Brazen N.Y. killing of L.A. man leaves puzzling questions

NEW YORK — Brandon Woodard checked out of his midtown Manhattan hotel room Monday afternoon and emerged onto 58th Street a block from Columbus Circle.

As the 31-year-old Playa Vista man walked down the street, a man standing near a Lincoln sedan pulled a hood over his head as Woodard passed. A short time later, the two passed each other a second time. The man turned, pulled out a gun and shot Woodard at close range in the back of the head with a 9-millimeter pistol. He got back into the Lincoln, which pulled away.

The shooting has riveted New York and made for tabloid headlines. New York police have described the killing as an assassination-style attack.

But it has also reverberated in Los Angeles, where Woodard was raised and made his home.

Woodard grew up in Ladera Heights, played basketball at the exclusive Campbell Hall private high school in Studio City and graduated from Loyola Marymount University in 2003. His stepfather, Rod Wellington, said in an interview Tuesday that Woodard was pursuing a law degree at the University of West Los Angeles School of Law (school officials would not confirm if he was enrolled).

His stepfather described Woodard as a "loving son, a loving father and a loving brother." Woodard had a 4-year-old daughter and had a "great relationship" with the girl and her mother, he said.

"He was a good young man," Wellington said.

But court records revealed a more complex picture. Woodard has been arrested at least 20 times, according to New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

In 2004, Woodard was cited by Las Vegas police and summoned to court after a backstage scuffle with a security guard at an Usher concert at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. Police said Woodard had entered a restricted area and refused orders to leave.

He failed to appear in court in connection with the citation and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He was arrested in 2008 on that bench warrant but police could not immediately say how the matter was resolved.

Los Angeles authorities allege that in February 2008 he stole items from a Whole Foods Market and a Gelson's. He was sentenced to nine days in county jail and 200 hours of community service.

In December 2009, he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor hit-and-run driving charge in Torrance. He received three years and a day in county jail.

Prosecutors said that he came back to court in 2010 and 2011 for probation violation hearings related to arrests for grand theft and battery against a former spouse as well as a spousal battery arrest in January. In April, prosecutors said his probation was completed.

The Los Angeles city attorney's office said there was a hearing related to the September 2010 spousal abuse allegation and noted that a bench warrant had been issued for Woodard's arrest as recently as July 3. It was not immediately clear how the warrant was resolved.

Officials with the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said Woodard was due in Beverly Hills Superior Court on Jan. 22 for a hearing in connection with a single charge of cocaine possession. He was originally charged in June.

Court records also indicated that Woodard's mother had been involved in multiple civil lawsuits related to her real estate business dealings. When Woodard was arrested in January, he listed his occupation as real estate.

Neither police nor family members said they have any idea for a motive.

On Tuesday, Kelly said detectives had made progress in their investigation from ballistics evidence and video surveillance footage that captured the shooting and the suspected getaway vehicle.

He added that investigators were pursuing all leads, including Woodard's criminal history and his family's real estate dealings.

Kelly said Woodard, who carried three cellphones, was believed to be a promoter of some kind, but did not elaborate.

It was not clear what brought Woodard to New York after he purchased a one-way ticket from California, Kelly said, or where he was going when he left the hotel. Woodard checked into the hotel Sunday and checked out about 1:15 p.m. the next day.

Kelly said it was clear the gunman lay in wait for Woodard and didn't act alone.

The suspect had a driver who, after the hit, pulled a silver or gray Lincoln onto 58th Street, Kelly said. Once the gunman was in the car, the vehicle headed south on 7th Avenue and disappeared. A short time later, a car "similar in description" was seen heading through the midtown tunnel eastbound into Queens, where the driver paid the toll with cash.

Investigators had the license plate of the vehicle, but Kelly declined to release the information, citing the ongoing investigation.

Kelly also said ballistics analysis linked the weapon to a 2009 shooting in Queens. The gun was fired at a residence, he said — no one was hurt and no arrests were made.

