Moratorium

The overwhelming difficulty of putting a lid on disaster when a deepwater oil well blows is reason enough to ban drilling at depths of more than 500 feet, at least while the safety concerns are being examined. But the federal courts have disagreed so far, ordering an immediate end to the Obama administration's six-month deepwater drilling moratorium, which affected 33 floating rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. The reason the wells have the potential for catastrophes like BP's Deepwater Horizon spill appears to be that the technology for preventing major blowouts at those depths is less than fully reliable.

Many members of the Los Angeles City Council think poorly ofWal-Mart, and with some good reason. They fear the giant retailer's reputation for crowding small businesses out of neighborhoods, and they are sensitive to the charge that the company's commitment to holding down prices comes at the expense of salary and benefits for its nonunion workforce. Egged on by their supporters in organized labor, members of the council will take up a proposal Friday to impose a temporary moratorium on retail development in Chinatown.

This is probably a very naive thought, but I keep wondering why we and other countries keep selling arms to other countries so they can continue fighting each other. Then we/U.N. go in and try to stop the fighting. Why not have a moratorium on arms sales? The arms dealers would be unhappy, but it might save a lot of lives, and give diplomatic negotiations more freedom and safety in which to work. JAN CHANTLAND, Fullerton He Votes for Libraries I am appalled by the closure of libraries and cutting back hours.

Pete and Jack Diehl grew up in the tall clapboard house their German immigrant ancestors built in 1842, on a hillside overlooking a creek in the Catskills. Sharp-featured and lean, the brothers run dairy farms within a couple miles of each other. They own land together, and Pete's grandson works on Jack's farm every day after school. But the Diehls are divided over the fate of their property — like thousands of others along the Pennsylvania border, where rich natural gas deposits underlie forests, pastures and towns.

A 10-year moratorium on offshore oil and gas development along the Oregon coast won final passage in the Legislature on Thursday, though lawmakers stopped short of adopting a permanent ban. The bill extends a previous moratorium that had expired Jan. 2 for the three-mile-wide stretch of state coastal waters. There are few known oil resources offshore and no big push for exploration, but environmental, fishing and tourism groups pressed to extend the ban, fearful that the federal government could move to open waters farther offshore to drilling.

An Obama administration report last summer wrongly implied that independent oil industry experts had reviewed and approved its moratorium on deep-water drilling after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, an investigation by the Interior Department's inspector general has found. The finding caps a controversy that began when a May 27 Interior Department report on stepped-up safety measures, including a moratorium on deep-water drilling, stated that the recommendations "have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.

A newly formed association of Los Angeles medical marijuana collectives has challenged the city's efforts to control dispensaries, claiming in a lawsuit that the 2-year-old moratorium is unconstitutionally vague and that the City Council violated state law when it extended the ban until mid-March. The lawsuit, filed late Monday, is the first to take aim at the city's attempts to halt the explosive growth in dispensaries. It comes as the City Council's Planning Committee continued Tuesday to struggle with a permanent ordinance to replace the moratorium.

Inside New Orleans' federal courthouse Monday, a judge was deliberating the points of law that could determine the fate of the Obama administration's six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling. Outside, Lucy Lailhengue was marching up and down Poydras Street with a sign that offered a more blunt line of reasoning: "If you support the moratorium, stop using oil and gas!" Lailhengue, 52, says she can smell the spilled oil in the gulf from her home in suburban Chalmette, and she worries about the crude despoiling nearby wetlands.

I find the secretary of state's rejection of the Soviet proposal for a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing disheartening. Certainly, the stockpiling of 50,000 nuclear weapons now in existence has not brought either side closer to the goal of peace and security. A moratorium on nuclear explosions would be a meaningful first step toward slowing and reversing the nuclear arms race. A unilateral Soviet moratorium in nuclear explosions could be seen as a confidence-building measure to bolster the talks in Geneva while a simultaneous test ban treaty is currently being negotiated.

