Danny Puff

Police prohibited access on Saturday to the neighborhood where gunman Adam Lanza lived. (Jason Sickles/Yahoo N

[Updated at 8:10 p.m. ET] NEWTOWN, CONN. -- Even to his neighbors, the gunman who massacred 26 kids and educators at an elementary school here still remains somewhat of a mystery.

"I want to know more," said Len Strocchia, who lives less than half mile away from the shooter's house.

Authorities say Adam Lanza, 20, killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their well-to-do home Friday morning before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary where he stormed in and committed one of the worst mass school shootings in U.S. history. The victims were 20 first-graders and six staffers, including the principal.

Adam Lanza's parents divorced a few years ago. Late Saturday, his father, Peter Lanza, wrote his family is, "in a state of disbelief and trying to find whatever answers we can."

"Our family is grieving along with all those who have been affected by this enormous tragedy," he explained in a written statement. "No words can truly express how heartbroken we are."

On Saturday, Strocchia walked down the street to see the shooter's house firsthand, but was forbidden to go past a police barricade near the Lanza home.

"I want to know which house and why I didn't know them," the father of two teenagers told Yahoo News.

[RELATED: Names and ages of shooting victims ]

Another neighbor did know Adam Lanza. Megan, who declined to give her last name, was a classmate of the shooter from kindergarten through middle school.

"He wasn't like a weird kid as a child," Megan told Yahoo News. "He was just quiet. He didn't put off a friendly vibe."

But she said he was one of the smartest students in school.

"He was always participating in class and everything," Megan said.

But she said her former classmate with whom she rode the school bus sort of vanished after their junior high years.

"He almost fell off the radar in middle school," Megan told Yahoo News.

The shooter's aunt, Marsha Lanza, told ABC News that his mother pulled him out of Newtown public schools because of a dispute over the district's plan for her son.

"She mentioned she wound up home-schooling him because she battled with the school district," the aunt told ABC News.

Police said Adam Lanza, dressed in all black, was armed with two handguns and a semi-automatic Bushmaster .223 rifle when he barged into the school.

[RELATED: Obama to visit Connecticut families ]

Dr. Carver, the medical examiner, said it appears that all the children were gunned down by the military-style rifle. Authorities said all the weapons were legally owned and registered by Nancy Lanza, the shooter's mother.

Newtown school superintendent Janet Robinson told reporters Saturday that Nancy Lanza had no connection to the Sandy Hook school, despite initial reports Lanza was on the faculty or a substitute teacher there.

"I'm sickened that this mass murder was done with legal guns," said Strocchia, the neighbor. "I'd like to find out why. Why did she have guns?"

But acquaintances of Nancy Lanza told The New York Times that the 52-year-old mother was a big fan of guns.

"She had several different guns," Dan Holmes told the newspaper . "I don't know how many. She would go target shooting with her kids."

Reports that Adam Lanza may have suffered from a personality disorder are being supported by people who knew the mother to have a troubled son.

According to the Times story, a friend said Nancy Lanza was, "handling a very difficult situation with uncommon grace."

Investigators revealed on Saturday that evidence found in the Lanza residence might provide a possible motive for the massacre.

State police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance declined to provide specifics about the evidence but said, "we're hopeful it will paint a complete picture."

Neighbors like Strocchia are searching for answers too. However, he said, said he harbors no anger.

"I'm thankful my children are alive," he said. "I have compassion and mercy. There was something wrong with him."

Read More

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Kelly Clarkson , who became the first contestant to win " American Idol " a decade ago and went on to several chart-topping successes, has gotten engaged to her boyfriend, the singer said in a Twitter message on Saturday.

Clarkson, 30, previously revealed she had been dating talent manager Brandon Blackstock since early this year. Blackstock is the stepson of country singer Reba McEntire.

"I'M ENGAGED!" Clarkson said on Twitter. "I wanted y'all to know!! Happiest night of my life last night!"

