Population growth is threat to other species, poll respondents say

Nearly two-thirds of American voters believe that human population growth is driving other animal species to extinction and that if the situation gets worse, society has a "moral responsibility to address the problem," according to new national public opinion poll.

A slightly lower percentage of those polled — 59% — believes that population growth is an important environmental issue and 54% believe that stabilizing the population will help protect the environment.

The survey was conducted on behalf of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, which unlike other environmental groups has targeted population growth as part of its campaign to save wildlife species from extinction.

Special report: Beyond 7 billion -- bending the population curve

The center has handed out more than half a million condoms at music concerts, farmers markets, churches and college campuses with labels featuring drawings of endangered species and playful, even humorous, messages such as, "Wrap with care, save the polar bear."

The organization hired a polling firm to show other environmental groups that their fears about alienating the public by bringing up population matters are overblown, said Kieran Suckling, the center's executive director. When the center broke the near-silence on population growth with its condom campaign, other environmental leaders "reacted with a mix of worry and horror that we were going to experience a huge backlash and drag them into it," he said.

Instead, Suckling said the campaign has swelled its membership — now about 500,000 — and donations and energized 5,000 volunteers who pass out prophylactics. He said a common response is, "Thank God, someone is talking about this critical issue."

The poll results, he said, show such views are mainstream.

In the survey, the pollsters explained that the world population hit 7 billion last year and is projected to reach 10 billion by the end of the century. Given those facts, 50% of people reached by telephone said they think the world population is growing too fast, while 38% said population growth was on the right pace and 4% thought it was growing too slowly. About 8% were not sure.

Special report: Beyond 7 billion -- bending the population curve

Sixty-one percent of respondents expressed concerned about disappearing wildlife. Depending how the question was phrased, 57% to 64% of respondents said population growth was having an adverse effect. If widespread wildlife extinctions were unavoidable without slowing human population growth, 60% agreed that society has a moral responsibility to address the problem.

Respondents didn't make as clear a connection between population and climate change, reflecting the decades-old debate over population growth versus consumption. Although 57% of respondents agreed that population growth is making climate change worse, only 46% said they think having more people will make it harder to solve, and 34% said the number of people will make no difference.

Asked about natural resources, 48% said they think the average American consumes too much. The view split sharply along party lines, with 62% of Democrats saying the average American consumes too much, compared with 29% of Republicans. Independents fell in the middle at 49%.

The survey of 657 registered voters was conducted Feb. 22-24 by Public Policy Polling, a Raleigh, N.C., firm that takes the pulse of voters for Democratic candidates and Democratic-leaning clients. It has a margin of error of 3.9%.

ken.weiss@latimes.com

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Jean-Claude Duvalier Faces Questions in Court About His Reign in Haiti

Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated Press

Supporters of Jean-Claude Duvalier held a picture of him, right, and his father outside court.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Jean-Claude Duvalier, the former dictator known as Baby Doc accused of bearing responsibility for the deaths, torture and the disappearance of hundreds of people, walked into a muggy, packed courtroom here on Thursday, sat down next to shocked victims and for the first time answered questions in a court of law about his brutal, 15-year reign.

The hearing, one he had avoided three times before but attended under renewed pressure from a judge, provided few answers about the violent period in Haiti that eventually ended with his downfall and the first, halting steps toward democracy. But few here ever expected the spectacle of a former dictator, dressed in a blue suit and gray tie, to give patient if evasive, and occasionally inaudible, responses while being called to account for his terror.

The judge, Jean-Joseph Lebrun, presiding over a hearing to determine if a trial should go forward, informed Mr. Duvalier that he was accused of ordering illegal arrests, torture and political killings during his tenure from 1971 to 1986.

“Were there deaths and summary executions under your government?” the judge asked.

“Deaths exist in all countries,” Mr. Duvalier, 61, replied, speaking so softly that the stenographer had to repeat his answers. “I didn’t intervene in the activities of the police.”

Mr. Duvalier, who unexpectedly returned from exile in France in 2011, later denied complicity and said that he checked out reports of abuse when they came to his attention. He defended his rule “as the son of a great nationalist,” François Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, another feared dictator whose death in 1971 put Mr. Duvalier, at age 19, in control of the country.

He painted a picture of a Haiti with less street crime than there is now and lamented the poverty and corruption that he said had become widespread.

“Upon my return, I found a country in ruins and engulfed by corruption,” he said. “It is my turn to ask, ‘What have you done with my country?’ ”

Mr. Duvalier, after his return, was charged with corruption; a court last year set aside human rights charges because it said the statute of limitations had expired. But advocates argued that it misinterpreted the law.

