Population

Brian Price, once a wrecking ball on UCLA's defensive line, has beaten long odds to return to the NFL after two off-season surgeries aimed at keeping his hamstrings attached to his pelvis, rather than breaking loose and coiling down the backs of his thighs. For Price, who will start at defensive tackle Sunday for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, his excruciating recovery was a 10-step process. Meaning just two months ago, he could run only 10 steps. "You have these doubts in your head at times," said Price, a second-round pick of the Buccaneers in 2010 who, because of his congenitally malformed pelvis, spent the last half of his rookie season on injured reserve.

The U.S. foreign-born population has risen to its highest level since 1920, with 13% of all those living in the nation in 2010 having been born elsewhere, a new report from the Census Bureau shows. Forty million of those residing in the U.S. in 2010 were born in other countries, up from 31 million, or 11% of the total, a decade earlier. The foreign-born share of the population dropped between 1920 and 1970, hitting a low of 4.7% in 1970, before rising again for several decades. But that growth has slowed in recent years as immigration has dropped, census officials said Thursday.

The PSA test should be abandoned as a prostate cancer screening tool, a government advisory panel has concluded after determining that the side effects from needless biopsies and treatments hurt many more men than are potentially helped by early detection of cancers. At best, one life will be saved for every 1,000 men screened over a 10-year period, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. But 100 to 120 men will have suspicious results when there is no cancer, triggering biopsies that can carry complications such as pain, fever, bleeding, infection and hospitalization.

California's population will grow more slowly in the next few decades than it has in the past - and that is good for the state's still-struggling economy, according to a new USC report. The study projects that the state's population, now 37.3 million, will continue to increase at a healthy clip - about 1% annually - for years to come. But at least through 2050, we are unlikely to see the boom rates of recent decades, especially the 1980s. "This is more manageable growth and that's good news for California," said Dowell Myers, a USC demography and urban planning professor who co-wrote the report with colleague John Pitkin.

A new study showing an estimated 7% of American teens and adults carry the human papillomavirus in their mouths may help health experts finally understand why rates of mouth and throat cancer have been climbing for nearly 25 years. The evidence makes it clear that oral sex practices play a key role in transmission. The new data, published online Thursday by the Journal of the American Medical Assn., are the first to assess the prevalence of oral HPV infection in the U.S. population.

Across the nation, the number of minorities continues to rise and the white population continues to decline, according to U.S. census estimates released Thursday. Minorities now make up about 35% of the population in the United States, an increase of 5% from 2000, reflecting demographic changes seen most powerfully in the Golden State. "More of the country is going to be like California," said William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution. Minorities make up 57% of the population in California.

The U.S. foreign-born population has risen to its highest level since 1920, with 13% of all those living in the nation in 2010 having been born elsewhere, a new report from the Census Bureau shows. Forty million of those residing in the U.S. in 2010 were born in other countries, up from 31 million, or 11% of the total, a decade earlier. The foreign-born share of the population dropped between 1920 and 1970, hitting a low of 4.7% in 1970, before rising again for several decades. But that growth has slowed in recent years as immigration has dropped, census officials said Thursday.

So how many omega-3 fatty acids are enough — and how should you get them? That likely depends on your age and your specific health concerns. The United States does not yet have guidelines for DHA or EPA, and consensus among nutrition experts is elusive. But specialty groups, some governmental agencies and individual experts have started to take a stand. For healthy adults without major medical issues, the European Food Safety Agency recommends a daily dose of 250 milligrams of combined EPA and DHA, while the National Heart Foundation of Australia suggests 500 milligrams.

Southern California is getting its population groove back, according to new U.S. census data. All six counties showed moderate population growth from 2008 to 2009, with all but San Diego County growing at a stronger rate than the year before. It's the latest sign that the region is recovering from the declines in population seen in the middle of the decade, some experts said. "Things aren't wonderful in Southern California, but you are seeing some industries that are growing or in the process of rebounding," said Jack Kyser, senior vice president and chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

A California community heads the list of America's fastest-growing big cities for the first time in recent memory, according to statistics released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. And, surprise -- it's not in the Inland Empire.

SEOUL - North and South Korea played their own distinctive games of power politics last week. The processes of leadership selection were enacted almost simultaneously, a coincidence that defined them so sharply as to provide a classroom lesson on the differences between the two systems. North Korea got all the publicity, not all of it because of the long-range missile it insisted on firing in the face of warnings to cease and desist. There was also the huge outpouring in Pyongyang for the centennial of the birth of the nation's "Great Leader," Kim Il Sung at which his grandson, Kim Jong Un, made his maiden speech before thousands of wildly cheering soldiers.

