Exclusive: Google to replace M&A chief

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc is replacing the head of its in-house mergers and acquisitions group, David Lawee, with one of its top lawyers, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Don Harrison, a high-ranking lawyer at Google, will replace Lawee as head of the Internet search company‘s corporate development group, which oversees mergers and acquisitions, said the source, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Google is also planning to create a new late-stage investment group that Lawee will oversee, the source said.

Google declined to comment. Lawee and Harrison could not immediately be reached for comment.

One of the Internet industry’s most prolific acquirers, Google has struck more than 160 deals to acquire companies and assets since 2010, according to regulatory filings. Many of Google’s most popular products, including its online maps and Android mobile software, were created by companies or are based on technology that Google acquired.

Harrison, Google’s deputy general counsel, will head up the M&A group at a time when the company is still in the process of integrating its largest acquisition, the $ 12.5 billion purchase of smartphone maker Motorola Mobility, which closed in May.

And he takes over at a time when the Internet search giant faces heightened regulatory scrutiny, with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission conducting antitrust investigations into Google’s business practices. Several recent Google acquisitions have undergone months of regulatory review before receiving approval.

As deputy general counsel, Harrison has been deeply involved in the company’s regulatory issues and many of its acquisitions. He joined Google more than five years ago and has completed more than 70 deals at the company, according to biographical information on the Google Ventures website.

Harrison is an adviser to Google Ventures, the company’s nearly four-year old venture division which provides funding for start-up companies.

While most of Google’s acquisitions are small and mid-sized deals that do not meet the threshold for disclosure of financial terms, Google has a massive war chest of $ 45.7 billion in cash and marketable securities to fund acquisitions.

Lawee, who took over the M&A group in 2008, has had hits and misses during his tenure. Google shut down social media company Slide one year after acquiring it for $ 179 million, for example.

The planned late-stage investment group has not been finalized, the source said. The fund might operate separately from Google Ventures, according to the source.

“Think of it as a private equity fund inside of Google,” the source said.

The company recently said it would increase the cash it allocates to Google Ventures to $ 300 million a year, up from $ 200 million, potentially helping it invest in later-stage financing rounds.

Google finished Friday’s regular trading session down 1 percent, or $ 6.92, at $ 684.21.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Carol Bishopric and Jim Loney)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Viral rapper PSY apologizes for anti-US protests

South Korean rapper and Internet sensation PSY is apologizing to Americans for participating in anti-U.S. protests several years ago.

Park Jae-sang, who performs as PSY, issued a statement Friday after reports surfaced that he had participated in concerts protesting the U.S. military presence in South Korea during the early stages of the Iraq war.

At a 2004 concert, the "Gangnam Style" rapper performs a song with lyrics about killing "Yankees" who have been torturing Iraqi captives and their families "slowly and painfully." During a 2002 concert, he smashed a model of a U.S. tank on stage.

"While I'm grateful for the freedom to express one's self, I've learned there are limits to what language is appropriate and I'm deeply sorry for how these lyrics could be interpreted," he wrote in the statement. "I will forever be sorry for any pain I have caused by those words."

The 34-year-old rapper says the protests were part of a "deeply emotional" reaction to the war and the death of two Korean school girls, who were killed when a U.S. military vehicle hit them as they walked alongside the road. He noted anti-war sentiment was high around the world at the time.

PSY attended college in the U.S. and says he understands the sacrifices U.S. military members have made to protect South Korea and other nations. He has recently performed in front of servicemen and women.

"And I hope they and all Americans can accept my apology," he wrote. "While it's important that we express our opinions, I deeply regret the inflammatory and inappropriate language I used to do so. In my music, I try to give people a release, a reason to smile. I have learned that thru music, our universal language we can all come together as a culture of humanity and I hope that you will accept my apology."

His participation in the protests was no secret in South Korea, where the U.S. has had a large military presence since the Korean War, but was not generally known in America until recent news reports.

PSY did not write "Dear American," a song by the Korean band N.EX.T, but he does perform it. The song exhorts the listener to kill the Yankees who are torturing Iraqi captives, their superiors who ordered the torture and their families. At one point he raps: "Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law, and fathers/Kill them all slowly and painfully."

PSY launched to international acclaim based on the viral nature of his "Gangnam Style" video. It became YouTube's most watched video, making him a millionaire who freely crossed cultural boundaries around the world. Much of that success has happened in the U.S., where the rapper has managed to weave himself into pop culture.

He recently appeared on the American Music Awards, dancing alongside MC Hammer in a melding of memorable dance moves that book-end the last two decades. And the Internet is awash with copycat versions of the song. Even former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, the 81-year-old co-chairman of President Barack Obama's deficit commission, got in on the fun, recently using the song in a video to urge young Americans to avoid credit card debt.

It remains to be seen how PSY's American fans will react. Obama, the father of two pop music fans, wasn't letting the news change his plans, though.

Earlier Friday, the White House confirmed Obama and his family will attend a Dec. 21 charity concert where PSY is among the performers. A spokesman says it's customary for the president to attend the "Christmas in Washington" concert, which will be broadcast on TNT. The White House has no role in choosing performers for the event, which benefits the National Children's Medical Center.