Some accuse the justice system of avoiding the human rights charges because Mr. Duvalier has been friendly with the current president, Michel Martelly. But victims’ lawyers pushed the case through appellate courts, leading to the pretrial hearing on Wednesday.

“This is already a historic victory in a country where the rich and powerful have always been above the law,” said Reed Brody, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch. “Who’d have thought that Duvalier would be forced one day to face his victims in a court of law, to submit to questioning about his alleged crimes, and to listen to details about his prisons and his police? Whatever happens next, Haitians will remember the image of their former dictator having to answer questions about the repression carried out under his rule.”

Mr. Duvalier’s rule was a bloody period of deaths and disappearances, many at the hands of a militia known as the Tonton Macoutes. He fled Haiti as civil unrest was tearing the country apart, leading to a period of tumultuous democracy marked by chaotic, sometimes violent elections.

In court, the names of several victims were read aloud and some of them were there, including Robert Duval, who said he was imprisoned and tortured in the 1970s. He smiled when he heard his name and said, “I’m touching myself to see if I’m alive or if it’s a dream.”

Isabeau Doucet reported from Port-au-Prince, and Randal C. Archibold from Mexico City.

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Josh Duhamel Has 'Full Conversations' with His Unborn Child

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Daddy-to-be Josh Duhamel is so excited about welcoming his first child that he’s begun to bond with wife Fergie‘s belly.

“I’ve had full conversations with the baby already,” Duhamel jokes to PEOPLE at Tuesday’s Nickelodeon upfront presentation in New York. “I’m trying my best to communicate from beyond the womb. Whether it can hear me, I don’t know, but I’m talking to it a lot.”

In addition to enjoying his chats with Fergie’s baby bump, the Safe Haven star, 40, admits he loves the Black Eyed Peas singer’s pregnancy glow.

“She looks so beautiful,” he says. “I look at her now as not only as my beautiful wife, but also as the woman carrying our child. That takes our relationship to a whole new level.”

As for dealing with the sleepless nights, diaper duty and constant feedings, the actor claims he’s up for the challenge.

“I actually look forward to that stuff that people warn you about,” he says. “I don’t mind waking up and dealing with the middle of the night stuff. I wake up early anyway. So I’m definitely ready for it. More so than I’ve ever been.”

There is one task Duhamel really wants to be ready for: ”I hope to be a great dad.”

“I have a lot more life experience than I had at 24. I feel like I’m a little more patient and more wise than I was before,” he explains. “It’s easier said than done, but I’m just looking to raise a good person.”

He adds, “When we saw the ultrasound, that thing was moving around a lot. So I think we are going to have our hands full.”

In the meantime, Duhamel will be busy preparing to host Nickelodeon’s 26th annual Kids’ Choice Awards, airing March 23 at 8 p.m..

“It’s truly bonkers what this show is going to be,” he says. “I’m trying to do things as a host that people would never expect me to do. So if people didn’t take me seriously before, they definitely won’t take me seriously now.”

– Paul Chi

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WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

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Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

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Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

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Parolee without GPS tracker charged with killing his grandmother

SACRAMENTO — A paroled sex offender who has been in and out of the San Joaquin County jail repeatedly for disarming his GPS monitor is back behind bars, charged with killing his 76-year-old grandmother and leaving her body in a backyard wheelbarrow.

Police reports and confidential law enforcement files show Sidney Jerome DeAvila, 39, was arrested and released at least 10 times in the last nine months, charged with parole violations over using drugs and public drunkenness as well as disabling his tracking device.

A former ward of a prison psychiatric hospital after being convicted in 2011 of molesting children, he was considered a high-risk parolee because of a long history of violence and mental health problems.

Almost every time DeAvila was arrested, the records show, he was released the next day because of overcrowding in the San Joaquin County jail.

Before the governor and Legislature began referring parole violators to county jails rather than state prisons, DeAvila would have remained behind bars awaiting hearings that could have sent him back to prison for up to a year.

Now the maximum penalty is 180 days in jail. But many who breach parole never serve that time because many counties are, like the state, under orders to reduce inmate overcrowding.

Since the custody rules changed in October 2011, more than 3,400 warrants have been issued for GPS violators, the vast majority of them sex offenders, a Times investigation found. Lawmakers recently introduced legislation to require GPS violators to go back to prison.