She then followed that by posting a link to a photo of her canary yellow diamond engagement ring on a website. She wrote that her boyfriend helped design it and that she "can't wait to make Brandon's ring."

Clarkson's album "Stronger" hit No. 2 last year on the Billboard 200 sales chart, and she in previous years topped pop charts with her songs "My Life Would Suck Without You" and "A Moment Like This."

The Texas-born singer won the Fox television singing contest "American Idol" in the show's debut year in 2002, and has had more success than many of the show's stars from following years.

Clarkson has burnished an image as an artist willing to speak her mind, even confessing to feelings of loneliness.

Last month, in an appearance on the "Ellen DeGeneres Show," Clarkson said she had been dating Blackstock since earlier this year and was thankful to have him.

"I am not alone for the first time for Thanksgiving and Christmas and I'm very happy," she said on the show.

In the same November appearance, Clarkson said she expected to get engaged to Blackstock. "We will totally, probably elope," she told DeGeneres.

(Reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by David Bailey)

Read More

NEWTOWN, Conn . (AP) While white-steepled churches and President Barack Obama prepared to comfort a grieving town Sunday, federal agents planned to fan out to dozens of gun stores and shooting ranges across Connecticut, chasing leads they hoped would cast light on the life of school shooter Adam Lanza.

Among the questions: Why did his mother, a well-to-do suburban divorcee, keep a cache of high-power weapons in the house? What experience did Lanza have with those guns? And, above all, what set him on a path to shoot and kill 20 children, along with the adults who tried to stop him?

Lanza shot his mother, Nancy Lanza , to death at the home they shared Friday, then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School in her car with at least three of her guns, forced his way in by breaking a window and opened fire, authorities said. Within minutes, he killed the children, six adults and himself.

All the victims at the school were shot with a rifle, at least some of them up close, and all were apparently shot more than once, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver said. There were as many as 11 shots on the bodies he examined.

All six adults killed at the school were women. Of the 20 children, eight were boys and 12 were girls.

Asked whether the children suffered, Carver said, "If so, not for very long." Asked how many bullets were fired, Carver said, "I'm lucky if I can tell you how many I found."

Parents identified the children through photos to spare them some shock, Carver said.

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.

The tragedy has plunged Newtown into mourning and added the picturesque New England community of 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.

Residents and faith leaders were sure to reflect Sunday on the mass shooting and what meaning, if any, to find in it. Obama planned to attend an interfaith vigil the fourth time he will have traveled to a city after a mass shooting.

On Saturday, overflow crowds packed St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church. The Rev. Richard Scinto, a deacon, gave a homily.

"In the past 48 hours I've said the phrase 'I don't know' about 1,000 times," he said. "That not knowing has got to be the worst part of this whole thing."

At St. John's Episcopal Church, 54-year-old Donna Denner, an art teacher at an elementary school in nearby Danbury whose classroom was locked down after the shooting, said she feels the same way she did after 9/11 but isn't sure the rest of the country does.

"I don't know if the rest of the country is struggling to understand it the same way we are here," she said. "Life goes on, but you're not the same. Is the rest of the country are they going about their regular activities? Is it just another news story to them?"

The gunman's father, Peter Lanza , issued a statement Saturday relating his own family's anguish in the aftermath.

"Our family is grieving along with all those who have been affected by this enormous tragedy. No words can truly express how heartbroken we are," he said. "We are in a state of disbelief and trying to find whatever answers we can. We too are asking why. ... Like so many of you, we are saddened, but struggling to make sense of what has transpired."

The rifle used was a Bushmaster .223-caliber, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation who was not authorized to speak about it and talked on condition of anonymity. The gun is commonly seen at competitions and was the type used in the 2002 sniper killings in the Washington, D.C., area. Also found in the school were two handguns, a Glock 10 mm and a Sig Sauer 9 mm.

