Signature gatherers duel over Riordan pension initiative

Bonnie Haviland is the kind of voter Los Angeles city workers are hoping will help them stop former Mayor Richard Riordan's push to switch new employees into 401(k)-type retirement plans from the current taxpayer-backed pensions.

The Tarzana grandmother thinks younger generations shouldn't have to worry about a retirement tied to the ups and downs of the stock market. That's why Haviland, 72, refused Saturday to sign a petition seeking to put Riordan's pension measure before voters next May.

"I'm already retired so I don't have to worry," she said outside of a Vons supermarket, where a paid signature gatherer calling himself "Ace" had asked her to sign Riordan's petition. "But I feel sorry for those who do."

Riordan is in the midst of gathering about 265,000 signatures to qualify a pension initiative for the May mayoral election. Changes are needed because pension costs are projected to continue rising even with recent changes made to retirement benefits by the City Council, Riordan has said.

The city faces a $216-million budget shortfall next year, due in part to ever-increasing pension costs, city budget managers say. Union leaders say starting a 401(k)-like plan would cost the city even more, at least initially.

Saturday was the kickoff of organized labor's attempt to derail the former mayor and multimillionaire businessman's initiative drive. After a morning rally, about 100 city union members fanned out to 7-Elevens, supermarkets and strip malls across Los Angeles to persuade voters not to sign Riordan's petition.

"When there's trash to be picked up, who comes to your house to do it? Even on the day after Christmas?" asked Aurora Wynnz, a community activist whom everyone calls "McGee." "They don't get Social Security. And Riordan wants them all to get 401(k)s. How has that worked out for you?"

Wynnz appeared to be having great success. One person after another signed a sheet asking the city clerk to cancel out their signature for Riordan's measure just in case they had signed the petition without really knowing what it was about.

Tracy "Love" Williams was one of them. Stopped by Ace outside Vons, he signed one petition to get a medical marijuana ordinance on the ballot, and then signed a second one that Ace presented to him, he said. When Wynnz explained what the Riordan initiative would do, Williams was upset that he had signed it.

"How do I know you're not lying too?" Williams asked. After some more persuasion, he took the clipboard. "OK, I'll sign this too."

Jason Elias, a union spokesman, said overall activity was light Saturday, probably because of the wet weather.

Elias said that one of his members was pushed by a signature gatherer outside an Eagle Rock Trader Joe's and that he was spit on by the same man at another store. Union members were told not to be confrontational with the petition gatherers but to make a counter argument to voters being approached, he said.

The union didn't call the police, he said, because the man left. "We got what we wanted — he wasn't able to get any more signatures at that store."

John Schwada, a Riordan spokesman, said city workers can best protect their retirement benefits by joining the former mayor's movement. The current taxpayer-backed pension system is outdated and could bankrupt the city unless serious changes are made, he said.

"All the people of Los Angeles deserve an opportunity to vote on an issue of such great importance to the city's future," Riordan said in a statement.

catherine.saillant@latimes.com

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Israel and Hamas Step Up Air Attacks in Gaza Clash

Wissam Nassar for The New York Times

The Gaza City funeral on Thursday of Ahmed al-Jabari, the Hamas military commander, killed in an Israeli attack. More Photos »

KIRYAT MALACHI, Israel — Israel and Hamas brushed aside international calls for restraint on Thursday and escalated their lethal conflict over Gaza, where Palestinian militants launched hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory, targeting Tel Aviv for the first time, and Israel intensified its aerial assaults and sent armored vehicles rumbling toward the Gaza border for a possible invasion.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak of Israel, expressing outrage over a pair of long-range Palestinian rockets that whizzed toward Tel Aviv and set off the first air-raid warning in the Israeli metropolis since it was threatened by Iraqi Scuds in the Persian Gulf war of 1991, said, “There will be a price for that escalation that the other side will have to pay.”

Early Friday, the Israeli military said it had called up 16,000 army reservists, as preparations continued for a possible ground invasion for the second time in four years. Mr. Barak had authorized the call-up of 30,000 reservists, if needed, to move against what it considers an unacceptable security threat from smuggled rockets amassed by Hamas, the militant Islamist group that governs the isolated coastal enclave and does not recognize Israel’s right to exist.

