New chief of California's prisons named

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday named a vocal advocate of shorter sentences and community treatment to run the state's crowded and troubled prison system.

Brown announced the selection of Jeffrey Beard, 65, the retired former Pennsylvania prisons chief, to succeed Matthew Cate, who stepped down last month after four years as secretary of corrections in California. Cate is now leader of the California State Assn. of Counties.

Beard, whose appointment is subject to Senate confirmation, spent nearly four decades in corrections in Pennsylvania, starting as a counselor and advancing to prison warden, eventually spending nine years as department head. He completed an expansion of that state's prison system, including the addition of 32,000 inmate beds.

He left in 2010, advocating for laws that put more criminals into work-treatment programs instead of prisons, telling lawmakers that an "over-reliance" on locking up non-serious offenders did little to improve public safety.

Though an official start date was not announced, Beard joins Brown's administration at a critical time. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has until Jan. 7 to produce a plan for reducing prison crowding or face the renewed threat of federal orders to release inmates early.

In addition, a federal receiver is attempting to negotiate terms for California to resume control over the delivery of healthcare to inmates. And the parole and healthcare divisions are laying off staff.

In announcing the appointment, Brown said Beard "has arrived at the right time to take the next steps in returning California's parole and correctional institutions to their former luster."

Beard's successor in Pennsylvania says Beard will fit right in.

"I think you guys hit a home run," said Pennsylvania Corrections Secretary John Wetzel.

Wetzel, who was appointed eight months after Beard retired, said the former director weighed in frequently with crucial advice and provided input on new legislation intended to reduce prison crowding in that state and on expanding community treatment and diversion programs.

In 2008, Beard lent support to a proposal to ease county jail crowding by sending felons serving more than two years to state prison. But it allowed for medical release and early release of nonviolent offenders who completed treatment and education programs.

Andy Hoover, legislative director for the Pennsylvania branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Beard played an active role in developing corrections policies and promoting them before the Legislature.

But Beard has critics as well, some of whom hold him responsible for expanding the use of solitary confinement in Pennsylvania and for a two-month moratorium on parole releases after the murders of two Philadelphia police officers. The moratorium caused such overcrowding that Pennsylvania began sending inmates to serve time in other states.

Hoover said Beard was caught in a political bind, carrying out policies he had not set. "He was in an unfortunate position," Hoover said. "It was very much out of his hands."

Corrections historian Dan Berger, who was working on his doctoral degree at the University of Pennsylvania at the time, disagrees.

"Beard does not have a good reputation on health and human rights in prison," Berger said. "He gives more rhetoric to sentencing reform than believes it."

After retiring in 2010, Beard joined Pennsylvania State University's Justice Center for Research, and he has worked as a private consultant to a number of states, including California. He advised Sacramento on litigation over the care and housing of mentally ill offenders and has toured California prisons.

Beard is not shy about voicing opinions on where the criminal justice system fails. In 2010, he told Pennsylvania lawmakers that heavy reliance on incarceration of low-level offenders "has proven to have limited value in maintaining public safety."

"We must stop treating all offenders the same and move away from the 'get tough on crime' philosophy of locking up less serious offenders for longer periods of time," he told them.

In a 2005 commentary in an industry publication, Beard called for a rethinking of "who really belongs in prison" and an end to the then-popular "scared straight" programs he felt increased the likelihood that freed inmates would commit future crimes. "We must have the will to put an end to feel-good and/or publicly popular programs that simply do not work," Beard wrote.

Corrections officials said Beard was unavailable Wednesday but released a single statement quoting the incoming secretary as saying he was "honored" to be appointed "for this important public safety position."

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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Kodak in $525 million patent deal, eyes bankruptcy end

(Reuters) – Eastman Kodak Co agreed to sell its digital imaging patents for about $ 525 million, a key step to bringing the photography pioneer out of bankruptcy in the first half of 2013.

The deal for the 1,100 patents allows Kodak to fulfill a condition for securing $ 830 million in financing.

The patent deal was reached with a consortium led by Intellectual Ventures and RPX Corp, and which includes some of the world’s biggest technology companies, which will license or acquire the patents.

Those companies are Adobe Systems Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Facebook Inc, Fujifilm, Google Inc, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, HTC Corp, Microsoft Corp, Research In Motion Ltd, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Shutterfly Inc, according to court documents.

Kodak still must sell its personalized and document-imaging businesses as part of the financing package, and also has to resolve its UK pension obligation.

Kodak said the patent deal puts it on a path to emerge from Chapter 11 in the first half of 2013.

