Washed It!

For years in her native Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi has been known simply as “The Lady,” a pro-democracy stalwart and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has languished for years in an arbitrary solitary confinement imposed by the nation’s ruling military junta.

Although she was snatched from the public limelight, residents of the former Burma have always known this about the charismatic Buddhist activist, now 65: She would not be broken by the military generals she has long defied.

On Saturday, Suu Kyi proved them all right. She was finally released from the mildewing, two-story villa where she has spent much of her house arrest, spanning 15 of the last 21 years.

Whether in prison or not, supporters say, she has remained a quiet but defiant symbol of struggle against political repression for residents of the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

Always cutting a slight figure, the daughter of a national hero who had generations earlier campaigned for Burma’s independence from Britain endured personal hardship to uphold her political principals, often going years without seeing her husband or sons.

But as popes, presidents and activists called unsuccessfully for her release, she never wavered. Once asked if she thought her story had the makings of a Greek tragedy, she responded: “Don’t be silly. I don’t go in for melodrama.”

She later added: “I look upon myself as a politician. That’s not a dirty word, you know. Some people think that there is something wrong with politicians. Of course, there is something wrong with some politicians.”

Time and again, Suu Kyi showed her mettle since taking up the democracy struggle in 1988.

Spending much of her early life abroad, Suu Kyi had returned home that year just as street protests erupted against a quarter-century of military rule. The daughter of martyred independence leader Gen. Aung San, she quickly assumed a leadership role.

Then 44, she campaigned for the government to stage proper elections and became the first secretary general of the fledging National League for Democracy.

Explaining why she risked prison or worse by taking on the nation’s military, she responded: “I could not, as my father’s daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on.”

Her unsuccessful efforts to stop a brutal military suppression that killed thousands of protestors, repeatedly facing own armed soldiers, gained her worldwide notoriety, including the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, being proclaimed by the Nobel committee as “an outstanding example of the power of the powerless.”

But Suu Kyi’s sons, Alexander and Kim, accepted the award in Oslo on behalf of their mother who, seen as a threat by the country’s new military rulers, was detained in 1989 on national security charges.

She spent the next six years under house arrest at the family home at 54 University Avenue, enduring various periods in detention since then. Over the years, she has waged repeated hunger strikes to call attention to the military’s brutal repression of protesting students.

But Suu Kyi endured. When her husband, British scholar Michael Aris, died in London in March 1999, they had only seen each other a handful of times since her first house arrest a decade earlier.

Press reports have painted her life in captivity as austere. Rising each day at 4 a.m., she meditated, read and listened to one of five radios that were her only link to the outside world. She had no telephone, no television, no Internet. Her mail, if delivered at all, was heavily censored.

Once an accomplished pianist, Myanmar’s muggy equatorial heat long ago warped her instrument. Her only companionship: two long-serving, mother-and-daughter assistants.

Recent months have brought particular frustration. Suu Kyi was just a few weeks away from being released last year when she had an unexpected visit by an American, John Yettaw. She was found guilty of harboring anti-government elements and her sentence was extended.

At the time, one of her assistants told reporters: “It has been a hard life, she has sacrificed a lot. But she is used [to it] now. And she keeps working, waiting for the day she will be released.”

john.glionna@latimes.com
Suu Kyi outlasted her oppressors

If Republicans win control of the House in the Nov. 2 election, California’s congressional delegation will undergo a dramatic transfer of power, as Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Beverly Hills give way to a team of Republicans who could take over at least five committees.

Although Democrats are certain to remain in the majority of the state’s delegation, California Republicans hold enough seniority within their party to wield the chairmanship gavels of more committees than any other state:

•Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista, in line to chair the top investigative committee, could become the Obama administration’s chief congressional antagonist.

•Rep. Jerry Lewis of Redlands, the senior California House Republican, could return as Appropriations Committee chairman, tasked with carrying out his party’s pledge to rein in spending, even as his home state looks to Washington for more money.

•Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon of Santa Clarita is positioned to take control of the Armed Services Committee, setting up a possible confrontation with the White House it if sticks to its plan to begin drawing down troops in Afghanistan in July. He also would take over the panel at a time when budget cuts loom over the state’s defense industry.

•Rep. David Dreier of San Dimas is likely to return as chairman of the Rules Committee, which sets the procedures for considering House bills. And Rep. Dan Lungren of Gold River, if he wins his tough reelection campaign, could chair the Committee on House Administration, which oversees the day-to-day operations of the House.

Republicans feel so good about their prospects that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) is working behind the scenes to win the Science and Technology Committee gavel. Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton), who provided more than $1 million of his own campaign funds to help elect Republicans, has been mentioned as a possible candidate for chairman of the Financial Services Committee.

And Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), in only his second term, is expected to move up in party leadership, perhaps to the third-ranking position of whip, responsible for counting votes and maintaining party discipline on important floor decisions. It would be a reward for the telegenic 45-year-old chief recruiter of Republican candidates who has traveled the country from Lake Oswego, Ore., to Frog Jump, Tenn., working to deliver a GOP majority.

California’s potential clout in a Republican-controlled House is striking given the blue tinge of the state, which still views President Obama more favorably than most other places, though six California Republicans chaired major committees before the Democrats won control of the House in 2006.

Democrats say they believe their party will hold onto the majority after Nov. 2, but are using the “what if” prospect of a Republican takeover in the campaign.

“Every time I try to encourage the White House to do more to help us elect Democrats to the House of Representatives, I send them a picture of Darrell Issa with the word ’subpoena’ underneath,” said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), in reference to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s power to drag administration officials before the bright TV lights of investigative hearings.

Democrats question how strongly California Republicans will look out for the state’s interests while shaping their party’s national agenda.

“When the Republican governor of California came to Congress with his hand out, saying, ‘I need your help,’ they all said, ‘no,’ ” said Daniel Weiss, chief of staff for Rep. George Miller of Martinez, one of five California Democrats who chair House committees.

All of the California Republicans present last summer opposed a $26-billion aid package for cash-strapped states, including $1.2 billion sought by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, attacking it as another expensive federal bailout.

“We will not be a prosperous state if our country has policies that are bringing us a trillion and a half dollars more in debt each year,” Rohrabacher said.

“Chasing after nonexistent federal dollars is hardly our priority,” added Dreier, chairman of the California Republican delegation. “Our goal is to implement fiscally responsible pro-growth economic policies so that we can get Californians working.”

Frederick Hill, a spokesman for Issa, said California Republicans would be “positioned to play key roles in addressing the failed efforts of this Congress and administration to lower unemployment — many California congressional Democrats don’t even seem to acknowledge that this administration’s job policies aren’t working as advertised.”

California Republicans could face resistance within their own party over aiding a blue state and the longtime mind-set among many lawmakers who would rather have federal resources go “anywhere but California.”

Among the biggest changes in a GOP power transfer would be Issa taking over as chairman of the oversight committee, which over the years has investigated subjects including steroid use in sports, and waste, fraud and abuse in government contracts.

Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog Project on Government Oversight, expects Issa to be “oftentimes partisan.”

But, she said, so was Waxman, an investigative pit bill while leading the panel, investigating such things as whether the George W. Bush administration sought to muzzle climate scientists in order to downplay the dangers of global warming and the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to deny California permission to implement its global warming law.

“We think it could be interesting having him as chairman of the committee,” Brian said.

But interesting isn’t a word Democrats use.

“So far, he’s given a lot of indications that he’s looking forward to using the position for partisan purposes,” Waxman said.

There is speculation that some longtime California Democrats may retire rather than try to adjust to life with less power. But if Republicans win the majority by only a few seats, those Democrats might stay on in hopes of regaining the majority in 2012.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) is among those eager for a Republican takeover of the House. “Most importantly, it will put people in charge who are not from San Francisco or Hollywood,” he said.

richard.simon@latimes.com

Election could shift power in state’s congressional delegation

Repeated clashes over illegal immigration have marked the state’s political races for years, but a new Los Angeles Times/USC poll found that voters hold positive views about immigrants overall and favor accommodating illegal immigrants who have held down jobs in the state.

