Offices

Michele and Russell Poland's credit was shot, but they managed to buy their suburban dream home anyway. After a business bankruptcy and a home foreclosure, they turned to a rare option in this era of tightfisted banking - a subprime loan. The Polands paid nearly $10,000 in upfront fees for the privilege of securing a mortgage at 10.9% interest. And they had to raid their retirement account for a 35% down payment. Most borrowers would balk at such stiff terms. But with prices rising, the Polands wanted to snag a four-bedroom home in Temecula near top-rated schools for their 5-year-old son. By later this year, they figure, they'll be able to refinance into a standard loan.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa began the formal transition of power to his successor on Thursday, hosting Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti for breakfast at Getty House where he told reporters that the city councilman had his "full support. " Garcetti, who defeated City Controller Wendy Greuel on Tuesday, will not take office until July 1. But he and his team have already begun to prepare the policy initiatives that he hopes will allow him to "hit the ground running on day one," as he said during a news conference afterward.

Trial judges are, on the books, elected officials, and even the vast majority of those whose names never appear on a ballot are subject to election challenge every six years. Should voters not call them to account for their performance, as they do with any other politician, on election day? Should they not encourage opponents to challenge incumbent judges? Or are judges different from members of Congress or city councils? Judges are most definitely different. The last thing we want or need in California is trial judges who sit on the bench with one eye on justice and the other on how any particular ruling is going to play with the public.

In the campaign for mayor, Eric Garcetti spoke grandly about a city with plentiful summer jobs for low-income teens, a tunnel under the traffic-clogged Sepulveda Pass and even an end to homelessness. But a day after winning office, the mayor-elect faced some immediate and less lofty challenges: potentially bruising battles over employee salaries, police overtime pay and how to reverse cuts to ambulance staffing, sidewalk repairs and other basic city services. On Thursday, the City Council - a body that Garcetti will remain part of until June 30 - is set to decide whether and how to pay for a scheduled 5.5% raise for many city workers, a payout portrayed by the city's top financial advisor as a long-term budget buster.

Los Angeles police will not pursue through the courts scores of motorists with unpaid tickets from the city's defunct red-light camera program. The city Police Commission voted this week to end its contract with the company that operated L.A.'s cameras until they were shut off last summer. And authorities are now planning to reassign a small group of officers who regularly appeared in court to testify in contested photo enforcement cases. With the cancellation of the contract, officers will no longer have easy access to the photo and video evidence that courts require.

A group of immigrants-rights advocates is on a bus tour of California and is banging the drum -- literally -- for changes in federal law to provide illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. About 50 people are on a bus tour of congressional offices in California urging support for proposals being considered in Washington. The tour includes members of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and is targeting Republicans. On Tuesday, the bus tour visited the Brea office of Rep. Ed Royce and the Irvine office of Rep. John Campbell.

A Spring Street office building completed in 1915 has been purchased by a developer who plans to improve it as gentrification sweeps gradually through downtown Los Angeles' formerly depressed historic financial district. The Corporation Building, at 724 S. Spring St., was acquired by Izek Shomof, one of the most active developers of aging properties in the city's historic core. Shomof said he plans to renovate the 13-story tower and rent office space to creative firms. Terms of the sale by Spring & Main Property were not disclosed, but real estate experts familiar with the neighborhood valued the deal at about $10 million.

Smith Technology Corp. said Monday that it has agreed to sell three consulting offices to Elson T. Killam Associates. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Smith, which provides engineering and remediation services, said the transaction will generate cash to meet ongoing needs. The offices are in Mobile, Ala.; Panama City, Fla.; and Dallas.

An explosion Wednesday damaged the offices of the West German airline Lufthansa on the main shopping street of Muslim-controlled West Beirut, police said. The blast, caused by a stick of dynamite hurled at the airline's ground-floor offices on Hamra Street, caused minor damage. The offices were empty at the time.

An explosion ripped through the offices of the only opposition newspaper in the Bosnian Serb town of Doboj, a NATO spokesman said. The blast destroyed the offices of Alternativa. There were no injuries. It was the second attack in a few weeks on the paper, owned and edited by retired Bosnian Serb army colonel Milovan Stankovic, an open supporter of Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic.

