$1.

50 DESIGNATED AREAS HIGHER

80 PAGES 2013 WST

FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2013

latimes.com

North Korea boosts nuclear ability

Pyongyang has the technology to make small warheads to fit long-range missiles, a U.S. assessment says.
By Ken Dilanian, David S. Cloud and Barbara Demick WASHINGTON A U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that North Korea has the capability to develop nuclear warheads small enough to fit on a ballistic missile, a congressman disclosed Thursday. Although U.S. experts believe North Korea cannot hit the U.S. mainland with its missiles, a significant improvement in Pyongyangs weapons technology would be deeply disconcerting for U.S. policymakers. It would also help explain the United States measures including an emphasis on its ability to respond with nuclear weapons after weeks of warlike rhetoric from Pyongyang. Regional intelligence officials and analysts say North Korea is poised to launch as many as five missiles from its east coast, but that the planned launches did not appear to be in preparation for war. They said the launches were likely to only be part of a military exercise and would not pose a threat to the U.S. or its allies, Japan and South Korea. Analysts said the exercise would probably be part of festivities to mark the birthday Monday of the countrys late founder, Kim Il Sung, grandfather of the current leader. [See North Korea, A5]
Ng Han Guan Associated Press

Baca to face feds in probe of jails

Was FBI informants transfer for his safety or to neutralize him? Federal prosecutors will interview sheriff.
By Robert Faturechi

ON A FAST TRACK IN CHINA

Gov. Jerry Brown speaks to journalists aboard a bullet train leaving the Beijing South station. The governor would like to see China, which is enjoying an economic boom and spent $77.6 billion on overseas investments last year, pump some of its cash into Californias troubled high-speed rail project. LATEXTRA

Bad business decisions

By Walter Hamilton, Andrea Chang and Tiffany Hsu Its the kind of audacious but small-stakes insider trading that normally wouldnt have merited much attention. Golfing buddies Scott London and Bryan Shaw netted just $1.3 million, a blip in a world where Wall Street kingpins pocket hundreds of millions in ill-gotten gains. The two men made one misstep after another. Their haplessness virtually guaranteed theyd get nailed, experts said. The scope of their illfated caper was made clear Thursday when federal prosecutors in Los Angeles filed a criminal charge against London, alleging that he
BUSINESS, B1

Criminal complaint in insider-trading case paints now-fired KPMG auditor and pal as brash bunglers whose downfall was inevitable
KPMG accountants role
Prosecutors dispute Scott Londons claim that he was not closely involved in the trades.

U.S. attorneys office

SCOTT LONDON, left, is shown in an FBI photograph allegedly accepting a cash bribe from Bryan Shaw.

passed insider tips to Shaw from 2010 to 2013. London, a former auditor at KPMG, and Shaw, an Encino jeweler, kept trading even after Fidelity Investments suspended Shaws brokerage account, according to the Justice Department complaint. They swapped packets of cash in public. London brashly predicted that authorities werent interested in small fish like them. Their most glaring blunder was [See Trading, A13]

Evidence points toward solving the missing link

By Monte Morin With long arms, high shoulder blades and powerful fingers, the ancient creatures were built for climbing trees. But they also had long lower limbs, flat feet and a flexible lumbar spine that gave them a distinct evolutionary edge: They could cover long distances by walking upright on two legs. After four years of intense analysis, a team of paleoanthropologists is making its most detailed case yet that a pair of ancient skeletons discovered in a grassy South African valley could represent the direct evolutionary link between modern humans and the family of human ancestors that includes the Australopithecus known as Lucy. In a series of six papers published in Fridays edition of the journal Science, the researchers argue that the mosaic nature of the Australopithecus sediba specimens makes them a strong candidate to be the missing link the branch of Australopithecus that ultimately gave rise to the genus Homo, which includes Homo sapiens. The skeleton fossils have so many human-like features across the whole of the body that it must be considered, at the very least, a possible ancestor, said Lee R. Berger, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, who discovered the fossils in 2008. Berger was senior author of all the new studies. But not everyone accepts this view. Critics say the skeletons are not old enough to be the precursors to Homo. Others say the similarities can be chalked up to the diversity of early hominids, but that certain aspects of A. sedibas anatomy make it an unlikely candidate for being our forebear. At a minimum, the new details revealed in the pa[See Evolution, A11]

Molly Hennessy-Fiske Los Angeles Times

the help of one of the Jaycees sponsoring Sweetwaters Rattlesnake Roundup.

