Son of Nick Van Exel sentenced to 60 years on murder conviction

Nick Van Exel was taken 37th overall by the Lakers in the 1993 draft. (Vince Compagnone / Los Angeles Times / February 2, 2013)

By Eric Pincus

February 2, 2013, 7:06 a.m.

Sad news for a former Lakers All-Star. Nickey Maxwell Van Exel, the son of Nick Van Exel, was sentenced to 60 years in prison for murder in Texas on Friday.

The 22-year-old was found guilty Thursday of shooting Bradley Bassey Eyo in 2010.

Nick Van Exel was selected by the Lakers with the 37th overall pick in the 1993 NBA draft.

Before the arrival of Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant in 1996, Van Exel was the team's leader and go-to player.

Van Exel played with the Lakers until 1998, then was traded after an All-Star season for Tony Battie and the draft rights to Tyronn Lue.

He is currently on staff with the Atlanta Hawks in player development.

ALSO:

Lakers top Minnesota for first road win of 2013

Dwight Howard flying home for nonsurgical PRP procedure

Short list of players who fit within Lakers disabled player exception

Email Eric Pincus at eric.pincus@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @EricPincus.

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Why is Beckham sitting on the bench for nothing?

PARIS (AP) — David Beckham has won league championships in three countries on two continents, earns millions of dollars in endorsements and his name is practically synonymous with celebrity itself. He has his own cologne, for goodness sake. So why is he even bothering to sit on the bench for the Paris Saint-Germain football club?

His royal highness of football doesn't need the money — and he's said he'll donate his PSG salary to charity — but he does need to start thinking about life after the game. At 37, Beckham is practically a dinosaur for the sport, and he acknowledged in his welcoming press conference on Thursday that he probably won't be in the team's starting lineup.

Instead, Beckham may be beginning to put in place a plan for life after the final whistle. Ellis Cashmore, a sociologist who writes about sports and media culture at Staffordshire University, said that prolonged exposure is always useful to celebrities building empires. In that way, the deal with PSG does double work: It keeps his name in lights for longer and also garners extra attention for the charitable contribution.

"When he does stop playing, which is going to be quite soon, his overall brand appeal will inevitably decline because we will inevitably forget about this guy," he said. "I think he's probably thinking, I want to stay in the shop window for a bit longer."

But Cashmore also cautioned against being too cynical in assessing Beckham's motives: "The guy is an athlete. He wants to do what he loves to do."

Bruno Satin, an independent players' agent who was with IMG for a decade, also said that the move to PSG — even if it's to sit on the bench — is a step up for Beckham.

"For him, to be on the PSG team, it's a higher level than being on the Los Angeles Galaxy," he said. "For the world of football, for real football, the Los Angeles Galaxy is nothing on the map of football."

Some wondered if Beckham was trying to avoid the notoriously sticky fingers of the French state with his plans to donate his salary.

But Sandra Hodzic, a tax lawyer with Salans, said the deduction an individual can take on such contributions is limited. Instead, it would be smarter for PSG to directly donate the salary — and take a big tax break in the process.

Doing so would have an added benefit for the club: UEFA, the governing body for European football, mandates that clubs break even. The donation could allow PSG to essentially write off Beckham's entire salary — a huge help for a team notorious for mega-contracts.

Beckham, meanwhile, would be better off trying to avoid becoming a French tax resident at all. So far, Hodzic said, he is making all the right moves: His family is staying in London, he plans to live only part-time in the country for less than six months, and his primary source of income —whether or not he donates his salary — isn't being earned in France.

Beckham's agent did not return calls for comment on specifics of the contract.

Still, the charitable contribution has raised the question about what Beckham is getting out of the deal. For one, he likely is still getting a cut of rights to his image. Jerseys with his name on them were already selling out at the PSG store on the Champs-Elysees on Friday.

Cashmore, who wrote a book called "Beckham," calls him a "marketing phenomenon" and estimates that about 70 percent of Beckham's income comes from endorsement deals — with Adidas, for instance. That makes salary almost irrelevant — especially for a man estimated by the Sunday Times Rich List to be worth 160 million pounds ($253 million).

But the football feeds the endorsements, Cashmore says.

"It makes an awful lot of business sense to perpetuate, to prolong his active competitive football career," he said, especially with a team that's doing fairly well this year. "It makes an awful lot of sense for him to showcase himself because it will generate more income from his various other sponsorship and licensing activities."

But certainly this move, as any at this late-stage in his playing career, is being made with an eye on what will come next. Cashmore said that when Beckham signed with the L.A. Galaxy, there was an understanding that he would eventually become an ambassador for American soccer. That plan clearly fell by the wayside — perhaps because Major League Soccer decided it was just too expensive to keep on the star after his presence on American soil failed to generate more interest in the game.

It's possible, Cashmore said, that Beckham is looking for a similar deal after his stint at PSG, which is Qatari-owned. The tiny, wealthy nation is hosting the World Cup in 2022, and Beckham's contract with PSG will establish a relationship with it; from there, a role as, say, an ambassador for the tournament would seem more natural.

"For his after-career conversion, it's important to have links with major actors in the world of sports," said Satin. And Qatar is certainly one. It has poured money into PSG, drawing major names like striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic. It also funds the satellite network Al Jazeera, which could provide Beckham with a platform. And then there's the World Cup.

In the end, though, Satin said the clue to Beckham's thinking may be as simple as the eternal draw of Paris.

"PSG has become a glamorous club, a pretty nice club in a beautiful city," said Bruno Satin, an agent. "It's just two hours on the Eurostar (train) from London."

____

AP Sports Writer Rob Harris contributed to this report from London.

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Follow Sarah DiLorenzo at http://www.twitter.com/sdilorenzo

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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Fayetteville, Ga. He was 90.

The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”

“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”

Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.

When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.

“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”

In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”

He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”

Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.

Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.

Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.

“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 2, 2013

An earlier version of this obituary misstated the town in which Mr. Sams died. It was Fayetteville, Ga., not Lafayette, Ga.

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Deering Banjo in a groove

It all started with the Kingston Trio.

One day in 1963, a San Diego kid and his friends got their hands on an album by the popular folk group. Greg Deering, 12 at the time, recalls studying the musicians on the cover and thinking, "I've got to get a banjo" — not out of love for the twangy instrument but mainly because his pal already had a guitar.

Fifty years later, Greg, his wife, Janet, and daughter Jamie preside over the bestselling banjo-making business in the U.S.

From a small Spring Valley factory, the Deering Banjo Co. is having its best year ever, defying the U.S. skills gap and California's manufacturing doldrums. It has expanded and trained its own workforce and expects to top $4 million in sales for the year ending June 30.

Greg Deering, 62, is the creative force behind the banjo design and the machinery used to build them. Janet Deering, 58, handles operations. Daughter Jamie Deering, 34, might have the most fun job: liaison with the company's big-name roster of professional musician customers.

Over the company's 38-year history, it has developed a loyal following from the likes of Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, the Dixie Chicks, Steve Martin and Mumford & Sons. Artists who play Deering banjos rolled up 13 Grammy nominations this year.

Two of Deering's fans illustrate how the company has managed to ride the banjo's renaissance as an instrument that crosses several musical genres as varied as country, reggae and indie rock.

"It's great working with a family company, an American company that really cares about the artist and making top-quality banjos," said Jeff DaRosa, singer, bassist and banjo player for the Dropkick Murphys, the Boston-based Celtic punk band.

Scotty Morris, lead vocalist of the contemporary swing revival band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, called Deering Banjo "the quintessential American instrument builder."

"When I call Deering, I talk to a Deering, and I like that almost as much as I love the instruments they build," Morris said.

That kind of reputation combined with specially crafted manufacturing tools and a skilled, veteran workforce has helped the company weather the recession and cheap competition from China. Deering has been able to expand its workforce in a way that other companies have not, growing to 42 workers from 30 a year ago.

Although the nation as a whole has been adding manufacturing jobs, all California has done is reduce the rate of decline, said John Husing, principal of Redlands-based Economics and Politics Inc.

The most recent statistics available show that California ended 2012 with 1.23 million manufacturing jobs, down sharply from nearly 1.9 million in 2000 and marginally below the nearly 1.24 million in December 2011.

If you ask the Deerings what their greatest challenge has been, the answer has been running the business in California, particularly during a run-up in workers' compensation insurance premiums that began under Gov. Gray Davis.

"That nearly put us out of business. We're still paying off some of those debts," Greg Deering said, adding that the company has remained in California mostly because the family considers it home.

"And because we are stubborn. We are so stubborn," Janet Deering said.

Greg Deering credits his father, who worked in the Southern California aerospace industry, for developing his eye for design.

"He started me out on model airplanes when I was 2," Deering said. "He turned me loose on my own, making models when I was 5. At age 7, he bought me my first set of drafting tools."

But it wasn't until he was a student at San Diego State that he realized just what his father had done for him. There was an assignment to cut a board of certain dimensions from a rough block of wood. He was done with the assignment quickly and began working on a banjo. Weeks later, he realized the other students were still working on the block of wood.

"That was when it clicked for me," he said, later adding, "my father was a very intense mentor for me. He was teaching me how to be a craftsman."

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Edward Koch dies at 88; outspoken mayor led New York City comeback

Edward I. Koch, a Greenwich Village lawyer who became mayor of New York in the late 1970s and led the city out of one of its worst financial crises by stabilizing the budget and restoring its swagger, has died. He was 88.

Koch died early Friday of congestive heart failure in a Manhattan hospital, his friend and spokesman, George Arzt said. Koch had been hospitalized Monday, a day before a documentary about him, "Koch," premiered in New York City. He had complained of trouble breathing and other ailments, and it was the latest of several hospitalizations for the former mayor in recent months.

For most of his adult life, Koch had lived alone in an apartment off Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. It's where he departed the morning he rode a public bus to City Hall to be sworn in as the 105th mayor and where he returned 12 years later, at age 65, after a disastrous fourth run to keep the job he clearly relished and worked hard at. Voters had finally tired of his infatuation with himself and his racially divisive rhetoric; but far from retiring, Koch spent the rest of his life out of public office but never out of public view.

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2013

He juggled almost a dozen jobs including law partner, columnist, author, radio show host, playwright, movie reviewer, public speaker and appeared relentlessly in the media, a shtick-artist with one of the most recognizable New York accents in the world. When he wasn't bellowing at opponents on political round tables, he was hawking everything from diet aids to soft drinks in advertisements and popping up in screen cameos playing always himself, the quintessential New Yorker, alongside Carrie and the girls in episodes of "Sex in the City" or with Big Bird in "The Muppets Take Manhattan."

He was pivotal in a September 2011 upset that put a Republican into the heavily Democratic congressional district that had been held by Rep. Anthony Weiner, who had been forced to resign in a "sexting" scandal. Koch helped catapult Republican Bob Turner to an unlikely victory in the special election to replace Weiner after he endorsed Turner to show his anger with President Obama's Middle East policy. "Ed Koch was enough to turn this around," Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf said after Turner's win.

For his 86th birthday, New York's current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, renamed the Queensboro Bridge linking Manhattan to Koch's home borough of Queens after him, saying the bridge – now officially known as the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge -- was like Koch: "a resilient, hard-working New York City icon."

"He was a great mayor, a great man, and a great friend," Bloomberg said in a statement Friday after Koch's death. "In elected office and as a private citizen, he was our most tireless, fearless, and guileless civic crusader. Through his tough, determined leadership and responsible fiscal stewardship, Ed helped lift the city out of its darkest days and set it on course for an incredible comeback."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo echoed the sentiment. "No New Yorker has -- or likely ever will -- voice their love for New York City in such a passionate and outspoken manner than Ed Koch," said Cuomo. "New York City would not be the place it is today without Ed Koch's leadership over three terms at City Hall."

