Congress edges closer to 'fiscal cliff' deal but can't close it

WASHINGTON — Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill inched toward a compromise to avert part of the so-called fiscal cliff but remained unable to close a deal as each side struggled with internal tensions as well as the remaining gap between them.

Lawmakers have been trying to beat a deadline of midnight Monday, when tax rates are scheduled to go up for the vast majority of Americans. But they could continue chasing a deal for days — even until the new Congress is sworn in at noon Thursday. After that, the political dynamics could shift with the entrance of new members.

If Congress fails to act, the combination of new taxes and sharp cuts in defense spending and domestic programs, which also would take effect with the new year, could tip the economy back into recession, economists have warned.

On Sunday, talks hit a standstill early in the day after Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky proposed slowing Social Security cost-of-living increases as part of the spending package. Democrats rejected the idea, and many Republicans quickly disavowed it.

In response to a request from McConnell, the Obama administration assigned Vice President Joe Biden to broker further negotiations.

"I'm willing to get this done, but I need a dance partner," McConnell said on the Senate floor. "The sticking point appears to be a willingness, an interest, or courage to close the deal."

Biden and McConnell talked by phone throughout the afternoon as the two sides appeared to close in on a potential compromise.

Republicans have said they are willing to raise taxes on wealthier households while stopping the tax increases for most Americans. The two sides have not agreed on an income threshold for the tax increases. Republicans suggested starting about $550,000 in taxable income for couples and $450,000 for single households. The most recent offer from Democrats had set the tax level slightly lower, about $450,000 for couples and $360,000 for singles.

But Republicans were also seeking to preserve inheritance taxes at the current rate of 35%, while Democrats have sought to raise them. Republicans want to keep the automatic spending cuts in place for now, while Democrats suggest easing them. Democrats also want to continue long-term unemployment benefits as part of the year-end package.

Other sticking points remain over adjustments to the rates Medicare pays doctors and fixing the tax code to protect middle-income Americans from the alternative minimum tax, which was designed to prevent tax avoidance by the wealthy. Both provisions involve laws that are not indexed for inflation and have required annual adjustments by Congress.

The closer the two sides edged toward compromise Sunday, the more divisions within their ranks became apparent.

Republican senators, worried they would be blamed for harming seniors, openly revolted once the McConnell proposal to trim Social Security benefits became public.

After a closed-door meeting, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) articulated the public relations challenge the proposal posed his party: "What [Democrats] are saying now is, 'Republicans want to preserve tax breaks for rich people and give up seniors' Social Security.' It should be off the table. And I think most Republicans believe it should be off the table."

"I'm not a fan," said retiring Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine). "I don't think it should be part of it, and I think there are others who shared that view."

Democrats rejected the proposal. An aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the talks, said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) "was taken aback and disappointed" by the idea. "We feel we are further apart than we were 24 hours ago."

Adjusting the cost of living for recipients of government benefits, including Social Security, had been offered by President Obama in talks with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) when they were negotiating a broader deficit reduction deal. But Democrats have rejected including the idea in the more limited package now under discussion.

At the same time, some Democrats worried that Biden, who has closed several deals before with McConnell, might be too eager to compromise compared with Reid. White House officials have been more worried than many congressional Democrats about the potential economic damage that the tax cuts and spending reductions could cause.

Obama made clear the line of attack that the White House would use against Republican leaders if Congress could not find a resolution.

"They have had trouble saying yes to a number of repeated offers," Obama said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," which was recorded Saturday.

"If they can't do a comprehensive package of smart deficit reductions, let's at minimum make sure that people's taxes don't go up and that 2 million people don't lose their unemployment insurance."

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Tribune Co. set to exit bankruptcy protection

Tribune Co. is expected to emerge from bankruptcy protection Monday with a new board of directors composed largely of entertainment-industry veterans.

Exiting bankruptcy would mark a milestone for Tribune, the parent of the Los Angeles Times and other newspaper and television properties.

Tribune sought Bankruptcy Court protection in December 2008 after a leveraged buyout by real estate magnate Sam Zell saddled the company with $12.9 billion in debt just as advertising revenue was collapsing. It is one of the longest bankruptcy cases in U.S. corporate history.

Tribune will emerge as a slimmed-down entity with a more stable financial base. But the media conglomerate will still be buffeted by the larger forces pounding the newspaper industry, specifically uncertainty over whether papers can generate sufficient revenue from digital operations.

"Tribune is far stronger than it was when we began the Chapter 11 process four years ago and, given the budget planning we've done, the company is well-positioned for success in 2013," Eddy Hartenstein, Tribune's chief executive, wrote in a note to employees Sunday night.

Tribune's new board of directors is expected to be made up of a who's who of Hollywood players. Most have no hands-on experience running newspapers and television stations, which are Tribune's biggest assets.

Five of the seven members have ties to the entertainment and media industries, including Hartenstein and Peter Liguori, a former News Corp. executive who is expected to succeed Hartenstein as Tribune CEO in the next few weeks.

Also expected to be named to the board are Peter Murphy, previously a longtime executive at Walt Disney Co.; Ross Levinsohn, former head of global media at Yahoo Inc.; and Craig A. Jacobson, a veteran entertainment attorney.

The board will be rounded out by Bruce Karsh, president of Oaktree Capital Management, the Los Angeles investment firm that owns about 23% of the new Tribune; and Kenneth Liang, an Oaktree managing director.

Tribune owns 23 local television stations, eight daily newspapers and Internet and other media properties.

Those holdings include KTLA-TV Channel 5, the Chicago Tribune, and national cable station WGN-TV. Tribune also holds slightly less than one-third of the Food Network cable channel and about a 25% stake in the CareerBuilder website.

Liguori is also a former Discovery Communications senior executive whose resume is in programming and marketing. He headed both the FX cable network and Fox Broadcasting at News Corp. At Discovery he served as chief operating officer of the cable programming giant.

Murphy spent almost two decades at Disney, rising to the position of chief strategist. He founded private investment firm Wentworth Capital Management. He has close ties to Angelo, Gordon & Co., an investment firm that will own roughly 9% of the new Tribune Co.

Levinsohn is a former head of global media at Yahoo. He also served briefly as its interim CEO before Google Inc.'s Marissa Mayer being tapped for that job. Levinsohn also is a former News Corp. executive who headed its interactive unit.

Jacobson, an attorney at Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman, Warren, Richman, Rush & Kaller is one of Hollywood's more prominent deal-makers. His clients have included several high-profile executives and performers such as Ryan Seacrest.

Tribune remained profitable throughout the bankruptcy, building cash reserves of more than $2.5 billion as of Nov. 18, according to a U.S. Bankruptcy Court filing this month. Creditors are expected to immediately take nearly $3 billion in cash out of the new company, some of it coming from a new $1.1-billion loan that was approved as part of the bankruptcy.

The value of Tribune's newspaper properties has sunk to $623 million, a fraction of their value a few years earlier, according to an estimate filed in Bankruptcy Court in April.

A key question still to be answered is what Tribune will do with its newspapers. Some analysts believe the company will seek to sell the slower-growing newspapers to focus on TV holdings.

As for the Los Angeles Times, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has expressed interest, according to people familiar with the matter.

Aaron Kushner, owner of the Orange County Register, and Doug Manchester, the San Diego real estate developer who last year bought the local Union Tribune newspaper, also have shown interest.

Austin Beutner, the former venture capitalist and former deputy mayor of Los Angeles, told The Times in October that he has reached out to civic-minded investors who would consider acquiring the paper.

walter.hamilton@latimes.com

joe.flint@latimes.com

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This Rose Parade marks a major step for a young float designer

Charles Meier pulled his first all nighter when he was 11 years old. His mother found him asleep in a flower box.

It was the night before final judging for the 1990 Rose Parade. Meier, a volunteer, had been running around for hours helping float decorators fill vials of water, scrape seeds and glue last-minute details. Exhausted, he finally crawled into a box that still smelled of orchids.

His parents snapped a picture, not knowing that their son would go on to win South Pasadena's float design contest just two years later, making him the youngest designer in Rose Parade history.

Nor did they imagine he would one day break through a tight-knit institution and start his own float company. When the 124th Rose Parade rolls out Tuesday, Meier's company will be the event's first new professional builder in almost two decades.

"I basically traded in stuffed animals for Rose Parade floats," said Meier, 34. "Other kids were at home reading comic books, and I'm here organizing my float pictures into photo albums. It was what captured my imagination."

::

Meier still remembers the moment he fell in love.

He was 9 years old, sitting in grandstand seats his parents had won in a raffle. It was sensory overload: Booming marching bands. Floats adorned with tractors and dancers on a giant piano. And color. So much color.

He started drawing floats that day. He studied flowers, memorized parade brochures and, accompanied by his parents, joined float decorating committees. He couldn't stop talking about his ideas.

"I don't want to hear you describe another float," his mother, Carol, told him. "Just draw one and send it in and see if they will build it."

Every year, he submitted designs to his hometown float committee. On his 13th birthday, South Pasadena selected his drawing. Instead of letting the experts take over, he insisted on working with the graphic designer on his vision of two aliens playing tug-of-war with a spaceship.

"It was really kind of funny. He was so young. I mean, he was 13, just a kid," said Dex Regatz, 82, the graphic designer who took Meier under his wing.

"Before they knew it, I had insisted I do the complete floral plan," Meier said. "And they actually took most of those ideas and ran with them."

He quickly became a live encyclopedia of flowers and colors.

He once exercised his mental floral database by designing a Valentine-themed float with 94 types of roses, an unmatched feat in Rose Parade annals. He juggled hot pink Hot Ladys, bicolored Panamas and King Kongs with hints of green.

He experiences his life through the prism of floats. Walking across moss inspired the furry texture for an animal. Coconut flakes, so white he thought they sparkled, looked perfect for celestial stars and eyeballs.

::

To pay his bills, Meier worked as a senior caretaker and freelance floral designer.