DeAvila's most recent arrest for parole violation was Feb. 13, jail records show. He was released from the jail Feb. 20 and failed to get a new GPS monitor from the parole office, prompting a fresh warrant for his arrest.

On Tuesday, Stockton police were called after neighbors found the body of Racheal Russell, DeAvila's grandmother, with whom he sometimes lived, in a wheelbarrow in her backyard.

DeAvila was booked later that day on charges of murder, resisting arrest and violating parole. As of Thursday afternoon, he had not entered a plea.

Stockton police are awaiting autopsy results to declare a cause of death, police spokesman Joseph Silva said.

California corrections officials reiterated Thursday that counties, not the state, are responsible for determining whether and how long to keep parole violators in jail.

"We take absconding from parole very seriously," corrections spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said. The state "provides counties with the funding and tools needed to manage offenders at the local level. Parole violators can be held in county jail for up to 180 days, and we know sheriffs take their responsibility seriously and are making difficult decisions every day."

A spokesman for the San Joaquin County sheriff's office did not immediately return calls seeking comment. A local judge who presides over jail releases has said the county cannot accommodate parole violators without releasing other convicted criminals.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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As Castro Era Drifts to Close, a New Face Steps In at No. 2

Franklin Reyes/Associated Press

Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, right, during the closing session of the Cuban National Assembly in Havana on Sunday.

MEXICO CITY — He may have just taken on the toughest job in Cuba. Rivals at home will try to take him down. Enemies abroad will discredit him. Almost anyone with an interest in Cuba — including American spies and Cuban intelligence officers — will dig through his public and private lives, rummaging for secrets or clues about his plans.

All the while, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, 52, the top contender to succeed the Castros after more than half a century of their rule, will need to display the authority of a future president while acting as if he does not want the job, maintaining the submissiveness and loyalty that the Castros require.

“It’s going to be a challenge,” said Brian Latell, a former C.I.A. agent who monitored Fidel Castro’s speeches for years and continues to track Raúl Castro as an outside analyst. “The record of the Cuban revolution is littered with the names of people who were thought to be No. 3 or 2 and all of them fell by the wayside, going back to Che Guevara.”

Though a stranger to many Cubans, Mr. Díaz-Canel suddenly became the chosen one when he was promoted to first vice president on Sunday as Raúl Castro, 81, announced he would retire after his current five-year term ended in 2018.

Mr. Díaz-Canel replaced José Ramón Machado Ventura, 82, and became one of the youngest members of Cuba’s political hierarchy. His elevation raised the curtain on an epic drama that had been envisioned dozens of times over the decades. Leader after leader has been mentioned as the next president of Cuba but now, with the Castro era drifting to a close, all the attention is focused on Mr. Díaz-Canel, who has been thrust into what experts describe as the most scrutinized leadership role in the country since Fidel Castro took power in 1959.

Several high-placed young guns who had been auditioning for the job have been banished from government since Fidel Castro fell ill and retired in 2006. Some were accused of corruption, others of disloyalty in the form of vulgar jokes (surreptitiously recorded) about Fidel Castro’s health and Raúl Castro’s political capabilities.

One of those sent packing off in an earlier purge — the Cuban expression is “plan pajama” — is an old boss of Mr. Díaz-Canel’s from their days at the Union of Communist Youth: Roberto Robaina, a brilliant mathematician and former foreign minister who can now be found painting or hanging out at his Havana restaurant, Chaplin’s Cafe.

But unlike others floated as possible future leaders, Mr. Díaz-Canel has managed to be officially anointed as the successor. No one else can claim that distinction, not even Che, Fidel Castro’s right-hand man during the revolution. And though much about Mr. Díaz-Canel remains a mystery, what is known suggests that Rául Castro made the selection. Mr. Díaz-Canel, though clearly an avowed loyalist, has little in common with Fidel Castro, in personality or outlook. He seems instead a younger, more casual version of Raúl.

Like Raúl, he is known for being funny and warm in small groups, and more demure when speaking to crowds. An engineer, he also shares with Raúl a hefty respect for competence over ideology, and an antipathy to showy appearances. While Fidel Castro took power riding a tank into Havana, Mr. Díaz-Canel is well known within Communist Party circles for riding his bike to work when he served as the top official in the province of Villa Clara. He was born there in a lush central region of sweet-smelling mills and pristine coastal keys on April 20, 1960. His father worked for a brewery and his mother was a primary school teacher, according to someone close to the family who did not want to be identified talking about the private life of a government official.

