Egypt’s President Said to Limit Scope of Judicial Decree

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

Egyptians at a burned-out school in Cairo on Monday before the funeral of an activist who was injured in a clash and died Sunday.

CAIRO — With public pressure mounting, President Mohamed Morsi appeared to pull back Monday from his attempt to assert an authority beyond the reach of any court. His allies in the Muslim Brotherhood canceled plans for a large demonstration in his support, signaling a chance to calm an escalating battle that has paralyzed a divided nation.

After Mr. Morsi met for hours with the judges of Egypt’s Supreme Judicial Council, his spokesman read an “explanation” on television that appeared to backtrack from a presidential decree placing Mr. Morsi’s official edicts above judicial scrutiny — even while saying the president had not actually changed a word of the statement.

Though details of the talks remained hazy, and it was not clear whether the opposition or the court would accept his position, Mr. Morsi’s gesture was another demonstration that Egyptians would no longer allow their rulers to operate above the law. But there appeared little chance that the gesture alone would be enough to quell the crisis set off by his perceived power grab.

Hundreds of opponents of Mr. Morsi protested in Tahrir Square on Tuesday, Reuters reported, with the crowd expected to grow in the late afternoon.

The presidential spokesman, Yasser Ali, said for the first time that Mr. Morsi had sought only to assert pre-existing powers already approved by the courts under previous precedents, not to free himself from judicial oversight.

He said that the president meant all along to follow an established Egyptian legal doctrine suspending judicial scrutiny of presidential “acts of sovereignty” that work “to protect the main institutions of the state.” The judicial council had said Sunday that it could bless aspects of the decree deemed to qualify under the doctrine.

Mr. Morsi had maintained from the start that his purpose was to empower himself to prevent judges appointed by former President Hosni Mubarak from dissolving the constituent assembly, which is led by his fellow Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. The courts have already dissolved the Islamist-led Parliament and an earlier constituent assembly, and the Supreme Constitutional Court was widely expected to rule against this one next week.

But the text of the original decree had exempted all presidential edicts from judicial review until the ratification of a constitution, not just those edicts related to the assembly or justified as “acts of sovereignty.”

Legal experts said that the spokesman’s explanations of the president’s intentions, if put into effect, would amount to a revision of the decree Mr. Morsi issued last Thursday. But lawyers said that the verbal statements alone carried little legal weight.

How the courts would apply the doctrine remained hard to predict. And Mr. Morsi’s opposition indicated it was holding out for far greater concessions, including the breakup of the whole constituent assembly.

Speaking at a news conference while Mr. Morsi was meeting with the judges, the opposition activist and intellectual Abdel Haleem Qandeil called for “a long-term battle,” declaring that withdrawal of Mr. Morsi’s new powers was only the first step toward the opposition’s goal of “the withdrawal of the legitimacy of Morsi’s presence in the presidential palace.” Completely withdrawing the edict would be “a minimum,” he said.

Khaled Ali, a human rights lawyer and former presidential candidate, pointed to the growing crowd of protesters camped out in Tahrir Square for a fourth night. “The one who did the action has to take it back,” Mr. Ali said.

Moataz Abdel Fattah, a political scientist at Cairo University, said Mr. Morsi was saving face during a strategic retreat. “He is trying to simply say, ‘I am not a new pharaoh; I am just trying to stabilize the institutions that we already have,’ ” he said. “But for the liberals, this is now their moment, and for sure they are not going to waste it, because he has given them an excellent opportunity to score.”

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Brad Pitt: Wedding Will Happen 'Soon'

By Tim Nudd

11/27/2012 at 07:50 AM EST

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie

Jim Ruymen/Landov

Put the champagne on ice. It appears Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's long-awaited wedding isn't far off – and that's from someone who would know.

"I am getting more pressure from my kids, and it is something I want to do within their lifetime, but I also feel like the time has come," Pitt said Monday night at the premiere of his new film, Killing Them Softly, in New York.

"The time is nigh," he added. "It's soon. I got a good feeling about it."

Pitt, 48, who has been in London filming World War Z this month, has been with Jolie, 37, for seven years. They have six children together – Maddox, 11, Pax, 8, Zahara, 7, Shiloh, 6, and 4-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne – and got engaged this past spring.

