Fatburger chief executive has the fast-food chain sizzling

The gig: Andrew Wiederhorn is the chairman and chief executive of Fatburger Inc., a fast-food restaurant chain based in Beverly Hills. The first Fatburger opened on Western Avenue in Los Angeles in 1947 and gained notoriety when rappers Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. all mentioned the restaurant in songs. Since 2003, Fatburger has been owned by Fog Cutter Capital Group Inc., a Santa Monica investment company of which Wiederhorn is also chairman and CEO.

Self-starter: Wiederhorn grew up in a single-parent family in Portland; his father died when he was age 9. In high school, he hired a lawyer to help him get permits to rent out jet-skis on the Willamette River. Wiederhorn attended USC and graduated in three years with a bachelor's degree in business. At 21, he founded the investment firm Wilshire Credit Corp. Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad was one of his first financial backers, investing $300 million.

Boom times: Wiederhorn moved back to Portland in 1990, where he founded Fog Cutter Capital in 1997. By the late '90s, he was worth an estimated $140 million. In 2000, when Magic Johnson bought a stake in Fatburger, Fog Cutter helped finance the change of ownership for the struggling company. In 2003, Fog Cutter bought a controlling stake in Fatburger for $7 million.

Hard knocks: After one of Wiederhorn's business associates in Portland was arrested under a 22-count federal indictment, including charges of mail fraud, money laundering and witness tampering, authorities began investigating Wiederhorn too. In 2004, he pleaded guilty to charges of paying an illegal gratuity to his associate and filing a false tax return. He spent 15 months in prison in Sheridan, Ore. "I saw an awful lot of terrible things," Wiederhorn said. "Everything else seems somewhat mild." He says his attorneys had advised him that his actions were legitimate business deals. "At some point, you have to look in the mirror and accept that you can't do anything more," Wiederhorn said. "Dealing with a failure showed me that all I can change is where I go from here."

Righting the ship: When Wiederhorn got out of prison in 2005, he became chief executive of Fatburger. The company had changed ownership multiple times and was not doing well. Wiederhorn and Fog Cutter invested $23 million more in Fatburger, closed several dozen unprofitable stores and converted the remaining restaurants to franchises in an attempt to turn the company around. "Having a restructuring background, I know that you have to make practical decisions, not ones based on hope," Wiederhorn said. "It's a lot of trench fighting. A lot of challenges." In 2011, 25 stores in California and Nevada that had entered bankruptcy protection were auctioned off.

Rebirth: Fog Cutter relocated to Santa Monica in 2010 to reconnect with Fatburger's roots, Wiederhorn said. The company is aggressively expanding its locations and offerings. Fatburger had 40 stores in 2003. By the end of 2012, there were 150 Fatburgers in 27 countries. Fatburger has built flagship stores in Dubai and Macao, and is beginning to move into other countries in Asia. The company last year bought Buffalo's Cafe, a casual wings franchise similar to Wingstop. The first Buffalo's Cafe opened in Palmdale in December. A joint Fatburger-Buffalo's Cafe is slated for Santa Monica and Sepulveda boulevards.

Life outside work: Wiederhorn, 46, is a major donor to USC Associates, an academic support group. He also speaks to entrepreneurship classes at USC. He enjoys skiing, tennis and spending time with his wife, Tiffany, and their six children, three of whom went to USC. "The things that are critical to your survival have to do with your personal life," Wiederhorn said. "You can't take problems home. They'll all be there in the morning when you get back to work. I try to tell my employees that: We're just flipping hamburgers. You can't take all this too seriously or it'll drive you crazy."

laura.nelson@latimes.com

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Palmdale woman accused of torturing her children

Neighbors of a Palmdale woman charged with assaulting and torturing two of her children said Thursday that they never even realized she had kids.

The siblings — a boy, 8, and girl, 7 — did not play outside and were rarely seen, said Cynthia Otero, who runs a day care center at a home opposite the house in the 39000 block of Clear View Court where Ingrid Brewer is alleged to have mistreated the youngsters.

Otero said that when she recently spotted the children getting out of a car, she thought Brewer, 50, "might be baby-sitting."

So neighbors in the suburban cul-de-sac were the more shocked when word spread that Brewer was arrested on suspicion of crimes against her children, she said. Brewer is being charged with eight felony counts, including torture, assault with a deadly weapon and cruelty to a child.