But on the side, he continued to volunteer for South Pasadena and Sierra Madre. He won fans with his enthusiasm, many said, and he treated each float as an intricate work of art.

"I'm always so impressed with his floats. You can stand anywhere, from any angle, and it looks good," said Gwen Robertson, a longtime Sierra Madre volunteer.

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Cal State Chancellor Charles B. Reed leaves a mixed legacy

As chancellor of California State University, Charles B. Reed became a symbol of the problems and the promise of the massive public higher education system.

He has received national recognition for his efforts to increase the number of underserved students — low income, minorities, veterans — and for steering the country's largest four-year university system through a period of crippling budget cuts at a time of large enrollment growth.

He has been mocked in effigy by students critical of rapidly increasing tuition and slammed by lawmakers for granting executive pay hikes as others in the system were forced to tighten belts.

Reed, 71, who retires at the end of the year, offers no apologies for a leadership style that is seen as often blunt and bullheaded. He is an admitted workaholic, his only extensive time off a week in Italy for his daughter's wedding 11 years ago.

He's not much for sentimentality. Weeks before his departure, he cleaned out his office, inviting staff members to take his honorary degrees and awards. There will be no trophy room in the Florida home where he's retiring.

He arrived at Cal State in 1998 at a time of burgeoning state budgets, almost immediately butting heads with academic leaders while vowing to increase enrollment by more than 100,000 students.

But it is likely that the Reed legacy will hinge on the latter part of his tenure and on his management of nearly $1 billion in state funding cuts since 2008. Enrollment in the 23-campus system peaked at about 440,000 students in 2008, falling to its current 425,000 as many campuses turn away eligible students and reduce services.

"I may have done some of the best work in my 40 years as an educator these last five years figuring out how to continue to provide access and fund the system, keep the doors open," Reed said. "It's been a real struggle, and what I've seen is a lack of political will and a lack of political leadership in California."

And despite the passage of Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry Brown's November tax measure that prevents even steeper cuts to higher education, Reed is not bullish on future financial support.

His supporters said that despite the challenges, he has maintained a perhaps underappreciated commitment to students.

Some of those efforts include increased recruitment of African American, Latino, Asian and Native American students and the development of an early assessment program for high school students to test their readiness for college-level English and math. (The percentages of African American and Asian students have declined in recent years mainly because of population shifts, officials said.)

His tenure saw the opening of Cal State Channel Islands in Camarillo and the first Cal State doctoral degree programs in educational leadership, nursing practice and physical therapy.

"You always know where he stands, and I find it interesting that a lot of people talk about wanting leaders to be honest with everybody and I think he's one of those leaders," said Cal State Fresno President John D. Welty. "He's consistently clear and honest even though not everyone likes what he says."

Reed developed a tough skin as a high school quarterback growing up in the coal-mining town of Waynesburg, Pa., the eldest of eight children. That won't-back-down attitude has placed him in frequent conflict with faculty and student activists.

In the last 10 years, student fees have increased 167%. Protests exploded on campuses and at meetings of the board of trustees. Demonstrators were pepper sprayed outside one meeting in November 2011, and people picketed outside Reed's Long Beach home.

An impasse over salary and class sizes led hundreds of members of the faculty union to stage a first-ever strike at two campuses last year. And the system's leaders received widespread condemnation after trustees approved a $400,000 compensation package for the new San Diego State president — $100,000 more than his predecessor — at the same meeting at which tuition was increased by 12%.

(Reed's successor, UC Riverside Chancellor Timothy White, requested a 10% cut from Reed's $421,500 salary and will receive $380,000 plus a $30,000 supplement from the Cal State foundation.)

"We felt like he [Reed] came in leading with his chin, ready for some kind of slug fest," said Lillian Taiz, a history professor at Cal State L.A. who is president of the California Faculty Assn. "The fundamental problem is, we don't share the same vision for the system and that has moved from a model that more resembled a privatized [corporate] university."

Reed has few kind words about union leaders.

"They don't represent the rank and file of our really good faculty out there every day working hard, doing really good things with our students," he said. "With the union, we have a group that want to fight, that want to demonize me for whatever reasons."

Reed made unpopular decisions by necessity, said incoming state Sen. Marty Block (D-San Diego), former chairman of the Assembly's higher education committee. Block said he largely agreed with the decision to offer high pay to get well-qualified campus leadership.

However, he said, "the timing was terrible. Making public the decision with salaries at the same meeting with student fees being raised was not the best public relations, and if Charlie has a fault, it is that he was more concerned with doing the right thing than getting the public relations right."

Despite a gruff exterior, Reed was fiercely loyal to his staff, board Chairman A. Robert Linscheid said.

"When we lost a staff member who died suddenly, Charlie did a lot of comforting for the family and a lot of comforting for the staff," he said. "Some consider him to be pretty headstrong, but I just look at him to be matter of fact."

Reed won a football scholarship to George Washington University and eventually earned a doctorate in education. He worked as the chief of staff for Florida Gov. Bob Graham and was chancellor of the Florida State University system for 13 years before heading west.

In retirement, Reed is likely to remain a national authority on higher education: He has committed to several speaking engagements each month through April.

"I feel I've had a good 15-year run at Cal State and it's hard work every day," he said, "but I don't know anything else I'd rather be doing."

carla.rivera@latimes.com

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Congress leaders scramble to find 'fiscal cliff' compromise

WASHINGTON — The momentary optimism that Washington could resolve the stalemate over New Year's Day tax hikes turned quickly Saturday to the backroom number crunching needed to broker what remained a difficult deal.

Top congressional leaders and their aides holed up inside the Capitol, swapping potential scenarios that might yield enough votes to pass legislation to prevent a tax increase on all but the wealthiest Americans.

The work being done off the Senate floor, in the offices of Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) involves such tricky math that even if the political will exists to craft a compromise, partisanship may still prevent one. How to deal with income and estate taxes, as well as extended long-term unemployment benefits, remain among the stickiest issues.

"We've been in discussions all day, and they continue. And we'll let you know as soon as we have some news to make," McConnell said Saturday night as he left the Capitol. "We've been trading paper all day and talks continue into the evening."

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) stopped by the negotiations in the morning as a light snow dusted the city, but by midday tourists milling about the Capitol were snapping photos of the empty corridor outside his office. The Democratic leaders, Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), did not come to the Capitol but remained involved in the talks.

President Obama, who received updates at the White House, used his weekly address to put pressure on congressional leaders. "We just can't afford a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy," he said. "The economy is growing, but keeping it that way means that the folks you sent to Washington have to do their jobs."

Congress will convene for a rare Sunday afternoon session, with the Senate opening at 1 p.m. and the House at 2 p.m. Votes could come as soon as Sunday but most likely would be pushed to Monday as talks continue. Both parties will meet behind closed doors Sunday afternoon to consider their options.

If no agreement is reached, Obama reminded Republicans, he'll call for a vote on a proposal that would block the tax hike on income of less than $250,000 and would extend the unemployment insurance that expired Saturday for 2 million out-of-work people.

Obama's threat capitalizes on a key advantage in the tax-and-spend battle: Without a compromise, taxes will go up on everyone Tuesday, when the George W. Bush-era tax cuts expire. Republicans who oppose his bare-bones bill would be in the awkward position of protecting the wealthiest at the expense of the middle class.

"I believe such a proposal could pass both houses with bipartisan majorities — as long as these leaders allow it to come to a vote," Obama said. "If they still want to vote no, and let this tax hike hit the middle class, that's their prerogative — but they should let everyone vote. That's the way this is supposed to work."

Quiz: How much do you know about the "fiscal cliff?"

Republicans face the prospect of voting for a tax increase for the first time in two decades, a potential milestone that has deeply divided the party. Still, they suggested Saturday that they could stomach raising income tax rates if the income threshold was higher than Obama has proposed — $500,000 might be acceptable, according to a source who asked to remain anonymous to discuss internal negotiations.

The GOP also wants to preserve the current estate tax rate, which is 35% on estates valued at more than $5 million. Most Democrats want the estate taxes set at 45% on those above $3.5 million; if no action is taken, the rate will revert to 55% on estates valued at more than $1 million.

The combination of income and estate tax rates may lead to a deal that could win Republican support, but it could also prove to be a deal killer for Democrats.

With Republicans divided, particularly in the House, Boehner is expected to bring at most barely half of his majority to any deal. Pelosi's support will be vital to pass the measure; she may have to muster about 100 votes.

A White House official stressed that whatever deal the Senate leaders broker will have to win approval from the House Democratic leader, who has shown her ability to deliver — or withhold — Democratic votes.

The deal may also draw support if it contains other must-pass year-end provisions, including a tweak to prevent middle-class households from being hit with the alternative minimum tax and an adjustment to ensure doctors treating Medicare patients do not take a pay cut.

The scene playing out on Saturday was a repeat of the cycle of brinkmanship and crisis that has characterized divided Washington for the last two years.

The optimism expressed by political leaders after Friday's White House meeting of Obama and congressional leaders appeared to be less about a major breakthrough or newfound comity than the hard reality that time was running short.

Congress has proved time and again that it works best — and perhaps only — under deadline pressure. With tax rates set to expire Dec. 31, just hours remained to approve a deal.

Despite the tight timeline, many senators left town, even if just for the day. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) posted a photo on his Twitter account of himself with the Oreo mascot at a college football bowl game in San Francisco.

Others stayed behind. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) tweeted that he was touring the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum with Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). "Back at it tomorrow," he added.

Yet even with political momentum, the deep divisions within parties were still evident, particularly as Republicans confronted a debate over their party's bedrock principles.

Influential anti-tax activist Grover Norquist encouraged Republicans to move on to the next battles, as Congress will be asked within months to raise the nation's debt limit. Republicans see that as the next point of leverage in their fights with Obama to reduce federal spending, including on Social Security and Medicare.

Any deal being crafted this weekend is not expected to resolve those issues or alter the automatic federal spending cuts coming on Jan. 2, all but ensuring that 2013 will see a return of divisive tax and spending arguments.

