Government Reform

The longtime executive officer of the embattled California Board of Registered Nursing resigned Tuesday, ensuring almost entirely new leadership for the agency as it strives to revamp its oversight of hundreds of thousands of caregivers. But the sweeping reforms promised by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week face significant obstacles -- not the least of which are the governor's own budgetary gambits and his failure to fill key vacancies in his administration.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to create a task force that will oversee an overhaul of the planning department, after a major audit last month determined the department was in "critical condition." The 117-page review of the Planning and Development Services Department found that customer service was nearly nonexistent, and required safety and environmental inspections were not being performed.

Here's a way to start fixing the state Capitol. Maybe also repair some city halls and county courthouses. The bipartisan reform group California Forward has proposed a modest, reasonable and doable set of significant changes in how state and local governments operate. The package has something for everyone left and right of center, although it may not satisfy those on the extreme wings. There's no denying the problems: gridlock, perpetually late budgets, chronic deficits, IOUs, Sacramento raids on local coffers.

The top United Nations official in Afghanistan on Thursday issued an unusually pointed warning to President Hamid Karzai to enact major political reforms or risk losing the support of the international community. "There is a belief among some that the international commitment to Afghanistan will continue whatever happens because of the strategic importance of Afghanistan," Kai Eide, the U.N. special representative, said at a news conference. "I would like to emphasize that this is not correct.

Backers of an overhaul of California's government, who hope to leverage disgust with Sacramento into support for changing how the state raises taxes and spends money, have a difficult path ahead, according to a new poll of California voters. Major segments of the electorate see the state's problems as the product of unrestrained lawmakers driven by special interests to waste taxpayer money, and reject arguments that structural issues with the state's Constitution and government institutions are to blame.

Despite some progress, congressional investigators cast doubt on whether efforts by American International Group Inc. to restructure its operations and pay back the government will ever prove successful. Still, the company's shares jumped $8.49, or 21%, to $48.40 after the head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said that panel would examine a plan to reduce the AIG bailout package. The Federal Reserve and Treasury Department have provided $182.3 billion to AIG.

Cubans waited hours in line for tickets, packed Havana's cinemas and watched with rapt attention as "The Lives of Others," a chilling account of East German secret-police repression of communism's doubters, arrived in the Cuban capital last month. Was the debut of the Academy Award-winning film two years after its release another signal that Cuba's Communist leaders are open to reform?

The CIA's internal investigative branch will be subjected to a series of new checks and controls designed to give targets of in-house probes greater ability to defend themselves, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in a statement to the agency's employees. Among the changes is the creation of two positions to oversee the work of the CIA's inspector general, including a "quality control officer" charged with monitoring the inspector's handling of evidence and testimony.

Key partners in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's government may seek the ouster of the Shiite Muslim leader if he fails to move quickly on stalled benchmark reforms and on sharing in decision making.

Government and opposition negotiators agreed Friday to work toward a raft of electoral and constitutional reforms, but remained bitterly divided over how Kenya's presidential rivals might settle their differences and share power in a coalition. Former U.N.