According to authorities, Brewer reported the children missing Jan. 15, prompting a search by deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Palmdale Station. The youngsters were found hours later hiding under a blanket near a parked car on a street close to their home. They were without winter clothes in 20-degree weather, authorities said.

Sgt. Brian Hudson, a spokesman for the sheriff's Special Victims Bureau, said the children told investigators they ran away because Brewer deprived them of food, locked them in separate bedrooms when she went to work each day, bound their hands behind their backs with zip ties and beat them with electrical cords and a hammer. The youngsters also said that when they were locked in the bedrooms and needed to use the bathroom, they instead had to use wastebaskets, Hudson said.

They fled because "they were tired of being tied up and beaten," Hudson said.

Hudson said both children had injuries consistent with the alleged abuse, including marks on their wrists indicating they had been restrained and "numerous bruising and abrasions over their bodies." They told investigators the mistreatment had been happening since Halloween.

Neighbors interviewed by authorities said they had never noticed anything suspicious but "hardly ever saw the two children," Hudson said. Otero and another neighbor said Brewer did not make friends on the block.

Otero said Brewer was "unfriendly" and typically ignored verbal greetings and waves.

According to sheriff's officials, Brewer, a certified nursing assistant who works in Los Angeles and has adult children, adopted the young siblings about a year ago from foster care. They were home schooled.

Neil Zanville, a spokesman for the county Department of Children and Family Services, said his agency was legally prohibited from disclosing any case-specific information about past or present clients. But in a written statement, the agency's director, Philip Browning, called the report disturbing.

"While we cannot confirm or deny whether this family is under our supervision, I am personally looking into this situation to determine what role, if any, our department had in these children's lives," Browning said.

Sheriff's officials said Thursday that the children were "doing great" despite their injuries.

Otero lamented that they had been made to suffer.

"It's just so sad," said the neighbor, who has a 5-year-old daughter and 8-year-old twins. "I wish they would have knocked on my door. I would have helped them."

Brewer is in the custody of the Sheriff's Department, with bail set at $2 million. She is scheduled to appear in court Thursday, Hudson said.

ann.simmons@latimes.com

Times staff writer Kate Mather contributed to this report.

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New PlayStation 4 details emerge: 8-core AMD ‘Bulldozer’ CPU, redesigned controller and more

2013 is a huge year for gamers. Nintendo (NTDOY) just launched the Wii U ahead of the holidays and both Sony (SNE) and Microsoft (MSFT) are expected to issue next-generation consoles before the year is through. We’ve seen plenty of rumors about both systems over the past few months, and the latest comes from Kotaku and focuses on Sony’s PlayStation 4.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 said to be overhyped, RIM’s comeback chances remain slim]

The site claims to have gotten its hands on documents describing Sony’s developer system given to premier partners so they can build games ahead of the next-generation console launch. The specs, if accurate, will obviously line up with the release version of the system. Included in the specs Kotaku is reporting are an AMD64 “Bulldozer” CPU with eight cores total, an AMD GPU, 8GB of system RAM, 2.2GB of video memory, a 160GB hard drive, a Blu-ray drive, four USB 3.0 ports and more.

[More from BGR: Apple: ‘Bent, not broken’]

Sony also reportedly has a redesigned controller in the works that will include a capacitive touch pad.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Damon 'hijacks' Kimmel's ABC show

NEW YORK (AP) — Matt Damon had his revenge.

The butt of a long-running joke on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live," the actor opened Thursday night's show as a kidnapper who tied Kimmel to a chair with duct tape and gagged him with his own tie.

"There's a new host in town and his initials are M.D.," Damon said. "That's right, the doctor is in."

For years, Kimmel has joked at the end of his show that he ran out of time and was unable to bring Damon on as a guest. Kimmel was the silent one Thursday, watching from the back of the stage as Damon did his job.

Damon tormented Kimmel by bringing on a succession of big-name guests. Robin Williams stopped by to finish the monologue. Ben Affleck had a walk-on role. Sheryl Crow was the bandleader and performed her new single. Nicole Kidman, Gary Oldman, Amy Adams, Reese Witherspoon and Demi Moore all crowded the talk show's couch.

"I've been waiting for this moment for a long, long time," Damon said. "This is like when I lost my virginity, except this is going to last way longer than one second."

Damon's guest hosting turn came at a key time for Kimmel. ABC earlier this month moved the show to 11:35 p.m. ET and PT after a decade of airing it a half hour later, putting him in direct competition with Jay Leno and David Letterman.