City flags were ordered flown at half-staff.

"He was the epitome of New York--loud, funny, opinionated, smart," said Arzt, a former reporter who became Koch's spokesman in City Hall and had lunch with him every Saturday after he left, along with 10 other alumni of the administration. "Ed was very much a straight shooter, a champion of the middle class, a moderate Democrat akin to a Harry Truman. He defied categories."

In fact, Koch loved to enrage liberals by doing and saying the unthinkable--endorsing Republican politicians (John Lindsay, Rudolph Giuliani, George W. Bush) and their beliefs (the death penalty). But Koch also held fast to many liberal values. A civil libertarian, Koch made one of his first executive orders when he became mayor to add sexual preference to a citywide ban on job discrimination.

He not only never shied away from controversy, he invited it; unlike successors Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, he enjoyed confrontation. He once wrestled an egg-throwing heckler to the floor before the police could move in.

Altogether Koch wrote (mostly co-authored) 15 books, including eight autobiographies, two children's books and multiple mystery novels starring himself as the detective. He also regularly reviewed movies and restaurants, and at last count had more than 6,200 followers on Twitter (@mayoredkoch).

Really, Koch would opine to whomever, whenever, never mincing words: Movie tickets were too expensive; the United Nations, after an anti-Israel vote, was "made up of gangsters, cutthroats and piranhas"; a Puerto Rican mayoral rival was a "poverty pimp"; Sarah Palin was likable "but she scares the hell out of me." He never lost interest in his absolutely favorite subject—himself. "How'm I doin'?" was his trademark question.

The only topics that remained off limits were his heroic service as an infantryman in World War II—he was awarded two battle stars—and his sexuality. A lifelong bachelor, Koch refused to delve into rumors of his homosexuality. "I ran in a total of 24 elections and won 21," he once told the New York Times. "I will not be a coward and say I am straight or I'm gay, because it's no one's business. I got where I am today not because of sexuality or gender but because people thought I was the best at what I did...."

In recent years, though Koch appeared to mellow, seeking reconciliation with many of his former rivals, he refused to yield when it came to standards for public service. As recently as the summer of 2010, at age 85, he ginned up a campaign called "New York Uprising" to reform state government. Despite a history of heart disease that left him with two pacemakers and a degenerative spinal disorder that caused the once-strapping 6-foot-1 former mayor to be stooped in old age, he embarked in a rented Jeep on a campaign-style press tour around upstate New York to shame reluctant legislators in their home districts to signing a pledge to "clean up Albany."

"I didn't willingly take this on," he told reporters. "I was waiting for someone else to do it.... It's only after six months or a year of going to every breakfast, lunch and dinner, where all they talked about is the dysfunctional Legislature ... I'm thinking somebody is going to stand up and challenge this in some form. But nobody did. So I said to myself, 'Well, if nobody will, I will.' "

This was shortly after Koch, ever the showman, revealed he'd finalized plans for his funeral and penned his gravestone epitaph about his love of his religion, Judaism, his city and his country.

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CNN's Sanjay Gupta adds fiction to his workload

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When doctors get called on the carpet by other doctors, it's productive but not always pretty, as neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta describes it.

Closed-door meetings in which physicians candidly dissect cases that went awry can verge on "dignified versions of street fights," said CNN's globe-trotting correspondent.

He drew on such sessions — commonplace for hospitals, if little publicly known — for his first novel, "Monday Mornings," and is a writer-producer on a new TNT series based on the 2012 book.

The drama, from veteran producer David E. Kelley ("Boston Legal," ''The Practice") and with a heavyweight cast that includes Ving Rhames, Alfred Molina and Bill Irwin, debuts Monday (10 p.m. EST). That's also the day the show's fictional Chelsea General Hospital holds its weekly reviews.

In the real world, such meetings to scrutinize complications and mistakes in patient care can lead to new guidelines, Gupta said.

"They can be simple, like never sedate a patient until they're strapped in on the table," he said, the outcome of an unrestrained patient having taken a tumble. "Some changes are big, some are small, but they are always important. We are always redefining medicine."

In the first episode of "Monday Mornings," brash but dedicated neurosurgeon Dr. Tyler Wilson (Jamie Bamber, "Battlestar Galactica") is grilled for failing to check a patient's medical history. Gupta said he learned his own "searing" lesson, about carefully reviewing lab results, without any harm to the patient.

Do the forums ever become a stage for office politics?

"People do jockey for position in these situations," Gupta replied. "If someone's at the lectern (under scrutiny), anyone can ask questions, not just the chairperson of the department. So the nature and tone of it can change pretty quickly."

The most disturbing inquiries involve an apparently reckless M.D. with "a disregard for the person on the operating table or in the hospital," he said. "You can imagine your own mother or loved in the position of the patient, and those are the most indelible ones of all."

The meetings make for gripping drama on "Monday Mornings." But is a show that focuses on medicine's failures as well as its triumphs potentially a hard sell for audiences?

"ER," TV's once-reigning hospital drama, aired a powerful first-season episode in which decisions by Dr. Mark Greene, the caring, steady lead character played by Anthony Edwards, cost a pregnant woman her life. The story line was a rarity on the show that routinely focused on medical heroics.

The key to making the TNT series work is the "likability" of its physicians, said Bill D'Elia, a producer on "Monday Mornings."

It's crucial to "understand their motivation, understand how good they are, how much they care. So it's not black-and-white" when a character blows it, D'Elia said.

As is the case with non-TV doctors, Gupta said.

