Drug overdose deaths up for 11th consecutive year

CHICAGO (AP) — Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines.

"The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data.

In 2010, the CDC reported, there were 38,329 drug overdose deaths nationwide. Medicines, mostly prescription drugs, were involved in nearly 60 percent of overdose deaths that year, overshadowing deaths from illicit narcotics.

The report appears in Tuesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

It details which drugs were at play in most of the fatalities. As in previous recent years, opioid drugs — which include OxyContin and Vicodin — were the biggest problem, contributing to 3 out of 4 medication overdose deaths.

Frieden said many doctors and patients don't realize how addictive these drugs can be, and that they're too often prescribed for pain that can be managed with less risky drugs.

They're useful for cancer, "but if you've got terrible back pain or terrible migraines," using these addictive drugs can be dangerous, he said.

Medication-related deaths accounted for 22,134 of the drug overdose deaths in 2010.

Anti-anxiety drugs including Valium were among common causes of medication-related deaths, involved in almost 30 percent of them. Among the medication-related deaths, 17 percent were suicides.

The report's data came from death certificates, which aren't always clear on whether a death was a suicide or a tragic attempt at getting high. But it does seem like most serious painkiller overdoses were accidental, said Dr. Rich Zane, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

The study's findings are no surprise, he added. "The results are consistent with what we experience" in ERs, he said, adding that the statistics no doubt have gotten worse since 2010.

Some experts believe these deaths will level off. "Right now, there's a general belief that because these are pharmaceutical drugs, they're safer than street drugs like heroin," said Don Des Jarlais, director of the chemical dependency institute at New York City's Beth Israel Medical Center.

"But at some point, people using these drugs are going to become more aware of the dangers," he said.

Frieden said the data show a need for more prescription drug monitoring programs at the state level, and more laws shutting down "pill mills" — doctor offices and pharmacies that over-prescribe addictive medicines.

Last month, a federal panel of drug safety specialists recommended that Vicodin and dozens of other medicines be subjected to the same restrictions as other narcotic drugs like oxycodone and morphine. Meanwhile, more and more hospitals have been establishing tougher restrictions on painkiller prescriptions and refills.

One example: The University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora is considering a rule that would ban emergency doctors from prescribing more medicine for patients who say they lost their pain meds, Zane said.

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Stobbe reported from Atlanta.

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Online:

JAMA: http://www.jama.ama-assn.org

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com

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Massive mixed-use project in Hollywood clears a hurdle

A proposal for two skyscrapers that would flank the Capitol Records tower in Hollywood gained the approval of the city's planning department Tuesday despite push-back from dozens of disgruntled residents.

The Millennium Hollywood plans are the most ambitious in a string of revitalization projects in the area, including the W Hotel and the Hollywood & Highland Center. The $664-million mixed-use development could include more than 1 million square feet of apartment, office and retail space.

The proposal comes less than a year after the L.A. City Council approved new zoning guidelines for Hollywood that allow more and taller buildings near transit hubs. The strategy is part of a vision to cluster new development around bus stops and Metro stations — a theory that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa calls "elegant density."

In architectural renderings, balconies jut from the thin towers like a teetering game of Jenga. The 4.5-acre lot from which the skyscrapers would rise would also include green space, a pool and an outdoor library.

The site is one block from the Metro Red Line's Hollywood and Vine station, and developers say they would install bike lanes and lockers.

Nearby residents say Millennium Hollywood would make Hollywood's notoriously bad traffic worse, lengthening commutes and response times from police and firefighters. Construction noise and dust could hurt seniors and students living in the area, said Jan Martin, the president and chief executive of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, which is next to the site. The college has nearly 1,000 students and faculty who cross Vine Street daily, steps from where the construction would occur.

"You could not possibly tune a violin with that kind of noise going on," Martin said.

Millennium Hollywood representatives said that if the school were for children, city law would require them to reduce noise or dust around the school. Because the students are adults, there are no such requirements.

