Mislabeled Foods Find Their Way to Diners’ Tables

ATLANTA — The menu offered fried catfish. But Freddie Washington, a pastor in Tuscaloosa, Ala., who sometimes eats out five nights a week and was raised on Gulf Coast seafood, was served tilapia.

Dustin Chambers for The New York Times

Consumers are misled most frequently when they buy fish, investigators say, because diners have such limited knowledge about seafood. 

It was a culinary bait and switch. Mr. Washington complained. The restaurant had run out of catfish, the manager explained, and the pastor left the restaurant with a free dinner, an apology and a couple of gift certificates.

“If I’m paying for a menu item,” Mr. Washington said, “I’m expecting that menu item to be placed before me.”

The subject of deceptive restaurant menus took on new life last week when Oceana, an international organization dedicated to ocean conservation, released a report with the headline “Widespread Seafood Fraud Found in New York City.”

Using genetic testing, the group found tilapia and tilefish posing as red snapper. Farmed salmon was sold as wild. Escolar, which can also legally be called oil fish, was disguised as white tuna, which is an unofficial nickname for albacore tuna.

Every one of 16 sushi bars investigated sold the researchers mislabeled fish. In all, 39 percent of the seafood from 81 grocery stores and restaurants was not what the establishment claimed it was.

“This thing with fish is age old, it’s been going on forever,” said Anne Quatrano, an Atlanta chef who opened Bacchanalia 20 years ago and kick-started the city’s sustainable food movement. “Unless you buy whole fish, you can’t always know what you’re getting from a supplier.”

Swapping one ingredient for a less expensive one extends beyond fish and is not always the fault of the person who sells food to the restaurant. Many a pork cutlet has headed to a table disguised as veal, and many an organic salad is not.

The term organic is regulated by the Department of Agriculture, but many other identifying words on a menu are essentially marketing terms. Unscrupulous chefs can falsely claim that a steak is Kobe beef or say a chicken was humanely treated without penalty.

In cases of blatant mislabeling, a chef or supplier often takes the bet that a local or federal agency charged with stopping deceptive practices is not likely to walk in the door. “This has been going on for as long as I’ve been cooking,” said Tom Colicchio, a New York chef and television personality. “When you start really getting into this stuff, there’s so many things people mislabel.”

At Mr. Colicchio’s New York restaurants, all but about 5 percent of the meat he serves is from animals raised without antibiotics, he said. It costs him about 30 percent more, so he charges more. “Yet I have a restaurant down the street that says they have organic chicken when they don’t, and they charge less money for it,” he said. “It’s all part of mislabeling and duping the public.”

Consumers are misled most frequently when they buy fish, investigators say, because there are so many fish in the sea and such limited knowledge among diners. The Food and Drug Administration lists 519 acceptable market names for fish, but more than 1,700 species are sold, said Morgan Liscinsky, a spokesman with the agency.

Marketing thousands of species in the ocean to a dining public who often has to be coaxed to move beyond the top five — shrimp, tuna, salmon, pollock and tilapia — is not an exact science.

The line between marketing something like Patagonian toothfish as Chilean sea bass or serving langostino and calling it lobster is a fine one.

Robert DeMasco, who owns Pierless Fish, a wholesaler in New York, used a profanity to describe someone who buys farm-raised fish and sells it as wild. “But on some of this, they’re splitting hairs,” he said.

In 2005, a customer sued Rubio’s, a West Coast taco chain, for misleading the public by selling a langostino lobster burrito. The FDA ruled that practice acceptable, which allowed chains like Long John Silver’s and Red Lobster to sell the crustacean called langostino and legally attach the word lobster to it. Maine lobstermen and lawmakers fought the decision unsuccessfully.

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Reyes joins growing craft beer market with Windy City deal

Independent breweries are still a niche category in the marketplace, but interest in them continues to grow.

Reyes Beverage Group, a division of global food and beer distributor Reyes Holdings of Rosemont, said Sunday it has reached an agreement to purchase Windy City Distribution, a well-regarded distributor of craft beers.

Brothers Jim and Jason Ebel founded Windy City in 1999. The firm operates as a distributor across eight northern Illinois counties for more than 40 craft breweries, such as Tyranena, Lagunitas and Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales. The Ebels also are the brewers behind Warrenville-based Two Brothers beer.

