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Call it retirement anxiety, or maybe recession obsession. For all of their married life, Patrick Webster, 63, and Susie Martin, 54, have been extremely frugal. Webster and Martin, who both work at Marymount College in Rancho Palos Verdes, have been stashing away their combined income at an enviable rate - more than 25% - for retirement. Together they have more than $1 million in investments and no debt. But rather than feeling reasonably secure about their financial future, they dread a return of hard times.

As University of California patient care workers returned to the picket lines Wednesday, hospital administrators said they were gratified that so many others chose to come to work. More than three-quarters of union members who had been scheduled to work Tuesday did so, said Dianne Klein, spokeswoman for the UC office of the president. Hospital officials said they expected a similar turnout Wednesday. "The [union] leadership is engaged in this game of brinkmanship," Klein said.

Michele and Russell Poland's credit was shot, but they managed to buy their suburban dream home anyway. After a business bankruptcy and a home foreclosure, they turned to a rare option in this era of tightfisted banking - a subprime loan. The Polands paid nearly $10,000 in upfront fees for the privilege of securing a mortgage at 10.9% interest. And they had to raid their retirement account for a 35% down payment. Most borrowers would balk at such stiff terms. But with prices rising, the Polands wanted to snag a four-bedroom home in Temecula near top-rated schools for their 5-year-old son. By later this year, they figure, they'll be able to refinance into a standard loan.

Julie Su doesn't back down from fights when she thinks employers are cheating their workers. In her two years as California's top labor law enforcer, Su has taken on scores of unscrupulous businesses. As state labor commissioner, she inherited an understaffed state agency that she recalled was overwhelmed with complaints of worker abuse, unpaid overtime and management retaliation. "I set out to make the promise of a just day's pay for a hard day's work a reality in every workplace in California," Su said in a status report to Gov. Jerry Brown being released Wednesday.

Vietnam veteran John Otte did his best to forget the war. He got married, raised two sons and made a career working at credit unions. But as Otte neared retirement, memories of combat flooded back. Starting in 2005, he filed a series of claims with Veterans Affairs for disability compensation, contending that many of his health problems stemmed from the war. The VA agreed, and now the 65-year-old with two Purple Hearts receives $1,900 a month for post-traumatic stress disorder and diabetes - and for having shrapnel scars on his arms.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using the supplement nitric oxide? Richard Sunland Nitric oxide is a gas naturally found in the body; its function is conveying information between cells. One of its main jobs is increasing blood flow by dilating blood vessels, and that's why it's sometimes given in supplement form to heart patients, orally and intravenously. In at least one study it's been shown to be effective for lowering blood pressure.

WASHINGTON - President Obama said Friday he wanted to put more Americans to work by slashing the amount of time it takes to grant federal approval for big job-creating projects. But Obama's choice of venue for his remarks - a Baltimore company that makes mining and pumping equipment - provided fodder for Republicans. They noted that the company president had, just the day before, testified on Capitol Hill in support of the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration has delayed for years over environmental concerns.

In 1986, lawmakers decided the problem of illegal immigration had to be dealt with. More than 3 million people were living in the United States after crossing the border illegally or overstaying their visas. A new law signed by President Ronald Reagan gave legal status and a path to citizenship to most of those unauthorized residents - helping many secure a slice of the American dream but also giving fuel to critics who sought to turn "amnesty" into a pejorative. Less than 30 years later, the number of immigrants living in the country illegally is thought to have nearly quadrupled, and the freighted baggage of amnesty looms over new efforts to reform the nation's immigration laws.

A county that's home to 1.56 million poor people should probably do something about poverty, don't you think? According to the latest Census Bureau report, the number of people in L.A. County living below the poverty threshold of $10,956 for a single person or $21,954 for a family of four rose dramatically between 2008 and 2009. And if a million and a half people living in dire poverty isn't bad enough, consider also the hundreds of thousands of employed L.A. residents who are barely getting by. The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE)

The U.S. foreign-born population has risen to its highest level since 1920, with 13% of all those living in the nation in 2010 having been born elsewhere, a new report from the Census Bureau shows. Forty million of those residing in the U.S. in 2010 were born in other countries, up from 31 million, or 11% of the total, a decade earlier. The foreign-born share of the population dropped between 1920 and 1970, hitting a low of 4.7% in 1970, before rising again for several decades. But that growth has slowed in recent years as immigration has dropped, census officials said Thursday.