And yet, even with so much history together already, Pitt says the idea of tying the knot with his longtime partner is still hugely meaningful.

"We've had a family, we've raised the kids," he says. "I am surprised how much [marriage] meant to me once you had that."

• Reporting by K.C. BAKER

Brad opens up about his family, his life with Angelina and their wedding plans in the next issue of PEOPLE! Look for much more on newsstands Friday

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Bounce houses a party hit but kids' injuries soar

CHICAGO (AP) — They may be a big hit at kids' birthday parties, but inflatable bounce houses can be dangerous, with the number of injuries soaring in recent years, a nationwide study found.

Kids often crowd into bounce houses, and jumping up and down can send other children flying into the air, too.

The numbers suggest 30 U.S. children a day are treated in emergency rooms for broken bones, sprains, cuts and concussions from bounce house accidents. Most involve children falling inside or out of the inflated playthings, and many children get hurt when they collide with other bouncing kids.

The number of children aged 17 and younger who got emergency-room treatment for bounce house injuries has climbed along with the popularity of bounce houses — from fewer than 1,000 in 1995 to nearly 11,000 in 2010. That's a 15-fold increase, and a doubling just since 2008.

"I was surprised by the number, especially by the rapid increase in the number of injuries," said lead author Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

Amusement parks and fairs have bounce houses, and the playthings can also be rented or purchased for home use.

Smith and colleagues analyzed national surveillance data on ER treatment for nonfatal injuries linked with bounce houses, maintained by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Their study was published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Only about 3 percent of children were hospitalized, mostly for broken bones.

More than one-third of the injuries were in children aged 5 and younger. The safety commission recommends against letting children younger than 6 use full-size trampolines, and Smith said barring kids that young from even smaller, home-use bounce houses would make sense.

"There is no evidence that the size or location of an inflatable bouncer affects the injury risk," he said.

Other recommendations, often listed in manufacturers' instruction pamphlets, include not overloading bounce houses with too many kids and not allowing young children to bounce with much older, heavier kids or adults, said Laura Woodburn, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Amusement Ride Safety Officials.

The study didn't include deaths, but some accidents are fatal. Separate data from the product safety commission show four bounce house deaths from 2003 to 2007, all involving children striking their heads on a hard surface.

Several nonfatal accidents occurred last year when bounce houses collapsed or were lifted by high winds.

A group that issues voluntary industry standards says bounce houses should be supervised by trained operators and recommends that bouncers be prohibited from doing flips and purposefully colliding with others, the study authors noted.

Bounce house injuries are similar to those linked with trampolines, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended against using trampolines at home. Policymakers should consider whether bounce houses warrant similar precautions, the authors said.

___

Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

Trade group: http://www.naarso.com

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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As Rebels Gain, Congo Again Slips Into Chaos

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo — The lights are out in most of Goma. There is little water. The prison is an empty, garbage-strewn wasteland with its rusty front gate swinging wide open and a three-foot hole punched through the back wall, letting loose 1,200 killers, rapists, rogue soldiers and other criminals.

Now, rebel fighters are going house to house arresting people, many of whom have not been seen again by their families.

“You say the littlest thing and they disappear you,” said an unemployed man named Luke.

In the past week, the rebels have been unstoppable, steamrolling through one town after another, seizing this provincial capital, and eviscerating a dysfunctional Congolese Army whose drunken soldiers stumble around with rocket-propelled grenades and whose chief of staff was suspended for selling crates of ammunition to elephant poachers.

Riots are exploding across the country — in Bukavu, Butembo, Bunia, Kisangani and Kinshasa, the capital, a thousand miles away. Mobs are pouring into streets, burning down government buildings and demanding the ouster of Congo’s weak and widely despised president, Joseph Kabila.

Once again, chaos is courting Congo. And one pressing question is, why — after all the billions of dollars spent on peacekeepers, the recent legislation passed on Capitol Hill to cut the link between the illicit mineral trade and insurrection, and all the aid money and diplomatic capital — is this vast nation in the heart of Africa descending to where it was more than 10 years ago when foreign armies and marauding rebels carved it into fiefs?

