Baghdad and Kurdistan at Odds Over Oil

Atef Hassan/Reuters

An oil field in Nasiriya, in southern Iraq, a region that is far more important to global oil production than Kurdistan, where exploration is at a relatively early stage.

LONDON — The re-emergence of Iraq as an oil powerhouse is sending ripples through the Middle East and the industry as a whole.

Iraq has surpassed Iran as the second-largest member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, after Saudi Arabia, raising questions about whether other countries will need to reduce oil production to accommodate a rising Iraq.

But tensions are evident between the federal government in Baghdad and the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, which is based in Erbil in the north.

The Kurds, who suffered terribly under Saddam Hussein, are determined to maintain their autonomy from Baghdad — not least by developing their own oil resources. The federal government insists that it alone has the authority to grant access to Iraq’s natural resources. But the Kurds are attracting some of the world’s top oil companies.

Strains between the regional and federal governments were on display Wednesday at the Oil and Money Conference convened here by The International Herald Tribune and the Energy Intelligence Group, a provider of independent analysis and data to the global energy industry.

Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi deputy prime minister, who has helped draft contracts to rehabilitate Iraqi oil fields, said Tuesday that Exxon Mobil was in the advanced stages of organizing a sale of its 60 percent stake in a premier Iraqi project, the West Qurna 1 field, to buyers approved by the Iraqi government.

Iraq has been at loggerheads with Exxon since it signed an exploration deal with the Kurdistan government last year. Mr. Shahristani said the Iraqi government did not recognize Kurdish contracts with oil companies.

Patrick J. McGinn, an Exxon Mobil spokesman, declined to comment.

Mr. Shahristani warned Total, the French oil giant, and other companies that they could be forced out of their Iraqi projects if they have their feet in both camps.

“They must either decide to present their contract to the federal government for approval or they are in breach of their contract” with Iraq, he said.

But Mr. Shahristani is losing the battle to persuade the large Western oil companies. Exxon Mobil, Total, Chevron and Gazprom have all decided that Kurdish oil deals have sufficient potential for profit to be worth risking the ire of Baghdad.

Philip Lambert, who leads the London-based advisory firm Lambert Energy, said at the conference that the surge in deals in Kurdistan, compared with a relatively moribund environment in Iraq proper, suggested that the environment in Kurdistan was healthier.

One reason, as Mr. Shahristani acknowledged, is that Baghdad’s contracts are among the toughest in the world. They offer such low returns that — with continued security risks and infrastructure problems — Western companies are deciding that they would be better off making deals with the Kurds.

Under Kurdistan contracts, oil companies can earn $3 to $5 a barrel, compared with about $1 a barrel under contracts with the Iraqi federal government, according to Wood Mackenzie, a consulting firm in Edinburgh. The large companies have been signing exploration deals with Kurdistan, not production contracts. That leaves several years for the governments in Baghdad and Erbil to reach an accommodation before the fields in the north start producing.

Southern Iraq is far more important to the current global oil picture, with more than three million barrels a day of production, while Kurdistan is struggling to export 200,000 barrels a day. But exploration in Kurdistan is still at a relatively early stage, having started only after Hussein’s ouster in 2003. Companies looking for oil in the north have had a high success rate.

Despite Mr. Shahristani’s prickliness, signs suggest that Baghdad and the Kurdistan government could reach an understanding soon. Under an agreement last summer, Kurdistan has been putting oil into the main Iraq-Turkey pipeline. These exports had been suspended over payment disputes between Baghdad and Erbil, leaving companies like Genel Energy, led by Tony Hayward, the former BP chief, with no other option than to sell their oil cheaply in the Kurdish market or truck it to Turkey.

Kurdistan’s success in attracting the big oil companies seems to have influenced thinking in Baghdad. Mr. Shahristani said there was nothing in Iraqi law that prevented the award of contracts that give companies a slice of the output of fields for exploration. Companies prefer these contracts to the service deals that Baghdad has offered, which give companies a per-barrel fee for renovating old fields like West Qurna.

At the conference, Mr. Shahristani dismissed suggestions that Iraq would have trouble replacing Exxon Mobil, saying that international companies were interested.

He indicated that he had dialed back his expectations for Iraqi oil production in the next few years to about nine million barrels a day from the 12 million barrels a day that Iraq would achieve if the oil companies delivered on all the contracts they have signed. Iraq’s approach could jeopardize Baghdad’s ambitions to triple its current oil output, a herculean task.

