Imports

Obsession of the moment: Hasami porcelain plates and bowls released in a new matte black finish by the Japanese design importer TGS, or Tortoise General Store, in Venice. The Hasami porcelain is beautiful in its spare simplicity and smart function. The pieces nest nicely for storage. Optional oak lids pair well with the stone bowls and can be used separately as serving trays. TGS co-owner Keiko Shinomoto says  the collection has a nice back story too: It's part of a project in the southern Japanese town of Hasami, where a pottery tradition that dates to 1599 is ailing because of -- can you guess?

“The Great Gatsby's” leading man, Leonardo DiCaprio, is using his current screen sway for environmental good -- again. Together with Christie's next week, DiCaprio will co-host “the most important environmental charity ever staged,” the auction house's Brett Gorvy said in a statement. The 11th Hour charity auction, to be held in New York Monday evening, will benefit environmental and wildlife conservation efforts supported by the now 15-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

The U.S. temporarily halted shipments of imported orange juice from all countries and said it would destroy or ban products containing even low levels of a banned fungicide. The imports will be held while they're tested and may be sold if levels are below trace amounts, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday. The fungicide, linked in studies to a higher risk of liver tumors in animals, was found in trace amounts last month in products from Brazil, which produces almost 1 in 6 glasses of orange juice consumed in the U.S., according to CitrusBR, an export industry association.

I remember life before the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. I grew up in Altadena and Pasadena during the late 1930s and '40s. All too often I awoke to thick smog and air quality warnings. I watched as segments of the San Gabriel Valley shifted from orange groves to miles upon miles of housing, and communities were cut in half by an ever-expanding network of freeways. By 1970, Gov. Ronald Reagan and a Republican-led Legislature realized that something had to be done.

First it was reliability. Now it is basic looks and appeal. For the first time since 1997, domestic auto brands have collectively surpassed imports in vehicle appeal, said J.D. Power and Associates, the Westlake Village auto research company. Fancy luxury autos from overseas still have an edge, but among mass-market vehicles, the domestic automakers are the top dogs, the research firm said Thursday in its annual Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout, or APEAL, study.

In another sign of how deep the global recession has become, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on Friday reported their worst combined import statistics for September in nine years. September is often the busiest month at the nation's biggest port complex, making it one of the best barometers of the health of the economy and international trade. The port of Los Angeles received 309,078 containers packed with imported goods in September, representing a decline of 16% from the same month last year and 27% from September 2006, L.A.'s best month ever for imports.

Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea, the world's largest maker of liquid-crystal display televisions, may be barred from selling TVs and computer monitors in the U.S. after losing a patent case filed by Japanese rival Sharp Corp. The U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington said Wednesday that Samsung violated Sharp's patent rights and ordered both sides to submit arguments on whether an import ban should be imposed. In a notice on its website, the agency said it wanted to consider the effect of a ban on "competitive conditions in the U.S. economy."

Thank you for your news item about Trader Joe's halting some Chinese imports ("Grocer curtails China imports," Feb. 12). I'm sorry to see that the other food retailers mentioned in Jerry Hirsch's story -- Whole Foods, Fresh & Easy -- are not reviewing their import policies. Not only are there serious safety concerns about the food itself, and the working standards under which that food is produced, but the idea of shipping garlic and spinach across the Pacific Ocean is absurd. It's no wonder that U.S. farmers are disappearing as we become increasingly dependent on food that is grown elsewhere.

I take issue with the view of James Flanigan in connection with the current steel import debate ["Steel's Protest on Imports Warns of Dangers to All," Nov. 8]. Imports have not been a threat to American steel mills. For the last several years, steel users and steel producers alike depended on high-level tonnage of imports to maintain manufacturing efficiency. Steel consumption hit a new record in 1997 after a record 1996. The first half of 1998 was also an all-time high. The U.S. steel mills couldn't fill the widened gap between demand and supply despite operating at record levels.