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: A Son Lost, a Mother Found

My friend Yvonne was already at the front door when I woke, so at first I didn’t realize that my mother was missing.

It was less than a week after my son Spencer died. Since that day, a constant stream of friends had been coming and going, bringing casseroles and soup, love, support and chatter. Mom hated it.

My 94-year-old mother, who has vascular dementia, has been living in my home in upstate New York for the past few years. Like many with dementia, mom is courteous but, underneath, irascible. Pride defines her, especially pride in her Phi Beta Kappa intellect. She hates to be confronted with how she has become, as she calls it, “stupid.”

The parade of strangers confused her. She had to be polite, field solicitous questions, endure mundane comments. She could not remember what was going on or why people were there. It must have been stressful and annoying.

That night, like every night since the state troopers brought the news, I woke hourly, tumbling in panic. As if it were not too late to save my son. Mom knew something was wrong, but she could not remember what. As I overslept that morning, she must have decided enough was enough. She was going home.

In a cold sky, the sun blazed over tall pines. As I opened the door, the dogs raced out to greet Yvonne and her two housecleaners. Yvonne often brags about her cleaning duo. They were her gift to me. They were going to clean my house before the funeral reception, which was scheduled for later that week. This was a very big gift because, like my mother before me, I am a very bad housekeeper.

Mom’s door was shut. I cautioned the housecleaners to avoid her room as I showed them around. Yvonne went to the kitchen to listen to the 37 unheard messages on my answering machine; the housecleaners went out to their van to get their instruments of dirt removal.

I ducked into Mom’s room to warn her about the upcoming noise. The bed was unmade; the floor was littered with crumpled tissues; the room was empty.

Normally, I would have freaked out right then. I knew Mom was not in the house, because I had just shown the whole house to the cleaners. Although Mom doesn’t wander like some dementia patients, she does on occasion run away. But I could not muster a shred of anxiety.

“Yvonne,” I called, “did you see my mother outside?”

Yvonne popped her head into the living room, eyebrows raised.“Outside? No!” She was alarmed. “Is she missing?”

“Yeah,” I said wearily, “I’ll look.” I stepped out onto the front porch, tightening the belt of my bathrobe and turning up the collar. Maybe she had walked off into the woods. The dogs danced around my legs, wanting breakfast.

I had no space left in my body to care. Either we would find her, or we would not. Either she was alive, or she was not. My child was gone. How could I care about anything ever again?

Then I saw my car was missing. My mouth fell open and my eyeballs rolled up to the right, gazing blindly at the abandoned bird’s nest on top of the porch light: What had I done with the keys?

Mom likes to run away in the car when she is angry. She used to do it a lot when my father was still alive — every time they fought. Since Mom took off in my car almost a year ago, after we had had a fight, I’d kept the keys hidden. Except for this week; this week, I had forgotten.

I was reverting to old habits. I had left the doors unlocked and the keys in the cupholder next to the driver’s seat. Exactly like Mom used to do.

“Uh-oh,” I said aloud. Mom was still capable of driving, even though she did not know where she was going. I just really, really hoped that she didn’t hurt anybody on the road. I pulled out my cellphone, about to call the police.

“Celia!” Yvonne shouted from the kitchen. She hurried up behind me, excited. “They found your mother. There are two messages on your machine.”

At that very moment, Mom was holed up at the College Diner in New Paltz, a 20-minute drive over the mountain, through the fields, left over the Wallkill River and away down Main Street.

Yvonne called the diner. They promised to keep the car keys until someone arrived. By that time, Yvonne had to go to work. She drove my friend Elizabeth to the diner, and Elizabeth drove Mom home in my car.

Half an hour later, they walked in the front door. Mom’s cheeks were rouged by the chill air and her eyes sparkled, her white hair riffing with static electricity. “Hello, hello,” she sang out. “Here we are.” She was wearing the flannel nightgown and robe I had dressed her in the night before. It was covered by her oversized purple parka, and her bare feet were shoved into sneakers.

I started laughing as soon as I saw her. I couldn’t help it. Elizabeth and Mom started laughing too. “You had a big adventure,” I said, hugging them both. “How are you?”

“I’m just marvelous,” said my mother. Mom always feels great after doing something rakish. We settled her on the sofa with her feet on the ottoman. By the time I got her blanket tucked in around her shoulders, she had fallen asleep.

Elizabeth couldn’t stop laughing as she described the scene. “Your mother was holding court in this big booth. She was sitting there in her nightgown and her parka, talking to everybody, with this plate of toast and coffee and, like, three of the staff hovering around her.”

The waitress said Mom seemed “a little disoriented” when she got there. Mom said she was meeting a friend for breakfast, but since she was wearing a nightgown and didn’t know whom she was meeting or where she lived, the staff thought there might be a problem. They convinced Mom to let them look in the glove compartment of the car, where they found my name and number.

It was then that I realized I was laughing – something I’d thought I would never be able to do again. “Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I’m laughing,” I said.

“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Elizabeth, holding her belly.

“Ha, ha, ha,” I laughed, rolling on the floor.