The insider said that Mr. Díaz-Canel was a keen chess player as a child and an avid reader. He is on Facebook, looking casual in a photograph with relatives, but online there are few examples of his published commentary.

He appears to have maintained a down-to-earth approach throughout his career. After graduating from the Central University of Las Villas in 1982, he served in the military for a few years, then slowly moved up the Communist Party ranks. While others behaved like bureaucrats, he had a touch of the mod, wearing his blondish hair long and listening to rock ’n’ roll.

Damien Cave reported from Mexico City, and Victoria Burnett from Havana. Alain Delaquérière contributed research from New York.

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Billie Joe Armstrong Comes Clean About Rehab

By Kevin O'Donnell

02/27/2013 at 08:00 PM EST

Last September, Billie Joe Armstrong made headlines when, during his band Green Day's performance at the I Heart Radio Music Festival in Las Vegas, the rocker unleashed a profanity-laced tirade that took aim at everyone from the concert's promoter, Clear Channel, to Justin Bieber.

The meltdown forced Armstrong to enter an outpatient rehab program for a month and in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, the frontman, who turned 41 this month, reveals his struggle to get sober.

"I'm a blackout drinker," he reveals. "That's basically what happened [that night]."

Leading up to that infamous performance, Armstrong was struggling with a dependence on pills for anxiety and insomnia, combined with a heavy drinking problem. After the concert, he agreed to enter an outpatient rehab program for a month.

Although he declines to specify what type of medications he was taking, he tells the magazine, "I started combining them to a point where I didn't know what I was taking during the day and what I was taking at night. It was just this routine. My backpack sounded like a giant baby rattle [from all of the bottles inside]."

Armstrong, who has been married to wife Adrienne since 1994 and has two sons, Joseph and Jakob, also reveals how hard it was to go through withdrawal.

"That was gruesome, laying on the bathroom floor and just feeling like ... [pauses] I didn't realize how much of that stuff affected me." He also opens up about the toll it took on his family: "I kept [the withdrawal] away from my sons pretty good ... [And my wife] knew the deal. I'm sure it was rough for her to see me going through this."

Now, the musician insists he's on the mend and no longer drinking. "I want to put on good shows," says Armstrong, who will resume touring with Green Day on March 10 in Pomona, Calif. "I want to be reliable." 

Armstrong also admits maintaining his sobriety will be a challenge. "There is still the obsession for alcohol," he says. "There's also sleepless nights. But I have to work on it every day. Because I know what goes on out there … I've got to watch my step."

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Huge study: 5 mental disorders share genetic links

WASHINGTON (AP) — The largest genetic study of mental illnesses to date finds five major disorders may not look much alike but they share some gene-based risks. The surprising discovery comes in the quest to unravel what causes psychiatric disorders and how to better diagnose and treat them.

The disorders — autism, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia — are considered distinct problems. But findings published online Wednesday suggest they're related in some way.

"These disorders that we thought of as quite different may not have such sharp boundaries," said Dr. Jordan Smoller of Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the lead researchers for the international study appearing in The Lancet.

That has implications for learning how to diagnose mental illnesses with the same precision that physical illnesses are diagnosed, said Dr. Bruce Cuthbert of the National Institute on Mental Health, which funded the research.

Consider: Just because someone has chest pain doesn't mean it's a heart attack; doctors have a variety of tests to find out. But there's no blood test for schizophrenia or other mental illnesses. Instead, doctors rely on symptoms agreed upon by experts. Learning the genetic underpinnings of mental illnesses is part of one day knowing if someone's symptoms really are schizophrenia and not something a bit different.

"If we really want to diagnose and treat people effectively, we have to get to these more fine-grained understandings of what's actually going wrong biologically," Cuthbert explained.

Added Mass General's Smoller: "We are still in the early stages of understanding what are the causes of mental illnesses, so these are clues."

The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, a collaboration of researchers in 19 countries, analyzed the genomes of more than 61,000 people, some with one of the five disorders and some without. They found four regions of the genetic code where variation was linked to all five disorders.

Of particular interest are disruptions in two specific genes that regulate the flow of calcium in brain cells, key to how neurons signal each other. That suggests that this change in a basic brain function could be one early pathway that leaves someone vulnerable to developing these disorders, depending on what else goes wrong.

For patients and their families, the research offers no immediate benefit. These disorders are thought to be caused by a complex mix of numerous genes and other risk factors that range from exposures in the womb to the experiences of daily life.

"There may be many paths to each of these illnesses," Smoller cautioned.

