Cooley leaves legacy of fighting corruption, increasing DNA use

He waged an insurgent campaign against his boss to become Los Angeles County district attorney, promising to act as a prosecutor not a politician.

Twelve years later, Steve Cooley retired last week as one of the county's most entrenched political fixtures, having served a historic tenure as top prosecutor, reshaped the most powerful office in the local criminal justice system and left his mark on California law enforcement.

Cooley is widely credited with expanding the way law enforcement uses DNA and with making the fight against local public corruption a priority. His efforts to soften California's tough three-strikes sentencing law came to fruition less than a month before he left office when voters in November overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure that scales back the law.

"He steered a very middle and fair course," former Dist. Atty. John Van de Kamp told reporters before Cooley's successor, Jackie Lacey, was sworn in earlier in the week. "He leaves a great legacy for this office."

But his tenure was hardly free of criticism or problems.

Cooley failed two years ago in a bid to become state attorney general, losing narrowly as the Republican nominee to Democrat Kamala D. Harris, who comfortably won in Cooley's home county. He has been dogged by accusations that he lacked the nerve to prosecute the toughest cases. And he waged an ugly battle with the union that represents line-level prosecutors, which accused him of retaliating against its officers.

As he steps off the public stage, Cooley insists he cannot think of anything he would have done differently.

"I have no regrets. My motives were pure," he said in a recent interview before he left office. "This has probably been the greatest run in anyone's memory."

Cooley, 65, who joined the district attorney's office straight out of law school in 1973, rattled off a long list of accomplishments but said a few stood out.

Among them was the work of his Public Integrity Division. In October, the division charged one of its most high-profile targets, county Assessor John Noguez, with taking bribes to illegally reduce property taxes for the clients of a political supporter. A year earlier, the unit hit eight Bell officials with a litany of corruption charges.

The office also spearheaded efforts to fight violent crime through the increased use of DNA.

Cooley signed the ballot argument in favor of a 2004 initiative that expanded the state's DNA databank to include anyone arrested for a felony. And he urged the state to embrace a controversial method of searching the databank for partial matches that would identify relatives of crime suspects. In 2010, the method helped investigators identify Lonnie Franklin Jr. as the "Grim Sleeper" serial killer, now linked to the slayings of more than a dozen women.

One of Cooley's first actions in office was to introduce a policy for prosecutors generally not to seek life sentences for repeat offenders under the three-strikes law unless the latest offense was a serious or violent crime.

His efforts to amend the law led him to butt heads with other district attorneys, but the state's prosecutors must now follow a law modeled on his approach thanks to the passage of Proposition 36, which his office helped write.

Donna McClay, president of the union that represents deputy district attorneys, said the public has more trust in the office today than 12 years ago, and she credited Cooley with improving the diversity of its employees. More than 36% of the office's prosecutors are nonwhite compared with 28% in late 2000. Nearly 53% are women. "That's a positive thing," she said.

But she said many prosecutors are disappointed that Cooley did not do more to make good on a campaign promise to improve their salaries and benefits. Cooley did, however, receive a 23% raise himself in 2008. He retired making more than $308,000 and will continue to receive about that sum as his annual pension.

Cooley spent his first week of retirement at a defendant's table in federal court scribbling notes on a legal pad during a civil trial in which two former union presidents allege that he retaliated against them with punitive transfers and dead-end assignments. Cooley denies the claim.

In his last few days, he upset some in the office when he announced a final round of promotions for 19 mid-level prosecutors. Among those chosen from a top group of 152 prosecutors was his daughter, Shannon, who was hired in April 2009 and has less time in the office than all but two others of those promoted.

Cooley defended his decision, saying it was based on merit. His daughter earned perfect scores on the office's written test and from her supervisor. The supervisor, Head Deputy Dist. Atty. John Zajec, called her "dedicated, conscientious, hardworking" and among the most outstanding young prosecutors. She recently won a conviction in a difficult drunk-driving murder trial, he said.

Under Cooley, the district attorney's office brought a good share of public corruption cases to court. But some have questioned Cooley's decision not to file charges against high-profile subjects.

