Susan Powell's Father-in-Law Secretly Took 4,500 Pictures of Her

12/07/2012 at 07:30 PM EST

Wrapping up a year that has brought unimaginable frustration and heartbreak, Susan Powell's family marked the three-year anniversary of her disappearance at a ceremony this week near where her two sons are buried.

"It's a hard time of year," Susan's father, Chuck Cox, tells PEOPLE. "Our daughter's still missing. Someday, we will find out what happened to her."

He added that he is not sure what to make of a West Valley City, Utah, police announcement Thursday that their investigation into Susan's Dec. 6, 2009 disappearance remains active but "has been scaled down," with a reduction in the number of full-time investigators working the case.

The announcement came at the same time that more evidence emerged of the alleged obsession Susan's father-in-law, Steven Powell, had toward her. Authorities released nearly 4,500 pictures that they say he secretly took of her at home and elsewhere.

Cox says he's hopeful that the police are still doing everything possible to solve Susan's case, but he hasn't ruled out suing the department for failing to arrest Susan's husband, Josh Powell, for her murder.

More than two years after Susan's disappearance, Josh on Feb. 5 murdered the couple's two sons and committed suicide by blowing up his house.

Cox's lawyer, Anne Bremner, says Cox "goes back and forth" over whether to sue West Valley City. "He wants them to find her. A lawsuit can have a chilling affect on things."

Cox and Bremner say they do plan to file a lawsuit against the state of Washington for continuing to give Josh visitation with his children despite what they claim were mounting concerns regarding his mental stability.

Although Cox and the police believe that Josh Powell knew more than anyone what happened to Susan, they also strongly suspect that his father, Steven Powell, should still be looked at more closely.

Steven Powell

Ted S. Warren / AP

The Coxes hoped Steve Powell's voyeurism trial in May would unearth some answers but it did not. Powell invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked in jail about Susan.

In numerous interviews with PEOPLE, Steve and Josh Powell denied any involvement in Susan's disappearance and have suggested that she ran off with another man.

Steve Powell was prosecuted for surreptitiously photographing his neighbor's young daughters (and is serving a 30-month sentence), but the investigation also unearthed journals in which Powell described his interest in his daughter-in-law, as well as the thousands of photos, which were released Thursday to the Associated Press.

In a journal entry, Steven Powell recalls a sexually charged dream in which Susan asks him, “Do you think I would make a good wife for you?” None of the pictures show Susan naked, although there are images of her crotch and backside.

"We think he knows exactly where our daughter is," Cox says.

Once Susan disappeared, Josh sold the family's home in Utah and moved with the boys into Steven Powell's house in Puyallup, Wash., only about two miles from the Cox family.

On Thursday, families streamed to Puyallup’s Woodbine Cemetery to remember the Powell boys and other children who died tragically and to dedicate a memorial: a bronze angel inspired by the novella The Christmas Box, in which strangers learn the value of love following a child’s death.

The novella's author, Richard Paul Evans, also attended the dedication. The memorial is on a hill overlooking the boys' gravesites 75 yards away.

"We get a lot of support from a lot of people and we're going to make it through," Cox says.

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Smokers celebrate as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — The crowds of happy people lighting joints under Seattle's Space Needle early Thursday morning with nary a police officer in sight bespoke the new reality: Marijuana is legal under Washington state law.

Hundreds gathered at Seattle Center for a New Year's Eve-style countdown to 12 a.m., when the legalization measure passed by voters last month took effect. When the clock struck, they cheered and sparked up in unison.

A few dozen people gathered on a sidewalk outside the north Seattle headquarters of the annual Hempfest celebration and did the same, offering joints to reporters and blowing smoke into television news cameras.

"I feel like a kid in a candy store!" shouted Hempfest volunteer Darby Hageman. "It's all becoming real now!"

Washington and Colorado became the first states to vote to decriminalize and regulate the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by adults over 21. Both measures call for setting up state licensing schemes for pot growers, processors and retail stores. Colorado's law is set to take effect by Jan. 5.

Technically, Washington's new marijuana law still forbids smoking pot in public, which remains punishable by a fine, like drinking in public. But pot fans wanted a party, and Seattle police weren't about to write them any tickets.

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

The mood was festive in Seattle as dozens of gay and lesbian couples got in line to pick up marriage licenses at the King County auditor's office early Thursday.

King County and Thurston County announced they would open their auditors' offices shortly after midnight Wednesday to accommodate those who wanted to be among the first to get their licenses.

Kelly Middleton and her partner Amanda Dollente got in line at 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Hours later, as the line grew, volunteers distributed roses and a group of men and women serenaded the waiting line to the tune of "Chapel of Love."

Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

In dealing with marijuana, the Seattle Police Department told its 1,300 officers on Wednesday, just before legalization took hold, that until further notice they shall not issue citations for public marijuana use.

Officers will be advising people not to smoke in public, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

He offered a catchy new directive referring to the film "The Big Lebowski," popular with many marijuana fans: "The Dude abides, and says 'take it inside!'"

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress."

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Alison Holcomb is the drug policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and served as the campaign manager for New Approach Washington, which led the legalization drive. She said the voters clearly showed they're done with marijuana prohibition.

"New Approach Washington sponsors and the ACLU look forward to working with state and federal officials and to ensure the law is fully and fairly implemented," she said.

___

Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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Operators at 311 are accustomed to oddball calls

Just before Thanksgiving a few years back, Raquel Lopez fielded her umpteenth call of the day to find an irate man on the line.

Someone had littered his lawn with Butterball turkeys.

"This is not funny!" he shouted, demanding the shrink-wrapped birds' immediate removal.

It was another priceless moment for Lopez, who has been answering L.A.'s 311 information line for seven years.

"We're like a human Google," she said, laughing one recent morning as she sat, headset on, in a gray cubicle on the 10th floor of a building across Main Street from City Hall.

And she never can guess what she'll be asked next.

"One call to City Hall," the city's website proclaims, provides residents a "personal gateway to the services Los Angeles has to offer."

But what does that mean, really?

Some L.A. residents have singular ideas:

One caller told Lopez she wanted a wall where her kids played handball tested for STDs because she'd seen a transient urinate on it.

Another refused to accept that she'd have to hire a private service to get rid of bees in her backyard. "They're not my bees," she kept saying. "They're the city's bees."

Then there was the guy who called, very frightened, because he heard strange beeps in his house. Had someone planted something in his walls? Lopez suggested he check the batteries in his smoke alarms.

A man named Kelly had called for years just to talk — after the 911 operators cut him off. His wife, he complained, was sleeping with Dr. Bloomfield — and everything had gone to pot after the Northridge earthquake.

There is an irony in callers' certainty that the city can and should solve their every problem, given that the 311 service has woes of its own.

Budget cuts have shriveled the call center.

When it was launched with much fanfare in 2002, 311 operated all day, every day. Then the hours were chopped — first to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., then 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Staffing fell from 70 to 35.

Not that the phones stopped ringing. On weekdays, the center averages 2,000 to 3,000 calls; 700 to 900 come in on a typical Saturday or Sunday. Busy agents end up apologizing to callers who complain about having to wait on hold.

Big screens around the room display the number of calls that have been answered so far that day and how many agents — speaking English and Spanish — currently are on the phone. (If someone calls in another language, say Persian or Thai, an interpreter from a contract translation service can be patched in quickly.)

On rapid-fire days, the saving grace for the agents is the personalized recorded message that plays for a few seconds when they first pick up:

"Thank you for calling 311. This is Raquel. How may I assist you?"

Callers don't notice the voice isn't live, and "it lets you take a breather in between," Lopez said.

Many of the 311 calls, of course, are sensible, expected and easily resolved. People ask how to dispose of bulky items. They report dead animals, fallen tree limbs, graffiti or illegal dumping. Someone wants to set up a building inspection. A pothole has appeared. A streetlight is out.

Sophisticated programs let agents quickly find information. They can zoom in, for instance, on maps that show the location of each streetlight, then confirm that they've located the right one by checking to see that a photo matches the caller's description.

Some agents work radios, sending reports directly to crews out on the streets. When it makes sense to, that is.

Mario Aldaz, 34, who has worked at 311 since it opened, said an agent once took a call about an abandoned couch in an alley. The caller didn't ask for the couch to be removed. She wanted the city to remove graffiti on the couch.

As for those Butterballs, Lopez did in the end offer help. She contacted the Bureau of Sanitation — which, among other things, is responsible for collecting dead animals and spoiled meat.

nita.lelyveld@latimes.com

Follow City Beat @latimescitybeat on Twitter or at Los Angeles Times City Beat on Facebook.

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Netflix says CEO’s Facebook post triggered SEC notice

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Netflix Inc said on Thursday securities regulators warned they may bring civil action against the company and its chief executive for violating public disclosure rules with a Facebook post, in a case that raises questions about how public companies communicate on social media.

The high-profile Silicon Valley CEO, Reed Hastings, dismissed the contention and said he did not believe the Facebook post was “material” information.

Hastings wrote in the post on the company’s public Facebook page on July 3: “Netflix monthly viewing exceeded 1 billion hours for the first time ever in June.” The post was accessible to the more than 244,000 subscribers to the page.