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

michael.memoli@latimes.com

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Officials warn holiday revelers against firing weapons

By Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times

December 29, 2012, 8:59 p.m.

Los Angeles officials are warning that anyone discharging a firearm into the air to celebrate the new year not only risks killing someone but could also face a lengthy prison sentence.

"Firing into the air weapons in celebration puts innocent lives at risk," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said last week. "Nothing ruins the holiday season like an errant bullet coming down and killing an innocent."

Villaraigosa said the misuse of firearms is on everyone's mind in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting that left six adults and 20 children dead. The mayor vowed that authorities will pursue criminal charges for anyone caught in possession of a weapon in public.

For more than a decade, city and county leaders have tried to quell celebratory gunfire.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said a bullet discharged into the air falls at a rate of 300 to 700 mph, depending on the weapon — "easily enough to crack the human skull."

"Please celebrate New Year's with your family, not in [Sheriff] Lee Baca's jail or my jail," Beck said, pledging to capture anyone firing a weapon. "Firing a gun in the air isn't only dangerous and a crime but socially unacceptable."

L.A. County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey said that anyone caught firing a weapon — even if they don't hit someone — will face a felony charge and a fine of up to $10,000 and a possible three-year sentence. A conviction would be considered a strike offense and the suspect would lose the right to own a firearm.

Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said that in some county areas, special equipment has been deployed to spot shots within seconds and track their locations.

"The madness of gun violence has to stop," he said. "This is a matter of physics. What goes up must come down."

richard.winton@latimes.com

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Jean Harris dies at 89; killer of 'Scarsdale Diet' doctor

Jean Harris, the onetime headmistress of an elite girls' school whose trial in the fatal 1980 shooting of the celebrity diet doctor who jilted her generated front-page headlines and national debates about whether she was a feminist martyr or vengeful murderer, has died. She was 89.

Harris, who spent nearly 12 years in prison for the shooting death of her longtime boyfriend, "Scarsdale Diet" doctor Herman "Hy" Tarnower, died Sunday at an assisted-living facility in New Haven, Conn., of complications related to old age, her son James said.

Convicted in 1981 of second-degree murder, Harris, who had at least two heart attacks in prison, was granted clemency on her 15 years-to-life sentence on Dec. 29, 1992, by then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, who cited her health and advancing age.

"I honestly thought I would die in prison," Harris said after her release.

Harris, then 68, took up residence in a New Hampshire cabin overlooking Vermont's Green Mountains, where she walked her dog, wrote and raised money for a program to help children of inmates at New York's Bedford Hills Correctional Center, where she was imprisoned after her Feb. 28, 1981, conviction.

The March 10, 1980, shooting of Tarnower — which she claimed throughout her life was her own suicide gone awry — was one of the most sensational crimes of its era.

It riveted the nation, not only because of its titillating combination of sex and violence. It raised what many experts said were important sociological issues, with some feminists rallying to Harris as a symbol of society's disregard for the plight of older women and others arguing that her case had nothing at all to do with feminism.

Women's movement icon Betty Friedan dismissed Harris as a "pathetic masochist" for staying with a man who mistreated her. But author Shana Alexander, who wrote a book on the case, described Harris as the "psychological victim of a domineering person."

Whether morality play or soap opera, the case inspired two TV movies: "The People vs. Jean Harris" (1981), in which Harris was portrayed by Ellen Burstyn, and "Mrs. Harris" (2005), which starred Annette Bening.

In 1980, Harris was the 56-year-old headmistress of the fancy, private Madeira School overlooking the Potomac River in McLean, Va. Tarnower was a 69-year-old cardiologist and best-selling author of a book on a high-protein, low-fat diet that he developed for heart patients at his medical center in well-to-do Scarsdale, N.Y.

When they met in 1966, they were so taken with each other that Tarnower — a lifelong bachelor — gave Harris a 4-carat diamond engagement ring. He quickly changed his mind, telling her that he couldn't stop seeing other women.

Harris agreed to this condition, and through the years became what she wryly described as "the broad-he-brought" to dinner parties. By 1980 the 14-year relationship was on the skids as Harris became embittered watching Tarnower, in the wake of the Scarsdale diet book, growing ever more rich and famous.

The last straw for Harris: Tarnower was "wavering" about whether to invite her or a younger woman, Lynne Tryforos, to a dinner honoring him.

After one particularly harrowing week at the school when she expelled four seniors, Harris decided on suicide. She wrote notes to her grown sons, put her papers in order, packed a .32-caliber handgun in her purse and drove five hours from Virginia to Tarnower's six-acre estate in Purchase, N.Y.

She later testified that she wanted to see her lover one last time before killing herself at the estate's duck pond. But her plans went awry after she let herself into his home, found Tarnower asleep and spotted a negligee and hair rollers in a bathroom — evidence that her rival, 38-year-old Tryforos, had recently stayed over.

Harris threw the hair rollers at a window, breaking it, and also broke a cosmetic mirror. The ruckus woke Tarnower, who struck her, Harris said. She said that she challenged him to "hit me again, Hy, make it hard enough to kill," but he withdrew. Feeling the revolver in her pocketbook, she pulled out the gun and said to him, "Never mind, I'll do it myself."

But, she testified, when she raised the gun to her temple, he grabbed the weapon, which went off and wounded him in the hand, giving her time to grab the gun again; she later testified that she thought she had time to kill herself.

In the ensuing struggle, Tarnower was struck by bullets three more times — in the chest, arm and back. A fifth bullet also was fired. Harris maintained throughout her life that Tarnower was trying to prevent her from killing herself.

The call to the White Plains police was made at 10:56 p.m. by the doctor's housekeeper, who lived on the estate. The March 12 four-column headline in the New York Times read " 'Scarsdale Diet' Doctor Is Slain; Headmistress Is Charged."

The highly publicized 64-day trial that followed included 92 witnesses — most disastrously, Harris herself.

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India leaders appeal for calm after rape victim dies

New Delhi, India —

Indian riot police blocked major roads, imposed restrictions on "illegal assembly" and shut subway stations Saturday as they braced for fresh demonstrations even as politicians appealed for calm following the overnight death of a rape victim at a Singapore hospital from multiple organ failure.

The brutal assault two weeks ago of a 23-year old paramedical student, who has not been identified, has sparked national soul searching on India's treatment of women. Thousands have demonstrated across the country, including a large gathering in Delhi a week ago met by police wielding tear gas, water cannons and truncheons.

"I join the nation in conveying to her family and friends my deepest condolences at this terrible loss," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a statement on his website, calling on citizens to channel their emotions constructively. "It is up to us all to ensure that her death will not have been in vain."

"RIP: India's Daughter," and "India's brave daughter," said TV station headlines as the victim's body along with her family were scheduled to be flown back from Singapore on a chartered aircraft Saturday afternoon. The victim reportedly died of severe organ failure compounded by cerebral edema, a swelling of the brain often suffered by boxers in which the brain's water content rises, causing extreme pressure within the skull.

"She was courageous in fighting for her life for so long against the odds, but the trauma to her body was too severe for her to overcome," the hospital's chief executive, Dr. Kelvin Loh, told reporters.

As public anger exploded, Indian officials have struggled to craft a response, with proposals ranging from the petty -- ban curtains in all vehicles -- to the draconian, including calls to extend the death penalty to extreme sexual assault cases.  

Six men have been arrested for their alleged role in the attack and face charges of rape and kidnapping. With the victim's death, murder charges will likely be added. The men reportedly told police they were "looking for fun." The government has promised to fast-track their trial in a country where cases often take a decade or more.

The government set up two committees, one looking at ways to speed up sexual assault trials and the second charged with looking at systemic lapses after the bus on which the attack took place reportedly passed through several police checkpoints.

Officials also announced plans starting in New Delhi to post the names, addresses and photographs of convicted rapists on official websites to shame them publicly.

"Her death has shaken the conscience of the nation," said the opposition leader of parliament's lower house, Sushma Swaraj, in a Twitter message: "We must wake up and make India safe for daughters." 

But India's legal system is notoriously creaky and enforcement lax. Families are often afraid to report rapes, fearful of being asked for bribes to fill out police reports or being publicly humiliated. There's a national rape conviction rate of 25%. In rural communities where the stigma is greatest amid concerns that victims are "tainted goods,"  women are sometimes pressured into marrying their attackers.

A global survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in June found that India was among the worst places to be a woman because of high rates of infanticide, child marriage and economic and sexual slavery.

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Army Corps of Engineers clear-cuts lush habitat in Valley

An area that just a week ago was lush habitat on the Sepulveda Basin's wild side, home to one of the most diverse bird populations in Southern California, has been reduced to dirt and broken limbs — by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Audubon Society members stumbled upon the barren landscape last weekend during their annual Christmas bird count. Now, they are calling for an investigation into the loss of about 43 acres of cottonwood and willow groves, undergrowth and marshes that had maintained a rich inventory of mammals, reptiles and 250 species of birds.

Much of the area's vegetation had been planted in the 1980s, part of an Army Corps project that turned that portion of the Los Angeles River flood plain into a designated wildlife preserve.

Tramping through the mud Friday, botanist Ellen Zunino — who was among hundreds of volunteers who planted willows, coyote brush, mule fat and elderberry trees in the area — was engulfed by anger, sadness and disbelief.

"I'm heartbroken. I was so proud of our work," the 66-year-old said, taking a deep breath. "I don't see any of the usual signs of preparation for a job like this, such as marked trees or colored flags," Zunino added. "It seems haphazard and mean-spirited, almost as though someone was taking revenge on the habitat."

In 2010, the preserve had been reclassified as a "vegetation management area" — with a new five-year mission of replacing trees and shrubs with native grasses to improve access for Army Corps staffers, increase public safety and discourage crime in an area plagued by sex-for-drugs encampments.

The Army Corps declared that an environmental impact report on the effort was not necessary because it would not significantly disturb wildlife and habitat.