“We haven’t really touched the root cause,” said Aloys Tegera, a director for the Pole Institute, a research institute in Goma.

He said Congo’s chronic instability is rooted in very local tensions over land, power and identity, especially along the Rwandan and Ugandan borders. “But no one wants to touch this because it’s too complicated,” he added.

The most realistic solution, said another Congo analyst, is not a formal peace process driven by diplomats but “a peace among all the dons, like Don Corleone imposed in New York.”

Congo’s problems have been festering for years, wounds that never quite scabbed over.

But last week there was new urgency after hundreds of rebel fighters, wearing rubber swamp boots and with belt-fed machine guns slung across their backs, marched into Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province and one of the country’s most important cities.

The rebels, called the M23, are a heavily armed paradox. On one hand, they are ruthless. Human rights groups have documented how they have slaughtered civilians, pulling confused villagers out of their huts in the middle of the night and shooting them in the head.

On the other hand, the M23 are able administrators — seemingly far better than the Congolese government, evidenced by a visit in recent days to their stronghold, Rutshuru, a small town about 45 miles from Goma.

In Rutshuru, there are none of those ubiquitous plastic bags twisted in the trees, like in so many other parts of Congo. The gravel roads have been swept clean and the government offices are spotless. Hand-painted signs read: “M23 Stop Corruption.” The rebels even have green thumbs, planting thousands of trees in recent months to fight soil erosion.

“We are not a rebellion,” said Benjamin Mbonimpa, an electrical engineer, a bush fighter and now a top rebel administrator. “We are a revolution.”

Their aims, he said, were to overthrow the government and set up a more equitable, decentralized political system. This is why the rebels have balked at negotiating with Mr. Kabila, though this weekend several rebels said that the pressure was increasing on them to compromise, especially coming from Western countries.

On Sunday, rebel forces and government troops were still squared off, just a few miles apart, down the road from Goma.

The M23 rebels are widely believed to be covertly supported by Rwanda, which has a long history of meddling in Congo, its neighbor blessed with gold, diamonds and other glittering mineral riches. The Rwandan government strenuously denies supplying weapons to the M23 or trying to annex eastern Congo. Rwanda has often denied any clandestine involvement in this country, only to have the denials later exposed as lies.

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Dancing with the Stars Features First All-Female Finale!

TV Watch

Dancing With the Stars

By Mike Fleeman

11/26/2012 at 07:30 AM EST

From left: Shawn Johnson, Kelly Monaco and Melissa Rycroft

Craig Sjodin/ABC (3)

Let's hear it for the girls!

For the first time, Dancing with the Stars will showcase an all-female finale, with Shawn Johnson, Melissa Rycroft and Kelly Monaco competing for the mirror-ball trophy on Monday to complete the all-star season.

"Unbelievable," says Rycroft, who finished third on season 8. "The three of us are standing up on that stage going: 'We beat all the boys!' How really does that happen?"

And while the spotlight will be on the women, for one man – her pro partner Tony Dovolani – the finals are particularly important. In 14 seasons, he's only made it twice, getting no higher than third, first in season 2 with Stacy Keibler in 2006, then with Rycroft in 2009.

"For me, winning the trophy would be everything," he says.

The women, who reached the finals last Tuesday after Apolo Ohno and Emmitt Smith were sent home, are vying in a race that features two former champs.

Johnson, who won in season 8, says she's "so excited" to go for the trophy again, while Monaco, the show's first winner back in 2005, is ready for battle. She notes she's one of five girls in her family and "can step in the ring" with anyone.

"I embrace girl power!" she says. "So I think it's awesome. I'm honored to be up there with two amazing women."

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AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

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Review of Burbank Police Department finds deficiencies

A recent report on the Burbank Police Department's internal investigations and its responses to officers' use of force found deficiencies in timeliness, evidence gathering and problem spotting.

The report by the Los Angeles County Office of Independent Review, which the city hired last year for department oversight, comes at a time when the law enforcement agency is reeling from excessive-force allegations, officer-involved lawsuits and a federal investigation into alleged officer misconduct.

The report did note some improvements compared with "below baseline" cases from previous years.

