Advocate

Vietnam veteran John Otte did his best to forget the war. He got married, raised two sons and made a career working at credit unions. But as Otte neared retirement, memories of combat flooded back. Starting in 2005, he filed a series of claims with Veterans Affairs for disability compensation, contending that many of his health problems stemmed from the war. The VA agreed, and now the 65-year-old with two Purple Hearts receives $1,900 a month for post-traumatic stress disorder and diabetes - and for having shrapnel scars on his arms.

UC Berkeley is making its vast library collections and course textbooks more readily available to students with visual and other impairments under an agreement reached Tuesday that could set a precedent for universities nationwide. The settlement with the nonprofit legal group Disability Rights Advocates was reached after more than a year of negotiations and will provide students with physical, developmental, learning and visual disabilities more timely access to printed materials in alternative formats such as Braille, large print and audio.

Admit it, at 45 years old, the Advocate looks good. Over those years, the LGBT magazine has seen the same challenges as any other print publication but has forged ahead with its watchdog duties in human rights as well as being a pop culture compass. The glossy will celebrate the big 4-5 at the Beverly Hilton on Thursday, welcoming a host of celebs and activists, as well as fashion and social types. Not to mention inductees to the Heroes Hall of Fame, a list of notables that includes Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O'Donnell, Cynthia Nixon and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Privacy rights groups on Monday filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County's two major law enforcement agencies after they refused to turn over information collected by electronic license plate scanners, the suit claimed. The Los Angeles Police Department and L.A. County Sheriff's Department have made use of the plate-reading technology for several years. Typically mounted on patrol vehicles, the small cameras continuously scan license plates and check them against criminal databases in search of stolen cars and cars registered to known fugitives.

Re "School Bonds Are Seen as Critical," Feb. 28. Why does The Times label every anti-tax doofus it interviews a "taxpayers' advocate"? Would you call someone who enjoyed eating out but groused about paying the tab a "diners' advocate"? I am a taxpayer--have been for decades--and have nothing in common with these would-be public service freeloaders. Stop telling me they are pleading my cause, which is how my dictionary defines an advocate. Call the Howard Jarvis clones what they are: knee-jerk tax complainers.

The homeless were invited to join celebrities Wednesday night as guests converged at the California Afro-American Museum in Exposition Park for the inaugural event of a new group calling itself Artists Against Homelessness. After a reception that showcased artworks by the homeless, an entertainment program followed, featuring skits, poetry, speeches, songs and dramatic readings. AAH is the latest Hollywood-based organization to declare that homelessness is not good.

After a vocal advocate for the controversial Malibu Lagoon restoration turned a gun on herself late Saturday, some closest to her were left wondering if the increasing vitriol surrounding the project drove the 35-year-old over the edge. Stephenie Glas, a Los Angeles city firefighter, shot herself in the head shortly before midnight at her boyfriend's Corral Canyon home, according to the boyfriend, Steve Woods. Authorities said only that a 35-year-old female died of "apparent suicide" at the home but did not release the woman's identity Sunday.

The unveiled one enters. That's what you notice first when Amal Basha, black hair flowing, hurries into the room, deploying sentences like poetic armies. She mentions that she's just returned from a human rights conference and is on her way to a seminar against torture. A man slides a tray before her and disappears. Tea? Coffee? A cigarette? A story? "I had to wear the full niqab when I was 8 years old," she says of the face veil worn by women here. "I couldn't breathe.

I'm not surprised to discover that Sean Penn is under attack again for his outspoken admiration of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Raul Castro. The real shocker is where the attack is happening: The Advocate, America's leading gay publication. James Kirchick, an assistant editor at the New Republic, pretty much eviscerates Penn, who just wrote a cover story in the Nation singing the praises of both Latin American dictators. Up until now, in the wake of his bravura performance as gay activist Harvey Milk in "Milk," the mainstream entertainment media haven't bothered to ask Penn any tough questions about his political views.

The push to create an in-house ratepayer advocate at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power gained new momentum Friday with a majority of the Los Angeles City Council saying that the proposal's time has come. Although the DWP and representatives of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa have resisted the idea for months, a succession of rate hikes and an $82,000 consulting contract with departing DWP General Manager H. David Nahai may have turned the tide, council members said. Council President Eric Garcetti, known for smoothing over disputes between council members and the mayor, submitted a proposal Friday calling for a ratepayer advocate.