A mistake is made and "you think that's a bad doctor. You may even think that's a bad human being, and in some cases you might be right," he said. "But a lot of times you're not, and I think showing the rest of the story, how it may continue to get discussed" is illuminating.

Besides writing for "Monday Mornings," Gupta, 43, makes sure it depicts surgery and the world of medicine accurately.

How Gupta fits the tasks into his already demanding schedule is a medical mystery. As D'Elia said, he never knows if he's talking to the doctor in Atlanta, where Gupta lives with his family and practices, or in another city, sometimes far-flung, as part of his award-winning work for CNN (which, like TNT, is part of Time Warner subsidiary Turner).

"When I talk to him I have this (mental) picture of him in front of a green screen so he can input wherever he is," D'Elia said. "He's as likely to be in Pakistan as New York."

Since joining CNN in 2001, Gupta has covered events including the quake and tsunami in Japan, Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. In 2003, while embedded with a Navy medical unit, he reported from Iraq and Kuwait and acted as a doctor as well as a reporter, performing brain surgeries in a desert operating room.

That same year, he got a spot on People magazine's list of the "sexiest men alive."

He anchors the weekend medical affairs program, "Sanjay Gupta MD," is on the staff and faculty at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, and is an associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital.

In 2009, he was approached for the position of surgeon general in the new Obama administration, a post he says he declined because it would have halted his work as a neurosurgeon. He's said he's a supporter of the Affordable Care Act and wants to see it fully implemented to give more Americans coverage.

Gupta learned his work ethic from his parents, who moved from India in the 1960s to work at a Ford plant in Detroit, where he grew up, and is surprised when people ask how he does it all.

"There's a lot of people who work a lot harder than I do and aren't known," he said.

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Online:

http://www.tntdrama.com

___

Lynn Elber can be reached at lelber(at)ap.org and on Twitter (at)lynnelber.

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Well: Gluten-Free Muffin Recipes

For people who need to eliminate gluten from their diet, baking becomes a challenge. Beginners often find gluten-free baked goods too dense. Even the Recipes for Health columnist Martha Rose Shulman didn’t like the flavor of a commercial gluten-free flour mix, which left her gluten-free cookies and tart-shells with a strong taste of bean flour. As a result, she created her own gluten-free mix for baking muffins. She writes:

My son Liam still doesn’t know that the muffins he has been devouring all week are gluten-free.

I put together my own gluten-free flour mix, one without bean flour, and turned to America’s favorite Gluten-Free Girl, Shauna James Ahem, for guidance. I was already thinking about making muffins, and I wanted a mix that could replace the whole wheat flour I usually use in conjunction with other grains or flours. Her formula for a whole-grain flour mix is simple – 70 percent ground gluten-free grain like rice flour, millet flour, buckwheat flour or teff (the list on her site is a long one) and 30 percent starch like potato starch, cornstarch or arrowroot.

For this week’s recipes, I used what I had, which was brown rice flour, potato starch and cornstarch – 20 percent potato starch and 10 percent cornstarch — and that’s the basis for the nutritional analyses of this week’s recipes. I used this mix in conjunction with a gluten-free meal or flour, so the amount of pure starch in the batters is much less than 30 percent.

When you bake anything it is much simpler and results are more consistent if you use grams and scale your ingredients. This is especially true with gluten-free baking, since you are working with grain and starch formulas. Digital scales are not expensive and I urge you to switch over to this method if you like to bake. I have given approximate cup measures so the recipes will work both ways, but scaling is more accurate.

Here are five ways to bake gluten-free muffins:

Gluten-Free Banana Chocolate Muffins: These dark chocolate muffins taste more extravagant than they are.

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Gluten-Free Cornmeal, Fig and Orange Muffins: A sweet and grainy cornmeal mixture makes for a delicious muffin.

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Gluten-Free Whole Grain Cheese and Mustard Muffins: A savory muffin with a delicious strong flavor.

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Gluten-Free Buckwheat, Poppy Seed and Blueberry Muffins: The buckwheat flour is high-fiber and makes a dark, richly-flavored muffin.

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Gluten-Free Cornmeal Molasses Muffins: Strong molasses provides a good source of iron in an easy-to-make muffin.

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Refinery operations boost 4Q earnings for Exxon-Mobil and Chevron

Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., the largest U.S. energy producers, are boosting profits with oil refineries that some analysts and investors urged them to divest as recently as last year.

Earnings from processing crude into fuels such as gasoline and diesel more than made up for lagging returns from oil and natural gas exploration during the final three months of 2012, Exxon and Chevron reported today. Fuel refining helped propel fourth-quarter net income to a five-year high of almost $9.95 billion for Exxon and a record $7.25 billion for Chevron.

Exxon, the world's biggest refiner, and Chevron, operator of fuel plants from South Korea to Mississippi, have resisted the trend among peers such as Marathon Oil Corp. and ConocoPhillips of spinning off refineries to focus on oil drilling. The persistence is paying off: Exxon posted the second-highest annual profit in U.S. history last year, surpassed only by its own all-time high from 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

"Even though refining has long been seen by some as a drag on earnings, it has now been vindicated," said Ernie Cecilia, who helps manage $6.7 billion as chief investment officer at Bryn Mawr Trust Co. in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. "We like integration."

Arjun Murti at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was among analysts who questioned Exxon's dedication to the so-called integrated model during a presentation by Exxon Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson last March in New York. Tillerson defended the arrangement that joins refineries to chemical plants and oil production, saying it enables the company to capture the "highest value of each molecule."

Incremental Value

"There's no doubt in my mind that the integrated model adds incremental value to everything we do," Tillerson said during the event.

Exxon's full-year net income rose 9.3 percent to $44.88 billion, just $340 million shy of the U.S. profit record the company set in 2008 when it raked in $45.22 billion.