A law enforcement official said Saturday that authorities were investigating fresh leads that could reveal more about the lead-up to the shooting. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Ginger Colbrun, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said earlier there was no evidence Lanza was involved in gun clubs or had trained for the shooting. When reached later in the day and asked whether that was still true, she said, "We're following any and all leads related to this individual and firearms."

Dean Price, director of the Wooster Mountain State Range a shooting range in Danbury said two ATF agents visited the range Friday night and stayed into the early morning looking through thousands of names on sign-in logs.

He said that he had never seen Adam or Nancy Lanza there and that agents told him they did not find their names on the sign-in sheets.

Law enforcement officials have said they 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.

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 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. 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.

"She put those children first. That's all she ever talked about," a friend, Andrea Crowell, told The Associated Press. "She wanted to do her best for them, to teach them something new every day."

There was also 6-year-old Emilie Parker, whose grieving father, Robbie, talked to reporters not long after police released the names of the victims but expressed no animosity, offering sympathy for Lanza's family.

"I can't imagine how hard this experience must be for you," he said.

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Jim Fitzgerald, Bridget Murphy, Pat Eaton-Robb and Michael Melia in Newtown; Denise Lavoie in Danbury, Conn.; Adam Geller in Southbury, Conn.; Stephen Singer in Hartford, Conn.; and Pete Yost in Washington.

Read More

(Reuters/Larry Downing)

President Barack Obama will travel to Newtown, Conn., on Sunday to meet with families of those killed in the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School and thank emergency workers who responded to the tragedy, the White House said Saturday.

"The President will also speak at an interfaith vigil for families of the victims as well as families" at 7 p.m., press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.

On Friday, an emotional Obama vowed to "take meaningful action, regardless of the politics," to prevent future tragedies like the shooting massacre, which killed 26 people at the school, 20 of them children.

"Our hearts are broken today," Obama said in a brief statement at the White House briefing room, frequently pausing to wipe tears from his eyes. "The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them: birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own. Among the fallen were also teachers, men and women who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams."

Read More

NEW YORK (AP) The scope and senselessness of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting challenged journalists' ability to do much more than lend, or impose, their presence on the scene.

Pressed with the awful urgency of the story, television, along with other media, fell prey to reporting "facts" that were often in conflict or wrong.

How many people were killed? Which Lanza brother was the shooter: Adam or Ryan? Was their mother, who was among the slain, a teacher at the school?

Like the rest of the news media, television outlets were faced with intense competitive pressures and an audience ravenous for details in an age when the best-available information was seldom as reliable as the networks' high-tech delivery systems.

Here was the normal gestation of an unfolding story. But with wall-to-wall cable coverage and second-by-second Twitter postings, the process of updating and correcting it was visible to every onlooker. And as facts were gathered by authorities, then shared with reporters (often on background), a seemingly higher-than-usual number of points failed to pan out:

The number of dead was initially reported as anywhere from the high teens to nearly 30. The final count was established Friday afternoon: 20 children and six adults, as well as Lanza's mother and the shooter himself.

For hours on Friday, the shooter was identified as Ryan Lanza , with his age alternatively reported as 24 or 20. The confusion seemed explainable when a person who had spoken with Ryan Lanza said that 20-year-old Adam Lanza , the shooter who had then killed himself, could have been carrying identification belonging to his 24-year-old sibling.

This case of mistaken identity was painfully reminiscent of the Atlanta Olympics bombing case in 1996, when authorities fingered an innocent man, and the news media ran with it, destroying his life. Such damage was averted in Ryan Lanza's case largely by his public protestations on social media, repeatedly declaring "It wasn't me."

Initial reports differed as to whether Lanza's mother, Nancy, was shot at the school, where she was said to be a teacher, or at the home she shared with Adam Lanza. By Friday afternoon, it was determined that she had been shot at their home.

Then doubts arose about whether Nancy Lanza had any link to Sandy Hook Elementary. At least one parent said she was a substitute teacher, but by early Saturday, an official said investigators had been unable to establish any connection with the school.

