Crackdown

Bahrain's security forces arrested at least half a dozen opposition leaders Thursday and surrounded Shiite Muslim neighborhoods on the second day of a crackdown that, at least for now, appeared to have left the regime's opponents frightened and divided about how to respond. Opposition activists said the most prominent of those arrested were Hassan Mushaima, a hard-line Shiite leader of the Haq movement who had only weeks ago returned from London exile, and Abdul Jalil Singace, another Haq leader who had been released from prison less than a month ago. Haq has been one of the most prominent opposition groups demanding the elimination of Bahrain's Sunni monarchy.

Several violent incidents, including the shooting of a 13-year-old boy, have sparked worries of renewed gang activity in a northeast Los Angeles neighborhood where city authorities have invested many resources to combat a notorious gang. Years after a largely successful effort to clear a subgroup of the Avenues gang from Drew Street in Glassell Park, authorities say it appears that rival gangs are looking to exact revenge on, or humiliate, a once powerful and predatory enemy. "I think there's payback a little bit there," said LAPD Lt. David Kowalski, supervisor of the Northeast Division's gang unit.

Re "Police Write 330 Tickets in Street-Race Crackdown," June 10. It's about time the crackdown occurred. Both juveniles and adults attend the street races and show a blatant disregard for public and personal safety when they conduct the races. One young man quoted in The Times made one comment that proves he does not recognize the danger in street racing, [saying that] there was little harm in it. I can recall numerous accounts in which someone was seriously injured at the street races due to a traffic accident.

WASHINGTON - Doctors, nurses and social workers from across the country, 107 in all, were charged in what federal officials in Washington called a "nationwide takedown" of medical professionals accused of fraudulently billing Medicare out of nearly half a billion dollars. The amount of bogus Medicare claims, totaling about $452 million, was the highest in a single raid in the history of a federal strike force combating rising fraud in the medical industry, according to the Justice Department.

Adding some swashbuckling to its tough talk on fighting piracy, the federal government on Wednesday seized several websites that had offered downloads of pirated movies such as "Toy Story 3" and "Iron Man 2" within hours of their release in theaters. Federal authorities announced that they had seized domain names from nine websites engaged in the "criminal theft of American movies and television." The websites include TVShack.net, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org and Ninjavideo.

Beyond the hospital grounds, heavily armed police trying to secure this tiny kingdom against the contagion of unrest spreading across the Middle East manned checkpoints and grimly gripped their weapons. Within, perplexed and angry protesters insisted that they wouldn't be cowed. The night before, a bloody assault against sleeping demonstrators killed at least four people. But the front line shifted across town Thursday to the Salmaniya Medical Complex, where the dead were laid out. Doctors were treating those who had been tear-gassed, clubbed or wounded by gunfire, and an angry crowd was chanting slogans against the royal family.

Protesters marched in the southern Syrian city of Dara on Tuesday, pressing their demands for political freedoms for a fifth day despite a security crackdown. Some witnesses said the protesters numbered in the hundreds; others said thousands took part. But it was clear that the country's burgeoning protest movement of the last week was the largest of President Bashar Assad's 11-year-rule. Tuesday's demonstration once again stopped short of calling for Assad's ouster, pushing instead for the release of jailed political dissidents and an end to the secret police organization, which is headed in Dara by the president's cousin.

Two summers ago, drug gangs, leftist rebels and right-wing militias traded mortar and machine-gun fire daily as they vied for control of this steamy port city. Teens were paid $200 a month -- a king's ransom in this impoverished community -- to act as lookouts for narcos. Armed groups fought it out in the neighborhoods and trash-strewn inlets from which 60-foot speedboats departed for Central America and Mexico with illicit drug loads. With an average of three killings a day, Buenaventura's homicide rate was among the highest on the planet.

Syria's loosely organized pro-democracy movement drew tens of thousands of people into the heart of Damascus and cities across the country Friday, a major victory against a government campaign of violence that has killed hundreds of peaceful protesters. Activists said security forces, who have deployed tanks in some cities, killed 64 people Friday as they tried to crush the 6-week-old protest movement. In Washington, the White House said President Obama had signed an executive order imposing sanctions on three Syrian officials the United States believes engaged in human rights abuses.

President Obama on Wednesday condemned Moammar Kadafi's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Libya, saying he had ordered his administration to prepare "a full range of options" to handle the crisis as the death toll rose into the hundreds. Although Obama described the violence in Libya as "outrageous" and "unacceptable," he did not specify any potential actions against Kadafi and did not call on him to resign. A senior administration official said the White House does not want to give Kadafi a chance to cast himself as a patriot resisting American pressure.