“Our progress has accelerated over the past several weeks as we prepare to emerge as a strong, sustainable company,” said Antonio Perez, chairman and chief executive of the Rochester, New York-based company.

The patent portfolio was expected to be a major asset for Kodak when it filed for bankruptcy in January. An outside firm had estimated the patents could be worth as much as $ 2.6 billion.

Kodak’s patents hit the market as intellectual property values have soared and technology companies have plowed money into patent-related litigation.

For example, last year Nortel Networks sold 6,000 wireless patents in a bankruptcy auction for $ 4.5 billion and earlier this year Google spent $ 12.5 billion for patent-rich Motorola Mobility.

But Kodak’s patent auction dragged on beyond the initial expectation that it would be wrapped up in August. One patent specialist blamed those early, overly optimistic valuations, which he said encouraged Kodak’s team to set their sights too high.

“Unfortunately (Kodak management) was misled into thinking it was worth billions of dollars and it wasn’t,” said Alex Poltorak, chairman of General Patent Corp, a patent licensing firm. “I think they sold them at a very good price.”

He said after Google acquired Motorola, the search engine company no longer needed patents at any price, deflating the intellectual property market.

Kodak traces its roots to the 19th century and invented the handheld camera. But it has been unable to successfully shift to digital imaging.

It will likely be a different company when it exits bankruptcy, out of the consumer business and focused instead on providing products and services to the commercial imaging market.

The patent sale is subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

The Kodak bankruptcy case is in Re: Eastman Kodak Co. et al, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-10202.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware and Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore; Editing by Nick Zieminski,; John Wallace and Peter Galloway)

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Miss USA Olivia Culpo is crowned Miss Universe

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A 20-year-old beauty queen from Rhode Island was crowned the new Miss Universe on Wednesday, beating out 88 other women during a televised competition at the Planet Hollywood casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

Olivia Culpo took the crown from Leila Lopes of Angola after strutting in a purple and blue bikini and a red velvet gown.

In the final stages of the competition, she answered a question about her regrets by saying she wished she hadn't picked on her siblings.

Miss Philippines, Janine Tugonon, came in second, while Miss Venezuela, Irene Sofia Esser Quintero, placed third.

Contestants from 89 countries on six continents spent the past two weeks in Sin City, where they posed in hardhats at a hotel groundbreaking, took a painting lesson, and pranked hotel guests by hiding in their rooms.

The beauty queens took the stage in tight, pleated mini-dresses with glittering sequin bodices and sky high platform shoes, strutting to the hit "Live While We're Young," by English-Irish boy band One Direction.

Later in the two-hour show, they walked a stage decked with white Christmas trees and snow flurry effects, throwing off gauzy white wraps to show off tie-dye bikinis in purples, pinks and blues.

For the third elimination round, they strutted in evening gowns as band Train and Australian singer Timomatic performed. Miss Venezuela's straight-cut, emerald-colored gown was perhaps the most distinct, its long sleeves virtually invisible but for the navy blue, garland-like trim encircling them. Miss USA's red velvet number was full-skirted and wintery, except for the deep, plunging neckline. Miss Australia's gown evoked a wedding dress — pure white with sparkles at the waist and a corset-style bodice.

Culpo, from Rhode Island, was trying to end a long losing spell for the U.S. in the competition. An American had not won the right to be called Miss Universe since Brook Lee won the title in 1997.

The contestants voted to give the Miss Congeniality crown to Miss Guatemala.

The pageant aired live on NBC and was streamed to more than 100 countries.

Andy Cohen of the Bravo network and Giuliana Rancic of E! News returned to host the pageant, which was back in Las Vegas after being held in Sao Paulo last year.

The panel of 10 judges included singer Cee Lo Green, "Iron Chef" star Masaharu Morimoto and Pablo Sandoval of the San Francisco Giants.

Asked on the red carpet whether he found playing in the World Series or judging the beauty pageant to be more difficult, Sandoval said both were hard.

Angola sported a low-cut sequined gown and said she expected this night to be the worst part of her year. The 2011 winner offered some advice to the women vying for her crown.

"Be calm and smile," she said. "Smiling helps a lot. Even though they are not relaxed, the judges will think that they are."

Sharply dressed women and men, including a large contingent from South America, held banners and cheered on their favorite contestants.

"I've seen them and they are absolutely gorgeous," said Donald Trump, a co-owner of the Miss Universe Organization. "They're very nervous and they should be. It's a billion people (watching)."