Netflix received what is known as a Wells Notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which means the SEC staff will recommend the full commission pursue either a cease-and-desist action and/or a civil injunction against Netflix and Hastings over the alleged violation.

Netflix may have run afoul of the SEC’s Regulation FD, adopted in 2000, which requires public companies to make full and fair public disclosure of material non-public information.

“We think posting to over 200,000 people is very public, especially because many of my subscribers are reporters and bloggers,” Hastings said on Thursday in a letter. He also said that he did not believe the Facebook posting was “material” information.

The SEC believes that figure is material information that should have been disclosed in a press release or regulatory filing, according to Hastings’ letter.

“We remain optimistic this can be cleared up quickly through the SEC’s review process,” said Hastings in the public letter to shareholders that the online video streaming company submitted alongside a regulatory filing citing the receipt of the “Wells Notice” from the SEC.

Netflix’s stock jumped from $ 67.85 a share on July 2, the day before Hastings’ post, to $ 81.72 on July 5. On July 25 its stock fell 22 percent to $ 60.28 when the company reported second-quarter earnings fell from $ 68.2 million a year earlier to $ 6.2 million this year.

“It’s totally disingenuous to say that his statement wasn’t material when the stock went from under $ 70 a share to more than $ 80 and the only data point was that post,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter.

REGULATORY GREY AREAS?

But legal and securities experts say the fast-changing world of social media leaves room for regulatory grey areas.

“The evolution of social media presents the SEC with some very interesting regulatory challenges. But if they’re worried about social media, there are ways for them to address that without threatening to sue Reed Hastings. They should have a rulemaking where they can ventilate these issues,” said Joseph Grundfest, former SEC commissioner and Stanford Law School professor.

“This situation has nothing to do with the problems that Regulation FD was designed to address.”

Joseph Marrow, an attorney at the Waltham, Massachusetts law firm Morse Barnes-Brown Pendleton, said there are conflicting views on what constitutes disclosure in circumstances like this, also noting the rules are not settled in this area.

“I would not suggest companies publish material non-public information on Facebook and Twitter without discussing it before with in-house counsel. Companies are putting together social media policies,” he said.

“If Netflix doesn’t have a policy, I bet they will have one very soon,” he said, adding the issue was unlikely to be serious enough to threaten Hastings’ position as CEO of Netflix, but could result in some type of financial penalty for the company.

Netflix shares fell 1.4 percent to $ 85 in after-hours trading on Thursday.

(Reporting by Ronald Grover and Sue Zeidler in Los Angeles Additional reporting by Alexei Oreskovic and Alistair Barr in San Francisco; Editing by Dan Grebler, Phil Berlowitz and Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The X Factor Reveals Its Four Semi-Finalists

TV Watch

The X Factor

By Aaron Parsley

12/06/2012 at 09:20 PM EST

There were tears on The X Factor Thursday night.

With only four spots in next week's semi-finals, the six acts who performed two songs each Wednesday night were a tense bunch. Especially after last week's shocking elimination that sent home fan favorite Vino Alan.

A majority of PEOPLE.com readers picked Demi Lovato's only remaining contestant, CeCe Frey, as the singer who most deserved elimination. Was she able to make it through one more week? Keep reading for all the results ...

CeCe Frey was the first to go.

"I'm proud of everything that I've done on this show," she said. "I hope I've taught everyone at home that you need to love who you are, because the more you love who you are, the less you're going to need anybody else to."

Her coach tried to avoid tears but shed a few anyway. "I've grown so close to you," Demi said. "And I'm just so proud of you."

Three acts were then declare safe: Simon Cowell's boy band, Emblem3; Britney Spears's frontrunner, Carly Rose Sonenclar; and L.A. Reid's country singer, Tate Stevens, also a frontrunner.

That left Team Britney's Diamond White and Simon's other group, Fifth Harmony, to sing for survival.

Fifth Harmony sang Mariah Carey's "Anytime You Need a Friend," and Diamond sang Lee Ann Womack's "I Hope You Dance."

As expected, Simon and Britney voted to send home each other's acts. But it was the end of the road for Diamond, after L.A. and Demi both voted to send her home as well.

"I'm just thinking of Cher Lloyd right now," she said of the "Want U Back" singer. "She came in fifth and look where she is."

Here's how the top four ranked:
1. Tate Stevens
2. Carly Rose Sonenclar
3. Emblem3
4. Fifth Harmony

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Celebrations planned as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.

Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.

Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."

Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.

Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.

___(equals)

Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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L.A. literary stalwart selected as city's first poet laureate

Before sitting down for tea in Echo Park, the poet reaches for her iPhone.