Although Iraq is an OPEC member, it does not have a quota, in recognition of its need for revenue to rebuild. Mr. Shahristani said that once Iraq had reached four million to five million barrels a day, it could start discussing its production with other OPEC members.

“We don’t think that Iraq is going to be squeezing any country out of the market,” he said.

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Verizon says 1.4 million customers back on its fiber optic network

(Reuters) – Verizon Communications said fiber optic services have been restored to more than 1.4 million customers hurt by Hurricane Sandy.

The provider of telephone, Internet and television services said on November 1 that it may take another two weeks to restore telecommunication services for its customers after flooding and power outages knocked out services.

The company said it completed 364,000 repairs across the mid-Atlantic and northeast regions.

Verizon said it will provide credits for landline customers and fix equipment damaged due to the hurricane.

Verizon shares were up at $ 42.39 after the bell on Wednesday. They closed at $ 42.24 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting By Pallavi Ail in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Hope Solo Weds Jerramy Stevens Amid Assault Allegations?

By Dahvi Shira

11/14/2012 at 06:35 PM EST

Jerramy Stevens and Hope Solo

NFL/Getty; Jeff Vinnick/Getty

One day after former Seattle Seahawks tight end Jerramy Stevens was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his fiancée, U.S. women's soccer team goalkeeper Hope Solo, the pair reportedly tied the knot.

"Confirmed," Sportsradio 950 AM and 102.9 FM radio host Dave Mahler Tweeted on Tuesday. "Jerramy Stevens and Hope Solo were married tonight. Events of yesterday morning didn't change plans."

The pair, who had only been dating for about two months, applied for a marriage license last Thursday. According to court documents, the athletes were arguing over whether to wed in Florida or Washington State.

Stevens, 33, was reportedly released from custody by a Kirkland, Wash., Municipal Court judge on Tuesday after determining there wasn't enough evidence to hold the former football star.

All of the former Dancing with the Stars contestant's social media pages have gone silent since Nov. 6., and calls to her rep have not been returned.

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New gene triples risk for Alzheimer's disease

Scientists have identified a new gene variant that seems to strongly raise the risk for Alzheimer's disease, giving a fresh target for research into treatments for the mind-robbing disorder.

The problem gene is not common — less than 1 percent of people are thought to have it — but it roughly triples the chances of developing Alzheimer's compared to people with the normal version of the gene. It also seems to harm memory and thinking in older people without dementia.

The main reason scientists are excited by the discovery is what this gene does, and how that might reveal what causes Alzheimer's and ways to prevent it. The gene helps the immune system control inflammation in the brain and clear junk such as the sticky deposits that are the hallmark of the disease. Mutations in the gene may impair these tasks, so treatments to restore the gene's function and quell inflammation may help.

"It points us to potential therapeutics in a more precise way than we've seen in the past," said Dr. William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer of the Alzheimer's Association, which had no role in the research. Years down the road, this discovery will likely be seen as very important, he predicted.

It is described in a study by an international group published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.

About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer's. Medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. There is no known cure.

Until now, only one gene — ApoE — has been found to have a big impact on Alzheimer's risk. About 17 percent of the population has at least one copy of the problem version of this gene but nearly half of all people with Alzheimer's do. Other genes that have been tied to the disease raise risk only a little, or cause the less common type of Alzheimer's that develops earlier in life, before age 60.

The new gene, TREM2, already has been tied to a couple other forms of dementia. Researchers led by deCODE Genetics Inc. of Iceland honed in on a version of it they identified through mapping the entire genetic code of more than 2,200 Icelanders.

Further tests on 3,550 Alzheimer's patients and more than 110,000 people without dementia in several countries, including the United States, found that the gene variant was more common in Alzheimer's patients.

"It's a very strong effect," raising the risk of Alzheimer's by three to four times — about the same amount as the problem version of the ApoE gene does, said Dr. Allan Levey, director of an Alzheimer's program at Emory University, one of the academic centers participating in the research.

Researchers also tested more than 1,200 people over age 85 who did not have Alzheimer's disease and found that those with the variant TREM2 gene had lower mental function scores than those without it. This adds evidence the gene variant is important in cognition, even short of causing Alzheimer's.

"It's another piece in the puzzle. It suggests the immune system is important in Alzheimer's disease," said Andrew Singleton, a geneticist with the National Institute on Aging, which helped pay for the study.

One prominent scientist not involved in the study — Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, a Harvard Medical School geneticist and director of an Alzheimer's research program at Massachusetts General Hospital — called the work exciting, but added a caveat.