COLUMN ONE

MISS SNAKE CHARMER 2013, Kyndra Vaught, shows the crowd a rattler with

They called it Operation Pandoras Box. Los Angeles County sheriff s officials learned in the summer of 201 1 that the FBI had enlisted an inmate in the Mens Central Jail to collect information on allegedly abusive and corrupt deputies. In an unusual move, sheriff s officials responded by moving the inmate, a convicted bank robber, to a different jail under fake names, including Robin Banks. They assigned at least 13 deputies to watch him around the clock, according to documents reviewed by The Times. And when the operation was over, the deputies received an internal email thanking them for helping without asking to [sic] many questions and prying into the investigation at hand. Whether Pandoras Box was intended to protect the inmate or neutralize him as an FBI informant is a key issue in a federal investigation into brutality in the jails. Four sheriff s officials told The Times that Sheriff Lee Baca played a significant role in the operation: After learning that an inmate in his jails may have been working as an informant for the FBI, Baca called a meeting and gave his staff orders on how to handle the situation. One of the four officials said Baca continued afterward to guide the operation and get updates. On Friday, Baca will be interviewed by federal prosecutors examining jail abuse and other problems in the Sheriff s Department. Part of the inquiry centers on whether by holding inmate Anthony Brown under aliases and moving him, sheriff s officials were obstructing an FBI investigation. In an interview this week with the Times Editorial Board, Baca said hes been assured hes not a target of the investigation. Federal officials have declined to discuss details of the case. Bacas spokesman has said Brown was moved not to hide him from the FBI but to protect him from deputies because he was snitching on them. [See Baca, A12]

A charming tradition
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske queen: Miss Snake Charmer. Texas has plenty of bizarre pageant royalty Gatorfest Queen, Watermelon Thump Queen, Queen Citrianna. Miss Snake Charmer is perhaps the most daring, braving not just the spotlight and the judges, but also the snake pit. She is expected to handle scores of serpents, often milking or gathering their venom, and beheading and skinning them. Queens usually eat some of whats left after skinning, which gets fried at the roundup cook shack and tastes like a cross between rabbit and frog. Winning Miss Snake Charmer instantly cements a girls reputation in this town of about 1 1,000, where many claim ties to former queens. You would be hardpressed to find a family in Sweetwater that has not been involved, said Jacque McCoy, Chamber of Commerce executive vice president, who competed in 1964 (she placed fourth). A daughter won in 1989, and a granddaughter in 2010. Winning can also catapult a pretty face beyond the dusty plains known as Big Country. Thats what one contestant this year hoped and what her parents dreaded more than a Western diamondback rattler. :: Eight girls vied for the crown last month. They would be judged by their interview, evening gown, casual wear and talent performance. One high school senior planned to play the eupho[See Pageant, A9]

In a Texas beauty pageant unlike any other, contestants vie for the chance to wade through a pit of rattlesnakes.
reporting from sweetwater, texas

Movie museum design unveiled

AMPAS

L. Berger Univ. of Witwatersrand

has made a detailed case that Australopithecus sediba is a direct ancestor of modern humans.

A SCIENTIFIC TEAM

ach spring for more than half a century, this small West Texas town has hosted whats billed as the worlds largest gathering of rattlesnakes. The roundup began as pest control, but has grown to become a cultural phenomenon that draws 30,000 people. And every roundup is ruled by a

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences reveals plans for the $300 million museum the group plans to build at the May Co. building on Wilshire Boulevard, now owned by LACMA. LATEXTRA Weather Gradual clearing. L.A. Basin: 69/56. AA8 Complete Index ... AA2

85944 00150