Chevron earned $26.2 billion in 2012, the second-highest result in company history, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The year was 2.7 percent below Chevron's biggest-ever profit of $26.9 billion, posted in 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Valero, Marathon

Exxon rose 1 cent to $89.98 at 12:35 p.m. in New York trading. Chevron increased 0.7 percent to $116.

Today's announcements by the giants of the U.S. energy industry capped a week in which refining companies that don't explore for crude or make chemicals disclosed outsized profits.

Valero Energy Corp., the world's biggest so-called independent refiner, on Jan. 29 posted a 20-fold increase in fourth-quarter net income as expanding supplies of crude from U.S. shale formations reduced input costs. The San Antonio-based company's shares surged 13 percent that day for the largest daily advance in 15 months.

Marathon Petroleum Corp., the Findlay, Ohio-based refiner spunoff by Marathon Oil in June 2011, reported a $755 million profit during the quarter after a $75 million loss a year earlier, according to a Jan. 30 statement.

U.S. refinery margins rose 46 percent during the October- to-December period, in part because rising production from North American shale pressured domestic oil prices. Crude futures traded in New York declined by 6.2 percent during the quarter to average $88.23 a barrel, bucking the international trend that saw the global benchmark rise 1 percent to average more than $110.

Four-fold Increase

Exxon's refineries earned $1.77 billion during the period, a four-fold increase from $425 million a year earlier. That profit growth occurred even as the Irving, Texas-based company lowered the amount of crude it processed by 7.9 percent to 4.837 million barrels a day compared to the same period of 2011.

The glowing refining result offset a 12 percent drop in Exxon's oil and gas earnings to $7.76 billion. Oil and gas output from the company's wells fell 5.2 percent to the equivalent of 4.293 million barrels of crude a day from 4.53 million a year earlier, according to today's statement.

Exxon's crude production, which is six times more valuable than gas on an energy-equivalent basis, fell 2.1 percent to 2.203 million barrels a day from 2.25 million during the year- earlier period. Chemical earnings climbed to $958 million from $543 million, according to the statement.

Chevron Results

Chevron said its refining unit returned to profit after recording a loss a year earlier. The San Ramon, California-based company's fuel plants earned $925 million during the period, compared with a $61 million loss in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Chevron processed 1.62 million barrels of crude and other feedstock a day at its plants around the world during the October-to-December period, a 3.3 percent increase from 1.57 million a year earlier, according to the statement. Processing rates at the company's U.S. refineries dropped 8 percent to 702,000 barrels a day from 763,000 a year earlier due to the lingering impact of an August fire that shut a crude unit at a California facility.

Chevron also benefited from a $1.4 billion gain attributed to a gas-field swap with Royal Dutch Shell Plc in Australia, according to a statement from the company today.

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California's population to grow 39% by 2060, report says

By Chris Megerian

January 31, 2013, 10:48 a.m.

California's population will reach nearly 52.7 million by 2060, according to a new state report. 

The projection, released by Gov. Jerry Brown's Department of Finance, said the state will cross the 50 million threshold by 2049.

The report showed 39% growth in the state's population. By comparison, if there was a state made only from the difference between the California's current population and its projected population in 2060, it would be the fifth-largest state in the nation. 

California's demographics are also in for a major shift, according to the report: For the first time since California became a state, Latinos will be a plurality in early 2014. By 2060, they will be nearly half of the state's population. 

Although the state's Asian population is also growing, it will only be a little more than 13% of the state's population, the report said.

Comments are filtered for language and registration is required. The Times makes no guarantee of comments' factual accuracy. Readers may report inappropriate comments by clicking the Report Abuse link next to a comment. Here are the full legal terms you agree to by using this comment form.

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Beyonce admits she lip synced at Inauguration

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Beyonce says she did lip sync when she performed the national anthem on Inauguration Day.

The singer held a press conference Thursday in New Orleans days ahead of her half-time performance at the Super Bowl.

She said she's a "perfectionist" and wanted her performance for President Barack Obama to be a memorable one. She called the day "emotional."

Beyonce opened the press conference with live rendition of the national anthem.

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Follow Nekesa Mumbi Moody at http://www.twitter.com

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Personal Health: Keeping Blood Pressure in Check

Since the start of the 21st century, Americans have made great progress in controlling high blood pressure, though it remains a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.

Now 48 percent of the more than 76 million adults with hypertension have it under control, up from 29 percent in 2000.

But that means more than half, including many receiving treatment, have blood pressure that remains too high to be healthy. (A normal blood pressure is lower than 120 over 80.) With a plethora of drugs available to normalize blood pressure, why are so many people still at increased risk of disease, disability and premature death? Hypertension experts offer a few common, and correctable, reasons:

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Jane Brody speaks about hypertension.

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¶ About 20 percent of affected adults don’t know they have high blood pressure, perhaps because they never or rarely see a doctor who checks their pressure.

¶ Of the 80 percent who are aware of their condition, some don’t appreciate how serious it can be and fail to get treated, even when their doctors say they should.

¶ Some who have been treated develop bothersome side effects, causing them to abandon therapy or to use it haphazardly.

¶ Many others do little to change lifestyle factors, like obesity, lack of exercise and a high-salt diet, that can make hypertension harder to control.

Dr. Samuel J. Mann, a hypertension specialist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, adds another factor that may be the most important. Of the 71 percent of people with hypertension who are currently being treated, too many are taking the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages of the right ones.

Dr. Mann, author of “Hypertension and You: Old Drugs, New Drugs, and the Right Drugs for Your High Blood Pressure,” says that doctors should take into account the underlying causes of each patient’s blood pressure problem and the side effects that may prompt patients to abandon therapy. He has found that when treatment is tailored to the individual, nearly all cases of high blood pressure can be brought and kept under control with available drugs.

Plus, he said in an interview, it can be done with minimal, if any, side effects and at a reasonable cost.

“For most people, no new drugs need to be developed,” Dr. Mann said. “What we need, in terms of medication, is already out there. We just need to use it better.”