Last year, a judge hearing the case against Bell officials said it was curious that the city's former police chief, Randy Adams, hadn't been charged. Adams made more money than the Los Angeles police chief for heading Bell's 46-person Police Department. Prosecutors say his contract was drawn up so the public could not learn the real size of his paycheck.

Cooley called Judge Kathleen Kennedy's comments "gratuitous and uninformed." He said his prosecutors carefully reviewed the evidence against Adams before determining that they did not have enough to charge him.

"Randy Adams is an embarrassment to the profession, to every uniform he has ever worn, and he ought to just go hide," he said. "But ... we don't overreach. We don't bring false charges."

Despite his defeat in the 2010 attorney general's election, Cooley recently showed that he still has plenty of political clout as he helped his anointed successor, Lacey, win election.

For the future, Cooley said he has only vague plans that include setting up a management consulting firm to advise government and private organizations. He might also try his hand at books that would detail some of the high-profile cases his office handled during his tenure, he said. One possible title: "Fakes, Frauds and Phonies."

"It would include both people we've prosecuted and others I've run across," he said with a laugh.

jack.leonard@latimes.com

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Twitter to Start War on Instagram In Time for Christmas

Holidays seem to be Instagram‘s bread and butter, so it makes sense that Twitter would fire their first shot in the war on Instagram when the app is at its most vulnerable. 

RELATED: Why You Can’t See Instagram Photos on Twitter Anymore

If we learned anything from Thanksgiving, it’s that people love to Instagram their holidays. Turkeys, stuffing, table settings: you Amaro’d it all. It was the service’s best day ever. There were 10 million pictures Instagrammed on Thanksgiving. So it’s not a logistical stretch to imagine the holiday season – Hanukkah starts tonight! —  will be big business for Instagram, too. Christmas day will probably be especially big since it combines dinner, like Thanksgiving, and presents. (Also: check your Instagram feed right now and you’re sure to see at least 3 Christmas trees.)

RELATED: Meet the Parade of Greedy Crybabies Who Didn’t Get iPhones for Christmas

And so comes a report from AllThingsD’s Mike Isaac saying Twitter will launch its own photo filters on time for Christmas, likely to try and capitalize on that rush of OMG I got a cool thing! photo-sharing. Instagram stopped their photos from being shown on Twitter, because they want people on their site. The move makes enough sense, because Instagram is owned by Facebook and not Twitter, but it still sucks for the rest of us. The two companies are now in a budding rivalry over photo-sharing, so this is it, it’s war, we guess. 

RELATED: How to Get Over the Twitter-Instagram War on Photos

If you’re having trouble watching these two former friends fight, please read The Atlantic Wire’s Rebecca Greenfield’s guide to getting over it. The holidays is no place for rivalries. Didn’t Jingle All The Way teach you people anything? 

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Rolling Stones hit NY for 50th anniversary gig

NEW YORK (AP) — "Time Waits for No One," the Rolling Stones sang in 1974, but lately it's seemed like that grizzled quartet does indeed have some sort of exemption from the ravages of time.

At an average age of 68-plus years, the British rockers are clearly in fighting form, sounding tight, focused and truly ready for the spotlight at a rapturously received pair of London concerts last month.

On Saturday, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts hit New York for the first of three U.S. shows on their "50 and Counting" mini-tour, marking a mind-boggling half-century since the band first began playing its unique brand of blues-tinged rock.

And the three shows — Saturday's at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn, then two in Newark, N.J., on Dec. 13 and 15 — aren't the only big dates on the agenda. Next week the Stones join a veritable who's who of British rock royalty and U.S. superstars at the blockbuster 12-12-12 Sandy benefit concert at Madison Square Garden. Also scheduled to perform: Paul McCartney, the Who, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Eddie Vedder, Billy Joel, Roger Waters and Chris Martin.

The Stones' three U.S. shows promise to have their own special guests, too. Mary J. Blige will be at the Brooklyn gig, as well as guitarist Gary Clark Jr., the band has announced. (Blige performed a searing "Gimme Shelter" with frontman Jagger in London.) Rumors are swirling of huge names at the Dec. 15 show, which also will be on pay-per-view.

In a flurry of anniversary activity, the band also released a hits compilation last month with two new songs, "Doom and Gloom" and "One More Shot," and HBO premiered a new documentary on their formative years, "Crossfire Hurricane."

