Construction Workers

A Senate squabble threatened to put about 80,000 Federal Aviation Administration employees and airport construction workers back on indefinite paid leave Saturday, but negotiators were hopeful the Senate would agree to at least extend FAA funding by Thursday. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) held up the expected passage of an FAA and highway projects funding extension bill, which passed unanimously in the House on Tuesday. FAA funding will expire Friday unless a compromise is reached. Coburn said on the Senate floor that he would approve a separate bill for FAA funding, but refuses to pass the legislation without amending the highway funding portion of the bill.

A gunman dressed in black and ranting incoherently fired on an elementary school playground in Carlsbad, Calif., at lunchtime Friday, slightly wounding two children before construction workers tackled him. The injured girls, both second-graders, suffered graze wounds in the arm, authorities said. They were airlifted to Rady Children's Hospital in nearby San Diego. Witnesses who saw them taken to the aircraft said they did not appear to be seriously injured and that one girl even waved to onlookers.

An 8-year-old girl, kidnapped from her yard by a stranger ? the object of an intensive overnight search ? was returned to her mother alive Tuesday after a dramatic rescue by a quick-acting unemployed construction worker. "It's truly a miracle of God that she is with us?we certainly beat the odds," said Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer. The third-grader and a 6-year-old friend were playing in the driveway in front of their apartment complex about 8:30 Monday evening, when a man, whom police later identified as 24-year-old Gregorio Gonzalez, told them he would buy them gifts if they came with him. Neighbors who saw the man talking to the children shouted at the girls to run. Gonzalez allegedly grabbed the 8-year-old and forced her into an older rust-colored Chevrolet pickup truck with white stripes.

Beads of sweat dotted Terrence Mason Jr.'s forehead Saturday morning as he brushed white primer on a metal pipe outside the faded South Los Angeles building that houses the Los Angeles Black Worker Center. Mason, a sheet metal worker, was among dozens of electricians, painters and other construction workers who showed up in work boots and hard hats, tool belts strapped around their hips, to lend their skills to fixing up the center's new headquarters in the Paul Robeson Community Center on South Vermont Avenue.

Workers excavating at the World Trade Center site have unearthed the 32-foot-long hull of a ship probably buried in the 18th century. The vessel probably was used along with other debris to fill in land to extend lower Manhattan into the Hudson River, archeologists said. Archeologists Molly McDonald and A. Michael Pappalardo were at the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on Tuesday morning when workers uncovered the artifacts. "We noticed curved timbers that a backhoe brought up," McDonald said Wednesday.

The U.S. has spent nine years and billions of dollars trying to hunt down Osama bin Laden amid the rugged, lawless badlands along Pakistani-Afghan border. But according to Pakistani officials, Gary Brooks Faulkner thought he could get the job done himself, with a pistol, a dagger and a pair of night-vision goggles. The construction worker, whose age was variously reported as 52 and 40, was arrested early Monday in Pakistan's Chitral region, a mountainous, forested expanse along the Afghan border.

California employers cut more workers in December, capping a dismal year in which the state lost more than half a million jobs. Payrolls shrank by 38,800, marking the worst month for job losses since September. The unemployment rate remained flat at 12.4%, but only because more than 100,000 workers left the labor force and are no longer counted. Many of them have given up looking for work or have moved out of state. Economists expect the state's labor market to remain weak this year largely because the bellwether housing sector continues to struggle.

Featuring a knockout performance by Adam Scott, a much-deserved 2009 Independent Spirit Award nominee for best male lead, "The Vicious Kind" upends the heavily tread dysfunctional family drama in ways that are unique, surprising and memorable. The film, also up for best screenplay at the Spirits, should prove a solid launching pad for writer-director Lee Toland Krieger. Set in small-town Connecticut over a Thanksgiving weekend, this sharp-tongued, emotionally resonant tale sets angry -- and, yes, kind of vicious -- construction worker Caleb Sinclaire (Scott)

Pablo Nuñez, a carpenter by trade, says he is accustomed to working 10-hour shifts, sometimes six days a week, on home-building sites throughout Southern California. But legally mandated overtime pay was almost as unheard of at job sites, he says, as visits from labor inspectors. "The only person getting overtime might be the brother of the foreman," Nuñez said. The Corona resident is among 85 residential construction workers from California, Nevada and Arizona who will share $242,301 in unpaid wages after settling a federal lawsuit last month against a major home-builder, Boise, Idaho-based Building Materials Holding Corp.

Opening day at the Ritz-Carlton and J.W. Marriott hotels at LA Live is still five months away. But Room 1055 is a beehive of activity. One worker attaches metal pins to the door of what will become the room's closet, his drill a quick, metallic syncopated whir. Another grunts away as he carefully attaches a mirror to the wardrobe's door. When this two-man crew started installing wardrobes in the hotels, on the 52-story building's fifth floor, it took them 60 minutes to assemble the piece.