Contributions

UCLA and Steve Alford. A basketball program of unmatched pedigree led by a former prodigy who became a national champion and Olympic gold medalist before making a steady climb up the coaching ladder. On paper, a harmonic convergence. How they came together, a choreography of those themes, would make for a dazzling introduction, which UCLA held at center court in historic Pauley Pavilion last month. The aura of John Wooden, his contributions to sports and society -- and those 10 national titles -- was thick.

L.A.'s 9th City Council District is among the poorest in the city, taking in a stretch of South Los Angeles where the median household income is less than $30,000 per year. Yet despite persistent economic woes, the district has become a hot spot for expensive campaign contributions in this year's election, with special interests from across the state spending big in the race to replace termed-out Councilwoman Jan Perry. Labor unions, businesses, billboard companies, healthcare interests and others have spent $900,000 on unlimited "independent expenditures" for state Sen. Curren Price (D-Los Angeles)

In these troubled economic times, it's not hard to understand why people might want to protect their life savings by purchasing a hard asset like gold or silver. At least, that's the pitch of Monex, the big Newport Beach investment firm, which bills itself as "America's trusted name in precious metals investments" and assures clients that it's "committed to customer service. " So let's take a look at the experiences of some customers who say their trust in Monex was misplaced.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - It was the catastrophe everyone knew was coming yet no one seemed able to stop. According to analysts, a violent Islamist militia was partly to blame for thousands of deaths in Somalia's food crisis from 2010 to 2012, but so was U.S. anti-terrorism policy. The effect of nations' collective failure to grapple with the complex problems of getting aid into famine-stricken southern Somalia has only now been established: Nearly 260,000 people died, half of them children younger than 5, according to a report released Thursday by the U.S.-based Famine Early Warning System Network, or FEWS NET, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Hotel magnate Barron Hilton, grandfather of heiress Paris Hilton, has bequeathed 97% of his estimated $2.3-billion net worth to his father's charity foundation, officials said Wednesday. The contribution to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, to come from the sale of Hilton Hotels Corp. and the pending sale of Harrah's Entertainment Inc. after the money is placed in a trust, is the largest in the foundation's history and will bring its value to about $4.5 billion.

The most powerful labor organization in Los Angeles refused Friday to back away from a campaign mailer in which it urges voters to support Wendy Greuel for mayor because she "will raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. " Even though Greuel has said she supports the higher "living wage" only for workers at large hotels, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor chief Maria Elena Durazo accused the media of "nitpicking" when she was questioned about the accuracy of the mailer, which went to Latino voters.

"Since colonial times, blacks have made an increasingly important contribution to American military might. . . . When given an opportunity to fight, black soldiers and sailors (and eventually airmen and Marines) did well, whether in the North American wilderness, at sea, or on (and above) foreign battlefields. . . . Helping defeat America's foes did not gain acceptance within the military. . . . Besides fighting the wartime enemy, black Americans faced a second and far more dangerous foe . . .

Gordon Elwood of Medford, Ore., kept his pants up with a bungee cord, accepted handouts from a food bank and refused to have a phone installed in his home because of the cost. When he died in October at age 79, he left a $10-million fortune. Elwood was among a small fraternity of America's upper class: the penny-pinching, often shabbily dressed wealthy who are almost as much a mystery to the people who know them as to the millions of strangers who read their stories and wonder, "Why?"

Saudi Arabia remains the world's leading source of money for Al Qaeda and other extremist networks and has failed to take key steps requested by U.S. officials to stem the flow, the Bush administration's top financial counter-terrorism official said Tuesday. Stuart A.

Strict limits on campaign contributions imposed by voters nearly three decades ago are crumbling in the Los Angeles mayor's race, with big donors using loosely regulated "super PACs" to help candidates like never before in a citywide election, a Times analysis has found. Of the $17.5 million collected so far to support mayoral hopefuls Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti, roughly one-third - a record $6.1 million - has gone into independent political action committees that can accept contributions of any size.

Strict limits on campaign contributions imposed by voters nearly three decades ago are crumbling in the Los Angeles mayor's race, with big donors using loosely regulated "super PACs" to help candidates like never before in a citywide election, a Times analysis has found. Of the $17.5 million collected so far to support mayoral hopefuls Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti, roughly one-third - a record $6.1 million - has gone into independent political action committees that can accept contributions of any size.

