Immunity

It was evidently good enough for Gilligan and Robinson Crusoe. But is coconut water a healthy choice for people who aren't stranded on a deserted island? A longstanding treat in tropical regions across the globe, coconut water hit U.S. supermarkets a few years back and is now being marketed with a vengeance. Sometimes billed as nature's sports drink, the slightly sour beverage has also acquired a reputation for being able to improve circulation, slow aging, fight viruses, boost immunity, and reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke.

Invoking his right against self-incrimination, the former finance director of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum declined to testify before a grand jury about alleged corruption at the stadium, then answered questions after a judge granted him limited immunity, transcripts of the proceedings show. Ronald Lederkramer, once the Coliseum's No. 2 executive, left the Coliseum late last year after The Times reported that he used his personal credit card to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars in stadium equipment to pocket valuable reward points.

Measles are making a comeback. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says travelers to countries with large recent outbreaks, including France, Britain, Spain, Switzerland, India and areas of Africa and Asia, have returned to the U.S. and brought cases of the highly contagious disease with them. "Every traveler needs to make sure they are immune to measles," Dr. Phyllis Kozarsky, a consultant for the CDC's division of global migration and quarantine, said in an interview.

In 1992, the acquittal of four police officers accused of beating Rodney King was the match that ignited a city, setting off a wave of violence that left 53 dead, thousands injured and hundreds of businesses destroyed. There was a lot of accumulated tinder to burn. Los Angeles was struggling with a faltering and de-industrialized economy that left too many without good jobs, a wave of demographic transition that caused ethnic and generational tensions, and a widening gap between rich and poor that was just beginning to emerge into public view - a bit like the U.S. today.

Torture victims won a victory Tuesday when the Supreme Court ruled that federal law does not automatically protect ex-officials of foreign governments from lawsuits over the abuse. In a 9-0 ruling, the high court rejected a claim of immunity from former Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Samantar. Although the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 shields other countries from being sued in American courts, it does not protect former officials of those states, the justices said.

The Israeli Parliament on Tuesday stripped former Interior Minister Arye Deri of his immunity to criminal prosecution, clearing the way for formal charges of fraud and misuse of public funds to be brought against him. The vote was 65 to 9 with one abstention. Deri resigned from the Cabinet last month but kept his seat in Parliament. His ultra-Orthodox Shas party has all but formally dropped out of the ruling coalition.

Re "First job: FISA," editorial, March 30 Your editorial is misguided. Ignoring a lawless administration that has been illegally wiretapping U.S. citizens since well before 9/11, you urge Congress to give the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt. Apparently, your editorial board has learned nothing from the past seven years -- an illegal war based on lies, torture conducted in our name, politicization of the Justice Department and incompetence exhibited elsewhere. You urge Congress to bend to the administration's will and grant the telecoms immunity, and blandly assure us that a congressional investigation will shed light on seven years of lawbreaking.

The lower house of Russia's parliament substantially weakened a Kremlin bill that would grant former presidents sweeping immunity from prosecution, in a move that could bring legal problems for Boris N. Yeltsin. Under the new version, a former president can be prosecuted if parliament first agrees to strip immunity. Immediately after Yeltsin resigned Dec. 31, 1999, his successor, Vladimir V. Putin, signed a decree guaranteeing immunity for former presidents.

David Berst, director of enforcement for the National Collegiate Athletic Assn., took issue Thursday with statements made by Ron Watson, assistant athletic director at Oklahoma. Watson criticized the NCAA for giving Oklahoma State wide receiver Hart Lee Dykes immunity in exchange for information implicating four schools in recruiting violations. "If you want to find out what really happened, you have to have limited immunity," Berst told the Tulsa Tribune.

A nationwide settlement on foreclosure practices has ended one headache for the banks involved, but there are signs that it is only the beginning of many others. The agreement between 49 states and five large banks gives the financial giants immunity from future complaints about some aspects of their foreclosure practices. The banks had previously made changes to improve the way they foreclose on homeowners and had put aside most of the funds necessary to pay for the $25-billion settlement.