Kelly said Monday's crime was particularly surprising, given such a public setting.

"You can characterize it as either being brazen or foolhardy," he said.

tina.susman@latimes.comkate.mather@latimes.comandrew.blankstein@latimes.com

Times staff writers Adolfo Flores, Jeff Gottlieb and Frank Shyong contributed to this report. Susman reported from New York, Mather and Blankstein from Los Angeles.

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Pope Benedict offers blessings with his first tweet

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – After weeks of anticipation, Pope Benedict sent his first tweet on Wednesday.

“Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart.”

The tweet was sent when the 85-year-old pope tapped on a touch screen at the end of his weekly general audience in the Vatican before thousands of people.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella, editing by Paul Casciato)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The Voice: Team Blake Goes Two-For-Two

TV Watch

The Voice

By Julia Haskins

12/12/2012 at 07:40 AM EST

From left: Judges Adam Levine, Cee Lo Green, Christina Aguilera and Blake Shelton

Trae Patton/NBC

And then there were three – thanks to Tuesday night's episode of The Voice.

Team Blake's Cassadee Pope and Terry McDermott and Team Cee Lo's Trevin Hunte and Nicholas David all awaited their fates during the elimination round to decide the top three, with the coaches seeming to be relieved that they would not have a role in the challenging decision.

McDermott was the first to learn that America's votes had guaranteed him another round of competition. To their coach's delight, Team Blake went two-for-two when Pope joined her teammate in celebration.

While Shelton's team remained intact, Green waited for his contestants' moment of truth. The coaches struggled to say goodbye to either one of the beloved singers.

Christina Aguilera advised Hunte and David to soak up all the lessons they learned on The Voice and move forward no matter what happened. Adam Levine opened up about his own regrets, having not turned his chair around the first time for the singers.

"I have grown to love you as people and love your talent so much," Levine said. "I was wrong not to turn around."

Their coach was also upset. "It's very disheartening and very difficult to see two of my best people on this show being pinned against each other," Green said.

David was the last contestant saved, while Hunte was sent home. "Thank you for pushing and motivating me." Hunte told his coach. "I love you, Cee Lo."

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Dec. 11

NEWS Besieged by economic woes and insistent questions about its future, the European Union accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday with calls for further integration and a plea to remember the words of Abraham Lincoln as he addressed a divided nation at Gettysburg. Andrew Higgins reports from Oslo.

North Korea said on Monday that a technical issue had been found in the rocket it had planned to launch as early as this week to put a satellite in orbit, but that it still planned to try the launching by the end of the month. Choe Sang-Hun reports from Seoul.

Some Moroccans wonder whether the Arab Spring brought only cosmetic changes, questioning whether the king and his entourage gave up any of their power. Suzanne Daley reports from Tangier, Morocco.

Italian stock and bond prices fell on Monday after a weekend of political turmoil in Italy gave rise to fears that the country was headed for renewed instability. Shares of Italian banks, which are big holders of the government’s bonds, were among the hardest hit. Elisabetta Povoledo and David Jolly report.

Returns from Romania’s parliamentary elections on Monday gave an overwhelming victory to the center-left alliance of Prime Minister Victor Ponta, leaving the country poised for Round 2 of a political standoff that has destabilized one of the European Union’s newest and poorest members. Dan Bilefsky reports.

Huawei Technologies, a Chinese maker of telecommunications equipment, said on Monday that it planned to open a research and development center in Helsinki next year, accelerating its investments in Europe, where its business is expanding rapidly. Eric Pfanner reports from Paris.

FASHION The Chanel show that Karl Lagerfeld put on last week at Linlithgow Palace, near Edinburgh, was spectacular in every sense of the word. The burning braziers, sending quivering light over old stone, and the dinner held in a tented space, arising like magic on the hillside, were outshone only by an exceptional collection. Suzy Menkes reviews from Edinburgh.

