Protest

WASHINGTON - It was bound to happen: As the sequester budget cuts are felt around the country, lawmakers are having second thoughts - and trying to tinker with them in a way that could lead to a full-scale government shutdown. Senators want to load up a routine spending bill with provisions to reopen the White House to tours, shield meat inspectors from furloughs and keep air traffic control towers staffed, among other changes that would rearrange the across-the-board cuts. Nearly 100 amendments have been filed by senators on both sides of the political aisle, stalling the measure that is needed to keep the government running after March 27. Without approval, the government would shut down, a prospect lawmakers and President Obama have said they want to avoid.

Arnella Sims already has witnessed the effects of broad cuts to the Los Angeles County court system: The lines in the courthouses are getting longer; the calls from the public angrier. And Sims -- who has worked as a court reporter for 37 years -- knows things could get much worse. In the coming months, the Los Angeles County Superior Court is to enact a cost-cutting plan that includes the complete closure of eight regional courthouses, consolidations of court services and layoffs of hundreds of court employees.

A majority of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors want to back away from a proposed ballot measure that would impose a controversial parcel fee on county property owners to clean up storm water pollution. The supervisors first considered the proposal in January but deferred a vote after a hearing at which nearly 200 people spoke, the vast majority in opposition to the fee, which would range from about $54 a year for most single family homes to tens of thousands of dollars for large, industrial properties.

SACRAMENTO -- Labor and environmental groups rallied Tuesday on the steps of the Capitol to protest efforts to overhaul California's landmark environmental law. Representatives from unions and environmental organizations -- backed by dozens of supporters --  described the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, as an "environmental bill of rights" that allows the public to weigh in on proposed development in their communities. Signed into law by Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970, the measure requires developers to go through a lengthy public process detailing their projects' potential environmental effects and how those would be mitigated.

NEW DELHI - The alleged leader of a gang that brutally raped a woman in India three months ago, setting off massive protests, soul-searching and reforms, committed suicide in his cell early Monday by using fabric to fashion a noose, according to officials and local news media. Ram Singh was one of five adults and a juvenile charged with picking up a 23-year-old physiotherapy student and her male friend in a commuter bus in mid-December. Singh was the driver and "mastermind," police said.

CAIRO -- Egyptian protesters set fire to a police social club and attempted to block the Suez Canal  on Saturday after a court upheld death sentences for 21 soccer fans and acquitted seven police officers accused in a deadly stadium riot last year. Demonstrations in Port Said and Cairo marked the latest escalation in months of unrest and civil disobedience aimed at bringing down President Mohamed Morsi's embattled Islamist-led government. The rage came amid a widening security vacuum spurred by a nationwide police strike.

The news of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's death this week was striking not because it came as a surprise. Rather it was because his death ignited a bitter debate over what the populist leader's lasting legacy will be at home and abroad. To his supporters, Chavez was a force for good who made them a priority, who established government programs to combat poverty and illiteracy. But to his critics, he was little more than an old-style Latin American caudillo , or strongman, who mismanaged the country's vast oil wealth and allowed inflation and crime to spiral out of control.

CAIRO - The young policeman with scuffed boots and sleepless eyes sat on a motorcycle in a neighborhood that no longer feared or respected him. Khaled Sayed wore the colors of his trade: a black beret adorned with a silver eagle. An officer for three years, Sayed patrols streets where guns flow and jobless youths roam with knives and rage. Uniformed men with badges and battered side arms once held sway here, but their swagger has been clipped by a new and dangerous order. Egypt's police and central security forces, for decades the thuggish protectors of Hosni Mubarak's repressive state, now safeguard a new government run by Islamist elements they once persecuted.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - A 22-year-old Palestinian college student died Thursday of wounds suffered when he was shot in the head with a rubber-coated bullet by Israeli soldiers two weeks ago.   Muhammad Asfour of the village of Aboud, 13 miles northwest of Ramallah, was taking part in a demonstration in his village when he was hit in the face by the bullet, which fractured his skull, news agencies reported. He was first taken to Rafidia Hospital in the northern West Bank city of Nablus and later transferred to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, where he was pronounced dead Thursday morning.

Several hundred protesters marched in Austin on Tuesday to protest Texas Gov. Rick Perry's hard stance against expanding Medicaid coverage in the state. Perry has dismissed calls to follow two tenets of the federal Affordable Care Act: expand Medicaid, the government program providing health insurance for sick or low-income people, and set up a health insurance exchange where people can shop for coverage. He has called Medicaid expansion "an unsustainable program" that would cost taxpayers billions.