The deal, which is expected to close by the end of the year, is yet another sign of the coming-of-age of the craft beer scene, which is now much more part of the mainstream beer industry. In 2012, 442 craft breweries opened, according to the Beer Institute. The Brewers Association, a trade association, said sales of craft brews increased 14 percent in the first half of 2012 and volume jumped 12 percent.

While the beer industry overall has shown limited growth, the explosive interest in craft beer is enticing giants such as Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Budweiser, and MillerCoors, both of which have struggled to enter the craft market on their own. Since acquiring Chicago's Goose Island in 2011, Anheuser-Busch has aggressively expanded that well-known label. Earlier this year, it revealed plans to increase Goose Island's distribution to all 50 states, making it one of the few craft brands with a true national footprint.

Reyes' Chicago Beverage Systems and Windy City will not integrate their operations. Windy City's president, Bob Collins, and his management team will join Reyes. Chicago Beverage Systems distributes Miller, Coors and Heineken brands, among others.

"Windy City Distributing will be a new entity in our network focused solely on the craft beer market," said Ray Guerin, chief operating officer of Reyes Beverage Group. "I look forward to working with Windy City to learn more about servicing the craft beer industry while providing Reyes Beverage Group's expertise to help Windy City expand."

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Both companies are privately held.

mmharris@tribune.com

Twitter @chiconfidential

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Conn. gunman broke in, shot some victims twice

The family of Nancy Lanza, the mother of elementary school shooter Adam Lanza, issued a statement of grief and condolence about Friday's massacre through local law enforcement in Kingston, N.H. (Dec. 15

NEWTOWN, Conn.—

The gunman behind the Connecticut elementary school massacre stormed into the building and shot 20 children at least twice with a high-powered rifle, executing some at close range and killing adults who tried to stop the carnage, authorities said Saturday.

He forced his way into the school by breaking a window, officials said. Asked whether the children suffered, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver paused. "If so," he said, "not for very long."

The terrible details about the last moments of young innocents emerged as authorities released their names and ages — the youngest 6 and 7, the oldest 56. They included Ana Marquez-Greene, a little girl who had just moved to Newtown from Canada; Victoria Soto, a 27-year-old teacher who apparently died while trying to hide her pupils; and principal Dawn Hochsprung, who authorities said lunged at the gunman in an attempt to overtake him and paid with her life.

The tragedy has plunged Newtown into mourning and added the picturesque New England community of handsome Colonial homes, red-brick sidewalks and 27,000 people to the grim map of towns where mass shootings in recent years have periodically reignited the national debate over gun control but led to little change.

Faced with the unimaginable, townspeople sadly took down some of their Christmas decorations and struggled Saturday with how to go on. Signs around town read, "Hug a teacher today," ''Please pray for Newtown" and "Love will get us through."

"People in my neighborhood are feeling guilty about it being Christmas. They are taking down decorations," said Jeannie Pasacreta, a psychologist who was advising parents struggling with how to talk to their children.

School board chairwoman Debbie Leidlein spent Friday night meeting with parents who lost children and shivered as she recalled those conversations. "They were asking why. They can't wrap their minds around it. Why? What's going on?" she said. "And we just don't have any answers for them."

The tragedy brought forth soul-searching and grief around the globe. President Barack Obama planned to visit Newtown on Sunday. Families as far away as Puerto Rico planned funerals for victims who still had their baby teeth, world leaders extended condolences, and vigils were held around the U.S.

"Next week is going to be horrible," said the town's legislative council chairman, Jeff Capeci, thinking about the string of funerals the town will face. "Horrible, and the week leading into Christmas."

Police shed no light on what triggered Adam Lanza, 20, to carry out the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, though state police Lt. Paul Vance said investigators had found "very good evidence ... that our investigators will be able to use in painting the complete picture, the how and, more importantly, the why." He would not elaborate.

However, another law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators have found no note or manifesto from Lanza of the sort they have come to expect after murderous rampages such as the Virginia Tech bloodbath in 2007 that left 33 people dead.

Lanza shot to death his mother, Nancy Lanza, at the home they shared, then drove to the school in her car with at least three of her guns, forced his way in and opened fire, authorities said. Within minutes, he killed 20 children, six adults and himself.