That seemed to make the massacre even more confusing. Early on, the attack was said to have taken place in her own classroom and was interpreted by more than one on-air analyst as possibly a way for Adam Lanza to strike back at children with whom he felt rivalry for his mother's affection.

At first, authorities said Lanza had used two pistols (a Glock and a Sig Sauer) in the attack and left a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle in the trunk of a vehicle. But by Saturday afternoon, the latest information was that all the victims had been shot with the rifle at close range.

There were numerous versions of what Lanza was wearing, including camouflage attire and black paramilitary garb.

With so many unanswered questions, TV correspondents were left to set the scene and to convey the impact in words that continually failed them.

However apt, the phrase "parents' worst nightmare" became an instant cliche.

And the word "unimaginable" was used countless times. But "imagine" was exactly what the horrified audience was helpless not to do.

The screen was mostly occupied by grim or tearful faces, sparing everybody besides law enforcement officials the most chilling sight: the death scene in the school, where as viewers were reminded over and over the bodies remained while evidence was gathered. But who could keep from imagining it?

Ironically, perhaps the most powerful video came from 300 miles away, in Washington, where President Barack Obama delivered brief remarks about the tragedy. His somber face, the flat tone of his voice, the tears he daubed from his eyes, and his long, tormented pauses said as much as his heartfelt words. He seemed to speak for everyone who heard them.

The Associated Press was also caught in the swirl of imprecise information. When key elements of the story changed, the AP issued two advisories one to correct that Adam Lanza, not his brother, was the gunman, and another that called into question the original report that Lanza's mother taught at the school.

But TV had hours to fill.

Children from the school were interviewed. It was a questionable decision for which the networks took heat from media critics and viewers alike. But the decision lay more in the hands of the willing parents (who were present), and there was value in hearing what these tiny witnesses had to say.

"We had to lock our doors so the animal couldn't get in," said one little boy, his words painting a haunting picture.

In the absence of hard facts, speculation was a regular fallback. Correspondents and other "experts" persisted in diagnosing the shooter, a man none of them had ever met or even heard of until hours earlier.

CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" scored an interview with a former classmate of Lanza's with an emphasis on "former."

"I really only knew him closely when we were very, very young, in elementary school together," she said.

Determined to unlock Lanza's personality, Morgan asked the woman if she "could have ever predicted that he would one day flip and do something as monstrous as this?"

"I don't know if I could have predicted it," she replied, struggling to give Morgan what he wanted. "I mean, there was something 'off' about him."

The larger implications of the tragedy were broached throughout the coverage not least by Obama.

"We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics," he said, which may have gladdened proponents of stricter gun laws.

But CBS correspondent Nancy Cordes noted, "There's often an assumption that after a horrific event like this, it will spark a fierce debate on the issue. But in recent years, that hasn't been the case."

Appearing on "The O'Reilly Factor" Friday night, Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera voiced his own solution.

"I want an armed cop at every school," he said.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org and at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier .

Read More

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The family of Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera said on Monday they are holding onto hope that she may still be alive, although U.S. officials said earlier that she died on Sunday in a plane crash in Mexico .

"In our eyes, we still have faith that our sister will be OK," Rivera's brother Juan told reporters outside the family house near Long Beach, California .

"We thank God for the life that he has given ... my sister," said Juan Rivera , also a singer. "For all the triumphs and successes she has had, and we expect that there will be more in the future."

Rivera, 43, died after the small jet she was traveling in crashed in northern Mexico on Sunday, U.S. officials said. Rivera's father, Pedro, told Telemundo television on Sunday that everyone on the plane had died. So far, authorities have not announced the recovery of any bodies.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said it was helping Mexican authorities with the investigation of the crash of the private Learjet LJ25.

The plane crashed at about 3:30 a.m. local time (4.30 a.m. EST) in the municipality of Iturbide some 70 miles south of Monterrey, from which the singer and six others were en route to Mexico City.

