Bullets

Until recently, very few people had ever heard of raspberry ketones, the aromatic compounds that give the berries their distinctive smell. Today, health food stores have trouble keeping the capsules or drops of the stuff on their shelves. Almost overnight, an obscure plant compound became the next big thing in weight loss - and all it took was a few words from Dr. Oz. In a February episode of "The Dr. Oz Show," Mehmet Oz told viewers that raspberry ketones were "the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat. " Once Oz calls something a "miracle," it doesn't remain obscure for long.

Re "Rail requires high-speed spending," May 14 Your article on the feasibility of mounting a construction effort that could put $3.5 million of work in place each day was unduly negative. I worked on the Alameda Corridor and on the Utah I-15 programs, which showed the feasibility of delivering large civil works projects on an aggressive schedule. While they did not reach the peak volume planned for California's rail project, we have seen this volume in L.A. during the peak years of rail construction in the early 1990s.

There's a bull market for bullets. Stacks of ammo, once piled high at gun shops across America, have dwindled. Prices paid by consumers for much-sought-after Winchester .380-caliber handgun bullets have doubled. At weekend gun shows, trailers loaded with boxes of ammunition are drained within hours. Budget-pressed police departments, which can't be caught short, have increased their orders just to be safe, and the U.S. military, fighting two wars, has seen its need for bullets quadruple in recent years.

The chief of the state bullet train authority said Tuesday that he hopes to obtain some type of relief from environmental laws that would eliminate a risk that the 130-mile initial construction project could be stopped by an injunction, a potentially growing prospect as agriculture interests in the Central Valley gear up for a legal fight. At a state Senate hearing, Chairman Dan Richard also said the agency plans to spend the entire $6 billion of initial construction money within a 2017 deadline set by the federal government.

In all discussion of the carnage wrought by the 200 million guns in these United States, all we seem to hear is "gun control." I think we are missing the point. It's too late to control guns by controlling manufacture and sales. So let's consider this: "Guns don't kill people . . . bullets do!" An unloaded gun is not a dangerous weapon, so let's limit or reduce or eliminate the manufacture of ammunition. Let's drastically restrict the sale of bullets and perhaps lay a huge tax on them as well; 200 million guns are not so terrifying if only a few of them are loaded.

Taxing ammunition to pay for health care (Nov. 4) is an idea that's right on target. JEAN ASKHAM Fullerton

On the issue of the proliferation of guns in Los Angeles and our society in general, one must realize what we're up against. Thousands, perhaps millions, of handguns are in irresponsible hands. Then there's the powerful National Rifle Assn. lobby, blind to the human toll its efforts have wrought, and wealthy enough to stay the course until the last dog is dead. Clearly, nothing short of martial law and house searches will abate this plague, so there is only one answer: Guns don't kill people, bullets do. If we can't eliminate the guns, legislation must be enacted to change the nature and content of today's bullets.

The Washington Bullets cut 7-foot-1 center William Bedford Monday after he had missed three of his four scheduled practices because of what he said was a hamstring pull. "We decided that Bedford just didn't fit into our plans," General Manager John Nash said. Bedford's official stay with the Bullets lasted less than three days. Bedford, a former Memphis State standout, was obtained in a trade last week from the Clippers.

James Hahn's article telling how easy it is for kids to obtain guns is scary (Commentary, May 31). Why not make it difficult to get bullets? Crooks can't make their own bullets--particularly for such a precision machine as an automatic weapon. A fast, positive deterrent to gun murder would be this: A government inspector would be stationed at the shell factory to monitor each shipment. An application approved by a police department would be required by every vendor of bullets. INGRID RALSTON Los Angeles L.A. City Atty.

Re "Back in the Wild, Condors Succumb to Old Nemesis: Lead," June 10: Banning the use of lead bullets on public lands can help save not only endangered condors but people and the environment. Spent bullets from recreational shooting are one of the major sources of lead pollution in the United States. A typical outdoor shooting range can become contaminated to Superfund levels after just a few years' use. Despite the costly problems of cleaning up abandoned sites, protecting nearby water from lead contamination and treating lead-poisoned kids, many cities, counties, parks districts and other jurisdictions throughout California maintain shooting ranges, at least in part with public funds.