Education officials said they had found no link between Lanza's mother and the school, contrary to news reports that said she was a teacher there. Investigators said they believe Adam Lanza attended Sandy Hook Elementary many years ago, but they had no explanation for why he went there Friday.

Authorities said Adam Lanza had no criminal history, and it was not clear whether he had a job. Lanza was believed to have suffered from a personality disorder, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Another law enforcement official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said Lanza had been diagnosed with Asperger's, a mild form of autism often characterized by social awkwardness. People with the disorder are often highly intelligent. While they can become frustrated more easily, there is no evidence of a link between Asperger's and violent behavior, experts say.

The law enforcement officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the unfolding investigation.

Richard Novia, the school district's head of security until 2008, who also served as adviser for the school technology club, of which Lanza was a member, said he clearly "had some disabilities."

"If that boy would've burned himself, he would not have known it or felt it physically," Novia said in a phone interview. "It was my job to pay close attention to that."

Amid the confusion and sorrow, stories of heroism emerged, including an account of Hochsprung, 47, and the school psychologist, Mary Sherlach, 56, rushing toward Lanza in an attempt to stop him. Both died.

There was also 27-year-old teacher Victoria Soto, whose name has been invoked as a portrait of selflessness and humanity among unfathomable evil. Investigators told relatives she was killed while shielding her first-graders from danger. She reportedly hid some students in a bathroom or closet, ensuring they were safe, a cousin, Jim Wiltsie, told ABC News.

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“Modern Family” star’s dad granted control of her estate

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The father of “Modern Family” star Ariel Winter was given temporary control over the teenage actress’ estate on Wednesday in a court-approved settlement in Los Angeles after allegations that her mother had abused her.

Winter, 14, who plays the brainy and precocious teenager Alex Dunphy on the Emmy-winning ABC comedy, will remain under temporary guardianship of her older sister, Shanelle Gray, under the settlement, court officials said.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Levanas scheduled a hearing for March 29 in which he could hand permanent guardianship over to Gray and control of Winter’s estate to her father, Glenn Workman.

Gray, 34, was first awarded temporary guardianship of the actress in October.

Winter’s mother, Chrisoula Workman, has denied allegations, earlier submitted in court documents, that she verbally and physically abused her daughter.

Messages left with Winter’s publicist and attorney seeking comment were not immediately returned.

“Modern Family” portrays the lives of three zany families and has won three consecutive Emmy awards as American television’s best comedy series.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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School Yoga Class Draws Religious Protest From Christians

T. Lynne Pixley for The New York Times

Miriam Ruiz during a yoga class last week at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School in Encinitas, Calif. A few dozen parents are protesting that the program amounts to religious indoctrination. More Photos »

ENCINITAS, Calif. — By 9:30 a.m. at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School, tiny feet were shifting from downward dog pose to chair pose to warrior pose in surprisingly swift, accurate movements. A circle of 6- and 7-year-olds contorted their frames, making monkey noises and repeating confidence-boosting mantras.

Jackie Bergeron’s first-grade yoga class was in full swing.

“Inhale. Exhale. Peekaboo!” Ms. Bergeron said from the front of the class. “Now, warrior pose. I am strong! I am brave!”

Though the yoga class had a notably calming effect on the children, things were far from placid outside the gymnasium.

A small but vocal group of parents, spurred on by the head of a local conservative advocacy group, has likened these 30-minute yoga classes to religious indoctrination. They say the classes — part of a comprehensive program offered to all public school students in this affluent suburb north of San Diego — represent a violation of the First Amendment.

After the classes prompted discussion in local evangelical churches, parents said they were concerned that the exercises might nudge their children closer to ancient Hindu beliefs.

Mary Eady, the parent of a first grader, said the classes were rooted in the deeply religious practice of Ashtanga yoga, in which physical actions are inextricable from the spiritual beliefs underlying them.

“They’re not just teaching physical poses, they’re teaching children how to think and how to make decisions,” Ms. Eady said. “They’re teaching children how to meditate and how to look within for peace and for comfort. They’re using this as a tool for many things beyond just stretching.”