Thursday's special program aimed for the same water-cooler status as a memorably lewd short film Damon made for the show a few years ago with Kimmel's then-girlfriend, Sarah Silverman. It went viral and remains probably the best-known skit in the show's history.

To twist the knife even further, Damon brought Silverman on as his final guest Thursday night, with Kimmel looking on forlornly as she likened their five-year relationship to an unfortunate trip to a hot dog vendor.

"Is there anything you'd like to say to Jimmy?" Damon asked.

"No, I'm good," Silverman replied.

Then came the sweetest revenge of all, with Damon promising to ungag Kimmel in the show's final minutes.

"Wait," he said. "I'm sorry. We're out of time."

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HCA Must Pay Kansas City Foundation $162 Million

HCA, the nation’s largest profit-making hospital chain, was ordered on Thursday to pay $162 million after a judge in Missouri ruled that it had failed to abide by an agreement to make improvements to dilapidated hospitals that it bought in the Kansas City area several years ago.

The judge also ordered a court-appointed accountant to determine whether HCA had actually provided the levels of charitable care that it agreed to at the time.

The ruling came in response to a suit filed in 2009 by a community foundation that was created when HCA acquired the hospitals. Among other things, the foundation was responsible for ensuring that HCA met the obligations outlined in the deal.

The dispute in Kansas City is the second time in recent years that HCA has come under legal fire from officials in communities that sold troubled nonprofit community hospitals to HCA.

In another dispute in New Hampshire in 2011, a judge ruled in HCA’s favor, deciding that Portsmouth Regional Hospital would remain part of HCA after community leaders tried to regain control. During testimony in a 2011 trial, a former hospital official claimed he had difficulties getting HCA to pay for what he and others described as critical equipment and facility upgrades.

In an e-mailed statement, a spokesman for HCA said the company was disappointed in the court’s ruling and intended to appeal. He also added that the two cases were “rare exceptions” and that the company had enjoyed positive relationships with communities across the country.

The suit is among several problems for HCA. The company disclosed last year, for example, that the United States attorney’s office in Miami had subpoenaed documents as part of an inquiry to determine whether unnecessary cardiology procedures had been performed at HCA hospitals in Florida and elsewhere. At stake in that case is whether HCA inappropriately billed Medicare and private insurers for the procedures. HCA has denied any wrongdoing.

Financially, Thursday’s judgment is a slap on the wrist for HCA, which posted net income of $360 million in just the third quarter of last year. But the ruling may reverberate beyond HCA as communities across the country put their troubled nonprofit hospitals up for sale.

In many cases, the buyers with the deepest pockets have been profit-making hospital chains that want to convert the community hospitals to profit status, typically agreeing to spend money to fix them and to maintain certain levels of charitable care in the community.

In 2011, for instance, Vanguard Health Systems, which went public that year and has as its largest shareholder the private equity firm Blackstone Group, bought eight hospitals in Detroit. As part of that deal, Vanguard Health agreed to spend $850 million over five years to fix and maintain the hospitals.

The trouble in the Kansas City area began a year after HCA acquired a dozen hospitals from Health Midwest in 2003 for $1.125 billion. As part of the deal, HCA agreed to make $300 million in capital improvements in the first two years and an additional $150 million in the following three. The hospital chain also agreed to maintain the levels of care that had been provided to low-income individuals and families in the area for 10 years.

But when the members of the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City, a nonprofit created from the proceeds of the sale of the hospital, received their first report from HCA in 2004 they discovered the hospital was already way behind.

Of the $300 million it was supposed to spend in the first two years, its own documents showed it had spent only about $50 million, according to Mark G. Flaherty, one of the founding members of the foundation and its general counsel.

HCA’s reports to the foundation also indicated that the level of charitable care it provided at the system’s large inner-city hospital had fallen while charitable care provided at the more affluent suburban hospital had risen sharply, Mr. Flaherty said.

“That was a big red flag to us,” he said.

After repeatedly asking HCA executives for explanations but receiving none, the foundation sued HCA in 2009. The case went to trial for several weeks in 2011.

HCA argued in the trial that it had met its obligation to spend money on hospital facilities by building two new hospitals at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than repairing older facilities. But Judge John Torrence of Jackson County Circuit Court ruled that the agreement called for improvements to existing hospitals.

