Moratoriums

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.

In response to a jump in requests for temporary film permits, Camarillo officials have passed a 45-day moratorium on adult film production in the city. The ordinance, approved Wednesday, gives the city time to study the potential effects of pornographic film production and determine whether to impose regulations. The city received several calls last week inquiring about temporary film permits and asking whether Camarillo had a condom ordinance, Assistant City Atty. Don Davis said.

The Nebraska Legislature on Thursday became the first in the nation to pass a moratorium on executions. The bill would ban executions for two years while a study is done to see if the death penalty is being applied fairly in the state. Death sentences could be imposed, but no executions would take place. The one-chamber, nonpartisan Legislature approved the bill on a vote of 27-21, two more than the 25 needed to pass it. Gov.

Bird flu researchers said Wednesday that they would end a self-imposed moratorium on controversial experiments to determine how the deadly H5N1 virus might mutate and gain the ability to spread easily among humans. In a statement published online by the journals Science and Nature, 40 scientists said they were poised to resume their investigations - but only in countries that have established clear rules for conducting the research safely. The U.S., which is the largest funder of influenza research, is not yet among those nations.

A plan to stop movie theaters from locating outside the downtown Glendale area for a 45-day moratorium period was amended to Brand Boulevard only. The City Council asked city staff members on Tuesday to narrow the proposed moratorium. The council voted 5 to 0 to introduce the moratorium, but asked that it be rewritten to allow only cinemas that would front on Brand Boulevard to be given permits. Council members will vote on the revised measure next week.

After hearing testimony from dozens of speakers condemning the aerial spraying of malathion, the Glendale City Council adopted a resolution Tuesday calling for a moratorium on use of the pesticide in the area. In doing so, Glendale joined half a dozen cities in Los Angeles and Orange counties that have asked for an end to spraying of the pesticide until more research is done into its effects on humans and the environment.

The city was expected to extend a 45-day building moratorium, giving administrators more time to find ways to increase capacity at the city's overloaded sewage-treatment plant. On Oct. 20, the City Council imposed a moratorium on issuing building permits that require sewer connections because city engineers discovered that Soledad's sewage-treatment plant was near capacity and filtering ponds ran the risk of overflowing.

A symbolic 40-hour "murder moratorium" in Los Angeles, timed to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, concluded Sunday, with organizers pronouncing it a success. "We never had any illusions that we were going to end murder," said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, one of the organizers. "The point was to get people to think about it. Get engaged. Get involved. This is your community." Los Angeles Police Officer Norma Eisenman, a department spokeswoman, said there were two homicides in the city during the moratorium.

Israel imposed a 10-month moratorium Wednesday on approvals for new homes in Jewish settlements across the West Bank. But it appeared unlikely that the restriction, applauded by the Obama administration, would be enough to coax the Palestinians back to U.S.-brokered peace talks. The unilateral decision by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu marked a retreat from the pro-settler policies his right-wing Likud Party has pursued for more than three decades in and out of government. In a televised speech, he called it a "painful step" aimed to "encourage resumption of peace talks with our Palestinian neighbors."

State and local officials looking for some extra scratch by taxing your dial-up, cable or DSL Internet-access services will have to live with a seven-year itch after Congress on Tuesday banned those fees until 2014. The House unanimously approved a seven-year extension of a moratorium on Internet-access taxes, which the Senate passed last week. The move cleared the way for President Bush to sign it before the current ban expires Thursday.

Two high-ranking state officials Thursday called on school districts across California to impose a moratorium on costly capital appreciation bonds while changes are considered to limit their use. Bill Lockyer, state treasurer, and Tom Torlakson, state superintendent of public instruction, sent letters to education officials asking them to avoid using the sometimes risky bonds until the governor and Legislature can weigh proposals to restrict the...

WASHINGTON — You've probably seen the reverse mortgage pitchmen at work on your TV screen — former Sen. Fred Thompson and actors Robert Wagner and Henry "Fonzie" Winkler prominent among them — urging seniors to pull cash out of their homes through a loan program guaranteed by the federal government. But it looks as if the pitchmen will have fewer and smaller mortgages to sell in 2013. In a move aimed at controlling losses to its insurance funds, the Federal Housing Administration is clamping a moratorium on the most popular form of reverse mortgage — the so-called standard version, which allows large lump-sum drawdowns of cash at fixed interest rates.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Eight people were executed by hanging in Afghanistan on Tuesday, ending a virtual four-year moratorium on the death penalty. Officials announced that eight more men are to be hanged on Wednesday. The 16 death sentences were formally approved by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, drawing immediate condemnation from the New York-based Human Rights Watch.  The first eight men were hanged Tuesday in Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul after being convicted on charges of murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery and sexual assault.

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Tuesday setting a two-year moratorium on closing state parks in the wake of a scandal in which some parks officials hid surplus funds while facilities were threatened with being shuttered. The legislation by Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield (D-Woodland Hills) was in response to the discovery in July that some parks officials had concealed about $54 million in unspent funds even as the governor was proposing to close 70 parks because of a budget shortfall.

Charter school advocates are mounting a campaign against a proposed moratorium on new charters in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The moratorium is one provision of a resolution, by school board member Steve Zimmer, scheduled for discussion Tuesday. Any moratorium would violate state law, the California Charter Schools Assn. asserted in a Friday letter to L.A. Unified. The proposal "very clearly violates the Charter Schools Act," wrote the group's general counsel, Ricardo J. Soto.

SACRAMENTO - In the continuing fallout from the state parks funding scandal, the California Legislature on Thursday approved a two-year moratorium on park closures and proposed allocating $30 million to keep them operating. Facing a midnight Friday deadline to adjourn their two-year session, lawmakers also acted to improve working conditions for nannies and other domestic workers, give driver's licenses to some illegal immigrants, allow seriously ill inmates out of county jails early and ban sexual-orientation "conversion" therapy aimed at making gay teens straight.

The Los Angeles City Council approved a moratorium Tuesday on all new agreements to operate oil pipelines in the city until an investigation into a blaze caused by a quake-ruptured pipeline in Mission Hills is completed. The moratorium initially will last 45 days, but can be extended until city officials submit a report to the City Council on the Mission Hills rupture and on the safety measures used by operators of underground pipelines.

Data Design Laboratories Inc., a maker of electronic circuit boards, said Tuesday that it has reached an agreement with its lenders for a three-year moratorium on repaying $14 million in bank loans. Sanwa Bank California and Tokai Bank Ltd. both agreed to the terms, which the company said would give it working capital to recover from losses that it attributed to the recession and the computer industry slump. In exchange, the banks receive rights to company assets as collateral.

Spending on most new construction projects in the Los Angeles Community College District's $6-billion campus building project has resumed, virtually ending a moratorium that had been the centerpiece of efforts to reform poor planning, questionable spending and other flaws uncovered in the program. The moratorium was initially imposed last October to examine whether campuses had sufficient funding to maintain and operate 3 million square feet of new facilities - a 60% increase - particularly in light of severe state funding cuts.

Jolted by the possibility of a syphilis outbreak among its ranks, a Los Angeles-based trade group that represents the adult film industry announced a nationwide moratorium on X-rated productions while more than 1,000 porn performers are tested. The Free Speech Coalition issued the call on its website after reporting that one performer tested positive for syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease, and had begun notifying sexual partners of that information. The moratorium was announced Saturday, a day after Los Angeles County's Public Health Department said it was investigating a cluster of possible syphilis cases within the porn industry.