Asked whether immigrants represented a benefit or a burden to the state, 48% of voters likely to cast ballots in November said they were a benefit, and 36% said they strongly held that view. Only 32% said immigrants overall were a burden to California because of their impact on public services, and only 22% felt that way strongly.

Separately, 59% of likely voters said that an illegal immigrant who had lived and worked in the United States for at least two years should be allowed to remain here if discovered. More than 2 in 5 voters saidthey felt strongly that such an option should be available. Only 30% of likely voters thought the illegal immigrant should be deported, and only 19% backed that option strongly.

But views varied widely by political persuasion and age.

Liberals were most supportive of immigrants legal and illegal, with 75% saying immigrants were a benefit and 81% saying that working illegal immigrants should be able to keep their jobs. Voters under 45 agreed, with 59% saying immigrants were beneficial and 68% calling for illegal immigrants to keep their jobs rather than be deported.

Among conservative likely voters, 52% felt immigrants were a burden and 25% felt they were a benefit. Conservatives were the only group that leaned more toward deportation — by a narrow 2 percentage point margin.

Voters over 65 were more split, with 41% citing immigrants as a benefit and 36% as a burden. They also favored letting illegal immigrants keep their jobs, 55% to 33%.

By far the demographic group most supportive of immigrants was Latinos. Sixty-eight percent said immigrants were a benefit, a view shared by 43% of whites. And 76% felt illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay in the country, a sentiment shared by 56% of whites.

The poll was conducted for The Los Angeles Times and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences from Oct. 13 to 20 by the Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and the Republican firm American Viewpoint. It included a random sample of 1,501 California voters, including 922 likely voters. Results for likely voters have a margin of sampling error of 3.2 points in either direction, with a larger margin for subgroups.

cathleen.decker@latimes.com
Californians hold positive views of immigrants; most oppose deportation

One night a few years back, a California communications executive named Deborah Bowker was worried about her husband, who was sick and hospitalized. An old friend told her she shouldn’t be alone, that she should come over and stay the night.

The guest bedroom at the friend’s house was used most often by grandchildren, and contained two tiny beds. That night, Bowker was crying herself to sleep in one of them when the door cracked open. Without a word, Carly Fiorina padded across the room and crawled into the other bed.

Bowker and Fiorina have been close friends since they went to MIT together, and little changed for 20 years — until Fiorina decided to run for the U.S. Senate, with Bowker as her chief of staff.

That fretful night doesn’t seem like a big deal now. Bowker’s husband recovered, and Fiorina might not even remember it, Bowker said with a laugh. Bowker said she hadn’t told the story before and wasn’t sure why she was telling it now — except that she hardly recognizes Fiorina in the image that’s been created through the veneer of politics.

Those closest to Fiorina, 56, describe her as loyal and fun-loving, witty and bright. But they are well aware of the other image — of a pompous diva, aligned with the most strident factions of her Republican Party, pampered by a golden parachute after being fired from her high-profile job.

Fiorina the candidate hasn’t always helped matters. Her tone on the stump can be caustic. At one point in her dogged campaign against the Democratic incumbent, Sen. Barbara Boxer, an open microphone caught her belittling Boxer’s hair as “so yesterday.”

In a sneering attempt to connect with a “tea party” crowd near Fresno recently, she referred to San Francisco — the center of the metropolitan area where she spent nearly half of her life, the city just up the road from her 5,400-square-foot Los Altos Hills estate — as “that faraway world.”

And her critics tend to roll their eyes when Fiorina — who was raised on opera and French lessons, was the daughter of a powerful judge and has a sterling academic pedigree — pitches herself as a kind of Horatio Alger. Her journey, she said at one recent campaign event, was “only possible in the United States of America.”