Organizers had considered holding the 61st annual Miss Universe in the popular Dominican Republic tourist city of Punta Cana, but Miss Universe Organization President Paula Shugart said that country's financial crisis proved to be too much of an obstacle.

Contestants in the pageant cannot have been married or have children. They must be younger than 27 and older than 18 by Feb. 1 of the competition year.

The winner of the crown receives an undisclosed salary, a wardrobe fit for a queen, a limitless supply of beauty products, and a luxury apartment in New York City.

The pageant started as a local revue in Long Beach, Calif., organized by Catalina Swimwear. It is not affiliated with the Miss America pageant and unlike that contest, does not include a talent section.

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U.N. Suspends Polio Campaign in Pakistan After Killings of Workers

B.K. Bangash/Associated Press

A Pakistani woman administered polio vaccine to an infant on Wednesday in the slums of Islamabad. Militants have killed eight polio workers over three days.

LAHORE, Pakistan — The front-line heroes of Pakistan’s war on polio are its volunteers: young women who tread fearlessly from door to door, in slums and highland villages, administering precious drops of vaccine to children in places where their immunization campaign is often viewed with suspicion.

Now, those workers have become quarry. After militants stalked and killed eight of them over the course of a three-day, nationwide vaccination drive, the United Nations suspended its anti-polio work in Pakistan on Wednesday, and one of Pakistan’s most crucial public health campaigns has been plunged into crisis.

The World Health Organization and Unicef ordered their staff members off the streets, while government officials reported that some polio volunteers — especially women — were afraid to show up for work.

At the ground level, it is those female health workers who are essential, allowed privileged entrance into private homes to meet and help children in situations denied to men because of conservative rural culture. “They are on the front line; they are the backbone,” said Imtiaz Ali Shah, a polio coordinator in Peshawar.

The killings started in the port city of Karachi on Monday, the first day of a vaccination drive aimed at the worst affected areas, with the shooting of a male health worker. On Tuesday four female polio workers were killed, all gunned down by men on motorcycles in what appeared to be closely coordinated attacks.

The hit jobs then moved to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, which, along with the adjoining tribal belt, constitutes Pakistan’s main reservoir of new polio infections. The first victim there was one of two sisters who had volunteered as polio vaccinators. Men on motorcycles shadowed them as they walked from house to house. Once the sisters entered a quiet street, the gunmen opened fire. One of the sisters, Farzana, died instantly; the other was uninjured.

On Wednesday, a man working on the polio campaign was shot dead as he made a chalk mark on the door of a house in a suburb of Peshawar. Later, a female health supervisor in Charsadda, 15 miles to the north, was shot dead in a car she shared with her cousin.

Yet again, Pakistani militants are making a point of attacking women who stand for something larger. In October, it was Malala Yousafzai, a schoolgirl advocate for education who was gunned down by a Pakistani Taliban attacker in the Swat Valley. She was grievously wounded, and the militants vowed they would try again until they had killed her. The result was a tidal wave of public anger that clearly unsettled the Pakistani Taliban.

In singling out the core workers in one of Pakistan’s most crucial public health initiatives, militants seem to have resolved to harden their stance against immunization drives, and declared anew that they consider women to be legitimate targets. Until this week, vaccinators had never been targeted with such violence in such numbers.

Government officials in Peshawar said that they believe a Taliban faction in Mohmand, a tribal area near Peshawar, was behind at least some of the shootings. Still, the Pakistani Taliban have been uncharacteristically silent about the attacks, with no official claims of responsibility. In staying quiet, the militants may be trying to blunt any public backlash like the huge demonstrations over the attack on Ms. Yousafzai.

Female polio workers here make for easy targets. They wear no uniform but are readily recognizable, with clipboards and refrigerated vaccine boxes, walking door to door. They work in pairs — including at least one woman — and are paid just over $2.50 a day. Most days one team can vaccinate 150 to 200 children.

Faced with suspicious or recalcitrant parents, their only weapon is reassurance: a gentle pat on the hand, a shared cup of tea, an offer to seek religious assurances from a pro-vaccine cleric. “The whole program is dependent on them,” said Mr. Shah, in Peshawar. “If they do good work, and talk well to the parents, then they will vaccinate the children.”

That has happened with increasing frequency in Pakistan over the past year. A concerted immunization drive, involving up to 225,000 vaccination workers, drove the number of newly infected polio victims down to 52. Several high-profile groups shouldered the program forward — at the global level, donors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations and Rotary International; and at the national level, President Asif Ali Zardari and his daughter Aseefa, who have made polio eradication a “personal mission.”