Ideally, governmental bodies would refrain from including prayers - even ecumenical, "lowest-common-denominator" ones - in their public proceedings. But if prayers are to be offered, they certainly shouldn't be monopolized by a single religious tradition. That is how the Supreme Court should rule in a case involving a town in New York state. On Monday, the justices agreed to hear a case involving the town of Greece, N.Y., which since 1999 has begun its official meetings with a prayer.

The family of an unarmed man killed by a Downey police officer with a submachine gun in a case of mistaken identity has agreed to a $4.5-million settlement with the city's insurer. Michael Nida, 31, was fatally shot in the back Oct. 22, 2011, by Officer Steven Gilley after Nida was mistaken for a suspect wanted in an armed robbery at a Bank of America ATM. Prosecutors decline to criminally charge the officer, citing Nida's resistance and running from officers three times. Nida's family and their attorneys said the settlement was agreed upon by lawyers for Downey's municipal insurer last week on the eve of a trial for a wrongful-death and civil-rights lawsuit.

  Total time: 1 hour, 5 minutes Servings: 4 Caramelized onions 4 slices applewood-smoked bacon 2 onions, sliced (about 4 cups) 1 teaspoon sugar 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar 1 teaspoon ketchup 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce 2-3 drops liquid smoke 1/4teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper 1. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat. Fry the bacon until crisp, 5 to 6 minutes, then remove to paper towels to drain. Crumble 1 slice and set aside; reserve the rest of the bacon for another use. Measure 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat into a medium heavy skillet.

As the campaign for mayor of Los Angeles has played out over the last two years, the complaints I've heard most often are that none of the candidates has reached for big ideas, that the field has lacked big personalities and that the two finalists are hard to distinguish from each other. There's some truth to each of those, but with the campaign concluding Tuesday, it's also worth noting that all of them also are overstated. Start with the personalities. Neither Controller Wendy Greuel nor Councilman Eric Garcetti is the commanding figure that many would like to see in a mayor.

WASHINGTON - Senators pushed forward Monday with changes to a sweeping immigration overhaul over the objections of a union of immigration officers that announced its opposition to the bill. The legislation, written by a bipartisan group of senators, has largely withstood challenges and is on track for a key vote this week as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares to pass the measure to the full chamber. As the committee convened for its fourth day of hearings, the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, which represents about 12,000 employees at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, announced its opposition, saying provisions in the bill could lead to fraud.

A two-year campaign that has drawn record spending will see either the first woman or the first Jew elected as Los Angeles mayor. But despite those milestones, candidates Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti sped around the city Sunday trying to avoid another distinction: drawing the lowest turnout for an open mayoral seat in modern history. The two candidates reached out to voters in churches, at a pizza parlor and in a bowling alley on a long day of campaigning - their last extended opportunity to connect directly to voters before Tuesday's election.

Israeli police reopened the university offices of the leading Palestinian official in Jerusalem on Monday, two weeks after they claimed that the premises were being used for Palestinian Authority activity and shut them down. Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al Quds University and the chief representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Jerusalem, said he signed a document Monday agreeing not to use the premises for political activity.

Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr is investigating what may have gone on between President Clinton and a former White House intern in the West Wing, which houses dozens of offices for the president's top advisors. 1. President Clinton, Oval Office 2. Clinton's study 3. Rahm Emanuel, senior advisor for policy and strategy 4. John Podesta, deputy chief of staff 5. Erskine Bowles, chief of staff 6. Vice President Al Gore 7. Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, national security advisor 8.

WASHINGTON - Steven Miller, the top enforcement official at the Internal Revenue Service, thought he might have trouble on his hands. Election season was well underway in March 2012 when tea party organizations started to complain angrily of IRS harassment over their requests for tax-exempt status. The media was looking into it. Congress had picked up the scent. Miller dispatched an advisor to Cincinnati, where a field office handles applications from nonprofits, to figure out what was up. What he learned would blow up into a crisis that would damage the agency's reputation and lead to his ouster last week.

LAREDO, Texas -- A recent wave of kidnappings in Nuevo Laredo was prominently featured in a recent Sunday edition of El Mañana, one of the largest and most long-standing Spanish-language newspapers on the border. But the story carried no byline, and no residents were quoted or pictured. "People don't want to go out for interviews - they say, 'No, we may get kidnapped,'" said Ninfa Cantú Deándar, who runs the paper with her siblings. Because of threats from Mexican cartels, the paper - published in the twin cities of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and Laredo, Texas - is operating very differently these days.