ARTS “Tarzan” is only one of the shows that proves that even out-and-out flops on Broadway can go on to lucrative afterlives in Hamburg, as long as the shows have the spectacle and pageantry that theater producers here say enthrall a German audience. Patrick Healy reports from Hamburg.

SPORTS The essence of Lionel Messi is not in the bare statistic that now makes him the most prolific scorer of goals in a single year in the history of the game. It is in the way that he does it. Rob Hughes reports from London.

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New tests could hamper food outbreak detection

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's about to get faster and easier to diagnose food poisoning, but that progress for individual patients comes with a downside: It could hurt the nation's ability to spot and solve dangerous outbreaks.

Next-generation tests that promise to shave a few days off the time needed to tell whether E. coli, salmonella or other foodborne bacteria caused a patient's illness could reach medical laboratories as early as next year. That could allow doctors to treat sometimes deadly diseases much more quickly — an exciting development.

The problem: These new tests can't detect crucial differences between different subtypes of bacteria, as current tests can. And that fingerprint is what states and the federal government use to match sick people to a contaminated food. The older tests might be replaced by the new, more efficient ones.

"It's like a forensics lab. If somebody says a shot was fired, without the bullet you don't know where it came from," explained E. coli expert Dr. Phillip Tarr of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that losing the ability to literally take a germ's fingerprint could hamper efforts to keep food safe, and the agency is searching for solutions. According to CDC estimates, 1 in 6 Americans gets sick from foodborne illnesses each year, and 3,000 die.

"These improved tests for diagnosing patients could have the unintended consequence of reducing our ability to detect and investigate outbreaks, ultimately causing more people to become sick," said Dr. John Besser of the CDC.

That means outbreaks like the salmonella illnesses linked this fall to a variety of Trader Joe's peanut butter might not be identified that quickly — or at all.

It all comes down to what's called a bacterial culture — whether labs grow a sample of a patient's bacteria in an old-fashioned petri dish, or skip that step because the new tests don't require it.

Here's the way it works now: Someone with serious diarrhea visits the doctor, who gets a stool sample and sends it to a private testing laboratory. The lab cultures the sample, growing larger batches of any lurking bacteria to identify what's there. If disease-causing germs such as E. coli O157 or salmonella are found, they may be sent on to a public health laboratory for more sophisticated analysis to uncover their unique DNA patterns — their fingerprints.

Those fingerprints are posted to a national database, called PulseNet, that the CDC and state health officials use to look for food poisoning trends.

There are lots of garden-variety cases of salmonella every year, from runny eggs to a picnic lunch that sat out too long. But if a few people in, say, Baltimore have salmonella with the same molecular signature as some sick people in Cleveland, it's time to investigate, because scientists might be able narrow the outbreak to a particular food or company.

But culture-based testing takes time — as long as two to four days after the sample reaches the lab, which makes for a long wait if you're a sick patient.

What's in the pipeline? Tests that could detect many kinds of germs simultaneously instead of hunting one at a time — and within hours of reaching the lab — without first having to grow a culture. Those tests are expected to be approved as early as next year.

This isn't just a science debate, said Shari Shea, food safety director at the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

If you were the patient, "you'd want to know how you got sick," she said.

PulseNet has greatly improved the ability of regulators and the food industry to solve those mysteries since it was launched in the mid-1990s, helping to spot major outbreaks in ground beef, spinach, eggs and cantaloupe in recent years. Just this fall, PulseNet matched 42 different salmonella illnesses in 20 different states that were eventually traced to a variety of Trader Joe's peanut butter.

Food and Drug Administration officials who visited the plant where the peanut butter was made found salmonella contamination all over the facility, with several of the plant samples matching the fingerprint of the salmonella that made people sick. A New Mexico-based company, Sunland Inc., recalled hundreds of products that were shipped to large retailers all over the country, including Target, Safeway and other large grocery chains.