American consumers are truly guinea pigs in an insidiously pervasive agricultural experiment ["StarLink Ban for Humans Is Total," July 28]. Until mandatory testing and labeling of genetically engineered food is in place, we should institute a moratorium on genetically engineered foods. Tomas Bogardus Orange

In an almost unheard-of move, scientists who study the deadly H5N1 bird flu announced a 60-day voluntary moratorium on studying the virus to allow time "to clearly explain the benefits of this important research and the measures taken to minimize its possible risks. " The statement, released Friday by the journals Science and Nature, comes soon after federal officials had asked the journals and two research teams to withhold details of experiments that showed the virus can be coaxed to a form that passes readily through the air from mammal to mammal.

A plan to help secure the future of Hollywood's most famous nursing home has been stalled by gridlock in Washington. After months of negotiations, the board of the Motion Picture & Television Fund is close to finalizing a deal with Kindred Healthcare Inc. of Louisville, Ky., to invest in long-term acute-care services at the Woodland Hills complex that includes the nursing home. Under the proposed agreement, Kindred would invest $10 million to remodel an existing hospital building and would lease hospital and rehabilitation beds from the fund.

Little snoops Re "Opening home skies to drones," Nov. 27 Drones may be inevitable, but why here, and what's the hurry? Wouldn't Iran, Syria and North Korea be more likely markets for this latest "gotta have" law enforcement tool? It's more their style. (And don't say we never arm our enemies.) Yes, we'll probably end up with drones overhead; money and power always get what they want. But I'll bet that the first American citizen who shoots one down in U.S. territory will become a folk hero.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber angered prosecutors, victims' families and doubtless many voters this week when he granted a reprieve to all 37 of the state's death row inmates for the duration of his term. In doing so, he committed one of the most courageous and conscientious acts we've seen on the national political stage in some time. Kitzhaber made his announcement following a decision by the state Supreme Court clearing the way for the Dec. 6 execution of Gary Haugen, who was convicted of killing Mary Archer in 1981 and stabbing a fellow prison inmate to death in 2004.

Los Angeles is one of the few cities that still impose what is, in effect, a local income tax on business. One result is that startups and established firms seeking greener pastures seldom come here, opting instead for more competitive big cities around the country or smaller but more business-friendly municipalities in the region. Three years ago Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa decided to put up the welcome sign by throwing out the tax altogether — but just for a limited period. And just for new arrivals.

The Los Angeles Community College District has suspended all spending on new construction projects while it studies how to pay for building maintenance once it finishes its vast campus expansion program. State budget cuts have made it hard for the district to cover its growing maintenance costs as it opens scores of new buildings under its $5.7-billion bond program. The moratorium announced Monday by Chancellor Daniel LaVista will postpone or halt 67 projects planned by the district's nine colleges but not yet underway or under contract.

The City Council on Tuesday approved a six-month extension of the city's moratorium on new medical marijuana dispensaries, a move designed to provide time for city officials seeking to draft new regulations covering the facilities. The council voted 14 to 0 for the temporary ban, initially enacted in August 2007. Councilman Dennis Zine said the moratorium would give the city attorney's office time to recommend a medical marijuana dispensary policy that would prevent abuses while still ensuring that such facilities are available to legitimate patients.

City officials are considering an emergency, one-year moratorium on most commercial development in Santa Monica. The City Council voted unanimously this week to instruct the city attorney to draw up the ordinance. The moratorium, expected to be voted on next week, would apply to all nonresidential projects except those for which permits were filed before May 2. Projects on public lands, hospitals and the Third Street Mall area would be exempt, as would development on Santa Monica College lands.

The Citee Golf Club on the outskirts of the capital's smoggy sprawl is a kelly green oasis surrounded by neatly trimmed hedges and rows of luxury villas. At $77,000, a family membership at the club costs about 16 times the annual salary of a typical Beijing resident. The 18-hole course, with its pink-shirted female caddies, had its "soft opening" in 2009, five years after the Chinese government declared a moratorium on golf course construction. The ban, imposed amid concern over the country's dwindling arable land, clearly hasn't stopped the boom in golf course construction in China.

China has joined Germany, France, Russia and other nations now pledging to review their atomic energy programs in the aftermath of the nuclear crisis sparked by Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami. FOR THE RECORD: Energy in China: A March 19 Business article about China's nuclear power industry misspelled the name of Yang Fuqiang, senior advisor on climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, as Yan Fuqiang. ? Premier Wen Jiabao announced this week that China would put a moratorium on construction of new nuclear power plants while it updates safety standards.