Soldier looks forward to driving with new arms

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BALTIMORE (AP) — A soldier who lost all four limbs in a roadside bombing in Iraq says he's looking forward to driving and swimming with new arms after undergoing a double-arm transplant.


"I just want to get the most out of these arms, and just as goals come up, knock them down and take it absolutely as far as I can," Brendan Marrocco said Tuesday.


The 26-year-old New Yorker spoke at a news conference at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was joined by surgeons who performed the operation.


After he was wounded, Marrocco said, he felt fine using prosthetic legs, but he hated not having arms.


"You talk with your hands, you do everything with your hands, basically, and when you don't have that, you're kind of lost for a while," he said.


Marrocco said his chief desire is to drive the black Dodge Charger that's been sitting in his garage for three years.


"I used to love to drive," he said. "I'm really looking forward to just getting back to that, and just becoming an athlete again."


Although he doesn't expect to excel at soccer, his favorite sport, Marrocco said he'd like to swim and compete in a marathon using a handcycle.


Marrocco joked that military service members sometimes regard themselves as poorly paid professional athletes. His good humor and optimism are among the qualities doctors cited as signs he will recover much of his arm and hand use in two to three years.


"He's a young man with a tremendous amount of hope, and he's stubborn — stubborn in a good way," said Dr. Jaimie Shores, the hospital's clinical director of hand transplantation. "I think the sky's the limit."


Shores said Marrocco has already been trying to use his hands, although he lacks feeling in the fingers, and he's eager to do more as the slow-growing nerves and muscles mend.


"I suspect that he will be using his hands for just about everything as we let him start trying to do more and more. Right now, we're the ones really kind of holding him back at this point," Shores said.


The procedure was only the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant ever done in the United States.


The infantryman was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009. He is the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War.


Marrocco also received bone marrow from the same donor to minimize the medicine needed to prevent rejection. He said he didn't know much about the donor but "I'm humbled by their gift."


The 13-hour operation on Dec. 18 was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Hopkins.


Marrocco was being released from the hospital Tuesday but will receive intensive therapy for two years at Hopkins and then at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda.


After a major surgery, human nerves regenerate at a rate of an inch per month, Lee said.


"The progress will be slow, but the outcome will be rewarding," he added.


___


Associated Press Writer David Dishneau contributed to this story from Hagerstown, Md.


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Woman who drowned autistic son gets prison time

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Autism
A 37-year-old San Diego woman who told police she killed her son because of the burden of caring for an autistic child was sentenced Monday to 15 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.


Patricia Corby drowned her 4-year-old son, Daniel, in the family bathtub March 31 while her husband was at work, according to evidence submitted in court.


"I hate you with all my heart and soul," Duane Corby told the woman before San Diego County Superior Court Judge Charles Gill sentenced her for the death of the boy.


After killing her son, she tried to commit suicide but failed, according to evidence.


She wrapped the boy in a blanket and took his lifeless body to a police substation responsible for their Carmel Valley neighborhood.


Under Gill's sentence, Corby will not be eligible for a reduced sentence due to good behavior while in prison. Corby's husband told investigators that he had never seen any signs of mental illness in his wife.


The family had spent $70,000 trying to find help for their son, according to evidence in court.


Corby kept her head bowed in court as relatives told the judge about the pain caused by the boy's death, including an aunt who said the boy is probably looking down from heaven and asking, "Mama, why did you kill me?"


ALSO:


Manti Te'o hoax: Diane O'Meara says she was hounded for photos


Latino kids disproportionately victimized by teachers, lawyer says


Frank Ocean wants Chris Brown prosecuted in clash over parking spot

-- Tony Perry in San Diego


Photo: Patricia Corby at arraignment. Credit: Fox-5 San Diego




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The Lede Blog: Images of New Clashes in Egypt, Two Years After the Revolution's 'Day of Rage'

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Last Updated, 2:47 p.m. This post has been updated throughout the day with reports from bloggers and journalists in Egypt, where protests and clashes continued in major cities despite an attempt to impose emergency rule.

As my colleague David Kirkpatrick reports from Egypt, there were protests in the Suez Canal city of Port Said and fresh clashes in Cairo on Monday.