By Friday, however, nearly all of the vegetation — native and non-native — had been removed. Decomposed granite trails, signs, stone structures and other improvements bought and installed with public money had been plowed under.

In an interview, Army Corps Deputy District Cmdr. Alexander Deraney acknowledged that "somehow, we did not clearly communicate" to environmentalists and community groups the revised plan for the area 17 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. He added that the corps would "make the process more transparent in the future."

But Kris Ohlenkamp, conservation chairman of the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society, asserted that the corps had misrepresented its intent all along.

Walking Friday through what once had been a migratory stop for some of the rarest birds in the state — scissor-tailed flycatchers, yellow-billed cuckoos, least Bell's vireos, rose-breasted grosbeaks — Ohlenkamp said: "We knew that the corps had a new vision for this area, but we never thought it would ever come to this."

Frequent catastrophic floods prompted civic leaders in the 1930s to transform the river into a flood-control channel. Nearly the entire 51-mile river bottom was sheathed in concrete, except in a few spots such as the Sepulveda Basin.

Over the decades, awareness of the river's recreational potential grew. And with pressure from environmental groups, Los Angeles County and corps officials in the 1980s made major changes. The waterway and surrounding flood plain were slowly transformed into a greenbelt of parks, trees and bike paths, courtesy of bond measures approved by voters.

Then in 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency deemed the entire river to be navigable and therefore subject to protections under of the Clean Water Act.

A year ago, Army Corps of Engineers District Cmdr. Col. Mark Toy issued a license allowing the Los Angeles Conservation Corps to operate a paddle-boat program in the Sepulveda Basin, along a 1.5-mile stretch of river shaded by trees teeming with herons, egrets and cormorants.

This summer, paying customers will disembark a hundred yards from the corps' recent clear-cuts.

"Environmental stewardship is critical for us," Deraney said. "But assuring public safety and access to infrastructure designed to deal with flooding are paramount."

As he spoke, a Cooper's hawk swooped down and landed on a nearby tree stump.

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

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L.A. gun buyback program breaks a record

A one-day gun buyback event in Los Angeles on Wednesday gathered 2,037 firearms, including 75 assault weapons and two rocket launchers, officials said. The total was nearly 400 more weapons than were collected in a similar buyback earlier this year.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the collection at two locations was so successful that the city ran out of money for supermarket gift cards and got a private donation through the city controller to bolster the pot.

The gun buyback was moved up from its usual Mother's Day date in response to the massacre Dec. 14 that claimed the lives of 26 people, including 20 students, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

"As you can see to my right and left, these weren't just guns that weren't functioning anymore," Villaraigosa said at a news conference Thursday morning. "These were serious guns — semiautomatic weapons, guns that have no place on the streets of Los Angeles or any other city."

The mayor described the event as a success, but acknowledged that there were still many guns on the streets.

Hundreds lined up in cars to get Ralphs gift cards in exchange for different types of guns. Villaraigosa said the LAPD collected 901 handguns, 698 rifles, 363 shotguns and 75 assault weapons. The weapons will be melted down.

He said that nearly three-quarters of those turning in the weapons said in an informal survey that they felt safer with the weapons off the street.

"Perhaps the most honest testament to the success of yesterday's program can be seen in the 166 weapons that were surrendered for nothing," Villaraigosa said.

Police Chief Charlie Beck said it was the most successful gun buyback event since the city began the program.

"Those are weapons of war, weapons of death," Beck said, motioning to a selection of military-style weapons on a display table. "These are not hunting guns. These are not target guns. These are made to put high-velocity, extremely deadly, long-range rounds down-range as quickly as possible, and they have no place in our great city."

Beck acknowledged that the weapons would not be checked for connections to crimes before being melted down. He said the sheer number would make that difficult, and he does not want to deter people from turning in firearms.

Villaraigosa again Thursday called for a national assault weapons ban and for strengthening the California assault weapons law to close loopholes.

richard.winton@latimes.com

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Media may argue against redactions in church files, judge rules

Media organizations will be allowed to argue against redactions in secret church files that are due to be made public as part of a historic $660-million settlement between the Los Angeles Archdiocese and alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled Thursday.

Pursuant to Judge Emilie Elias' order, The Times and the Associated Press will be allowed to intervene in the case, in which attorneys are gearing up for the release of internal church personnel documents more than five years after the July 2007 settlement. The judge's ruling came after attorneys for the church and the plaintiffs agreed to the news organizations' involvement in the case.

The Times and the AP object to a portion of a 2011 decision by a retired judge overseeing the file-release process. Judge Dickran Tevrizian had ruled that all names of church employees, including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and other top archdiocese officials, should be blacked out in the documents before they were made public. In a hearing, Tevrizian said he did not believe the documents should be used to "embarrass or to ridicule the church."

Attorneys for the news organizations argued in court filings that the redactions would "deny the public information that is necessary to fully understand the church's knowledge about the serial molestation of children by priests over a period of decades." The personnel files of priests accused of molestation, which a church attorney has said were five or six banker's boxes of documents, could include internal memos about abuse claims, Vatican correspondence and psychiatric reports.

Contending that the secrecy was motivated by "a desire to avoid further embarrassment" for the church rather than privacy concerns, the media attorneys wrote: "That kind of self-interest is not even remotely the kind of 'overriding interest' that is needed to overcome the public's presumptive right of access, nor does it establish 'good cause' for ongoing secrecy."

An archdiocese attorney said Thursday that the church had spent a "great deal of effort" in redacting the files to comply with Tevrizian's order, and said the media attorneys misunderstand the legal process that both parties in the settlement agreed would be binding.

"We agree with Judge Tevrizian that enough time has passed and enough reforms have been made that it's time to get off this and move onto another subject," attorney J. Michael Hennigan said.

An attorney representing the victims also filed papers Thursday arguing that the church was "too broadly construing" Tevrizian's redaction orders, and asking Elias to release the files with church officials' names unredacted.

"Each of the higher-ups in the Los Angeles Archdiocese who recklessly endangered generations of this community's children by protecting pedophile priests will themselves be protected," wrote Ray Boucher, lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

A hearing on the release of church documents is scheduled for Jan. 7. At the hearing, Elias will also hear objections from an attorney representing individual priests, who contend that their constitutional privacy rights will be violated if the files are made public. In a court filing this month, the priests' attorney, Donald Steier, said Tevrizian was "dead wrong" to rule that the documents can be disclosed because the public interest outweighs the clerics' rights.

"Under California law, it is the employees who own the information in the files, and the Archdiocese is merely the custodian who has a legal duty to defend the contents of the files and has no legal right to agree to disclose them," Steier wrote.

victoria.kim@latimes.com

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Retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf dies at 78

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who presided over the swift and devastating 1991 military assault on Iraq that transformed the Middle East and reminded America what it was like to win a war, died Thursday of complications from pneumonia. He was 78.

The former four-star general, whose burly image towering in camouflage fatigues above his troops came to define both Operation Desert Storm and the nation's renewed sense of military pride, had been living in relatively quiet retirement in Tampa, Fla., eschewing the political battles that continued to broil over a part of the world he had left as a conqueror.

"We've lost an American original," the White House said in a statement. "Gen. Schwarzkopf stood tall for the country and Army he loved. Our prayers are with the Schwarzkopf family, who tonight can know that his legacy will endure in a nation that is more secure because of his patriotic service."

Former President George H.W. Bush, hospitalized himself with an illness in Texas, called Schwarzkopf "a true American patriot and one of the great military leaders of his generation."

Schwarzkopf, often called "Stormin' Norman" for his legendary temper, was best known for commanding a 765,000-strong force of allied international troops that drove former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces out of Kuwait six months after they'd overrun the tiny Gulf oil sheikdom, terrorized its citizens and taken over its oil fields.

It was an operation fraught with peril: Iraq had the fourth-largest Army in the world; it was equipped with a large arsenal of Soviet-supplied weaponry; it had dispatched its elite Republican Guard forces into key defensive positions; and the Iraqi president warned he had fortified the borders with moats of oil that could be set afire and turned into deathtraps for any U.S. forces that dared to venture across.

But Schwarzkopf, with an eerie degree of prescience, had rehearsed a battle with Iraq only days before the country's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait and began putting it into place, convincing the leadership in Washington that the war could be won with a combination of forceful American air power and an overwhelming array of troops on the ground.

In the end, after weeks of pounding by American bombers and missiles, the ground war was over in just 100 hours, with U.S. battle casualties limited to 147 dead and 467 wounded.

On the decision of then-President Bush and Army Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Schwarzkopf agreed to end the war short of demolishing the Republican Guard and taking down Saddam Hussein — a decision that would dog him for the rest of his life, especially as the U.S. went to war once again against Iraq in 2003.

To the end, Schwarzkopf insisted he had accepted the decision as the right one, even if he had not embraced it with enthusiasm — continuing to inflict carnage on retreating Iraqi forces for another day would have done little to upset the balance of power in the region and might have risked more American casualties, he said.

Likewise, he rejected criticism that the halt in combat had pulled the rug from underneath nascent rebellions by Iraqi Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north, leaving them vulnerable and exposed to slaughter once U.S. forces went home.

The Kurds had been battling the Iraqi regime for years, and would continue to do so, he said. "Yes, we are disappointed that that has happened. But it does not affect the accomplishment of our mission one way or another," he said at a news conference after the war.

The 6-foot, 3-inch general came home to a hero's welcome, appearing at a ticker-tape parade up Broadway, the Pegasus Parade at the Kentucky Derby in Louisville and an unusual joint session of Congress, where he received a standing ovation. Britain's Queen Elizabeth II awarded him a knighthood.

"In the defeat of Saddam's forces, he vanquished the scars on the American psyche over Vietnam," said Frank Wuco, a former senior naval intelligence officer who helped draft battle plans during Desert Storm. "He showed the Americans, primarily the American military, what victory felt like again."

In a 1992 autobiography written with Peter Petre, Schwarzkopf downplayed the notion of personal valor and resurrected something he'd said earlier to journalist Barbara Walters: "It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle."

