John E

Metrolink's board of directors on Friday hired a former railroad vice president with broad transportation experience to replace David R. Solow, the embattled chief executive who became controversial following the September 2008 Chatsworth crash. After a nationwide search for candidates, the commuter rail service selected John E. Fenton as its chief executive. The appointment will become effective April 16. Fenton's salary and benefits had not been finalized and were unavailable Friday.

The Los Angeles County probate judge who oversees an elderly heiress' trust fund approved $50,000 in compensation Tuesday for a Kabbalah Centre official who is under criminal investigation for his handling of the woman's financial affairs. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael I. Levanas signed off on John E. Larkin's payment request without comment. The money covers work that Larkin, a veteran Hollywood financial advisor, performed last year as a trustee for an $11-million family trust fund benefiting 88-year-old Susan Strong Davis.

A funeral service for John E. Anderson, a billionaire businessman, philanthropist and namesake of UCLA's graduate school of management, will be held at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at Westwood United Methodist Church, 10497 Wilshire Blvd. He died Friday at 93.

Federal authorities have taken over an investigation into the management of an elderly heiress' fortune by a key figure at the Kabbalah Centre, police said Tuesday. A supervisor with the Palos Verdes Estates Police Department, which had led a criminal probe into the handling of the housebound widow's affairs, said the department turned over files concerning her longtime business manager, John E. Larkin, to federal agents last month. Sgt. Steve Barber declined to name the agency but said its focus was "financial activities" involving the 88-year-old heiress, Susan Strong Davis, and Larkin, a veteran Hollywood business manager who helps oversee the Kabbalah Centre's money.

John E. Anderson, a Bel-Air billionaire businessman and philanthropist who founded Topa Equities Ltd. and was the namesake of UCLA's graduate school of management, died Friday morning. He was 93. Anderson died of pneumonia at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, a family spokesperson said. A self-made man whose net worth of $2.4 billion placed him at No. 153 on the 2010 Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, Anderson was the founder, president and chief executive of the privately owned Topa Equities Ltd. The Century City-headquartered holding company owns 33 subsidiaries involved in insurance, real estate, financial services, wholesale beverage distribution, automobile dealerships and manufacturing.

Traffic radar guns, which save lives by catching speeders, have come under suspicion as a possible cause of cancer in traffic officers exposed to their microwave beams, triggering a series of lawsuits by an Agoura Hills lawyer. Attorney John E. Sweeney has filed suits on behalf of five former traffic officers who contracted cancer and are seeking millions of dollars in damages from radar equipment manufacturers, whom they accuse of failing to warn of health risks.

John E. Boswell, a Yale historian who provoked debate with his research saying gay marriages during the Middle Ages were celebrated in the church, died Friday of the complications of AIDS. He was 47. Boswell drew national attention in June with his book "Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe," a study of more than 60 manuscripts from the Middle Ages. Boswell contended that homosexual marriages were well established in the medieval church. But Boswell's thesis was criticized by other scholars.

John E. Hunt, 79, a New Jersey Republican who lost his congressional seat to James Florio in 1974 in the wave of post-Watergate victories by Democrats. Hunt first was elected to Congress in 1967 from Camden and Gloucester counties in southern New Jersey. A strong supporter of President Richard M. Nixon, the former sheriff and state police lieutenantlost to Florio, who still holds the seat and is running for governor. Before being elected to Congress, Hunt served two terms in the state Senate.

John E. Alcorn, an illustrator whose work ranged from a U.S. postage stamp to credits for Fellini movies, died Jan. 27 of a heart attack. He was 56. Alcorn died at the Laurence & Memorial Hospital in New London, Conn., his family said. After graduating from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in Manhattan in 1955, he worked for Esquire magazine, Push Pin Studios and CBS.

Private memorial services will be held today for John E. Smith, librarian emeritus at UC Irvine. Smith, 69, died Monday at his home in Santa Ana following a lengthy illness with cancer. Smith was the founding librarian at UC Irvine. He joined the faculty in 1963, two years before the new campus opened for its first classes. He was a founder of UC Irvine's Friends of the Library organization.