Video uploaded to YouTube on Sunday showed officers firing at protesters in Port Said, killing four, including a man in a wheelchair, according to Mosireen, a collective of activist Egyptian filmmakers.

Video said to show Egyptian police officers firing at protesters in the Suez Canal city of Port Said on Sunday.

As clashes continued in Port Said on Monday, despite a declaration of martial law, journalists and bloggers there uploaded video of angry chants against the government at funerals for protesters and reports of escalating mayhem.

Video said to show the funeral of protesters killed in Port Said, Egypt on Monday.

In Cairo, police fired tear gas on Sunday and Monday at protesters at the foot of the Kasr el-Nile bridge near Tahrir Square, which was the scene of an epic battle during the uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak exactly two years ago, on what was known as the revolution’s “Day of Rage.”

The activist blogger Omar Kamel shared dramatic photographs and video of the clashes by the bridge on Sunday, showing clouds of tear gas in front of the luxury hotels along the Nile Corniche illuminated by the protesters’ fireworks and lasers.

Video of clashes along the Nile Corniche in Cairo on Sunday night, posted online by Omar Kamel, an activist filmmaker.

The Egyptian newspaper El Watan uploaded video of clashes in the same area on Monday.

Video on clashes in Cairo on Monday, from hte Egyptian news site El Watan.

The Cairene blogger who writes as Kikhote uploaded video shot from above Tahrir Square on Monday that zoomed in to the foot of the Kasr el-Nil bridge, showing the location of the bridge and what looked like hundreds of protesters gathered there.

Video shot from above Tahrir Square on Monday showed the location of clashes at Kasr el-Nil bridge nearby.

Kikhote also drew attention to the activist blogger Rasha Azab’s photograph of a cloud of tear gas in the air above the heads of protesters near the foot of the bridge on Monday, in front of the distinctive salmon-colored facade of the Cairo Semiramis hotel.

Tarek Shalaby, another activist blogger, reported on Twitter that a couple of hundred protesters remained on the bridge, with dozens of officers from the Central Security Forces on the Corniche nearby, at about 2 p.m. on Monday afternoon.

A short time later, my colleague Kareem Fahim reported from the bridge that tear gas was being fired at protesters on the Cornche.

At abut 5 p.m. local time, Jonathan Rashad, a photographer, reported on Twitter that the officers had pushed protesters back from the Cornche on to the bridge and into Tahrir Square.

About two hours later, the Egyptian journalists Mohamed Abdelfattah and Simon Hanna reported from the Corniche that a protest march coming from the other direction had broken through the police lines just down the street from the Semiramis, and, after some fighting, the protesters captured a senior officer outside another luxury hotel, the Kempinski.

Witnesses also said that the protesters then took control of one police armored personnel carrier, driving it to Tahrir Square, and set fire to another.

At about 8 p.m. local time the A.P.C. that was driven into Tahrir Square by protesters was also on fire, as video posted online by the blogger Kikhote showed.

Video of an armored personnel carrier ablaze in Tahrir Square on Monday night.

As the 9 p.m. curfew imposed on Port Said approached, Rawya Rageh, a correspondent for Al Jazeera English, reported from the city that thousands of protesters had taken to the streets to defy the order — including the local soccer club’s most hardcore fans, the ultras, who were blamed for a deadly riot last year.

A blogger named Sameh Abd El-Khalek uploaded photographs to Twitter of what he said was the protest march on Monday night.

As the Egyptian blogger who writes as The Big Pharaoh noted, live television images also showed thousands of protesters breaking the 9 p.m. curfew in the city of Suez.

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Crucial, long-overdue BlackBerry makeover arrives

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TORONTO (AP) — The maker of the BlackBerry smartphone is promising a speedy browser, a superb typing experience and the ability to keep work and personal identities separate on the same phone, the fruit of a crucial, long-overdue makeover for the Canadian company.


Thorsten Heins, chief executive of Research In Motion Ltd., will reveal the first phone with the new BlackBerry 10 system in New York on Wednesday. Repeated delays have left the once-pioneering BlackBerry an afterthought in the shadow of Apple’s trend-setting iPhone and Google’s Android-driven devices.






