Escalates

The push by Los Angeles' elected officials to address a growing financial crisis hit a new stage on Friday: open battle. Just as credit rating agencies want them to work in unison on erasing a $212-million budget shortfall, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and members of the City Council traded threats and accusations on city spending and political leadership. Villaraigosa started the day by promising to veto plans by the council to spend money from its discretionary accounts. The council ignored that warning, allocating $389,000 for a new park in the San Fernando Valley and $95,000 for sidewalk repairs in South Los Angeles.

Two women were ordered Tuesday to stand trial for murder in the death of a 23-year-old woman who was beaten during an altercation outside a popular Santa Ana nightspot. The ruling followed a two-day hearing with attorneys dissecting the shaky and sometimes chaotic scene, captured on the cellphones of bystanders. Lawyers for Vanesa Tapia Zavala and Candace Marie Brito, who are accused of killing Kim Pham on Jan. 18, said it was Pham who instigated the brawl by throwing the first punch, then jumping on a woman who had tumbled to the ground.

China escalated its rhetoric against the Dalai Lama, accusing the Nobel Peace laureate and his supporters of planning suicide attacks. The Tibetan government-in-exile swiftly denied the charge. Wu Heping, spokesman for China's Ministry of Public Security, said searches of monasteries in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, had turned up a large cache of weapons. Beijing has accused the Dalai Lama and his supporters of orchestrating violence last month in Lhasa.

Thai officials proclaimed a state of emergency Tuesday to contain increasingly violent anti-government protesters trying to oust Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and derail an election she has called. The 60-day emergency state gives the government sweeping powers to impose curfews, ban public gatherings, censor news media and arrest people without charges or warrants, news agencies reported in Bangkok, the capital. Yingluck's embattled government needs the emergency measure " to take care of the situation ," said Deputy Prime Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul, the Bangkok Post reported.

HACIPASA, Turkey - The turrets of Turkish armored vehicles rise from the cotton fields outside this border village, guns trained toward Syria. Infantry units flank the banks of the Orontes River as Syrians escaping the fighting in their homeland maneuver across its muddy waters in rowboats. Overhead, Turkish fighter jets periodically buzz the skies. The two nations' more-than-500-mile border has become a tinderbox that many fear could become the spark for a regional war that no one seems to want but that appears to be closer than ever.

Yahoo is escalating the hostilities and the stakes in its increasingly acrimonious patent battle with Facebook. In papers filed in San Francisco federal court Friday, the Internet search company expanded its lawsuit against Facebook to include two more charges of intellectual property theft. It now claims Facebook is infringing on 12, rather than 10, of Yahoo's patents. "Today's filing underscores the breadth of Facebook's violation of Yahoo's intellectual property," a Yahoo spokesman said in an emailed statement.

Re "Rage Isn't Just a No-Signal Turn," editorial, July 23: The Times points out that fatal assaults are "often precipitated by the smallest of perceived slights." Since slights are often the result of poor or ineffective communication, why not try the following. Let's place inexpensive electronic ticker-tape-like devices on all rear fenders or trunks. The driver with the simple push of a button could flash the following messages: Sorry, my mistake. Thank you for your courtesy.

Sen. Frank Hill, after delays of several years, was convicted on corruption charges. He "resigned" his state Senate seat but stonewalled his departure so as to gain the interim income from a position he cannot serve and prevent replacement by an honest representative. His actions demonstrate the arrogance and ethical violations of some of our public officials that unfortunately escalates public scorn of our government and weakens democracy. Even worse is the attitude of GOP leader Sen. Ken Maddy, who said of Hill: " . . . He was more of a victim of circumstances and the venue than he is of committing a crime."

With respect to the Persian Gulf, an Egyptian official says that the reflagging "could put the whole region . . . even the world at risk." A Western diplomat asks, "What . . . if the tanker war escalates as a result of the U.S. presence? Does (the U.S.) become sucked into a vicious and unpredictable war?" (July 16) At the same time Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Georgia), an opponent of the scheme, says, "If the Administration abandons its commitment to Kuwait, U.S. credibility in the region will suffer."

I was filled with a sort of disbelief when I read the Kolpacoff letter, which blindly idolizes Ronald Reagan. That disbelief quickly turned to disgust, and then to anger. He stated: "Young people today will look back on the 1980s with the warmest remembrances . . ." Surprise, Mr. Kolpacoff: the future of all of us young people looks rather grim, due to the dangerous bumbling of the "Great Communicator." I am filled with fear every time I think of our suicidal involvement in Nicaragua.