"The consensus we found, generally speaking, was that the [investigative] efforts by your Police Department were really an objective search for truth," said Michael Gennaco, chief attorney on the review board. "That doesn't mean every investigation was perfect."

The team of attorneys reviewed six internal investigations and 11 use-of-force incidents that were closed this year.

Gennaco's biggest concern was the time it took to complete the investigations. Of the six internal investigations reviewed, one had expired. The officer was never disciplined for failing to document a sexual battery allegation because the investigation wasn't finished on time.

State law gives officials one year to complete internal investigations.

"The worst thing you want to do is have an officer who should have been held accountable not be held accountable because of a technicality," Gennaco said.

In another case, an officer was interviewed eight months after the incident in question and couldn't recall the details, making it difficult "to challenge the officer," he said.

Most investigations, however, were completed within a few months of the incidents.

The report found that the department's use-of-force response protocols were thoughtful and thorough, although they were not always fully implemented.

Pointing out shortcomings in witness interviews, the report cited a case involving use of force against a juvenile: The suspect's story differed from the officer's, but other officers who had been there were not interviewed.

The review board also discovered instances in which suspects' injuries weren't prioritized. A suspect who had been kicked by an officer — in the same spot where he'd been shot years earlier — complained of stomach pain three times before he was sent to a medical facility.

Another suspect, who was said to be intoxicated and uncooperative when arrested, complained of pain for two days while in custody. It was discovered later that his finger was broken.

Interim Police Chief Scott LaChasse said the department has been implementing changes to address the review board's concerns.

"Today, there's probably more strict instruction in terms of taking complaints and doing a full, complete investigation," LaChasse said.

Gennaco commended the city for its transparency.

"It's going to be uncomfortable for some — change always is, transparency always is," he said. "The curtain's been thrown open. Light has been allowed in."

alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com

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White House Presses for Drone Rule Book

WASHINGTON — Facing the possibility that President Obama might not win a second term, his administration accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures, according to two administration officials.

The matter may have lost some urgency after Nov. 6. But with more than 300 drone strikes and some 2,500 people killed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the military since Mr. Obama first took office, the administration is still pushing to make the rules formal and resolve internal uncertainty and disagreement about exactly when lethal action is justified.

Mr. Obama and his advisers are still debating whether remote-control killing should be a measure of last resort against imminent threats to the United States, or a more flexible tool, available to help allied governments attack their enemies or to prevent militants from controlling territory.

Though publicly the administration presents a united front on the use of drones, behind the scenes there is longstanding tension. The Defense Department and the C.I.A. continue to press for greater latitude to carry out strikes; Justice Department and State Department officials, and the president’s counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, have argued for restraint, officials involved in the discussions say.

More broadly, the administration’s legal reasoning has not persuaded many other countries that the strikes are acceptable under international law. For years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United States routinely condemned targeted killings of suspected terrorists by Israel, and most countries still object to such measures.

But since the first targeted killing by the United States in 2002, two administrations have taken the position that the United States is at war with Al Qaeda and its allies and can legally defend itself by striking its enemies wherever they are found.

Partly because United Nations officials know that the United States is setting a legal and ethical precedent for other countries developing armed drones, the U.N. plans to open a unit in Geneva early next year to investigate American drone strikes.

The attempt to write a formal rule book for targeted killing began last summer after news reports on the drone program, started under President George W. Bush and expanded by Mr. Obama, revealed some details of the president’s role in the shifting procedures for compiling “kill lists” and approving strikes. Though national security officials insist that the process is meticulous and lawful, the president and top aides believe it should be institutionalized, a course of action that seemed particularly urgent when it appeared that Mitt Romney might win the presidency.

“There was concern that the levers might no longer be in our hands,” said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity. With a continuing debate about the proper limits of drone strikes, Mr. Obama did not want to leave an “amorphous” program to his successor, the official said. The effort, which would have been rushed to completion by January had Mr. Romney won, will now be finished at a more leisurely pace, the official said.

Mr. Obama himself, in little-noticed remarks, has acknowledged that the legal governance of drone strikes is still a work in progress.