Now, there’s some optimism. Previews of the software have gotten favorable reviews on blogs. Financial analysts are starting to see some slight room for a comeback. RIM‘s stock has nearly tripled to about $ 16.30 from a nine-year low in September, though it’s still nearly 90 percent below its 2008 peak of $ 147.


Most analysts consider a BlackBerry 10 success to be crucial for the company’s long-term viability.


“The old models are becoming obsolete quickly,” BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis said. “There is still a big user base but it’s going to rotate off. The question is: Where do they rotate to?”


The BlackBerry, pioneered in 1999, has been the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people. Corporate information-technology managers like the phones because they’re relatively secure and easy to manage.


The BlackBerry has also crossed over to consumers. President Barack Obama couldn’t bear to part with it when he took office. Oprah Winfrey declared it one of her “favorite things.” People got so addicted that the device was nicknamed “the CrackBerry.”


But when the iPhone came out in 2007, it showed that phones can do much more than email and phone calls. They can play games, music and movies. Android came along to offer even more choices. Though IT managers still love BlackBerrys, employees were bringing their own devices to the workplace — a trend Heins acknowledged RIM was slow to adapt to.


Suddenly, the BlackBerry looked ancient.


Even as BlackBerry sales continued to grow in many parts of the world, many BlackBerry users in North America switched to iPhones and Android devices. BlackBerry’s worldwide subscriber based peaked at 80 million in the quarter that ended Sept. 1, before dropping to 79 million in the most-recent quarter. In the U.S., according to research firm IDC, shipments of BlackBerry phones plummeted from 46 percent of the market in 2008 to 2 percent in 2012.


RIM promised a new system to catch up, using technology it got through its 2010 purchase of QNX Software Systems. RIM initially said BlackBerry 10 would come by early 2012, but then the company changed that to late 2012. A few months later, that date was pushed further, to early 2013, missing the lucrative holiday season. The holdup helped wipe out more than $ 70 billion in shareholder wealth and 5,000 jobs.


Although executives have been providing a glimpse at some of BlackBerry 10′s new features for months, Heins will finally showcase a complete system at Wednesday’s event. Devices will go on sale soon after that.


RIM redesigned the system to embrace the multimedia, apps and touch-screen experience prevalent today.


“Historically there have been areas that have not been our strongest points,” Rick Costanzo, RIM’s executive vice president of global sales, said in an interview. “Not only have we caught up, but we may even be better than some of the competition now.”


Costanzo said “no one else can touch” what RIM’s new system offers.


The new operating system promises better multitasking than either the iPhone or Android. Simply swipe a finger across the phone’s display screen to switch to another program.


All emails and notifications from such applications as Twitter and Facebook go to the BlackBerry Hub, a nerve center accessible with a finger swipe even if you have another application open. One can peek into it and open an email, or return to the previous application without opening the email.


“You are not going in and out of applications; you’re flowing through applications with one simple gesture of your finger,” Costanzo said. “You can leave applications running. You can effortlessly flow between them. So that’s completely unique to us.”


That said, multitasking will be limited and won’t allow for extensive use of apps side by side, as is typically permitted on traditional computers. If you’re watching a video, it will still run while you check for email. But it will pause if you decide to open an email and resume when you are done.


The BlackBerry’s touch-screen keyboard promises to learn a user’s writing style and suggest words and phrases to complete, going beyond typo corrections offered by rivals. See the one you want, and flick it up to the message area. Costanzo said that “BlackBerry offers the best keyboard, period.”


Gus Papageorgiou, a Scotiabank financial analyst who has tried it out, agreed with that assessment and said the keyboard even learns and adjusts to your thumb placements.


The first BlackBerry 10 phone will have only a touch screen. RIM has said it will release a version with a physical keyboard soon after that. That’s an area RIM has excelled at, and it’s one reason many BlackBerry users have remained loyal despite temptations to switch.


Another distinguishing feature will be the BlackBerry Balance, which allows two personas on the same device. Businesses can keep their data secure without forcing employees to get a second device for personal use. For instance, IT managers can prevent personal apps from running inside corporate firewalls, but those managers won’t have access to personal data on the device.


