Fact Finding

The Times did a great disservice to all Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) non-administrative employees in the article "Pay Cuts Urged for All School Workers" (Oct. 25). The news item was supposed to be about a fact-finding report addressing the administrators' union, Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), bargaining with the district. Yet it appeared that the panel recommendations for a pay cut applies to all LAUSD employees. Even if the report said that, this particular fact-finding panel applies to AALA alone and does not speak for any other union negotiations.

A new Egyptian government investigation into the nearly-three-week revolution that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak in February paints a sinister portrait of a desperate police state relying on snipers, thugs and other forces that led to the deaths of at least 846 people. The lead judge on the fact-finding commission said Tuesday that Mubarak was at least indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of protesters at the hands of police officers and Interior Ministry agents.

A delegation of senior U.S. officials met with Myanmar's military rulers in the highest-level talks with the reclusive government in 14 years. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell led the U.S. delegation meeting the military government in its new capital, Naypyidaw, before traveling to Yangon for talks with detained Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly characterized the trip as "basically . . . a fact-finding mission."

Jean Benson Wilkinson, who became one of the first Los Angeles public school teachers to be fired for refusing to cooperate with McCarthy-era investigators, died Dec. 28 in Berkeley. She was 96. FOR THE RECORD: Jean Wilkinson: In the Jan. 6 LATExtra section, the obituary of Jean Benson Wilkinson, a Los Angeles teacher who was fired during the Red Scare, cited a 1954 editorial by William Randolph Hearst. The year was correct but not the author; Hearst died in 1951. The editorial was unsigned and ran in the Los Angeles Herald Express, a Hearst newspaper.

The head of the World Bank's China department said today he is reserving judgment on the bank's future relationship with Beijing. "It's too early to come to any conclusions. I'm just listening to what they tell me," Shahid Burki said in a telephone interview. The bank, which has more than 70 projects worth $8 billion in China, Monday delayed a $160.2-million urban development loan until Burki could assess conditions after the violent suppression of China's pro-democracy movement.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes of a failed political career, Dick Nixon reappears on the world stage. President Boris Yeltsin publicly snubbed Nixon for "protocol indiscretions" for meeting with opposition political leaders before meeting with him. Yeltsin was livid in his refusal to meet with Nixon. He abruptly canceled Nixon's briefings with lower government officials and removed the complimentary bodyguard and limousine service. Yeltsin's public reaction puzzled me, knowing the tremendous financial help needed from America, until I read an article in The Times, March 10. The last paragraph illuminates why I believe Yeltsin spoke of Nixon's misstep so angrily.

In response to "San Francisco Probes Private Spy Network," Feb. 26: The Times' article contains several misstatements and mischaracterizations about the activities of the Anti-Defamation League. Your article alleges that ADL has acted as part of a nationwide "spy network" which has collected information on a wide variety of individuals within the United States. This is absolutely untrue. One of ADL's principal missions is to educate the public about the threat posed by extremist groups through its publication, "ADL on the Frontline," as well as various special investigative reports, books and other materials.

The Russians are back. Olympic champion Evgeni Plushenko won the short program at the European figure skating championships Wednesday in Tallinn, Estonia, with a spectacular performance that proved he has the goods to repeat in Vancouver despite a three-year layoff. Plushenko scored 91.30 points, beating the world record he set at the Turin Games. Brian Joubert , the 2007 world champion, is about two points behind and fellow Frenchman Yannick Ponsero is third going into today's free skate.

In exactly one week, Los Angeles will wake up with a newly elected mayor. The lucky leader of 4 million restless campers with cracked sidewalks could be Wendy Greuel, the business-suited Valley kid who worked for Mayor Tom Bradley and President Clinton and would be the first female mayor in city history. Or it could be Eric Garcetti, who seems to have done everything in his 42 years except pitch for the Dodgers and kayak to Borneo, and whose adopted daughter may one day celebrate both a bat mitzvah and a quinceañera . Last week, I wrote about a Greuel visit to Tolliver's barbershop in South Los Angeles, where she was relaxed and sharp in front of a crowd that thinks she's the one. Today I'll report on my outing with her opponent, who, like Greuel, helped create some of the city's problems but now promises to deliver peace and prosperity to one and all. L.A. ELECTIONS 2013: Sign up for our email newsletter When Garcetti walked into a Westwood Village pizza parlor late Monday night, he was not recognized until after he'd selected artichokes, olives, onions and peppers as toppings.