Los Angeles County officials said Monday that they were opening an investigation into possible financial exploitation of a housebound Palos Verdes Estates heiress by her money manager. The launch of a probe into the handling of Susan Strong Davis' affairs came in response to a Times article describing how the 87-year-old widow spent millions of dollars on a four-bedroom home in Beverly Hills despite suffering from what relatives said was dementia that left her unable to make even minor decisions.

When John E. Fenton took over Metrolink in April of last year, the government-run railroad had fallen off the tracks. Several million dollars in inventory was unaccounted for. Ridership was declining and staff morale had plummeted. After a head-on crash with a freight train in Chatsworth killed 25 people in 2008, the line had the worst safety record in the nation for a commuter railroad. Today — 16 months after Fenton arrived — Metrolink has changed by a number of critical measures.

A funeral service for John E. Anderson, a billionaire businessman, philanthropist and namesake of UCLA's graduate school of management, will be held at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at Westwood United Methodist Church, 10497 Wilshire Blvd. He died Friday at 93.

John E. Anderson, a Bel-Air billionaire businessman and philanthropist who founded Topa Equities Ltd. and was the namesake of UCLA's graduate school of management, died Friday morning. He was 93. Anderson died of pneumonia at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, a family spokesperson said. A self-made man whose net worth of $2.4 billion placed him at No. 153 on the 2010 Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, Anderson was the founder, president and chief executive of the privately owned Topa Equities Ltd. The Century City-headquartered holding company owns 33 subsidiaries involved in insurance, real estate, financial services, wholesale beverage distribution, automobile dealerships and manufacturing.

The first trial of a Guantanamo Bay detainee to face justice in a civilian court began with a dramatic flourish Tuesday as a former ambassador described a low rumble, a thunderous blast and a burning man "in his last gasps of life" after the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania in 1998. "Every clock in the embassy stopped," John E. Lange, who had been the acting ambassador in Tanzania, said as he began what is expected to be months of testimony in the trial of accused Al Qaeda operative Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani.

Metrolink's board of directors on Friday hired a former railroad vice president with broad transportation experience to replace David R. Solow, the embattled chief executive who became controversial following the September 2008 Chatsworth crash. After a nationwide search for candidates, the commuter rail service selected John E. Fenton as its chief executive. The appointment will become effective April 16. Fenton's salary and benefits had not been finalized and were unavailable Friday.

John E. Baur, a professor of history at Cal State Northridge for nearly three decades, has died at a Chatsworth convalescent hospital. He was 71. Baur, a longtime North Hills resident, died Saturday of bone cancer, said history professor James Sefton, Baur's office mate for 28 years. Born in Chicago, Baur came to California as a child during the late 1920s and remained for the rest of his life.

Former Rep. John E. Moss, the father of the 1966 federal Freedom of Information Act, died Friday of complications from pneumonia. He was 82. In addition to his landmark FOI legislation, Moss was a staunch defender of the 1st Amendment and a strong advocate of consumer rights and environmental laws during his 26-year congressional career representing the Sacramento area. He retired from Congress in 1979. He moved from Sacramento to San Francisco in 1992, on the advice of doctors who recommended that he get away from the San Joaquin Valley smog.

John E. Carter, R&B lead tenor and two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, died Friday at Ingalls Memorial Hospital in his hometown of Harvey, Ill. He was 75 and had lung cancer. Carter, known for his falsetto, was the last surviving founding member of the doo-wop group the Flamingos, which gained fame with such hits as "Golden Teardrops" and their reworking of the pop classic "I Only Have Eyes for You." Carter, who was born June 2, 1934, left the Flamingos the first time in 1957 to do military service and left permanently in 1960 to join the Dells, which had been formed in the early 1950s by some of his high school friends.

John E. Swearingen, 89, a Chicago banker and oil executive who led Standard Oil Co. of Indiana to become the sixth-largest U.S. company, died Friday of pneumonia at a Birmingham, Ala., hospital, according to his wife, Bonnie Bolding Swearingen. He also had Alzheimer's disease. A native of Columbia, S.C., Swearingen graduated from the University of South Carolina and earned a master's degree in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.