The Stones formed in London in 1962 to play Chicago blues, led at the time by the late Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart, along with Jagger and Richards, who'd met on a train platform a year earlier. Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts were quick additions.

Wyman, who left the band in 1992, was a guest at the London shows last month, as was Mick Taylor, the celebrated former Stones guitarist who left in 1974 — to be replaced by Wood, the newest Stone and the youngster at 65.

The inevitable questions have been swirling about the next step for the Stones: another huge global tour, on the scale of their last one, "A Bigger Bang," which earned more than $550 million between 2005 and 2007? Something a bit smaller? Or is this mini-tour, in the words of their new song, really "One Last Shot"?

The Stones won't say. But in an interview last month, they made clear they felt the 50th anniversary was something to be marked.

"I thought it would be kind of churlish not to do something," Jagger told The Associated Press. "Otherwise, the BBC would have done a rather dull film about the Rolling Stones."

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Associated Press writer David Bauder contributed to this report.

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New Taxes to Take Effect to Fund Health Care Law

WASHINGTON — For more than a year, politicians have been fighting over whether to raise taxes on high-income people. They rarely mention that affluent Americans will soon be hit with new taxes adopted as part of the 2010 health care law.

The new levies, which take effect in January, include an increase in the payroll tax on wages and a tax on investment income, including interest, dividends and capital gains. The Obama administration proposed rules to enforce both last week.

Affluent people are much more likely than low-income people to have health insurance, and now they will, in effect, help pay for coverage for many lower-income families. Among the most affluent fifth of households, those affected will see tax increases averaging $6,000 next year, economists estimate.

To help finance Medicare, employees and employers each now pay a hospital insurance tax equal to 1.45 percent on all wages. Starting in January, the health care law will require workers to pay an additional tax equal to 0.9 percent of any wages over $200,000 for single taxpayers and $250,000 for married couples filing jointly.

The new taxes on wages and investment income are expected to raise $318 billion over 10 years, or about half of all the new revenue collected under the health care law.

Ruth M. Wimer, a tax lawyer at McDermott Will & Emery, said the taxes came with “a shockingly inequitable marriage penalty.” If a single man and a single woman each earn $200,000, she said, neither would owe any additional Medicare payroll tax. But, she said, if they are married, they would owe $1,350. The extra tax is 0.9 percent of their earnings over the $250,000 threshold.

Since the creation of Social Security in the 1930s, payroll taxes have been levied on the wages of each worker as an individual. The new Medicare payroll is different. It will be imposed on the combined earnings of a married couple.

Employers are required to withhold Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes from wages paid to employees. But employers do not necessarily know how much a worker’s spouse earns and may not withhold enough to cover a couple’s Medicare tax liability. Indeed, the new rules say employers may disregard a spouse’s earnings in calculating how much to withhold.

Workers may thus owe more than the amounts withheld by their employers and may have to make up the difference when they file tax returns in April 2014. If they expect to owe additional tax, the government says, they should make estimated tax payments, starting in April 2013, or ask their employers to increase the amount withheld from each paycheck.

In the Affordable Care Act, the new tax on investment income is called an “unearned income Medicare contribution.” However, the law does not provide for the money to be deposited in a specific trust fund. It is added to the government’s general tax revenues and can be used for education, law enforcement, farm subsidies or other purposes.

Donald B. Marron Jr., the director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, said the burden of this tax would be borne by the most affluent taxpayers, with about 85 percent of the revenue coming from 1 percent of taxpayers. By contrast, the biggest potential beneficiaries of the law include people with modest incomes who will receive Medicaid coverage or federal subsidies to buy private insurance.

Wealthy people and their tax advisers are already looking for ways to minimize the impact of the investment tax — for example, by selling stocks and bonds this year to avoid the higher tax rates in 2013.

The new 3.8 percent tax applies to the net investment income of certain high-income taxpayers, those with modified adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 for single taxpayers and $250,000 for couples filing jointly.