But many doctors who are generalists do not understand the “intricacies and nuances” of the dozens of available medications to determine which is appropriate to a certain patient.

“Prescribing the same medication to patient after patient just does not cut it,” Dr. Mann wrote in his book.

The trick to prescribing the best treatment for each patient is to first determine which of three mechanisms, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible for a patient’s hypertension, he said.

¶ Salt-sensitive hypertension, more common in older people and African-Americans, responds well to diuretics and calcium channel blockers.

¶ Hypertension driven by the kidney hormone renin responds best to ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, as well as direct renin inhibitors and beta-blockers.

¶ Neurogenic hypertension is a product of the sympathetic nervous system and is best treated with beta-blockers, alpha-blockers and drugs like clonidine.

According to Dr. Mann, neurogenic hypertension results from repressed emotions. He has found that many patients with it suffered trauma early in life or abuse. They seem calm and content on the surface but continually suppress their distress, he said.

One of Dr. Mann’s patients had had high blood pressure since her late 20s that remained well-controlled by the three drugs her family doctor prescribed. Then in her 40s, periodic checks showed it was often too high. When taking more of the prescribed medication did not result in lasting control, she sought Dr. Mann’s help.

After a thorough work-up, he said she had a textbook case of neurogenic hypertension, was taking too much medication and needed different drugs. Her condition soon became far better managed, with side effects she could easily tolerate, and she no longer feared she would die young of a heart attack or stroke.

But most patients should not have to consult a specialist. They can be well-treated by an internist or family physician who approaches the condition systematically, Dr. Mann said. Patients should be started on low doses of one or more drugs, including a diuretic; the dosage or number of drugs can be slowly increased as needed to achieve a normal pressure.

Specialists, he said, are most useful for treating the 10 percent to 15 percent of patients with so-called resistant hypertension that remains uncontrolled despite treatment with three drugs, including a diuretic, and for those whose treatment is effective but causing distressing side effects.

Hypertension sometimes fails to respond to routine care, he noted, because it results from an underlying medical problem that needs to be addressed.

“Some patients are on a lot of blood pressure drugs — four or five — who probably don’t need so many, and if they do, the question is why,” Dr. Mann said.

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How to Measure Your Blood Pressure

Mistaken readings, which can occur in doctors’ offices as well as at home, can result in misdiagnosis of hypertension and improper treatment. Dr. Samuel J. Mann, of Weill Cornell Medical College, suggests these guidelines to reduce the risk of errors:

¶ Use an automatic monitor rather than a manual one, and check the accuracy of your home monitor at the doctor’s office.

¶ Use a monitor with an arm cuff, not a wrist or finger cuff, and use a large cuff if you have a large arm.

¶ Sit quietly for a few minutes, without talking, after putting on the cuff and before checking your pressure.

¶ Check your pressure in one arm only, and take three readings (not more) one or two minutes apart.

¶ Measure your blood pressure no more than twice a week unless you have severe hypertension or are changing medications.

¶ Check your pressure at random, ordinary times of the day, not just when you think it is high.

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Twitter says it's working to fix problem with accessing the site

If you're having trouble tweeting Thursday, you aren't alone.

Twitter has been either inaccessible, slow or not performing properly for some users Thursday morning.

The San Francisco-based social network acknowledged the problems around 7:30 a.m. PST, saying, "Some users may be experiencing issues accessing Twitter."

10 tech companies to watch in 2013

The company's Status website also said that the company's engineers were working to resolve the problem.

[Updated 10:45 a.m. PST Jan. 31: Twitter says it has resolved the issues that affected its Web and mobile users from 7 a.m. to 9:50 a.m. PST.

"We apologize to users who were affected by this, and we’re working to ensure that similar issues do not occur," the company said.]

Users of the popular network took to Facebook to ask others about Twitter's problems and mocked the site when it began to work properly for some of them.

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Retired barber charged in fatal shooting of Newport Beach doctor

By Nicole Santa Cruz

January 30, 2013, 10:43 a.m.

Prosecutors have filed charges against a 75-year-old man who is accused of murdering his urologist during an appointment in Newport Beach.

Stanwood Fred Elkus of Lake Elsinore has been charged with one felony count of special circumstances murder by lying in wait and a sentencing enhancement for the personal use of a firearm causing death, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors say Elkus, a retired barber, arrived for an appointment at his doctor’s office Monday afternoon and waited in an exam room until Ronald Gilbert entered.

Elkus is accused of shooting Gilbert several times in the upper body, according to prosecutors and police.

Other doctors heard the shots and attempted to revive Gilbert, prosecutors said. Elkus gave his gun to a staff member in the office and was arrested without incident, they said.

Elkus, who is being held at the Orange County jail on no bail, was expected in court Wednesday.

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Nabors on marrying partner: 'Just wanted it legal'

HONOLULU (AP) — Actor Jim Nabors says marrying his longtime male partner doesn't change anything about their relationship — he just wanted it to be formally acknowledged.

The 82-year-old actor best known as Gomer Pyle in "The Andy Griffith Show" told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he just wanted the marriage to be legal.

Nabors married 64-year-old Stan Cadwallader in Seattle on Jan. 15. Nabors says they have been partners for 38 years.

Nabors says they flew from Honolulu just for the short ceremony and were married in a hotel room by a judge friend who drove up from Olympia, Wash.

Nabors says he's not an activist but feels strongly that everyone should be able to choose who they spend their life with.

News of Nabors' marriage was first reported by Hawaii News Now.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

Jim Nabors, the actor best known for playing Gomer Pyle on TV in the 1960s, has married his longtime male partner.

Hawaii News Now (http://bit.ly/14tFM3U) reports Nabors, 82, and Stan Cadwallader, 64, traveled from their Honolulu home to Seattle to be married Jan. 15. Gay marriage became legal in Washington state last month.