It was not clear whether the show of Israeli force on the ground in fact portended an invasion or was meant as more of an intimidation tactic to further pressure Hamas leaders, who had all been forced into hiding on Wednesday after the Israelis killed the group’s military chief, Ahmed al-Jabari, in a pinpoint aerial bombing. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he was ready to “take whatever action is necessary.”

Israel said Friday that Mr. Netanyahu had agreed to a temporary cease-fire during the visit of the Egyptian prime minister to the Gaza Strip, which was to begin later in the day. The announcement reflects Israel’s interest in preserving its strained and fragile peace treaty with Egypt.

The visit is expected to last about three hours, and an official in Mr. Netanyahu’s office said by telephone that Israel had told Egypt that the cease-fire would hold as long as “there would not be hostile fire from the Gaza Strip into Israel.”

“Prime Minister Netanyahu is committed to the peace treaty with Egypt,” the official said. “That peace serves the strategic interests of both countries.” There was no suggestion that the Israelis were considering a more permanent cease-fire at this stage.

Tel Aviv was not hit on Thursday. One rocket crashed into the sea off its coast and another apparently fell, the ability of militants 40 miles away to fire those weapons at the city of 400,000 underscored, in the Israeli government’s view, the justification for the intensive aerial assaults on hundreds of suspected rocket storage sites and other targets in Gaza.

Health officials in Gaza said at least 19 people, including five children and a pregnant teenager, had been killed over two days of nearly nonstop aerial attacks by Israel, and dozens had been wounded. Three Israelis were killed on Thursday in Kiryat Malachi, this small southern Israeli town, when a rocket fired from Gaza struck their apartment house.

In a sign of solidarity with Hamas as well as a diplomatic move to ease the crisis, President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt ordered his prime minister to lead a delegation to Gaza. In another diplomatic signal, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, also planned to visit Jerusalem, Cairo and Ramallah, the West Bank headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, in coming days.

In Washington, Obama administration officials said they had asked friendly Arab countries with ties to Hamas, which the United States and Israel regard as a terrorist group, to use their influence to seek a way to defuse the hostilities. At the same time, however, a State Department spokesman, Mark C. Toner, reiterated to reporters the American position that Israel had a right to defend itself from the rocket fire and that the “onus was on Hamas” to stop it.

Isabel Kershner reported from Kiryat Malachi, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Fares Akram from Gaza, Rina Castelnuovo from Kiryat Malachi, Mayy El Sheikh and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo, Gabby Sobelman from Jerusalem, Alan Cowell from Paris and Elisabeth Bumiller from Bangkok.

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Ruckus Wireless prices IPO at high end of range: market source

(Reuters) – WiFi products maker Ruckus Wireless Inc priced its initial public offering at $ 15 per share, the high end of its expected price range, a market source told Reuters.

The company, which is backed by Google Inc‘s Motorola Mobility LLC and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, raised $ 126 million by selling 8.4 million shares.

Ruckus offered 7 million shares while selling shareholders, including Telus Corp, offered 1.4 million shares.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company, which makes wireless LAN products for both indoor and outdoor use, competes with Meru Networks Inc and Aruba Networks Inc.

The company’s customers include Time Warner Cable Inc, Towerstream Corp, Tikona Digital Networks and Bright House Networks.

Goldman Sachs & Co and Morgan Stanley are the lead underwriters to the offering.

The company’s shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday under the ticker symbol “RKUS”.

(This story was fixed to correct description of Sequoia Capital to venture capital firm in paragraph 2)

(Reporting by Sharanya Hrishikesh and Ashutosh Pandey in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The X Factor Reveals Its Top 12

TV Watch

The X Factor

11/15/2012 at 11:00 PM EST

Demi Lovato and Simon Cowell

Double elimination time on The X Factor!

The top 12 performed songs by divas the night before – and then faced a night of diva-worthy drama on Thursday's show. And it was a particularly tough night for the young adults' coach, Demi Lovato, after the outcome of the viewers' votes were revealed.

Keep reading for all the results ...