Ms. Eady and a few dozen other parents say a public school system should not be leading students down any particular religious path. Teaching children how to engage in spiritual exercises like meditation familiarizes young minds with certain religious viewpoints and practices, they say, and a public classroom is no place for that.

Underlying the controversy is the source of the program’s financing. The pilot project is supported by the Jois Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in memory of Krishna Pattabhi Jois, who is considered the father of Ashtanga yoga.

Dean Broyles, the president and chief counsel of the National Center for Law and Policy, a nonprofit law firm that champions religious freedom and traditional marriage, according to its Web site, has dug up quotes from Jois Foundation leaders, who talk about the inseparability of the physical act of yoga from a broader spiritual quest. Mr. Broyles argued that such quotes betrayed the group’s broader evangelistic purpose.

“There is a transparent promotion of Hindu religious beliefs and practices in the public schools through this Ashtanga yoga program,” he said.

“The analog would be if we substituted for this program a charismatic Christian praise and worship physical education program,” he said.

The battle over yoga in schools has been raging for years across the country but has typically focused on charter schools, which receive public financing but set their own curriculums.

The move by the Encinitas Union School District to mandate yoga classes for all students who do not opt out has elevated the discussion. And it has split an already divided community.

The district serves the liberal beach neighborhoods of Encinitas, including Leucadia, where Paul Ecke Central Elementary is, as well as more conservative inland communities. On the coast, bumper stickers reading “Keep Leucadia Funky” are borne proudly. Farther inland, cars are more likely to feature the Christian fish symbol, and large evangelical congregations play an important role in shaping local philosophy.

Opponents of the yoga classes have started an online petition to remove the course from the district’s curriculum. They have shown up at school board meetings to denounce the program, and Mr. Broyles has threatened to sue if the board does not address their concerns.

The district has stood firm. Tim Baird, the schools superintendent, has defended the yoga classes as merely another element of a broader program designed to promote children’s physical and mental well-being. The notion that yoga teachers have designs on converting tender young minds to Hinduism is incorrect, he said.

“That’s why we have an opt-out clause,” Mr. Baird said. “If your faith is such that you believe that simply by doing the gorilla pose, you’re invoking the Hindu gods, then by all means your child can be doing something else.”

Ms. Eady is not convinced.

“Yoga poses are representative of Hindu deities and Hindu stories about the actions and interactions of those deities with humans,” she said. “There’s content even in the movement, just as with baptism there’s content in the movement.”

Russell Case, a representative of the Jois Foundation, said the parents’ fears were misguided.

“They’re concerned that we’re putting our God before their God,” Mr. Case said. “They’re worried about competition. But we’re much closer to them than they think. We’re good Christians that just like to do yoga because it helps us to be better people.”

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Greener planet is goal for 3 startups

If the glut of companies billing themselves as "solutions" providers is any indication, the world has no shortage of problems.

Green tech companies take on some of the most complicated, difficult problems to solve. They tend to be problems created by our mere existence, chief among them our massive demand for energy. The more we rely on energy to power our electronics, our vehicles and our lives, the more pollution we churn into our land, water and air.

The Tribune checked in with three local green tech startups at various stages of development. They haven't changed the world yet, but they're working on it.

COMPANY: LanzaTech

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: Global warming, a huge challenge as energy demand is expected to double within 40 years.

FUNDS RAISED: $100 million

It may sound like sci-fi, but LanzaTech produces gas-eating "bugs" that don't require oxygen to survive.

In April, the company's microscopic bacteria began ingesting carbon monoxide from a steel mill in China. Carbon monoxide goes in one end of the bacteria and ethanol comes out the other.

With a few genetic tweaks, the bug can produce a wide range of fuels and chemicals from gases that companies spend money to get rid of. The idea, says Jennifer Holmgren, the company's chief executive, is to trap nasty gases that float from steel mills, power plants and chemical factories, turning them into products that are useful and profitable.

The company recently inked a deal with Petronas, the national oil company of Malaysia, to develop a modified version of the bug that takes in carbon dioxide and produces acetic acid, a chemical companies need to produce polymers used in plastics.

"Rather than trying to sequester carbon deep into the earth, we will 'bury' it in a chemical," Holmgren said. "In this way, companies can not only comply with emissions reduction requirements, but also generate revenue along the way."