“One of the things we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place, and we need Congressional help in order to do that, to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president’s reined in terms of some of the decisions that we’re making,” Mr. Obama told Jon Stewart in an appearance on “The Daily Show” on Oct. 18.

In an interview with Mark Bowden for a new book on the killing of Osama bin Laden, “The Finish,” Mr. Obama said that “creating a legal structure, processes, with oversight checks on how we use unmanned weapons, is going to be a challenge for me and my successors for some time to come.”

The president expressed wariness of the powerful temptation drones pose to policy makers. “There’s a remoteness to it that makes it tempting to think that somehow we can, without any mess on our hands, solve vexing security problems,” he said.

Despite public remarks by Mr. Obama and his aides on the legal basis for targeted killing, the program remains officially classified. In court, fighting lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times seeking secret legal opinions on targeted killings, the government has refused even to acknowledge the existence of the drone program in Pakistan.

But by many accounts, there has been a significant shift in the nature of the targets. In the early years, most strikes were aimed at ranking leaders of Al Qaeda thought to be plotting to attack the United States. That is the purpose Mr. Obama has emphasized, saying in a CNN interview in September that drones were used to prevent “an operational plot against the United States” and counter “terrorist networks that target the United States.”

But for at least two years in Pakistan, partly because of the C.I.A.’s success in decimating Al Qaeda’s top ranks, most strikes have been directed at militants whose main battle is with the Pakistani authorities or who fight with the Taliban against American troops in Afghanistan.

In Yemen, some strikes apparently launched by the United States killed militants who were preparing to attack Yemeni military forces. Some of those killed were wearing suicide vests, according to Yemeni news reports.

“Unless they were about to get on a flight to New York to conduct an attack, they were not an imminent threat to the United States,” said Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who is a critic of the strikes. “We don’t say that we’re the counterinsurgency air force of Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, but we are.”

Then there is the matter of strikes against people whose identities are unknown. In an online video chat in January, Mr. Obama spoke of the strikes in Pakistan as “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists.” But for several years, first in Pakistan and later in Yemen, in addition to “personality strikes” against named terrorists, the C.I.A. and the military have carried out “signature strikes” against groups of suspected, unknown militants.

Originally that term was used to suggest the specific “signature” of a known high-level terrorist, such as his vehicle parked at a meeting place. But the word evolved to mean the “signature” of militants in general — for instance, young men toting arms in an area controlled by extremist groups. Such strikes have prompted the greatest conflict inside the Obama administration, with some officials questioning whether killing unidentified fighters is legally justified or worth the local backlash.

Many people inside and outside the government have argued for far greater candor about all of the strikes, saying excessive secrecy has prevented public debate in Congress or a full explanation of their rationale. Experts say the strikes are deeply unpopular both in Pakistan and Yemen, in part because of allegations of large numbers of civilian casualties, which American officials say are exaggerated.

Gregory D. Johnsen, author of “The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al Qaeda and America’s War in Arabia,” argues that the strike strategy is backfiring in Yemen. “In Yemen, Al Qaeda is actually expanding,” Mr. Johnsen said in a recent talk at the Brookings Institution, in part because of the backlash against the strikes.

Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistan-born analyst now at the Atlantic Council in Washington, said the United States should start making public a detailed account of the results of each strike, including any collateral deaths, in part to counter propaganda from jihadist groups. “This is a grand opportunity for the Obama administration to take the drones out of the shadows and to be open about their objectives,” he said.

But the administration appears to be a long way from embracing such openness. The draft rule book for drone strikes that has been passed among agencies over the last several months is so highly classified, officials said, that it is hand-carried from office to office rather than sent by e-mail.

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AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

Read More..

Dann Cahn dies at 89; editor on 'I Love Lucy'

Using a newly developed editing machine that he dubbed the "three-headed monster," Dann Cahn pioneered multi-camera editing on sitcoms in the 1950s while helping to craft a classic, "I Love Lucy."

"Lucy" broke ground in television by employing three cameras instead of one for filming, a then-novel system that allowed an episode to be filmed as though it were a stage play — continuously and in sequence.

But the abundance of footage overwhelmed editors, who quickly sought out a cutting-edge contraption that was being created for the game show "Truth or Consequences," Cahn later recalled.