Pungent steam rises from a boiling pot of a mugwort tea blended with wormwood and a variety of other herbs. Above it sits a nude woman on an open-seated stool, partaking in a centuries-old Korean remedy that is gaining a toehold in the West. Vaginal steam baths, called chai-yok, are said to reduce stress, fight infections, clear hemorrhoids, regulate menstrual cycles and aid infertility, among many other health benefits. In Korea, many women steam regularly after their monthly periods.

First came the bestselling book, then the sequel, and now comes "Freakonomics" the movie, a kind of victory lap that both celebrates that success and demonstrates why the work of economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner has become an international phenomenon. With the original book selling more than 4 million copies and getting translated into 35 languages, not to mention spending two-plus years on the New York Times bestseller list, Dubner and Levitt's penchant for looking at economic data in adventurous ways and coming up with counterintuitive results has clearly touched a cultural nerve.

The Russians are back. Olympic champion Evgeni Plushenko won the short program at the European figure skating championships Wednesday in Tallinn, Estonia, with a spectacular performance that proved he has the goods to repeat in Vancouver despite a three-year layoff. Plushenko scored 91.30 points, beating the world record he set at the Turin Games. Brian Joubert , the 2007 world champion, is about two points behind and fellow Frenchman Yannick Ponsero is third going into today's free skate.

A delegation of senior U.S. officials met with Myanmar's military rulers in the highest-level talks with the reclusive government in 14 years. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell led the U.S. delegation meeting the military government in its new capital, Naypyidaw, before traveling to Yangon for talks with detained Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly characterized the trip as "basically . . . a fact-finding mission."

U.S. Army Gen. George S. Patton once wrote that "battle is an orgy of disorder." This statement rings especially true now as Western nations continue to fight against enemies whose primary tactic is to sow as much confusion and disorder on the battlefield as possible. Unfortunately, the just-released report of the U.N. Human Rights Council -- the so-called Goldstone mission report -- on Israel's three-week Operation Cast Lead in Gaza earlier this year seems to have ignored this modern-day phenomenon entirely.

Tom had been a working man his entire adult life. He made good money in the car business and parlayed that good fortune into trips to some of the world's great locales. As he approached his 60s, life was looking pretty sweet. But last week he found himself back at a destination that he never would have imagined visiting: a food distribution center in Laguna Beach. And instead of leaving with trinkets or lasting reminders of an exciting vacation, he walked away with two boxes of cereal, salmon patties, two cans of beef stew, scones and a loaf of bread.

A novel approach toward injecting international justice into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict got underway Sunday in this embattled enclave, but it left neither side particularly satisfied. Borrowing from the South African reconciliation experience, a United Nations fact-finding commission opened what it said was the first-of-its-kind public hearing to gather witness testimony about alleged war crimes during Israel's 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip in winter.

A commission appointed to study the athletics program at Cal State Northridge earned the praise of school officials for its comprehensive approach during an exhaustive, two-day, fact-finding visit to the campus. Ronald Kopita, vice president of student affairs at Northridge, said Tuesday the six-member panel collected "reams of information from every constituent group one could ever try to pull together."

Re "L.A. councilman to lead six-country trip," May 30 As The Times reports, the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation proposes to use fees generated from the Sunshine Canyon Landfill to fund a $250,000 overseas fact-finding mission led by Councilman Greig Smith this summer. The decision to use these municipal funds was made entirely by the Bureau of Sanitation, not Sunshine Canyon. Although operations at Sunshine Canyon generated the funds, the landfill's operators have no control over how that money is spent by the city.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to launch an investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation programs under President George W. Bush, setting the stage for a sweeping examination of some of most secretive and controversial operations in recent agency history.

Re "L.A. councilman to lead six-country trip," May 30 As The Times reports, the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation proposes to use fees generated from the Sunshine Canyon Landfill to fund a $250,000 overseas fact-finding mission led by Councilman Greig Smith this summer. The decision to use these municipal funds was made entirely by the Bureau of Sanitation, not Sunshine Canyon. Although operations at Sunshine Canyon generated the funds, the landfill's operators have no control over how that money is spent by the city.