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SACRAMENTO - Facing a possible two-day strike next week by patient care and technical workers, the five large University of California medical centers are starting to cancel elective surgeries that had been scheduled as soon as Monday, officials said. Emergency care will not be shut and patients already in the five hospitals across the state will continue to receive care. But many elective procedures will delayed until after the potential strike, set for Tuesday and Wednesday, according to John Stobo, UC's senior vice president for health sciences and services.

Just weeks before the national political conventions get underway, a crucial figure has yet to commit to the presidential race. Jason Sudeikis, who plays "Saturday Night Live's" Mitt Romney as a cheerfully button-down, out-of-touch, Ward Cleaver-like figure, said he has not yet decided whether to return to the sketch show when it resumes this fall. After nine years at "SNL" - the last few as the show's most valuable straight man - Sudeikis has been spending recent months focusing on his movie career.

At first, the murder seemed to have all the markings of an attempted carjacking. When Los Angeles police officers reached the scene on the dark Boyle Heights street July 26, they found affluent software designer Bruce Cleland lying in a pool of blood across the street from his new black 4Runner. His distraught wife, Rebecca, said she had been knocked unconscious when she got out of the vehicle to check the tailgate and awoke to the gruesome sight.

In announcing his wrongheaded proposal to increase the minimum wage to $9 an hour, President Obama spoke in lofty terms: "In the wealthiest nation on Earth," he said in his State of the Union address last month, "no one who works full time should have to live in poverty. " If the debate proceeds as it has -- many times -- in the past, then most Democrats will embrace the president's message and back the proposal, while most Republicans will oppose it, on the grounds that higher labor costs will lead to higher unemployment.

James Newman Hood sits in a quaint, ornate courtroom, rocking slowly in his wooden chair, as lawyers and witnesses chart his descent from the golden existence and happy family life he once knew to the prospect of financial ruin and a life behind bars.

A new national survey of nonprofit executives suggests it isn't just the uncertain economy that's making it hard for charities - including arts and culture groups - to meet their fundraising goals. The research says there's something fundamentally amiss with the way many of them go about courting donors. “This study reveals that many nonprofit organizations are stuck in a vicious cycle that threatens their ability to raise the resources they need to succeed,” begins the 36-page report commissioned by the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund and conducted by CompassPoint, a San Francisco-based organization that provides management advice to nonprofits.

Walt Disney Co.'s planned Grand Central Creative Campus in Glendale will eventually employ 10,000 workers and include 3.6 million square feet of offices, sound stages and studio production facilities, according to interviews and documents filed with the city of Glendale. In announcing the development in September, Walt Disney Imagineering executives declined to disclose the project size, the number of employees or the dollar value.

Swiss luxury watch brand Hublot, which signed on as the Lakers "official timekeeper" in January, took the  relationship a step further this week, announcing Kobe Bryant as its newest brand ambassador on Wednesday and unveiled a limited-edition timepiece called the King Power Black Mamba. The official announcement was made by Hublot Chief Executive Ricardo Guadalupe at a rooftop news  conference at the London Hotel in West Hollywood and was followed by a celebrity-studded dinner co-hosted by GQ magazine that included Bryant and wife Vanessa, Jimmy Kimmel, Zac Efron, Jesse Williams, Garcelle Beauvais, Brad Goreski and Christos Garkinos.

Although FedEx Corp. was built on a cargo airline, its trucking business is now a big-time moneymaker and a tough competitor for its chief rival, United Parcel Service Inc. But the shipping giant's trucking division, FedEx Ground Package System Inc., is embroiled in a growing labor fight that could raise operating costs by millions and lead to an overhaul of its workforce.

Google Inc., the ever-expanding Internet search giant, is establishing a beachhead in Venice. In a rare bright spot for the region's sluggish economy, Google is leasing more than 100,000 square feet of office space in three buildings, including the famed Binoculars Building designed by Frank Gehry. Sitting in front of the building is a huge binocular sculpture created by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, perhaps befitting of the company's search theme. The move is part of a major expansion by Google in Southern California and could set up a new center of operation in the region.