Schwarzkopf was born Aug. 22, 1934, in Trenton, N.J. By graduating from the West Point military academy in 1956, he followed in the footsteps of his father, a general who served in both world wars and went on to found the New Jersey State Police, which investigated the kidnapping of the infant son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh.

Schwarzkopf went on to earn a master's degree in engineering from USC and taught missile engineering at West Point before volunteering in 1966 to serve in Vietnam — a conflict he called a "cesspool," in which he said military commanders were more interested in promoting their careers than in winning the war.

But Schwarzkopf went on to earn kudos from his own troops, at one point landing by helicopter in a minefield to rescue men trapped there. He was wounded twice and won three Silver Stars for bravery.

He commanded ground troops in the invasion of Grenada in 1983 and in 1988 took over U.S. Central Command, overseeing a staff of 700 at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa. There, he quickly discarded the old playbooks that said the Soviet Union was the biggest threat to American interests in the Middle East. He turned his sights instead on Iraq.

Headquartered in the Saudi capital of Riyadh during the buildup to Desert Storm, Schwarzkopf had a double-barreled shotgun in the corner, and in his spare living quarters, a Bible and an edition of World War II German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's "Infantry Attack."

He often said he wished for more patience but sometimes bristled at the notion he had a bad temper.

"An awful lot has been written about my temper. But I would defy anyone to go back over the years and tell me anyone whose career I've ruined, anyone whom I've driven out of the service, anyone I've fired from a job," he said. "I don't do that. I get angry at a principle, not a person."

He is survived by his wife, Brenda; two daughters, Cynthia and Jessica; a son, Christian; a grandson; and sisters Ruth Barenbaum and Sally Schwarzkopf.

kim.murphy@latimes.com

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Former President George H.W. Bush in intensive care

Former President George H.W. Bush, seen in March, has been moved to intensive care at a Houston hospital. (Tom Pennington / Getty Images)

By Matt Pearce

December 26, 2012, 4:02 p.m.

Former President George H.W. Bush has been moved to the intensive care unit at Methodist Hospital in Houston, hospital officials confirmed to the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.

Bush, 88, has been struggling with fever, weakness and a bronchitis-like cough, according to the Associated Press. He was originally planning to spend Christmas at home, but that plan was prevented by high fever.

Bush originally was checked into the hospital in November with bronchitis symptoms.

Bush suffers from vascular Parkinson's disease and missed the Republican National Convention this year.

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Deadly storm moves on to Northeast

A massive storm system upended post-Christmas travel plans Wednesday as it marched toward the Northeast after dumping snow and sleet on the middle of the country and producing tornadoes through the South on Christmas Day.

The storm stretched from Michigan to Florida and had been blamed for seven deaths so far.

The nation's airlines had canceled more than 1,800 flights and delayed more than 9,000 by at least 15 minutes, mostly into and out of Dallas, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, Indianapolis and New York, according to the airline monitoring website Flightstats.com.

PHOTOS: Northeast braces for winter storm

Los Angeles International Airport, the nation's fifth-busiest, has been largely spared the impact of the storm, with only a handful of delays and cancellations Wednesday, to airports including New York's John F. Kennedy International and Chicago's O'Hare International.

The storm could dump 12 to 18 inches of snow from the lower Great Lakes to northern New England, the National Weather Service said.

A tornado watch had been in effect for part of the day in eastern North Carolina and northeastern South Carolina.

"It is a significant storm in terms of its size and its range of impacts from severe weather to winter weather," said Chris Vaccaro, spokesman for the weather service.

The storm was expected to clear most of the mid-Atlantic states Wednesday night, the service said, and northern New England could expect steady snow starting Thursday morning.

On Christmas Day alone, the weather service received 34 reports of tornadoes in eastern Texas, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, Vaccaro said.

A twister touched down in Mobile, Ala., on Tuesday, blowing roofs off homes and knocking down trees and power lines. Several mobile homes north of the city were toppled, but no serious injuries were reported.

"Right now it's cleanup and damage assessment," said Donald Leeth, plans and operations officer with the Mobile County Emergency Management Agency.

The storm caused tens of thousands of customers to lose power across Alabama, but most had it back by Wednesday.

Snow and ice hit Arkansas hard, with about 200,000 customers losing power. Gov. Mike Beebe declared a statewide disaster Wednesday. The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management said two counties had opened shelters for those without heat.

The department received a report that a man died when a tree fell on his house in Saline County. Two children died on Christmas when the car they were in crossed the center line of an icy Arkansas highway and struck an SUV.

In Oklahoma, two people were killed in separate crashes Tuesday.

On Christmas, the storm's winds were blamed for toppling a tree onto a pickup in Texas, killing the driver, and for knocking another tree onto a house in Louisiana, killing a man there, the Associated Press reported.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency for several counties after the storm injured more than 25 people.

The New York City Office of Emergency Management issued a travel advisory for Wednesday evening through Thursday morning, citing forecasts of "snow with sleet and freezing rain." The area was also under a high wind warning, with gusts of up to 60 mph possible, Vaccaro said.

The worst of the weather should be gone by Friday, he said. "Come Friday morning, it will largely be a sunny day across the eastern third of the country."

andrew.khouri@latimes.com

Times staff writer Hugo Martin contributed to this report.

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Toyota to pay big to settle suits

Toyota Motor Corp., moving to put years of legal problems behind it, has agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle dozens of lawsuits relating to sudden acceleration.

The proposed deal, filed Wednesday in federal court, would be among the largest ever paid out by an automaker. It applies to numerous suits claiming economic damages caused by safety defects in the automaker's vehicles, but does not cover dozens of personal injury and wrongful-death suits that are still pending around the nation.

The suits were filed over the last three years by Toyota and Lexus owners who claimed that the value of their vehicles had been hurt by the potential for defects, including floor mats that could cause the vehicles to surge out of control.

ROAD TO RECALL: Read The Times' award winning coverage

In addition, Toyota said it is close to settling suits filed by the Orange County district attorney and a coalition of state attorneys general who had accused the automaker of deceptive business practices. The costs of those agreements would be included in a $1.1-billion charge the Japanese automaker said it will take against earnings to cover the actions.

"We concluded that turning the page on this legacy legal issue through the positive steps we are taking is in the best interests of the company, our employees, our dealers and, most of all, our customers," Christopher Reynolds, Toyota's chief counsel in the U.S., said in a statement.

Toyota's lengthy history of sudden acceleration was the subject of a series of Los Angeles Times articles in 2009, after a horrific crash outside San Diego that took the life of an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer and his family.

Under terms of the agreement, which has not yet been approved in court, Toyota would install brake override systems in numerous models and provide cash payments from a $250-million fund to owners whose vehicles cannot be modified to incorporate that safety measure.

In addition, the automaker plans to offer extended repair coverage on throttle systems in 16 million vehicles and offer cash payments from a separate $250-million fund to Toyota and Lexus owners who sold their vehicles or turned them in at the end of a lease in 2009 or 2010. The total value of the settlement could reach $1.4 billion, according to Steve Berman, the lead plaintiff attorney in the case.

The lawsuits, filed over the last several years, had been seeking class certification.

News of the agreement comes scarcely a week after Toyota agreed to pay a record $17.35-million fine to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for failing to report a potential floor mat defect in a Lexus SUV. Those come on top of almost $50 million in fines paid by Toyota for other violations related to sudden acceleration since 2010.

The massive settlement does not, however, put Toyota's legal woes to rest. The automaker still faces numerous injury and wrongful death claims around the country, including a group of cases that have been consolidated in federal court in Santa Ana, and other cases awaiting trial in Los Angeles County.

The first of the federal cases, involving a Utah man who was killed in a Camry that slammed into a wall in 2010, is slated for trial in mid-February.

The California cases are set to begin in April, among them a suit involving a 66-year-old Upland woman who was killed after her vehicle allegedly reached 100 miles per hour and slammed into a tree.

Edgar Heiskell III, a West Virginia attorney who has a dozen pending suits against Toyota, said he is preparing to go to trial this summer in a case that involved a Flint, Mich., woman who was killed when her 2005 Camry suddenly accelerated near her home.

"We are proceeding with absolute confidence that we can get our cases heard on the merits and that we expect to prove defects in Toyota's electronic control system," he said.

Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said the settlement would have no bearing on the personal injury cases.

"All carmakers face these kinds of suits," he said. "We'll defend those as we normally would."

The giant automaker's sudden acceleration problems first gained widespread attention after the August 2009 crash of a Lexus ES outside San Diego.

That accident set off a string of recalls, an unprecedented decision to temporarily stop sales of all Toyota vehicles and a string of investigations, including a highly unusual apology by Toyota President Akio Toyoda before a congressional committee. Eventually Toyota recalled more than 10 million vehicles worldwide and has since spent huge sums — estimated at more than $2 billion, not including Wednesday's proposed settlement — to repair both its automobiles and public image.

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L.A. architecture school  is poised to spread its wings

The Southern California Institute of Architecture has a most unusual college campus: a quarter-mile-long former railroad freight depot near the Los Angeles River in downtown. Students skateboard inside the skinny structure, from end to end, passing exhibition halls, a robotics lab and studios packed with wooden models and computers.

But some physical deficits come with that urban coolness. Unlike more traditional colleges, SCI-Arc, as it is known, has no lawn or central quad to accommodate graduation ceremonies and other big events. The school uses the parking lot for such gatherings, but it lacks amenities and charm, despite remarkable views of downtown skyscrapers.

Now an ambitious project is in the works to create what teachers and students believe will fill the need and become a landmark in a neighborhood that is morphing from gritty to artsy.

A faculty member has designed an unusual steel-frame and fabric pavilion that will include a stage for graduations, concerts and community events and provide shade for 1,200 guests on movable chairs. It will be shaped like an enormous bat with wings, poised to fly above nearby lofts and galleries.

And thanks to an arts foundation grant, the $170,000 project is slated to be constructed by next spring in the school's parking lot, at the foot of the 4th Street bridge near Merrick Street.