Residents also said they were concerned that the skyscrapers would spoil their million-dollar views from the Hollywood Hills. According to plans, the towers could be as tall as 485 and 585 feet — more than twice the tallest building in Hollywood.

"You go too far from that, you've changed the district," said City Councilman Tom LaBonge, who took a break from a council meeting down the hall to come to the hearing. Then he turned to city planner Jim Tokunaga. "What's your favorite building in Hollywood?"

"Uh, Capitol Records," Tokunaga responded.

LaBonge nodded and looked at Tokunaga long and hard. The audience laughed.

The personality of Hollywood may favor shorter buildings now, said Phillip Aarons, an attorney representing the development, but the new skyscrapers represent the future. There has never been a height limit in the area, he said.

"Hollywood evolves," Aarons said. "That's its nature."

The Planning Commission will consider the development next month.

laura.nelson@latimes.com

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China’s Army Is Seen as Tied to Hacking Against U.S.

This 12-story building on the outskirts of Shanghai is the headquarters of Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army. China’s defense ministry has denied that it is responsible for initiating digital attacks.

On the outskirts of Shanghai, in a run-down neighborhood dominated by a 12-story white office tower, sits a People’s Liberation Army base for China’s growing corps of cyberwarriors.

The building off Datong Road, surrounded by restaurants, massage parlors and a wine importer, is the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398. A growing body of digital forensic evidence — confirmed by American intelligence officials who say they have tapped into the activity of the army unit for years — leaves little doubt that an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies originate in and around the white tower.

An unusually detailed 60-page study, to be released Tuesday by Mandiant, an American computer security firm, tracks for the first time individual members of the most sophisticated of the Chinese hacking groups — known to many of its victims in the United States as “Comment Crew” or “Shanghai Group” — to the doorstep of the military unit’s headquarters. The firm was not able to place the hackers inside the 12-story building, but makes a case there is no other plausible explanation for why so many attacks come out of one comparatively small area.

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398,” said Kevin Mandia, the founder and chief executive of Mandiant, in an interview last week, “or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”

Other security firms that have tracked “Comment Crew” say they also believe the group is state-sponsored, and a recent classified National Intelligence Estimate, issued as a consensus document for all 16 of the United States intelligence agencies, makes a strong case that many of these hacking groups are either run by army officers or are contractors working for commands like Unit 61398, according to officials with knowledge of its classified content.

Mandiant provided an advance copy of its report to The New York Times, saying it hoped to “bring visibility to the issues addressed in the report.” Times reporters then tested the conclusions with other experts, both inside and outside government, who have examined links between the hacking groups and the army (Mandiant was hired by The New York Times Company to investigate a sophisticated Chinese-origin attack on its news operations, but concluded it was not the work of Comment Crew, but another Chinese group. The firm is not currently working for the Times Company but it is in discussions about a business relationship.)

While Comment Crew has drained terabytes of data from companies like Coca-Cola, increasingly its focus is on companies involved in the critical infrastructure of the United States — its electrical power grid, gas lines and waterworks. According to the security researchers, one target was a company with remote access to more than 60 percent of oil and gas pipelines in North America. The unit was also among those that attacked the computer security firm RSA, whose computer codes protect confidential corporate and government databases.

Contacted Monday, officials at the Chinese embassy in Washington again insisted that their government does not engage in computer hacking, and that such activity is illegal. They describe China itself as a victim of computer hacking, and point out, accurately, that there are many hacking groups inside the United States. But in recent years the Chinese attacks have grown significantly, security researchers say. Mandiant has detected more than 140 Comment Crew intrusions since 2006. American intelligence agencies and private security firms that track many of the 20 or so other Chinese groups every day say those groups appear to be contractors with links to the unit.

While the unit’s existence and operations are considered a Chinese state secret, Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview that the Mandiant report was “completely consistent with the type of activity the Intelligence Committee has been seeing for some time.”

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Mindy McCready: Under Police Scrutiny at Time of Suicide?