"It was a Moviola with four heads — three for picture and one for sound," Cahn told Editors Guild Magazine in 2006. "When they wheeled it in, I said, 'Boy, that's some monster!' And the name stuck."

Cahn, 89, the last surviving member of the original creative team behind "I Love Lucy," died Wednesday of natural causes at his West Los Angeles home, said his son, Daniel Cahn.

A second-generation film editor, he was the son of Philip Cahn, who in 1937 co-founded what is now the Motion Picture Editors Guild. Dann Cahn's son, who is also a film editor, is president of the guild.

"The amazing thing about 'I Love Lucy' is that they were making up things as they were going along, and Dann was a big part of that," said Gregg Oppenheimer. His father, Jess Oppenheimer, was the creator-producer behind the wildly successful comedy that starred Desi Arnaz as a bandleader and Lucille Ball as his wife.

Earlier this year, Dann Cahn told CineMontage magazine that when "Lucy" started out "television was a live medium related to radio" so they learned to apply "the rhythms and tempos of filmmaking" to TV.

But when the demands of production soon caused Cahn to hire more editors, he said that Arnaz remarked: "Danny, you want a crew bigger than my band?"

Eventually that was exactly what happened, according to Editors Guild Magazine, as Desilu Productions expanded along with Cahn's role in the company owned by Arnaz and Ball. Cahn rose to supervising editor of all productions, staying until Arnaz left Desilu in the early 1960s.

Cahn's contribution to "I Love Lucy" was "immeasurable and his generosity of energy and spirit to the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center and museum has been unmatched," said Journey Gunderson, executive director of the center in Jamestown, N.Y.

"Fans would literally come from around the world," she said, "to listen to Dann Cahn regale them with stories about what it was like to be part of the creative team on one of the most successful television shows of all time."

Daniel Richard Cahn was born April 9, 1923, in Los Angeles. His mother ran a dress shop on Hollywood Boulevard that catered to silent movie stars, according to a biography by the American Cinematography Editors, which gave Cahn a career achievement award.

After raising chickens on property near Universal Studios, his father joined the studio in the 1930s after a power outage put an end to his ranching. With two associates, he later founded the editors guild.

The younger Cahn started out as a child actor, appearing in the 1938 Jackie Cooper movie "Newsboys' Home" and other films before working as an assistant editor on the 1942 movie "Pittsburgh."

While in the Army Air Forces, he honed his editing skills at "Fort Roach," the nickname given the old Hal Roach Studios in Culver City when it housed the First Motion Picture Unit during World War II. He worked on training films and spent a year at the Pentagon editing combat footage into newsreels.

"Most of us got a world of experience," Cahn told The Times in 2005, the year he hosted a gathering at Warner Bros. for 19 surviving members of the unit and screened a short film he made about Fort Roach.

He served as an assistant editor on the 1948 Orson Welles film "Macbeth" and the next year was given his first chance at full-fledged editing when a fellow soldier, producer Stanley Rubin, hired him for the NBC dramatic anthology "Your Show Time."

While editing the 1951 movie "The Lady Says No," Cahn was interrupted by his friend, director William Asher, who told him that he had declined an offer to edit "I Love Lucy" — and had suggested Cahn for the job.

Talented and a quick study, according to the reference work "Lucy From A to Z," Cahn edited "I Love Lucy" until it left the air in 1957.

Often called "Danny," he wanted a more distinctive name for the "Lucy" credits and decided to drop the "y" from his first name, Oppenheimer said.

At Desilu, Cahn oversaw a slate of TV shows that included the 1950s sitcom "Our Miss Brooks" and the crime drama "The Untouchables," which debuted in 1959.

His nearly 100 television and film projects also included such shows as "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Police Woman," and the 1970 film "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."

After he married Judy Baker, a former professional golfer, in 1953, the couple had two children. His daughter, Dana, died in 1973 and his wife died two years ago. Diagnosed with dementia, he had moved in with his son, Daniel, who is his only survivor.

"He was a raconteur who just had an overwhelming personality," his son said. "He was a Type A who mentored a lot of people. He had an incredible life."

valerie.nelson@latimes.com

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