Chinese Officials Pledge to Loosen Controls Over Embattled Newspaper

GUANGZHOU, China — Propaganda officials in the southern province of Guangdong have agreed to loosen some controls over an embattled newspaper whose struggle against censorship has galvanized free-speech advocates across China, according to journalists at the newspaper.

The agreement was part of a compromise in which reporters and editors who had said they would strike continued to work to put out the newspaper, Southern Weekend, also known as Southern Weekly, which is published on Thursdays. It is an iconic liberal publication that has regularly challenged Communist Party officials and policies but has come under tighter control in recent years, particularly since the summer.

In Beijing, talk of another newsroom in crisis emerged on Wednesday as reporters at Beijing News, a newspaper co-founded by the parent company of Southern Weekend, said propaganda officials forced the newspaper, against the judgment of its publisher and top editors, to run an editorial attacking Southern Weekend. Some journalists broke down in tears in the newsroom, according to various accounts, and the publisher, Dai Zigeng, threatened to resign, but was still in his job as of Wednesday night.

The deal in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, appeared to bring a tentative peace to a newsroom in turmoil, though journalists said they would have to see whether provincial officials followed through on their promises.

The journalists appeared to back down from their demands that the top provincial propaganda official, Tuo Zhen, leave his post. Newspaper employees have accused Mr. Tuo of putting in place much stricter censorship rules since he began his job in May; in particular, they said he had a hand in the rewriting of a New Year’s editorial that was supposed to have been a call for enforcement of constitutional rights but that ended up being more of a paean to the current system. It is unclear what role Mr. Tuo played in the changes, which ignited the call last weekend among some journalists to carry out a strike.

Journalists at Southern Weekend said that under rules imposed by Mr. Tuo, propaganda officials regularly reviewed the content of the paper before it went to print and vetted reporting topics proposed by journalists. Those rules are supposed to be abolished under the new agreement.

Zeng Li, a veteran journalist who reviews articles in-house at Southern Weekend to guard against riling the censors, said, “Now things are calming down.”

“To publish a good paper is the hope of both the leaders and the staff,” he added.

Hu Chunhua, the new party chief of Guangdong, China’s most liberal province, helped mediate the settlement, which took shape late Tuesday, journalists said. The clash over censorship is the first big test for Mr. Hu, 49, who is considered one of the party’s rising stars and a candidate to be the leader of China in a decade.

The battle at Southern Weekend also poses a challenge for the central authorities. Xi Jinping, the new party chief, made a trip to Guangdong late last year to stress the need to open the economy further. Analysts have wondered whether he will also call for greater political freedoms. Mr. Xi has made remarks, though, that underscore the need for China to remain true to its socialist roots.

Central propaganda officials appear to have taken a tough line on the censorship issue by demanding this week that the biggest news Web sites and some important publications print a scathing editorial criticizing Southern Weekend that was originally published by Global Times, a populist newspaper, and widely derided by Chinese journalists. The order to run the editorial led to the crisis at Beijing News on Tuesday night. The paper ran a truncated version.

One journalist described the scene in the office in a blog post: “Some people look sad; some burst into tears; some shout that they are going to quit.”

The post continued: “We don’t want to kneel down, but our knees have been shattered. We are kneeling down this one time while gnashing our teeth.” The journalists stayed in the office past 3 a.m. and tried to dispel their sorrow by drinking, the post said.

Beijing News has a reputation for serious investigative journalism. Its first editor in chief was Cheng Yizhong, a muckraking journalist who also ran Southern Metropolis Daily, which, like Southern Weekend, is owned by the Nanfang Media Group. Beijing News was brought under the direct management of the Beijing party propaganda office in 2011, in a clear sign that senior officials were displeased with the newspaper’s reporting.

One senior reporter at the newspaper said that some propaganda officials visited the office on Wednesday, but that no personnel changes had taken place.

In Guangzhou, a third day of protests continued outside the headquarters of the Nanfang Media Group, with about a dozen Communist Party supporters waving Chinese flags and Mao Zedong portraits confronting advocates of free speech.