The source of those illnesses probably would have remained a mystery without the national database, since there weren't very many illnesses in any individual state.

To ensure that kind of crucial detective work isn't lost, the CDC is asking the medical community to send samples to labs to be cultured even when they perform a new, non-culture test.

But it's not clear who would pay for that extra step. Private labs only can perform the tests that a doctor orders, noted Dr. Jay M. Lieberman of Quest Diagnostics, one of the country's largest testing labs.

A few first-generation non-culture tests are already available. When private labs in Wisconsin use them, they frequently ship leftover samples to the state lab, which grows the bacteria itself. But as more private labs switch over after the next-generation rapid tests arrive, the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene will be hard-pressed to keep up with that extra work before it can do its main job — fingerprinting the bugs, said deputy director Dr. Dave Warshauer.

Stay tuned: Research is beginning to look for solutions that one day might allow rapid and in-depth looks at food poisoning causes in the same test.

"As molecular techniques evolve, you may be able to get the information you want from non-culture techniques," Lieberman said.

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Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

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New UC logo a no-go with students and alumni

University of California officials said they were trying to project a "forward-looking spirit" when they replaced the university system's ornate, tradition-clad logo with a sleek, modern one.

What they got was an online revolt complete with mocking memes, Twitter insults and a petition to restore the old logo. Students and alumni have taken to Facebook and Photoshop to express their displeasure, showing the new symbol ready to be flushed down a toilet and as a permanently stalled computer operating system. One critic suggested the controversial image be tattooed on its creators' foreheads as punishment.

UC campuses in the past have been the site of war protests, sit-ins against tuition hikes and Occupy camping demonstrations. This week, the schools are dealing with a unlikely debate about graphic design and whether the new logo demeans the university.

"To a generation all too familiar with circular, fading loading symbols, this is an attempt to be revolutionary. But it comes off as insensitive," Reaz Rahman, a 21-year-old UC Irvine senior who started the online petition, said of the UC's new logo. "To me, it didn't symbolize an institution of higher learning. It seemed like a marketing scheme to pull in money rather than represent the university."

UC officials were caught on the defensive. They emphasize that the traditional seal, with its "Let There Be Light" motto, a drawing of an open book and the 1868 date of UC's founding, is not being abandoned and still will be used on such things as diplomas and official letterhead. But they say that the 1910 seal is so ornate that it does not reproduce well for many Internet uses and that it is often confused with variations created by the 10 individual UC campuses. UC websites are now adorned with the new logo.

It was introduced with little fanfare about six months ago and is now being extended to more UC websites and publications. Officials said it is adaptable and will provide a unified image for fundraising, recruiting and public affairs campaigns.

"We want to convey that this is an iconic place that makes a difference to California and that there is a UC system," said Jason Simon, the UC system's director of marketing communication.

In various colors, it shows a large U that echoes the shape of the old seal's book and contains an interior C at the bottom. The words "University of California" are on its right, and Simon complained that critics usually don't include that text in their depictions of the logo.

Simon said UC has received much favorable feedback about the logo, which was developed by an in-house team of designers. There are no plans to immediately change it in response to the protests, but he suggested that the symbol might evolve over time.

Marketing and design experts said emotional responses are common when institutions change their marketing images. For example, over the past few years, changes in the logos for Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice and the Gap clothing chain triggered consumer protests and the companies then restored the original.

Drastic changes in long-time logos disrupt "a sense of connection," explained Kali Nikitas, chairwoman of the graduate program in graphic design at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. "It's as if you show up at the same coffee shop for years and they start serving you a different coffee. Your routine is broken," she said. And at colleges and universities, reactions can be particularly powerful, she added, "since people really love tradition and legacy at their alma mater. They are really passionate about where they go to school and view it as the cornerstone of their lives."

The older UC logo, she said, conveys a sense of stability while the new one looks "incredibly progressive." She said that people probably will come to accept the new one and "in five years, no one will care."