With Balance, “you can just switch from work to personal mode,” Papageorgiou said. “I think that is something that will attract a lot of people.”


RIM is also claiming that the BlackBerry 10′s browser will be speedy, even faster than browsers for laptop and desktop computers. According to Papageorgiou, early, independent tests between the BlackBerry 10 and the iPhone support that claim.


Regardless of BlackBerry 10′s advances, though, the new system will face a key shortcoming: It won’t have as many apps written by outside companies and individuals as the iPhone and Android. RIM has said it plans to launch BlackBerry 10 with more than 70,000 apps, including those developed for RIM’s PlayBook tablet, first released in 2011. Even so, that’s just a tenth of what the iPhone and Android offer. Papageorgiou said the initial group will include the most popular ones such as Twitter and Facebook. But RIM will have to persuade others to make a BlackBerry version, when they are already struggling to keep up with both the iPhone and Android.


Like many analysts, Papageorgiou recently upgraded RIM’s stock, but cautions that longtime BlackBerry users will have to get used to a whole new operating system.


He said RIM can be successful if about a third of current subscribers upgrade and if the company can get 4 million new users overseas, especially in countries where the BlackBerry has remained popular. IDC said smartphone shipments grew 44 percent in 2012. If those trends continue, it will be possible for the BlackBerry to grow even if iPhone and Android users don’t switch.


“This doesn’t have to be the best smartphone on the planet to be a success for RIM,” he said. “I think the big question though is, if it fails, is it just too late? Are the other two ecosystems just so advanced that no one can catch up? That’s a big risk.”


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Justin Bieber: 'I'm Not in the Happiest Place' After Selena Gomez Split

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By Maggie Coughlan





01/28/2013 at 02:30 PM EST



Breaking up is hard to do – even for Justin Bieber.

After his on-again, off-again relationship with Selena Gomez, the 18-year-old pop sensation tells Billboard how he's been handling single life.

"There's so many rumors. People say I call Selena every day and she won't pick up the phone or I'm chasing her down, and these are all fake stories," he says.

He continues: "I don't go on blogs or anything like that. I hear things. People tell me if something happens on the Internet. It gets back to me, definitely."

But when asked if he's "pretty heartbroken," Bieber admits he's hasn't been having the easiest time following his split.

"I'm not in the happiest place that I've ever been. I'm trying to get through what I'm going through. Like I said, I have my really close friends to cheer me up and keep me going," he says.

Bieber – who says his song "Nothing Like Us" is about his breakup with Gomez, 20 – says he relies on his music for emotional release.

"I'm 18. I have a great team around me," he says. "I have great friends. We have a blast. They keep me occupied and keep my mind off negative things. It's funny when people are like 'You're 18. What have you really gone through?' I'm thinking, 'What do you mean? When you were 18, you don't think you went through that stuff?' When you are 18, you're going through that transition. You have a high school girlfriend, you might not. Going to college. Figuring yourself out, leaving home."

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Soldier who lost 4 limbs has double-arm transplant

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The first soldier to survive after losing all four limbs in the Iraq war has received a double-arm transplant.


Brendan Marrocco had the operation on Dec. 18 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his father said Monday. The 26-year-old Marrocco, who is from New York City, was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009.


He also received bone marrow from the same dead donor who supplied his new arms. That novel approach is aimed at helping his body accept the new limbs with minimal medication to prevent rejection.


The military is sponsoring operations like these to help wounded troops. About 300 have lost arms or hands in the wars.


"He was the first quad amputee to survive" from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there have been four others since then, said Brendan Marrocco's father, Alex Marrocco. "He was really excited to get new arms."


The Marroccos want to thank the donor's family for "making a selfless decision ... making a difference in Brendan's life," the father said.


Surgeons plan to discuss the transplant at a news conference with the patient on Tuesday.


The 13-hour operation was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Johns Hopkins, and is the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant done in the United States. Lee led three of those earlier operations when he previously worked at the University of Pittsburgh, including the only above-elbow transplant that had been done at the time, in 2010.


Marrocco's "was the most complicated one" so far, Lee said in an interview Monday. It will take more than a year to know how fully Marrocco will be able to use the new arms, Lee said.