"I would like to see more evidence that this is Alzheimer's" rather than one of the other dementias already tied to the gene, Tanzi said. Autopsy or brain imaging tests can show whether the cases attributed to the gene variant are truly Alzheimer's or misdiagnosed, he said.

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Online:

Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org

Alzheimer's info: http://www.alzheimers.gov

Alzheimer's Association: http://www.alz.org

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Four arrested in hijacking of gold and gems from Mariposa museum

This is the upper part of the Fricot nugget, which at 13.8 lbs is the largest remaining specimen of crystallized gold from 19th century California. Thieves who broke into the California State Mining and Mineral Museum missed the nugget while stealing other gold nuggets and gems. (Tomas Ovalle)

By Diana Marcum, Los Angeles Times

November 15, 2012

FRESNO—

Four men suspected in the heist of more than $1 million in gold and gems from the California State Mining and Minerals Museum in Mariposa have been arrested, investigators said, adding that more arrests were possible.

Men dressed as ninjas and armed with pick-axes broke into the Sierra foothill museum Sept. 28, in broad daylight, and herded two employees into a far room before smashing display cases.

But the thieves failed to get away with the facility's most prized possession: the Fricot nugget, nearly 14 pounds of crystalline gold believed to be the largest nugget to survive the California Gold Rush. The intruders triggered an alarm system, which automatically closed the doors to the nugget's vault, but they dove out in time and escaped the museum with other artifacts.

A spokesman for the California Highway Patrol — the lead agency investigating the state museum break-in — said some of the stolen gold with quartz had been recovered.

Christopher Sheffield, 42, was taken into custody late Tuesday, authorities said. Earlier Tuesday, police arrested 41-year-old Jonathan Matis; Matthew Campbell, 43; and 40-year-old Edward Rushing III, all residents of gold country counties near Sacramento.

The museum, a popular destination for local grade school field trips, reopened last week for the first time since the robbery.

diana.marcum@latimes.com

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France Declares Its Recognition of New Syria Rebel Group

Osman Orsal/Reuters

The Syrian town of Ras al-Ain, bordering Turkey, was bombed for a second day on Tuesday.

PARIS — France announced Tuesday that it was recognizing the newly formed Syrian rebel coalition and would consider arming the group, seeking to inject momentum into a broad Western and Arab effort to build a viable and effective opposition that would hasten the end of a stalemated civil war that has destabilized the Middle East.

The announcement by President François Hollande made France the first Western country to fully embrace the new coalition, which came together this past weekend under Western pressure after days of difficult negotiations in Doha, Qatar.

The goal was to make an opposition leadership — both inside and outside the country — representative of the array of Syrian groups pressing for the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad. Although Mr. Assad is increasingly isolated as his country descends further into mayhem and despair after 20 months of conflict, he has survived partly because of the disagreements and lack of unity among his opponents.

Throughout the conflict, the West has taken half measures and been reluctant to back an aggressive effort to oust Mr. Assad. This appears to be the first time that Western nations, with Arab allies, are determined to build a viable opposition leadership that can ultimately function as a government. Whether it can succeed remains unclear.

Mr. Hollande went beyond other Western pledges of support for the new Syrian umbrella rebel group, which calls itself the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. But Mr. Hollande’s announcement clearly signaled expectations that if the group can establish political legitimacy and an operational structure inside Syria, creating an alternative to the Assad family’s four decades in power, it will be rewarded with further recognition, money and possibly weapons.

“I announce that France recognizes the Syrian National Coalition as the sole representative of the Syrian people and thus as the future provisional government of a democratic Syria and to bring an end to Bashar al-Assad’s regime,” said Mr. Hollande, who has been one of the Syrian president’s harshest critics.

As for weapons, Mr. Hollande said, France had not supported arming the rebels up to now, but “with the coalition, as soon as it is a legitimate government of Syria, this question will be looked at by France, but also by all countries that recognize this government.”

Political analysts called Mr. Hollande’s announcement an important moment in the Syrian conflict, which began as a peaceful Arab Spring uprising in March 2011. It was harshly suppressed by Mr. Assad, turned into a civil war and has now left nearly 40,000 Syrians dead, displaced about 2.5 million and forced more than 400,000 to flee to neighboring countries, according to the United Nations.

“It’s certainly another page of the story,” Augustus Richard Norton, a professor of international relations at Boston University and an expert on Middle East political history, said of the French announcement. “I think it’s important. But it will be much more important if other countries follow suit. I don’t think we’re quite there yet.”