Rivera was to perform in the city of Toluca, 40 miles southwest of Mexico city , in central Mexico after a concert in Monterrey on Saturday night.

It is not clear what caused the crash, and the Mexican transportation ministry said the wreckage was strewn so far about that it was difficult to recognize the crash site.

Rivera was born in Long Beach to Mexican immigrants and lived in suburban Los Angeles. She was a giant figure in the Mexican folk nortena and banda genres.

She had sold 15 million albums in her 17-year career and garnered a slew of Latin Grammy nominations.

"The entire Universal Music Group family is deeply saddened by the sudden loss of our dear friend Jenni Rivera," the singer's record label said in a statement.

"From her incredibly versatile talent to the way she embraced her fans around the world, Jenni was simply incomparable," Universal added in the statement. "Her talent will be missed; but her gift of music will be with us always."

In recent years Rivera had branched out into television with a reality television show and as a judge on the Mexican version of the singing competition "The Voice."

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Lisa Shumaker)

Read More

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - John McAfee 's odyssey on the run opened a new chapter on Wednesday after Guatemala deported to the United States the former Silicon Valley entrepreneur wanted for questioning in Belize over the murder of a fellow American.

McAfee, 67, had been held for a week in Guatemala, where he surfaced after evading police in Belize for nearly a month following the killing of American Gregory Faull , his neighbor on the Caribbean island of Ambergris Caye .

A Reuters witness saw McAfee's plane bound for Miami leaving Guatemala City just before 3:40 p.m. (2140 GMT). The flight is scheduled to arrive in Miami at 7:10 p.m. (0010 GMT Thursday).

The goateed McAfee has led the world's media on a game of online hide-and-seek in Belize and Guatemala since he fled after Faull's death, peppering the Internet with pithy quotes and colorful revelations about his unpredictable life.

"I'm happy to be going home," McAfee, dressed in a black suit, told reporters shortly before his departure from Guatemala City airport on Wednesday afternoon. "I've been running through jungles and rivers and oceans and I think I need to rest for a while. And I've been in jail for seven days."

Police in Belize want to quiz McAfee as a " person of interest " in Faull's death, although the technology guru's lawyers blocked an attempt by Guatemala to send him back there.

Authorities in Belize say he is not a prime suspect in the investigation. McAfee has denied any role in Faull's killing.

Guatemala's immigration authorities had been holding McAfee since he was arrested last Wednesday for illegally entering the country with his 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend.

The eccentric tech pioneer, who made his fortune from the anti-virus software bearing his name, has been chronicling life on the run in a blog, www.whoismcafee.com.

He said he had no immediate plans after reaching Florida.

"I'm just going to hang in Miami for a while. I like Miami," he told Reuters by telephone just before his plane left. "There is a great sushi place there and I really like sushi."

BELIZE STILL WAITING

Residents of the Belizean island of Ambergris Caye, where McAfee has lived for about four years, said McAfee and Faull, 52, had quarreled at times, including over McAfee's unruly dogs.

McAfee says Belize authorities will kill him if he turns himself in for questioning. He has said he was being persecuted by Belize's ruling party for refusing to pay some $2 million in bribes.

Belize's prime minister has rejected the allegations, calling McAfee paranoid and "bonkers.

Belize police spokesman Raphael Martinez said the country still wanted to question McAfee about the Faull case.

"He will be just under the goodwill of the United States of America. He is still a person of interest, but a U.S. national has been killed and he has been somewhat implicated in that murder. People want him to answer some questions," he said.

Martinez noted that Belize's extradition treaty with the United States extended only to suspected criminals, a designation that did not currently apply to McAfee.

"Right now, we don't have enough information to change his status from person of interest to suspect," he said.

Residents and neighbors on Ambergris Caye said McAfee was unusual and at times unstable. He was seen to travel with armed bodyguards, sporting a pistol tucked into his belt.