When Holmgren talks about the technology's potential, she pulls up a map of the world, showing partnerships and agreements the company has with companies from Boeing Co. in Chicago and Kansas-based Invista, the world's largest nylon producer, to Indian Oil Co. in New Delhi and Mitsui & Co. Ltd. in Japan.

Out of the company's various projects, the carbon monoxide-eating bacteria are the furthest along in the path toward commercialization. This month, LanzaTech finished a demonstration project for China's largest steel manufacturer, Baosteel, at a plant near Shanghai.

LanzaTech successfully produced the equivalent of more than 100,000 gallons of ethanol per year from just a fraction of the carbon monoxide the company creates in the steel-making process.

"You're literally driving for miles watching this steel mill," Holmgren said, explaining its vast size — and its potential to produce hundreds of millions of gallons of ethanol per year.

The technology creates a financial incentive to trap the gas rather than flare it, a common practice that produces carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. Through a series of pipes, the gas enters a vessel filled with the organism, which is floating in water. Fuel comes out the back end and is pumped through a distiller to create pure ethanol.

Because of the success of that demonstration, the steel company has ordered the first of what will eventually be three or four units, each about $80 million, that are each expected to produce 30 million to 50 million gallons of ethanol per year. Each unit pays itself back in under five years, Holmgren said.

"We don't want it to be green for green's sake. If it is, no one is going to use it," she said.

With 140 employees worldwide, LanzaTech doesn't have any revenues to report yet. Holmgren said LanzaTech expects to grow to profitability between 2013 and 2015.

COMPANY: Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies LLC

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Obama: 'Our hearts are broken'

A man killed his mother at their home and then opened fire Friday inside an elementary school, massacring 26 people, including 20 children, as youngsters cowered in fear to the sound of gunshots reverberating through the building and screams echoing over the intercom.

The 20-year-old killer, carrying at least two handguns, committed suicide at the school, bringing the death toll to 28, authorities said.

The rampage, coming less than two weeks before Christmas, was the nation's second-deadliest school shooting, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech massacre that claimed 33 lives in 2007.

"Our hearts are broken today," a tearful President Barack Obama, struggling to maintain his composure, said at the White House. He called for "meaningful action" to prevent such shootings, saying, "As a country, we have been through this too many times."

Police shed no light on the motive for the attack. The gunman, Adam Lanza, was believed to suffer from a personality disorder and lived with his mother, said a law enforcement official who was briefed on the investigation but was not authorized to discuss it.

Panicked parents looking for their children raced to Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, a prosperous New England community of about 27,000 people 60 miles northeast of New York City. Police told youngsters at the kindergarten-through-fourth-grade school to close their eyes as they were led from the building so that they wouldn't see the blood and broken glass.

Schoolchildren -- some crying, others looking frightened -- were escorted through a parking lot in a line, hands on each other's shoulders.

Law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity said that Lanza killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, then drove to the school in her car with at least three guns, including a high-powered rifle that he apparently left in the back of the vehicle, and shot up two classrooms around 9:30 a.m.

A custodian ran through the halls, warning of a gunman on the loose, and someone switched on the intercom, alerting people in the building to the attack -- and perhaps saving many lives -- by letting them hear the hysteria going on in the school office, a teacher said. Teachers locked their doors and ordered children to huddle in a corner or hide in closets as shots echoed through the building.

Authorities gave no details on exactly how the attack unfolded, but police radio traffic indicated the shooting lasted only a few minutes. State police Lt. Paul Vance said officers arrived instantaneously, immediately entered the school, searched it completely and found Lanza dead.

In addition to the 20 children, six adults were killed at the school; the principal was believed to be among the dead. A woman who worked at Sandy Hook Elementary was wounded.

A law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity said investigators believe Lanza attended the school several years ago but appeared to have no recent connection to the place.

At least one parent said Lanza's mother was a substitute teacher there. But her name did not appear on a staff list. And the law enforcement official said investigators were unable to establish any connection so far between her and the school.

Lanza's older brother, 24-year-old Ryan, of Hoboken, N.J., was being questioned, but a law enforcement official said he was not believed to have had a role in the rampage. Investigators were searching his computers and phone records, but he told law enforcement he had not been in touch with his brother since about 2010.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the unfolding investigation.

