Consent

WASHINGTON -- Federal banking regulators have ordered Capital One Bank to refund $150 million to about 2 million customers for deceptive marketing of payment protection and other add-on products sold with its credit cards. Capital One also must pay $60 million in civil penalties for the practices. The refunds and fines, which the bank has agreed to pay under consent orders, were announced Wednesday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Although it was drowned out by the mayor's race, Los Angeles quietly marked a historic moment this month: On May 15, after 12 years of policing the city under the eye of a federal judge, the Los Angeles Police Department at last was allowed to return to managing itself. That marks the end of a contentious yet intensely productive era, and it is a signal triumph for the man most responsible, Gerald Chaleff, who negotiated the consent decree in 2001, who oversaw its implementation and who witnessed its expiration.

REWARI, India -- India passed anti-rape legislation Thursday that included a controversial provision setting the age of sexual consent at 18. Reformers argued the law, which was passed in a hurried response to public anger over the fatal mid-December rape of a 23-year old physiotherapy student, should set the age at 16 to prevent wrongful arrests in a changing society. However, conservatives prevailed, fearful a lower age would encourage premarital sex and undermine Indian morality.

The federal judge who oversaw a dramatic, forced transformation of the Los Angeles Police Department has freed the department from the final vestiges of federal oversight. In a brief, three-line order Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Gary Feess formally lifted the binding agreement the U.S. Department of Justice imposed on the LAPD in 2001, which spelled out dozens of major reforms the police agency had to implement and frequent audits it was required to undergo by a monitor who reported to Feess.

The Beverly Hills fertility doctor who assisted Nadya Suleman in conceiving octuplets was cited by federal regulators for using an experimental procedure without her informed consent, according to testimony Thursday at a state medical board hearing in downtown Los Angeles. Dr. Michael Kamrava's medical license could be revoked if it is determined that he was grossly negligent in his treatment of Suleman and two other female patients: a 48-year-old who suffered complications after she became pregnant with quadruplets and a 42-year-old diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer after receiving fertility treatments.

A student dashed into the nurse's office at Los Angeles High School the other morning and asked for an aspirin to relieve his headache. Sorry, the aide said, but the nurse's office cannot dispense medicine. But why not try the school health clinic on the other side of the counter, which offers a complete menu of medical services? So the student moved to the other side of the waiting room and asked the clinic receptionist for an aspirin. Are you a member of the clinic? Have your parents filled out the consent form?

A man may be convicted of rape if his sexual partner first consents but later changes her mind and asks him to stop, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday. In a 6-1 decision, the state high court said a man who continues sexual intercourse with a woman once she has retracted her consent can be charged with rape. The court ruled in a date rape case involving teenagers at a party in El Dorado County.

A federal appeals court this month upheld a Texas law that requires a woman seeking an abortion to undergo a sonogram, forces doctors to describe that sonogram in detail to her and then requires that she wait 24 hours before she can undergo the procedure. Texas was one of five states to adopt mandatory sonogram laws last year. Proponents insist these laws are about informed consent and making sure women have all the details about the procedure. They are not. The laws are about one thing only: erecting obstacles to abortion.

When a doctor at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles called in 2007 to tell Eduardo Rivas that his 6-month-old son needed surgery to repair double hernias, Rivas was not sure what he should do. Nathan had been born four months premature. His mother, Rivas' wife, had died of breast cancer soon after his birth. Rivas had to decide on his own. What happened next is at the root of a $19-million civil lawsuit filed by Rivas against the hospital and two of his son's doctors. Rivas, a Spanish speaker, last week told the jury hearing the case in Los Angeles County Superior Court that he never consented to surgery that he says left his son brain-damaged.

Sixty years after Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer, her cells live on in laboratories around the globe. Collected by Johns Hopkins researchers as she was being treated, the cells grew incessantly — and they've since helped scientists make blockbuster medical advances, including cancer treatments and the polio vaccine. Decades passed before anyone told Lacks' relatives of her enduring gift to modern science. And though the advances that have come from her cells are worth millions, her family never received a cent.