"I have to turn this thing off," she explains, silencing the ringer. "It's getting too noisy these days."

As a publisher, educator and author of seven books of poems, Eloise Klein Healy is a stalwart of the Los Angeles literary scene. Her phone has been buzzing more than usual in recent weeks as she prepares to take on a new title. On Friday, Healy will be named L.A.'s first poet laureate.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa decided earlier this year that his city, like others, should have a namesake poet. The mayor, who chose Healy from a pool of three finalists recommended by a selection panel, said he was moved by the grace of her writing and by her "belief in the power of poetry, and her commitment to sharing this power far and wide."

Healy spent her formative years in Iowa and still maintains an air of Midwestern modesty. She says she doubts the quality of her poems won her the laureate honor.

She guesses it had more to do with her long involvement in the arts community, especially the feminist art movement of the 1970s, and her subject matter: Los Angeles looms large in her work.

She writes lovingly of helicopters and bougainvillea, of strip malls and Santa Anas. Car thefts and stabbings are part of the backdrop. Freeways wind freely through her verse.

In a poem called "Los Angeles," Healy describes the city as an older sister who was less pretty and less charming than her younger sibling. "There was something about your proportions / that was indelicate — your more abundant waist," she tells the city.

But in the final verse, a person enters and loves Los Angeles anyway:

Nobody expected it

and you never told about

the lover who met you

loose and large

in the late afternoon

and loved you all night,

completely out of proportion.

Healy says she writes about Los Angeles to understand "the influence of place on people."

It's a technique she employs often. Once, while working on a book of poems about Sappho, the classical lyric poet, Healy traveled to the poet's birthplace on the island of Lesbos in Greece. "I wanted to walk on a beach where she could have walked," Healy said. "I wanted to look at that horizon."

Healy is 69, but she seems much younger. She is trim, with olive skin and snow-white hair. For years, she lived down the street from the small Sunset Boulevard cafe where she sipped tea one morning this week. She chronicled her time in the neighborhood in a book called "Artemis in Echo Park."

Since 1988, she has lived in Sherman Oaks with her partner, Colleen Rooney.

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British News Media Agree to More Powerful Regulator

LONDON — The editors of Britain’s principal national newspapers met Wednesday under pressure from Prime Minister David Cameron and agreed to the establishment of an independent newspaper regulator with far greater powers than those available to the existing watchdog.

But the editors, meeting over breakfast at a London restaurant, steered a careful course, embracing most but not all of the measures recommended in a report last week by a high-ranking judge, Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson. They rejected the judge’s most contentious proposal, for a new law that would put teeth into a state-sanctioned system of oversight.

That placed the editors broadly in line with the approach taken by Mr. Cameron, who has courted political opprobrium, particularly on the left, by saying that writing any part of a new regulatory system into law would risk eroding 300 years of press freedom in Britain. Reacting to the Leveson report last Thursday, the prime minister warned that once such a law existed, politicians would be tempted to broaden it, and start the country down the road to state control of the news media.

Lord Justice Leveson led a nine-month inquiry into a scandal surrounding abusive and illegal newspaper practices, including hacking into private computers and voice mail and bribing police officers and other public officials to obtain confidential information — practices that appeared to have been rife in some newsrooms.

The Leveson inquiry and the parallel investigations by the police have focused especially on two mass-circulation tabloids that anchored Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire in Britain, The Sun and The News of the World. The company shut down The News of the World in July 2011, at the height of the scandal.

In effect, some analysts said, the editors’ agreement reflects the price that Britain’s famously freewheeling newspapers are now paying for the tabloid papers’ excesses.

Though Britain has no formal equivalent of the First Amendment, its tabloid newspapers in particular have prided themselves on being the scourge of the establishment, of privilege and of claims to a right of privacy by celebrities and others in the news. That attitude could now be curbed, perhaps even radically, by a new regulatory body responding to the public outrage stirred by the recent scandals, these analysts said.

The newspaper The Guardian reported on its Web site on Wednesday that the editors — including representatives of the sensationalist “red top” tabloids like The Sun, the country’s most lucrative daily — had endorsed 40 of the 47 principal recommendations made in Lord Justice Leveson’s 2,000-page report.

They agreed to scrap the weak and widely discredited Press Complaints Commission, set up by newspaper barons 20 years ago, and replace it with a new body appointed from outside the newspaper industry and the government. It would have a much larger budget, a strong investigative staff, and the power to order errant newspapers to publish prominent apologies and pay fines up to £1 million, or $1.6 million, or 1 percent of a publication’s annual revenue, whichever is less. Effectively, subscribing to the new system would be compulsory, since failure to sign up would deny newspapers access to a new system for arbitrating libel suits that could be far cheaper than fighting suits in the courts.

