Neighbors

Two 17-year-old girls have been sentenced for torturing and butchering an elderly woman, less than three weeks after a pair of 10-year-olds were charged with murdering a toddler. Again, a troubled nation is asking, how could this happen? Edna Phillips, 70, was throttled with her dog's leash and stabbed or slashed 86 times. The mental images of the crime have shocked the nation just as the video pictures of little James Bulger being led to his death did last month.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - As U.S. frustration with Pakistan's six-month blockade of Afghanistan-bound supplies became painfully apparent Monday at the NATO summit in Chicago, Pakistanis are growing worried that their government's negotiating strategy could cost their country millions of dollars in American aid and jeopardize its prospects for a voice in Afghanistan's postwar future. For weeks, U.S. and Pakistani officials have been negotiating a new set of transit fees that would pave the way for the reopening of routes that NATO convoys used to ferry fuel and nonlethal supplies from the southern port of Karachi to the Afghan border.

Distancing himself from Republicans on housing issues, President Obama pitched a $5-billion to $10-billion plan to help a key segment of struggling homeowners — those still making monthly payments, but on underwater mortgages. Obama proposed Wednesday to help about 3.5 million people with good credit who are unable to refinance at historically low rates because their homes are worth less than their mortgages. He argued that those homeowners — and the country — couldn't afford to let the housing market bottom out, as many Republicans, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, have advocated.

KLEINENSIEL, Germany - When the German government shut down half the country's nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, followed two months later by a pledge to abandon nuclear power within a decade, environmentalists cheered. A year later, however, criticism of the nuclear shutdown is emerging from a surprising source: some of the very activists who pushed for the phaseout. They say poor planning of the shutdown and political opportunism by the government have actually worsened the toll on the environment in Germany, and Europe, at least in the short term.

Re "Expansion of museum opposed by neighbors," Feb. 9 Simon Wiesenthal advocated human rights. So why is the Museum of Tolerance violating the rights of its immediate neighbors by pushing forward with an ill-advised expansion? Is it institutional arrogance? Clearly the museum has lost sight of its responsibility to Holocaust survivors and its neighbors. Los Angeles must protect nearby residents from the effects of the increased traffic, noise and inconvenience to their daily lives.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe set out on a tour of South America last week to reassure his counterparts that the looming U.S. military buildup in his country poses no threat to them. But it's not just Uribe who needs to be soothing and -- dare we employ one of President Obama's favorite words -- transparent. Washington too should be working hard to quell the fears it has raised in the region. Details of an agreement giving U.S. personnel access to Colombian military bases are not finalized, but the United States is expected have a significant presence at three air bases and two naval bases, greatly increasing its capability to monitor not only local drug traffickers but neighboring countries.

To the residents of Saltair Terrace — a peaceful cul-de-sac just a block from busy San Vicente Boulevard — Brentwood just doesn't need the retail complex that billionaire Charles T. Munger wants to erect in place of the landmark structure that once housed Dutton's bookstore. "The beauty of our neighborhood is we've got three tailors, world-class restaurants and groceries — all within three blocks," said Amy Ziering, a documentary film producer who lives on the petite street directly behind the project site.

Val Kilmer plays a ponytailed villain in "MacGruber," the comedy film based on a "Saturday Night Live" skit, but lately he seems to have been cast as a real-life bad guy by neighbors in this rural mountain community. Aggrieved by a planning board's decision permitting Kilmer to rent out guesthouses on his 5,300-acre ranch, the neighbors charged that he had denied locals access to fishing holes in the nearby Pecos River and made ethnically insulting comments in magazine interviews.

The body of 75-year-old man sat decomposing on his Marina del Rey balcony for days because neighbors thought the lifeless figure was part of a Halloween display and didn't call police. Mostafa Mahmoud Zayed had apparently been dead since Monday with a single gunshot wound to one eye. He was slumped over a chair on the third-floor balcony of his apartment on Bora Bora Way, said cameraman Austin Raishbrook, who owns RMG News and was on the scene Thursday when authorities were alerted to the body.

One La Crescenta resident's decision to paint her house neon green has drawn the ire of neighbors who say the color stands out in all the wrong ways. For the last month, the foothill house at 3045 Markridge Road has been coated in neon green with purple trim — a stark contrast to the muted, earthy tunes of the neighboring homes. The blaring color has also done more than simply highlight the Markridge Road house; it has also exposed the lack of regulatory recourse for nearby homeowners.