Getting to know the person friends call “the real Carly,” meanwhile, can be a confounding task. Stung by several episodes in her life, including the unraveling of her first marriage and the brouhaha surrounding her firing from Hewlett-Packard, where she was chief executive, president and chairman, she is private and guarded.

Fiorina’s work ethic is legendary, and her discipline is one reason Boxer — a lioness of the left seeking her fourth Senate term — is in arguably the toughest race of her career. But Fiorina can be so on-message that she comes across as a machine.

During a recent heat wave, Fiorina met with business leaders in a sweltering City of Industry warehouse. A visitor joked that the record heat might cause her to rethink her position on global warming. Fiorina was not amused, launching instantly into her talking points about climate change — contending that she reserved the right to “challenge the science.”

On the campaign trail, it can be difficult to envision the Fiorina who could often be found dancing with the interns and the secretaries at the end of corporate parties, long after the other executives were gone. Or the woman who, on a recent boat trip, suddenly disappeared; she had jumped off the stern and hauled herself onto a tiny raft with her step-granddaughters.

Friends say she’s a fair cook and has a nice touch on the piano. She was raised Episcopalian but is not a regular churchgoer. She does Jane Fonda-style aerobics, whether she’s home or on the road.

She reads policy briefs on her iPad but reads books the old-fashioned way. She’s a voracious shopper, said one friend of 20 years, and gave one Hong Kong jeweler enough business that he put her picture in the window. She has at her disposal a household net worth estimated as high as $121 million and yachts on both coasts, and will be one of the wealthiest members of Congress if she wins.

She and her husband, Frank Fiorina, a former AT&T executive with blue-collar roots in Pittsburgh, have been married for 25 years. It is a second marriage for both; she calls him a “hunk” with some frequency.

Last fall, she threw him a sock-hop-themed 60th birthday party, tracking down friends he hadn’t seen in 30 years. Fiorina was stylish as ever, said an old friend, Kathy Fitzgerald, in a black dress and textured stockings — and, since she was being treated for breast cancer, bald.

Cara Carleton Sneed was born in Austin, Texas. Her mother, a talented oil painter, was a refugee from a troubled childhood in Ohio. Her father, Joseph Tyree Sneed III, was a University of Texas law professor whose ambition in academia meant that she was perpetually “the new kid,” she wrote in her autobiography, as the family moved repeatedly.

In 1969, while teenagers across America experimented with a new counterculture, Fiorina was in Ghana, where her father was teaching students about the country’s new constitution.

Fiorina’s father soon joined the Stanford law faculty, and she graduated from Stanford with a degree in philosophy and medieval history — which, she jokes, rendered her unemployable. She bounced from job to job, working as a typist, a temp, a receptionist. In 1980, she signed on as a management trainee with AT&T.

Fiorina presents a sharp contrast in images

A trio of economics scholars, including an MIT professor whose nomination to the Federal Reserve board has been held up in the Senate, won the Nobel Prize in economics on Monday for their studies of markets and how mismatches between buyers and sellers can contribute to such problems as high unemployment.

Peter A. Diamond of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and fellow American Dale T. Mortensen, a professor at Northwestern University, will share the $1.5 million award with Christopher A. Pissarides, a British and Cypriot citizen who teaches at the London School of Economics.

The three men pioneered and developed models that help explain, among other things, why there are so many jobless people even as there are a large number of job openings — a problem that is particularly relevant today as the United States and other developed countries grapple with stubbornly high unemployment.

The U.S. jobless figure for September was reported Friday at 9.6%.

“The laureates’ models help us understand the ways in which unemployment, job vacancies and wages are affected by regulation and economic policy,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in announcing the prize.

“This may refer to benefit levels in unemployment insurance or rules in regard to hiring and firing,” the statement said. “One conclusion is that more generous unemployment benefits give rise to higher unemployment and longer search times.”

The idea that more-generous jobless benefits can provide a disincentive for workers to seek or take jobs has been hotly debated in the U.S. as policymakers have continued to face pressure to extend unemployment checks for millions of people.

