Government Employees

Gathered over financial statements and chocolate-covered strawberries at a Dana Point resort, trustees of Orange County's employee retirement system heard the bad news. Like many ordinary Americans' 401(k) plans, the county pension fund is losing money for the third straight year, thanks to debilitating stock market declines. The fund, which has fallen to about $4.3 billion from $4.

An independent arbitrator has ordered county officials in Central California to reinstate a clerical worker who was fired for turning in an illegal immigrant--a suspected deadbeat dad--to U.S. immigration authorities.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Civilian deaths in the war in Afghanistan dropped in 2012 for the first time in six years, a sign of lessening hostilities, but insurgents dramatically expanded their campaign of assassinating government supporters, the United Nations said Tuesday. The annual U.N. report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan documented a 12% decline in deaths, largely because of fewer ground operations, new limits on airstrikes by U.S.-led coalition forces and fewer suicide bombings by insurgents.

In attacking the Internal Revenue Service for a training video parodying the TV show “Star Trek,” critics have not very boldly gone where many have gone before -- to a political universe in which government employees are pilloried for practices that are common in the private sector. You probably have heard that the IRS spent $60,000 to produce a video parodying the 1960s space opera, which spawned several spinoffs in movies and on TV. The video features the adventures of the "Starship Enterprise Y,” whose mission is to “seek out new tax forms, to explore strange new regulations, to boldly go where no governmental employee has gone before.” The stand-in for Capt.

It's chilly and hard to see at 4 a.m. as Martin Maher throttles up his turbocharged work boat against the swells. He is set to rendezvous with a Chinese container ship three miles beyond the Port of Los Angeles breakwater. His mission: Deliver a port pilot to guide the incoming container ship through the labyrinth of narrow channels and turn basins in the nation's busiest harbor complex. Scanning the horizon with an unblinking squint, Maher spins the Stephen M. White's 36-inch chrome wheel to swing around to the side of the Chinese ship, longer than three football fields.

Back in August, the union representing the city's traffic engineers vowed that on the day of their work action, "Los Angeles is not going to be a fun place to drive." City officials took the threat seriously. Fearful that the strikers could wreak havoc on the surface street system, they temporarily blocked all engineers from access to the computer that controls traffic signals. But officials now allege that two engineers, Kartik Patel and Gabriel Murillo, figured out how to hack in anyway.

Los Angeles union leaders had hoped the presence of two liberal Democrats in the race for mayor would produce a robust defense of the value of government, government employees and the positive effects public sector pay and benefits have on the broader economy. The realities of campaigning have largely precluded that, particularly in a city contending with persistent budget shortfalls and private-sector workers facing stagnant incomes, tax and fee increases, and a slow erosion of good-wage jobs.

Each girl went to the Department of Motor Vehicles in Redwood City hoping to walk away with a license. A trip to the DMV is such a teenage rite of passage -- like a first date or graduation -- that most teens think they know what to expect. But DMV tester Calvin Hoang Cat subjected 14 young test takers to the unexpected. Cat groped, fondled and hugged the girls while they were behind the wheel. Then he told many that they flunked.

The youthful head of a self-styled Alaska militia that collected firearms and grenades and talked of killing judges and government employees was sentenced Tuesday to more than 25 years in prison, despite his lawyer's claim that he suffered from paranoid delusions. Prosecutors had sought 35 years for  Schaeffer Cox , who had gained a following in far-right circles across the West with his message that the government had strayed from its constitutional authority. Secretly  he and his followers began accumulating weaponry and plotting retribution.  Tuesday's hearing in Anchorage marked a substantial turnaround for the 28-year-old former leader of the Alaska Peacemakers Militia, who spent his trial in May and June denying wrongdoing and accusing the government of putting his political beliefs on trial.

Palestinian government employees loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas stood in lines outside banks in Hamas-ruled Gaza to collect their first full salaries in 15 months. The salary payments were a boost to Abbas in his power struggle with Hamas, which took control of Gaza by force last month. Abbas has since fired the Hamas-led government and said civil servants who sided with the Islamic militants would not be receiving salaries.