Government Reform

The sinister steel door in Lubyanka prison still has bars over the shoulder-high slot where KGB guards once spoke to political prisoners like Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. But today it leads nowhere. It is sealed shut, and the famous prison inside the KGB's Lubyanka headquarters has been converted to a staff cafeteria and bookkeeping department. The KGB stopped interrogating prisoners there when dictator Josef Stalin died in 1953, the secret police agency said Friday.

A congressional committee has launched a wide-ranging examination of the California high-speed rail project, including possible conflicts of interest and how the agency overseeing it plans to spend billions of dollars in federal assistance. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), notified the California High-Speed Authority about the review Monday and ordered the agency to preserve its documents and records of past communications.

A government-appointed commission in Pakistan called Tuesday for the abolition of strict Islamic laws, which rights activists say discriminate against women. The Islamic Hudud Ordinances were passed in 1979 under the dictatorship of Gen. Zia ul-Haq and cover a range of crimes. One of the most controversial provisions states that a woman must have four male witnesses to prove rape or face a charge of adultery herself. Men and women found guilty of adultery face stoning or 100 lashes.

The cigarette smoke hovers dense inside the neighborhood cafe. Young patrons knock back beers at greasy wooden tables. A heated debate rages about Syria's revolt. The rotund bar owner labels the rebels baltajiya , or bandits, who are ravaging towns and villages. Demonstrators want only change and freedom, replies a young man in a hooded sweat shirt. Others wrangle over the president and the uncertain future. It is a striking scene for a tightly controlled police state.

Seven top officials in Cuba's Interior Ministry have resigned or been fired, the government announced Friday, one day after the execution of four military officers, thus providing the latest twist in the nation's highly publicized drug-smuggling and corruption scandal.

The fear of Dimo Bodurov is the problem of Bulgaria and Eastern Europe itself as the region attempts to revive democracy. A petty entrepreneur in this small factory town, Bodurov in many ways is a man to be admired. He runs the local market and is an active member of the Ekoglasnost opposition group, one of many budding organizations that will challenge the ruling Communist Party as early as next May in Bulgaria's first free elections since 1946.

State and local government must find new ways of doing business or risk ruin, state Controller Kathleen Connell warned a group of San Fernando Valley business leaders Friday. Addressing a meeting of the board of directors of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. at the newly reopened Northridge Fashion Center, Connell said the state's precarious fiscal condition should compel government and the private sector to cut waste and create jobs.

Like many of her neighbors, Garden Grove resident Barbara Anderson says she's fed up with city and county government and proclaims wholehearted support for the concept of the year: restructuring. But mention one downsizing proposal under consideration--disbanding her city's Fire Department in favor of contract service from the county fire authority--and Anderson's zeal wanes. "I think we have a good Fire Department. I don't see the purpose of messing with it," she said warily.

A reformist government forged from a political deal to overturn Romania's post-Communist legacy took office after parliament backed its pledges to speed up market-oriented change. "This is another kind of government, capable and willing to change Romania's fate," Prime Minister Victor Ciorbea said after taking the oath of office.

President Alvaro Uribe suffered a surprising double blow in two days of balloting that ended Sunday as Colombian voters rejected most elements of a government reform package he had promoted and chose one of his political enemies as mayor of the nation's capital. Uribe, America's closest political ally in South America, had made the package of 15 constitutional reforms the centerpiece of his agenda, introducing it to Congress the day he took office last year.

President Obama this morning will ask Congress to give him authority to significantly shrink the federal government by merging six agencies dealing with trade and commerce, a senior administration official said. Obama is seeking power to propose a sweeping consolidation of agencies with overlapping duties with an eye toward saving money and improving performance, the official said. The president is asking Congress to grant him authority held by no president since Ronald Reagan.

A septuagenarian anticorruption activist ended a 13-day hunger strike Sunday with a glass of coconut water after India's Parliament bowed to his demands, agreeing to create a powerful, independent lokpal , or ombudsman, with authority to go after high-level corruption. Whether or not the new agency has teeth or ultimately does much to stem endemic corruption remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that activist Anna Hazare ("Anna" is an honorific title meaning elder brother)

Thousands of people took to the streets in the southern city of Dara, chanting "Syria, Freedom," a day after a deadly crackdown on protests there, human rights activists said. The demonstrations Thursday occurred at the funerals for some of those killed when government forces opened fire on protesters the previous day. Initial reports put the death toll at 15, but Reuters news agency, citing a hospital source, said more than 25 people were killed. Video on YouTube purporting to show the assault included images of streets littered with bodies, some shot in the head.

Mohamed Albuflasa was different from everyone else taking the stage on the second day of Bahrain's protests. He was a Sunni Muslim. The 34-year-old Salafist favored government reform, and he believed he should speak at the rally to promote unity among the country's Shiite Muslim majority and Sunnis at Manama's Pearl Square. Within hours, a security agency had detained him, and he has not been seen since. Even as hundreds of political prisoners were freed this week by King Hamed ibn Isa Khalifa, Albuflasa remains jailed and his whereabouts a mystery.

Rep. Darrell Issa, the California congressman who has promised to closely scrutinize the Obama administration, will become chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the new GOP-controlled House of Representatives in January, it was announced on Wednesday. The appointment had been expected. Issa (R-Vista) is the ranking minority member of the committee in the current Congress. As chairman, Issa will be the leading voice in choosing what to investigate. A frequent Republican critic in the current Congress, Issa has said he wanted to seek new subpoena powers for dozens of federal agency watchdogs as part of a campaign to downsize government spending.

Egypt has been governed for 29 years by President Hosni Mubarak, and a state of emergency limiting civil liberties has been in effect for that entire time. The most popular opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, is banned and its candidates must run as independents. Egyptian political analysts expect that the government will manipulate this fall's parliamentary elections, as it has in the past, to guarantee the ruling National Democratic Party another sweeping majority. Against this backdrop, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei has called for a boycott of the elections unless electoral reforms are implemented first.

It's difficult to nail down the last time this antique city was considered cutting edge. Was it the 1850s, when a coffeehouse owner created the Sazerac cocktail? Or perhaps the 1940s, when a teenager named J.M. Lapeyre invented the automatic shrimp peeler? Whatever the answer, New Orleans was not defined by its spirit of innovation in the decades preceding Hurricane Katrina.

Has Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton lost just his voice in New York--or also part of his message? That's what some advocates of government reform--including several in the orbit of Clinton's Democratic presidential campaign--say they are wondering after listening to his discussion of urban issues here.

Thai security forces fired into a crowd of anti-government protesters on the outskirts of Bangkok on Wednesday in a bid to keep demonstrators contained in the capital. A soldier was killed and at least 18 protesters injured in the melee, the government's Erawan emergency center reported. It was not immediately clear whether the troops were using live ammunition, rubber bullets or both, and there was some speculation that the soldier was accidentally shot by security forces. The showdown, the third time protests have turned deadly in the last three weeks, occurred along a major street connecting the capital with its northern suburbs as the Bangkok demonstrators, known as "Red Shirts," tried to take their protest on the road in a convoy of vehicles.

I'd never dreamed anything could be more shocking than looking at my credit card balance, but that was before I opened this month's statement. There, staring me in the face, was a message informing me that if I paid the minimum balance each month, it would take 31 years to pay off the credit card. OK, the message wasn't staring; after all, it's just a message. But I swear I could hear it laughing. Think about it. Thirty-one years. That's longer than it takes to pay off a mortgage, longer than most marriages last, and almost as long as Geraldo Rivera has been annoying us on TV, though it feels much longer.