"The maximum speed is an inch a month for nerve regeneration," he explained. "We're easily looking at a couple years" until the full extent of recovery is known.


While at Pittsburgh, Lee pioneered the novel immune suppression approach used for Marrocco. The surgeon led hand transplant operations on five patients, giving them marrow from their donors in addition to the new limbs. All five recipients have done well and four have been able to take just one anti-rejection drug instead of combination treatments most transplant patients receive.


Minimizing anti-rejection drugs is important because they have side effects and raise the risk of cancer over the long term. Those risks have limited the willingness of surgeons and patients to do more hand, arm and even face transplants. Unlike a life-saving heart or liver transplant, limb transplants are aimed at improving quality of life, not extending it.


Quality of life is a key concern for people missing arms and hands — prosthetics for those limbs are not as advanced as those for feet and legs.


Lee has received funding for his work from AFIRM, the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a cooperative research network of top hospitals and universities around the country that the government formed about five years ago. With government money, he and several other plastic surgeons around the country are preparing to do more face transplants, possibly using the new minimal immune suppression approach.


Marrocco expects to spend three to four months at Hopkins, then return to a military hospital to continue physical therapy, his father said. Before the operation, he had been living with his older brother in a handicapped-accessible home on New York's Staten Island built with the help of several charities.


The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.


Despite being in a lot of pain for some time after the operation, Marrocco showed a sense of humor, his father said. He had a hoarse voice from a tube in his throat during the long surgery, decided that he sounded like Al Pacino, and started doing movie lines.


"He was making the nurses laugh," Alex Marrocco said.


___


AP writer Alex Dominguez contributed to this report.


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The Lede Blog: Fire at a Nightclub in Southern Brazil

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Victims of the fire are attended by medics.

An intense fire ripped through a nightclub crowded with university students in southern Brazil early on Sunday morning, leaving behind a scene of horror, with bodies piled in the club’s bathrooms and on the street.

At least 232 people were killed, many of them students in the agronomy and veterinary medicine programs at a local university, police officials said.

As Simon Romero reports, a flare from a band’s pyrotechnic show ignited the fire in the nightclub, called Kiss, in the southern city of Santa Maria. Rescue workers continued to haul bodies from the still-smoldering building on Sunday.

Amateur videos posted to YouTube showed scenes of chaos as medics scurried over the bodies of victims who appeared to be unconscious, checking for signs of life.

Medics rush to care for victims of the fire.

Officials and witnesses say that security guards at the club had locked some exits, sewing panic as people attempted to flee the flames and smoke.

“Only after a multitude pushed down the security guards did they see the crap they had done,” Murilo de Toledo Tiecher, 26, a medical student who survived the fire, said in comments posted on Facebook.

Shortly before the fire, a club D.J. posted a photo on Facebook from inside the crowded club with the caption “Kiss is pumping.”

A short time later, another photo that was said to be taken outside the club and widely disseminated through social media showed smoke billowing from the front entrance.

The fire quickly engulfed the building.

Firefighters and volunteers who used T-shirts to protect themselves from the smoke struggled to pull people from the burning building.

Firefighters and volunteers tried to pull people from the burning building

Photos from the scene showed frantic friends and family members gathered outside the club and a hospital.

As Mr. Romero reports, witnesses said the fire started about 2 a.m. after the band, Gurizada Fangangueira, took the stage. At least one member of the five-person band, which is based in Santa Maria and advertised its use of pyrotechnics, was said to have been killed in the fire.

Overcrowding and a disregard for fire safety codes have led to deadly blazes at nightclubs in the past, though Sunday’s tragedy in Brazil is among the worst.

In 2003 in Rhode Island, a also fire set off by a pyrotechnic display at a club killed about 100 people. A fire that erupted under similar circumstances in Russia left almost as many dead in 2009.

And in Luoyang, China in 2000, 309 people were killed in a fire that broke out at a dance hall, forcing some to leap from high-rise windows.

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Ailing Jennifer Lawrence Plans to Attend the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Say Sources

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By Alison Schwartz





01/27/2013 at 01:40 PM EST



Will Jennifer Lawrence walk the red carpet at Sunday night's Screen Actors Guild Awards?

