Government Regulation

My 8-year-old recently got the lemonade stand itch. So we started laying plans to enrich her college fund by enticing passers-by with white chocolate-pistachio cookies and juice from organic lemons. Fortunately, our property backs onto one of the busiest paved urban trails in America, bustling on weekends with cyclists, rollerbladers and pedestrians. Visions of dollars danced in our heads. Googling for the perfect lemonade recipe, we soon found a site promoting a May 1 "national" event called Lemonade Day. This event, organizers say, is an "initiative designed to teach kids how to start, own and operate their own business — a lemonade stand.

Sensing a fresh threat to state and federal healthcare reforms, California insurance officials are seeking new limits on a controversial form of health coverage insurers are selling to small employers. At issue is a new type of self-insurance for small businesses with as few as 25 workers. Critics said insurers such as Cigna Corp. are using these new plans to game the system and cherry-pick companies with healthier workers. They said this could undermine a key goal of the federal Affordable Care Act to lower premiums by pooling together more healthy and sick Americans into insurance exchanges.

Concerned about hazards posed by underground electrical vaults, the Public Utilities Commission is moving toward tightening regulations for inspections of the storage units--some of which go unexamined for years. The proposal, under consideration at the time of a July 12 explosion that killed three Pasadena city employees, is expected to be adopted by the commission this fall. It mandates inspection schedules for the vaults and requires utilities to keep records of the inspections.

Move over salt. Step aside, saturated fat. There's a new public enemy in the pantry, and it's … sugar. In a provocative commentary coming out in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature, Dr. Robert Lustig  and two colleagues from UC San Francisco argue that the added sugars in processed foods and drinks are responsible for so many cases of chronic disease and premature deaths that their use ought to be regulated, just like alcohol and...

Four big banks are complaining to federal regulators that American Telephone & Telegraph Co. is illegally marketing a combined general credit card and phone calling card. The banks, in filings with the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve, said the phone giant is trying to act like a bank without being subject to banking laws. They added that AT&T is improperly offering discounted long-distance calling as an inducement to gain customers.

Sensing a fresh threat to state and federal healthcare reforms, California insurance officials are seeking new limits on a controversial form of health coverage insurers are selling to small employers. At issue is a new type of self-insurance for small businesses with as few as 25 workers. Critics said insurers such as Cigna Corp. are using these new plans to game the system and cherry-pick companies with healthier workers. They said this could undermine a key goal of the federal Affordable Care Act to lower premiums by pooling together more healthy and sick Americans into insurance exchanges.

Amid outcries from business groups and conservatives fearing the government might start poking around workers' homes, U.S. Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman on Wednesday withdrew a directive that employers are responsible for health and safety problems in home offices.

Brooke WILLIAMSON had worked her way up through the kitchens at Michael's and Boxer and she'd won considerable acclaim as the chef at Zax, and now -- at 25 -- she was a partner in her own restaurant, Amuse Cafe in Venice. Business was booming, the critics were raving, and every night the room had both the loud buzz of the hip "in" place and the reassuring warmth of the neighborhood hangout. Then, without warning, came The Call.

The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that it has warned the nation's six largest manufacturers of hearing aids to stop "misleading the public" about the effectiveness of their products or face regulatory action. In letters sent April 16, the agency told the companies that their advertising, promotion and labeling create "unrealistic expectations" about the performance of the devices. About 5.

Pasties and a G-string are no good to an Indian erotic dancer. With sari firmly tied, she just flashes some navel, or bares her back, to fire up a bar full of men into a money-throwing frenzy. Striptease is out of the question, table dancing an unimagined horror of Western promiscuity. Women who entertain men in India's nightclubs are supposed to do so more or less fully clothed, with a vague nod to an ancient art of suggestion.

A new proposal to toughen the Food and Drug Administration's power to regulate dietary supplements has the makers of vitamins, minerals and botanical extracts up in arms. But an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine says the drug-safety agency's proposed new powers do not go nearly far enough. To expand its current $28-billion-a-year market, the dietary supplements industry is widely devising and selling formulations that use "novel" products -- minerals, plants, or amino acids that appear newly promising, which have not circulated widely in the United States before, or which are offered in "mega-doses" much higher than have been customarily used in supplements.