At one point, a law enforcement official mistakenly identified the gunman as Ryan Lanza. Brett Wilshe, a friend of Ryan Lanza's, said Lanza told him the gunman may have had his identification. Ryan Lanza apparently posted Facebook page updates Friday afternoon that read, "It wasn't me" and "I was at work."

Robert Licata said his 6-year-old son was in class when the gunman burst in and shot the teacher. "That's when my son grabbed a bunch of his friends and ran out the door," he said. "He was very brave. He waited for his friends."

He said the shooter didn't utter a word.

Stephen Delgiadice said his 8-year-old daughter heard two big bangs. Teachers told her to get in a corner, he said. "It's alarming, especially in Newtown, Connecticut, which we always thought was the safest place in America," he said. His daughter was uninjured.

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Owner of Rivera plane being investigated by DEA

PHOENIX (AP) — The company that owns a luxury jet that crashed and killed Latin music star Jenni Rivera is under investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and the agency seized two of its planes earlier this year as part of the ongoing probe.

DEA spokeswoman Lisa Webb Johnson confirmed Thursday the planes owned by Las Vegas-based Starwood Management were seized in Texas and Arizona, but she declined to discuss details of the case. The agency also has subpoenaed all the company’s records, including any correspondence it has had with a former Tijuana mayor who U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected has ties to organized crime.

The man widely believed to be behind the aviation company is an ex-convict named Christian Esquino, 50, who has a long and checkered legal past. Corporate records list his sister-in-law as the company’s only officer, but insurance companies that cover some of the firm’s planes say in court documents that the woman is merely a front and that Esquino is the one in charge.

Esquino’s legal woes date back decades. He pleaded guilty to a fraud charge that stemmed from a major drug investigation in Florida in the early 1990s and most recently was sentenced to two years in federal prison in a California aviation fraud case. Esquino, a Mexican citizen, was deported upon his release. Esquino and various other companies he has either been involved with or owns have also been sued for failing to pay millions of dollars in loans, according to court records.

The 43-year-old California-born Rivera died at the peak of her career when the plane she was traveling in nose-dived into the ground while flying from the northern Mexican city of Monterrey to the central city of Toluca early Sunday morning. She was perhaps the most successful female singer in grupero, a male-dominated Mexico regional style, and had branched out into acting and reality television.

It remained unclear Thursday exactly what caused the crash and why Rivera was on Esquino’s plane. The 78-year-old pilot and five other people were also killed. Esquino was not on the plane.

The late singer’s brother, Pedro Rivera Jr., said that he didn’t know anything about the owner or why or how she ended up in his plane.

Esquino told the Los Angeles Times in a telephone interview from Mexico City earlier this week that the singer was considering buying the aircraft from Starwood for $ 250,000 and the flight was offered as a test ride. He disputed reports that he owns Starwood, maintaining that he is merely the company’s operations manager “with the expertise.”

In response to an email from The Associated Press, Esquino said he did not want to comment. Calls to various phone numbers associated with him rang unanswered.

Esquino is no stranger to tangles with the law. He was indicted in the early 1990s along with 12 other defendants in a major federal drug investigation that claimed the suspects planned to sell more than 480 kilograms of cocaine, according to court records. He eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring to conceal money from the IRS and was sentenced to five years in prison, but much of the term was suspended for reasons that weren’t immediately clear.

He served about five months in prison before being released.

Cynthia Hawkins, a former assistant U.S. attorney who handled the case and is now in private practice in Orlando, remembered the investigation well.

“It was huge,” Hawkins said Thursday. “This was an international smuggling group.”

She said the case began with the arrest of Robert Castoro, who was at the time considered one of the most prolific smugglers of marijuana and cocaine into Florida from direct ties to Colombian drug cartels in the 1980s. Castoro was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to life in prison, but he then began cooperating with authorities, leading to his sentence being reduced to just 10 years, Hawkins said.

“Castoro cooperated for years,” she said. “We put hundreds of people in jail.”

He eventually gave up another smuggler, Damian Tedone, who was indicted in the early 1990s along with Esquino and 11 others in a conspiracy involving drug smuggling in Florida in the 1980s at a time when the state was the epicenter of the nation’s cocaine trade.