It was unclear what would happen to Huang Can, the editor in chief of Southern Weekend, who is a party official and considered an ally of the propaganda bureau. Journalists said Mr. Huang had forced a newspaper employee to give up a password to the publication’s microblog so Mr. Huang could put out a statement that the New Year’s editorial had been written by the editors.

If propaganda officials abdicate their power to review articles and reporting topics at Southern Weekend, that duty will probably fall to Zhang Dongming, president of Nanfang Media Group. Mr. Zhang is a party loyalist and was once head of the provincial propaganda department’s news division. Starting in late 2002, Mr. Zhang helped suppress reporting on the outbreak of SARS in Guangdong, and just months later he was installed in the media group.

One senior editor at Southern Weekend, Yan Lieshan, said in a telephone interview that the outcome of the negotiations might seem tentative, but that journalists did not want to back senior party officials into a corner. “Xi Jinping has begun by showing good intentions and creating an atmosphere of reform,” he said. “So we don’t want to push the leadership to the point where they have no room left to act. We at Southern Weekend want a result that both sides can accept.”

Edward Wong reported from Guangzhou, and Jonathan Ansfield from Beijing. Mia Li contributed research from Guangzhou, and Shi Da from Beijing.

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‘Liquipod’ takes smartphone waterproofing on the road

Amid a sea of Ultra-HD TVs, smart washing machines and various other gadgets, waterproofing expert Liquipel took to CES 2013 to make two announcements. The firm, which adds an interior and exterior waterproof nanocoating to cell phones, revealed a new and improved waterproofing material that is even more effective than its first-generation solution. Liquipel also unveiled its new “Liquipod,” a portable machine that can waterproof gadgets anywhere in the world while device owners wait, according to TechCrunch. Previously, Liquipel required customers to ship their handsets to the company’s offices for treatment.

[More from BGR: iPhone 5 now available with unlimited service, no contract on Walmart’s $ 45 Straight Talk plan]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Sandra Bullock Honored at People's Choice Awards for New Orleans Support

By Alison Schwartz

01/09/2013 at 10:45 PM EST

Sandra Bullock at the Warren Easton Charter High School Health Clinic in New Orleans in August 2010

James Crump/Getty

Sandra Bullock took home big honors for her work in the Big Easy Wednesday night.

The People's Choice Awards crowned the Oscar-winning actress the favorite humanitarian for her career-spanning philanthropic efforts, including her dedication to New Orleans's Warren Easton Charter High School

"I'm not at all being modest when I say I'm not doing anything compared to what they do on a daily basis," Bullock, 48, told the crowd gathered at Los Angeles's Nokia Theatre.

Just six months after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, the actress showed her support by adopting the school, which sustained $4 million in damages during the storm. She donated hundreds of thousands of dollars for renovations, telling PEOPLE years later that she "felt such a profound need to do something for them."

Her generosity helped the charter school – the first public high school for boys in Louisiana – afford renovations, new band uniforms, athletic equipment and a new health clinic in a city that's close to her heart. After all, she adopted her son, Louis, from New Orleans in 2010 and also has a home in the Garden District.

She pointed to the tireless dedication of the school's students, teachers and tough principal. "I've seen her," she joked. "Yeah, you don't want to go into that office."

Bullock then gave a shout-out to her son, who was sick as home, she said.

"[The students] compete, but they never cut each other down," she added. "And all that happens not because it's easy, but because they do not allow themselves any other option than to succeed."

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Retooling Pap test to spot more kinds of cancer

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported encouraging signs that one day, there might be.

Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.

How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in the ovaries or the lining of the uterus, and float down to rest in the cervix, where Pap tests are performed. These cells are too rare to recognize under the microscope. But researchers from Johns Hopkins University used some sophisticated DNA testing on the Pap samples to uncover the evidence — gene mutations that show cancer is present.