Early in the hour, hosts Mario Lopez and Khloé Kardashian announced the act with the lowest number of votes was Simon Cowell's hip-hop group Lyric 145, who performed a mash-up of Queen's "We Will Rock You" and Katy Perry's "E.T." on Wednesday.

"We didn't get the opportunity to show what we really had," frontwoman Lyric Da Queen said. "We hard original lyrics ... But we're just taking the good with the bad right now."

Nine acts were then declared safe, leaving two to sing for survival – and they were both from Demi's team: Jennel Garcia and Paige Thomas.

Jennel performed an emotional rendition of Hoobastank's "The Reason," and Paige sang Coldplay's "Paradise."

Then the judges had to vote for the act they wanted to send home.

"I'm shocked that either of them are at the bottom," L.A. Reid said. He voted to send home Jennel. Britney followed his lead. Simon refused to say his choice and forced Demi to go first. "The act that I'm going to send home is Paige," she said. It was up to Simon to avoid a tie – and he picked Jennel.

So, Demi was the only one to reject Paige and she'll have to work with her again next week. Awkward!

"You're so unbelievably talented and you have a future ahead of you so I'm not worried," Demi told Jennel. "I love you and I really, really believe in you."

And then the co-hosts announced the ranking of the top 10 based on who got the most votes:

10. Paige Thomas
9. Arin Ray
8. Beatrice Miller
7. Diamond White
6. Fifth Harmony
5. CeCe Frey
4. Emblem3
3. Vino Alan
2. Carly Rose Sonenclar
1. Tate Stevens

The show's only country singer does it again!

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Diabetes rates rocket in Oklahoma, South

NEW YORK (AP) — The nation's diabetes problem is getting worse, and the biggest jump over 15 years was in Oklahoma, according to a new federal report issued Thursday.

The diabetes rate in Oklahoma more than tripled, and Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama also saw dramatic increases since 1995, the study showed.

The South's growing weight problem is the main explanation, said Linda Geiss, lead author of the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.

"The rise in diabetes has really gone hand in hand with the rise in obesity," she said.

Bolstering the numbers is the fact that more people with diabetes are living longer because better treatments are available.

The disease exploded in the United States in the last 50 years, with the vast majority from obesity-related Type 2 diabetes. In 1958, fewer than 1 in 100 Americans had been diagnosed with diabetes. In 2010, it was about 1 in 14.

Most of the increase has happened since 1990.

Diabetes is a disease in which the body has trouble processing sugar; it's the nation's seventh leading cause of death. Complications include poor circulation, heart and kidney problems and nerve damage.

The new study is the CDC's first in more than a decade to look at how the nationwide boom has played out in different states.

It's based on telephone surveys of at least 1,000 adults in each state in 1995 and 2010. Participants were asked if a doctor had ever told them they have diabetes.

Not surprisingly, Mississippi — the state with the largest proportion of residents who are obese — has the highest diabetes rate. Nearly 12 percent of Mississippians say they have diabetes, compared to the national average of 7 percent.

But the most dramatic increases in diabetes occurred largely elsewhere in the South and in the Southwest, where rates tripled or more than doubled. Oklahoma's rate rose to about 10 percent, Kentucky went to more than 9 percent, Georgia to 10 percent and Alabama surpassed 11 percent.

An official with Oklahoma State Department of Health said the solution is healthier eating, more exercise and no smoking.

"And that's it in a nutshell," said Rita Reeves, diabetes prevention coordinator.

Several Northern states saw rates more than double, too, including Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Maine.

The study was published in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

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Associated Press writer Ken Miller in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

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Online:

CDC report: http://tinyurl.com/cdcdiabetesreport

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Tribe to buy mountaintop site and end dispute over quarry plan

Through seven years of disputes, a proposed rock quarry site in Riverside County has been called a job creator, an economy killer, an environmental disaster and even a creation site.

The debate ended Thursday, when the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians agreed to purchase 354 acres of the mountaintop site for $3 million and pay developer Granite Construction $17.35 million to end the dispute.

Pu'e¿ska Mountain, as the quarry site is known, "is our people's place of creation," said Pechanga Chairman Mark Macarro. "It is the Luiseño Garden of Eden, Dome of the Rock and Wailing Wall."