Some drew an analogy to France’s leading role in the early days of the Libyan uprising when it helped funnel aid, and later military support, to the rebels who had firmly established themselves in eastern Libya and would later topple Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. But in Syria, rebels have not been as organized and have no hold on significant amounts of territory — at least not enough to create a provisional government that could resist Mr. Assad’s military assaults. The West has also refused, so far, to impose a no-fly zone over Syria, which was critical to the success of the Libyan uprising.

Andrew J. Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that the new coalition would have to create a secure zone in Syria to be successful, and that that step would require support from the United States, which was instrumental in the negotiations that led to the group’s creation but has not yet committed to giving it full recognition.

What the French have done, Mr. Tabler said, is significant because they have started the process of broader recognition, putting pressure on the group to succeed. “They’ve decided to back this umbrella organization and hope that it has some kind of political legitimacy and keep it from going to extremists,” he said. “It’s a gamble. The gamble is that it will stiffen the backs of the opposition.”

Steven Erlanger reported from Paris, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Neil MacFarquhar and Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon; Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva; and Richard Berry from Paris.

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RIM to release new BlackBerrys soon after Jan. 30

TORONTO (AP) — Research In Motion Ltd. will release its much-delayed BlackBerry 10 smartphones “not too long” after a launch event on Jan. 30, a senior executive said Tuesday.

Chief Operating Officer Kristian Tear said the company is still fine-tuning the new phones.

The new phones are seen as critical to RIM‘s survival as the smartphone pioneer struggles in North America to hold on to customers who are abandoning BlackBerrys for flashier iPhones and Android phones. The new BlackBerry 10 system is designed for the touch screen, Internet browsing and apps experience that customers now expect. RIM’s current software is still focused on email and messaging and is less user-friendly, agile and robust than iPhone or Android.

On Monday, RIM said details on the BlackBerry 10, including specific availability, will be announced at the event. A touch-screen-only device is expected to be released first followed shortly after by a version with a physical keyboard. Many people still gravitate to BlackBerrys specifically for their physical keyboards, and RIM hasn’t succeeded in the past with touch-only offerings.

Tear said RIM wants to be the No. 1 mobile computing platform, despite the dominance of Apple and Android. He said the Waterloo, Ontario-based company believes it can compete with Silicon Valley because it has access to a lot of talented people and two great universities in the area. He said he’s been involved in two turnarounds before with Sony Ericsson and Ericsson and believes in RIM’s new management.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Tear said. “But everybody is super-focused and super-commited. We’re going to show the world that we are turning this around.”

Steve Zipperstein, RIM’s new chief legal officer, said RIM invented the smartphone and has been the innovator in the mobile space for a long time.

“We’re not going away,” Zipperstein vowed. “We’re going to succeed with BB 10. We’re going to impress our customers. We’re going to fight every day.”

Tear and Zipperstein were hired this past summer by CEO Thorsten Heins, who took over RIM in January after it lost tens of billions of dollars in market value. Heins had vowed to do everything he could to release BlackBerry 10 this year but said in June that the timetable wasn’t realistic. The new BlackBerrys will be released after the holiday shopping season and well after Apple’s September launch of the iPhone 5.

Heins is counting on BlackBerry 10 for a turnaround.

RIM’s platform transition is happening under a new management team and as RIM lays off 5,000 employees as part of a bid to save $ 1 billion this year.

RIM was once Canada‘s most valuable company with a market value of more than $ 80 billion in 2008, but the stock has plummeted since, from over $ 140 per share to around $ 8. Its decline evokes memories of Nortel, another former Canadian tech giant, which declared bankruptcy in 2009.

RIM’s stock fell 41 cents, or 4.7 percent, to close at $ 8.40 Tuesday in New York after rising as high as $ 9.07 the previous day, when RIM announced its Jan. 30 launch date.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The Voice Sends Two Contestants Home

TV Watch

The Voice

By Julia Haskins

11/13/2012 at 10:20 PM EST

Adam Levine and Christina Aguilera

Christopher Polk/Getty

It was a great night for Teams Cee Lo and Adam on The Voice Tuesday. And though not everyone got good news on elimination night, there were plenty of entertaining performances from the coaches and contestants alike.

To open the night, Christina Aguilera and Green performed the world premiere of "Make the World Move," from her new album Lotus. Guest Jason Aldean also took the stage, and Blake Shelton rocked out with his team to Tom Cochrane's "Life is a Highway."