The federal judge who oversaw a dramatic, forced transformation of the Los Angeles Police Department has freed the department from the final vestiges of federal oversight. In a brief, three-line order Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Gary Feess formally lifted the binding agreement the U.S. Department of Justice imposed on the LAPD in 2001, which spelled out dozens of major reforms the police agency had to implement and frequent audits it was required to undergo by a monitor who reported to Feess.

REWARI, India -- India passed anti-rape legislation Thursday that included a controversial provision setting the age of sexual consent at 18. Reformers argued the law, which was passed in a hurried response to public anger over the fatal mid-December rape of a 23-year old physiotherapy student, should set the age at 16 to prevent wrongful arrests in a changing society. However, conservatives prevailed, fearful a lower age would encourage premarital sex and undermine Indian morality.

It would be easy to close the book and say justice has been served in the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case. Two high school football stars were found guilty Sunday of raping an intoxicated 16-year-old at a party in a case that became a national scandal after videos and photos of the assault wound up on YouTube and Instagram. The text messages, pictures and jokey tweets that teenagers from the party shared online suggest a communal lack of conscience. That made it easy to blame locals so enamored of their football team that jocks thought they could get away with just about anything.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has refused to lift a 30-year consent decree that bars the Republican National Committee from targeting racial and ethnic minorities in its efforts to end fraudulent voting. The justices without comment turned down an appeal from RNC lawyers who said the decree has become “antiquated” and is “increasingly used as political weapon” by Democrats during national campaigns. For their part, lawyers for the Democratic National Committee had argued that recent campaigns show the “consent degree remains necessary today.” The court's action is a victory for the DNC, and it comes after an election year in which the two parties regularly exchanged charges over “voter fraud” and “voter intimidation.” But most of the recent battles have been fought on the state level, and it is not clear whether the long-standing consent decree has had much impact.

SAN FRANCISCO - In a major step to protect kids' online privacy, the Federal Trade Commission has unveiled new rules that require mobile apps and websites to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from children. The agency's chairman, Jon Leibowitz, said Wednesday that federal regulators were trying to keep pace with the growing use of mobile devices by those under age 13 - and the rapidly evolving tactics and tracking tools of marketers and data brokers that collect detailed dossiers on Americans and their online activities.

SAN FRANCISCO - Parents often hand over their smartphones and tablet computers to keep their kids entertained. But most parents are unaware the mobile apps and games that delight their kids are secretly collecting personal information they then share with marketers and other third parties. Now federal regulators are investigating whether mobile apps makers, in transmitting this data without parents' knowledge or consent, have violated laws that protect children's privacy. The Federal Trade Commission declined to name or say how many mobile apps makers it's probing.

A Los Angeles jury Tuesday found in favor of Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles and two doctors in a $19-million civil lawsuit filed by a Tujunga man who said they had operated on his infant son without his consent. Eduardo Rivas, 43, sued in Los Angeles County Superior Court in June, alleging that doctors had operated on his 6-month-old son, Nathan, to repair a double hernia in 2007 after he had refused permission. After the surgery, Nathan, who was born four months premature and arrived at the hospital with a nasal breathing tube, became dependent on a ventilator and feeding tube, according to Rivas' Beverly Hills-based lawyer, Nathaniel Friedman.

In the interest of justice, the Louisiana Legislature should make it a crime, punishable by fine and imprisonment, for any male to impregnate any female without first obtaining her written consent. LYNNE LACY Burbank

SACRAMENTO - State pharmacy regulators have opened an investigation into reports that CVS Caremark Corp. refilled prescriptions and billed insurance companies without patients' consent. Virginia Herold, executive officer of the California Board of Pharmacy, said Tuesday that investigators were probing complaints about the refill practices of the country's largest drugstore chain after Walgreen Co. Herold said the complaints concerning "CVS and refills" were similar to allegations raised in four Los Angeles Times reports published in the last three months.