But the study offers a lead in the hunt for psychiatric treatments, said NIMH's Cuthbert. Drugs that affect calcium channels in other parts of the body are used for such conditions as high blood pressure, and scientists could explore whether they'd be useful for psychiatric disorders as well.

The findings make sense, as there is some overlap in the symptoms of the different disorders, he said. People with schizophrenia can have some of the same social withdrawal that's so characteristic of autism, for example. Nor is it uncommon for people to be affected by more than one psychiatric disorder.

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Online:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60223-8/abstract

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Santa Cruz hit hard by officers' deaths

SANTA CRUZ — Flags throughout this sparkling beach town flew at half-staff Wednesday. The entire Police Department was meeting with grief counselors. Handmade signs cropped up, sympathy cards to a stunned city.

"Thank you for your service Santa Cruz Police Department. RIP Detective Baker. RIP Detective Butler." That's what Mary Gregg wrote in neat black letters on yellow construction paper, hanging her message in the window of the downtown check-cashing store where she works.

"Something," she felt, "had to be said today."

Best known for its surfing museum and a roller coaster that Bay Area newspaper columnist Herb Caen described as "one long shriek," Santa Cruz is not used to the kind of pain that rippled through town the day after a gunfight left two veteran officers — and the man they were investigating — dead.

The city's Police Department, which has less than 100 sworn officers, had operated for 150 years without losing a single one in the line of duty. Until Tuesday afternoon, when two veteran detectives in plainclothes walked up to Jeremy Goulet's house as part of a misdemeanor sexual assault investigation.

Sgt. Loran "Butch" Baker, 51, and Det. Elizabeth Butler, 38, were killed on Goulet's doorstep, Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak said during a news conference near an impromptu memorial at police headquarters.

"We don't know all that happened when they came into contact with Goulet," said Wowak, whose department is leading the investigation so Santa Cruz police can mourn. "We do know what was left in the aftermath."

The 35-year-old Goulet, who had a long history of run-ins with the law, killed and disarmed the detectives before fleeing in Baker's car, Wowak said. Law enforcement officers from throughout the region began a sweep of the Santa Cruz neighborhood where Baker and Butler were slain. A short time later, Goulet ditched the car and tried to flee on foot.

In the ensuing gun battle, Wowak said, Goulet shot up a firetruck, sending firefighters, medical personnel and passersby scrambling. After killing the suspect, authorities discovered Goulet had been wearing body armor and had three guns.

"It is our belief that two of the three weapons belonged to the Santa Cruz Police Department, but we haven't confirmed it," said Wowak, adding that it was still unclear whether Goulet had taken the body armor from Baker's car or had it on before the shooting broke out.

"We know now that he was distraught," the sheriff said. "We know now that he had the intention of harming himself and possibly the police.… There's no doubt in anyone's mind that the officers who engaged Goulet stopped an imminent threat to the community."

Goulet had been arrested Friday on suspicion of disorderly conduct. Local news accounts said he had broken into the home of a co-worker and been fired from his job at The Kind Grind coffeehouse Saturday. A manager at the beachfront shop declined to comment Wednesday.

According to Goulet's father, the barista — who recently had moved from Berkeley to Santa Cruz — was a ticking time bomb who held police and the justice system in deep contempt. Ronald Goulet, 64, told the Associated Press that his son had had numerous run-ins with the law and had sworn he would never go back to jail.

But the elder Goulet said he never thought his troubled son would turn to such violence.

Goulet said his son undermined any success in the military (he reportedly was a member of the Marine Corps Reserves and later the Army) or college because of an insatiable desire to peep in the windows of women as they showered or dressed.

"He's got one problem, peeping in windows," his father said. "I asked him, 'Why don't you just go to a strip club?' He said he wants a good girl that doesn't know she's being spied on, and said he couldn't stop doing it."

In 2008, a Portland, Ore., jury convicted Jeremy Goulet on misdemeanor counts of unlawful possession of a firearm and invasion of personal privacy after he peeked into a woman's bathroom as she showered, said Don Rees, a chief deputy district attorney in Multnomah County.

Goulet faced additional charges, including attempted murder, after he allegedly fired a gun at the woman's boyfriend. The two had fought after Goulet was spotted outside the woman's condo, but a jury acquitted him of those charges, Rees said.

During the trial, Goulet admitted that he liked to use his cellphone to record unsuspecting women undressing, according to the Oregonian newspaper. Prosecutors alleged he had peeped at women "hundreds of times" without getting caught.

Goulet was given three years' probation, Rees said, but spent time in jail after his probation was revoked.