Under the agreement, Granite Construction cannot own or operate a quarry within a 90-square-mile zone centered on the property for 23 years. The tribe has agreed to help the developer identify alternative sites for a quarry.

The 414-acre quarry was proposed in 2005 and would have produced about 200 million tons of concrete over several decades. More than two-thirds of the rock mined would have supplied San Diego County, where mining permits are harder to obtain.

Liberty Quarry, as it was called, pitted city leaders, residents and environmentalists against county government and unions in a bitter battle that packed public meeting rooms and crowded politicians' phone lines.

Temecula officials said the mining would have polluted the city's air, plugged their freeways and hurt the tourism industry without providing benefits to their citizens. The city's hills are dotted with wineries that lure more than 500,000 visitors a year.

But supporters said the project would create hundreds of blue-collar jobs, contribute millions of dollars to sales tax revenue and cut the distance that trucks would have to travel to construction sites.

The Riverside County Planning Commission initially rejected the project in February, but the county Board of Supervisors certified the project's environmental impact report in May and recently voted to fast-track the quarry's review.

The project's longtime opponents breathed a sigh of relief at Thursday's news.

Temecula Mayor Chuck Washington said he was "ecstatic" over the news. "To be honest, it feels a little bit like Christmas," Washington said.

Granite Construction's President and Chief Executive James H. Roberts said the company remains "committed to Western Riverside and San Diego counties" and wants to grow its business there, but spokeswoman Karie Reuther said it hasn't identified any potential locations.

In a speech delivered from atop a parking structure at Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula, Macarro said the tribe has no plans for the land beyond preservation.

"From our Luiseño cultural standpoint, the area holds tremendous potential to learn and recover even more of our history and culture. There is arguably no more pristine land in the Temecula Valley than Pu'éska Mountain," Macarro said.

frank.shyong@latimes.com

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BBC Failures Show Limits of Guidelines

LONDON — It was 2004, and the British Broadcasting Corporation was gripped by a crisis over journalistic standards that had led to Parliamentary hearings, public recrimination and the resignations of its two top officials. Vowing change, the corporation established elaborate bureaucratic procedures that placed more formal responsibility for delicate decisions in the hands not of individual managers, but of rigid hierarchies.

The corporation also appointed a deputy director general in charge of news operations; established a “journalism board” to monitor editorial policy; issued numerous new guidelines on journalistic procedures; and put an increasing emphasis on “compliance” — a system in which managers are required to file cumbersome forms flagging dozens of potential trouble spots, from bad language to “disturbing content” like exorcism or beheadings, in every program taped for broadcast.

More crises would follow — the history of the BBC can be measured out in crises — and with each new one, the management team under Mark Thompson, director general from 2004 through mid-September 2012, added more guidelines and put more emphasis on form-filling and safety checks in news and entertainment programs. An organization already known for its bureaucracy became even more unwieldy (the editorial guidelines are now 215 pages long).

But it is these very structures that seem to have failed the BBC in the most recent scandal, in which its news division first canceled a child abuse segment it should have broadcast, and later broadcast one it should have canceled. In the first instance, it appears that people overseeing the program were too cautious, so that top managers were left unaware of its existence; in the second, managers may have relied too much on rigid procedures at the expense of basic journalistic principles.

“They burned their fingers,” said Tim Luckhurst, a journalism professor at the University of Kent who worked at the BBC for 10 years. “They wanted systems that could take responsibility instead of people.”

The recent scandal has had a number of immediate results. Mr. Thompson’s successor as director general, George Entwistle, resigned after just 54 days on the job. (Mr. Thompson is now president and chief executive of The New York Times Company.) Outside investigators were appointed to interrogate BBC employees in at least three different inquiries. A number of lower- and midlevel managers had to withdraw temporarily from their jobs and, facing possible disciplinary action, hired lawyers. And, once again, the BBC is talking about reorganizing structures.

Through a spokesman, Mr. Entwistle declined to comment on the scandal or the BBC’s management practices, saying he was “not doing any media interviews at present.” Mr. Thompson also declined to comment.

