Disclosure Of Information

Responding to investigations into pension systems in New York and elsewhere, a Los Angeles pension agency voted Thursday to require any company seeking business with its board to disclose campaign contributions it has made to city political candidates.

A food fight is brewing over legislation in Washington that would require restaurants to post calories on menus. Hoping to clean up a patchwork of what it says are unwieldy state and local laws, a restaurant trade group is pushing a federal bill that would require chains to disclose the calorie counts of meals on the menu. But big companies such as Domino's, KFC and El Pollo Loco say the proposed legislation lets too many restaurants off the hook.

An American document that allegedly describes the torture of a former Guantanamo Bay inmate should be made public, a British court ruled Friday, dismissing Britain's argument that it was suppressing the information to preserve its intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States and to uphold national safety. The document contains a seven-paragraph summary of the treatment that Binyam Mohamed received in 2002 after being detained as a suspected terrorist. Mohamed, 31, a British resident, alleges that he was subjected to torture, including beatings and sexual mutilation, by interrogators in Pakistan and elsewhere with the full knowledge of American and British intelligence agents.

Amid a growing public uproar over the way it invests its money, the California Public Employees' Retirement System is expected to toughen its 6-month-old policy requiring outside investment managers to more fully disclose their relationships with the intermediaries who pitch their products. The tougher proposals are to be discussed by the CalPERS board today as the country's largest government pension fund overhauls the way it manages its massive investments, which total $200 billion.

Color additives made from insects will have to be disclosed on food and cosmetics labels by 2011 because of the possibility of allergic reactions, under a new rule from the Food and Drug Administration. The red dyes derived from carmine and cochineal extract -- from the cochineal insect -- must be named specifically instead of described generically as "artificial color," as they are now, the FDA said. The labels won't have to disclose that the ingredients come from bugs. The rule is a response to reports of allergic reactions, some life-threatening, to food and cosmetics containing the ingredients, according to the FDA. The ingredients are used in some makeup by Estee Lauder Cos., which said it would comply with the rule, and in some Dannon yogurts, whose containers already list them.

Talk about irony. Comedian George Carlin spent decades pushing the bounds of free speech by saying the seven words you can never say on television, but not one of them made it into an FBI file on him. Among the 12 pages that do make up a file recently released by Carlin's family are a couple of letters from outraged citizens who complained that the "alleged comedian" had made fun of the FBI and its director, J. Edgar Hoover, during TV appearances in...

A federal judge Thursday denied a request by Proposition 8 supporters to withhold disclosing any more names and addresses of donors who supported the campaign for the state's ban on same-sex marriage. Yes on 8 campaign officials had challenged the constitutionality of the state's Political Reform Act, saying that people who gave money were being harassed and that some received death threats. The act, passed in 1974, requires campaigns to reveal personal information of people who give more than $100 to campaigns.

New York's attorney general and a key congressman are demanding that the chief executive of Bank of America Corp. immediately disclose details about individual bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch & Co. employees in December. The Charlotte, N.C., bank acquired Merrill on Jan. 1. The letter from Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis comes as Cuomo's office and the bank fight about whether details of individual bonuses should be made public.

Thousands of donors to Senate Republican hopeful Norm Coleman's legal fund learned that their identities and some credit card information had been posted on the Web. In an e-mail to supporters, the campaign said it asked federal authorities to investigate, and it urged affected donors to cancel the cards.

The city of Walnut filed suit earlier this week to block a proposed NFL stadium in adjacent Industry, arguing in part that the developer's campaign failed to reach the city's large Asian population. Walnut is a predominantly Asian suburb about 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, and city officials said in their lawsuit that many residents don't speak English. The suit alleges that the city of Industry did not properly inform Walnut residents in their native tongues about the potential effects of the $800-million stadium.