The couple met in 1975 when Cadwallader was a Honolulu firefighter.

"I'm 82 and he's in his 60s and so we've been together for 38 years and I'm not ashamed of people knowing, it's just that it was such a personal thing, I didn't tell anybody," Nabors said. "I'm very happy that I've had a partner of 38 years and I feel very blessed. And, what can I tell you, I'm just very happy."

Nabors said he's been open about his homosexuality to co-workers and friends but never acknowledged it to the media before. He doesn't plan to get involved in the issue politically.

"I'm not a debater. And everybody has their own opinion about this and actually I'm not an activist, so I've never gotten involved in any of this," Nabors told Hawaii News Now.

Nabors became an instant success when he joined "The Andy Griffith Show" in spring 1963. The character of Gomer Pyle — the unworldly, lovable gas pumper who would exclaim "Gollllll-ly!" — proved so popular that in 1964 CBS starred him in "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C."

In the spinoff, which lasted five seasons, Gomer left his hometown of Mayberry to become a Marine recruit. His innocence confounded his sergeant, the irascible Frank Sutton.

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The Consumer: The Drug-Dose Gender Gap

Most sleeping pills are designed to knock you out for eight hours. When the Food and Drug Administration was evaluating a new short-acting pill for people to take when they wake up in the middle of the night, agency scientists wanted to know how much of the drug would still be in users’ systems come morning.

Blood tests uncovered a gender gap: Men metabolized the drug, Intermezzo, faster than women. Ultimately the F.D.A. approved a 3.5 milligram pill for men, and a 1.75 milligram pill for women.

The active ingredient in Intermezzo, zolpidem, is used in many other sleeping aids, including Ambien. But it wasn’t until earlier this month that the F.D.A. reduced doses of Ambien for women by half.

Sleeping pills are hardly the only medications that may have unexpected, even dangerous, effects in women. Studies have shown that women respond differently than men to many drugs, from aspirin to anesthesia. Researchers are only beginning to understand the scope of the issue, but many believe that as a result, women experience a disproportionate share of adverse, often more severe, side effects.

“This is not just about Ambien — that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr. Janine Clayton, director for the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health. “There are a lot of sex differences for a lot of drugs, some of which are well known and some that are not well recognized.”

Until 1993, women of childbearing age were routinely excluded from trials of new drugs. When the F.D.A. lifted the ban that year, agency researchers noted that because landmark studies on aspirin in heart disease and stroke had not included women, the scientific community was left “with doubts about whether aspirin was, in fact, effective in women for these indications.”

Because so many drugs were tested mostly or exclusively in men, scientists may know little of their effects on women until they reach the market. A Government Accountability Office study found that 8 of 10 drugs removed from the market from 1997 through 2000 posed greater health risks to women.

For example, Seldane, an antihistamine, and the gastrointestinal drug Propulsid both triggered a potentially fatal heart arrhythmia more often in women than in men. Many drugs still on the market cause this arrhythmia more often in women, including antibiotics, antipsychotics, anti-malarial drugs and cholesterol-lowering drugs, Dr. Clayton said. Women also tend to use more medications than men.

The sex differences cut both ways. Some drugs, like the high blood pressure drug Verapamil and the antibiotic erythromycin, appear to be more effective in women. On the other hand, women tend to wake up from anesthesia faster than men and are more likely to experience side effects from anesthetic drugs, according to the Society for Women’s Health Research.

Women also react differently to alcohol, tobacco and cocaine, studies have found.

It’s not just because women tend to be smaller than men. Women metabolize drugs differently because they have a higher percentage of body fat and experience hormonal fluctuations and the monthly menstrual cycle. “Some drugs are more water-based and like to hang out in the blood, and some like to hang out in the fat tissue,” said Wesley Lindsey, assistant professor of pharmacy practice at Auburn University, who is a co-author of a paper on sex-based differences in drug activity.

“If the drug is lipophilic” — attracted to fat cells — “it will move into those tissues and hang around for longer,” Dr. Lindsey added. “The body won’t clear it as quickly, and you’ll see effects longer.”

There are also sex differences in liver metabolism, kidney function and certain gastric enzymes. Oral contraceptives, menopause and post-menopausal hormone treatment further complicate the picture. Some studies suggest, for example, that when estrogen levels are low, women may need higher doses of drugs called angiotensin receptor blockers to lower blood pressure, because they have higher levels of proteins that cause the blood vessels to constrict, said Kathryn Sandberg, director of the Center for the Study of Sex Differences in Health, Aging and Disease at Georgetown.

Many researchers say data on these sex differences must be gathered at the very beginning of a drug’s development — even before trials on human subjects begin.

“The path to a new drug starts with the basic science — you study an animal model of the disease, and that’s where you discover a drug target,” Dr. Sandberg said. “But 90 percent of researchers are still studying male animal models of the disease.”

There have been improvements. In an interview, Dr. Robert Temple, with the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the F.D.A., said the agency’s new guidelines in 1993 called for studies of sex differences at the earliest stages of drug development, as well as for analysis of clinical trial data by sex.

He said early research on an irritable bowel syndrome drug, alosetron (Lotronex), suggested it would not be effective in men. As a result, only women were included in clinical trials, and it was approved only for women. (Its use is restricted now because of serious side effects.)

But some scientists say drug metabolism studies with only 10 or 15 subjects are too small to pick up sex differences. Even though more women participate in clinical trials than in the past, they are still underrepresented in trials for heart and kidney disease, according to one recent analysis, and even in cancer trials.

“The big problem is we’re not quite sure how much difference this makes,” Dr. Lindsey said. “We just don’t have a good handle on it.”

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Readers may submit comments or questions for The Consumer by e-mail to consumer@nytimes.com.