He said HCA still owed $162 million of the $300 million it had agreed to spend between 2003 and 2005. He then named a court-appointed forensic accountant to determine whether HCA had met its other capital commitments and whether it provided the charitable care it had said it would.

HCA’s own written statements claimed “differing amounts,” the judge wrote in his ruling. One HCA report said it provided $48 million in charitable care to the area in 2009 while another report on its Web site said it provided more than $87 million. The annual report to the foundation claimed it provided $185 million in uncompensated and charity care that year, the judge wrote.

During the trial, when asked about the widely differing numbers, the president of HCA’s Midwest division and other HCA executives had no explanation.

The money will be paid to the foundation, which will use it to create grants to provide care for uninsured or underinsured families in the area. It is unclear whether the spending on improvements will occur.

Depending on what the court-appointed accountant discovers, HCA may owe even more money, said Paul Seyferth of Seyferth Blumenthal & Harris, which represents the foundation.

“We think they’re going to have a tremendously difficult time convincing anybody that they spent what they claim they spent,” Mr. Seyferth said.

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Lawmaker questions Disney's plan for wristband data

A congressman from Massachusetts raised questions Thursday about how Walt Disney Co. will use information it collects when it gives parkgoers new wristbands embedded with computer chips.

Edward J. Markey (D-Mass), who co-chairs a congressional panel on privacy, asked Walt Disney Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Robert A. Iger in a letter what information the park will collect with the so-called MagicBand and how it will be used.

"Widespread use of MagicBand bracelets by park guests could dramatically increase the personal data Disney can collect about its guests," he said, adding that he is particularly concerned at the prospects of Disney collecting information about children.

Disney announced recently that it plans to unveil this spring at Walt Disney World in Florida a wristband embedded with radio frequency identification chips. A unique code in each chip lets parkgoers pay to enter the park, check into Disney hotels and buy food and souvenirs, among other things.

Disney officials promoted the wristbands as a way to make visiting the park easier. The wristbands will let Disney use the data to customize future offerings and marketing pitches.

Disney officials say they have no plans yet to introduce the wristbands at Disneyland or Disney California Adventure Park in Anaheim.

In a three-page letter, Markey said he is "deeply concerned that Disney's proposal could potentially have a harmful impact on our children." He asked whether parkgoers will have a chance to opt out of sharing their information and, if not, whether Disney will share the data with other companies.

A spokesman for Markey said his office had not received a response from Disney on Thursday, but in a statement to The Times, the company said participation in the wristband program was optional.

"In addition, guests control whether their personal information is used for promotional purposes, and no data collected is ever used to market to children," the statement said.

If parkgoers agree to release such information it can be used for marketing, Disney officials confirmed.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

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Former LAUSD teacher accused of molesting 20 children

A former Los Angeles Unified School District teacher was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of committing lewd acts and sexually abusing 20 children and an adult, law enforcement authorities said.

Robert Pimentel, 57, who taught at George de la Torre Jr. Elementary School in Wilmington, was taken into custody by Los Angeles Police Department detectives, who had launched an investigation in March after several fourth-grade girls said they had been inappropriately touched.

Prosecutors filed 15 charges against Pimentel involving a dozen of his alleged victims. The charges involve sexual abuse and lewd acts on a child and cover the period from September 2011 to March 2012, according to court records. Authorities said the teacher is suspected of inappropriately touching children under and over their clothing.

Detectives suspect Pimentel victimized an additional eight children and the adult, LAPD Capt. Fabian Lizarraga told The Times.

The arrest comes as the nation's second-largest school district has been rocked in recent months by allegations of sexual misconduct involving teachers and students.

In January, a teacher at Miramonte Elementary School in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood was arrested on suspicion of spoon-feeding semen to students in a classroom and taking dozens of photos. Some of the photos show students blindfolded and being fed allegedly tainted cookies.

An audit released in November concluded that the district failed to promptly report 150 cases of suspected teacher misconduct — including allegations of sexual contact with students — to state authorities as required by law. District officials said they have addressed the breakdowns highlighted in the audit.

Wednesday evening, L.A. Unified Supt. John Deasy said both Pimentel and the school's principal were immediately removed when the district found out about the allegations in March.

Deasy said he removed the principal because he was "dissatisfied" with how the situation was handled at the school. The principal has not been identified.

Parents at the school were informed within 72 hours after Pimentel was removed from the campus, and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing was promptly notified, the district said.

