Robert Thompson

Inside the chill of the county coroner's office, the detective and the forensic anthropologist stood over soot-covered bones arrayed on a metal table. Over two hours, Elizabeth Miller provided a running dialogue for each bone. She picked up one rib after another, studying them for knife scrapes. The bones were those of a boy, perhaps 12 to 15 years old, found in the chimney of an abandoned building in South Los Angeles. The boy wore faded and stained tan jeans and a white shirt, but no shoes.

Robert S. Thompson, a former associate justice of the California Court of Appeal who taught law at USC for 11 years, died in San Diego on Friday after a short illness, his family said. He was 91. Thompson's judicial career began on the Los Angeles Municipal Court, where he served from 1965 to 1966. He moved to the Los Angeles Superior Court for two years, until then-Gov. Ronald Reagan elevated him to the state Court of Appeal in 1968. During his tenure on the appellate court he ruled on a number of noteworthy cases, including a 1974 decision that bolstered the landmark legal battle of Bill Farr, a Los Angeles journalist who, invoking California's shield law, spent 46 days in jail after refusing to reveal his sources to the judge in the Charles Manson murder trial.

A former federal banking regulator testified Tuesday that he had provided a well-connected Republican lobbyist with a confidential copy of an internal government report highly critical of a questionable thrift takeover that the lobbyist had helped to engineer.

Inside the chill of the county coroner's office, the detective and the forensic anthropologist stood over soot-covered bones arrayed on a metal table. Over two hours, Elizabeth Miller provided a running dialogue for each bone. She picked up one rib after another, studying them for knife scrapes. The bones were those of a boy, perhaps 12 to 15 years old, found in the chimney of an abandoned building in South Los Angeles. The boy wore faded and stained tan jeans and a white shirt, but no shoes.

A former aide to President Bush told a Senate hearing Tuesday that he did nothing wrong when he helped an Arizona insurance executive acquire 15 failed Texas savings and loans and suggested that he is a victim of politics. "Until this committee began looking into this transaction, I had been very proud of that transaction and the way it had occurred," Washington lobbyist Robert J. Thompson testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee panel.

The FBI has launched a major investigation into allegations of political favoritism and influence peddling in connection with the government's sale to private investors of dozens of insolvent savings and loans in Texas, knowledgeable sources said Wednesday. One federal regulator said in an interview that he was offered immunity by an FBI agent in return for testimony about deals in which billion-dollar taxpayer subsidies went to "political favorites."

NBC's "Double Standard," airing tonight at 9 p.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39, tippy-toes into the illusory world of bigamy. Robert Foxworth ("Falcon Crest") plays Leonard Harik--loving father and husband, respected lawyer, soon to be a circuit judge--who weds his secretary/mistress in a bogus ceremony after the birth of their illegitimate daughter. He does this because "anything else would be morally wrong."

Stephen J. Cannell, the prolific television writer and producer who co-created "The Rockford Files" and "The A-Team" and later became a bestselling novelist, has died. He was 69. Cannell died Thursday evening of complications associated with melanoma at his home in Pasadena, his family said. In a career that began in the late 1960s when he sold his first TV script and took off as he soon became the hottest young writer on the Universal lot, Cannell created or co-created more than 40 TV shows, including "Baa Baa Black Sheep," "Baretta," "The Greatest American Hero" and "21 Jump Street.

IT was the perfect cast for an uplifting reality TV show: five orphaned siblings and the loving family friends who took them in. The story line certainly appealed to the producers of ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." After learning that Phil and Loki Leomiti had opened their doors to the Higgins clan -- their former neighbors and fellow church members -- the show's executives proposed transforming the couple's modest Santa Fe Springs house into a nine-bedroom showpiece.

"The Hunger Games," the teen action-adventure film that is opening to big numbers this weekend, is, without question, a parable of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It's also a cautionary tale about Big Government. And undeniably a Christian allegory about the importance of finding Jesus. Or maybe a call for campaign-finance reform? Like the Suzanne Collins bestseller on which it is based, the movie about a teenage girl fighting for her life in a televised death match in a dystopian post-apocalyptic country that has replaced America has a whiff of political content.

Robert E. Thompson, co-author of the screen adaptation of Horace McCoy's novel, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1969, has died. He was 79. Thompson died of pneumonia Feb. 11 in Santa Monica, according to his family. "They Shoot Horses," which Thompson wrote with James Poe, was directed by Sydney Pollack and starred Jane Fonda and Michael Sarrazin as contestants trying desperately to win a Depression-era dance marathon.

Robert E. Thompson, 82, a former publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a onetime Washington bureau chief for Hearst Newspapers and a White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in the 1960s, died of prostate cancer Tuesday at his home in Williamsburg, Va. A native of Los Angeles, Thompson began his career as a reporter at the Fort Wayne, Ind., Journal-Gazette in 1949. After two years, he moved to a wire service, covering agriculture from Washington, D.C.

EMPIRES ON THE PACIFIC: World War II and the Struggle for the Mastery of Asia By Robert Smith Thompson, Basic Books: 434 pp., $30 FREE TO DIE : FOR THEIR COUNTRY, The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II, By Eric L. Muller, University of Chicago Press: 230 pp., $27.50 On Sept. 2, 1945, an armada of almost 260 Allied warships lay at anchor in Tokyo Bay. Aboard the battleship Missouri, Allied generals and admirals, including Douglas MacArthur, William F.

The mother of a boy murdered in Anaheim appealed Friday for the case to end, calling for the execution of the convicted killer. Kay Brenneman said that more than 18 years after the death of her 12-year-old son, Benjamin, the man convicted of the crime sits on death row with 30 appeals pending before a federal court. "He took my child from the heart of my being," she said at a news conference. Robert Jackson Thompson was convicted two years after the boy's death on Aug. 25, 1981.

A former aide to President Bush told a Senate hearing Tuesday that he did nothing wrong when he helped an Arizona insurance executive acquire 15 failed Texas savings and loans and suggested that he is a victim of politics. "Until this committee began looking into this transaction, I had been very proud of that transaction and the way it had occurred," Washington lobbyist Robert J. Thompson testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee panel.

The FBI has launched a major investigation into allegations of political favoritism and influence peddling in connection with the government's sale to private investors of dozens of insolvent savings and loans in Texas, knowledgeable sources said Wednesday. One federal regulator said in an interview that he was offered immunity by an FBI agent in return for testimony about deals in which billion-dollar taxpayer subsidies went to "political favorites."

Robert E. Thompson, 82, a former publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a onetime Washington bureau chief for Hearst Newspapers and a White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in the 1960s, died of prostate cancer Tuesday at his home in Williamsburg, Va. A native of Los Angeles, Thompson began his career as a reporter at the Fort Wayne, Ind., Journal-Gazette in 1949. After two years, he moved to a wire service, covering agriculture from Washington, D.C.

Fess Parker, whose star-making portrayal of frontiersman Davy Crockett on television in the mid-1950s made him a hero to millions of young baby boomers and spurred a nationwide run on coonskin caps, died Thursday. He was 85. Parker, who played another pioneer American hero on television's "Daniel Boone" in the 1960s before becoming a successful Santa Barbara hotel developer and Santa Ynez Valley winery owner, died of complications from old age at his home near the winery, said family spokeswoman Sao Anash.

A former federal banking regulator testified Tuesday that he had provided a well-connected Republican lobbyist with a confidential copy of an internal government report highly critical of a questionable thrift takeover that the lobbyist had helped to engineer.