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Federal Reserve holds steady on interest rates and stimulus effort

WASHINGTON -- With economic growth slowing in recent months, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday it would keep short-term interest rates near zero and continue its latest bond-buying stimulus program.

Following a two-day meeting, Fed policymakers said recent information "suggests that growth in economic activity paused in recent months, in large part because of weather-related disruptions and other transitory factors."

Those disruptions included the Midwest drought and Superstorm Sandy.

The statement from the Federal Open Market Committee, the central bank's policymaking arm, came after the Commerce Department unexpectedly reported the economy contracted at a 0.1% annual rate in the fourth quarter of last year.

It was the first time the economy shrank since the end of the great recession in 2009.

But most economists said the slowdown was an anomaly caused in part because of concerns about the fiscal cliff. They predicted the economy would grow about 2% in the first quarter of this year.

The closely watched wording of the Federal Open Market Committee's statement was a bit more pessimistic than after the last meeting in December. At that point, the Fed said economic activity and employment were expanding at a "moderate pace in recent months, apart from weather-related disruptions."

In September, the Fed launched its third round of bond buying to try to stimulate economic growth and reduce unemployment.

The central bank began an open-ended program to buy $85 billion in bonds a month to hold down long-term interest rates and boost business spending,

The Fed also said it anticipated short-term interest rates would remain near zero until the unemployment rate dropped to at least 6.5%, as long as inflation remained in check.

The unemployment rate was 7.8% in December and economists project it remained the same this month. The Labor Department will release the January jobs report Friday.

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Egyptian general warns against continued unrest

CAIRO — Egypt’s top military commander warned President Mohamed Morsi and opposition parties Tuesday to end days of bloodshed and unrest before the nation slides into chaos that may jeopardize the economy and “lead to the collapse of the state.”

The ominous statement from Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi signaled that the military, which ruled Egypt for months before Morsi was elected in June, wanted to quickly stem an uprising against the Islamist-led government. At least 52 people have died in riots since Friday.

“The continuing conflict between political forces and their differences concerning the management of the country could lead to a collapse of the state and threaten future generations,” Sisi said on the army’s Facebook page. He added that political turmoil and attacks on state targets were a “real threat to the security of Egypt.”

Despite its much criticized rule, marked by political repression and human rights violations, the military is largely revered. It is regarded by many Egyptians as the single stabilizing force across a spectrum of failed institutions and Morsi’s authoritarian moves to consolidate the Muslim Brotherhood’s grip on power.

It did not appear the army was preparing to seize control of the country. The generals’ tenure running the government after the February 2011 toppling of Hosni Mubarak left them bitter and tainted the military’s reputation, especially after crackdowns on demonstrators. The army prefers playing behind-the-scenes power broker.

The statement, though, suggested the military was losing patience with protesters and questioning Morsi’s ability to contain the crisis. The army has been loyal to the president; Morsi supported a new constitution that gives the generals wide autonomy. But the Islamist president has been unable to sway protesters or the opposition away from conflict.

The military did not clarify how it “might interfere in coming days,” said Talaat Mosallam, a retired major general and security analyst. “Their experience before in politics was not a comfortable one. But their feeling that the political powers might be losing control compelled them to issue a statement.”

Troops have been deployed and given emergency arrest powers to guard public buildings and shipping docks in the vital coastal cities of Suez, Port Said and Ismailia. Ports in those towns serve the Suez Canal, whose stability is a potent economic symbol for foreign capitals and investors.

Violence and protests eased a bit on Tuesday. However, clashes between rock-throwing youths and police rumbled at the edges of Tahrir Square in Cairo. Unrest continued in Suez and Port Said, where protesters defied curfews and the government had lost control amid burned police stations and well-armed residents.

The main opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front, has rejected Morsi’s call for political talks. The organization, headed by reformers, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, has accused the president and the Muslim Brotherhood of hijacking the revolution that overthrew Mubarak.

But the opposition’s influence on the streets is questionable. Many protesters criticize it as disorganized, divided and unable to articulate a galvanizing message. The opposition epitomizes a major shortcoming of the revolution: the absence of a charismatic figure capable of bridging political differences and fixing the economy.

The military’s statement highlighted the failure of the Interior Ministry, which controls the nation’s police forces, to keep order. The ministry backed Mubarak’s 30 years of repressive rule and lacks the reforms to gain the confidence of Egyptians. It is mistrusted by the Muslim Brotherhood, whose members for decades were persecuted and tortured by police.

The unrest has been further complicated by disparate interests converging around a protest movement. Peaceful demonstrations have often been overshadowed by young men and boys hurling stones and firebombs at police. Soccer fans, known as Ultras, have acted as shock troops. Looters and gunmen roam cities.

More recently an anarchist group calling itself the Black Bloc has battled security forces along barricades leading to the parliament. The country’s general prosecutor Tuesday called it a terrorist organization after the ransacking of the lobby in the Intercontinental Hotel near Tahrir Square. The Black Bloc denied it was involved.

Frightened hotel workers sent out tweets, including one that read: “SOS If anyone knows anyone in #Military #Police #Government, please send help! Thugs in Lobby.”

Hesham Abdel-Wahab, a hotel security guard, told the Ahram Online news website: “We called the police and requested they send forces. But when I spoke to the police, they just continued to ask me for my name. They were very hesitant. I kept saying to them that my name doesn't matter, we were under attack.”

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Special correspondent Reem Abdellatif contributed to this report.

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Dior: Jennifer Lawrence dress had no malfunction

LOS ANGELES (AP) — That was no wardrobe malfunction — that was couture.

When Jennifer Lawrence ascended the stairs to accept her SAG Award Sunday night, a bit of skin showed through the skirt of her gown, leading to some speculation that it had ripped.

Dior Couture told The Associated Press that wasn't so.

The design house said Lawrence's gown was designed by Raf Simons "with different levels of tulle and satin." That was what viewers saw on television when she lifted her gown to walk upstairs.

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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