Such debates have reached college campuses because schools are looking for ways to better compete for donations and applicants, said Petrula Vrontikis, a graphic design professor and branding expert at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. "It is much more about brand differentiation," she said, noting that many of the old college seals looked too much alike. UC has shifted dramatically, she said, "from an institutional look to a marketing look that is young-skewed and vibrant."

But some young people rejected it with online mockery and slashing comments, similar to the ways they reacted to last year's pepper-spraying of student demonstrators by UC Davis police.

"New UC logo is an abomination," wrote one Twitter-user "Back to the drawing board." Another tweeted that "Whoever signed off on this UC logo should be forced to have it tattooed on their forehead for life."

David Bocarsly, UCLA student body president, attributed some of the unusual attention to exam period procrastination.

"During finals week, you have more people on their computers than ever looking for something to do other than study," said Bocarsly, a senior.

Tomo Hirai, a 24-year-old UC Davis graduate, thought the new UC logo looked like "a loading logo" for a computer operating system such as Windows or Mac.

"It cheapened the entire UC System," Hirai said. "That's not what you do to 144 years of history."

So about 30 minutes on Adobe Photoshop was all it took for Hirai to create a logo with the C endlessly circling.

This past weekend, after Hirai shared his modified logo with the world, he said he received a letter from the UC Davis alumni association seeking a donation.

"I'm not paying them a single penny," he said, adding that the logo debacle was the "bitter icing on the cake."

larry.gordon@latimes.com

matt.stevens@latimes.com

Times staff writer Samantha Schaefer contributed to this report.

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Amanda Seyfried: 'Everyone Wants to Have Sex' with Channing Tatum

By Maggie Coughlan

12/11/2012 at 08:00 AM EST

Amanda Seyfried has worked with a lot of good-looking men, but there's one in particular who rises to the top of her list.

"Channing [Tatum] was amazing. He's a superstar," the actress, 27, tells the January issue of InStyle about PEOPLE's 2012 Sexiest Man Alive.

Seyfried, who starred opposite Tatum in 2010's Dear John, is well-aware of her former costar's appeal.

"Everybody wants to have sex with him. And the only person he wants to have sex with is his wife, Jenna [Dewan-Tatum]. He's the most loyal husband," she says.

But while Tatum and Dewan-Tatum have managed to find marital bliss in spite of being in the spotlight, Seyfried admits she's not as lucky.

"The thing is, I can't date anybody without it being portrayed as a serious relationship in the tabloids. It sucks! Like Josh Hartnett and I were friends; we hung out, we dated. I don't actually have sex with every male I come into contact with," she says.

Another of Seyfried's costars getting a lot of attention is Anne Hathaway, who chopped off her locks and went on a drastic diet for her role in the upcoming Les Misérables, opening Dec. 25 (Seyfried plays Cosette, and Hathaway is Fantine).

"I would have done that for sure," Seyfried says of the haircut, but she draws the line there. "I probably wouldn't lose or gain weight for a role, though. I'm too health-conscious. And I don't think I could actually lose weight because I couldn't be on that kind of a diet. I would lose my mind."

Stripping for Lovelace

But playing the late porn-star-turned-feminist Linda Lovelace for the upcoming biopic Lovelace did have Seyfried focusing on her physique, which she doesn't mind.

"It's not about my body. It's not about me," she says of doing nude scenes. "You're playing somebody else. You're not going to believe a love scene if the people are dressed. You're not going to believe a stripper who has on a bra and underwear the whole time. At the same time, it has to do with how comfortable you are with letting people see your skin. For me, I'm okay with it."

Seyfried also says that being diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder – which she manages with Lexapro – has positively contributed to her acting.

"I don't feel like I'm struggling with it. I think OCD is a part of me that protects me. It's also the part of me that I use in my job, in a positive way," she tells the magazine. "The only thing I'd like to get beyond is my fear of driving over bridges and through tunnels. I can't overcome it."