Tedone also cooperated with authorities and has since been released from prison. Telephone messages left Thursday for both Tedone and Castoro were not returned.

Esquino eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of concealing money from the IRS.

Joseph Milchen, Esquino’s attorney at the time, said Thursday the case eventually revolved around his client “bringing money into the United States without declaring it.”

However, Milchen acknowledged that a plane purchased by Esquino was “used to smuggle drugs.”

He denied his former client has ever had anything to do with illegal narcotics.

“The only thing he has ever done is with airplanes,” Milchen said.

Court filings also indicate Esquino was sentenced to two years in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to committing fraud involving aircraft he purchased in Mexico, then falsified the planes’ log books and re-sold them in the United States.

Also in 2004, a federal judge ordered him and one of his companies to pay a creditor $ 6.2 million after being accused of failing to pay debts to a bank.

As the years passed, Esquino’s troubles only grew.

In February this year, a Gulfstream G-1159A plane the government valued at $ 500,000 was seized by the U.S. Marshals Service on behalf of the DEA after landing in Tucson on a flight that originated in Mexico

Four months later, the DEA subpoenaed all of Starwood’s records dating to Dec. 13, 2007, including federal and state income tax documents, bank deposit information, records on all company assets and sales, and the entity’s relationship with Esquino and more than a dozen companies and individuals, including former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank-Rhon, a gambling mogul and a member of one of Mexico’s most powerful families. U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected Hank-Rhon is tied to organized crime but no allegations have been proven. He has consistently denied any criminal involvement.

He was arrested in Mexico last year on weapons charges and on suspicion of ordering the murder of his son’s former girlfriend. He was later freed for lack of evidence.

The subpoena was obtained by the U-T San Diego newspaper.

A Starwood attorney listed on the subpoena, Jeremy Schuster, declined Thursday to provide details.

“We don’t comment on matters involving clients,” he said.

In September, the DEA seized another Starwood plane — a 1977 Hawker 700 with an insured value of $ 1 million — after it landed in McAllen, Texas, from a flight from Mexico.

Insurers of both aircraft have since filed complaints in federal court in Nevada seeking to have the Starwood policies nullified, in part, because they say Esquino lied in the application process when he noted he had never been indicted on drug-related criminal charges. Both companies said they would not have issued the policies had he been truthful.

Another attorney for Starwood has not responded to phone and email messages seeking comment, and no one was at the address listed at its Las Vegas headquarters. The address is a post office box in a shipping and mailing store located between a tuxedo rental shop and a supermarket in a shopping center several miles west of the Las Vegas Strip.

___

Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

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Life Expectancy Rises Around World, Study Finds

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Children in Nairobi, Kenya. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged in mortality gains, compared with Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

“The growth of these rich-country diseases, like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, is in a strange way good news,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that people on average are living longer.”

In 2010, 43 percent of deaths in the world occurred at age 70 and older, compared with 33 percent of deaths in 1990, the report said. And fewer child deaths have brought up the mean age of death, which in Brazil and Paraguay jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 30 in 1970, the report said. The measure, an average of all deaths in a given year, is different from life expectancy, and is lower when large numbers of children die.

But while developing countries made big strides the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries’ female populations between 1990 and 2010. American women gained just under two years of life, compared with women in Cyprus, who lived 2.3 years longer and Canadian women who gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. Life expectancy for American women was 80.5 in 2010, up from 78.6 in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said. American men gained in life expectancy, to 75.9 years from 71.7 in 1990.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which provided estimates of disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

The World Health Organization issued a statement on Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differed substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others were similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries — representing about 15 percent of the world’s population — produce quality cause-of-death data.

Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception to the trend. Infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternity-related causes of death still account for about 70 percent of the region’s disease burden, a measure of years of life lost due to premature death and to time lived in less than full health. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

Globally, AIDS was an exception to the shift of deaths from infectious to noncommunicable diseases. The epidemic is believed to have peaked, but still results in 1.5 million deaths each year.

Over all, the change means people are living longer, but it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization.

Tobacco use is a rising threat, especially in developing countries, and is responsible for almost six million deaths a year globally. Illnesses like diabetes are also spreading fast.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting.

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