The last time Manuel Cardenas fell ill, the 24-year-old single father had no choice but to report for work. His employer, a security contractor, doesn't offer sick pay to part-timers like Cardenas, he said, and he can't afford to lose a day's wages. "I probably shouldn't have, but I had to," said Cardenas, a security guard in San Jose. He is among California workers for whom labor groups and others are fighting to secure paid sick leave. Currently, 4.5 million workers in California, about 40% of the state's workforce, don't have sick-pay benefits.

For Dr. Antronette K. Yancey, a UCLA public health professor, exercise could be fun and done in short bursts in the workplace, schools and even places of worship. Her campaign to urge people to incorporate physical activity into their daily lives led to a 2010 book about the topic - "Instant Recess: Building a Fit Nation 10 Minutes at a Time. " Long before First Lady Michelle Obama launched a national conversation on physical fitness, Yancey was talking about the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle and the benefits of exercise, colleagues said.

SACRAMENTO - "Living in parallel universes," is how Senate leader Darrell Steinberg describes it. Gun control and gun rights advocates "talking past each other. " Emanating from different cultures, incapable of agreeing on how to make us all safer from firearms. Their opposite views were in full voice last week in the Legislature during a marathon 10-hour committee hearing - longest anyone could remember - on gun bills. Unlike in Washington, where gun control forces couldn't muster enough strength in the U.S. Senate to pass legislation expanding background checks, a state Senate committee in Sacramento approved eight bills to strengthen California's already stringent firearms regulations.

Gifford Phillips, a gentlemanly patron of cultural institutions and passionate advocate of contemporary art who played a leading role at museums on both coasts of the United States, has died. He was 94. Phillips died Wednesday of natural causes at a hospice in Palm Desert, said his daughter Marjorie Elliott. A member of a wealthy family - including his uncle, art collector Duncan Phillips, who founded the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. - Gifford Phillips was a partner in Pardee Phillips, a real estate developer of residential and commercial property in California and Nevada.

Michelle Rhee, head of an influential education advocacy group that backs using student test scores to evaluate teachers, this week fended off accusations that she failed to pursue evidence of cheating when she ran the District of Columbia school system. In an internal memo, a district consultant warned that about 190 teachers at 70 schools - more than half the system's campuses - may have cheated in 2008 by erasing wrong answers on student testing sheets and filling in correct ones.

Under the immigration bill proposed by a bipartisan group of senators, Maria Galvan could achieve her dream of opening a hair salon in Southern California. She has spent more than a decade doing odd jobs, barred from getting the required business license because she is in the country illegally. "It makes me happy to know we're being heard," said Galvan, 43, who is originally from Mexico City. "If this happens, it will be such a relief. " The path to citizenship as laid out in the bill is a lengthy one. Jose Cruz, a day laborer from Guatemala looking for work outside a Los Angeles Home Depot, said he was willing to wait.

How ironic that Rambo-admirer Ronald Reagan should play a starring role in the birthday celebrations of nonviolent advocate Martin Luther King Jr. MARY E. HANSON Whittier

Your reason for endorsing Wes Bannister over John Garamendi for the first state insurance commissioner is not very convincing to me (editorial, "This Is a Pocketbook Issue for Everyone," Oct. 18). Of course, we all know that insurance is a complex area of consumerism but do we need a technician or do we need a consumer advocate? I think we need the latter: one who will see that Prop. 103 is enforced and can take a leadership position in providing health-care insurance for all residents.

Weeks after Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa celebrated his plan to move the city off of coal-fired energy, a city watchdog has attached a giant price tag to the initiative. Fred Pickel, the ratepayer advocate at the Department of Water and Power, said Monday that eliminating coal from the utility's power mix ahead of a state-mandated deadline is projected to cost more than $600 million. What that could mean for ratepayers' electricity bills is unclear, he said. Pickel said he would urge city officials to look for ways to lower the costs Wednesday at a meeting of the City Council's Energy and Environment Committee.

Consumer advocates have long battled with companies that offer high-interest "payday loans" over the lenders' proposals to increase the maximum amount a person can borrow. Now, a group of those advocates is taking the offensive, pushing a bill that would fix two fundamental problems with payday lending as it's practiced in California. The point isn't to end that form of lending - as the widespread use of the service shows, it responds to a real need - but to stop the loans from becoming a debt trap for desperate consumers.