Mortensen, in a conference call from Denmark, where he is currently a visiting professor at Aarhus University, said his models do show a negative effect of higher jobless benefits.

But he dismissed that as a major factor in the high unemployment, saying instead that the current job troubles are a function of the impaired financial markets.

“I really don’t think this is the time to worry about that,” Mortensen, 71, said of unemployment benefits.

The works of Diamond, who first developed a theoretical framework on “search markets” in the early 1970s, and Mortensen and Pissarides also offer insights into another ongoing debate among economists — whether the high unemployment today reflects structural deficiencies such as mismatches in skills or problems that are more cyclical in nature because of weak demand.

Some economists have argued the troubles are structural, suggesting that unemployment won’t be going back to the normal range of 5%, while others have emphasized that the terrible labor situation demands more substantial government stimulus to bolster demand for goods and services.

Diamond acknowledged that the process of improving the job market “is going to be slow and painful” for the whole economy and people looking for work. But he didn’t view it as a structural problem, suggesting more optimism for the future.

“I think the economy is very adaptive,” he said. “Workers and employers will adapt.”

Diamond, 70, who received his Ph.D. from MIT and has been a professor there since 1966, is considered by peers as a brilliant theorist whose works on social security systems are highly regarded.

Last spring he was nominated by President Obama to fill one of three vacancies on the Fed’s board. But while two other nominees to the Fed board were cleared recently, Diamond’s confirmation was effectively blocked by Senate Republicans.

Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, questioned whether the MIT professor had enough practical experience to serve as a Fed governor.

Asked about the Fed nomination during a news conference at MIT, Diamond said he would not withdraw his candidacy but declined to comment further.

don.lee@latimes.com
Three share Nobel Prize in economics

The increasingly contentious Nevada Senate race between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his ultra-conservative Republican opponent, Sharron Angle, took an ugly turn last week when the candidates accused each other of going easy on child molesters — and campaigning isn’t expected to get any more pleasant between now and election day.

“It’s not much fun to live through,” said political scientist David Damore of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “It’s about 95%, if not 100%, negative.”

In a surprise move on Saturday, Angle softened some of her harsh stances on government benefits such as Social Security and unemployment insurance that have led opponents to characterize her as extreme, according to the Associated Press. Her remarks came during an interview before an audience with a conservative radio host in Las Vegas.

While Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 14.4%, and the highest foreclosure rate, Reid and Angle concentrated on ratcheting up the fear factor with their new spots, a sign that the race remains uncomfortably tight. Three polls released in the last week showed Angle with a slight lead over Reid, but within the margin of error.

“I would say that the ramping up of the rhetoric indicates that the internal polling of the candidates shows they have no clue who is winning this race,” said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. As a result, the candidates are scrambling to demonize each other.

“Reid’s goal isn’t to get people to like him,” Herzik said, “it’s to scare people about Sharron Angle. He’s got very high unfavorables and he knows he can’t change that, so what can he do? Make people like Sharron Angle even less, or be afraid of her.”

In a 30-second spot, Angle accused the incumbent of voting to allow taxpayer dollars to pay for Viagra for convicted child molesters and sex offenders. “What else,” it asks, “could you ever need to know about Harry Reid?”

Her charge is rooted in political maneuvering around the healthcare reform bill that became law this year. Reid voted against an amendment that would have barred the use of federal funds to buy Viagra for sex offenders. Democrats opposed the amendment for procedural reasons. Politifact, a website that evaluates claims in political ads, rated Angle’s charge as “barely true.”

Reid blasted Angle for a vote she cast in 1999 while a member of the Nevada Assembly opposing background checks for people who volunteer with youth and church groups. “Sharron Angle voted to protect the privacy of sex offenders,” says the star of the spot, a Las Vegas family therapist who works with abused kids. A rating for Reid’s ad could not be found on Politifact.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that the bill, which passed the Assembly, would create a fund to pay for the screening of volunteers. The newspaper quoted minutes from the discussion in committee, which reflected that Angle was concerned with “the possible invasion of privacy and liability issues included in the bill.”

