Final Report

Two Los Angeles Fire Department officials who led internal inquiries into a pair of now high-profile racial discrimination lawsuits say reports submitted to a top commander were altered. They say documents that stand in their place as the department's official conclusions were not prepared with their consent and that their names were signed on them by someone else. Battalion Chief Millage Peaks and Capt.

Re "Iraq study group: dismal findings; dismal day," Dec. 7 The report from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group lays out in clear terms the terrible consequences of continuing the current Bush foreign policy: expansion of chaos to other parts of the Middle East, complication of the Israeli-Palestinian situation, further erosion of the world's confidence in the United States. The message to the president is clear: It's time to stop worrying about your image and do the right thing. We should be working with all the key parties in the Middle East to achieve a stable Iraq, even those countries (such as Iran and Syria)

As pressure mounts for the United States to seek direct talks on Iraq with Iran and Syria, President Bush appeared Tuesday to rule out any change in his administration's policy toward those Iraqi neighbors. By reaffirming a long-standing administration policy setting strict conditions on talks with either country, Bush indicated that he may be unwilling to accept an expected recommendation by a bipartisan commission assessing policy options on Iraq.

After long promising that it would provide a full public accounting of the Rampart Division scandal, the Los Angeles Police Department now acknowledges that it has not completed that work and has given up trying. According to a blue ribbon panel assigned to sort through the corruption details, the LAPD's investigation into the scandal was hindered on several fronts.

A Los Angeles Police Department captain said Tuesday that preliminary results of an inquiry into the fatal police shooting of toddler Suzie Pena have been turned over to the district attorney and a final report would be ready next month. Capt. Jim Vogue was called before the Police Commission to discuss the internal investigation amid concern by Commission President John Mack and others that it remained unresolved nearly a year after the July 10, 2005, shooting.

A commission that has been a magnet for criticism as well as a channel for emerging citizen activism will wind up its work today, bringing to a close the first planning stage for a post-Katrina New Orleans. The Bring New Orleans Back Commission formally issues its final report to Mayor C. Ray Nagin tonight, though the reports of its seven committees have been public for several weeks.

After about 10 years and $21 million spent investigating former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros, the last independent counsel from the Clinton era officially ended his probe Thursday, complaining he needed more time to unravel what might have been a massive "coverup at high levels of our government." David M. Barrett, a former Republican lawyer and lobbyist who was appointed in 1995 to investigate the Democrat, issued a 474-page "Final Report of the Independent Counsel."

Katrina hit the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane, not a Category 4 as first thought, and New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain likely were spared the storm's strongest winds, the National Hurricane Center said. New Orleans' storm levees were generally believed to be able to protect the city from the flooding of a fast-moving Category 3 storm. But Katrina was generally a slow-moving storm, said Jim Taylor, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers. Katrina made landfall Aug.

The NCAA released its final report Wednesday on its investigation of South Carolina's football program under ex-Gamecock coach Lou Holtz. The NCAA outlined 11 violations -- five major and six secondary, raising the total infractions by one from South Carolina's disposition report last summer. In August, the NCAA added an additional year of probation to the two years already self-imposed by South Carolina.

The United Nations' oil-for-food program was so badly managed and supervised that more than half of the 4,500 companies doing business with Iraq paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, an independent investigation into the program will announce today. The inquiry, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, will detail how the U.N.