Outsider

The great thing about individual states, as well as separate countries, is that they're all laboratories of government conducting experiments in social and economic policies -- and in the marketplace of government ideas, the most successful ones can be copied by everybody else. That's why the United Kingdom's experiment with austerity should be of great interest to Americans as we approach the presidential election. I've seen several commentators weigh in on this, but one of the most clear-headed analyses can be found today on Al Jazeera.

Hundreds of environmentalists, union members and liberal activists converged on Rancho Mirage on Sunday to rally against what they see as the influence of two of the nation's leading financial backers of conservative causes. The protestors waved signs condemning "corporate greed," chanted slogans and surged toward a line of helmeted police officers at the entrance to a resort where billionaires Charles and David Koch were holding a retreat for prominent conservative elected officials, major political donors and strategists.

TULSA, Okla. -- Beyond its cluster of office towers, Tulsa is a city built close to the ground, a broad clash of neighborhoods you can tell apart by how the grass grows, bright and trim as a putting green in the richer sections, pale and shaggy in the poorer spots. Tulsa native S.E. Hinton, a cult figure for 40 years since the publication of "The Outsiders," knows the difference between the wild and the well-kept lawn.

An ex-Marine accused of committing a hate crime outside a gay bar in Long Beach will be extradited from Illinois to face prosecution in L.A. County, officials aid. John Kelly O'Leary, 21, was arrested Monday night in the Chicago suburb of Evergreen Park, police said. O'Leary allegedly beat two men outside the Silver Fox Bar near 4 th Street and Redondo Avenue in September while yelling anti-gay slurs, police said. L.A. County prosecutors tacked on a hate-crime charge in their complaint.

No need to go inside LACMA's new Broad Contemporary Art Museum to see the work of John Baldessari, widely praised for his witty, topsy-turvy installation of the museum's hit exhibition "Magritte and Contemporary Art."

Three close male friends live through ups and downs in realizing their dream of running a sports shop/cricket academy in the Indian film "Kai Po Che" ("Brothers for Life"). Based on a bestselling novel, the film traffics in an energetic form of aspirational/redemptive melodrama that ties the friends' fortunes to real-world events in the early 2000s, such as the Gujarat earthquake. Once business-minded Govind (Raj Kumar), impulsive cricket fanatic Ishaan (newcomer Sushant Singh Rajput)

In 1980, journalist and military brat Mary Edwards Wertsch saw the movie version of novelist Pat Conroy's "The Great Santini." "The overall effect on me," she wrote later, "was like being struck by a thunderbolt. . . . For the first time in my life I saw that . . . I (was) . . . the offspring of a lifestyle that is unique, intense, demanding, steeped in characteristic rules and values--and a lifestyle that literally millions of children have shared."

In proclaiming March as Women's History Month, President Obama stated that "too many women feel the weight of discrimination on their shoulders. " Liberals often make this claim, citing the fact that women earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, and call for stronger protection against gender-based discrimination by employers. Conservatives typically respond by pointing out that men and women tend to make different choices about occupation, working hours and whether to take time off from the labor force.

Marilyn Vann can trace her Cherokee roots back more than 200 years through generations of Native Americans and the descendants of black slaves who lived among them. She has mountains of paper -- birth certificates, tribal enrollment cards, land deeds, affidavits, yellowing photographs -- documenting her family's life within the tribe.

TIJUANA - From a gated yard on a gritty street in this border city, white-paneled tour buses would set out for Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm and other California destinations. When the time came for Scapadas Magicas to undergo its annual U.S. inspection in January, the bus company reported that its terminal was in San Diego - at an address that did not exist. Soon afterward, Scapadas Magicas did present two buses for inspection by the California Highway Patrol, which found them to be in working order and cleared them for operation.