The predicament of McAfee, a former Lockheed systems consultant, is a far cry from his heyday in the late 1980s, when he started McAfee Associates . McAfee has no relationship now with the company, which was sold to Intel Corp.

McAfee was previously charged in Belize with possession of illegal firearms, and police had raided his property on suspicions that he was running a lab to produce illegal synthetic narcotics. He said he had not taken drugs since 1983.

"I took drugs constantly, 24 hours of the day. I took them for years and years. I was the worst drug abuser on the planet," he told Reuters before his arrest in Guatemala. "Then I finally went to Alcoholics Anonymous, and that was the end of it."

(Writing by Dave Graham and Michael O'Boyle; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Read More

LOS ANGELES (AP) They are seen as the progenitors of Chicano rock 'n' roll, the first band that had the boldness, and some might even say the naivet , to fuse punk rock with Mexican folk tunes.

It was a group called Los Lobos that had the unusual idea of putting an accordion, a saxophone and something called a bajo sexto alongside drums and Fender Stratocaster guitars and then blasting a ranchera-flavored folk tune or a Conjunto inspired melody through double reverb amps at about twice the volume you'd normally expect to hear.

"They were Latinos who weren't afraid to break the mold of what's expected and what's traditionally played. That made them legendary, even to people who at first weren't that familiar with their catalog," said Greg Gonzalez of the young, Grammy-winning Latino-funk fusion band Grupo Fantasma.

To the guys in Los Lobos , however, the band that began to take shape some 40-odd years ago in the hallways of a barrio high school is still "just another band from East LA ," the words the group has used in the title of not one but two of its more than two dozen albums.

As a yearlong celebration of Los Lobos ' 40th anniversary gets under way, having officially begun on Thanksgiving, much is likely to be made of how the band began as a humble mariachi group, toiling anonymously for nearly a decade at East LA weddings and backyard parties before the unlikely arrival of rock stardom.

That's, well, sort of true.

For long before there was mariachi in Los Lobos ' life, there was power-chord rock 'n' roll. Before the Latin trio Las Panchos had an impact, there was Jimi Hendrix .

"I actually went to go see him when I was 14 or 15," says drummer-guitarist and principal lyricist Louie Perez , recalling how he had badgered his widowed mother to spend some of the hard-earned money she made sewing clothes in a sweatshop on a ticket to a Hendrix show.

"I sat right down front," he recalls, his voice rising in excitement. "That experience just sort of rearranged my brain cells."

About the same time, he had met a guitarist named David Hidalgo in an art class at James A. Garfield High, the school made famous in the 1988 film "Stand and Deliver" that profiled Jaime Escalante's success in teaching college-level calculus to poor barrio kids. Soon the two had recruited fellow students Conrad Lozano and Cesar Rosas, both experienced musicians.

"Cesar had played in a power trio," Perez recalls, while Lozano had been playing electric bass guitar for years.

It was sometime in November 1973 (no one remembers the exact day so they picked Thanksgiving) when the band is believed to have been born.

And the group might have stayed just another garage band from East LA , had it not been for a Mexican tradition called Las Mananitas.

"It's a serenade to someone on their birthday," Perez explains, and the group members' mothers had birthdays coming up.

"So we learned about four or five Mexican songs and we went to our parents' homes and did a little serenade," Hidalgo recalled separately.

They were such a hit that they began scouring pawn shops for genuine Mexican instruments and really learning to play them.

Because they were at heart a rock 'n' roll band, however, they always played the music a little too loud and a little too fast. That was acceptable at the Mexican restaurants that employed them, until they decided to break out the Stratocaster guitars they had so coveted as kids.

"They said, 'Well, that's not what we hired you for,'" Perez says, chuckling.

So they headed west down the freeway to Hollywood, where initially the reaction wasn't much better.

Saxophonist Steve Berlin recalls seeing the hybrid group showered with garbage one night when they opened for Public Image Ltd. Two years later, however, when they opened for Berlin's group the Blasters, the reaction was different.