Responding to incidents of violence against transgender arrestees, the Los Angeles Police Department plans to open a segregated lockup for biologically male and female suspects who identify themselves as members of the opposite sex, officials said. By early May, a 24-bed transgender module will open at the LAPD women's jail downtown, the first such police lockup in the nation, according to Capt. Dave Lindsay, the jail division commander. "This is a major change," Lindsay said.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Dozens of tornadoes raked the Central Plains on Saturday as residents in Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Iowa braced themselves for a long night of tornado-watching. Damage was relatively light in the afternoon as the storm scraped across the sparsely populated farmlands of western and central Kansas. A hospital was damaged in Creston, Iowa, with no injuries reported. But well after sundown, much of the region was still under tornado watches. If anything, the potential for disaster increased as the system headed toward more densely populated areas in eastern Kansas and southeastern Nebraska.

Using space technology to sniff out a telltale trail of penguin poop strewn about the edges of Antarctica, scientists have completed the first-ever census of an animal population taken with satellite imagery. The collaboration of British and American researchers was able to identify 44 emperor penguin colonies, including seven that were previously unknown. They counted 595,000 birds - twice as many as they expected to see. "Now that we have this baseline information, we can start asking new questions" about the Antarctic ecosystem, said Michelle LaRue, a doctoral student in conservation biology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and coauthor of a paper about the discovery, published Friday in the journal PLoS One. As depicted in the 2005 film "March of the Penguins," emperor penguin pairs battle temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit to nest at their breeding sites each year.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Mohammad Fahad Al-Qahtani is a busy man with a dangerous passion. A human rights activist and relentless writer of letters and legal briefs, he challenges a kingdom that demands unquestioned authority. He slips videos onto the Internet and fires off missives to King Abdullah, calling for the freeing of political prisoners and the arrest of the king's half brother and heir apparent. He smiles at such audaciousness at a time when Saudi authorities are trying to contain calls for change encouraged by Arab rebellions, but turns somber when pondering the consequences.

By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that people arrested over traffic and other minor offenses can be strip-searched even if there is no reasonable suspicion that they are concealing weapons or contraband. But the court's decision goes too far. Jailers have a responsibility to make sure that their facilities are secure, but they can do so without the blanket authority the court has given them. The decision was a defeat for Albert Florence, a finance director for a car dealership who was on his way to a family celebration when a New Jersey state trooper stopped his car and, after finding that he had an outstanding warrant, arrested him. The warrant had been issued because of a fine that he actually had paid.

For the first time since the 19th century, Latinos now account for a majority of births in California, a long-expected, yet still telling milestone in the state's demographics. Latinos make up about 30% of the state's population. But according to a new analysis of birth certificates by UCLA scholars, Latino babies accounted for more than half of all California births beginning in the third quarter of 2001, at 50.2%. In the fourth quarter of that year, the rate edged up to 50.6%.

Monarch butterflies, devastated by storms at their winter home in Mexico, have dwindled to their lowest population levels in decades as they begin to return to the United States and Canada. The monarch loss is estimated at 50% to 60%, which means the breeding population is expected to be the smallest since the Mexican overwintering colonies were discovered in 1975, said Chip Taylor, a professor of entomology and director of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas. "I think it is very clear that the butterflies lost more than half of the population," Taylor said.

The catch of small, schooling fish such as sardines and anchovies should be cut in half globally and the amount left in the ocean doubled to protect the ecologically vital species from collapse, scientists say in a new report. The silvery species known as forage fish are harvested in huge numbers worldwide and are easy for fishermen to round up because they form dense schools, or "bait balls. " But wide fluctuations in their numbers make them especially vulnerable to overfishing, according to the report released Sunday by the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force, a 13-member panel of scientists from around the world.

As evening falls, a dazed woman with a gangrenous thumb spreads a blanket over a row of plastic crates to make a bed on the urine-soaked sidewalk. As many as 10 people are camping along this stretch of pavement on 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles. Their belongings - tents, sleeping bags, shopping carts, a leather chair, at least two microwaves and piles of clothing - nearly cover the concrete. Rats scuttle in the gutter. A bony man lights up a crack pipe. Scenes like these had all but disappeared several years ago when the Safer City Initiative brought 50 additional police officers to the 50 gritty blocks known as skid row. Crime rates dropped, homeless encampments were cleared and the street population shrank.