The owners of the Battle of the Dance dinner show had hoped to catch the wave of tourists from nearby Disneyland with family-friendly entertainment boasting European dancers and a gourmet meal of smoked salmon salad, filet mignon and a "decadent" dessert. But when the paying customers failed to materialize in the numbers foreseen, they cut the number of dinner shows, amped up the volume and turned to a different crowd. There was a "topless DJ," go-go dancers and an appearance by an adult film performer to entertain late-night partygoers in Anaheim's manicured resort district.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court and the Obama administration are set for another politically charged clash Wednesday as the justices take up Arizona's tough crackdown on illegal immigrants. It will be a rematch of the attorneys who argued the healthcare case a month ago, and another chapter in the partisan philosophical struggle over states' rights and the role of the federal government. And once again, President Obama's lawyers are likely to face skeptical questions from the high court.

The Vatican has ordered an overhaul of the most important group of nuns in the United States after an investigation found what Roman Catholic Church officials called "radical feminist themes" that questioned official positions on homosexuality and the ordination of women. In a bluntly worded report, the Vatican's watchdog of orthodoxy, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, found what it called "serious doctrinal problems" with some of the comments and actions by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, based in Silver Spring, Md. The Vatican on Wednesday named Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle to oversee changes in the group, a process that could take up to five years.

CHONGQING, China — Change has come quickly to this sprawling city of 30 million people since the charismatic local party chief, Bo Xilai, was fired last month by the national Communist Party leadership in China's most high-profile political shake-up in 20 years. Signs in public squares now ban gatherings to sing "red songs," a prominent element of Bo's effort to revitalize Mao-era values. Advertising has replaced propaganda messages on television. Bo's supporters say some old problems — be it the nuisance of unwanted leaflets or a bigger issue like prostitution — are creeping back.

A crackdown on Venice Beach homeless encampments and renegade vendors is pitting longtime residents and merchants against homeless advocates and younger transients. The Los Angeles Police Department enforcement efforts, begun almost two months ago, were spurred by mounting complaints from waterfront residents and business owners who said aggressive, intoxicated transients and violent disputes over vendors' spaces had made the boardwalk an increasingly lawless, frightening place.

China launched an Internet crackdown Friday amid its worst political crisis in decades, shuttering more than a dozen websites, limiting access to the country's largest micro-blog providers and arresting six people for spreading rumors about a coup attempt in Beijing. The measures represent the strongest attempt yet to quash speculation that the nation's top leadership is wracked by infighting after the ouster of Bo Xilai, the controversial Communist Party chief of mega-city Chongqing.

Syrian authorities intensified a crackdown on opposition activists Thursday, arresting hundreds of people ahead of another planned day of demonstrations after weekly prayers, witnesses said. Soldiers stormed Damascus' Saqba suburb, entering homes and detaining residents, according to witnesses and antigovernment activists. In At Tall, another Damascus suburb, more than 800 people were arrested Thursday, witnesses said. "They pretended that they were following an organized list when they carried out the arrests, but in reality, it was just a random selection of young men that were detained," said an activist in the capital who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation by authorities.

A clandestine network that helps North Koreans escape through China has gone deeper underground because of fears over what authorities in both countries have learned from the capture of two U.S. journalists who were released by Pyongyang this month, a missionary said today. When they were arrested in March, Laura Ling and Euna Lee were reporting on an underground railroad that has helped thousands of people escape from North Korea. "Their arrest reverberated through the aid network," said Tim Peters, a missionary in Seoul who oversees aid work in northeast China.

Forget years of conflicting rules, hazy regulations, hard lines and soft bans. An LAPD narcotics squad has made an end-run around the city's fumbling efforts to regulate medical marijuana, shutting down every dispensary in its San Fernando Valley division in a three-year campaign whose success just might signal the end of legal pot sales in Los Angeles. The closure this week of Herbal Medicine Care in Chatsworth ended a string of Devonshire Division busts that netted 30 guns, $2 million in cash and nine kilos of cocaine, in addition to a ton of marijuana.

As diplomats attempted to craft a compromise, Russia remained firm Wednesday in its pledge to veto any U.N. Security Council resolution that could open the door for international military intervention in Syria. Meanwhile, fighting raged anew in the troubled Middle East nation, with nearly 70 additional deaths reported by opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose bloody crackdown on street protests has led to calls from the Arab League and Western powers for him to step aside.