Eight years ago, Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda explored childhood and family in the acclaimed drama "Nobody Knows," about a 12-year-old boy who must take care of his siblings when their mother runs off with a new boyfriend. Kore-eda returns to a similar theme but in a lighter, whimsical vein in "I Wish," which opened Friday. The leisurely paced comedy stars real-life brothers Koki and Ohshiro Maeda as siblings who live hundreds of miles apart from each other on the island of Kyushu after their parents break up. The elder brother, Koichi (13-year-old Koki)

If California starts building a 130-mile segment of high-speed rail late this year as planned, it will enter into a risky race against a deadline set up under federal law. The bullet train track through the Central Valley would cost $6 billion and have to be completed by September 2017, or else potentially lose some of its federal funding. It would mean spending as much as $3.5 million every calendar day, holidays and weekends included -- the fastest rate of transportation construction known in U.S. history, according to industry and academic experts.

The Obama administration threatened California on Thursday with rescinding $3.3 billion in federal grants to start construction of a bullet train if the Legislature does not act by June to appropriate the state's share of funding. In a series of meetings with key lawmakers in Sacramento, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that the recent proposal by state Senate leaders to delay a $2.7-billion decision on the high-speed rail project until August is not acceptable. "We need the Legislature to make the strongest commitment possible," LaHood said in an interview.

State bullet train officials Thursday approved the environmental impact studies for an initial section of high-speed track to be built from Merced to Fresno, a decision that sets the stage for possible legal challenges from powerful Central Valley farming interests. Certification of the final state and federal environmental reports is a critical step before the California High-Speed Rail Authority can begin to secure government permits and award construction contracts for the first phase of the $68-billion project that would link Los Angeles and San Francisco with 200 mph trains.

The state rail authority has grossly underestimated future operating costs of California's proposed bullet train, meaning taxpayers potentially will have to provide billions of dollars annually once the system is running, according to an analysis released Monday by a group of outside financial experts. The California High Speed Rail Authority's claim that its future system would generate hundreds of millions of dollars in surpluses is based on unrealistic assumptions about what it will cost to operate the network, according to the study group, which included former World Bank official William Grindley and Stanford University management professor Alain C. Enthoven.

SACRAMENTO - The car salesman offers you a sleek new luxury model for $33,000. Go for it, you think. Time for an upgrade. Sold. Oops, the sales guy says later. Those numbers won't pencil. We'll need $98,000. You're stunned and outraged. Tell you what, the dealer counters. We'll let ya have it for $68,000 and take off some options. Take the car and shove it, you tell him. Can't afford it. Don't need it. You're entitled to do that - back out of a car deal before taking delivery.

Stirring up new ill will with authorities in Okinawa, the U.S. military acknowledged with regret that its jets mistakenly fired 1,520 bullets containing depleted uranium during shooting practice near the island, then waited a year before notifying Japan. U.S. officials said the bullets posed no environmental or health threat. It wasn't clear why they waited until Jan. 16 to tell Japan about the gunfire at a firing range on an uninhabited coral island in late 1995 and early 1996.

The plan to build a bullet train has so many funding uncertainties and so many other details that remain unclear that the state should delay any decision this year to commit billions of dollars to the project, the nonpartisan research branch of the Legislature recommended Tuesday. The tough advice came on the day before two key legislative committees are to examine the plan and an accompanying request by Gov. Jerry Brown for funding to start a $6-billion construction segment in the Central Valley.

SAN FRANCISCO - A formal plan to build a California bullet train that would become partially operational in 10 years was approved by the state rail agency Thursday, though the blueprint was amended at the last minute to include a goal of providing service to Orange County. The decision represents the culmination of more than two decades of planning and political battles over a project that aims to reshape the future, transporting passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes but at a staggering cost of $68 billion.