In a pilot study, they analyzed Pap smears from 46 women who already were diagnosed with either ovarian or endometrial cancer. The new technique found all the endometrial cancers and 41 percent of the ovarian tumors, the team reported Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

This is very early-stage research, and women shouldn't expect any change in their routine Paps. It will take years of additional testing to prove if the so-called PapGene technique really could work as a screening tool, used to spot cancer in women who thought they were healthy.

"Now the hard work begins," said Hopkins oncologist Dr. Luis Diaz, whose team is collecting hundreds of additional Pap samples for more study and is exploring ways to enhance the detection of ovarian cancer.

But if it ultimately pans out, "the neat part about this is, the patient won't feel anything different," and the Pap wouldn't be performed differently, Diaz added. The extra work would come in a lab.

The gene-based technique marks a new approach toward cancer screening, and specialists are watching closely.

"This is very encouraging, and it shows great potential," said American Cancer Society genetics expert Michael Melner.

"We are a long way from being able to see any impact on our patients," cautioned Dr. Shannon Westin of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She reviewed the research in an accompanying editorial, and said the ovarian cancer detection would need improvement if the test is to work.

But she noted that ovarian cancer has poor survival rates because it's rarely caught early. "If this screening test could identify ovarian cancer at an early stage, there would be a profound impact on patient outcomes and mortality," Westin said.

More than 22,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, and more than 15,000 die. Symptoms such as pain and bloating seldom are obvious until the cancer is more advanced, and numerous attempts at screening tests have failed.

Endometrial cancer affects about 47,000 women a year, and kills about 8,000. There is no screening test for it either, but most women are diagnosed early because of postmenopausal bleeding.

The Hopkins research piggybacks on one of the most successful cancer screening tools, the Pap, and a newer technology used along with it. With a standard Pap, a little brush scrapes off cells from the cervix, which are stored in a vial to examine for signs of cervical cancer. Today, many women's Paps undergo an additional DNA-based test to see if they harbor the HPV virus, which can spur cervical cancer.

So the Hopkins team, funded largely by cancer advocacy groups, decided to look for DNA evidence of other gynecologic tumors. It developed a method to rapidly screen the Pap samples for those mutations using standard genetics equipment that Diaz said wouldn't add much to the cost of a Pap-plus-HPV test. He said the technique could detect both early-stage and more advanced tumors. Importantly, tests of Paps from 14 healthy women turned up no false alarms.

The endometrial cancers may have been easier to find because cells from those tumors don't have as far to travel as ovarian cancer cells, Diaz said. Researchers will study whether inserting the Pap brush deeper, testing during different times of the menstrual cycle, or other factors might improve detection of ovarian cancer.

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Closing arguments made in slaying of neo-Nazi father

One photograph captured Jeffrey Hall and his children frolicking in the surf, the other showed his son gripping a toy gun and flashing a Nazi salute along with his dad and a hooded Klansman.

Those contrasting images flashed Wednesday on a courtroom wall in Riverside during closing arguments in the murder trial of a 12-year-old boy who pointed a gun at his father's head and pulled the trigger, killing the neo-Nazi activist in May 2011.

The fate of the boy, who was 10 years old when he shot his sleeping father, is now in the hands of Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jean P. Leonard, who must decide if the youngster knew what he did was wrong, and what should be done with him.

Hate "cooked" inside the boy during years of being his father's punching bag and after hearing Hall threaten to burn down the family's Riverside home with his wife and children inside, said his attorney, Public Defender Matthew Hardy. So the boy turned to the same twisted morality learned from his neo-Nazi father, and grabbed Hall's own loaded .357 magnum, to end it, Hardy told the judge.

"He believed, in his own damaged way, that what he was doing was justified," Hardy said. "He felt he had to kill his dad to protect the family."

Hardy said the boy was "almost genetically programmed to commit violence" after his birth mother's use of heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs while pregnant altered his neurological wiring. Hall and the boy's mother divorced shortly after he was born, with Hall taking custody of his son when he was 3. The boy started throwing violent, uncontrollable tantrums while still a toddler and, in school, stabbed teachers and students with pencils.