District officials prepared a "notice of termination" for Pimentel and the principal, which they had planned to present to the Board of Education in April 2012, Deasy said. But both employees retired before the board meeting.

He said Pimentel and the principal will receive their full pensions because they retired before the district took action against them.

"Can you go back and fire someone who's already retired? No, you can't," Deasy said.

Detectives launched their investigation of Pimentel after some of the children told their parents they had been abused, Lizarraga said. The parents then alerted officers at the LAPD's Harbor Division.

Of the 20 children allegedly abused, 19 were students at the school, according to Lizarraga. He said detectives came across the other child as they gathered evidence.

Deasy told The Times that his recollection was that the adult was a co-worker of Pimentel.

Pimentel, who lives in Newport Beach, had been a teacher with the district since 1974, police said. He was taken into custody shortly after noon Wednesday and was being held on $12-million bail. He is expected to appear in court Thursday.

In the Miramonte Elementary case, former teacher Mark Berndt, 61, is charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct and is awaiting trial. He has pleaded not guilty.

The district is facing nearly 200 molestation and lewd conduct claims stemming from Berndt's alleged wrongdoing.

In a separate case, a jury recently awarded $6.9 million to a 14-year-old boy who was molested while he was in fifth grade at Queen Anne Place Elementary School in the Mid-Wilshire area.

The teacher in that incident pleaded no contest to two counts of a lewd act on a child and to continuous sexual abuse of a child younger than 14. He is serving a 16-year prison sentence.

richard.winton@latimes.com

howard.blume@latimes.com

Times staff writer Robert J. Lopez contributed to this report

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Siri was supposed to be a key feature on Verizon’s DROID lineup until Apple swooped in

Since the release of the iPhone 4S, Apple (AAPL) has touted its intelligent voice assistant Siri as a key feature of the iOS ecosystem. The startup company behind the app originally launched Siri as standalone program on the App Store and had plans to release Android and BlackBerry versions in the future. Siri was quickly acquired by Apple, however, and plans to expand the app were cancelled.

[More from BGR: Apple reports Q1 results: $ 13.1 billion profit beats estimates, iPhone sales and Q2 guidance miss big]

According to a report from The Huffington Post, Verizon (VZ) had actually signed a deal with the creators of Siri to feature the voice assistant on its DROID line of smartphones several months before the company was approached by Apple. The wireless carrier even created commercials touting the unique feature, although they never saw the light of day.

[More from BGR: As data gets cheaper for Verizon to transmit, customers are paying more]

After two months of availability on the App Store, Apple acquired Siri in 2010 and the rest is history.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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SFJazz Center opens, bringing swing to West Coast

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Full of shimmer and swing, San Francisco's sleek new jazz concert hall opened Wednesday night with an opening night gala featuring McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea and Esperanza Spalding aimed at cementing respect for and expanding the reach of the jazz idiom on the West Coast.

The 700-seat, specially designed concert hall nestled in the heart of the city's arts district was brightly lit amid a light rain and attracted a crowd of hundreds with a high-energy, inaugural celebration emceed by Bill Cosby.

Cosby played percussion during the night's first number, along with several others including Oakland percussionist John Santos.

"This is just fabulous, it's a tremendous opportunity for everyone here," Santos said.

Billed as the first freestanding building in the West built for jazz performance and education, the center opened Wednesday after raising more than $60 million over more than a decade to build a home for SFJAZZ, the nonprofit that puts on the city's jazz festival.

A building that stood opposite the hall was decked out with giant black-and-white photographs of jazz greats.

"This is the revival of the jazz scene in San Francisco," said attorney and attendee Kirk Boyd.

After three decades of renting trucks to drop off pianos and drums for gigs at outside venues, spokesman Marshall Lamm said the organization was delighted to open a permanent home, which soon will boast a New Orleans-style cafe and cocktail lounge led by The Slanted Door's Charles Phan.

"It's just not like someone inherited some money and they built a building," said San Francisco bassist, jazz composer and bandleader Marcus Shelby. "This a concept and idea and practice that has been developed for decades and this building is the result of all of that hard work to give the West Coast a venue that has to be respected."

Wednesday, the show drew celebrities including Tom Waits, Danny Glover, Amy Tan, former Secretary of State George Shultz and hundreds of other jazz aficionados.

The venue will need to play multiple, distinct roles: attract exclusive, high-level performers, support local musicians and school groups such as the SFJazz High School All-Stars and celebrate the legacy of the city's Fillmore District.