David J. Kautter, the director of the Kogod Tax Center at American University, offered this example. In 2013, John earns $160,000, and his wife, Jane, earns $200,000. They have some investments, earn $5,000 in dividends and sell some long-held stock for a gain of $40,000, so their investment income is $45,000. They owe 3.8 percent of that amount, or $1,710, in the new investment tax. And they owe $990 in additional payroll tax.

The new tax on unearned income would come on top of other tax increases that might occur automatically next year if President Obama and Congress cannot reach an agreement in talks on the federal deficit and debt. If Congress does nothing, the tax rate on long-term capital gains, now 15 percent, will rise to 20 percent in January. Dividends will be treated as ordinary income and taxed at a maximum rate of 39.6 percent, up from the current 15 percent rate for most dividends.

Under another provision of the health care law, consumers may find it more difficult to obtain a tax break for medical expenses.

Taxpayers now can take an itemized deduction for unreimbursed medical expenses, to the extent that they exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income. The health care law will increase the threshold for most taxpayers to 10 percent next year. The increase is delayed to 2017 for people 65 and older.

In addition, workers face a new $2,500 limit on the amount they can contribute to flexible spending accounts used to pay medical expenses. Such accounts can benefit workers by allowing them to pay out-of-pocket expenses with pretax money.

Taken together, this provision and the change in the medical expense deduction are expected to raise more than $40 billion of revenue over 10 years.

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More young American adults are leaving the nest

WASHINGTON — After riding out the tough economy in their parents' basements, more young American adults are starting to break out on their own, pushing up the nation's mobility rate and giving an important boost to the housing market and the broader recovery.

Thanks to improving job prospects and super-low mortgage rates, adults in their 20s and early 30s are moving into their own apartments and buying homes in increasingly greater numbers, according to real estate experts and government statistics.

Census Bureau data show that the nation added more than 2 million households in the 12 months that ended March 31, about triple the annual average for the previous four years. Most of the gain came from baby boomers, but young adults are hitting the road as well.

The recession had knocked overall U.S. interstate migration to a post-World War II low, but last year the number of people ages 25 to 29 who moved across state lines reached its highest level in 13 years, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.

Frey called the shift significant: "They're leading indicators of migration coming for the broader population."

Laurie Brown, 26, said she was "completely broke" when she moved back into her parents' house near Tahoe City, Calif., in early March 2011. She came home with college loans to pay and other debt from bouncing from one place to the next.

"At first, I thought I'd be there only two months," she said.

But Brown soon realized just how tough the job market was. She had a bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, in business communications from George Fox University in Newburg, Ore., but the best she could find after returning home was busing and waiting tables at a restaurant in Tahoe City.

"I was really humbled," she said. "It made me feel like I wasn't an adult, like you're back in high school." Once a week, she got together for happy hour with three high-school buddies who were all in the same boat: college graduates living at home again. "We were kind of a support group," she said.

Then in late April, after finding full-time work at a nonprofit youth development and literacy program in the Tahoe area, Brown moved into an apartment about 15 minutes from her parents' home.

"In some ways it was a blessing in disguise," she said of her 14 months living with her mother and father. Although it was hard at times to adjust, she said, "it was really nice to spend time with my parents. I was able to reconnect with them."

During the recession and slow recovery, young people better educated than their parents' generation have struggled to compete with older workers in a job market with several unemployed people for every opening. That compares with about two people unemployed for every job opening before the 2007-09 recession.

Without sufficient incomes, they delayed getting married and having children, and simply stayed where they could pay little or no rent.

The result was that 2 million more adults ages 18 to 34 were living under their parents' roofs last year than four years earlier, according to an analysis of census data by Timothy Dunne, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

Over the last year, the jobless rate of those ages 25 to 34 has dropped a little more sharply than it has for the overall population. It fell to 7.9% in November from 9% at the start of the year, compared with a decline to 7.7% from 8.3% for all workers.

"With stronger economic fundamentals, the process will pick up speed," Dunne said. "I think there's pressure. Households can delay formation for only so long."

People tend to move long distances for new jobs.

A week ago, Kevin Ratz, 27, hitched a U-haul to his Ford pickup, loaded the trailer with furniture, stereo equipment and skis, and drove to Chicago.

Ratz left behind his parents' suburban Detroit home, where he had stayed in his childhood room for the last two years. The room was pretty much unchanged, with its sports-car posters on the wall and youth-hockey trophies lining the bookshelf.