"This young man never had a chance," Hardy said.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Soccio, however, urged the judge not to let the boy escape into the "Alice in Wonderland" juvenile justice system to avoid responsibility for a cold-blooded murder.

Hall was dozing on the living room couch, posing no imminent danger and "probably drunk" when he was shot, Soccio said. The boy also had revealed his plans to his little sister the day before, the prosecutor argued. Soccio played a police recording, captured the morning of the shooting, in which the sobbing girl told her brother: You said you were going to "shoot him in the stomach."

"He chose on his own to sneak downstairs and kill a sleeping parent," Soccio said. "He made the choice to kill his father."

Soccio said Hall's affiliation with the National Socialist Movement, while abhorrent to most, didn't mean he was a bad parent, nor did it justify his murder. The prosecutor also said there was no concrete evidence that Hall had been abusive.

In fact, Hall sought help from teachers, relatives and others to help control his son's violent outbursts, Soccio said. The prosecutor showed family photographs of Hall and his children playing on swing sets and decorating the Christmas tree, as well as Hall making balloon animals for his kids.

"Jeffrey Hall was a father who cared for his son," Soccio said.

The final photograph shown was of Hall lying dead on the couch, his neck splattered with blood and a bullet hole behind his ear.

The boy, who is not being named by The Times because he is a minor, is being tried as a juvenile.

If the judge agrees with the defense, the boy would be released, possibly into the foster care system. If she finds him responsible, she could send the youngster to a state prison facility for juveniles or a treatment facility for delinquents, or place him on probation. The boy could remain in juvenile custody until he is 23, at which time the district attorney's office has the rarely used option of petitioning the court to extend his sentence one year at a time.

If the judge agrees with the prosecution, she also must decide whether the boy's actions fell short of murder and amounted to voluntary manslaughter, in which a defendant had an unreasonable belief that he was in imminent danger or needed to use deadly force.

The boy's attorney said he fears what would happen if his client were sent to one of the state youth prisons, which have a history of abuse and violence.

"You put the kid in the Department of Juvenile Justice, you might be creating a serial killer," Hardy said after Wednesday's proceedings. "He needs to be placed somewhere where professionals can treat him."

phil.willon@latimes.com

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Aid Groups Report Rising Misery Among Displaced Syrians

New signs of deprivation plaguing Syria’s war-ravaged civilians emerged on Tuesday, with the United Nations saying it is unable to feed a million hungry residents in combat zones and aid agencies reporting an outbreak of violence in a large refugee camp in Jordan, where a winter storm felled tents and left many frustrated inhabitants shivering in a cold rain.

Weather forecasters said another storm was threatening Syria and its neighbors with snow on Wednesday.

The World Food Program, the food agency of the United Nations, said that it was providing food to one and a half million people inside Syria this month but that as many as two and a half million needed help, mostly in areas made hazardous by fighting between insurgents and loyalist forces of President Bashar al-Assad.

“Our partners are overstretched, and there is no capacity to expand operations further,” said a World Food Program spokeswoman, Elizabeth Byrs, at the agency’s Geneva headquarters. “We need more implementing partners.”

She also said acute fuel shortages in Syria had delayed food deliveries and contributed to severe inflation in the price of bread because bakeries needed fuel for their ovens. In the contested city of Aleppo, for example, the price of a kilogram of bread is 250 Syrian pounds, or about $3.50, at least 50 percent higher than in other parts of Syria and at least six times more than its cost when the Syrian conflict began nearly two years ago.

The United Nations appealed last month for $1.5 billion in additional aid to handle the growing humanitarian crisis created by the Syrian conflict, which has left at least 60,000 people dead and is threatening to destabilize the Middle East. More than half a million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries, and the United Nations refugee agency has forecast a doubling of that number by the middle of 2013.

The most heavily burdened neighbors — Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon — have been persistently calling for more international aid, particularly during the cold winter months.

At the Zaatari refugee camp, which shelters 54,000 Syrians in northern Jordan, fighting erupted Tuesday during food distribution after a night of relentless rain inundated parts of the encampment. The number of injuries was unclear.

