In brief: Campaign launched for missing reporter

WASHINGTON – Major U.S. media organizations launched a campaign Thursday to publicize the plight of missing McClatchy contributor Austin Tice, who disappeared in Syria in August 2012.

Tice is thought to be still alive, and he isn’t a prisoner of the Islamic State group, which executed two American journalists last year. But there’s been no direct communication with his captors since he vanished near Damascus as he was traveling to Beirut.

The only news of Tice to surface publicly since he stopped communicating with his editors and family Aug. 13, 2012, was a brief video posted to YouTube on Sept. 26, 2012, that showed him blindfolded and being led up a hill by a group of armed men.

The video provided the motif for the campaign, a black blindfold emblazoned with the hashtag #FreeAustinTice. Banner ads bearing that message are scheduled to appear on 268 websites for the next several weeks, according to the campaign’s coordinator, the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.

Medical scope linked to bacterial outbreak

WASHINGTON – A commonly used medical scope linked to a deadly bacterial outbreak at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center may be so flawed it cannot be properly cleaned, federal officials conceded Thursday. But they stopped short of recalling the device or outlining any new sterilization procedures.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has known about the potential problems for more than two years, and took action only after the Los Angeles Times reported this week that two patients died in a new superbug outbreak at the UCLA facility. At least five other patients have tested positive for the drug-resistant bacteria, and 179 others may have been exposed.

An FDA spokeswoman said that the devices’ benefits outweighed the risks.

The devices, called duodenoscopes, which feature a tiny camera mounted on the end of a tube that is threaded down a patient’s throat and into the digestive tract, are commonly used by physicians to diagnose and treat cancer, gallstones and other conditions.

‘Parks and Rec’ producer found dead

LOS ANGELES – Harris Wittels, who worked as a writer and executive producer on the NBC comedy “Parks and Recreation,” was found dead Thursday of a possible drug overdose at his Los Angeles home, police said. He was 30.

Wittels’ assistant found him at his home in the Los Feliz area around noon, and he was pronounced dead at the scene, police Officer Rosario Herrera said.

Wittels had talked about his struggles with drug abuse in a podcast last fall.

U.S. missionary accused of rebel ties

BOGOTA, Colombia – A court on Thursday rejected a request from prosecutors for the jailing of a U.S. missionary to face charges of collaborating with Colombia’s main leftist rebel group, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, ruling the evidence was not strong enough to warrant detention.

Prosecutors can still pursue a trial for Russell Martin Stendal, a 59-year-old Minnesota native who has worked for decades in some of Colombia’s most dangerous regions. He earlier said that he is being falsely accused.