One big reason he moved back in with his parents was the weak job market for young pilots. Although he had a degree in aviation from Western Michigan University and some experience as a flight instructor, he found few well-paying openings in the field.

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Lebanese men 'lost' to Syria deepen the divide in Tripoli

TRIPOLI, Lebanon — Late that evening, Abdel Hakim Ibrahim finally confirmed his father's worst fear: He had left for Syria.

"I've crossed the border: Please forgive me," he said in a text message as midnight approached. "God be with you."

That was the last his family heard from Ibrahim, 19, a student described as introverted and pious.

Ibrahim is among Lebanon's lost young men — 21 who reportedly disappeared into neighboring Syria one evening late last month and walked straight into a Syrian army ambush. He and the others are believed to have been killed, though there has been no official confirmation of their fate.

The incident has sparked a new spasm of sectarian bloodletting in this deeply divided northern Lebanese city, where the war in Syria has revived smoldering animosities. Some in the Sunni Muslim majority view the slayings as cold-blooded murder — many suspect the men were betrayed — and blame the city's Alawite minority, members of the same sect as Syrian President Bashar Assad.

All of the victims were Sunni. Alawite leaders have disavowed any responsibility.

On Dec. 2, Syrian state television aired video of blood-streaked bodies described as those of some of the 21 Lebanese "terrorists" who, the report said, had infiltrated Syria and been cut down. They intended to join the multitudes of foreign militants seeking to overthrow Assad, according to the official Syrian account.

But some families of the missing here insist that their sons were on a humanitarian mission, not a militant one. The men were unarmed when they were killed, say the distraught relatives. Some have recognized their sons in the official Syrian video and other images that have emerged of the dead.

"Abdel Hakim didn't know anything about fighting," Henad Hassan Ali, the mother of Ibrahim, said in an interview Friday at her home in Tripoli's hillside Mankoubin district, where five of the missing men resided. "He had no training. He didn't know about weapons. He hated even to get a bloody nose."

Tripoli, Lebanon's second city, has taken on the appearance of a war zone, a kind of mirror image of strife-torn Syria. Lebanese army tanks rumble down streets, and checkpoints block intersections. Sniper rounds and grenade explosions sound in the distance. A trip to Mankoubin involves multiple detours to avoid sniper fire.

At least 13 people have been reported killed and scores wounded this week in the latest outbreak of violence between rival neighborhoods in Tripoli that are on different sides of the Syrian conflict. Sunni gunmen have been exchanging fire with their counterparts in Jabal Mohsen, an Alawite bastion.

Lebanese and Syrian authorities are negotiating the return of the young men's bodies to Lebanon. The first remains may be repatriated Saturday, beginning what is likely to be a series of incendiary funerals.

"Tripoli is boiling," said one veteran of this city's seemingly endless sectarian conflicts.

It is no secret that Lebanese and other fighters have, for more than a year, been slipping into Syria from northern Lebanon, joining Sunni-dominated rebel units. Sympathy for the rebel cause is prevalent in Sunni communities here; the red, green, and black rebel tricolor is hoisted from homes and scrawled on walls. Weapons have headed north, and a steady flow of wounded and exhausted rebel fighters has come south for medical treatment and rest.

In April, one of Lebanon's most wanted men — Abdel Ghani Jawhar, a master bomb maker who headed the Al Qaeda-inspired Fatah Islam group — was reported killed in Syria in clashes with Syrian troops.

The smuggling routes between the two nations are well-established and heavily used. How, then, did the young men wander into an ambush? Family members suspect that the whole operation was a setup, or that the men were betrayed.

"The Syrians should have surrounded them and arrested them, interrogated them," said Ibrahim's mother, who added that she still holds out faint hope her son may be alive. "There was no need to kill them."

Her son's image has not been seen among the photos of the dead.

Some families have called for revenge. Ibrahim's father said he had no doubt what he would do were his son's killers to be brought to him. "I would kill them," he said.

His wife disagreed. "Only God has the right to take a life," said the mother of 10, speaking as her other children watched and listened in the family's simple home, where there has been no running water or electricity for 10 days — part of a general pattern of government abandonment, according to residents. "God did not tell us to kill Christians or Alawites or Muslims."