By Steve Helling and Mike Fleeman

02/18/2013 at 06:00 PM EST

Mindy McCready and David Wilson

Courtesy Mindy McCready

When Mindy McCready talked to police in recent weeks, her account of how her boyfriend came to be found with a fatal gunshot wound to the head concerned police, a law enforcement source tells PEOPLE.

"At first, she said she hadn't heard the gunshot because the TV was too loud. Then she said she had heard the gunshot," the source says. "So obviously there were a lot of questions, and the Sheriff was asking for clarification."

But before investigators could re-interview her, the long-troubled country singer also would die under eerily similar circumstances, her body discovered at the same Heber Springs, Ark., house just feet away from where David Wilson died.

McCready's death was blamed on what "appears to be a single self-inflicted gunshot wound," the Cleburne County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.

This differed from how the sheriff characterized Wilson's case. His cause and manner of death still have not been established by the coroner. It was McCready's publicist, and not a law enforcement official, who announced that Wilson had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

After Wilson's death, McCready, 37, spoke to investigators three times, but they didn't feel as if they were through with her.

"At no point did [police] tell her she was a suspect, and she wasn't officially one," says the source. "But she knew that some of her answers didn't stand up to questioning. She was very cooperative, but she just wasn't making a lot of sense."

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Hip implants a bit more likely to fail in women

CHICAGO (AP) — Hip replacements are slightly more likely to fail in women than in men, according to one of the largest studies of its kind in U.S. patients. The risk of the implants failing is low, but women were 29 percent more likely than men to need a repeat surgery within the first three years.

The message for women considering hip replacement surgery remains unclear. It's not known which models of hip implants perform best in women, even though women make up the majority of the more than 400,000 Americans who have full or partial hip replacements each year to ease the pain and loss of mobility caused by arthritis or injuries.

"This is the first step in what has to be a much longer-term research strategy to figure out why women have worse experiences," said Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit National Research Center for Women & Families. "Research in this area could save billions of dollars" and prevent patients from experiencing the pain and inconvenience of surgeries to fix hip implants that go wrong.

Researchers looked at more than 35,000 surgeries at 46 hospitals in the Kaiser Permanente health system. The research, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, was funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

After an average of three years, 2.3 percent of the women and 1.9 percent of the men had undergone revision surgery to fix a problem with the original hip replacement. Problems included instability, infection, broken bones and loosening.

"There is an increased risk of failure in women compared to men," said lead author Maria Inacio, an epidemiologist at Southern California Permanente Medical Group in San Diego. "This is still a very small number of failures."

Women tend to have smaller joints and bones than men, and so they tend to need smaller artificial hips. Devices with smaller femoral heads — the ball-shaped part of the ball-and-socket joint in an artificial hip — are more likely to dislocate and require a surgical repair.

That explained some, but not all, of the difference between women and men in the study. It's not clear what else may have contributed to the gap. Co-author Dr. Monti Khatod, an orthopedic surgeon in Los Angeles, speculated that one factor may be a greater loss of bone density in women.

The failure of metal-on-metal hips was almost twice as high for women than in men. The once-popular models were promoted by manufacturers as being more durable than standard plastic or ceramic joints, but several high-profile recalls have led to a decrease in their use in recent years.

"Don't be fooled by hype about a new hip product," said Zuckerman, who wrote an accompanying commentary in the medical journal. "I would not choose the latest, greatest hip implant if I were a woman patient. ... At least if it's been for sale for a few years, there's more evidence for how well it's working."

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Online:

Journal: http://www.jamainternalmed.com

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State opens new prison psychiatric ward

Inmates await treatment at the new mental health unit at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, Calif. The $24-million treatment center for mentally ill inmates opened Thursday as state corrections officials used the occasion to push for ending federal oversight of that aspect of prison operations. (Rich Pedroncelli, Associated Press / February 14, 2013)

By Paige St. John, Los Angeles Times

February 19, 2013

SACRAMENTO — California prison officials have opened a new psychiatric center for inmates, contending that the $24-million treatment facility is proof the state is ready to shed federal oversight of mental health care for prisoners.

