ENTERTAINMENT
April 11, 2014
An in-demand bassist who studied under Charlie Haden and has performed with a rich roster of talents that includes Ani DiFranco, Andrew Bird, Nels Cline and Scott Amendola, Todd Sickafoose's knotted and lovely 2008 album, "Tiny Resistors," was one of the top jazz releases of that year. Finally at the cusp of delivering an encore, Sickafoose reunites an all-star band that includes violinist Jenny Scheinman, clarinetist Ben Goldberg and drummer Allison Miller to premiere a piece dubbed "Bear Proof," a work commissioned by Chamber Music America.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
April 9, 2014 | Tony Perry
Putting the brakes on a controversial bill to ban killer whale shows at SeaWorld San Diego, an Assembly committee Tuesday called for additional study that could take at least 18 months. Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist at the Animal Welfare Institute, one of the bill's sponsors, said she was disappointed by the move but pleased at the idea of more study -- although it remained unclear how the study would be conducted. John Reilly, president of SeaWorld San Diego, said he doubted a compromise is possible with people backing the bill.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
April 8, 2014 | By Tony Perry
An Assembly committee Tuesday called for additional research on a bill that would end killer whale shows at SeaWorld San Diego. Assemblyman Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood), chairman of the Parks, Water and Wildlife Committee, said the issue of killer whales in captivity is too complex to be decided after a hearing of less than two hours. The panel's action, called sending a bill to "interim study," triggers a process that will last until at least mid-2015, Rendon said. The action did not require a vote.
OPINION
April 8, 2014 | By The Times editorial board
The lives of captive killer whales are nothing like those of their wild counterparts. Instead of roaming for miles every day in close-knit family groups, captive whales perform for audiences in tanks that, though roomier than those of early marine parks, are far too small for such large ocean predators. In the wild, killer whales have not been known to kill humans or one another. The same cannot be said for the whales in amusement parks around the world, even though they represent only about a tenth of a percent of the numbers in the wild.
OPINION
April 3, 2014 | By The Times editorial board
It was well known for many years that Japan's "scientific whaling" program was a sham, designed to get around the international moratorium on hunting whales. Almost no research on the animals came from Japanese scientists; instead, whale meat kept showing up in restaurants and school lunches. Finally, Australia, a whaling country until 1978 and now an avid opponent, called Japan's bluff over the hundreds of whales it killed each year in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary surrounding Antarctica.
BUSINESS
April 3, 2014 | By Hugo Martín
Amid ongoing controversy over its killer whale shows, SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. reported a 13% drop in attendance for the first three months of the year. The attendance numbers were included in a notice to the Securities and Exchange Commission that SeaWorld was buying 1.75 million of its own shares from private equity firm Blackstone Group. The notice said attendance for the quarter that ended March 31 dropped to about 3.05 million visitors from 3.5 million in the same period in 2013.