On a global scale, setbacks are not unusual in polio vaccination campaigns, which, by dint of their massive scale and need to reach deep inside conservative societies, end up grappling with more than just medical challenges. In other campaigns in Africa and South Asia, vaccinators have grappled with natural disaster, virulent opposition from conservative clerics and sudden outbreaks of mysterious strains of the disease.

Declan Walsh reported from Lahore, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.

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UBS to pay $1.5 billion to settle Libor charges

UBS has agreed to pay a fine of $1.5 billion to authorities and plead guilty to a felony count of wire fraud, the most recent developments in a far-reaching probe into how banks manipulated interest rates leading up to the financial crisis.

Two former traders were also charged with conspiracy in a complaint unsealed Wednesday, the first people charged criminally in the Libor scandal.

"We cannot and we will not tolerate misconduct on Wall Street of the kind admitted to by UBS today and by Barclays last June," said Assistant Atty. Gen. Lanny Breuer, head of the criminal division. In June, Barclays was the first bank to settle with authorities, paying $450 million.

The fine was one of the biggest leveled against a financial institution by American and British authorities, just short of the $1.9-billion fine HSBC agreed to pay last week over money laundering allegations.

The charges relate to the ways traders leaned on banks to manipulate the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, to benefit their own trading positions.

Officials said that from 2006 through 2009 UBS traders placed bets on the movement of Libor and manipulated the rate, which is used as a benchmark to set interest rates for many mortgages, credit cards and other consumer lending instruments. The traders profited by knowing which way the Libor would move.

In coming months, the probe probably will expand to include other banks that help determine the Libor, analysts say. But it's the criminal charges that turned some heads on Wall Street on Wednesday.

The plea agreement on wire fraud charges by a UBS subsidiary in Japan, which included a $100-million fine, marks the first time since 2005 that a major financial institution has pleaded guilty to criminal charges, the Justice Department said.

"For a bank to admit to criminality is kind of mind-blowing," said Peter Shapiro, managing director of Swap Financial Group in South Orange, N.J. "Obviously, they didn't do that easily — that was something that must have been a big priority of enforcement agencies."

Enforcement agencies have been feeling some pressure to level blame on financial institutions in the wake of the financial crisis, Shapiro said. No senior financial executives have served jail time for their roles in the financial crisis.

"Both the regulators and enforcement agencies feel somewhat beleaguered by the repeated assertions that they failed to deliver enough heads on a plate as a response to the financial crisis," he said.

U.S. officials also announced criminal charges against two former senior traders for UBS in connection with the scandal. Tom Alexander William Hayes, 33, of Britain, was charged with conspiracy and wire fraud, and Roger Darin, 41, of Switzerland, was charged with conspiracy. Both remain abroad, but the Justice Department will try to extradite them.

"The motivation here was nothing short of sheer greed, and the scheme was nothing short of a shell game, a Wall Street version of three-card monte," said Kevin Perkins, associate director of the FBI, which helped investigate the case.

More criminal charges at other banks could follow, said Anthony Sabino, professor of law at the Tobin College of Business at St. John's University.

"Once you start to round up some accused bad guys, that leads to more people being rounded up," he said. "This is a vast conspiracy among a multitude of banks, which therefore implicates a multitude of individuals."

Much of the activity took place at UBS Japan Securities Co., where Hayes was a senior trader. The Justice Department released internal UBS messages in which Hayes and others talked about their alleged manipulation.

In one from November 2006, Hayes told a UBS employee who submitted rate information for the Libor that he and Darin "skew the Libors a bit" and then said he needed the six-month rate to stay high for three days.

UBS traders were often colorful and emphatic in their pleadings, according to documents released by Britain's Financial Services Authority. One wrote, "I need you to keep it as low as possible.... If you do that, I'll pay you, you know, $50,000, $100,000, whatever you want."

The UBS fine was larger than that leveled on Barclays earlier in the year because UBS' misconduct was "considerably more serious than Barclays' because it was more widespread within the firm," the Financial Services Authority said. At least 45 individuals at UBS were involved in or aware of the rate-fixing practice.

UBS said that it had fully cooperated with authorities and that the interest-rate manipulations were the isolated actions of certain employees.

"Their misconduct does not reflect the values of UBS nor the high ethical standards to which we hold every employee," UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti said in a statement.

Analysts say that there's still potential for significant civil suits against UBS and other banks, which could be more damaging than the fines levied against them. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, an equity research firm, estimated in July that potential industry damages could reach $35 billion.