The new building, at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, will provide outpatient treatment for mentally ill inmates who do not require 24-hour care.

"It's time for the federal courts to recognize the progress the state has made and end costly and unnecessary federal oversight," Jeffrey Beard, secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in prepared remarks.

The care that California gives mentally ill prisoners is the subject of fierce contention in U.S. District Court, where the state has filed a legal bid to end federal oversight and lift inmate population caps that California concedes it cannot now meet.

A document filed Friday shows the state's prison population remains 49% above what the facilities were designed to hold. One lockup, Central California Women's Facility, is packed to 82% above its design capacity.

Expecting to also request an end to federal healthcare oversight, state officials have announced they intend this week to bring a group of Texas experts to California to inspect three prisons.

Lawyers for inmates have asked a federal judge to allow them to join the inspection tour. Lawyers for the state argue that doing so would be an "impermissible invasion into privileged communications."

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson in San Francisco has scheduled a hearing Tuesday morning to consider the dispute.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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Graham and McCain Say They Will End Bid to Block Hagel

Two of the most outspoken Republican critics of Chuck Hagel’s nomination as secretary of defense indicated Sunday that they would no longer hold up his Senate confirmation.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on Fox News Sunday that he would stand aside because Mr. Hagel had disavowed comments that he was said to have made during a talk at Rutgers University in 2007 that the State Department was an adjunct of the Israeli Foreign Minister’s office.

“I got a letter back from Senator Hagel in response to my question, ‘Did you say that, and do you believe that?’ And the letter said he did not recall saying that,” Mr. Graham said. “He disavows that statement.”

Mr. Graham, one of the most vociferous and persistent critics of Mr. Hagel’s nomination, added, “I’ll just take him at his word unless something new comes along.”

Although Mr. Graham said he would no longer try to block the nomination, he was far from giving it an emphatic endorsement, calling Mr. Hagel “one of the most unqualified, radical choices for secretary of defense in a very long time.”

Those comments were echoed, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, a close friend of Mr. Graham and a public opponent of Mr. Hagel’s nomination.

“I don’t believe he is qualified,” Mr. McCain said. “But I don’t believe that we should hold up his nomination any further because I think it’s a reasonable amount of time to have questions answered.”

Mr. Graham and Mr. McCain were among a majority of Republicans in the Senate who backed a filibuster on Thursday when Mr. Hagel’s nomination came to a vote. Despite four Republicans’ crossing over to vote with the majority Democrats, the nomination fell one vote short of passing an up-or-down floor vote.

That unprecedented move forced the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, to set up another vote on Feb. 26. With Democratic control of the Senate, Mr. Hagel is expected to win confirmation whenever his nomination comes up for a vote.

Mr. Hagel, a Republican former senator from Nebraska, has been broadly criticized by his former colleagues over his positions on Iran, Iraq and Israel, and faced a nomination process rocky even by recent fractious standards.

President Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, appearing Sunday on the ABC News program “This Week,” said that the White House had “grave concern” that national security was at stake, given the Senate Republicans’ delaying tactics in confirming both a new Pentagon chief and a director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“If you look at Chuck Hagel — decorated war veteran himself, war hero, Republican senator, somebody who over the course of the last many years, either as a Republican senator or as a chairman of the president’s Intelligence Advisory Board, I’ve worked with very closely,” he said. “This guy has one thing in mind — how to protect the country.”

Mr. McDonough, who was formerly Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, working under John O. Brennan, the president’s choice for C.I.A. director, added that “between John Brennan as the C.I.A. director and Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, we want to make sure that we have those guys sitting in the chairs working. Because I don’t want there to have been something missed because of this hangup here in Washington.”

The White House and Senate Democrats have continued to express confidence that both men will be confirmed. Democrats have enough votes to approve both nominees, but they do not have the 60 votes necessary to overcome any filibuster.