The Obama administration has adopted tough new limits on mercury and other toxic emissions from power plants, winning praise from environmentalists and public health advocates but sparking warnings from industry groups that contend the new regulations are too expensive and will place dangerous pressure on the nation's electrical grid. The update to the Clean Air Act comes after a relentless 20-year battle in Washington. It marks the first time the Environmental Protection Agency has curbed power plant emissions of mercury, a known neurotoxin that can be profoundly harmful to children and pregnant women.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected Friday to approve a tough new rule to limit emissions of mercury, arsenic and other toxic substances from the country's power plants, according to people with knowledge of the new standard. Though mercury is a known neurotoxin that can be profoundly harmful to children and pregnant women, the air pollution rule has been more than 20 years in the making, repeatedly stymied because of objections from coal-burning utilities about the cost of installing pollution-control equipment.

AT&T Inc. is considering whether to throw in the towel on its attempt to buy T-Mobile USA for $39 billion, which would leave its smaller rival searching for another strategy to compete in the ever-tougher wireless world. AT&T, the Justice Department and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom were granted court approval Monday to halt all proceedings in the government's antitrust case against the acquisition for a month while the two wireless carriers figure out what to do next. AT&T said it and Deutsche Telekom would use the time "to evaluate all options," and both agreed with a court order to decide "whether they intend to proceed" with any transaction.

Government authorities are investigating whether MF Global Holdings Ltd., the trading firm that has filed for bankruptcy and is run by former U.S. Sen. and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, misused customer funds. Regulators said that the firm had not properly kept customer funds separated from the firm's own funds, raising concerns that the company may have placed big bets for its own benefit with customer money. The FBI is expected to investigate whether the firm's actions violated criminal laws, two people familiar with the situation told the Associated Press.

Bringing back ROTC Re "Campuses welcome back a '60s outcast," June 1 I was a member of the "outcast" Naval ROTC at Stanford. At the time I was opposed to the Vietnam War, and 30 years later, I was opposed to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. But I remain strongly supportive of ROTC programs. National defense is a public good, and ROTC programs enable more students to help bear the substantial personal and national cost of it. The United States faces a danger from terrorism for the foreseeable future, and we should provide more opportunities for all members of society to participate in the defense of our country.

Whether it is grilled squab at Spago or fettuccine Parmesan at Gennaro's, restaurant leftovers have a common fate around Los Angeles. " Lo buttiamo via, " explained a waiter quietly in Italian. "We throw it away." The homeless in a dozen cities across the nation, including Chicago, New York and Atlanta, dine nightly on scraps from the finest white-linen restaurants. At upscale Chez Panisse in Berkeley, ham carved into perfect rectangles becomes prosciutto.

Pacific Telesis Group said Thursday that it will pare 11,000 of its 69,000 jobs--16% of the work force--over the next five years to cut costs amid increased competition and new labor-saving technology. The company, the state's largest private employer, said the job cuts will come almost entirely from its Pacific Bell local telephone subsidiary.

My 8-year-old recently got the lemonade stand itch. So we started laying plans to enrich her college fund by enticing passers-by with white chocolate-pistachio cookies and juice from organic lemons. Fortunately, our property backs onto one of the busiest paved urban trails in America, bustling on weekends with cyclists, rollerbladers and pedestrians. Visions of dollars danced in our heads. Googling for the perfect lemonade recipe, we soon found a site promoting a May 1 "national" event called Lemonade Day. This event, organizers say, is an "initiative designed to teach kids how to start, own and operate their own business — a lemonade stand.

Republicans are so determined to block the Federal Communications Commission's proposed Net neutrality rules that they're pulling out a little-used law that gives Congress the chance to second-guess federal agencies before their regulations go into effect. The GOP's argument is that the Internet has thrived without government regulation, so there's no reason to start now. That's a fine sentiment, but the point of the rules is to protect the Net from being manipulated by the handful of giant phone and cable TV companies that dominate the market for home broadband services.