Those estimates were validated Wednesday when the Inspector General for the Federal Housing Finance Agency estimated that government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may have lost a combined $3 billion because of reduced interest payments on securities and other holdings. Officials at FHFA, which regulates Fannie and Freddie, have not confirmed the estimate but are evaluating potential issues involved with the Libor manipulation.

There are barriers to further lawsuits — the burden of proof will be high, analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said. To move forward with civil suits, plaintiffs would have to prove that traders were conspiring, said John C. Coffee, a Columbia Law School expert in corporate fraud.

"But that said, the size of the potential liability is mushrooming," he said.

Times reporter E. Scott Reckard contributed to this report. Semuels reported from Los Angeles and Puzzanghera from Washington.

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California senators propose tighter gun laws after Newtown deaths

SACRAMENTO — A group of California lawmakers responded Tuesday to the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., with a series of proposals to further control access to weapons, including mandatory permits with fees and background checks for anyone who wants to buy bullets.

Tougher gun permit and safety measures, as well as a plan to close a loophole in the state's assault weapons ban, were also proposed.

California has been fighting in court for years with the National Rifle Assn. and other groups over an earlier, landmark law to restrict handgun ammunition sales. The state has been unable to enforce the law since 2010 because of the litigation.

"For too long, too much ground has been ceded in this debate about reasonable gun and ammunition control," said Sen. Kevin De Leon, chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

The Democrat from Los Angeles is leading the effort for new regulations on ammunition sales, which he said Tuesday would be dedicated to those killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. "We must not capitulate any longer."

He said his new proposal addresses concerns raised by the courts that the existing law does not clearly define what constitutes handgun ammunition.

The rules proposed by De Leon would apply to ammunition for all guns.

California lawmakers have repeatedly implemented strict rules on gun ownership despite the state's large population of hunters and recreational shooters, and constant wrangling with the NRA.

The nonprofit Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which lobbies for restrictions on firearm ownership, ranks California No. 1 among states.

Bans on assault weapons and ammunition clips holding more than 10 rounds, as well as a strong background check requirement, retention of records on gun buyers and a 10-day waiting period for purchasing firearms helped earn California the distinction.

De Leon wants an annual permit fee of up to $50 to pay for felony and mental illness background checks. Those buying ammunition on the Internet would have to collect the bullets at a gun store, where the permit would be required.

C.D. Michel, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the California Rifle and Pistol Assn. Foundation — the NRA's California affiliate — said Tuesday that the senator's latest proposal might also be illegal.

"You can't tax the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right," he said.

Others questioned the effectiveness of the proposed law.

"Anybody who wants to can drive to Reno or Las Vegas or Oregon and buy all the ammunition they want and bring it back to California," said Sam Paredes, executive director of the advocacy group Gun Owners of California.

Gov. Jerry Brown has not always embraced anti-gun legislation. He vetoed a measure lawmakers passed last year aimed at addressing the legal issues bedeviling the existing restrictions on ammunition purchases.

"Let's keep our powder dry … until the court case runs its course," Brown wrote in his veto message.

De Leon said the politics of such bills had changed with the Connecticut shooting.

"They were mowed down," he said of the Newtown children. "I think that viscerally it will give a lot of political officials around the country the political courage to do the right thing."

Los Angeles and Sacramento require fingerprinting of ammunition buyers. The Sacramento Police Department found that 349 felons and other prohibited buyers purchased ammunition in that city from 2008 to 2011. Officers were able to go after the violators.

State Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) this week proposed three gun-control bills, including one prohibiting devices on semiautomatic weapons that allow them to be easily reloaded with multiple rounds of ammunition.

He also proposed requiring yearly registration and background checks for gun ownership, rather than just at the time of purchase. Yee also proposed that all guns have a locked trigger and be properly stored in a lock box when not in use.

Republican Sen. Ted Gaines of Roseville announced Tuesday his proposal to permanently ban from owning guns mentally ill people whom a court deems to be a danger to others.

Gaines said current law allowed those people to regain the right to possess firearms if they completed treatment.

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

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Nielsen to buy Arbitron for about $1.26B

NEW YORK (AP) — Nielsen, the dominant source of TV ratings, on Tuesday said it had agreed to buy Arbitron for about $ 1.26 billion to expand into radio measurement.

Arbitron pays 70,000 people to carry around gadgets that register what stations they’re listening to. Since Nielsen also collects cash register data, CEO David Calhoun said buying Arbitron will let Nielsen be a one-stop shop for advertisers who want to know how the radio advertising they buy affects product sales.

