Cost Control

After weeks of wrangling, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens will present the Board of Supervisors today with restructuring plans that include $20.5 million in cuts -- the most significant in the department's history. "These are services that we believe are quite important to maintaining public safety, that we're not just going to be able to continue," sheriff's spokesman John McDonald said.

A policymaking body for California's courts decided unanimously Wednesday to close all courthouses on the third Wednesday of every month in response to budget cuts. The closures, approved by the California Judicial Council, will begin in September and continue through June. They are expected to save $85.4 million. In addition, judges will be asked to take voluntary furloughs one day a month, resulting in a 4.62% pay cut. Chief Justice Ronald M.

History textbooks in many California classrooms won't mention the election of President Obama or the subprime mortgage meltdown until at least 2016. Stem cell research and climate change could be absent from science texts even longer. And students will be using aging books for years longer than planned because of California's education budget cuts. The state budget that closed a $24-billion gap last month dramatically reduced state spending for textbooks. The state Board of Education won't approve new books for kindergarten through eighth grade until January 2016 at the earliest, and districts have postponed approvals of new high school books as well.

The recession has finally answered the question that centuries of philosophers could not: The glass is half-empty. That's because sales of bottled water have fallen for the first time in at least five years, assailed by wrathful environmentalists and budget-conscious consumers who have discovered that tap water is practically free. Even Nestle, the country's largest seller of bottled water, is beginning to feel a bit parched. On Wednesday, it reported that profits for the first half of the year dropped 2.7%, the first decline in six years.

Fanning out through this city's old neighborhoods, doctors and nurses from a local medical center have adopted a practice that harks back to a bygone era: They're making house calls. Surprising as it may seem, this throwback approach may offer a path toward the elusive goal of providing better medical treatment at lower cost. And although the proposal has generated fewer fireworks than the proposed new government insurance plan, experts say it may help transform the nation's healthcare system.

They couldn't have known it at the time, but United Airlines and other U.S. carriers were dealt a lucky break last year when an oil shock made it appear they were headed for bankruptcy. Overseas rivals, who were shielded from stratospheric fuel costs and the collapse of the U.S. dollar at the time, are now months behind the U.S. airline industry in dealing with the aftereffects of the global economic crisis that started as fuel prices fell, analysts said. International carriers such as Germany's Lufthansa and Air France-KLM are starting to lay off workers and trim routes as it becomes evident that lucrative international business flying will continue to be depressed for the foreseeable future.

With summer over and vacation travel done for the season, the recession-battered airline industry took stock in the last week or so and found scant signs of improvement. Here's a rundown of the major findings: Pent-up passenger demand and cuts in airline capacity could lead to fare increases of as much as 6% globally and 7% in North America, according to the American Express Global Business Travel Forecast, which was released this week. Ancillary fees -- those charges to check an extra bag, change a flight or order a cocktail, among other costs -- are also expected to inch up, raising the overall cost of a domestic business trip by 1.2% to an average of $1,080, according to the report.

Here's a funny question: Did you pay to read this? It's funny because it has two obvious and opposite answers. If you're at your kitchen table holding The Times' Calendar section, then of course you paid. On the other hand, if you're reading this on your home computer or office workstation, then of course you didn't pay. Everyone knows reading news online is free. It's so rigidly free, in fact, that most newspapers (including this one) that have tried to charge for their content have found such efforts to be a bit like pulling the sword from the stone.

Historians Robert Dallek and Sean Wilentz and author-essayist Barbara Ehrenreich are among the more than 100 writers who have signed an open letter asking the Washington Post not to shut down its stand-alone Sunday Book World section. "Few forums besides Book World introduce so many readers to so many important new works of literature and thought each week," the letter reads. "As part of one of our most venerated papers, it carries prestige and influence. It enriches our culture with its thoughtful criticism."

Toyota Motor Corp., the world's largest automaker, will freeze wages and offer voluntary buyouts to plant workers in North America for the first time to combat an industrywide sales slide. The buyout offers 10 weeks' pay plus two weeks' pay for every year of service and a $20,000 lump-sum payment. The Japanese company had announced Thursday that it would cut executive pay, eliminate bonuses and reduce work hours at some plants. Toyota recently forecast its first operating loss in 71 years.