Conferences

For more than 300 aspiring writers and producers, this -- a clanging cowbell, worn wooden tables and youthful TV programming executives at the House of Blues in West Hollywood -- was their chance to squeeze through the closed doors of Hollywood. It was not "Entourage." And it is not how superstar TV producers like J.J. Abrams or Aaron Sorkin pitch programs to network brass in the office suites of Burbank.

All year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has looked forward to treating Mexican and U.S. dignitaries to a one-of-a-kind California experience at a governors summit he is hosting in Los Angeles starting today. Schwarzenegger scheduled a 3D version of "Terminator 2" at Universal Studios. He organized a private dinner for the governors at his Brentwood mansion. He recruited his wife, Maria Shriver, to lead a seminar.

A 5-year-old boy was reportedly sexually assaulted by a 6-year-old male classmate at a Los Angeles-area school recently. On another campus, a 6-year-old girl was allegedly sexually abused by a 10-year-old classmate after he grabbed her hair and pulled her into a school bathroom. At a conference Wednesday on the Westside, these and other cases were described as part of a troubling trend of sexually aggressive behavior among students.

Later this month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will host the state's first Governor's Conference on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, to be held in Los Angeles. Since May, dozens of small-business owners and advocates have been hammering out preliminary policy proposals to present at the conference. Their recommendations are meant to position the state to thrive in the fast-changing global economy while improving the business environment for the 3.5 million small firms here.

Hundreds of people gathered near the Golden Gate Bridge over the weekend to ponder the enigmatic date of Dec. 21, 2012, the last day of the ancient Maya calendar and the focus of many end-of-the-world predictions.

The Bush administration is hopeful that world leaders, at a summit in Washington next week, will adopt an action plan singling out some short-term steps that could be taken to deal with the current financial crisis as well as prevent similar problems from happening again.

The Egyptian government indefinitely postponed reconciliation talks between Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas, setting up a possible new leadership battle between the two sides. The factional summit, originally scheduled to start Monday, was meant to resurrect the short-lived national unity government that collapsed in June 2007, leaving the militant group Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip and Fatah ruling the West Bank.

With Barack Obama busy building his administration, Republicans gathered Thursday to discuss ways to make him a one-term president and turn back a rising Democratic tide. There was plenty of disagreement over how to do that. The setting was a gloomy meeting of the Republican Governors Assn., which drew 17 of the party's state executives. Not incidentally, it also served as an early audition for the 2012 election, just about 1,450 days away.

President-elect Barack Obama sent an explicit message Tuesday to international negotiators of a new global warming treaty that, under his administration, the U.S would move to slash its own greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80% by mid-century, and "help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change."

A "top 11" list doesn't have the zing of a "top 10," but that's how many items were squeezed onto the wish list voted on last week by small-business owners and others who met to decide how California can refuel its economic engine of 3.2 million small firms. The ideas, finalized during the two-day Governor's Conference on Small Business and Entrepreneurship at a Los Angeles hotel, will be presented to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to guide his legislative agenda over the next two years.