Marcelo Spina, the professor heading the effort, said he hopes his pavilion will help bring more attention to the 550-student school, which now tends to anonymously inhabit the concrete depot. The 50-foot-high, 110-foot-wide graduation structure, topped with a school sign, "will be a kind of institutional beacon, a kind of marquee for the school's presence in downtown. It will allow people to know what is going on in this long building," Spina said.

It is already providing lessons for students.

As part of their classes, architecture students are helping with the design and construction of the so-called "League of Shadows." The name is a partly tongue-in-cheek reference to a group of Batman characters and to the pavilion's ability to block the L.A. sun. Its three attached boxlike forms will tilt above open arches and will be covered in black and turquoise fabric. The structure will be lighted at night.

On a recent day, a dozen students were working on a large model of the structure, figuring out how to attach the fabric to the wooden frame, and projecting its effect on sunlight. Among them was Suky Ho, 34, a master's degree student from San Francisco, who expects to graduate at the pavilion in 2014. "I feel very privileged to be part of that," she said.

The pavilion is important, she added, because the school "lacks a grand entry.... Maybe this will give us our own location and identity because it is on a corner."

Founded in 1972 as an avant-garde alternative to conservative architecture schools, SCI-Arc moved from a Westside warehouse in 2001 to the century-old depot, which it recently purchased after some legal wrangling. The private campus offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Over the past few years, students designed and built much smaller, temporary installations as backdrops to the graduations. Those were intended to last just a year or two. The school wanted something bolder that would last at least four or five years. So, the college's director, Eric Owen Moss, a renowned architect based in Culver City, held a design competition among four professors.

"Part of the responsibility of SCI-Arc, as I see it, is to cultivate not only the capacity of the students but to make it clear that the faculty who sit in judgment of the students also have to be productive and be judged and evaluated," Moss said. "You not only tell people what to do but you do it too."

The school received a $400,000 grant from ArtPlace, a consortium of public agencies, private foundations and banks that says it encourages "creative placemaking." That helped fund the graduation pavilion and a new indoor social gathering spot next to the cafe.

The League of Shadows, Moss said, pushes into the Arts District, east of Little Tokyo. "The idea was to get architecture out on the street and into the world."

The winning entry was by Spina and his wife, Georgina Huljich, a UCLA instructor and his partner in the Silverlake-based architecture firm, PATTERNS. Among their recent work is the Prism Gallery on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, which has an eye-catching facade.

Spina, who emigrated from Argentina and has taught at the college for 11 years, said he wants students to get beyond theories and computer simulations and learn how to swing a hammer and sew material. With its large wood and machine shop for creating models and other work, SCI-Arc has "an ethos of craftsmanship and making things," he said.

With the help of a professional engineering firm, most of the actual construction will be done by licensed crews. But students will be on hand to help with such things as positioning the full-size fabric skeins.

Elias Arkin, 26, a master's degree student from Mendocino County, said he found Spina's fall seminar helpful for his career. "Any time you get the chance to build is a positive. And especially when it is something so complex and unique as this," he said.

The pavilion will be a visual contrast to the adjacent 4th Street Bridge, a 1931 structure with Gothic Revival-style towers and street lights. The bridge traffic may make it too noisy for small-scale theater on the stage, but Jonathan Jerald, a neighborhood activist who is director of the nearby District Gallery, said he is delighted the space will be available for larger public concerts and community events.

"We love the shape and structure and think it's very intriguing," Jerald said. "I think it will become an icon not just for SCI-Arc but also an icon for the community."

larry.gordon@latimes.com

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Maps alter the course of several lives

None of them could have predicted the direction their lives would take when tens of thousands of maps were discovered this fall in a tiny cottage at the top of Mount Washington.

Just ask the librarian, the neighbor, the real estate agent and the retired Air Force man in Las Vegas, whose fates converged around the collection amassed over half a century by John Everett Feathers, who died of AIDS in February.

The cottage was crammed with bound atlases, wall-size roll-up maps and globes. Crates and cabinet drawers were filled with fold-out street maps. A gutted stereo case was even stuffed with maps where its electronic innards had once been.

The astonishing collection was uncovered by the real estate agent hired by the owners of the 948-square-foot house where Feathers had lived to empty out its contents. Told to throw out whatever he found, Matthew Greenberg instead called the Los Angeles Central Library's Glen Creason.

Creason went to take a look; what he saw would make the downtown library into one of the country's leading map archives and turn his life upside down.

It took weeks to unpack the 220 cardboard boxes that he and a group of movers, library workers and volunteers hauled from the cottage in October. It may take years to sort through all of the maps. Volunteers gathered one Saturday earlier this month and started organizing the maps by geographic area. Eventually each map will bear a Dewey Decimal System number.

Creason is already using Feathers' maps to answer library patrons' questions. One inquiry dealt with the locations of World War II era Civil Defense stations. A 1942 Jack Renie street guide held the answer. Previously, the library did not have any Renie guides earlier than the 1949 edition, Creason said.

"It's been really fun. These maps have attracted so much attention. I've gotten emails from all over the country. People come in and actually know my name," he said, with a laugh. "It's been really positive for the library. It's been a good thing."

Greenberg has found that the maps' discovery was a game changer for him, too. The unwitting public service he performed has given him new perspective on his real estate work and his life.

"Personally, the experience at the house was life changing. Giving away the maps was like the pebble in the lake: There was a ripple effect. It's made me look at things differently. With my work, right now I'm as busy as I could ever be," he said.

Earlier this month he was invited to discuss the maps' discovery at a rare books fundraiser at the downtown library and met several of Feathers' friends. They filled in some of the blanks about the collector's life for Greenberg.

The maps' discovery changed the fate of his listing, too. Greenberg had expected to have the lot subdivided for new homes. But the flurry of October map-packing attracted the attention of Mount Washington residents, among them Maureen Burke, who walked over with a neighbor to see what was going on.

There they met Greenberg, and Burke mentioned she was looking to move out of the small nearby guesthouse she rents and buy a tiny house of her own. When she heard that Feathers' old cottage was being viewed as a tear-down, she inquired about buying it.

Escrow closed earlier this month; and Burke, an advertising makeup artist, plans to move in when renovations are completed in early spring.

"I'd been renting 7 1/2 years on this same street and was being outbid for everything in my price range that I found," she explained. "Without sounding too out there, I'll say that how this turned out feels amazing."

Burke purchased the property from the estate of Walter Keller, who had been Feathers' companion before his own death two years ago. Keller had arranged with his brother and sister, twins Marvin Keller and Esther Baum, for Feathers to stay there rent-free as long as he lived.

"I told Marv I understand why his brother loved living there so much. The views are wonderful, the neighbors are nice," said Burke. "Walter liked to have parties. I told them that after I move in, I'll have a party and invite them."

Baum and Keller were happy with the $450,000 selling price, Greenberg said. "It was a good deal for everybody."

While Burke's purchase was still in escrow, she and Creason found two more boxes of maps that had been overlooked, hidden beneath some stairs.

The enthusiasm over Feathers' maps has made his father look at his son differently.

John Elmer Feathers, now an 82-year-old Air Force veteran and VA retiree who lives in Las Vegas, said he and his son had drifted apart in the last years of his life. "He didn't want to be a burden when he got AIDS," the elder Feathers said.

His son began collecting maps when he became an avid National Geographic reader as a boy, according to Feathers. "All of the magazines came with maps in them. After that, he would pick up free maps at gas stations when we were on road trips. He loved to travel all of his life."

The younger Feathers, nicknamed Jeff by the family, grew up a loner. He was born at an Air Force base hospital in Massachusetts with a cleft palate that caused speech problems that led him to be tagged a slow learner, his father said. In Los Angeles, he worked as a hospital dietitian and spent virtually all he earned buying more maps.

The elder Feathers said his son would be pleased to know that people will be able to use his maps for generations to come.

"It sounds like the library is going to do him up proud. He'd appreciate that."

bob.pool@latimes.com

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Contested UTLA panel elections signal internal fissures

The young staff at the Alexander Science Center has been hard hit by seniority-based layoffs, the main factor behind a turnover of at least 28 teachers in the last five years — this in a school with a faculty of about 28.

Teachers say that the students at the USC-adjacent campus have suffered from the lack of stability and that the faculty has felt frustrated and voiceless.

But now, three instructors from the Alexander science school are among the freshman class of delegates to the House of Representatives for United Teachers Los Angeles, the teachers union in the L.A. Unified School District.

The House is the union's official decision-making body: It selects candidates to endorse in elections and has the final say on policy — taking precedence over the president and the board of directors.

The recent elections, concluded this month, were the most contested in years, by far.

Of 32 election districts, 22 featured contested bids for seats that typically could be had for the asking through a self-nomination process. In all, 396 candidates vied for 209 positions, with 100 won by teachers not in the current House.

The ideology of the new delegates is varied, and still evolving. They are concerned about job security, teacher turnover, performance evaluations and funding levels. But they are also worried about what some see as a combative but ineffectual and sometimes wrongheaded union and a demanding, ossified district bureaucracy.

The level of interest in the House elections surprised union leaders and veteran teachers alike — some of whom greeted the nouveau activism with concern. They note that outside groups encouraged teachers to run and worry that such groups will try to influence union policy.

Two outside groups are local arms of national organizations, Educators 4 Excellence and Teach Plus. A third group, Teachers for a New Unionism, is headed by Mike Stryer, a Fairfax High teacher on leave who lost a bid for the school board four years ago. His team reached teachers through home mailings, urging them to run.

All the groups are funded by major nonprofits, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has huge investments in education research and sometimes controversial policy positions. And all assert their desire for a union that better serves the interests of teachers as well as students.

Some in UTLA perceive an unholy alliance among these groups, their sponsoring foundations and L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy, a former Gates official.

"Taking over our House of Reps is clearly their strategy to destroy us," wrote teacher Anne Zerrien-Lee in an email posted to an online teachers forum.