The acquisition will let Nielsen expand the amount of media consumption it tracks by about 2 hours per person per day to 7 hours, Calhoun said in an interview.

“You don’t find many mediums that allow for that kind of increase,” Calhoun said.

Arbitron’s operations are mainly in the U.S., while Nielsen operates globally. Calhoun said another major driver for the deal is that Nielsen wants to spread Arbitron’s tracking technology to other countries.

Evercore Partners analyst Douglas Arthur said Nielsen doesn’t need traditional radio measurement to grow, but Arbitron seemed like a willing seller, and it will be a “nice complementary but not ‘must have’ platform.”

Nielsen Holdings N.V. said it will pay $ 48 per share, which is a 26 percent premium to Arbitron’s Monday closing price of $ 38.04. Shares of Arbitron, which is based in Columbia, Md., jumped $ 8.99, or 23.6 percent, to close at $ 47.03.

Nielsen, which went public in January 2011, has headquarters in the Netherlands and New York. Its stock added $ 1.30, or 4.4 percent, to close at $ 30.92.

Nielsen said it expects the deal to add about 13 cents per share to its adjusted earnings a year after closing and about 19 cents per share to adjusted earnings two years after closing.

Abitron’s chief operating officer, Sean Creamer, is set to take over as CEO from William Kerr on Jan. 1. Calhoun said he hoped Creamer would remain with Nielsen after the deal closes.

Nielsen said it has a financing commitment for the transaction.

Nielsen was the prime source of audience ratings in the early days of radio, thanks to a device similar to Arbitron’s People Meter. The Audimeter was attached to the radio set. The company’s focus shifted to TV measurement in the 1950s.

On Monday, Nielsen announced a deal with Twitter to measure how much U.S. TV watchers tweet about the shows they’re watching. The “Nielsen Twitter TV Rating” will debut in the fall.

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Newsman's disappearance largely kept secret

NEW YORK (AP) — NBC was able to keep the abduction of chief Middle East correspondent Richard Engel in Syria largely a secret until he escaped late Monday because it persuaded some of this country's most prominent news organizations to hold back on the story.

Otherwise, the disappearance of Engel — probably the most high-profile international television reporter on a U.S. network — would have been big news.

Engel and three colleagues, producers Ghazi Balkiz and Aziz Akyavas and photographer John Kooistra, escaped during a firefight between rebels and their captors, forces sympathetic to the Syrian government. The journalists were dragged from their cars, kept bound and blindfolded and threatened with death.

NBC said it did not know what had happened to the men until after their escape. The first sign of trouble came last Thursday, when Engel did not check back with his office at an agreed-upon time.

The Associated Press learned of Engel's disappearance independently and was asked to keep the news quiet upon contacting NBC, said John Daniszewski, the AP's vice president and senior managing editor.

"A general principle of our reporting is that we don't want to write stories that are going to endanger the lives of the people that we are writing about," Daniszewski said. The first few days after an abduction are often crucial to securing the captive's release.

In any case, he said, the AP never had enough information to report to its standards. "The fragmentary information we did receive was not solid or sourced in a way we could use. We had no actual news to report until they got out on Tuesday and NBC went public with the story," he said.

CBS News also said that it had honored NBC's request, but a spokeswoman declined to discuss it. ABC, Fox News and CNN were also contacted by NBC.

CNN, in an editor's note affixed to a website story on Engel's escape, noted NBC's request. CNN said it complied to allow fact-finding and negotiations to free the captors before it became a worldwide story.

"Hostage negotiators say that once the global spotlight is on the missing, the hostages' value soars, making it much harder to negotiate their freedom," CNN said.

For similar reasons, the AP did not report its own news several years ago when a photographer was kidnapped in the Gaza Strip, securing his release within a day. In one celebrated case of secrecy, The New York Times withheld news that reporter David Rohde was kidnapped while trying to make contact with a Taliban commander in Afghanistan. Rohde escaped after seven months in captivity.

It wasn't clear whether Engel's abductors knew what they had at the time. That knowledge, CNN argued, could have greatly complicated any negotiations. In this case, the captors did not make any ransom demands during the time he was missing.

This isn't simply a professional courtesy; the AP has withheld news involving overseas contractors in the past, Daniszewski said. For similar reasons, the organization does not reveal details of military or police actions it learns about beforehand if the news will put people at risk, and doesn't write about leaders heading into war zones until they are safely there.

