Leadership

As warehouses go, there are few like Skechers USA Inc.'s new 1.82-million-square-foot distribution center. This warehouse is so big that it takes half a minute to drive from one end to the other at 60 miles per hour. The setup is so advanced that human hands will hardly touch the cargo as it is unpacked, categorized, stacked and prepared for delivery. The building is so green that it uses prevailing winds for ventilation instead of air conditioning. For its new North American operations warehouse, the nation's No. 2 footwear company chose the Inland Empire's Moreno Valley.

Re "Troops warned about conduct," May 5 According to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, soldiers who urinate on corpses or pose with their body parts "show a lack of judgment, a lack of professionalism and a lack of leadership. " Such actions, he said, "can damage our standing in the world. " What I found glaringly absent from his speech at Ft. Benning, Ga., is that such actions show, first and foremost, a lack of respect. If soldiers represent me, as Panetta states they do, they would not do such things based on the core morals of respect and decency, and not for fear that they would get caught if pictures appeared on the Internet.

BEIJING - "Beijing power struggle heralds end of China Communist Party," screams one headline. More sensational headlines purport to reveal how the wife of recently sacked Politburo member Bo Xilai poisoned an Englishman, who may have been her lover. And if that weren't enough, other stories claim that "Bo planned airline crash" and "slept with more than 100 women. " It's payback time for Chinese exiles, especially those with a printing press, television station or just a computer at their disposal.

Responding to letters to the editor on the dust-up between the Vatican and a group of American nuns, reader Joseph S. David of Brea wrote: "Is it liberal bias that The Times had one columnist and four letter writers castigate the Vatican for its recent call to liberal American nuns to reform, but no one to defend it? "In truth, defense is unnecessary for the offense that is the liberal nuns: flaunting of Roman Catholic doctrines, unfaithfulness to religious vows and a misinterpretation of Vatican II. They forget that when the church's Magisterium (its teaching office)

LATE IN FEBRUARY, THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY'S 80 MOST SENIOR OFFICIALS gathered at the Farm, a training facility in eastern Virginia whose very existence is classified. Robert M. Gates, the newly confirmed director of central intelligence, had summoned his top managers to the secret two-day conclave to force them to come to grips with the post-Cold-War era at the CIA.

A church watchdog group recommended Tuesday that Jan and Paul Crouch step aside as leaders of Orange County-based Trinity Broadcasting Network while a panel of Christian leaders investigates its finances. An executive for TBN, the world's largest Christian network, rejected the idea but said he would meet with critics and review audited financial statements and other related documents with them. "We will turn over to them whatever we need to turn over," said Paul Crouch Jr., a network executive.

Five feet tall, with dangly purple earrings and funky sneakers she decorated with a marker, Rachel Lester is one of the city's newest elected representatives. At 15, she's also the youngest. Rachel trounced her competition in this month's South Robertson Neighborhood Council election, pulling in 144 votes. Her opponent, a man with two children and a college degree, mustered only 13. When she begins her two-year term speaking for District 1 in June, she'll have to hitch a ride from Mom to the monthly council meetings.

Advice for President Clinton: Stop being Mr. Nice Guy. Get nasty--it works. The American people think that's leadership. It worked for Republicans! JOSEPH SIMON Malibu

To anyone who does not make a living peddling leadership courses, it might seem unsurprising to be told the whole leadership industry is nonsense. Whoever took seriously all those professors cruising the corporate training circuit promising leadership magic? Of all the dubious subjects chosen by academics, leadership may well be the most dubious. Barbara Kellerman, the James MacGregor Burns lecturer in public leadership at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, is an academic leadership all-star.

As President Obama heads for his second economic summit in three months, lingering skepticism about U.S. leadership threatens to produce a policy stalemate that could undercut prospects for recovery at home and abroad. Behind a veil of traditional diplomatic courtesy, leaders of the other wealthy economies are all but certain to resist any major new steps to stimulate global economic activity.

To anyone who does not make a living peddling leadership courses, it might seem unsurprising to be told the whole leadership industry is nonsense. Whoever took seriously all those professors cruising the corporate training circuit promising leadership magic? Of all the dubious subjects chosen by academics, leadership may well be the most dubious. Barbara Kellerman, the James MacGregor Burns lecturer in public leadership at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, is an academic leadership all-star.

The Los Angeles riots were sparked by the acquittal 20 years ago of four police officers in the beating of Rodney King, but civil rights attorney Connie Rice says the kindling for the fire was laid years before, by decades of hostile policing in black neighborhoods. "The reason we had this riot was because we had the total emasculation and humiliation of an entire community," she said. "It was kindling built on kindling built on kindling. " Rice reflected on the riots Sunday at the L.A. Times Festival of Books along with former L.A. County Dist.

A group that represents the majority of Roman Catholic nuns in the United States has been chastised by the Vatican for deviating from church doctrine and promoting what the Holy See called "radical feminist themes. " The Leadership Conference of Women Religious said Thursday it would consult with its members to decide on a course of action after the church's three-year investigation resulted in the harsh assessment of its activities and a call for reform. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the enforcer of orthodoxy - criticized the group for "protesting the Holy See's actions regarding the question of women's ordination and of a correct pastoral approach to ministry to homosexual persons.

The paratroopers had their assignment: Check out reports that Afghan police had recovered the mangled remains of an insurgent suicide bomber. Try to get iris scans and fingerprints for identification. The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan's Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held - and others squatted beside - the corpse's severed legs.

When Sparks General Manager Penny Toler learned last fall her team had landed the top overall pick in Monday's WNBA draft, she jumped and laughed. "I was real surprised," said Toler, whose team had a sparse 104 chances out of 1,000 to receive the first overall selection, the fewest of any of the four teams in the lottery mix. It was much-needed good fortune for a team that has recently teetered toward the unlucky. Superstar Candace Parker has missed more than half of the Sparks' games over the last two seasons because of injury, playing in 27 of 68 regular-season games.

Anybody who watched last fall's viral videos of campus police officers blasting orange pepper spray into the faces of seated protesters at UC Davis could have figured out that something had gone very wrong on the Central California campus. But it took two reports on the incident by an independent university panel and paid consultants to spell out the scope of the screw-ups, which indict not just the officers holding the spray canisters but the entire campus police force, its chief, a team of university leaders and Chancellor Linda Katehi.

SAN ANTONIO - Metta World Peace is trying to become more of a leader. Don't laugh. He doesn't while talking about it. "It's something I've done since I was a kid," the Lakers forward said Wednesday. "I've always been the leader, but when I got here it was [Derek] Fisher and Kobe [Bryant] , so I had to find other ways to participate and contribute. PHOTOS: Lakers vs. Spurs "Kobe's not playing right now, so it's definitely a comfortable situation to be a leader.

WASHINGTON - Before he took his campaign for the Republican nomination to the next primary battleground in Pennsylvania, Mitt Romney used the same Washington stage where President Obama had spoken a day before to accuse his likely general election rival of plans to wage a "hide-and-seek campaign" in the fall. The former Massachusetts governor, one day after winning a set of primaries that all but ensured he would be his party's nominee, used a "hot mic" incident involving the president and his Russian counterpart to cast doubt about what Obama would do if he won a second term.