NATIONAL
January 19, 2013 | By Candy Thomson
The DNA of a battle that helped turn the tide of a war going horribly wrong for America lay buried just 6 inches below a Maryland cornfield. For nearly two centuries, musket balls, canister shot and other artifacts from intense fighting at Caulk's Field waited to tell the story of a sweltering August night in 1814, when militiamen sprang a trap on a British raiding party bent on destruction. How did the citizen-soldiers best their battle-tested foes? State archaeologist Julie Schablitsky hopes to figure that out. With the help of cadaver-sniffing dogs and history buffs armed with metal detectors, she is retracing the footsteps of Sir Peter Parker, a British marine captain who led 170 troops, and a like number of militiamen commanded by Col. Philip Reed.
OPINION
January 10, 2013 | By Michael Kinsley
The most famous painting of the 20th century, Picasso's "Guernica," commemorates the 1937 bombing of this small Spanish town by the German air force, in support of Gen. Francisco Franco's fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Hard to believe, but this was history's first extensive bombing of a civilian population. In his book "Postwar," historian Tony Judt pointed out that more civilians died in World War II, of various causes, than did soldiers. That was not true of World War I or of most earlier conflicts.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 27, 2012 | By Lee Romney and Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times
SAN FRANCISCO - Capt. Zoe Bedell graduated at the top of her Marine Corps officer candidates class. In deployments to Afghanistan, she oversaw "female engagement teams" that accompanied male infantry units into the field - living and working in identical conditions. Yet since 1994, the Defense Department has formally excluded women from most direct ground combat positions, creating a growing disconnect with the realities of warfare. Bedell said she left active duty last year because the policy limited her potential for promotion by failing to officially recognize her combat leadership experience.
ENTERTAINMENT
November 10, 2012 | By Hector Tobar, Los Angeles Times
The Yellow Birds A Novel Kevin Powers Little Brown: 230 pp., $24.99 Pvt. John Bartle, the narrator of Kevin Powers' sorrowful war novel "The Yellow Birds," is a man of reason caught between the uncontrolled emotions of two men. The first is his sergeant, a severe gunslinger and molder of warriors named Sterling. Sgt. Sterling's discipline and his rage against the enemy are keeping his squad of men alive as they patrol an eerie, death-filled Iraqi landscape. Pvt. Bartle loves and hates him for this.
NATIONAL
October 19, 2012 | By Richard Simon
WASHINGTON -- A New York grave site, a Kansas battlefield, the Ohio home of an Alcoholics Anonymous founder and Los Angeles' downtown federal courthouse are among the newest national historic landmarks. In all, 26 sites received the largely honorary designation this week from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The designation of the courthouse comes as Congress debates the future of the Depression-era Spring Street building because of plans for a new courthouse in downtown Los Angeles.
WORLD
October 3, 2012 | By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
TRUJILLO, Colombia - The 11,000 coffee bushes clinging to the steep slopes of his 10-acre farm represent nothing less than a miracle to former rebel Jose Manuel Ospina, and a sign of the stiff challenges facing Colombia's new effort to end half a century of civil war. Ospina and his son were members of the 21st Front of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has been at war with the government for 48 years. The two laid down their arms in 2005 and enrolled in a program to bring them back into the mainstream of society.