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Former IndyMac execs told to pay FDIC $169 million

Three former IndyMac Bank executives must pay the government $169 million for their role in the Pasadena lender's collapse, delivering a victory to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in its efforts to recover losses from the financial crisis.

In verdicts delivered Friday, jurors in federal court in Los Angeles agreed with the government's claim that the executives, who ran a construction-lending division at IndyMac, had been negligent in approving 23 loans to developers and homebuilders who never repaid them.

Lawyers for the FDIC had argued that the executives — Scott Van Dellen, Richard Koon and Kenneth Shellem — violated bank safety standards in their eagerness to reap bonuses for generating higher volumes of the development and construction loans.

"The jurors gave us everything we asked for," said Thomas D. Long, an attorney from the outside law firm, Nossaman LLP, that represented the FDIC. "We are proud of and grateful to the jury for holding the bankers accountable and issuing the right judgment in a very important case related to the nation's financial crisis."

The FDIC and defense attorney Damian Martinez did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Martinez had argued that the defendants could not have foreseen the huge downturn in the housing market that punished IndyMac and other mortgage and construction lenders.

While not the largest bank to fail in recent years, IndyMac was the costliest to the nation's deposit insurance fund, with a loss of $13 billion. Socked by enormous losses, especially on home loans made with little verification of borrowers' incomes, it failed after a run on its deposits in 2008.

The FDIC victory contrasts with mixed results obtained by the Securities and Exchange Commission in its pursuit of damages against financial executives accused of contributing to the financial crisis.

In one setback involving wide-ranging civil fraud claims against former IndyMac Chairman Michael Perry, a federal judge in Los Angeles tossed out nearly the entire SEC lawsuit. Perry settled the single remaining negligence claim in October for $80,000.

"The contrast is striking," said John C. Coffee, a Columbia law school expert in fraud claims, contending that the SEC's own legal staff is weak. "If you want a large recovery, you need a private law firm that can staff the case with the bodies that it takes."

The FDIC lawsuit, filed in July 2010, went to trial in mid-November. It was the first of 39 suits the FDIC has filed against 308 insiders at banks that have failed in the five years since the subprime mortgage meltdown triggered the Great Recession.

The agency has settled before trial with some bank officers and directors.

Those include a settlement of up to $64 million with directors and officers of Washington Mutual Bank, the giant Seattle savings and loan whose collapse in 2008 was by far the biggest bank failure in U.S. history, and another $125 million settlement with the parent company, Washington Mutual Inc.

An FDIC lawsuit blaming Perry for the thrift's collapse is pending. A spokesman for the agency said the FDIC made a previously undisclosed settlement of $1.4 million with Richard Wohl, IndyMac's former president, most of it paid by officers and directors insurance.

It was unclear how much of the award Friday would be paid. The FDIC had hoped to recover funds from $80 million in insurance policies covering civil wrongdoing by IndyMac officers and directors, but another federal judge has ruled that insurance can't be tapped in this case. The FDIC has appealed that ruling.

scott.reckard@latimes.com

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Suspect in Northridge killings had violated probation

The man accused of killing four people at a Northridge home over the weekend violated his probation two months before the mass killing but managed to avoid being sent back to prison, interviews and records show.

Los Angeles County probation officials recommended at a September sentencing hearing that the man serve prison time after he was arrested on a drug possession charge.

Instead, Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Jessica Silvers ordered Ka Pasasouk to attend a drug treatment program and be released to the oversight of the Probation Department, according to court records and law enforcement officials.

But the Probation Department argued that Pasasouk's extensive criminal record — including convictions for assault and robbery — warranted prison time.

"The defendant is an ineligible and unsuitable candidate for continued community supervision," the probation report stated. "It is recommended that probation be denied and the defendant be sentenced to state prison."

In an interview Thursday, Reaver Bingham, Los Angeles County deputy chief of adult field services, said his department's recommendation was also based on the fact that Pasasouk did not report to his probation officer in one instance before the September hearing. He missed a second appointment in November, Bingham said.

At the time of the slayings, probation officials were preparing a warrant for his arrest.