Angle has been dogged by other issues, as well.

Last month, she seemed to suggest in a town hall meeting that Dearborn, Mich., which has a large Arab population, is operating under Islamic law, which drew a denunciation from the mayor of that city.

An account by the online news site, Mesquite Local News, said that in response to a question about whether “Muslims are taking over the U.S.,” Angle replied: “Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas, are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don’t know how that happened in the United States. It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States.”

On Thursday, the Reno News and Review published an interview with Angle’s one-time pastor, an evangelical Christian, in which he slurred Reid’s Mormon faith, calling it a “cult” and “kooky.” The Rev. John Reed of Sonrise Church in Reno said he was alarmed by Reid’s “allegiance to Salt Lake City,” where the Mormon religion is based.

Angle disavowed Reed’s remarks, but it is unclear what effect they will have on the 11% of Nevada’s voters who are Mormon. Some political observers believe the pastor’s remarks could prompt Mormons, who generally vote Republican, to choose “none of the above,” which is an option on the Nevada ballot.

In the last week, Reid has garnered the endorsements of two prominent Nevada Republicans — the state Senate’s Republican leader Bill Raggio and former First Lady Dema Guinn, whose late husband, Kenny Guinn, was governor from 1999 to 2007.

An American and two Japanese scientists won the 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for developing chemical methods widely used to make potential cancer drugs and other medicines, as well as slimmed-down computer screens.

Richard Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki were honored for their development four decades ago of one of the most sophisticated tools available to chemists today, called palladium-catalyzed cross couplings.

It lets chemists join carbon atoms together, a key step in the process of building complex molecules. Their methods are now used worldwide in commercial production of pharmaceuticals and molecules used to make electronics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

Heck, 79, is a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware, now living in the Philippines. Negishi, 75, is a chemistry professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and 80-year-old Suzuki is a retired professor from Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan.

Negishi told reporters in Stockholm by telephone from Indiana that he was excited to be awakened by a call early Wednesday from the Nobel committee, saying he started dreaming about winning the prize “half a century ago.”

“The Nobel Prize became a realistic dream of mine when I was in my 20’s,” he said, adding he would use his third of the 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award to continue doing research.

“I may have accomplished maybe half of my goals and I definitely would like to work for at least a couple of more years,” Negishi said.

Heck said from his home in the Philippines that the importance of his work wasn’t clear initially.

“It sort of grew as we worked on it,” he told The Associated Press. “As I worked on it longer it appeared it was pretty important and it has developed well since then.”

In a televised news conference from Hokkaido University, Suzuki said he was honored by the prize and hoped that it would inspire Japanese youngsters to explore chemistry.

“To my disappointment, not many young people seem to be interested in science, especially chemistry,” said Suzuki. “A resource-poor country like Japan can only rely on people’s endeavor and knowledge. I would like to continue my effort to provide help to younger people.”

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he spoke to Suzuki on the phone and congratulated him.

“He told me that Japan’s science and technology is at the world’s top level and encouraged me to make good use of the resources,” Kan said.

The methods developed by the three scientists have been used to artificially produce cancer-killing substances first found in marine sponges, the academy said in its citation. It’s not yet clear whether they will turn out to be useful drugs.

They are also being used to create new antibiotics that work on resistant bacteria and a number of commercially available drugs, including the anti-inflammatory Naproxen, prize committee member Claes Gustafsson said.

“There have been calculations that no less than 25 percent of all chemical reactions in the pharmaceutical industry are actually based on these methods,” Gustafsson said.

Palladium-catalyzed cross coupling has also been used by the electronics industry to make light-emitting diodes used in the production of extremely thin monitors, the academy said.

The approach developed by the winners is widely used in the pharmaceutical industry, in research labs and in commercial production of substances like plastics, said Joseph Francisco, president of the American Chemical Society and a colleague of Negishi’s in Purdue’s chemistry department.

“It’s truly quite fundamental work,” he said.