"It was quite literally an overnight success kind of thing," the saxophonist recalls. "By the next morning, everybody I knew in Hollywood, all they were talking about was this band Los Lobos ."

A few nights later, they asked Berlin if he might jam with them. They were working up some tunes melding punk rock with Norteno, a Latin music genre that uses an accordion and a saxophone, and they needed a sax player.

For his part, Berlin says, he had never heard of Norteno music.

Something clicked, however, and soon he was producing the group's first true rock album, 1984's "How Will the Wolf Survive?" At the end of the sessions he was in the band.

The next 28 years would be pretty much the same kind of up-and-down ride as the first 12 were.

The group became international rock stars in 1987 with their version of the Mexican folk tune "La Bamba" for the soundtrack of the film of the same name. They melded 1950s teen idol Ritchie Valens' rock interpretation with the original Son Jarocho style and sent the song to No. 1.

A two-year tour and a couple albums that nobody bought followed, leaving the group broke and disillusioned.

So they poured their anger and disillusionment into the lyrics and power chords of "Kiko," the 1992 album now hailed as their masterpiece. A new version, recorded live, was released earlier this year.

The influence of Los Lobos ' cross-cultural work can be heard to this day in the music of such varied young Latino groups as the hip-hop rockers Ozomatli, the Son Jarocho-influenced alt-music band Las Cafeteras and the Latino pop-rock group La Santa Cecilia, says Josh Kun, an expert on cross-border music.

"All of these bands inherited, wittingly or not, the experimental and style crossing instincts that Los Lobos proved were possible while hanging onto and developing your roots as a Mexican-American group," said Kun, who curated the Grammy Museum's recent "Trouble in Paradise" exhibition that chronicled the modern history of LA music.

For Los Lobos , winner of three Grammys, that was just the natural way of doing things for guys, Perez says, who learned early on that they didn't fit in completely on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

"As Mexican-Americans in the U.S. we're not completely accepted on this side of the border. And then on the other side of the border it's like, 'Well, what are you?'" he mused.

"So if that's the case," he added brightly, "then, hey, we belong everywhere."

Read More

PHOENIX (AP) The man who runs the business that owns a luxury jet that crashed and killed Latin music star Jenni Rivera says he has never been involved in drug trafficking and that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has dogged him for more than two decades without ever proving a single narcotics connection.

DEA spokeswoman Lisa Webb Johnson has said two planes owned by Las Vegas-based Starwood Management were seized by the agency in Texas and Arizona this year, but she declined to discuss details of their ongoing investigation. The agency also has subpoenaed all the company's records, including any correspondence it has had with a former Tijuana mayor long suspected by U.S. law enforcement as having ties to organized crime.

Christian Esquino , 50, who runs the business and has a long and checkered legal past, told The Associated Press on Friday that the DEA has been investigating him since the 1980s around the time he sold a plane in Florida to a major trafficker who later used it as part of a massive smuggling operation.

The federal government has also claimed Esquino is involved with Tijuana's notorious Arellano Felix cartel, he said, a charge he vehemently denies.

"The DEA has been investigating me my whole life," Equino told the AP in a telephone interview from Mexico City. "They can investigate me all they want and they can investigate Starwood all they want, but they're not going to find anything."

"I would have to be the smartest drug trafficker in the world to be able to stay away from a drug conviction with the DEA looking at me under a microscope for 20 years," he added.

The 43-year-old California-born Rivera died when the plane she was traveling in nose-dived into the ground last week. Rivera was an internationally known star who sold more than 15 million records in her career.

Esquino said the singer was considering buying the aircraft from Starwood for $250,000 and the flight was offered as a test ride. The 78-year-old pilot and five other people were also killed. Esquino said the pilot was an experienced airman with more than 24,000 hours flight time, and that Rivera had been considering buying a plane from Starwood for some time.