Green's Trevin Hunte, Nicholas David and Cody Belew came together for a '70s inspired – bell bottoms and all! – performance of the Bee Gee's "Stayin' Alive." But was it a sign of things to come? Keep reading for all the results ...

All of Green's singers as well as Levine's Bryan Keith, Melanie Martinez and Amanda Brown felt the love from viewers at home, and will have another shot at next week's show.

America also saved Aguilera's Sylvia Yacoub and Dez Duron, and Shelton's Cassadee Pope and Terry McDermott.

But without enough votes to keep them in the competition, Team Aguilera's Adriana Louise and Team Blake's Michaela Paige said goodbye.

Aguilera consoled Louise by reminding her that even she didn't win Star Search, but still made it to superstardom. Louise was grateful for all her coach's support. "You believed in me more than I believed in myself," she told Aguilera through tears.

Paige also enjoyed an uplifting experience on The Voice. "If I inspired anyone, that's all I wanted to do," Paige said. "Follow your dreams and believe in your heart." But her coach Shelton isn't too concerned about the aspiring singer's future.

"Her big old mohawk is going to be walking across the stage at the Grammys," he said, "and I can't wait."

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Report: FDA wanted to close Mass pharmacy in 2003

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly a decade ago, federal health inspectors wanted to shut down the pharmacy linked to a recent deadly meningitis outbreak until it cleaned up its operations, according to congressional investigators.

About 440 people have been sickened by contaminated steroid shots distributed by New England Compounding Center, and more than 32 deaths have been reported since the outbreak began in September, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That has put the Framingham, Mass.-based pharmacy at the center of congressional scrutiny and calls for greater regulation of compounding pharmacies, which make individualized medications for patients and have long operated in a legal gray area between state and federal laws.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee released a detailed history of NECC's regulatory troubles on Monday, ahead of a meeting Wednesday meeting to examine how the outbreak could have been prevented. The 25-page report summarizes and quotes from FDA and state inspection memos, though the committee declined to release the original documents.

The report shows that after several problematic incidents, Food and Drug Administration officials in 2003 suggested that the compounding pharmacy be "prohibited from manufacturing" until it improved its operations. But FDA regulators deferred to their counterparts in Massachusetts, who ultimately reached an agreement with the pharmacy to settle concerns about the quality of its prescription injections.

The congressional report also shows that in 2003 the FDA considered the company a pharmacy. That's significant because in recent weeks public health officials have charged that NECC was operating more as a manufacturer than a pharmacy, shipping thousands of doses of drugs to all 50 states instead of small batches of drugs to individual patients. Manufacturers are regulated by the FDA and are subject to stricter quality standards than pharmacies.

The report offers the most detailed account yet of the numerous regulatory complaints against the pharmacy, which nearly date back to its founding in 1998. Less than a year later, the company was cited by the state pharmacy board for providing doctors with blank prescription pads with NECC's information. Such promotional items are illegal in Massachusetts and the pharmacy's owner and director, Barry Cadden, received an informal reprimand, according to documents summarized by the committee.

Cadden was subject to several other complaints involving unprofessional conduct in coming years, but first came to the FDA's attention in 2002. Here are some key events from the report highlighting the company's early troubles with state and federal authorities:

__ In March of 2002 the FDA began investigating reports that five patients had become dizzy and short of breath after receiving NECC's compounded betamethasone repository injection, a steroid used to treat joint pain and arthritis that's different from the one linked to the current meningitis outbreak.

FDA inspectors visited NECC on April 9 and said Cadden was initially cooperative in turning over records about production of the drug. But during a second day of inspections, Cadden told officials "that he was no longer willing to provide us with any additional records," according to an FDA report cited by congressional investigators. The inspectors ultimately issued a report citing NECC for poor sterility and record-keeping practices but said that "this FDA investigation could not proceed to any definitive resolution," because of "problems/barriers that were encountered throughout the inspection."

__ In October of 2002, the FDA received new reports that two patients at a Rochester, N.Y., hospital came down with symptoms of bacterial meningitis after receiving a different NECC injection. The steroid, methylprednisolone acetate, is the same injectable linked to the current outbreak and is typically is used to treat back pain. Both patients were treated with antibiotics and eventually recovered, according to FDA documents cited by the committee.

When officials from the FDA and Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy visited NECC later in the month, Cadden said vials of the steroid returned by the hospital had tested negative for bacterial contamination. But when FDA scientists tested samples of the drug collected in New York they found bacterial contamination in four out of 14 vials sampled. It is not entirely clear whether FDA tested the same lot shipped to the Rochester hospital.