New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg donated $350,000 to the Los Angeles school board campaign this week, records show. Bloomberg's contribution, which was filed Tuesday, will enlarge the already sizable war chest of the Coalition for School Reform, a political action committee led by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The goal of the coalition is to back candidates who will support the policies of L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy and pledge to keep him on the job. Before the March primary, Bloomberg contributed $1 million for the three board races - the largest contribution ever made in an L.A. school board campaign.

Hilary Koprowski, a Polish-born researcher who developed the first successful oral vaccine for polio, has died. He was 96. Koprowski died of pneumonia April 11 at his Philadelphia home, said his son, Dr. Christopher Koprowski, a radiation oncologist. In 1950, Hilary Koprowski showed that it was possible to use his live-virus oral vaccine against polio, which had plagued the United States and other countries for decades. Another researcher, Dr. Albert Sabin, would win the race to get an oral vaccine licensed in the U.S. while Jonas Salk would develop an injectable vaccine that eliminated much of the disease in the country.

Metta World Peace is back in the lineup for the Lakers, but he'll remain a reserve until his knee improves. "Physically, he was limping and didn't look good last game," said Coach Mike D'Antoni of World Peace's four-point performance Wednesday against the Portland Trail Blazers. "He'll eventually be back in the starting lineup, as soon as he gets back to his normal form. " Even World Peace was surprised that he was able to return 12 days after undergoing knee surgery for torn cartilage.

While former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton considers the pros and cons of trying, once again, to become this nation's first female president and Julia Louis-Dreyfus returns as the bumbling but pencil-skirt-rocking fictional vice president in HBO's "Veep," a strange day took from us two women who helped a generation redefine what it meant to be a woman. It's difficult to imagine former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former Mouseketeer and pop music star Annette Funicello sharing much beyond today's obituary page - Thatcher died Monday, at 87, of a stroke; Funicello, at 70, of complications arising from multiple sclerosis.

The pilot of a medical helicopter that crashed in Missouri in 2011 had been texting, and that was a contributing factor to the disaster that killed four people, federal investigators said. The case is the first fatal commercial aircraft accident involving texting. But the texts, some from the pilot to a female friend, were just one problem. The five-member National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday unanimously agreed on Tuesday that the crash was caused by a tired pilot who skipped preflight safety checks that would have revealed the helicopter was low on fuel.

A book bag is a simple thing, but until he got one Thursday, 10-year-old Eric Ruiz often felt left out and different at school. "Everybody had a backpack and I didn't," he said. Not anymore. Eric was one of 100 fifth-graders at Bassett Street Elementary School who received free personalized book bags Thursday from the Assistance League of the San Fernando Valley. Inside the black book bags, each of the students found a notebook, a glue stick, a ruler, folders, pens and pencils.

Nancy Reagan has formally withdrawn her support of a proposed Los Angeles drug treatment center to be operated by Phoenix House and asked that 200 donors who pledged $5 million to the project be given the opportunity to transfer their donations to her own Nancy Reagan Foundation, The Times has learned. "This is a major disappointment to us," said Chris Policano, spokesman for Phoenix House in New York, a private foundation that operates a variety of drug programs across the country.

With the Dodgers' offense stuck in neutral through the first five games of the season, Manager Don Mattingly thought his team could use a little pick-me-up Sunday. So he held four regulars out of the starting lineup, replacing them with four guys who had combined for one hit this year. So guess what happened next. The Dodgers collected season highs for runs and hits in a 6-2 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates in front of a sun-splashed sellout crowd of 52,053 at Dodger Stadium. "You ask for energy from those guys," Mattingly said.

WASHINGTON - While they await a Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, gay rights advocates are taking their fight to a new arena: campaign finance law. A Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts who supports gay marriage has asked the Federal Election Commission to determine whether gay couples have the right to make joint contributions to political candidates. In a request for an advisory opinion Friday, attorneys for state Rep. Dan Winslow, a moderate Republican running in a special election to fill the seat vacated by Secretary of State John F. Kerry, asked the commission whether gay couples could donate to his campaign with a single check, as heterosexual married couples were allowed to do. The matter underscores the far-reaching and unexpected implications of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, which denies federal benefits to gay couples legally married in their states.