Government Officials

The Democratic Republic of Congo has been repeatedly ravaged by war, rebellion and attacks on civilians in the last two decades. Though the country is rarely without some skirmish going on somewhere - a result of a complicated history of rivalries among ethnic groups and constant conflicts over land ownership and resources - the government made a strategic move toward peace several years ago. It signed a treaty on March 23, 2009, with a rebel group...

The city of Los Angeles should continue negotiating with government officials from the Inland Empire to determine if there is a way to transfer control of L.A./Ontario International Airport to them, a new report recommended Friday. The report by Miguel Santana, the chief administrative officer for Los Angeles, also concluded that a December 2011 proposal by Ontario municipal officials to take over the struggling airport should be declined. Researchers said that the deal could result in the illegal diversion of $50 million in airport revenue to the city, instead of Los Angeles World Airports, which operates Ontario, Los Angeles International Airport and Van Nuys Airport.

One after another, people stepped before the Costa Mesa City Council to decry the blight and lawlessness on tiny Ford Road -- prostitutes, thieves, home invaders. What the city needs, they pleaded, is more cops. Councilman Jim Righeimer, a GOP activist and an architect of the city's controversial plan to radically slash its workforce, perceived the parade of concerned citizens as the pawns of a police union and its law firm, with its statewide reputation for bare-knuckle tactics.

JERUSALEM - Under pressure from the United Nations and human rights groups, Israel agreed Thursday to allow into the country three Eritrean refugees from a group of more than 20 that had been stranded for a week along a new newly built border fence with Egypt in the Sinai desert. Israeli officials said they would take in only two women and a teenager for humanitarian reasons and that the rest of the group would be removed from the fence area and taken to Cairo by Egyptian authorities.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi surprised the nation Tuesday by naming an obscure bureaucrat as his new prime minister to form a government that probably will be held in check by military leaders during an unsteady transition to democracy. The appointment of Hesham Kandil, water minister in the outgoing military-appointed Cabinet, kept with Morsi's vow that his prime minister would not come from the Muslim Brotherhood's political party. Morsi, who ran as a Brotherhood candidate, is under pressure from secularists and Christians not to choose a government dominated by Islamists.

Two former executives of an Orange County company pleaded guilty to foreign corruption charges for bribing overseas government officials in order to win sales contracts. Stuart Carson, former president of Control Components Inc., and Hong "Rose" Carson, the Rancho Santa Margarita company's former director of sales in China and Taiwan, are scheduled to be sentenced in October. The Carsons, who are married and live in San Clemente, pleaded guilty to bribery charges Monday during a hearing in Santa Ana before U.S. District Judge James V. Selna.

This place used to sell itself. The sun-kissed coastline, the glassy waves and the tens of millions of visitors who descended onto the spacious sand like clockwork. They were the magical ingredients that beach cities in California could bank on to bring in a steady stream of corporate dollars. For exclusive rights to put company logos on lifeguard towers, trash cans, warning signs, vending machines and volleyball nets up and down the Los Angeles County coast, the bidding would start at $700,000.

What is the status of medical marijuana in California? May people possess it, use it, distribute it, sell it? Those ought to be easy enough questions to answer, but because of state and local fumbling on the issue, they're not. And now, after last week's announcement by federal authorities of a crackdown on dispensaries, the answers may be harder than ever to nail down. So complicated are the legal and enforcement issues surrounding medical marijuana that the attempt by California's four U.S. attorneys to bring some clarity — just like earlier attempts by federal Justice Department officials — actually makes things murkier.

Dismayed by one City Council member's repeated whistle-blowing about the embattled city, Montebello City Council members are slated Wednesday to discuss rules on how council members communicate and use city letterhead. The move comes after some city officials expressed outrage that Councilwoman Christina Cortez used city letterhead to ask the Los Angeles County district attorney and the state controller to investigate the city. One rule would call for council members to provide for the printed agenda "a brief general description" of what they plan to discuss during public comments, "expressed in complete sentences.

Only in hindsight does earthquake prediction work with real accuracy. Seismologists can assess long-term risks and likely scenarios, but they'd be the last ones to say they can foretell the time, date and epicenter of the next Big One. Yet in Italy, a trial is underway for a group of seismologists and a government official accused of manslaughter for being overly reassuring about underground rumblings that preceded a killer quake in 2009. The charges they face for doing their job aren't just ludicrous but potentially damaging to scientists worldwide.