Ribbon

'The White Ribbon' MPAA rating: R for some disturbing content involving violence and sexuality Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes. In German with English subtitles. Playing: In limited release at Landmark, West Los Angeles

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the quasi-governmental agency authorized to spend $3 billion in taxpayer money on embryonic stem cell research, deserves praise for commissioning an independent study of its operations by a blue-ribbon committee of the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences. But the $700,000 spent on the study - funded by donations - will be wasted if the institute's oversight board fails to heed the committee's criticisms, which echo the findings of the Little Hoover Commission and other groups over the years.

The Los Angeles County Citizens' Commission on Jail Violence issued a final report Friday finding "a persistent pattern" of unreasonable force" in the Sheriff's Department's jails and blaming Sheriff Lee Baca's leadership. The commission, which was created by the Board of Supervisors, is made up of the following seven members: • Lourdes G. Baird , a former state and federal court judge who served as U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles from 1990 to 1992. • The Rev. Cecil L. "Chip" Murray , former pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the most prominent African American churches in Los Angeles, and a senior fellow of USC's Center for Religion and Civic Culture.

Aya Sumika, who played FBI agent Liz Warner on "Numb3rs," and Trevor John, an illustrator, moved into a just-built, two-bedroom condo in West Hollywood as newlyweds in 2007. "There was nothing interesting about it architecturally," Sumika said of the home. "We wanted a blank canvas. " Her goal was to transform it into a "chic urban space with French touches. " It's home to a pit bull rescue and two cats, and in 2010 the couple purchased Midori Ribbon, the luxury gift wrap firm  Sumika 's mother founded.

I just had to drop you a line and thank you for your terrific article about the academy ribbons ("At the Oscar Lectern, Just Point to Your Ribbon," March 6). I worked as a consultant for a few years with the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and, much to my surprise, found that the personal/professional/ego/artistic issues were much less confusing than trying to figure out how/where/when to wear the right/wrong ribbons. The most sadly amusing part was when someone figured out that ribbon pins would put holes in women's gowns, thus creating the "ribbon peel-and-stick-ons" that have become fashionable.

In a packed Las Vegas Hilton Showroom on a Sunday afternoon, 1,300 people watched a moment of flawless cuteness. In one of the 22 original segments for 2010's "Ribbon of Life" benefit, "Grease Monkeys," dozens of current and former Vegas performers took the stage with their offspring. Some children were carried by moms and dads in baby pouches, others were in a line of electric cars steered by their parents. Of course, no matter if the line of child-driven toy cars was straight or went twisted, the entire thing was adorable.

"We cannot tolerate a situation in which we are losing so much in human lives . . . and even in cold hard dollars." --Shirley Hufstedler, former U.S. secretary of education, a member of a blue-ribbon panel that studied the health and welfare of California's 7.6 million children and gave the state a D grade.

"I wish that life was simpler." "I wish democracy was real." "I wish I was drinking a margarita in my favorite bar in Mexico." Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander has become intimately familiar with people around the world and the things they yearn, thanks to an artwork she created called "I Wish Your Wish." It's showing publicly for the first time in the United States as part of her new show at the St. Louis Art Museum.

Los Angeles Olympic officials have taken the first step toward turning over part of the Games' massive surplus to help fund a permanent cultural fair patterned after the widely praised Olympic Arts Festival. The Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee's charitable foundation asked the state attorney general's office this week to allow it to provide money for future arts festivals, which are now under discussion by a blue-ribbon city committee.

Just across the state line into Iowa we drove under a thunderstorm, the kind they only have in Tornado Alley, the corridor that runs up the ribbon of states west of the Mississippi River from Texas to the Dakotas. It was mid-morning, but the sky was black as a starless night and you needed the headlights on to see the road just in front of you. The rain sounded like stones striking the hood of the car. Big drops splattered against the windshield like overripe grapes.

The Los Angeles County Citizens' Commission on Jail Violence issued a final report Friday finding "a persistent pattern" of unreasonable force" in the Sheriff's Department's jails and blaming Sheriff Lee Baca's leadership. The commission, which was created by the Board of Supervisors, is made up of the following seven members: • Lourdes G. Baird , a former state and federal court judge who served as U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles from 1990 to 1992. • The Rev. Cecil L. "Chip" Murray , former pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the most prominent African American churches in Los Angeles, and a senior fellow of USC's Center for Religion and Civic Culture.