After Thursday’s vote, outside groups campaigning against Mr. Hagel’s nomination said they would step up efforts to find damaging information and to pressure senators to vote against him.

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Downton Abbey's Season 3 Finale: Shocking, Says PEOPLE's TV Critic

Downton Abbey

By Tom Gliatto

02/17/2013 at 10:00 PM EST

Downton Abbey season 3 cast

Carnival Film & Television/PBS

Downton Abbey's third season finale on PBS's Masterpiece was, to say the least, a spoiler's paradise. The episode, which saw the Granthams and servants going on holiday in the Scottish Highlands, started on a joyful note – Lady Mary was pregnant! – and ended with a shock that would have knocked the hat off Lady Violet wobbling head.

SPOLIER ALERT: Major plot points to be revealed immediately.

Cousin Matthew (Dan Stevens) died in a car accident. He was driving back to Downton, so happy he was practically whistling, just after Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) had given birth to their son – the male Downton heir everyone has been so obsessed with since Season 1.

Many viewers probably saw this coming: For one thing, Stevens had said he was thinking of decamping before season 4 started shooting. And after the finale had its premiere broadcast in Britain in December, he blabbed all about it, including for an interview posted online by The New York Times.

Even so, the death was almost sadistically abrupt and arbitrary, especially after the soft tenderness and growing love between Mary and Matthew in recent episodes. Now we saw dead poor Matthew dumped on the cold mossy ground, eyes wide open.

You can never be sure Downton writer-creator Julian Fellowes won't pull some shameless stunt to kick-start a story – in season 2 Matthew, paralyzed during the war, suddenly leaped out of his wheelchair – but he seemed to want us to be sure that Matthew was 100% gone. I wouldn't have been surprised if the car backed over the corpse.

So ended a terribly sad season of Downton.

We already suffered the loss in childbirth of Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay). Her deathbed scene was unflinching and deeply moving as she gasped for breath and called for help. Her poor mother (Elizabeth McGovern) sobbed in despair, and the doctors couldn't agree on what to do.

Millions of viewers cried, too, and sighed for a long time afterward. Those who didn't are probably evil.

That scene was the heart of the season: Sybil was so beautiful and kind and gracious and spirited, and so different from her fractious sisters. It was if one were to discover a rare, transcendent soul among the Kardashians. Her death robbed the show of a lovely presence, and also brought out the best moments yet from McGovern and Maggie Smith, as Lady Violet.

It never ceases to annoy me, to be honest, that Lady Violet's feeble witticisms are treated as if they were Oscar Wilde one-liners on loan, like Harry Winston jewels. If you want real witticisms, try any contemporary American sitcom, including FX's Archer.

But this season, as Violet grieved, we saw how much depth Smith can invest in a single moment. At one point in the finale, she looked up as dinner was announced, and in her enormous eyes you saw a woman who wished she could just chuck the whole damn thing and dwell on her memories.

I wish I could say I will miss Matthew, but all in all an unattached Lady Mary is better than a married one. She was never sexier than in the first season, when she sneaked off to bed with velvety, sensual Mr. Pamuk, who unfortunately kicked the bucket while they made love.

Mary is a wonderful creation – the show's most original, complex character – capable of bouncing from romance to sorrow to sarcasm. You could say her love for Matthew transformed her, but it also had the potential to dull her.

Matthew was blandly handsome and good and patient and full of improving notions, but not terribly exciting. He was like a Bachelor from a much earlier period.

There isn't much else to say about the finale. Fellowes worked through a number of plots with his usual tangy glibness. The performances were all delightful, tart, full of emotion, humor and regret.

For now, we can look forward to Lady Mary at her most beautiful, because most woeful, in season 4.

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UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.

U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.

Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.

He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.

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Tensions rise between Feuer and Trutanich in city attorney's race

Ahead in fundraising and awash in endorsements, former lawmaker Mike Feuer's campaign for Los Angeles city attorney is filling mailboxes and sending automated phone calls to voters. Incumbent Carmen Trutanich has come out swinging against Feuer, his best-positioned challenger in the March 5 primary, while dark-horse candidate Greg Smith is poised to put more of his own cash into TV spots to boost his name ID.