But Mr. Entwistle’s temporary successor, Tim Davie, who had previously been director of BBC Audio & Music, acknowledged that changes had to be made. “If the public are going to get journalism they trust from the BBC I have to be, as director general, very clear on who’s running the news operation and ensuring that journalism that we put out passes muster,” Mr. Davie said in his first week on the job. The first thing to do, he said, was to “take action and build trust by putting a clear line of command in.”

This is a complicated scandal in two parts. The first part was over the BBC’s decision last December not to broadcast a report saying that Jimmy Savile, a longtime BBC television host, had been a serial child molester, and instead to broadcast several glowing tributes to his career. The second part was its decision on Nov. 2 to accuse a member of Margaret Thatcher’s government of being a pedophile, an accusation that turned out to be patently false.

But both exposed the problems in a system that seems to insulate the BBC’s director general — who is also the editor in chief — from knowledge of basic issues like what potentially contentious programs are scheduled for broadcast. And both decisions were the result, it seems, of a system that failed in practice, even as it was correctly followed in theory.

Ben Bradshaw, a former BBC correspondent and now a Labour member of Parliament, said the 2004 scandal, touched off by reporting about British intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, had created a system based on “fear and anxiety.” The BBC, he added, became “even more bureaucratic and had even more layers, which exacerbated the problem of buck passing and no one being able to take a decision.”

Speaking of the Nov. 2 broadcast, the chairman of the BBC Trust, Chris Patten, said in a television interview that the piece went through “every damned layer of BBC management bureaucracy, legal checks” without anyone raising any serious objections.

Matthew Purdy contributed reporting from New York, and Lark Turner from London.

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RIM CEO sees new BlackBerry powering growth

WATERLOO, Ontario (Reuters) – A new line of BlackBerry 10 devices will provide Research In Motion with a framework for growth over the next decade, offering long-term value for unhappy shareholders, Chief Executive Thorsten Heins said on Wednesday.

In an interview with Reuters, Heins said RIM had identified $ 800 million of the $ 1 billion of savings it promised for the financial year ending in early March, and was confident of finding the rest as it gets ready to launch the new phones.

RIM is betting that the new smartphones will help it claw back the market share it has lost to the likes of Apple Inc’s iPhone and devices powered by Google’s Android operating system.

Both consumers and corporate customers have abandoned the BlackBerry in droves, even though the devices offer security features that rivals have been unable to match.

“There’s this high-level security that you cannot walk away from, and then there’s ‘good enough’ security,” Heins said in an interview at RIM’s Waterloo, Ontario, campus, a sprawl of low-rise buildings.

But analysts remain skeptical, especially after the botched 2011 launch of RIM’s PlayBook tablet computer, which the company had hoped would compete with Apple’s wildly popular iPad. The PlayBook had top-of-the-line hardware, but its software was far from complete at the launch and needed multiple updates.

RIM delayed the roll-out of the BlackBerry 10 phones to the first quarter of 2013 so as not to repeat the errors that surrounded the PlayBook launch.

Heins said the delay was the correct decision – the way to ensure the BB10 phones are a high-quality product rather than a rushed one that would not meet customer expectations.

“I think it’s all lining up. Sometimes you get the feeling that the universe is in disarray, and with BlackBerry 10 coming, I see the stars lining up,” Heins said.

SLEEK DEMO MODELS

Sleek demo models of the new phones look much like the high-end smartphones in the market today, and company executives proudly showed off a touch-screen version and a version with the miniature QWERTY keyboard popular with many BlackBerry users.

Users flick a thumb or finger to maneuver from one program to another and can sneak a look at an incoming email while browsing the Internet or using other applications, a multi-tasking ability that RIM says rival devices lack.

Personal and business profiles can be kept separately, something RIM calls BlackBerry Balance. Corporations can erase only their share of the data on a device if they need to do so for security reasons, leaving personal photos, contacts and emails untouched.

The app library available at launch will not match the vast number available on other devices. Heins said RIM had chosen to focus on providing those apps needed in different regional markets. It expects some 100,000 apps to be ready at launch.

The developer community has been broadly enthusiastic about the devices. But financial analysts have mixed views on their likely reception in an ultra-competitive market.