A statement by the Jordanian police said two aid workers had been hurt. Save the Children, one of the international groups that help the United Nations refugee agency administer the camp, said 11 people had been hurt, more than half of them Save the Children workers.

“The incident followed a night of heavy storms, during which torrential rains and high winds swept away tents and left parts of the camp flooded,” Save the Children said in a statement.

Mohammed Abu Asaker, a regional spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency, acknowledged weather-related problems at the camp, aggravated by a large number of new residents — roughly 9,000 arrivals in the past week.

“It is a difficult situation in the camp,” he said. “There is a frustration from the refugees.”

Ali Bibi, a liaison officer with the refugee agency, said the violence on Tuesday was the latest in a series of at least four clashes among refugees, aid workers and the police in recent weeks.

Melissa Fleming, the chief spokeswoman for the refugee agency in Geneva, said in an e-mail that most of the camp had withstood the rainfall and that aid workers were expediting efforts to move families into prefabricated housing. She attributed tensions among the camp population to “fears of worsening weather conditions, with some families rushing to occupy prefabs out of turn.”

One refugee, who described himself as a colonel in the Syrian Army before he defected, said that even though he was living in one of the prefabricated houses and covering himself with blankets, he could not stay warm.

“The tents are drenched. Kids are crying. Puddles of water are all over,” the refugee, who asked to be identified by only his first name, Mohamad, said in a telephone interview. “I am walking, my shoes are covered with rainwater. I can’t remember being so cold. I don’t even want to think about more than half of the camp living in tents. Something has to be done.”

In Syria on Tuesday, activists reported new violence in the Yarmouk district south of Damascus, a longtime Palestinian refugee encampment convulsed by fighting last month when insurgents temporarily seized control. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition group with a network of contacts in Syria, reported an unspecified number of casualties in the area, as well as shelling by the Syrian military aimed at insurgent pockets in other Damascus suburbs.

In a speech on Sunday, Mr. Assad, whose family has dominated Syria’s politics for four decades, denounced those fomenting the armed uprising against him as foreign stooges, rejected negotiations and instead offered his own plan for political changes, which critics said was meant to keep him in power.

His speech was denounced by the opposition, its Arab and Western supporters, and the United Nations secretary general. On Tuesday, the prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former friend of Mr. Assad’s who has since become a strident foe, added his voice to the criticism.

“It is unimaginable to consider suggestions of a person who has killed his people with bombs, planes and shelling as democratic,” Turkey’s semiofficial Anatolian News Agency quoted Mr. Erdogan as saying.

Rick Gladstone reported from New York, and Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva. Reporting was contributed by Jodi Rudoren from Jerusalem; Ranya Kadri from Amman, Jordan; Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon; and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul.

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AP Exclusive: Richardson pressing NKorean test ban

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Wednesday that his delegation is pressing North Korea to put a moratorium on missile launches and nuclear tests and to allow more cell phones and an open Internet for its citizens.

Richardson told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview in Pyongyang that the group is also asking for fair and humane treatment for an American citizen detained in North Korea.

“The citizens of the DPRK (North Korea) will be better off with more cell phones and an active Internet. Those are the three messages we’ve given to a variety of foreign policy officials, scientists” and government officials, Richardson said.

He is accompanied by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Google Ideas think tank Director Jared Cohen on what Richardson has called a private, humanitarian trip. Schmidt, who is the highest-profile U.S. business executive to visit North Korea since leader Kim Jong Un took power a year ago, has not spoken publicly about the reasons behind the journey to North Korea.

The high-profile visit comes just weeks after North Korea launched a long-range rocket to send a satellite into space. Washington has condemned the launch as a banned test of missile technology.

Schmidt, who oversaw Google‘s expansion into a global Internet giant, speaks frequently about the importance of providing people around the world with Internet access and technology. Google now has offices in more than 40 countries, including all three of North Korea’s neighbors: Russia, South Korea and China, another country criticized for systematic Internet censorship.