Still, it's not a decision lightly taken by news organizations. "The obligation of journalists is to report information, not withhold it, except in exceptional circumstances," said Robert Steele, a journalism ethics professor at DePauw University.

The news that Engel was missing was first reported Monday by Turkish journalists who had heard about Akyavas' involvement, and was picked up by the U.S. website Gawker.com. In explaining why the news was reported, Gawker's John Cook wrote that no one had told him of a specific or even general threat to Engel's safety.

"I would not have written a post if someone had told me that there was a reasonable or even remote suspicion that anything specific would happen if I wrote the post," Cook wrote.

He also noted that China's Xinhua News Agency and the Breitbart website had also reported on Engel's disappearance. Breitbart's John Nolte attached a note to his report saying that he wasn't even aware of any news embargo until after hearing that Engel had been released.

The news was also tweeted by a small number of journalists, apparently unaware of the embargo request.

Whether a disappearance has become widely known could influence a decision by AP on whether to withhold the news, Daniszewski said. In this case, it wasn't clear that it had been widely circulated, he said.

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Attackers in Pakistan Kill Anti-Polio Workers

Rizwan Tabassum/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A Pakistani mother mourned her daughter, who was killed on Tuesday in an attack on health workers participating in a drive to eradicate polio from Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen shot dead five female health workers who were immunizing children against polio on Tuesday, causing the Pakistani government to suspend vaccinations in two cities and dealing a fresh setback to an eradication campaign dogged by Taliban resistance in a country that is one of the disease’s last global strongholds.

“It is a blow, no doubt,” said Shahnaz Wazir Ali, an adviser on polio to Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf. “Never before have female health workers been targeted like this in Pakistan. Clearly there will have to be more and better arrangements for security.”

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but most suspicion focused on the Pakistani Taliban, which has previously blocked polio vaccinators and complained that the United States is using the program as a cover for espionage.

The killings were a serious reversal for the multibillion-dollar global polio immunization effort, which over the past quarter century has reduced the number of endemic countries from 120 to just three: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Nonetheless, United Nations officials insisted that the drive would be revived after a period for investigation and regrouping, as it had been after previous attacks on vaccinators here, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Pakistan has made solid gains against polio, with 56 new recorded cases of the diseases in 2012, compared with 192 at the same point last year, according to the government. Worldwide, cases of death and paralysis from polio have been reduced to less than 1,000 last year, from 350,000 worldwide in 1988.

But the campaign here has been deeply shaken by Taliban threats and intimidation, though several officials said Tuesday that they had never seen such a focused and deadly attack before.

Insurgents have long been suspicious of polio vaccinators, seeing them as potential spies. But that greatly intensified after the C.I.A. used a vaccination team headed by a local doctor, Shakil Afridi, to visit Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, reportedly in an attempt to obtain DNA proof that the Bin Laden family was there before an American commando raid on it in May 2011.

In North Waziristan, one prominent warlord has banned polio vaccinations until the United States ceases drone strikes in the area.

Most new infections in Pakistan occur in the tribal belt and adjoining Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province — some of the most remote areas of the country, and also those with the strongest militant presence. People fleeing fighting in those areas have also spread the disease to Karachi, the country’s largest city, where the disease has been making a worrisome comeback in recent years.

After Tuesday’s attacks, witnesses described violence that was both disciplined and well coordinated. Five attacks occurred within an hour in different Karachi neighborhoods. In several cases, the killers traveled in pairs on motorcycle, opening fire on female health workers as they administered polio drops or moved between houses in crowded neighborhoods.

Of the five victims, three were teenagers, and some had been shot in the head, a senior government official said. Two male health workers were also wounded by gunfire; early reports incorrectly stated that one of them had died, the official said.

In Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, gunmen opened fire on two sisters participating in the polio vaccination program, killing one of them. It was unclear whether that shooting was directly linked to the Karachi attacks.

In remote parts of the northwest, the Taliban threat is exacerbated by the government’s crumbling writ. In Bannu, on the edge of the tribal belt, one polio worker, Noor Khan, said he quit work on Tuesday once news of the attacks in Karachi and Peshawar filtered in.

“We were told to stop immediately,” he said by phone.

Still, the Pakistani government has engaged considerable political and financial capital in fighting polio. President Asif Ali Zardari and his daughter Aseefa have been at the forefront of immunization drives. With the help of international donors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they have mounted a huge vaccination campaign aimed at up to 35 million children younger than 5, usually in three-day bursts that can involve 225,000 health workers.