As the race for the city's top lawyer enters its final weeks, the campaign styles of its main contenders are coming into sharper relief. And tensions are escalating between Feuer and Trutanich — two very different men with sharply contrasting views of the job.

Trutanich emphasizes his long legal career, first serving as a deputy district attorney, then heading a private law firm before winning the city attorney's job in 2009, his first bid for elected office. He touts his substantial courtroom experience while pointing out that Feuer has none. One of Trutanich's recent mailers describes him as "a hands on city attorney with real courtroom experience," then adds: "Mike Feuer has NEVER tried a single case in a courtroom … not one single case."

Feuer doesn't dispute that he has not been a prosecutor but says his own broad experience makes him better suited. Besides prosecuting misdemeanors, the city attorney's office provides advice to city officials, including reviewing proposed municipal laws, and represents the city in civil cases. Feuer says his years leading Bet Tzedek, which provides legal services to the poor, and his work on the Los Angeles City Council and in the state Assembly make him a "perfect fit" for the city attorney post.

Trutanich, during a candidates' debate on KPCC-FM (89.3), took issue with Feuer's statement, that, at Bet Tzedek, he had supervised "hundreds" of lawyers. Although acknowledging that the nonprofit legal aid organization had about 25 staff attorneys, Feuer said his statement was correct because he also directed the work of hundreds of outside lawyers doing pro bono work for the group. The Trutanich camp calls that "padding his resume."

Even a past city official has been caught in the crossfire. Former Councilwoman Ruth Galanter said she was surprised to see herself quoted in a Trutanich campaign press release that played off a Times story about termed-out state legislators seeking city council offices.

"I thought I should point out that I have endorsed Mike Feuer," Galanter wrote in an email. Her comments were "about the council elections, but the Trutanich campaign seems to think I was also referring to the city attorney race."

The Feuer campaign pounced on a Trutanich mailer claiming "Feuer Fails Our Children," pointing our three "errors" in its summation of some of Feuer's votes. "He's lying," a Feuer spokesman said, but a Trutanich representative said Feuer last year quietly changed some of his votes after the roll call, including on AB 2263, to seal records of some felons. Critics of the practice, which is allowed in the Assembly if it doesn't change the outcome, say it enables lawmakers to hide their real intent on controversial measures.

Except for a mailer highlighting a quote from Trutanich acknowledging that the National Rifle Assn. had been one of his private firm's clients, the Feuer campaign has stayed positive. It has promoted Feuer's "neighborhood walks" with voters and has been sending out almost daily announcements of endorsements. They include those of basketball-legend-turned-businessman Magic Johnson (who had backed Feuer's opponent in his unsuccessful run for city attorney in 2001 and who has made a radio ad for Feuer this time), former LAPD Chief William J. Bratton (who also made a recorded phone message to voters), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the L.A. County Democratic Party, several labor unions, the Valley Industry & Commerce Assn. and more than 1,000 "citizen endorsements."

Rick Taylor, Trutanich's chief strategist, downplayed the significance of endorsements but sent out a mailer featuring the incumbent's backing from former Mayor Richard Riordan. Taylor noted three independent polls, including an automated phone survey commissioned last month by KABC-TV Channel 7, showing his client ahead. "The people who matter are voters," Taylor said. "I'll take those endorsements."

John Thomas, Smith's consultant, sees the mudslinging as an opportunity for his lesser-known candidate "to sneak up the middle" and grab one of the two slots in an expected runoff. He said Smith, a private attorney who has made millions representing police and firefighters in whistle-blower and discrimination lawsuits, is adding a "substantial" amount to the $620,000 of his own funds he already put into the race. He'll spend much of that on television "so voters know they have a choice" other than Feuer and Trutanich.

Noel Weiss, another private attorney on the ballot, has not spent money on a campaign.

jean.merl@latimes.com

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