A new $12.3-million building is set to rise next to the Eli and Edythe Broad Stage in Santa Monica, allowing the organization to expand its cultural offerings and host more events. On Wednesday officials with the Broad will announce the new wing, with construction on the two-story structure expected to begin next year and be completed in 2014 at the earliest. The new complex, which will be situated on the east side of the Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center, comes at a time when the Broad is looking to expand its programming.

TULSA, Okla. - In the wake of what locals are calling the Good Friday Shootings, dozens of worried residents from Tulsa's mostly black north side attended an NAACP meeting in the heart of their troubled neighborhood for some truth-telling. Yes, they were relieved that two men had been arrested in the shootings that left three African Americans dead and two wounded. They were pleased that the glare of the national spotlight was forcing local officials to work with black leaders.

Wallace Stegner wrote books about the American and Canadian West, so it's understandable that people consider the longtime California resident a Western author. Stegner, a prolific novelist, essayist, conservation advocate and professor at Stanford University, was born in 1909 in Iowa and grew up in Utah and Saskatchewan, Canada. Today he is chiefly remembered for his fictional portraits of steely homesteaders and his musings on the American wilderness. But Stegner lived in Vermont most summers from the late 1930s until his death in 1993, and he considered the small Vermont village of Greensboro his home away from home.

Now that the homeless are prohibited from camping overnight on Ocean Front Walk in Venice, many have migrated to other spots in the beach town. After numerous complaints about trash, city workers, accompanied by police, raided the new areas last month and confiscated unattended belongings, prompting a lawsuit from a civil rights attorney. According to the suit, filed on behalf of 11 named homeless people, employees of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Department of Public Works seized property found on 3rd Avenue in Venice that included birth certificates, food stamp eligibility cards, prescription medication, wallets with cash, and even laptop computers.

It was a crime that mystified police for decades and left a neighborhood in fear -- a woman who lived alone found raped, stabbed and beaten in her suburban New Jersey home. Now, police say they have arrested a 51-year-old man who was the victim's teenage neighbor at the time of the killing. Because the man was a juvenile when the crime was committed, he may not legally be named, the Star-Ledger reported Wednesday. But the paper quoted unidentified law enforcement sources as saying the suspect is a truck driver who had lived near Lena Triano and who had been released from prison in 1999 after serving nearly 20 years for kidnapping and robbery.

Eager to live in an upscale neighborhood without paying rent or buying a home, Remy Martin Foster said he hit on the perfect solution: He bought an RV. "Mathematically it made the most sense," the unemployed 29-year-old said. "It was the best financial move I ever made. I started saving money immediately. " Trouble is, living in a vehicle on public streets is illegal. Ever since Foster began parking his camper on residential streets, first in Hollywood and then in the San Fernando Valley, the motor home dweller has been rousted from one spot to the next by annoyed neighbors and police.

Barbara Jones said she had a warning ready for her grandchildren whenever they visited her Compton home. Keep an eye out for her neighbor, Julian Carter.  "I'd tell them, 'If you see Julian walk up, come inside. I'm too old to be fighting with him,' " the 61-year-old Jones said Monday. "I'll fight with him, but I don't think I can win." Carter, 25, on Monday was accused of killing his 5-year-old niece, placing her body in a plastic trash bag and stuffing it into the closet of the family's home, which is next door to Jones' home.

John Bailey thought it was great when his neighbor was elected to the House of Representatives in 2007. "Not everyone lives next door to a congresswoman," he said. But two years later, he doesn't feel so lucky. The congresswoman's house is abandoned and in disrepair, "a blight on the neighborhood," Bailey said. He thinks the way that Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Long Beach) has treated her Sacramento home tells far more about her than her voting record.

John Spiak made his name as a curator at the Arizona State University Art Museum, in Tempe, where he spent 17 years helping to develop an innovative program dedicated in large part to a socially engaged mode of art-making known as "social practice. " He was born and raised in Orange County, however, not far from downtown Santa Ana, which makes his move last fall - to take over as director and chief curator of the Grand Central Art Center - something of a homecoming. "I grew up running around this neighborhood," he says, and he speaks of it today with a booster's enthusiasm.

SANFORD, Fla. -- For many Americans, George Zimmerman has become the face of barbarous vigilante justice. For Olivia Bertalan, he was the face of compassion - a neighbor of consummate graciousness and low-key gallantry. Roughly six months before Zimmerman shot and killed an unarmed black teenager in his gated Florida townhouse complex, he was standing in Bertalan's doorway, asking what he could do to help her. A group of young men had just broken into Bartalan's townhouse as she and her infant cowered in a locked bedroom.