Last week, I visited a South Los Angeles woman whose story should embarrass us. It's a story that's not uncommon, and deserves the full attention of the next mayor of the city. Alicia, whose full name I'm withholding because she's afraid her boss would fire her, is a maid who started working for a major hotel chain in Hollywood about three years ago. Her hourly pay is $8.65, and her last raise was 5 cents an hour. I kid you not. They threw her an extra nickel. Toward the end of the mayoral campaign, local labor leaders tried to win support for candidate Wendy Greuel by suggesting that she would raise the minimum wage in Los Angeles to $15 an hour.

MILWAUKEE - Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti was evasive when asked Monday about Don Mattingly's job status, refusing to say whether the last-place team could fire its manager this week. Against this backdrop of uncertainty, Clayton Kershaw pitched his second complete game of the season, a 107-pitch masterpiece in a 3-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park that ended the Dodgers' three-game losing streak. "Every time I get in trouble, Kersh saves me for one more day," Mattingly said jokingly.

WASHINGTON - President Obama said Friday he wanted to put more Americans to work by slashing the amount of time it takes to grant federal approval for big job-creating projects. But Obama's choice of venue for his remarks - a Baltimore company that makes mining and pumping equipment - provided fodder for Republicans. They noted that the company president had, just the day before, testified on Capitol Hill in support of the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration has delayed for years over environmental concerns.

Arte Moreno has placed blame for the team's brutal 2013 start, its failure to make the playoffs for three straight years and several high-priced moves that have paid minimal dividends on the one person the Angels owner can't fire: Himself. "If you're going to blame anyone, you've got to blame me," Moreno told FoxSports.com on Wednesday in New York, where he is attending the owners' meetings. "I'm the one at the end of the day that has the final call. " Moreno orchestrated the signing of first baseman Albert Pujols to a 10-year, $240-million deal before 2012.

CHARIKAR, Afghanistan - Abdul Shakour was working the night shift at Bagram air base repairing American vehicles when he was called to an emergency meeting. The news was bad: Shakour and 22 other Afghan mechanics were being laid off. After seven years at Bagram, Shakour was unceremoniously shown the door last month. He was told to return the next day to turn in his security badge and collect his final paycheck. "There aren't as many vehicles to fix and not as many soldiers around, so they don't need us anymore," Shakour said outside the base, speaking with a thick accent the English he had learned from American civilians and troops.

In a Hollywood auditorium, James L. Tolbert tried to induce a room packed with broadcasting and advertising executives to essentially join the civil rights movement in 1963 by pointing out the obvious. "We Negroes watch 'Bonanza' and buy Chevrolets. We watch 'Disney' on RCA sets," proclaimed Tolbert, an entertainment attorney who was speaking to the 125 invited guests in his role as president of the NAACP's Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch. "We buy all the advertised products, the same as you do. " Delivered weeks before the March on Washington, the speech pointed out the absence of African Americans on both sides of the camera.

Bucking longstanding patterns in the United States, more poor people now live in the nation's suburbs than in urban areas, according to a new analysis. As poverty mounted throughout the nation over the past decade, the number of poor people living in suburbs surged 67% between 2000 and 2011 -- a much bigger jump than in cities, researchers for the Brookings Institution said in a book published today. Suburbs still have a smaller percentage of their population living in poverty than cities do, but the sheer number of poor people scattered in the suburbs has jumped beyond that of cities.

A hiring surge led by California's hallmark industries ? high tech, movies and tourism ? generated nearly 100,000 net new jobs in February and offered the strongest sign yet that the state economy is on the mend. The 96,500-job jump was the biggest monthly increase since the current record system began in 1990, state officials said. California had added a paltry 700 jobs in January. Some economists were surprised by the huge uptick and cautioned that it could be revised downward.

Re "Reward for combat duty: loss of jobs," May 6 I'm glad The Times is naming names. The companies that failed to protect the jobs of those serving the country need public shaming so we'll know which companies not to patronize. The excuse that the law is misunderstood is the usual corporate shuck and jive. And the fact that the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs have even one case against them is a travesty. I thought we learned our lessons when we so badly mistreated the Vietnam veterans.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a controversial rail yard serving the harbor, setting the stage for possible court challenges alleging violations of environmental and civil rights laws. The proposal to build a center for trains hauling freight from the largest port complex in the nation has raised questions about environmental justice, particularly for minority and low-income neighborhoods in west Long Beach, which would bear the brunt of the effects. Council members voted 11 to 2 to approve the Southern California International Gateway and certify its environmental analysis, saying that the $500-million project would bolster efficiency in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, create jobs and improve air quality in surrounding communities.