Japan's trade minister urged more than 300 major companies today to boost imports this year by at least as much as they did last year, but industry officials expressed skepticism that the plea would have much effect. "Increases in Japan's product imports are urgently needed to reduce (Japan's) huge trade surplus," Seiroku Kajiyama told officials summoned from 162 of the 313 companies. He asked the executives to increase imports by more than 30%, rather than the 14.9% projected.

There's unanimity within the Lakers. Kobe Bryant and General Manager Mitch Kupchak both want Dwight Howard to return. There's also a problem within the Lakers: Howard isn't so sure. He declined to reveal which way he was leaning after his one-year run with the Lakers. "I'm going to take my time, get away from the game, my phones and everything and just clear my head," Howard said Tuesday in an end-of-season interview at the team's practice facility. "I'll do what's going to be best for myself, what's going to make me happy.

Richard Curtis is indisputably one of the good ones. A British screenwriter who helped give the world the comic genius of "Black Adder" and delivered a string of smart rom-com hits including "Four Weddings and a Funeral," "Bridget Jones's Diary" and "Love Actually" while writing for television shows as varied as "Mr. Bean," "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" and "Dr. Who," Curtis is also a founding member of Comic Relief, which, since 1985, has...

WASHINGTON - President Obama announced the end of “an important chapter” late Friday night in the Boston Marathon bombing with the arrest of a fugitive suspect. But Obama said the search is just beginning to find out why the attack was launched and who may have been involved.  “The families of those killed so senselessly deserve answers,” he said, explicitly classifying the alleged perpetrators of the crime as “terrorists.” Whatever “hateful agenda” propelled the attackers, Obama said, it “cannot prevail.” “They have already failed,” he said, because  Americans refused to be terrified and intimidated.

When it comes to trendsetters, Thomas Hudnut will go down in history as the high school educator who proved students could excel in academics and athletics at the same time. As the headmaster when Studio City Harvard High School merged with the Westlake School for Girls in 1989 to become Harvard-Westlake, he decided to launch an all-out effort "to be as much like Stanford as we possibly could. " Sports was used to gain exposure and inspire a whole different element of students to consider Harvard-Westlake, known for its academic excellence.

In "The Walking," a simple and pure young man circles half the world, on foot, by ship and plane, to a place he's longed to see. As a boy growing up in Iranian Kurdistan, Saladin lost himself in the dreamy vision of California he's seen in the movies. After the new, hard-line Islamic regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini comes to power in Iran in 1979, he imagines Los Angeles as a place of refuge. "As long as he could remember, it had forever been America and always California, not the Texas of the cowboy movies or the glass canyons of New York, but Los Angeles, and eventually, of course, Hollywood.

Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck says the public plays an important role in security and that "your safety is your responsibility as well as mine. " His blunt words came in response to Monday's bomb attack in Boston, saying there is only so much police can do. "In the city of Los Angeles this raises extreme concern. Obviously we are a city that loves its crowds, loves its sporting events, and the Los Angeles Police Department will take every effort to make those safe," Beck said.

South Korea said Saturday that it would resume imports of U.S. beef after an agreement banning meat from older cattle, an attempt to allay health concerns that have led to weeks of demonstrations against the nation's new president. Protest leaders said the plan didn't go far enough and held another of their daily candlelight rallies. Procedures to put the new import agreement into effect were to start Monday, Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon said, but it was not clear when American beef would reach South Korean markets.

After years of buying more and more from overseas, Americans appear to be losing some of their ardor for imported products, a shift with far-reaching implications for U.S. industry if it endures, analysts said Tuesday. "What we're seeing is a flattening out of import growth. There's no question about that," Kathleen B. Cooper, chief economist at Security Pacific National Bank in Los Angeles, said after the Commerce Department released its trade deficit report for April.

Imports to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach fell in March, partly because of the Lunar New Year holiday, which slows production -- and exports -- in many Asian countries.  The Port of Los Angeles reported Monday that March imports fell 28.7% from the same month last year, dropping to 231,396 containers. Exports also dropped in March from a year earlier. The port handled 154,428 outgoing containers last month -- a 17.9% drop. Combined, overall container volume dropped nearly 23% in March compared with a year earlier.