Examiner

Ralph (Casey) Shawhan, whose career as a journalist involved nearly every newspaper in Los Angeles and whose work as a publicist touched both films and television, died over the weekend in Scottsdale, Ariz. The former police and general assignment reporter for the Herald Express, the Examiner, the Mirror and the Los Angeles Times was 87 when he died Saturday.

Re the "First Person" article by Jim Wright, "A DMV Policy that Endangers Us All" (Sept. 9): Wright states that his father failed a test to renew his license because of two near accidents during the 30-minute behind-the-wheel examination. The examiner explained the appeals process and suggested his father drive home and think about his options. Wright's concern was that his father was allowed to drive away from the Department of Motor Vehicles after failing the test. Before his father received notice to turn in his license, he was involved in one more accident, which sent two people to the hospital.

A 44-year-old man with a history of severe mental illness has been arrested in the Jan. 18 murder of his parents in Carlsbad, officials said Friday. Dennis Brian Gluck was arrested Thursday night by Mexican police in Ensenada on a warrant issued by the U.S. marshal's office. He was brought to the U.S. border and is now in the Vista jail on $5 million bail. Gluck is charged with the murder of Harry Gluck, 90, and Jean Gluck, 78, in the family home in Carlsbad. The two were killed by chop wounds to the head, neck and chest, according to the county medical examiner.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history, violated its own risk-management rules with the knowledge of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a bankruptcy examiner said Monday. "We found that the SEC was aware of these excesses and simply acquiesced," Anton Valukas, the Lehman examiner, said in testimony to be presented in Washington tomorrow on policy issues arising from his 2,200-page report on Lehman‘s downfall. Valukas is scheduled to testify before the House Committee on Financial Services.

The bankruptcy of Lehman Bros. in September 2008 is widely seen as the event that kicked the financial meltdown into high gear. So it makes sense that the report released last week by Lehman's bankruptcy examiner should stand as the one indispensable analysis of how Wall Street almost brought the U.S. economy crashing down. The uncompromising report should put to rest the self-serving claims by Lehman's ex-Chairman Richard S. Fuld that the firm was destroyed by rumors, short selling, stock manipulation and an unwarranted loss of confidence by clients and trading partners.

An "X-Files" follower? Terri Merryman, a former anchor at KCAL-TV Channel 9, told the media Web site http://www.ronfineman.com that she once received a phone call "from a younger woman who claimed I was trying to steal her husband." How? By sending psychic messages "to him through the television set to meet me after the newscast." More from the psychic coldline: Mike Sharkey of Ventura came upon a newspaper ad for a psychic who specialized in "perditions."

Regarding "Between the Lines," (by Wanda Coleman, Three on the Town, Nov. 8): Let me see if I have this straight. You want me to feel outraged for you because in order to get something for nothing you had to wait in line? Forget it! To receive a cash allowance, food stamps and free medical care, waiting in line is worth it. The Russians you equated yourself with wait in line for a potato. I worked as a welfare examiner for five years, and I can attest to the fact that most of the people who are in line drop in without an appointment.

When an opening came up in the Child Sexual Abuse Protection Program of San Diego's Children's Hospital and Health Center, Dr. Charles Gilman figured that the skills acquired in his family practice would serve him well in the job. But the medical director of the program, Dr. David Chadwick, denied Gilman's application.

The powerful narcotic popped up on the cultural grid around the turn of the millennium. A Texas producer-remixer named DJ Screw paid homage to its woozy, heavy-lidded high by dramatically slowing down beats and vocals to replicate the drug's sleepwalker euphoria. Among Southern rappers, the chemical mixture - called "sizzurp" on the street - soon became as ubiquitous as gold jewelry. This wasn't some exotic new hallucinogen. In fact, it was usually mixed with fruit soda and sipped from oversized plastic foam cups.

In the latest chapter of an almost operatic family tragedy, the brother of murder-suicide suspect Josh Powell has died in Minneapolis after apparently throwing himself from a seven-story parking structure. A spokesman at the University of Minnesota, where Michael Powell was a graduate student, confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that the death occurred off campus and said the Minneapolis Police Department was investigating. Powell, 30, had been engaged in a legal battle with the parents of his missing sister-in-law, Susan Cox Powell, over the proceeds of as much as $3.5 million in life insurance paid out after Josh Powell killed himself and the couple's two young boys in February 2012.