“We endorsed virtually all the report, barring the clauses that dealt with statutory underpinning,” one of the editors who attended Wednesday’s meeting said. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing an agreement among the roughly 20 editors not to comment individually on the record while details of a new system are being worked out.

Newspapers represented at the meeting included broadsheets like The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and two Murdoch-owned titles, The Times and The Sunday Times; two weekly journals, The Spectator and The Economist; and mass-market tabloids like The Daily Mirror, The Daily Express and Mr. Murdoch’s Sun, with readerships in the millions.

The editor who spoke said that the group voted clause by clause on the 47 Leveson recommendations in a 90-minute meeting marked by a sense of urgency because of the mounting political pressure for tougher measures to rein in the news media. “There was a feeling that if we were to avoid something nasty, we had to do something quickly,” he said.

On the political left and center-left, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats are pressing for a statute that would put the newspapers on notice that they would defy the new system at their peril. With his own Conservative Party deeply split on the issue, Mr. Cameron told the editors at a meeting on Tuesday that they should endorse the principles behind the Leveson proposals, and that if they did not, they would “get a statute,” an editor who was present said.

With the editors now in line, senior aides to Mr. Cameron have said they will try to defuse the situation with a more detailed blueprint for an oversight system that would be independent but not depend on statutory backing, perhaps with a senior judge to act as a referee on appointments to the new regulatory body and on contested findings.

The editors’ action put newspapers with a combined daily and weekend circulation of more than eight million copies — said to be read by more than one-third of Britain’s population of 62 million — on record in favor of substantially toughening the system of self-regulation by the newspapers that has been in place since 1953.

In its current form, set up in 1991 after an earlier threat of government regulation, a voluntary body passes judgment on accusations of wrongdoing by the newspapers that participate. But critics who testified before the Leveson inquiry, including victims of the tabloid excesses, said the commission has been too pliant, especially in dealing with rambunctious tabloids like The Sun, which have had little to fear from the commission’s reproaches.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 6, 2012

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the jurisdiction of a proposed independent regulator in Britain. The new regulator would be charged with oversight of newspapers, not of the broader news media.

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Frank Ocean, Taylor Swift Collect Grammy Nominations

12/06/2012 at 01:00 AM EST

How FUN!

The Grammys handed out their nominations Wednesday night at a concert in Nashville and there was a decidedly youthful feel: Taylor Swift earned a nod for record of the year and the band FUN joined Frank Ocean with the trifecta of album and record of the year and best new artist.

In the country categories, Blake Shelton is up against Carrie Underwood for best solo performance and Miranda Lambert was nominated for best album.

Here are some of the major nominations. For a complete list go to Grammy.com:

Album of the Year:
El Camino – The Black Keys
Some Nights– FUN.
Babel – Mumford & Sons
Channel Orange – Frank Ocean
Blunderbuss – Jack White

Record of the Year:
Lonely Boy – The Black Keys
Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You) – Kelly Clarkson
We Are Young – FUN. featuring Janelle Monáe
Somebody That I Used To Know – Gotye Featuring Kimbra
Thinkin Bout You – Frank Ocean
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together – Taylor Swift

Best New Artist:
Alabama Shakes
FUN
Hunter Hayes
The Lumineers
Frank Ocean

Song Of The Year:
"The A Team" – Ed Sheeran, songwriter (Ed Sheeran)
"Adorn" – Miguel Pimentel, songwriter (Miguel)
"Call Me Maybe" – Tavish Crowe, Carly Rae Jepsen & Josh Ramsay, songwriters (Carly Rae Jepsen)
"Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" – Jörgen Elofsson, David Gamson, Greg Kurstin & Ali Tamposi, songwriters (Kelly Clarkson)
"We Are Young" – Jack Antonoff, Jeff Bhasker, Andrew Dost & Nate Ruess, songwriters (FUN. featuring Janelle Monáe)

Best Country Solo Performance:
"Home" – Dierks Bentley
"Springsteen" – Eric Church
"Cost Of Livin'" – Ronnie Dunn
"Wanted" – Hunter Hayes
"Over" – Blake Shelton
"Blown Away" – Carrie Underwood

Best Country Album:
Uncaged – Zac Brown Band
Hunter Hayes – Hunter Hayes
Living For A Song: A Tribute To Hank Cochran – Jamey Johnson
Four The Record– Miranda Lambert
The Time Jumpers – The Time Jumpers

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Celebrations planned as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.

Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.

Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."

Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.

Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.

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Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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