• See Amanda Seyfried's best red carpet looks at Instyle.com

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Romania Faces Upheaval as Ponta Coalition Wins Vote

PARIS — Romania’s center-left government overwhelmingly won parliamentary elections, according to partial results released Monday, an outcome that threatened to push the country into further political upheaval because of bitter rivalry between the prime minister and the president.

The central electoral office said the center-left alliance led by Prime Minister Victor Ponta won about 59 percent of the seats in the 452-seat legislature, followed by about 17 percent for a center-right group linked to President Traian Basescu. Around 81.45 percent of the votes have been counted.

The clear victory in Sunday’s election made Mr. Ponta the front-runner for prime minister. But Mr. Basescu, who has the power to appoint a prime minister, has indicated that he would not select Mr. Ponta, in part because Mr. Ponta tried to have him impeached over the summer.

During the campaign, Mr. Basescu called Mr. Ponta a “compulsive liar” and an “ogre” and said that appointing the man who tried to oust him would be like swallowing a pig. Mr. Ponta’s coalition, in turn, threatened a new impeachment effort if it won a majority and Mr. Ponta was not named prime minister.

Analysts said Mr. Basescu could be forced to back down due to the large margin of the center-left’s victory, which made Mr. Ponta’s reappointment seem inevitable. As of Monday morning, the president had not announced his intentions.

If he refused to appoint Mr. Ponta, the standoff threatened to produce a protracted political fight that could destabilize the country, undermine its struggling economy and delay a loan deal from the International Monetary Fund that Romania is hoping to negotiate when its current arrangement expires early next year.

In Bucharest, the Romanian capital, political commentators called the election “Basescu’s revenge.”

“The most we can hope for is that it is not a long war, and the parties find a compromise,” said Cosmin Stan, a leading Romanian broadcaster with Realitatea Television.

Romania, a poor Balkan country that has struggled to shed the legacy of decades of dictatorship under Nicolae Ceausescu, has undergone some of its worst political turbulence in recent memory. The country has weathered a series of unstable governments and come under criticism from the European Union and the United States. In October, the European Commission, the union’s executive body, said that concerns about corruption and fraud had prompted it to block development aid potentially worth billions of euros. All the while, the public remains deeply disillusioned amid a simmering dissatisfaction with austerity — including a 25 percent cut in public sector wages — for which many voters blame Mr. Basescu.

Mr. Ponta, at 40 the youngest prime minister in the European Union, has been locked in a bitter power struggle with Mr. Basescu, a 61-year-old former sea captain. The acrimony was made worse by the July impeachment vote, which Mr. Basescu called a “coup d’état” and which drew sharp criticism from the European Union and the United States. Mr. Ponta had accused Mr. Basescu of overreaching his mandate by, among other things, refusing to appoint ministers chosen by the prime minister.

Many Romanians say they are tired of the dueling leaders, and in a sign of that discontent, the populist People’s Party of Dan Diaconescu, a flamboyant television station owner who campaigned in a white Rolls-Royce and is being investigated for fraud, won about 14 percent of the vote, according to the partial results. As part of his campaign, Mr. Diaconescu has promised around $26,000 to every Romanian who starts a business.

But the feud between Mr. Ponta and Mr. Basescu dominated the election.

Under the Constitution, the president must name a prime minister from the party that receives a majority, in consultation with the party. Mr. Ponta is the coalition’s choice. The candidate for prime minister then needs to be approved by the Parliament, where Mr. Ponta’s center-left coalition has won a strong majority. While the Constitution gives the president the prerogative to name the prime minister, he cannot ignore the popular vote.

George Calin contributed reporting from Bucharest, Romania.

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Smokers celebrate as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — The crowds of happy people lighting joints under Seattle's Space Needle early Thursday morning with nary a police officer in sight bespoke the new reality: Marijuana is legal under Washington state law.