A half-century ago, hundreds of black-owned businesses including jazz and blues nightclubs thrived in the Fillmore, then nicknamed "Harlem of the West." After the government decreed the area blighted, wrecking balls erased many such hotspots and forced thousands of people from the neighborhood through eminent domain. After a decades-long urban renewal project by the federal and local governments, the Fillmore was reshaped — and gradually jazz clubs have started coming back.

None, organizers say, will have the weight and promise of SFJAZZ Center, whose acoustics are custom designed to showcase the sound coming off the stage and enhance the listener's experience.

"For the musicians to flow, it requires a stage where you can hear very clearly, " said Sam Berkow, who designed the acoustics and sound system for SFJAZZ Center as well as Jazz at Lincoln Center. "For the audience watching the band, with seating around the stage you'll get that collective sense of the listening experience, which is important when musicians are not just playing a chart but offering a solo in response to the crowd's energy."

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Follow Garance Burke on Twitter at (at)garanceburke

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Well: Long Term Effects on Life Expectancy From Smoking

It is often said that smoking takes years off your life, and now a new study shows just how many: Longtime smokers can expect to lose about 10 years of life expectancy.

But amid those grim findings was some good news for former smokers. Those who quit before they turn 35 can gain most if not all of that decade back, and even those who wait until middle age to kick the habit can add about five years back to their life expectancies.

“There’s the old saw that everyone knows smoking is bad for you,” said Dr. Tim McAfee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But this paints a much more dramatic picture of the horror of smoking. These are real people that are getting 10 years of life expectancy hacked off — and that’s just on average.”

The findings were part of research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, that looked at government data on more than 200,000 Americans who were followed starting in 1997. Similar studies that were done in the 1980s and the decades prior had allowed scientists to predict the impact of smoking on mortality. But since then many population trends have changed, and it was unclear whether smokers today fared differently from smokers decades ago.

Since the 1960s, the prevalence of smoking over all has declined, falling from about 40 percent to 20 percent. Today more than half of people that ever smoked have quit, allowing researchers to compare the effects of stopping at various ages.

Modern cigarettes contain less tar and medical advances have cut the rates of death from vascular disease drastically. But have smokers benefited from these advances?

Women in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s had lower rates of mortality from smoking than men. But it was largely unknown whether this was a biological difference or merely a matter of different habits: earlier generations of women smoked fewer cigarettes and tended to take up smoking at a later age than men.

Now that smoking habits among women today are similar to those of men, would mortality rates be the same as well?

“There was a big gap in our knowledge,” said Dr. McAfee, an author of the study and the director of the C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Public Health.

The new research showed that in fact women are no more protected from the consequences of smoking than men. The female smokers in the study represented the first generation of American women that generally began smoking early in life and continued the habit for decades, and the impact on life span was clear. The risk of death from smoking for these women was 50 percent higher than the risk reported for women in similar studies carried out in the 1980s.

“This sort of puts the nail in the coffin around the idea that women might somehow be different or that they suffer fewer effects of smoking,” Dr. McAfee said.

It also showed that differences between smokers and the population in general are becoming more and more stark. Over the last 20 years, advances in medicine and public health have improved life expectancy for the general public, but smokers have not benefited in the same way.

“If anything, this is accentuating the difference between being a smoker and a nonsmoker,” Dr. McAfee said.

The researchers had information about the participants’ smoking histories and other details about their health and backgrounds, including diet, alcohol consumption, education levels and weight and body fat. Using records from the National Death Index, they calculated their mortality rates over time.

People who had smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes were not classified as smokers. Those who had smoked at least 100 cigarettes but had not had one within five years of the time the data was collected were classified as former smokers.

Not surprisingly, the study showed that the earlier a person quit smoking, the greater the impact. People who quit between 25 and 34 years of age gained about 10 years of life compared to those who continued to smoke. But there were benefits at many ages. People who quit between 35 and 44 gained about nine years, and those who stopped between 45 and 59 gained about four to six years of life expectancy.

From a public health perspective, those numbers are striking, particularly when juxtaposed with preventive measures like blood pressure screenings, colorectal screenings and mammography, the effects of which on life expectancy are more often viewed in terms of days or months, Dr. McAfee said.

“These things are very important, but the size of the benefit pales in comparison to what you can get from stopping smoking,” he said. “The notion that you could add 10 years to your life by something as straightforward as quitting smoking is just mind boggling.”

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