The plan seeks to have every child in Pakistan immunized at least four times per year, although in the hardest-hit areas one child could be reached as many as 12 times in a year.

Declan Walsh reported from Islamabad, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi, Pakistan.

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Acclaimed Indian director returns to L.A. to 'chase a new dream'

The first time acclaimed Indian director Vidhu Vinod Chopra visited Los Angeles was to attend the Academy Awards after his 20-minute documentary, "An Encounter With Faces," was nominated for an Oscar.

The Indian government paid for his airfare because the young filmmaker, fresh out of film school, didn't have enough money to buy a plane ticket. He also couldn't afford to rent a tuxedo, so he wore his national dress — a night suit — on the night of the 1979 ceremony. The experience, however, planted a seed in Chopra's mind that he would eventually return to L.A. "If I was not nominated, I don't think I would be back here," he said.

Although he did not go  home  with one of Hollywood's coveted golden statues, Chopra has returned to the city more than 30 years later to make his first English-language movie. His independent feature, "Broken Horses," wrapped production Friday.

"The reason I came here was because all my dreams were fulfilled in India," Chopra, one of India's most renowned directors, said in an interview Saturday. "This is a different challenge. It's chasing a new dream all over again. I felt like I was in film school because nobody knows who I am."

His new $10-million movie was financed by India's Reliance Entertainment and is scheduled for release next year. Besides being Chopra's first film in English, "Broken Horses" also is believed to be the first to be shot by an Indian filmmaker in Los Angeles for an American audience.

Chopra's movies include Bollywood hits such as his last production, "3 Idiots," which was India's all-time highest-grossing film; a sweeping Shakespearean epic called "Eklavya: The Royal Guard"; and a documentary about destitute children in Mumbai.

Set in a California border town, "Broken Horses" tells the story of two brothers, played by Anton Yelchin and Chris Marquette, who get caught up in U.S.-Mexico border gang wars.

Although not a Bollywood film — the cast is mostly American and no one breaks out in song — it is loosely based on another picture Chopra wrote and directed, the 1989 Hindi movie "Parinda."

The script was written by Chopra and Abhijat Joshi, who also wrote "Eklavya: The Royal Guard" and "3 Idiots." Chopra's brother-in-lawSubhash Dhar, a collaborator on several of Chopra's films, also served as producer (Mandeville Films partners David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman were executive producers).

"To me this film is primarily a love story between two brothers caught up in a conflict in a border town," Chopra said. "I'm very close to my brother and my family, and it's really a story I wanted to tell."

The movie took several years to get off the ground. Originally conceived as a larger-budget project, the story initially was set in New York, but Chopra realized he didn't know the city well enough. He revised the script to use a border town as the backdrop and scouted locations in Nevada and New Mexico, but he ultimately selected the L.A. area because of its diverse locations and strong crews. (The production also got a $2-million state film tax credit.)

Chopra assembled a top-notch crew, including Oscar-nominated cinematographer Tom Stern ("The Hunger Games," "Million Dollar Baby"), production designer Toby Corbett ("Crossing Over") and Emmy-nominated costume designer Mary Vogt ("Men in Black 3" and "Batman Returns").

"I had a $100-million crew on a $10-million movie,'' Chopra said. "They had all come from big movies."

"Broken Horses" filmed over 34 days throughout the L.A. area, including Victorville, which played a border town; downtown, which represented New York City; and locations in Santa Clarita and at Polsa Rosa Ranch in Acton, where the crew built a chapel, a cabin and a small pond with water pumped from a nearby reservoir. The 730-acre ranch, which straddles the Santa Clara River and borders the Angeles National Forest, is a popular spot for filming and was also used for Disney's "The Lone Ranger."

"It was a perfect site for us," Dhar said. "L.A. has so much to offer. You can shoot for New York, a border town, for deserts — it's got amazing landscapes within 50 miles of the city."

Bundled up in a cap and winter jacket to fend off the 40-degree weather on a recent weekday at Polsa Rosa Ranch, Chopra was joined by about 100 crew members filming a scene for "Broken Horses."

Julius Hench sat in his black Ford SUV perched on a hilltop in Acton, watching one of his lieutenants drive down a dirt road to a ranch house in the distance. A man behind the truck cranked up a fan to blow a cloud of dust behind the truck.

Chopra liked the scene, except for one thing: He noticed Hench, played by Vincent D'Onofrio, was blinking too much and asked him to give him another take. D'Onofrio, star of the TV series "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," repeated the shot with less blinking.

"We got it — very nice," Chopra said.

richard.verrier@latimes

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