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New Report Details Syrian Missile Attack

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian government fired at least four ballistic missiles last week that hit civilian neighborhoods in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, killing more than 141 people, including 71 children, according to a Human Rights Watch report released on Tuesday.

Syrian antigovernment activists had reported the missile strikes last week, corroborated by video of the aftermath posted on the Internet, but the Human Rights Watch report contained new details about the number of missile strikes and the scope of destruction, with a death toll that was far higher than previously thought.

“The extent of the damage from a single strike, the lack of aircraft in the area at the time, and reports of ballistic missiles being launched from a military base near Damascus overwhelmingly suggest that government forces struck these areas with ballistic missiles,” the report said.

The assessment came as both sides’ international backers called with increasing urgency for a political solution but remained unable to get the antagonists to talk. That impasse has been the main focus of the first foreign trip by John Kerry, the new American secretary of state, who met with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, on Tuesday to try to push the Syrian combatants into talks.

Fighting intensified in Aleppo, including around the 12th-century Umayyad Mosque, one of the architectural centerpieces of Aleppo’s Old City, and around a long-contested police academy, according to rebels and the government.

The ballistic missile strikes felled entire buildings in destruction that stands out even after months of fighting, according to Human Rights Watch. Its researchers visited all four sites, in residential areas, and found no evidence of military targets nearby, making the attacks a violation of international law, the organization said.

A resident of Ard al-Hamra, one of the neighborhoods hit, said he had just left his brother’s house after evening tea on Friday when “the sky was lit up by a tremendous flash and all air was sucked away.”

He ran back to find that “my brother’s house was gone,” he told Human Rights Watch. “We managed to find my five young nieces and nephews, aged between 3 and 17 years old. They were all dead under the rubble. We still have not found my brother. When will somebody stop this madness?”

As the death toll from the Syrian conflict exceeds 70,000, according to United Nations estimates, and the destruction of major cities continues unabated, fears are mounting that the conflict will spread throughout the region.

Jeffrey D. Feltman, the United Nations’ top political official, told the Security Council during a Middle East briefing, “The destructive military spiral churns more forcefully each day and threatens to pull its neighbors, most notably and worrisomely Lebanon, into its vortex.”

Lebanon, torn apart by political disagreements over Syria and longstanding sectarian divides exacerbated by the increasingly sectarian killing in Syria, last week became the country hosting the largest number of Syrian refugees, even though it is Syria’s smallest and most politically vulnerable neighbor.

“Even tentative steps to dialogue are struggling to take root,” Mr. Feltman said, referring to offers of negotiations issued — with caveats and conditions — by both the Syrian opposition and government in recent days. “Regrettably, the warring parties remain locked in military logic which is bound to bring more death and destruction.”

Before a meeting in Rome on Thursday of the opposition’s international backers, the main opposition group remains under pressure to further unify and organize itself — in part to make sure there is someone for the government to meet with should talks become possible.

The opposition group, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, has said that on Saturday it will select a prime minister to run an interim government to be established in rebel-held areas of northern Syria. But the group has set and missed such deadlines in the past, and members say there is no consensus yet on who should fill the post.

Even if a prime minister is appointed and empowered to negotiate with the Syrian government, it is unclear if talks will take place. The government of President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, has long insisted that Mr. Assad be part of the process, while the opposition coalition, backed by the United States, declares that he cannot be.

Seeking to resolve that impasse, Mr. Kerry had his first meeting as secretary of state with Mr. Lavrov of Russia on Tuesday in Berlin.

The meeting covered the range of American-Russian issues, from economic relations to adoption of Russian orphans. But more than half of the session was devoted to the situation in Syria.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Kerry’s predecessor as secretary of state, believed she had worked out an agreement with the Russians in Geneva in June that would have established the framework for negotiations on a political transition to a post-Assad government. But the Russians interpreted the agreement differently, saying that the understanding that Mr. Assad should leave power could not be a precondition for the talks.

Mr. Kerry, who has said he has new ideas on how to advance diplomacy on Syria, has been looking for a way to secure Russian backing for a transition.

“It was a really serious and hard-working session,” said Victoria Nuland, the State Department’s spokeswoman. Much of the discussion, she said, “focused on Syria and how we can work together to implement the Geneva agreement.”

Mr. Lavrov told Russian news agencies after the meeting that Russia would try to establish the conditions for initiating “a dialogue between the government and the opposition.”

Hania Mourtada and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, and Michael R. Gordon from Berlin.

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