Court spokesman Mary Hearn said Thursday that all judges are forbidden by law to comment on pending cases and that Silvers would not discuss the case.

Pasasouk is accused of fatally shooting four people early Sunday outside a home in the 17400 block of Devonshire Street in Northridge. Three of the victims were wearing hooded sweat shirts and were about two feet apart with at least one bullet wound each to the head.

The fourth victim was farther away and appeared as if he was trying to run to the backyard when he was shot. He had at least one gunshot wound, according to the source.

Los Angeles County coroner's officials identified the dead as Amanda Ghossein, 24, of Monterey Park; Jennifer Kim, 26, of Montebello; Robert Calabia, 34, of Los Angeles; and Teofilo Navales, 49, of Castaic.

Coroner's spokesman Ed Winter said Los Angeles police had placed a security hold on any additional information about the deaths, and police have not commented on a motive.

But law enforcement sources told The Times that the killings appeared to stem from a dispute over personal property, including a computer. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing, said detectives were surprised that the dispute would have led to multiple deaths.

The suspects — Pasasouk, 31, of Los Angeles; Howard Alcantara, 30, of Glendale; Donna Rabulan, 30, of Los Angeles; and Christina Neal, 33, of Los Angeles — appeared before Judge Joe M. Bonaventure in Las Vegas on Thursday and waived their extradition rights.

It was not clear when the suspects would be moved. Los Angeles prosecutors have yet to file charges in the case.

Court records show that Pasasouk has an extensive criminal record. Last year, he pleaded no contest to unlawful taking of a vehicle and was sentenced to state prison (he was on probation for that offense at the time of the killings). In 2006, he pleaded guilty to second-degree robbery and assault likely to produce great bodily injury and sentenced to state prison. In 2004, he pleaded guilty and no contest in separate cases again involving unlawful taking of a vehicle.

At the September court hearing, Pasasouk pleaded no contest to the drug possession charge. At a follow-up hearing in November, Pasasouk admitted that he had failed to complete required drug treatment program. Another progress report was scheduled for January. Details of the hearings were first reported by the Los Angeles Daily News.

In late November, Pasasouk failed to appear for a meeting with his probation officer. Bingham said at that point, his department began looking for him and processing an arrest warrant.

He added that the department was now "looking at every aspect of this case relative to our supervision with a view toward determining if there is anything that needs to be done differently."

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

frank.shyong@latimes.com

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George Zimmerman sues NBC and reporters

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — George Zimmerman sued NBC on Thursday, claiming he was defamed when the network edited his 911 call to police after the shooting of Trayvon Martin to make it sound like he was racist.

The former neighborhood watch volunteer filed the lawsuit seeking an undisclosed amount of money in Seminole County, outside Orlando. Also named in the complaint were three reporters covering the story for NBC or an NBC-owned television station.

The complaint said the airing of the edited call has inflicted emotional distress on Zimmerman, making him fear for his life and causing him to suffer nausea, insomnia and anxiety.

The lawsuit claims NBC edited his phone call to a dispatcher in February. In the call, Zimmerman describes following Martin in the gated community where he lived, just moments before he fatally shot the 17-year-old teen during a confrontation.

"NBC saw the death of Trayvon Martin not as a tragedy but as an opportunity to increase ratings, and so set about to create a myth that George Zimmerman was a racist and predatory villain," the lawsuit claims.

NBC spokeswoman Kathy Kelly-Brown said the network strongly disagreed with the accusations made in the complaint.

"There was no intent to portray Mr. Zimmerman unfairly," she said. "We intend to vigorously defend our position in court."

Three employees of the network or its Miami affiliate lost their jobs because of the changes.

Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder but has pleaded not guilty, claiming self-defense under Florida's "stand your ground law."

The call viewers heard was trimmed to suggest that Zimmerman volunteered to police, with no prompting, that Martin was black: "This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black."

But the portion of the tape that was deleted had the 911 dispatcher asking Zimmerman if the person who had raised his suspicion was "black, white or Hispanic," to which Zimmerman responded, "He looks black."