Hundreds gathered at Seattle Center for a New Year's Eve-style countdown to 12 a.m., when the legalization measure passed by voters last month took effect. When the clock struck, they cheered and sparked up in unison.

A few dozen people gathered on a sidewalk outside the north Seattle headquarters of the annual Hempfest celebration and did the same, offering joints to reporters and blowing smoke into television news cameras.

"I feel like a kid in a candy store!" shouted Hempfest volunteer Darby Hageman. "It's all becoming real now!"

Washington and Colorado became the first states to vote to decriminalize and regulate the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by adults over 21. Both measures call for setting up state licensing schemes for pot growers, processors and retail stores. Colorado's law is set to take effect by Jan. 5.

Technically, Washington's new marijuana law still forbids smoking pot in public, which remains punishable by a fine, like drinking in public. But pot fans wanted a party, and Seattle police weren't about to write them any tickets.

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

The mood was festive in Seattle as dozens of gay and lesbian couples got in line to pick up marriage licenses at the King County auditor's office early Thursday.

King County and Thurston County announced they would open their auditors' offices shortly after midnight Wednesday to accommodate those who wanted to be among the first to get their licenses.

Kelly Middleton and her partner Amanda Dollente got in line at 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Hours later, as the line grew, volunteers distributed roses and a group of men and women serenaded the waiting line to the tune of "Chapel of Love."

Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

In dealing with marijuana, the Seattle Police Department told its 1,300 officers on Wednesday, just before legalization took hold, that until further notice they shall not issue citations for public marijuana use.

Officers will be advising people not to smoke in public, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

He offered a catchy new directive referring to the film "The Big Lebowski," popular with many marijuana fans: "The Dude abides, and says 'take it inside!'"

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress."

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Alison Holcomb is the drug policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and served as the campaign manager for New Approach Washington, which led the legalization drive. She said the voters clearly showed they're done with marijuana prohibition.

"New Approach Washington sponsors and the ACLU look forward to working with state and federal officials and to ensure the law is fully and fairly implemented," she said.

___

Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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Angel's statue offers solace to the grieving

Brandon Ty Garner died on the day he was born: July 1, 2011.

He came into the world at 24 weeks, 5 days. His lungs hadn't developed. He lived for six hours.

Very few people ever saw him.

Nearly a year and a half later, his parents remain swaddled in grief.

They visit his grave twice a week, even though it's an hour's drive from their Menifee home, and decorate it for each holiday he cannot share with them.

Recently they put up a small Christmas tree, full of colorful lights and ornaments. They surrounded it with stuffed animals, some wearing Santa hats.

Most people, they say, do not understand.

But on the night of Dec. 6, Janet and Ty Garner, both 33, were far from alone in their sorrow.

At El Toro Memorial Park in Lake Forest, in the children's section where Brandon is buried, several hundred people gathered before a bronze angel on a pedestal.

Some stood. Some sat in camp chairs. Extended families huddled on blankets on the grass.

They held candles. They listened to songs. They let the tears fall freely. They didn't try to hold them in.

And when the time came, they lined up to speak the names of their lost children and to lay down white carnations on long green stems.

Children's voices squeaked: "My sister Emma." "My big brother Jack." Adult voices cracked and quivered at "our baby girl," "my great-grandson," "our beautiful, beautiful boy."

One young couple grieved for newborn twins who had died the month before. An older man remembered his son, a fire captain, who had died years back, fully grown.

For nearly 20 minutes the names kept coming, one lapping over the next, as flowers filled the angel's open hands and blanketed her feet.

Similar scenes played out at more than 100 angels across the country.

The Dec. 6 tradition started with a self-published book, "The Christmas Box," which has become a staple of grief support groups.

In the 1993 story by Richard Paul Evans, a woman never stops mourning her daughter, who died at age 3 on that day.

The fictional child's grave features a statue of an angel.

After Evans had one erected in Salt Lake City, others followed. (The statues can be ordered through his website.)

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