Cadre

They call themselves the Regulators. They wear tattoos of a skull-faced man holding a shotgun, fire screaming from its barrels. They refuse to testify against their buddies. They've been accused of extorting and intimidating those outside their ranks. No, they're not members of a street gang. They're Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies at the Century station in Lynwood. And their "club" is part of a culture that's dogged the nation's largest sheriff's department for years.

Song Guorong's genealogy gets hazy just a few generations before his own. But follow it back further--by 2,000 years--and he'll tell you exactly who lies at the root of his family tree. "I know my ancestors were Romans," the lanky 39-year-old says in a matter-of-fact voice as he navigates the rutted lanes of this dusty hamlet deep in China's interior. It's a remarkable claim to make, in a place as far east of Rome as New York is west.

Friends and family of Pablo Escobar, the notorious Medellin cocaine boss, have formed a private security knot around their jailed chief by following his lead and surrendering themselves under a government leniency program. The trickle of Medellin Cartel figures into a mountainside prison continued Friday as Escobar's older brother, 44-year-old Roberto, and another member, Gustavo Gonzalez, arrived in a government caravan of seven four-wheel-drive vehicles.

Ask the average San Diegan what type of science is fueling the city's claim to high-tech fame and, almost universally, the response will be biotechnology. Almost lost in biotech's glow is the small cadre of local companies and researchers whose expertise made it possible for San Diego to make a credible bid to serve as host of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program.

A cadre of House liberals, admitting that they have been outmaneuvered in discussions concerning the future of Social Security, on Tuesday announced a campaign to defeat proposals that would allow workers to place some of their Social Security taxes into individual investment accounts. The debate about revamping the retirement system "has been one-sided and has shut out the voice of the American people," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.

A former National Guard lieutenant colonel and Hmong leaders met in March with California Highway Patrol officials to try to get law enforcement training for participants in an alleged plot to overthrow the Laotian government, according to court records. The CHP acknowledged Tuesday that retired Lt. Col. Harrison Ulrich Jack and Hmong community leaders toured the sprawling West Sacramento training academy as part of what the agency saw as an effort to boost the hiring of Asian Americans.

Twenty-five residents of Thousand Oaks may soon get a chance to test their reflexes--and their judgment--in a simulated cops-and-robbers shootout. They may also get to heft a SWAT team semiautomatic weapon, meet the four-legged members of the K-9 narcotics group, and marvel at the sophisticated phone equipment used in top-secret hostage negotiations.

Your health is being threatened from an unexpected direction: your insurance company. As we become accustomed to the dangers of pollution, overcrowding, radon and nuclear waste, it becomes increasingly vital to examine health-care decisions being forced on us by some insurance companies. Certain companies will go to any length to avoid paying legitimate claims for new and innovative treatments in a timely way.

In a Republican presidential field where control and discipline are equated with success, longshot candidate Alan Keyes is like a man navigating in the dark, blind to the surprises that can come with each new campaign day.

Senate Republicans voted Tuesday to keep their leadership intact despite the party's setback in last month's congressional elections, shunning the sort of major shake-up that rattled the House GOP. The single challenge--a bid by maverick Sen. Charles Hagel of Nebraska to unseat Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky as chairman of the Republican Senate campaign committee--was easily brushed aside on a 39-13 vote.