News Conferences

An old wives' tale claims they once held a boxing news conference and there was actual news. Not Wednesday. They trotted out Manny Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton, opponents for Saturday night's next big deal in the sport. Both acted responsibly, spoke sensibly, brought no new insight to their match, and sat down. Unless Mike Tyson, Bernard Hopkins or Floyd Mayweather Jr. are fighting, the lead-up show is never about the boxers and always about the window dressing. That's the eternal charm.

A somber President Obama warned a recession-weary nation Wednesday that its resilience would be tested even more in the second hundred days of his presidency, as he grapples with a series of crises including two wars, a teetering economy and an outbreak of swine flu. On the 100th day of his administration, Obama used a prime-time news conference to appeal for patience from Americans who have given him high approval ratings, laying out in unsparing detail the full scope of what the country faces.

A Los Angeles County assistant fire chief accused of beating a neighbor's 6-month-old puppy with a rock, cracking her skull and damaging her eye, said Monday that he acted in self-defense after the animal bit his thumb with what he called a "vise-like grip." Speaking at a news conference at his attorney's office in Beverly Hills, Glynn Johnson, 54, said the top of his thumb had nearly been ripped off and had to be sutured back on because of the bite.

A week into its sixth season, "American Idol" already has garnered its largest premiere audience in history and more than its share of controversies surrounding judge Paula Abdul. On Saturday, Abdul and her fellow judges, Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson, appeared with host Ryan Seacrest and executive producer Ken Warwick to face the music before the television media in Pasadena.

President Bush traveled to a Missouri hospital Thursday to press his case that Congress should sign on to his healthcare proposals, including his idea to pay for his initiative by taxing some employer-paid insurance premiums as employee income. Unlike similar town-hall-style events that the White House bills as "conversations," the round table at St. Luke's East hospital had no audience other than about 30 reporters. "If you work for a company, you get your healthcare free, in essence.

If there was any question that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates would go to almost any length to demonstrate he was the anti-Rumsfeld, he dispelled it Friday. In his first-ever Pentagon news conference, Gates' manner and method could not have been more different than those of his controversial predecessor -- starting with the room. Donald H. Rumsfeld made the Pentagon briefing room so much his own, Gates has evidently decided he has no intention of using it.

Dana Perino talks fast. When she steps to the lectern to brief White House reporters, Perino, a lapsed flute player, lets fly with a staccato torrent of words. She delivers her message not with the cool mien of the television broadcaster she thought she would become when she was a student at the University of Southern Colorado, but \o7appassionato. \f7Clearly, she cares about her subject. And that subject is all things Bush.

A handful of community activists gathered outside a fenced vacant lot Sunday to condemn the failure of commercial developers and government officials to rebuild businesses destroyed in the 1992 Los Angeles riots. "A lot of promises were made in 1992, 1993 and for years after to rebuild L.A....

In case you missed the news, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and a selected posse from the City Council traveled by bus to Debs Park in northeast L.A. last week to announce how they're going to lasso global warming. The gist of the plan is for the city government and its residents to burn a lot less fossil fuels in 2030 than they did in 1990. Fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gas that is the chief culprit behind climate change.

Quentin Tarantino would have been proud had he been in the melee of journalists vying for a spot at his "Death Proof" news conference on Tuesday. The previous one, for Julian Schnabel's film "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," also in competition, ran well past the normal 30-minute allotment, which created a scrum outside the meeting room. Members of the media clawed their way in when the "Diving Bell" team finally gave way.