By using the metal palladium as a catalyst to make carbon atoms bond to each other, the approach makes those bonds happen “very easily, very cleanly,” he said. It requires fewer steps than previous methods and avoids having to clean up unwanted byproducts, he said.

Heck started experimenting with using palladium as a catalyst while working for an American chemical company in Delaware in the 1960’s. In 1977 Negishi developed a variant of the method and two years later Suzuki developed a third.

The academy said the chemistry award had a link to the research honored Tuesday by the Nobel Prize in physics, awarded to Russian-born Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for experiments with graphene, the thinnest and strongest material known to mankind.

“In spring 2010, scientists announced that they had attached palladium atoms to graphene, and the resulting solid material was used to carry out the Suzuki reaction in water,” the citation said.

The 2010 Nobel Prize announcements began Monday with the medicine award going to 85-year-old British professor Robert Edwards for fertility research that led to the first test tube baby.

The literature prize will be announced on Thursday, followed by the peace prize on Friday and economics on Monday, Oct. 11.

The awards were established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel — the inventor of dynamite — and are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of his death in 1896.
American, 2 Japanese share 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry

A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel debated Monday whether to endorse the safety of genetically engineered salmon, but instead urged the agency to require more studies to demonstrate the fish’s safety.

The North Atlantic salmon developed by AquaBounty Technologies Inc. of Waltham, Mass., would be the country’s first genetically engineered food animal.

The Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee did not vote on the FDA’s preliminary findings that the fish was safe for people to eat and did not pose a significant environmental risk. Instead, the panel offered a series of recommendations aimed at fleshing out information, including the possibility that the fish could trigger allergies or other health problems in some consumers.

The panel’s chairman, David Senior of Louisiana State University, said he thought members generally believed the fish was safe to eat, but were concerned that some studies had a small sample size.

One panelist, Greg Jaffe of the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, predicted after the meeting that the FDA would eventually approve the salmon, “but I don’t think the agency’s going to go quickly on this.”

The salmon is produced by taking a portion of the gene that protects the ocean pout fish against freezing, transplanting it into the growth gene of a Chinook salmon and transferring the blended genetic material into the fertilized eggs of a North Atlantic salmon.

The resulting fish grows during the winter months as well as the summer, unlike an ordinary salmon.

Several panelists raised concerns about the fast-growing fish, saying there were not enough data to answer key questions about allergens and other potential risks.

“There are questions that have not been answered by the data that has been presented,” said panelist James McKean, a veterinarian and professor at Iowa State University.

But other panelists argued there was no difference between the altered salmon and its natural counterpart.

“I would not feel alarmed about eating this kind of fish,” said Gary Thorgaard, a professor and fish researcher at Washington State University.

The panel’s conclusions are not binding, but the FDA usually heeds its recommendations.

The hearings continue Tuesday, when the FDA will hear testimony about what labeling, if any, should be required if the salmon was approved.

azajac@latimes.com

Reuters contributed to this report.

FDA advisors urge more study of genetically altered salmon

Rob Canty heard the news on TV Sunday morning at his home in St. Tammany Parish, La.: The wild oil well that changed his life — and the lives of thousands of others along the Gulf Coast — was sealed up, safely and permanently, thanks to an injection of cement 18,000 feet below the ocean’s surface.

After nearly five months of heartache, misery and worry, the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico was dead.

The news was “real good,” said Canty, a 31-year-old shrimper, but it wasn’t likely to change his life back immediately. His shrimp boat is still contracted out indefinitely to BP, he said, and for the time being, he expects to remain among the 25,200 people hired to finish cleaning up the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

“We’re ready to try to go back fishing, but I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon,” Canty said. “We still got oil out there.”

Sunday’s announcement of the successful “bottom kill” of the BP well was met with relief, but only muted fanfare, as nearly all the players in the drama — including President Obama, outgoing BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward, and a number of Gulf Coast residents — emphasized that the story was far from over, and that much more work remained to be done.