Investigators for a blue-ribbon commission issued a searing critique of Sheriff Lee Baca and his top assistants, accusing them of fostering a culture in which deputies were permitted to beat and humiliate inmates, cover-up misconduct and form aggressive deputy cliques in the L.A. County jails. Baca was described as an out-of-touch boss who was "insulated … from force issues and other bad news" by his underlings. Members of his command staff, investigators said, tolerated a "code of silence" and failed to control and thoroughly investigate deputies' force against inmates.

For years, the two foreclosed houses near 49th Street and McKinley Avenue in South Los Angeles were dilapidated eyesores like so many others in a neighborhood hard hit by the housing crisis. The ground underneath them was even contaminated with lead and asbestos. Then, Thursday morning, a gaggle of laughing children hurtled across two new parks where the houses used to be. They were trailed by a beaming Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other dignitaries, one carrying a giant pair of ceremonial ribbon-cutting scissors.

Based on Samantha King's book of the same name, Canadian filmmaker Léa Pool's trenchant critique of breast cancer "culture," "Pink Ribbons, Inc. " questions the lucrative partnership between the pink ribbon campaign, corporations and cause marketing. Exploring how companies selling "everything from handguns to gasoline" - including those whose own products contain carcinogens - have cozied up to the movement, the film concludes they've bought a lot of good publicity but little in the way of medical progress.

Over the last two weeks, as Susan G. Komen for the Cure revoked funding for Planned Parenthood, then reversed itself, I watched through the scrim of something that, while less newsworthy, was, to me, no less significant: the death of Rachel Cheetham Morro, the 42-year-old writer of the blog Cancer Culture Chronicles. I never met Rachel. I don't know what she looked like. I don't know where she lived. We had one of those newfangled, disembodied relationships, conducted through Twitter and Facebook.

What to do on Iran Re "A fateful choice," Opinion, Feb. 2 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may indeed be the decider this time around in choosing to attack Iran, but the whole world will then have to deal with the aftermath. Just like in the buildup to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, you can already see the stream of editorials around the world, such as this one, making the case for striking Iran. Never mind that Netanyahu's decision is likely to be based more on fear and placating his extremist base than on actual facts.

SACRAMENTO --Internet retailer Amazon.com -- after years of avoiding having any physical presence in the Golden State -- is planning to open a third massive distribution center in the Northern California city of Tracy. The new operation is close to three major freeways -- interstates 5, 205 and 580 -- in a distant bedroom community for the San Francisco Bay Area south of Sacramento. The facility will be only about 30 miles from a second Amazon center being built in Patterson to the south.

In the still of a cold November evening, a small gathering of pagans, led by two witches, begins preparations for the coming winter solstice. But these are not just any pagans, and this is not just any setting. They are future officers of the United States Air Force practicing their faith in the basement of the Air Force Academy's cadet chapel. Their ranks are slim. According to the academy's enrollment records, only three of 4,300 cadets identified themselves as pagans, followers of an ancient religion that generally does not worship a single god and considers all things in nature interconnected.

When the 2011 winners of the coveted National Blue Ribbon Schools award were announced, only one of the 305 recipients was in Los Angeles, and that was a charter school. By contrast, two were located about 30 miles away, in Santa Ana - in a school district less than one-tenth the size of L.A. Unified. Yet Santa Ana Unified is far from affluent. A higher percentage of its students are poor and not fluent in English than in L.A. Unified . Close to 95% are Latino - making Santa Ana the most demographically homogenous school district in Orange County.

As a matter of fact, he is a nuclear engineer. And through all of the titles Albert Carnesale has taken on in the upper reaches of academia -- professor and provost of Harvard and dean of its Kennedy School, chancellor of UCLA, where he is still a professor -- one thread has been a constant: his work on the science and the political science of matters nuclear, both peaceable and belligerent. He now serves on the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, which presents its draft report to President Obama at the end of this month.