Government Buildings

Nearly everyone in Newport Beach thinks they need a new City Hall. Getting them to agree on where to put it is another story. On Tuesday, voters will decide whether to locate a new civic center on a 12-acre site in Newport Center that was slated to become a park. The fiercely contested ballot initiative has led to more than $800,000 in campaign spending, an amount almost unheard of for a local issue in a city of its size, including donations of more than $600,000 alone from one restaurateur.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other municipal leaders unveiled a green energy initiative Tuesday by the city's utility that they predict will create as many as 400 union jobs over the next three years to install and maintain solar panels on city buildings and other structures around Los Angeles. Villaraigosa promoted the new effort as part of a larger clean-growth strategy during an appearance atop a Los Angeles Convention Center parking garage with solar panels as a backdrop.

County officials on Saturday dedicated a more than $30-million civic center in East Los Angeles that took nearly a decade to complete. The center, at 4801 E. Third St., serves residents of the unincorporated neighborhood, as well as those from Montebello, Monterey Park, Commerce and Los Angeles. Angie Castro, a spokeswoman for L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina, whose district includes East L.A., called the center the heart of the neighborhood.

How many city officials does it take to change the lightbulbs? Too few, apparently, have dedicated themselves to the task. Los Angeles Controller Laura Chick issued an audit Monday of energy conservation -- or the lack thereof -- in the city's offices, police and fire stations, libraries and senior citizens centers, and declared that the city's 12-year-old program to cut back on electricity use needs "a complete overhaul."

A man stormed into a police building Tuesday and fatally stabbed six officers, Shanghai police said. Several officers were injured. A suspect was arrested and initially described on the Shanghai police website as a 28-year-old unemployed man from Beijing who took revenge against authorities because he was being investigated for stealing bicycles. However, this information was later deleted from the site.

BEIJING -- On the first morning of my recent stay in Beijing, I picked up the China Daily, the government-run English-language newspaper, to see the following phrase near the top of the front page: "Good Times Get Better." It was a teaser for a story inside the paper about the expanding number of luxury boutiques in the Chinese capital.

They squat in abandoned buildings, crash in rickety schoolhouses or sleep under bushes and trees. They stumble into the city wooden-faced and traumatized, children in tow, with little or nothing but the clothes they were wearing when they fled their houses. Tens of thousands of Georgians have been forced from their homes by days of fighting and Russian occupation, leaving this small country suddenly swamped in a major humanitarian crisis.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has asked the city to block the eviction of a nonprofit organization from a city-owned building that City Councilman Bernard C. Parks said was illegally being used by the group to organize voters against his bid for a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. For eight years, Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education's headquarters has been at 1715 W. Florence Ave.

The nation's economy might be crumbling, and the housing market may be in crisis, but Newport Beach is still dreaming big. The wealthy beach town's aging City Hall, a conglomeration of overstuffed buildings wedged next to a supermarket, is getting a makeover. Five designs for a new civic center offer flamboyant and wildly divergent visions for the symbolic heart of Orange County affluence. What could be more Newport Beach than an illuminated, sail-shaped roof and an upscale wine bar?

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. plans soon to sign a major lease of office space in Orange County, probably in Irvine, where as many as 600 people would liquidate the assets of troubled banks and thrifts based in California and other Western states. The agency needs 200,000 square feet of space and has looked at locations across Southern California, FDIC spokesman David Barr said. "It's a temporary office -- three to five years is what we're looking at," Barr said Tuesday.