__ At a February 2003 meeting between state and federal officials, FDA staff emphasized "the potential for serious public consequences if NECC's compounding practices, in particular those relating to sterile products, are not improved." The agency issued a list of problems uncovered in its inspection to NECC, including a failure to verify if sterile drugs met safety standards.

But the agency decided to let Massachusetts officials take the lead in regulating the company, since pharmacies are typically regulated at the state level. It was decided that "the state would be in a better position to gain compliance or take regulatory action against NECC as necessary," according to a summary of the meeting quoted by investigators.

The FDA recommended the state subject NECC to a consent agreement, which would require the company to pass certain quality tests to continue operating. But congressional investigators say Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy did not take any action until "well over a year later."

__ In October 2004, the board sent a proposed consent agreement to Cadden, which would have included a formal reprimand and a three-year probationary period for the company's registration. The case ended without disciplinary action in 2006, when NECC agreed to a less severe consent decree with the state.

Massachusetts officials indicated Tuesday they are still investigating why NECC escaped the more severe penalty.

"I will not be satisfied until we know the full story behind this decision," the state's interim health commissioner Lauren Smith said in a transcript of her prepared testimony released a day ahead of delivery. Smith is one of several witnesses scheduled to testify Wednesday, including FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg.

The committee will also hear from the widow of 78-year-old Eddie C. Lovelace, a longtime circuit court judge in southern Kentucky. Autopsy results confirmed Lovelace received fungus-contaminated steroid injections that led to his death Sept. 17.

Joyce Lovelace will urge lawmakers to work together on legislation to stop future outbreaks caused by compounded drugs, according to a draft of her testimony.

"We now know that New England Compounding Pharmacy, Inc. killed Eddie. I have lost my soulmate and life's partner with whom I worked side by side, day after day for more than fifty years," Lovelace states.

Barry Cadden is also scheduled to appear at the hearing, after lawmakers issued a subpoena to compel him to attend.

The NECC has been closed since early last month, and Massachusetts officials have taken steps to permanently revoke its license. The pharmacy has recalled all the products it makes, including 17,700 single-dose vials of a steroid that tested positive for the fungus tied to the outbreak.

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Brown taps ex-Marine general to head California parks department

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday tapped a decorated retired Marine Corps officer to run the state Parks and Recreation Department, which was rocked by a financial scandal last summer.

Former Maj. Gen. Anthony L. Jackson will replace Ruth Coleman, who resigned in July following revelations that parks officials had stashed more than $54 million away without informing the governor's office, even as dozens of parks were slated for closure because of budget cuts.

The governor alluded to the scandal in a statement announcing Jackson's appointment Tuesday.

"Under Maj. Gen. Jackson's leadership, I am confident that the stewardship of California's beaches, forests, estuaries, dunes and wetlands is in good hands," Brown said, "and that the confidence and trust of Californians in our parks department will be restored."

Jackson will oversee a department with a $584-million budget that has been plagued in recent years by infighting, mismanagement and low morale, culminating in the scandal that led to the departure of Coleman and other agency officials.

"His first job will be to reestablish the esprit de corps of the department," said Rusty Areias, who was parks director under Gov. Gray Davis and applauded Jackson's selection.

Through a spokesman, Jackson declined to comment.

A 35-year military veteran with a commanding presence and a death-grip handshake, Jackson was one of the highest-ranking African Americans in the Marine Corps. He oversaw operations at six Marine bases in California and one in Yuma, Ariz.

He has been a proponent of the military's need to continue to invest in alternative energy sources to power its bases and its vehicle fleets, for environmental and national security reasons.

San Diego lawyer Michael Neil, a retired Marine brigadier general and decorated Vietnam veteran, said that Jackson's leadership experience running far-flung Marine installations — with varied terrain and environmental concerns, as well as budgetary constraints and personnel issues — makes him an excellent choice to straighten out the state parks system.

"He knows how to run things," Neil said. "He knows how to command people, he knows how to get the best out of people. He will do an excellent job."

Jackson will be charged with overseeing the operation of more than 280 parks covering about 1.4 million acres, 15,000 campsites and 3,000 miles of hiking, biking and equestrian trails.

His appointment is subject to Senate confirmation. He is to be paid $150,112 a year.

anthony.york@latimes.com

Times staff writer Tony Perry in San Diego contributed to this report.

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