T-Mobile this week announced it would hold a Macklemore & Ryan Lewis concert, just one week after the company's chief executive was thrown out of the hip-hop duo's concert in Las Vegas that was put on by AT&T. The two wireless carriers have been at each others' throats the last few weeks, and T-Mobile's upcoming concert seems to be the latest shot in its fight with AT&T. The concert will be held Jan. 23 in Los Angeles at the Belasco Theatre. T-mobile and AT&T recently escalated their rivalry by announcing new strategies to poach customers from each other.

A social travel site that rewards followers of popular itineraries with savings. Name: CarryOn.com What it does: Features deals with escalating savings, meaning that the more people who follow a trip, the more savings CarryOn delivers. Members (free to join) choose between following an existing deal or creating their own. As more people follow the same deal, the price starts to drop. The site claims members can save up to 40%. What's hot: The site is attractive, and the deals are inviting, with large photos.

Striking social workers took to the picket lines for a second day Friday, with no progress reported in negotiations with Los Angeles County and a probable escalation of work-site actions next week by the county's largest public-employee union. "We intend to ramp it up," said Bob Schoonover, president of SEIU Local 721, which represents 55,000 county employees - including 3,600 social workers and their supervisors - who have been working without a contract for two months. "This is not going to be an easy fight.

BEIJING - After months of planning a trip to boost U.S. trade with Asia, Vice President Joe Biden instead is leading an urgent diplomatic mission to calm tensions between China and its neighbors and prevent a potential conflict. After arriving here Wednesday, Biden closeted himself with President Xi Jinping for 5 1/2 hours in what U.S. officials described as an effort to reassure anxious allies in the region and prevent escalation of the dispute over China's recent declaration of an air defense identification zone over islands Japan administers.

David S. Cunningham III is a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, former president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, and a onetime federal civil rights attorney. But on Saturday morning, he found himself handcuffed in the back of a UCLA police car. Officers had pulled him over as he was driving his Mercedes out of his Westwood gym - because, the police said, he wasn't wearing his seat belt. What happened next is a matter of dispute, but it ended with the African American judge yelling to a growing crowd in the heart of Westwood Village about police brutality.

CAIRO - It was nearly 9 p.m., but the Church of the Virgin Mary, the heart of the Christian community in a ramshackle neighborhood on Cairo's outskirts, was alive with activity. One elaborate Coptic wedding ritual was ending, and another was soon to begin. Relatives and friends of the couples crowded the church's entryway, spilling onto the sidewalks of a busy street that roared with traffic night and day. That was when the gunfire erupted. The assailants were masked and riding motorbikes, witnesses said.

Re "Fears of Iraqi Warfare Grow as 6 Britons Die," June 25: After a brilliant military campaign, we find ourselves in an Iraqi quagmire. Formation of a successor government lags. The Iraqi infrastructure is a shambles. Each day guerrilla warfare escalates and precious American and British lives are lost. Our present situation raises questions about the planning that was done before the button was pushed to go to war. Shouldn't we have realized that demographics would be overwhelmingly against us: that in a nation of over 20 million there would be many, many Baath Party activists determined to expel us?

WASHINGTON - The GOP-led House approved a spending bill that would strip President Obama's healthcare law of its funding, setting up a confrontation with the Democratically controlled Senate that risks causing the first shutdown of the government in nearly two decades. The 230-189 vote was at least a temporary victory for the chamber's most conservative lawmakers, who had pressured the Republican leadership to back the "defund Obamacare" drive. Advocates, including tea party-aligned advocacy groups, insisted that the looming deadline to approve a new government funding bill was the best leverage over Democrats since Republicans took over in 2011.

Summary executions, torture, hostage-taking and indiscriminate shelling of civilian homes are among the war crimes committed by both sides in the Syrian conflict, a special investigative panel of the United Nations Human Rights Council reported Wednesday. The report, based on 258 interviews with survivors of the violence and refugees from Syria, warned of a frightening escalation in recent months of acts in defiance of international law. Eight of nine investigated massacres in which the perpetrators could be reliably identified were blamed on government forces under Syrian President Bashar Assad, the report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry said.