He and Cohen have collaborated on a book about the Internet’s role in shaping society called “The New Digital Age” that comes out in April.

Using science and technology to build North Korea’s beleaguered economy was the highlight of a New Year’s Day speech by leader Kim Jong Un.

New red banners promoting slogans drawn from Kim’s speech line Pyongyang’s snowy streets, and North Koreans are still cramming to study the lengthy speech. It was the first time in 19 years for North Koreans to hear their leader give a New Year’s Day speech. During the rule of late leader Kim Jong Il, state policy was distributed through North Korea’s three main newspapers.

___

Follow AP’s bureau chief for Pyongyang and Seoul at www.twitter.com/newsjean.

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Kangaroo Gets Loose at Melbourne Airport

People Pets

01/08/2013 at 08:00 PM EST

Travelers passing through Australia's Melbourne Airport on Monday may have been greeted by an unexpected baggage handler.

At around 7 a.m., a 3-year-old eastern gray kangaroo was spotted in the airport's parking garage, where it hopped around for almost two hours, giving security officers the slip in the process.

Wildlife officer Manfred Zabinskas was then called in to catch the young animal, who was tranquilized in order to be transported to safety. Analyzing the critter, Zabinskas noted he had been away from his natural habitat for some time, and that the romp through the parking garage had done some damage to his feet. Prior to being re-released into the wild, the kangaroo will be looked at by a veterinarian.

This is the second time a kangaroo has paid a visit to the Melbourne Airport. Last October, another marsupial made its way up to the fifth floor of the parking garage before being spotted.

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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U.S. Supreme Court hands L.A. County a victory in water lawsuit

Los Angeles County got a reprieve in an ongoing dispute over who is responsible for pollution from storm water when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a ruling won by environmentalists.

However, the court's 9-0 decision Tuesday did not deal with the larger question of how to regulate storm water and urban runoff flowing into the region's waterways.

Gary Hildebrand, assistant deputy director of the county's Department of Public Works, said the court's decision "validates the approach the flood control district has been taking to deal with water management."

The ruling allows the district to move forward with updated storm water regulations that the regional water board put in place in November, he said.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and Santa Monica Baykeeper — now Los Angeles Waterkeeper — sued the flood control district in 2008 alleging that it had violated its storm water permit. The lawsuit cited high pollution readings at monitoring stations in the county's rivers.

Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the county was liable for pollution in the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers, and referred to the water flowing from the "concrete channels" into the natural part of the lower river as discharges of pollutants.

The Supreme Court said the 9th Circuit's opinion rested on a mistaken premise and reversed it. The water flowing from one "concrete" section of the river to another section cannot be deemed a "discharge" of pollutants, the court said. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said "no pollutants are 'added' to a water body when water is merely transferred between different portions of that body."

Steve Fleischli, water program director and senior attorney with the National Resources Defense Council, said the question that the court decided was never in dispute between the parties. He called the ruling a "temporary setback" in efforts to hold the county accountable.

"It doesn't close the door on our enforcement efforts against the county, and it doesn't limit the county's obligation to comply with the Clean Water Act," he said.

County officials have also argued that the flood control district is not primarily to blame for the pollution in the rivers, because there are dozens of cities discharging polluted runoff upstream from the monitoring sites. With only one monitoring station in each river, it is difficult to find the original source of the pollution.

The Supreme Court did not weigh in on that point, but when the case was argued last month, the justices commented that the county needs a better means of monitoring storm water runoff.

In her opinion, Ginsburg noted that the renewed storm water permit put in place by the Los Angeles regional water board will include monitoring the water quality at "discharge points" where storm drains flow into the rivers, which will provide more localized data.

Hildebrand said the ruling will not have an impact on a parcel fee the county is pursuing to raise about $290 million a year for projects that would help clean up storm water pollution. A hearing on that proposal is set for Jan. 15, and the Board of Supervisors may vote then to place the proposed fee on the ballot.

abby.sewell@latimes.com

david.savage@latimes.com

Sewell reported from Los Angeles and Savage from Washington, D.C.

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