People buy target-date mutual funds to avoid unpleasant surprises. But older investors in these retirement-oriented funds — and more broadly, any investors who hold fixed-income securities — could be in for an unexpected jolt if interest rates rise sharply, as they threatened to do in the first quarter. Interest rates fell to generational lows in recent years as the economy struggled in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. But with the economy gathering steam lately, many investment professionals say rates are much likelier to rise than fall.

For more than a year, Russia has prohibited its government-run museums from sending artworks to exhibitions in the United States. The ban has frustrated and puzzled American museum officials, because it was spurred by a legal decision unrelated to anything the museums themselves have done. Diplomacy has failed to lift it. Hopes have risen recently that the impasse can be broken by a bipartisan bill that passed unopposed in the U.S. House of Representativeson March 19 and is pending in the Senate judiciary committee.

Blocking "don't destroy me" signals that normally sit on the surface of tumor cells and render them resistant to immune-cell attack slows the growth of a broad range of human cancers when they're implanted in mice, researchers have found. The approach, reported by immunologists at the Stanford University School of Medicine, was effective against ovarian, breast, colon, bladder, liver, prostate and brain cancer cells. If the work can be repeated in people, the approach may someday help doctors marshal defender cells in patients' own bodies to fight cancers, the researchers said.

A nationwide settlement on foreclosure practices has ended one headache for the banks involved, but there are signs that it is only the beginning of many others. The agreement between 49 states and five large banks gives the financial giants immunity from future complaints about some aspects of their foreclosure practices. The banks had previously made changes to improve the way they foreclose on homeowners and had put aside most of the funds necessary to pay for the $25-billion settlement.

A former Marine testified Tuesday that he and other Marines were justified in breaking into a home in Iraq and killing everyone inside after their squad leader told them the house was to be treated as "hostile. " Stephen Tatum, testifying under immunity, said that after their superior, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, labeled the home "hostile," there was no need to ask questions to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants before killing those inside with M-16 fire and grenades.

Brody Kennedy was a typical sixth-grader who loved to hang out with friends in Castaic and play video games. A strep-throat infection in October caused him to miss a couple of days of school, but he was eager to rejoin his classmates, recalls his mother, Tracy. Then, a week after Brody became ill, he awoke one morning to find his world was no longer safe. Paranoid about germs and obsessed with cleanliness, he refused to touch things and showered several times a day. His fear prevented him from attending school, and he insisted on wearing nothing but a sheet or demanding that his mother microwave his clothes or heat them in the dryer before dressing.

The House and Senate panels investigating the Iran- contra scandal voted Thursday to offer limited immunity to three lesser figures in the operation whose testimony could shed light on details the investigators have been unable to obtain. The three are Fawn Hall, former secretary to fired White House aide Oliver L.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has agreed to an internationally negotiated plan to step down within 30 days in exchange for criminal immunity for his deadly crackdown on protests that have tipped the nation perilously close to civil war, Yemeni officials and opposition leaders said Saturday. But the canny Saleh has broken many promises, and the latest concession could be another maneuver by a leader who has remained defiant amid massive street demonstrations and the defections of top military and government officials.

After months of unrest that have brought his country to the edge of civil war, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh signed an agreement in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to hand power to his vice president in a deal that leaves him immune from prosecution in the deaths of scores of protesters. The agreement reached with the opposition and backed by the U.S. and Persian Gulf nations allows Saleh to retain the title of president for three months while early elections are scheduled. A clever politician who has ruled for 33 years, Saleh has broken similar promises before and it remains to be seen whether he will finesse a loophole to stay in charge.

Irom Sharmila's mother has a simple dream: sitting down to a meal with her daughter. Irom hasn't willingly ingested food or water for 11 years, in protest of a law granting legal immunity to the armed forces for human rights abuses. As the anniversary of her hunger strike nears, her mother imagines what might be. "I'm still waiting for her to come home," said Shakhi Devi, 78, holding an album of her daughter's photos. She rarely visits the 39-year-old, the world's longest-serving hunger striker, because it's too painful.