The Silver Linings Playbook star, who's nominated for her leading role playing troubled girl-next-door Tiffany, is currently sick with pneumonia, according to her costar. But sources tell PEOPLE that Lawrence is planning to attend the SAG Awards unless she takes a turn for the worse before showtime.

"She's been very sick," says one source. "She was laying low all week. She plans to be there tonight."

The actress, 22, was unable to attend Saturday's Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts International Awards in Los Angeles, where she was honored for her work in the film.

"I'm going to receive this on her behalf," Jacki Weaver told the audience as she accepted Lawrence's best lead actress trophy, according to E! News. "Poor Jen is really sick. She really is sick. She has pneumonia."

After nabbing a Golden Globe earlier this month, the actress is a favorite to pick up the SAG Award.

The 19th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awardswill air live on TNT and TBS on Sunday, Jan. 27, at 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT) from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

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CDC: Flu seems to level off except in the West

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New government figures show that flu cases seem to be leveling off nationwide. Flu activity is declining in most regions although still rising in the West.


The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospitalizations and deaths spiked again last week, especially among the elderly. The CDC says quick treatment with antiviral medicines is important, in particular for the very young or old. The season's first flu case resistant to treatment with Tamiflu was reported Friday.


Eight more children have died from the flu, bringing this season's total pediatric deaths to 37. About 100 children die in an average flu season.


There is still vaccine available although it may be hard to find. The CDC has a website that can help.


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CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/


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Teacher accused of molesting 20 student may have more victims, police say

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Pimentel


This story has been corrected. See note below.


An Orange County investigation into a former Los Angeles elementary school teacher is being reopened after the man was charged with molesting a dozen students at a Wilmington grade school.


The earlier investigation into the relations between Robert Pimentel and four youths – one from Newport Beach, three from Long Beach – was dropped because of “insufficient evidence, lack of corroboration, problems with the availability of witnesses and other evidentiary issues," the Orange County district attorney’s office said.


But in light of Pimentel’s arrest, the case will now be forwarded to the Los Angeles County district attorney.


Susan Kang Schroeder, chief of staff for the Orange County district attorney’s office, said prosecutors in L.A. had requested that they handle “all of our charges as well as their charges.” No details of the earlier Orange County investigation were made public.



Pimentel’s attorney, Richard Knickerbocker, said the former teacher is “absolutely innocent” and cautioned that the accusations are just that.


The Newport Beach resident and former youth soccer coach is being held on $12-million bail. He is charged with molesting a dozen elementary school students in 2011 and 2012, though Los Angeles police allege there are a total of 20 child victims and one adult.


Schroeder said Newport Beach detectives first submitted a case involving the four children in 2005 and that her office twice returned the case to police for further investigation. Ultimately, it was decided not to file charges, she said.



Pimentel volunteered for AYSO for six years as a referee and about one year as a coach in the Newport Beach area. He was suspended last March after he told the soccer organization that he was under investigation by the Los Angeles Unified School District.






Pimentel coached boys and had a child who played youth soccer, said George Passantino, an AYSO spokesman.

Although neither the district nor law enforcement contacted AYSO at the time, Pimentel's volunteer privileges were suspended immediately after the league learned of the investigation, as is standard any time allegations arise, he said.



"AYSO takes this very, very seriously, and when any type of a concern of this sort comes up, it is addressed," Passantino said. "It's not casting judgment, but we're making sure those kids are safe. You've got 500,000 kids. That's a big responsibility, and we're proud of the reputation we have in that arena."


No players or parents have reported abuse by Pimentel to AYSO, but the league is encouraging players' parents to contact authorities if they have any relevant information.
In the statement, the league also said it is "prepared to work closely" with law enforcement, should that become necessary.


[Updated, Saturday, 1 p.m.: This story initially said that  Pimentel coached youth soccer for seven years. He volunteered for AYSO as a referee for six years and as a coach for about a year.]


ALSO:


Man is arrested on suspicion of twice evading CHP in pursuit


Secret jail tapes of Seal Beach murder suspect must be handed over


After several hours, burglary suspect climbs down from East L.A. roof


--Jill Cowan and Richard Winton


Photo: Robert Pimentel in court Thursday. Credit: Associated Press.




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