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Drug Makers Challenge Pill Disposal Law in California

Brand name drug makers and their generic counterparts rarely find themselves on the same side of an issue, but now they are making an exception. They have teamed up to fight a local law in California, the first in the nation, that makes them responsible for running — and paying for — a program that would allow consumers to turn in unused medicines for proper disposal.

Such so-called drug take-back programs are gaining in popularity because of a growing realization that those leftover pills in your medicine cabinet are a potential threat to public health and the environment.

Small children might accidentally swallow them and teenagers will experiment with them, advocates of the laws say. Prescription drug abusers can, and are, breaking into homes in search of them. Unused pills are sometimes flushed down the toilet, so pharmaceuticals are now polluting waterways and even drinking water. One study found the antidepressant Prozac in the brains of fish.

Most such take-back programs are run by local or other government agencies. But increasingly there are calls to make the pharmaceutical industry pay.

“We feel the industry that profits from the sales of these products should have the financial responsibility for proper management and disposal,” said Miriam Gordon, California director of Clean Water Action, an advocacy group.

In July, Alameda County, Calif., which includes Oakland and Berkeley, became the first locality to enact such a requirement. Drug companies have to submit plans for accomplishing it by July 1, 2013.

But the industry plans to file a lawsuit in United States District Court in Oakland on Friday, hoping to have the law struck down. The suit is being filed by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, which represents brand-name drug companies, the Generic Pharmaceutical Association and the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

James M. Spears, general counsel of PhRMA, said the Alameda ordinance violated the Constitution in that a local government was interfering with interstate commerce, a right reserved for Congress.

“They are telling a company in New Jersey that you have to come in and design and implement and pay for a municipal service in California,” he said in an interview.

“This program is one where the cost is shifted to companies and individuals who are not located in Alameda County and who won’t be served by it.”

Mr. Spears, who is known as Mit, said that the program would cost millions of dollars a year to run and that pharmaceutical companies were “not in the waste disposal business.” He said it would be best left to sanitation departments and law enforcement agencies, which must be involved if narcotics, like pain pills, were to be transported.

Nathan A. Miley, the president of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and the champion of the legislation, said late Thursday, “It’s just unfortunate that PhRMA would fight this because it would be pennies for them.”

“We will win legally and will win in the court of public opinion as well,” Mr. Miley said.

The battle in Alameda could set the direction for other states and localities. Legislators in seven states have introduced bills to require drug companies to pay for take-back programs in the last few years, said Scott Cassel, founder and chief executive of the Product Stewardship Institute, a nonprofit group that advocates such programs. But none of the bills have passed.

Mr. Cassel said about 70 similar “extended producer responsibility” laws have been enacted in 32 states for other products, like electronic devices, mercury-containing thermometers, fluorescent lamps, paint and batteries. He said he was not aware that any had been struck down on constitutional grounds.

The pharmaceutical industry already pays for take-back programs in some other countries. The law in Alameda is modeled partly on the system in British Columbia and two other Canadian provinces. There, the industry formed the Post-Consumer Pharmaceutical Stewardship Association, which runs the programs.

Consumers can take unused drugs back to pharmacies, from which they are periodically collected. Drug companies pay for the program in proportion to their market share, said Ginette Vanasse, executive director of the association. The program for British Columbia, with a population over four million, costs about $500,000 a year, she said.

The extent of the problem of unused pills and how best to handle them are matters of debate.

The United States Geological Survey has found various drugs, including antidepressants, antibiotics, heart medicines and hormones, in waterways it has sampled. Sewage treatment plants and drinking water treatment plants are not meant to remove pharmaceuticals.

Still, it is not known what effect the chemicals might have. “It’s a hard-to-pin-down problem,” said Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst at the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group. It is thought that trace amounts in drinking water are probably not harmful. But larger amounts found in wastewater could be having an impact on wildlife.

It is also unclear whether take-back programs will help. Experts generally agree that the bigger source of pollution is urine and feces containing the remnants of drugs that are ingested, not the unused pills flushed down the toilet.

PhRMA also argues that take-back programs will not help much with the problem of drug abuse either. Mr. Spears said that it was better to have consumers tie up unused pills in a plastic bag and throw them in the trash. That is more effective, he said, because people would not have to travel to a collection point. Such collection points could become targets for thieves and drug abusers.

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