"We have enough enemies outside of UTLA that we shouldn't have to deal with school district and Gates puppets within," said regional union leader Scott Mandel in an interview.

Without question, the outside groups see things differently than the leadership of UTLA.

Notably, the union has wanted to limit, as much as possible, the effect of test scores on a teacher's performance evaluation. The outside groups or their funders have backed the use of standardized test scores — or formulas based on them — as one key measure of a teacher's effectiveness.

Secondly, the outside groups want layoffs based on teacher effectiveness rather than seniority; the unions defend the seniority system as the most equitable approach.

Still, Teach Plus wasn't trying to recruit candidates who passed a litmus test, said Executive Director John Lee.

"Our desire wasn't to have a Teach Plus caucus but to connect teachers with leadership opportunities," Lee said.

The new delegates emphasize their loyalty to their profession and to their mission.

"I love teaching," said 35-year-old Antoinette Pippin, a fourth-grade teacher at Alexander Science Center. "I love my students, but I'm seeing a lot of things right now that are bad for my students and bad for teachers."

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Dueling Santa trackers are off and running

A screen grab from Google's Santa Tracker. (Google / December 24, 2012)

By Deborah Netburn

December 24, 2012, 1:11 p.m.

All year long Santa keeps an eye on you. Now it's time to turn the tables.

One day a year, you are invited to keep an eye on Santa as he whips around the world in his sleigh, delivering a dizzying number of presents to children all over the world.

If you'd like to see where Santa is at the moment, you've got choices. Google and NORAD, which used to team up for your Santa tracking pleasure, have gone their separate ways this year and created two distinct tracking options.

Google's Santa Tracker is the slicker of the two. It takes you to Santa's Dashboard, where you can see Santa's current location, his next location, the number of miles traveled, and the number of presents delivered. Santa is also adding Twitter like status updates. The most recent one as of this writing: "Rudolph's nose just turned red." 

PHOTOS: Google Doodles of 2012

You can also click on the map and see where Santa has been, as noted by little present icons on the map. Click on the icon and you'll see how many presents Santa has delivered in each city. When Santa is on the move, you'll see him flying on the map in a sleigh. When he's stopped to deliver presents, you'll see him shoving presents down a chimney.

Over at the official NORAD Tracks Santa website you'll also find a running tally of how many presents Santa has delivered as well as what city he just left and what city he's currently headed toward. NORAD also offers Santa Cams that show animations of Santa flying around the world. 

Both Santa tracking services offer loads of extras. If you visit Santa's Village on Google's tracker you can send a message from  Santa to a friend or family member. And NORAD has more than 1,200 volunteers staffing a Santa hotline to answer all your Santa questions.  (877-HI-NORAD).

In the spirit of the season you might try them both out, but hurry up. The trackers shut down a few hours before Christmas morning. 

Happy tracking!

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Jack Klugman dies at 90; star of TV's 'The Odd Couple,' 'Quincy'

Jack Klugman, the three-time Emmy Award-winning actor best known for his portrayals of slovenly sportswriter Oscar Madison on TV's "The Odd Couple" and the title role of the murder-solving medical examiner on "Quincy, M.E.," died Monday at his home in Woodland Hills. He was 90.

Klugman had been in declining health for the last year, his son Adam said.

He had withdrawn from a production of "Twelve Angry Men" at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, N.J., in Marchfor undisclosed health reasons. He had undergone successful surgery for cancer of the larynx in 1989.

PHOTOS: 2012 notable deaths

Klugman was the last surviving member of the cast that played the jury in "12 Angry Men," the classic 1957 movie drama about deliberations in a first-degree murder trial. He was also a veteran of live TV dramatic anthology series in the 1950s and appeared in several episodes of "Twilight Zone."

On Broadway, Klugman played Ethel Merman's boyfriend, Herbie, in the hit musical "Gypsy," which earned him a 1960 Tony Award nomination. He won his first Emmy in 1964 for a guest appearance on "The Defenders."

In 1965, he was back on Broadway, replacing Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison in the original production of "The Odd Couple," Neil Simon's classic comedy about two friends with polar-opposite personalities who become roommates — one is divorced and the other just broke up with his wife.

PHOTOS: Jack Klugman -- 1922 - 2012

But that's not why Klugman landed the role of the casually sloppy Oscar Madison in the TV version of "The Odd Couple" opposite Tony Randall's fussy neat-freak Felix Unger.

Randall, who had appeared in a production of "The Odd Couple" with Mickey Rooney, had wanted Rooney to play Oscar in the TV series. But executive producer Garry Marshall fought for Klugman.

In his 2005 book "Tony and Me: A Story of Friendship," Klugman wrote that during the first rehearsals for the TV series, Marshall told him he'd never seen him play Oscar on Broadway.

"What!" said Klugman. "Then why did you fight for me?"

"I saw you in 'Gypsy,' " said Marshall. "You did a scene with Ethel Merman and I was impressed because as she was singing to you, she was spitting a lot and it was getting on your clothes and your face and in your eyes. You never even flinched. I said to myself, 'Now that's a good actor.' "

Although "The Odd Couple" was not a hit when it aired on ABC from 1970 to 1975, it has had a long life in syndication and forever cemented the reputation of its two stars as one of TV's great comedy teams.

In TV Guide's 1999 listing of "TV's Fifty Greatest Characters Ever," Felix and Oscar ranked No. 12.

"Many acting tandems have played Neil Simon's testosterone-and-teacup duo over the years on stage and screen," the magazine observed. "But Tony Randall and Jack Klugman are the Felix and Oscar we love most. For five unflaggingly creative seasons, they were the most evenly matched 'Odd Couple' imaginable."

Although Randall claimed he was "very little like" Felix, Klugman said in a 1996 interview with The Times, that he was "pretty close" to Oscar.

In fact, when members of the wardrobe department initially sought to outfit the unkempt Oscar, they looked no further than Klugman himself.

"They paid me $360 for everything in my closet, and I still made a profit on the deal," he told Sports Illustrated in 2005.

As Oscar, Klugman won Emmys in 1971 and 1973 for outstanding continued performance by an actor in a leading role in a comedy series.

After "The Odd Couple" ended its run in 1975, Klugman said the last thing on his mind was doing another TV series.

Having "spent five years in the best situation comedy ever devised" and having worked with Randall, "the nicest guy in this business," Klugman said, he turned down one pilot series script after another, particularly those for sitcoms.

But when he received the script for "Quincy, M.E.," he said, he saw "potential in it — the gimmick of a doctor who solves crime for the police by medical and scientific deduction. It was not just another cop show."

And with "Quincy, M.E." which ran on NBC from 1976 to 1983 and earned Klugman four Emmy nominations, he saw a way to raise issues such as incest, child abuse, drunk driving and elderly abuse.

"I'm a muckraker," he told the Chicago Tribune in 1993. "I saw the possibilities in 'Quincy': We could entertain with what was essentially a good murder mystery but also do important shows on important subjects. This was why I got into the business."

One of six children, Klugman was born in Philadelphia on April 27, 1922. His father, a financially struggling house painter, died when Klugman was 12. A year later, after a stint selling newspapers, Klugman began taking horse bets to earn extra money.

"The dealer said, 'These guys will give you slips of paper. Just put them in the tin,'" he recalled in a 1971 interview with The Times. "Then I was taking bets on the phone."

A lifelong track aficionado, Klugman later owned a horse farm in Temecula, and his racehorse, Jaklin Klugman, finished third in the 1980 Kentucky Derby.

Back home in 1945 after serving in the Army during World War II, Klugman lost the $3,000 he had saved in U.S. savings bonds by betting on baseball games. Worse, he owed $500 to a loan shark and faced serious bodily injury unless he made a payment within three days.

Unable to come up with the cash, Klugman skipped town and moved to Pittsburgh, where he was accepted into the drama department of what is now Carnegie Mellon University. A few years later he moved to New York, where he landed parts in off-Broadway and summer stock.

He appeared in films such as "Days of Wine and Roses" and "Goodbye, Columbus," and also starred in two short-lived situation comedies: "Harris Against the World" and "You Again?"

In 1989, Klugman, a heavy smoker, underwent surgery for cancer of the larynx in which the center of his right vocal cord was removed. Afterward, the actor famous for his raspy growl initially was unable to speak above a whisper.

After going public with his story a year-and-a-half later, he worked with voice specialist Gary Catona who put Klugman on a regimen of daily vocal exercises to strengthen his left vocal cord so that it could stretch to touch what was left of his right vocal cord and produce a sound.

His old friend Randall also played a key role in his return to acting in 1991.

After beginning his vocal exercises, Randall called Klugman to suggest that they do a one-night benefit performance of "The Odd Couple" on Broadway for Randall's new National Actors Theatre.

"I said to Tony, 'I can't even talk. I don't know how I can do it,' " Klugman recalled in a 1993 interview with the Chicago Tribune.

But, as he wrote in his memoir, after six months of working on his voice "like Rocky worked on his body," the whisper "became a sound, and in time, the sound became a little voice. But was it enough to perform on Broadway?"

Nervous about facing an audience and hating the way he sounded, Klugman, who wore a small microphone on stage, was encouraged after getting his first laugh.

At the end of the performance, he took his bow to a standing ovation.

"After that, I knew I was back," he said.

Klugman married actress and comedienne Brett Somers in 1953. They had been separated for many years when she died in 2007.

In addition to son Adam, he is survived by his wife, Peggy; son David; and two grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

McClellan is a former staff writer.

news.obits@latimes.com

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Charles Durning, king of character actors, dies at 89

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Charles Durning, the two-time Oscar nominee who was dubbed the king of the character actors for his skill in playing everything from a Nazi colonel to the pope, died Monday at his home in New York City. He was 89.

Durning's longtime agent and friend Judith Moss told The Associated Press that he died Monday of natural causes in his home in the borough of Manhattan.

Although he portrayed everyone from blustery public officials to comic foils to put-upon everymen, Durning may be best remembered by movie audiences for his Oscar-nominated, over-the-top role as a comically corrupt governor in 1982's "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."