“Today, we achieved an important milestone in our response to the BP oil spill,” Obama said in a statement, adding that members of his administration “remain committed to doing everything possible to make sure the Gulf Coast recovers fully from this disaster.”

“This road will not be easy,” he said, “but we will continue to work closely with the people of the gulf to rebuild their livelihoods and restore the environment that supports them.”

Hayward — whose gaffes during the spill resulted in his ouster, effective Oct. 1 — declared that the well “no longer presents a threat to the Gulf of Mexico,” adding that BP’s commitment to repair the damage “remains unchanged.”

The final plugging of the well was a somewhat underwhelming denouement to one of the great engineering challenges in modern times. After a number of missteps, BP was able to seal the well in mid-July with a temporary custom cap. Once the oil had stopped flowing, experts embarked on a slow, careful, multistep process to ensure that it would be shut in for good: In early August, the seal was improved with a shot of drilling mud and cement from the top. Later, crews swapped out the old blowout preventer — the safety device that failed during the April 20 blowout of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, killing 11 workers — with a newer, stronger cap.

Throughout the process, Thad Allen, the federal spill response chief, asserted that the well could be considered dead only when the outer ring of the well, called the annulus, was also plugged with cement from deep underground.

After testing to ensure that they would do no harm, crews on Thursday drilled into the annulus nearly 18,000 feet below the ocean’s surface, then began filling it with cement to ensure that oil would never again flow from the reservoir below.

Pressure tests were conducted late Saturday night that showed the cement job had been a success. On Sunday morning, Allen declared the well “effectively dead.”

“From the beginning, this response has been driven by the best science and engineering available,” Allen said in a statement Sunday. “We insisted that BP develop robust redundancy measures to ensure that each step was part of a deliberate plan, driven by science, minimizing risk to ensure we did not inflict additional harm in our efforts to kill the well.”

That was about as happy as anyone allowed themselves to be, at least in public. Even on the drilling rig some 50 miles off the Louisiana shore, the Associated Press reported that crews wouldn’t celebrate much. They’d treat themselves to prime rib on news of a job well done, but Rich Robson, the offshore installation manager, said the mood was bittersweet.

“To a lot of people, the water out here is a cemetery,” he said.

With the cement job completed, oversight of the well will shift from the National Incident Command, which was set up to deal with spill-related issues, to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, which regulates offshore oil drilling.

BP plans to complete the abandonment of the well, removing portions of casing and further securing the well. The company will also begin dismantling and recovering the various equipment used in the effort to plug the well that has gathered around the wellsite over the months.

The more complicated work, however, is the ongoing effort to find and clean up the remaining oil, and measure and mitigate its effects on the environment.

Before it was capped, the well spewed 205.8 million gallons of oil. Much of it remains at sea.

According to the federal government, about 110 miles of shoreline are experiencing “moderate to heavy oil impacts,” most of it in coastal Louisiana.

Of great concern to scientists is the huge amount of oil — about a quarter of the total — in droplet form that is floating in vast clouds in the deep water. The long-term effect of these clouds, and the ability of bacteria to break them down naturally, is not clear.

Aaron Viles, campaign director of the Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental nonprofit in New Orleans, said the sealing of the well gave him a sense of “trepidation.”

“Because I know that as that news comes out — that it’s the ‘final seal of the well’ — it’s kind of the final real attention this issue’s going to get, in the world’s eyes at least.

“I do think that, while we’re likely at the end of the big telegenic story, the more challenging piece remains,” he added. “Which is quantifying the impact and responding in the most effective way to ensure these resources can recover.”

richard.fausset@latimes.com

Blown-out BP well is declared dead

In 1977, one of the engineering marvels of the modern world made its debut: the trans-Alaska pipeline, 48 inches of steel traversing 800 miles, three mountain ranges and more than 800 rivers and streams.

In its heyday in the 1980s, the pipeline carried as much as 2.1 million barrels of oil a day from America’s largest oil field at Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez. Alaska was transformed into a petro state with an oil savings account worth $33.3 billion.