Pacific Crest analyst James Faucette warned last week that BlackBerry 10 is likely to be dead on arrival – with an operating system that gets “a lukewarm response at best,” due to the unfamiliar user interface and a shortage of apps.

SHAREHOLDER VALUE

Heins insisted morale was high at the company, despite 5,000 job cuts and a rapidly sliding market share ahead of the launch of the new phones.

RIM’s share price is down more than 90 percent from a 2008 peak of about $ 148. It has fallen even after Heins, a former Siemens AG executive, took over in January. The shares on Wednesday closed at $ 8.49 on Nasdaq.

“The message to our shareholders is that we understand this is and has been a difficult time for them and for us,” the tall, bespectacled CEO said. “But with the development of the BlackBerry 10 platform we are truly convinced that we will create long-term value for RIM’s shareholders and investors.”

RIM has already given the demo phones to developers and to carriers, and its new BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10, which runs the devices on corporate networks, is in beta testing with 20 key customers — both government agencies and corporates.

Next month, the company will give more than 50 top enterprise customers technical previews of both BES 10 and the devices.

Heins said the feedback he is getting from the customer base “is very encouraging.”

With the erosion of RIM’s base particularly strong in North America, there has been speculation the company could choose to launch the new phones in a region where the phones remain popular. Heins said that would not be the case.

“We cannot launch every carrier and every country on the same day, but what we have defined is a set of waves in the various regions,” he said. “It is going to be a global launch. There isn’t one preferred region. We are managing and planning it as we speak.”

(Reporting by Euan Rocha and Janet Guttsman; Editing by Frank McGurty and Leslie Adler)

Wireless 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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Booze calories nearly equal soda's for US adults

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans get too many calories from soda. But what about alcohol? It turns out adults get almost as many empty calories from booze as from soft drinks, a government study found.

Soda and other sweetened drinks — the focus of obesity-fighting public health campaigns — are the source of about 6 percent of the calories adults consume, on average. Alcoholic beverages account for about 5 percent, the new study found.

"We've been focusing on sugar-sweetened beverages. This is something new," said Cynthia Ogden, one of the study's authors. She's an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which released its findings Thursday.

The government researchers say the findings deserve attention because, like soda, alcohol contains few nutrients but plenty of calories.

The study is based on interviews with more than 11,000 U.S. adults from 2007 through 2010. Participants were asked extensive questions about what they ate and drank over the previous 24 hours.

The study found:

—On any given day, about one-third of men and one-fifth of women consumed calories from beer, wine or liquor.

—Averaged out to all adults, the average guy drinks 150 calories from alcohol each day, or the equivalent of a can of Budweiser.

—The average woman drinks about 50 calories, or roughly half a glass of wine.

—Men drink mostly beer. For women, there was no clear favorite among alcoholic beverages.

—There was no racial or ethnic difference in average calories consumed from alcoholic beverages. But there was an age difference, with younger adults putting more of it away.

For reference, a 12-ounce can of regular Coca-Cola has 140 calories, slightly less than a same-sized can of regular Bud. A 5-ounce glass of wine is around 100 calories.

In September, New York City approved an unprecedented measure cracking down on giant sodas, those bigger than 16 ounces, or half a liter. It will take effect in March and bans sales of drinks that large at restaurants, cafeterias and concession stands.

Should New York officials now start cracking down on tall-boy beers and monster margaritas?

There are no plans for that, city health department officials said, adding in a statement that while studies show that sugary drinks are "a key driver of the obesity epidemic," alcohol is not.

Health officials should think about enacting policies to limit alcoholic intake, but New York's focus on sodas is appropriate, said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a public health advocacy group.

Soda and sweetened beverages are the bigger problem, especially when it comes to kids — the No. 1 source of calories in the U.S. diet, she said.

"In New York City, it was smart to start with sugary drinks. Let's see how it goes and then think about next steps," she said.

However, she lamented that the Obama administration is planning to exempt alcoholic beverages from proposed federal regulations requiring calorie labeling on restaurant menus.

It could set up a confusing scenario in which, say, a raspberry iced tea may have a calorie count listed, while an alcohol-laden Long Island Iced Tea — with more than four times as many calories — doesn't. "It could give people the wrong idea," she said.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

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