And she who gave me life, who had suffered the death of my child and the extinction of her own intellect, snoozed on: oblivious, jubilant, still herself, still mine.

Read More..

Former IndyMac execs told to pay FDIC $169 million

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

scott.reckard@latimes.com

Read More..

Suspect in Northridge killings had violated probation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

frank.shyong@latimes.com

Read More..

George Zimmerman sues NBC and reporters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read More..

Drug Makers Challenge Pill Disposal Law in California

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read More..

California sues Delta Air Lines over mobile app privacy policy

The state of California has fired the opening shot in its fight to get mobile apps to comply with state privacy laws. California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris filed a suit against Delta Air Lines over its Fly Delta mobile app.

The app allows Delta fliers to check into flights, pay for checked baggage and access their frequent flier accounts with the airline. But the suit alleges that Delta has not provided a privacy policy for its standalone app, which gathers information such as a traveler’s full name, billing and home addresses, date of birth and credit card information.

"Users of the Fly Delta application do not know what personally identifiable information Delta collects about them, how Delta uses that information, or to whom that information is shared, disclosed, or sold," the complaint reads.

While the company has a privacy policy for its website, says the complaint, it fails to provide a clear privacy policy for the Fly Delta app, which also collects data through geo-location and photographs.

California's top cop put 100 mobile apps on notice in October, warning Delta and others that they were out of compliance with a state law that requires all commercial providers of websites and online services to "conspicuously post detailed privacy policies." The suit against Delta is the state’s first under the 2004 law.

At the time, Delta issued a statement saying, "We have received the letter from the Attorney General and intend to provide the requested information."

Harris’ office said Thursday that the company had not complied within the 30-day time frame required. A Delta spokesman said he could not comment on pending litigation.

"Losing your personal privacy should not be the cost of using mobile apps, but all too often it is," Harris said in a statement. "California law is clear that mobile apps collecting personal information need privacy policies, and that the users of those apps deserve to know what is being done with their personal information."

In February, Harris brokered an agreement on online privacy policies with several tech giants, including Google, Apple and Microsoft.

ALSO:

Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris puts mobile apps on notice about privacy [Updated]

Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, tech giants agree on mobile app privacy

State's top cop: Where is United Airlines app's privacy policy?

Read More..

L.A. council votes to regulate valet parking operators

Valet parking operators in Los Angeles would be regulated for the first time under an ordinance the City Council approved unanimously on Wednesday.

The new rules, subject to a second vote by the council, would require a valet operator in Los Angeles to obtain a permit, carry liability insurance, provide proof of off-street spaces for parking cars and ensure that valet workers had valid California driver's licenses. The ordinance would prohibit operators from using public street parking without permission and from blocking traffic.

The Los Angeles city attorney's office spent three years researching and crafting the regulations, which Councilman Eric Garcetti said were aimed at eliminating rogue operators. Portions of the measure were modeled on longtime regulations in West Hollywood, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills.

"Finally, the law is on the side of the driver," Garcetti said after the 13-0 vote.

Garcetti told council colleagues that he had heard many complaints from Hollywood constituents about fly-by-night valet operators who damaged vehicles, stole valuables or parked in restricted zones.

Councilman Paul Koretz, whose district includes the busy 3rd Street restaurant row between La Cienega Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, said the ordinance was "a long time coming." He said he had personally used black and white paint to correct hours-of-operation signs altered by valet workers. He also said valets had disabled parking meters to avoid having to pay for spots.

Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who represents Venice and other valet-intensive areas, said he was concerned that his constituents had not been consulted. Businesses along Abbot Kinney Boulevard have been working on parking solutions that could include leasing public school spaces for evening use and an automated, public-private parking facility on an old railroad right-of-way. Garcetti said the ordinance would not preclude any of those solutions.

The ordinance will be phased in across the city, with Hollywood expected to be first to implement the rules. That will allow for input from residents and business owners in Venice and elsewhere, Garcetti said.

Richard Tefank, executive director of the Police Commission, said the program might start next spring. The commission will set the fees, issue permits and explain the program to police and parking enforcement officers.

Jamal Zyoud, owner of J&G Parking Services, said that he thought regulation was a good idea but that he would find it difficult to pay a per-worker fee for background checks.

"Business is already slow," he said. "We're barely making it." He said the system might be workable if employees split with him the cost of background checks.

martha.groves@latimes.com

Read More..

Stars out in London for 'Les Mis' premiere

LONDON (AP) — Hollywood stars Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman have braved the London cold to walk the red carpet for the world premiere of "Les Miserables."

Hathaway said at the premiere Wednesday that playing the role of Fantine in the film adaptation of "Les Mis" was a dream job she would have done anything to land, describing the gig as "the sort of job you should give your paycheck back" for.

The 30-year-old actress lost 25 pounds (11.3 kilograms) and cut her hair to play the role of a struggling, sickly mother forced into prostitution in 1800s Paris in the screen adaptation of Victor Hugo's classic.

Joined by Jackman and other costars Russell Crowe and Amanda Seyfried, Hathaway signed autographs and met fans in central London at the event.

Read More..