Many critics marveled that such a heavyset man could be so nimble in the film's show-stopping song-and-dance number, not realizing Durning had been a dance instructor early in his career. Indeed, he had met his first wife, Carol, when both worked at a dance studio.

The year after "Best Little Whorehouse," Durning received another Oscar nomination, for his portrayal of a bumbling Nazi officer in Mel Brooks' "To Be or Not to Be." He was also nominated for a Golden Globe as the harried police lieutenant in 1975's "Dog Day Afternoon."

He won a Golden Globe as best supporting TV actor in 1991 for his portrayal of John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald in the TV film "The Kennedys of Massachusetts" and a Tony in 1990 as Big Daddy in the Broadway revival of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

Durning had begun his career on stage, getting his first big break when theatrical producer Joseph Papp hired him for the New York Shakespeare Festival.

He went on to work regularly, if fairly anonymously, through the 1960s until his breakout role as a small town mayor in the Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning play "That Championship Season" in 1972.

He quickly made an impression on movie audiences the following year as the crooked cop stalking con men Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the Oscar-winning comedy "The Sting."

Dozens of notable portrayals followed. He was the would-be suitor of Dustin Hoffman, posing as a female soap opera star in "Tootsie;" the infamous seller of frog legs in "The Muppet Movie;" and Chief Brandon in Warren Beatty's "Dick Tracy." He played Santa Claus in four different movies made for television and was the pope in the TV film "I Would be Called John: Pope John XXIII."

"I never turned down anything and never argued with any producer or director," Durning told The Associated Press in 2008, when he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Other films included "The Front Page," "The Hindenburg," "Breakheart Pass," "North Dallas Forty," "Starting Over," "Tough Guys," "Home for the Holidays," "Spy Hard" and `O Brother Where Art Thou?"

Durning also did well in television as a featured performer as well as a guest star. He appeared in the short-lived series "The Cop and the Kid" (1975), "Eye to Eye" (1985) and "First Monday" (2002) as well as the four-season "Evening Shade" in the 1990s.

"If I'm not in a part, I drive my wife crazy," he acknowledged during a 1997 interview. "I'll go downstairs to get the mail, and when I come back I'll say, `Any calls for me?"'

Durning's rugged early life provided ample material on which to base his later portrayals. He was born into an Irish family of 10 children in 1923, in Highland Falls, N.Y., a town near West Point. His father was unable to work, having lost a leg and been gassed during World War I, so his mother supported the family by washing the uniforms of West Point cadets.

The younger Durning himself would barely survive World War II.

He was among the first wave of U.S. soldiers to land at Normandy during the D-Day invasion and the only member of his Army unit to survive. He killed several Germans and was wounded in the leg. Later he was bayoneted by a young German soldier whom he killed with a rock. He was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and survived a massacre of prisoners.

In later years, he refused to discuss the military service for which he was awarded the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts.

"Too many bad memories," he told an interviewer in 1997. "I don't want you to see me crying."

Tragedy also stalked other members of his family. Durning was 12 when his father died, and five of his sisters lost their lives to smallpox and scarlet fever.

A high school counselor told him he had no talent for art, languages or math and should learn office skills. But after seeing "King Kong" and some of James Cagney's films, Durning knew what he wanted to do.

Leaving home at 16, he worked in a munitions factory, on a slag heap and in a barbed-wire factory. When he finally found work as a burlesque theater usher in Buffalo, N.Y., he studied the comedians' routines, and when one of them showed up too drunk to go on one night, he took his place.

He would recall years later that he was hooked as soon as heard the audience laughing. He told the AP in 2008 that he had no plans to stop working.

"They're going to carry me out, if I go," he said.

Durning and his first wife had three children before divorcing in 1972. In 1974, he married his high school sweetheart, Mary Ann Amelio.

He is survived by his children, Michele, Douglas and Jeannine. The family planned to have a private family service and burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

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Marines to undergo random Breathalyzer tests

SAN DIEGO — Starting Jan. 1, Marines at Camp Pendleton and other bases will be subject to random Breathalyzer tests twice a year under what is billed as the toughest anti-drinking policy in the U.S. military.

An order issued by Lt. Gen. R.E. Milstead Jr., deputy commandant for manpower and reserve affairs, calls for any Marine or sailor with a blood-alcohol level of 0.01% or higher to be referred for counseling. Any Marine or sailor who tests at 0.04% or higher will be referred to medical personnel to determine his or her fitness for duty.

Milstead said that although the new order "is primarily for deterrence and education," nothing precludes commanders from handing out punishment. Each unit will have an officer or staff noncommissioned officer to act as the alcohol screening program coordinator.

In California, a driver with a 0.08% blood-alcohol level is considered drunk, and his or her driver's license is immediately suspended. A single drink can lead to a level of 0.01%.

In September, a study by the Institute of Medicine, sponsored by the Department of Defense, found that binge drinking, often called "sport drinking," is increasing among military personnel in all branches.

In 1998, 35% of personnel admitted to binge drinking in the previous year. In 2008, the last year for which statistics were available, that figure had risen to 47%. Twenty percent of personnel classified themselves as "heavy" drinkers.

Noting that "alcohol has long been part of military culture," the study's authors, including professors from USC and UC San Francisco, called for better leadership from the top of the chain of command in curbing excess drinking. Among the recommendations was "routine screening for excessive alcohol consumption."

Under the Marine order, monthly reports about the results of the alcohol screening program will be kept by each Marine unit, and quarterly reports will be submitted to Marine Corps headquarters.

In fiscal 2011, the last year for which statistics are available, the Marine Corps reported 13 alcohol-related deaths among Marines in this country and abroad. Included were Marines killed by vehicle and motorcycle crashes, one from falling 17 stories from a building, one from attempting to run across a freeway near Camp Pendleton and several that occurred during binge drinking when the Marine passed out and could not be revived.

Officials have also expressed alarm about a link between alcohol abuse and cases of domestic violence and sexual assault.

In June, a Marine Corps report indicated that there had been 333 reported cases of sexual assault corpswide in the previous year and that in most cases, the aggressor, the victim or both had been drinking.

In a precede to that report, Commandant Gen. James Amos wrote: "Despite our efforts, we have been ineffective at addressing and eliminating sexual assault within our ranks."

tony.perry@latimes.com

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Catalina Island Conservancy loses 3 more board members

The conservancy that manages nine-tenths of Catalina Island began caving in on itself last week as a scientist and three members of the board of directors, one of them a major donor, walked away over differences with the organization's top executive.

Their departures bring to 10 the number of scientists and officials who have quit in recent months citing what they say is Executive Director Ann Muscat's controversial leadership style and differences over the direction she is taking the 40-year-old Catalina Island Conservancy.

"The organization is imploding," Roy Rose, a Catalina resident and businessman who resigned from the board last week, said Friday while standing on the veranda of his home overlooking Avalon's cozy harbor.

Rose, 77, said he had written the nonprofit out of his will, depriving it of more than $10 million. "I felt betrayed and misled," Rose said.

Muscat remains on the job by virtue of what sources said was an 8-7 vote by the board in a closed session Dec. 14. Some board members wanted to fire her immediately, but a majority preferred to keep her until a replacement is found, the sources said.

On Dec. 17, however, the conservancy announced that Muscat had retained the full support of the board. The statement contributed to some of the recent resignations.

Muscat, a marine biologist hired a decade ago, is pushing development of new tourist attractions to bring badly needed revenue to the conservancy and the island's tourism-oriented businesses. The conservancy manages most of the island's wild lands, operating on $12 million a year from donations and earned revenue.

Some of those who left the conservancy disagreed with the emphasis on tourism over conservation.

A more recent concern of some board members was the discovery that Muscat's employment contract had been renegotiated earlier this year without their approval. Muscat earns $286,000 a year, according to state tax reports. Conservancy officials Friday said the contract had been renegotiated by an executive committee, which consists of three board members.

Board Chairman John Cotton said the contract negotiations were conducted "under the guidance of a longtime outside counsel."

Cotton said the dissent reflected strong dissatisfaction with Muscat and the board. "We respect and are very thankful for all our donors," he said. "Hopefully, through a dialogue, we can come to an understanding."

Muscat could not be reached by telephone, and Norris Bishton, head of legal affairs for the conservancy, said she was not available to comment.

Other troubling issues involve Muscat's use of an assistant's conservancy credit card, which Muscat is authorized to review, instead of one issued to her, which the chief operating officer is authorized to review. Mel Dinkel, the conservancy's most recent treasurer and chief operating officer, resigned in May.

Separately, conservancy attorneys investigated a claim that the nonprofit violated its rules by paying about $5,000 in travel expenses for Muscat's husband to join her on a conservancy-sponsored "donor development trip" in 2009 to an island off Baja California, Mexico.

Sources say Muscat later reimbursed the organization after other officers pointed out that there was no policy for covering a spouse's travel costs in full.

For some, the issue goes beyond Muscat. Despite plans to replace her, they say, the board's behavior has taken a toll on the organization's credibility.

Many of the conservancy's 75 employees are now weighing their options.

"I believe deeply in the organization and its mission — but things don't look good," said a conservancy manager, who asked to remain anonymous. "Many of these issues can be resolved. But do I want to spend the next five years helping dig the organization out of the hole it's in?"

Regina Birdsell, a marketing and communications executive with the Center for Nonprofit Management, said board of directors of nonprofits need to operate transparently "because that is a sign of confidence that it is well-run and focused on achieving its mission." Renegotiating an executive officer's contract without the board's approval, she added, "is sloppy governance."

Rose would not argue with that.

"For years, I was so passionate about the conservancy that I donated $20,000 to $30,000 a year," he said. "In my original will, they were to receive my home and a commercial building I own in Avalon that has 24,000 square feet of space and is fully leased."

"Not anymore. I wrote the conservancy out of my will, and I did it with a sense of urgency," he said. "I do not believe the conservancy could handle such gifts responsibly."

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

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