"She was a very nice lady and I'm very sad that this happened," he said. "It's a terrible accident."

He did not have any information on the cause of the crash.

"We're a legal business that has now had a terrible tragedy and we're basically licking our wounds right now," he said.

Esquino's legal woes date back to the late 1980s, and he says it's all part of an aimless witch hunt by the U.S. He said the government wrongly assumes he must be involved in drugs just because he is a successful Mexican businessman in the high-end aviation industry.

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. He eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring to conceal money from the IRS and was sentenced to five years in prison, with all but about six months suspended.

Cynthia Hawkins, a former assistant U.S. attorney who handled the case, said it 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. Castoro was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to life in prison, but he began cooperating with authorities and had his sentence reduced to 10 years, Hawkins said.

Esquino said he only pleaded to the money charge to avoid a much lengthier sentence in the narcotics case. He said he came under scrutiny because he sold a plane to Castoro for about $220,000 that he later learned was used to smuggle drugs.

As the years dragged on, the DEA kept dogging Esquino. He said a DEA agent called him on his mobile phone in Mexico in September offering a deal.

"You tell me what cartels you work with and I'll stop seizing your airplanes," Esquino said the agent told him. "I said, 'You're wasting your time.'"

Esquino, a Mexican citizen, 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. He now denies that charge as well, and has since been deported.

This year, the government seized two Starwood planes in Tucson and Texas: a Gulfstream jet and a Hawker 700 worth a combined $2.5 million.

The DEA also has subpoenaed all of Starwood's records dating back to 2007, including its relationship former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank-Rhon, a gambling mogul and member of one of Mexico's most powerful families. 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.

Esquino said Hank-Rhon's involvement with his company was only through renting planes.

"The DEA has destroyed my business, they have destroyed my reputation. That's how they win," Esquino said. "They can't get me on a drug conviction because they have nothing on me, but they destroy my life in the meantime."

___

Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

Read More

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Jennifer Lawrence , you are the world's most desirable woman, according to an international poll released on Tuesday by the website AskMen .

" The Hunger Games " star rose to the top of the list from No. 47 last year on the heels of the box-office smash while buffing her credibility as a quirky, sex-mad young widow in the independent film "Silver Linings Playbook," AskMen editor in chief James Bassil said.

"Overall, there's a sense that she's a little more authentic than other actors," Bassil said, adding that the public still knows too little about the 22-year-old actress to form a negative opinion.

"She's fresh because we haven't seen her all over the gossip pages for the past three or four years," Bassil said.

Lawrence bumped last year's winner, Sofia Vergara of "Modern Family" fame, down to No. 12, while reality star Kim Kardashian plummeted to No. 98.

The poll surveyed 2.4 million readers asking them to vote on which celebrity they would choose as a prospective partner, according to the website, which is a unit of News Corp. The top 99 are then compiled into the annual poll.

Rounding out the top five were actress Mila Kunis , model Kate Upton, R&B star Rihanna and "Crazy, Stupid, Love" actress Emma Stone.

AGE NO ISSUE

Bassil said that lots of publicity often correlates to higher desirability ranking from men, but too many headlines can leave men looking elsewhere.

The most notable drop was socialite Kardashian, who fell 90 places from last year's No. 8 ranking.

" Kim Kardashian is petering off and basically dropping off the list at this point even as she's become more visible," Bassil said.

Youth also appears to have taken a backseat in men's tastes as this year's rankings feature a handful of women over 40.

"We've seen that increasingly over the past two or three years," Bassil said. "Like most things in life, attractiveness is extending into middle age ... Who knows? In 20 years we could see 60-year-olds on the list."

Those over the age of 40 on the list include U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama, 48; comedienne Sarah Silverman, 42; actress Lucy Liu, 44; and British actress Rachel Weisz, 42.

New Yahoo! President and Chief Executive Marissa Mayer was the only business executive to make list at No. 59.

The full list can be seen at www.askmen.com.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant)

Read More