Roadblock

State lawmakers moved to clear a roadblock that has stalled several thousand construction projects in the Southland that couldn't get required environmental permits and got caught in a court fight over permitting power plants. A compromise forged Wednesday would let the power plant dispute continue but would clear the way for unrelated projects. Supporters said the agreement would save about 57,000 Southern California jobs at 3,000 businesses and public agencies. At issue are pollution permits issued by the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Re "Subway extension runs into Westside roadblock," April 27 When I lived in Mexico City during the 1985 magnitude 8.0 earthquake, I witnessed epic destruction. Despite the severity of the damage inflicted by the temblor, the subway system was virtually unaffected. The trains resumed normal operations shortly after inspection. Beverly Hills leaders need to be fully informed by geological experts and transportation engineers as to any actual risks to the school buildings before taking a hard-line stand.

They built the roadblock across the highway out of whatever they could find -- burning tires, the shell of a refrigerator, a rusty bed frame, a palm tree stump, a beaten-up camper shell and eight bodies, one in a makeshift coffin, another stuffed into a suitcase. The young men of the Carrefour suburb of Port-au-Prince then furiously interrogated drivers Saturday about what they were carrying in their cars. They were sick of people from the earthquake-wrecked capital dumping the dead on their streets in the middle of the night.

Los Angeles County transportation officials set the stage Thursday for a showdown with Beverly Hills leaders over a small portion of the much-anticipated Westside subway extension. Officials on Thursday certified environmental documents for the entire $5.6-billion project, moving a step closer to construction of nine miles of rail that would mostly run underneath Wilshire Boulevard. But the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board only formally approved the first 3.9 miles of the project — as far west as La Cienega Boulevard — because of a request for a hearing from the city of Beverly Hills, where many school officials and city leaders hope to derail efforts to build part of the line underneath Beverly Hills High School.

No. 3 Huntington Beach Edison (7-0, 2-0) vs. No. 17 Los Alamitos (6-1, 1-1) at Huntington Beach High, 7 p.m. -- Off to its best start in 24 years under Coach Dave White, Edison faces a potential stumbling block; Los Alamitos has beaten the Chargers in Sunset League play the last two seasons. Griffins tailback Nick Richardson is averaging 181 yards and has 13 rushing touchdowns. "He's very, very fast and no one's stopped him," White said. The same could be said for Chargers quarterback Matt Viles, who has completed 62.7% of his passes for 1,976 yards with 16 touchdowns and five interceptions.

Well-connected lobbyists, political pressure and a good turnout at committee hearings used to be the special interest recipe for protecting turf in the state budget. Now, a potent new ingredient is being increasingly thrown into the mix: top-shelf litigators. Lawyers are being drafted in droves to unravel spending plans passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor. The goal of these litigators is to get back money their clients lost in the budget process. They are having considerable success, winning one lawsuit after another, costing the state billions of dollars and throwing California's budget process into further tumult.

A 3 a.m. car ride from the airport to downtown Cairo during curfew is a trip between two armed camps fighting for the future of Egypt. Outside the airport Tuesday, the road is immediately blocked by chunks of concrete, and a dozen young men wielding broom handles and a baseball bat approach. When I identify myself as a journalist from the U.S., the well-dressed men smile and say, "Welcome to Egypt," motioning for the driver to pass with me and another passenger. Thirty yards later it is the army that stops us, an officer and several soldiers with an armored personnel carrier as backup.

A car bomb exploded prematurely at a roadblock in Israel's security zone in southern Lebanon today. Israeli military sources and Christian radio stations said the blast killed only the driver, but a Muslim-controlled radio station said there were "many casualties that could not be quickly counted." The Muslim station, Beirut's Voice of the Nation radio, did not cite the source of its report, and the differences could not be reconciled immediately.

Israeli news reports said Friday that three Palestinians may have been killed in custody, not shot to death by soldiers at a roadblock as the military reported. Reports carried by three daily newspapers and army radio conflicted with the official version of a shooting Oct. 1 outside a refugee camp in the occupied Gaza Strip.

The California Highway Patrol arrested five people on suspicion of drunk driving in Spring Valley this weekend at the state's first sobriety checkpoint in San Diego County. Officers stopped 725 vehicles from 10 p.m. Friday to 2 a.m. Saturday at a roadblock set up in the 900 block of Sweetwater Road. Fifteen drivers were pulled off the road and given field sobriety tests.

In what could end up becoming a vicious cycle of economic hurt, struggling homeowners who can't relocate for new jobs may stymie employers' long-range growth. So says a report from outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., which finds that only about 7.5% of job hunters who found new positions ended up moving to a new home for work in the latter half of 2011. Since the end of 2009, the quarterly relocation rate has averaged about 7.9%. That's half the pre-recession rate of 15.7% and lower than the 13.2% of candidates willing to uproot during the recession.

Williams-Sonoma, the cookware giant founded more than five decades ago in now-historic downtown Sonoma in northern California, may face trouble going home again. In a bid to return to its roots, the retailer is facing controversy with the small city tucked in the wine county of Sonoma County over a desire to limit chain stores downtown, according to the  Santa Rosa Press Democrat. The company hopes to open a small location at the site of its original store that opened in 1956 and offered a selection of cookware from France.

Nearly 20 years after President Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, a key provision that grants Mexican trucks access to U.S. highways remains stalled. Staunch opposition from unions and consumer groups in this country, which argue that unsafe foreign trucks and inexperienced drivers put U.S. jobs and lives at risk, have successfully shut down even the most modest attempts to comply with NAFTA. In October, the Obama administration tried again, with a pilot program granting three Mexican trucking firms limited access to U.S. roads.

A mug shot of a wide-eyed man with a full-grown beard flashed on the evening news. The television reporter said he had been stabbed to death in Placentia. Rebecca McGillivray said she knew the image was her father, but it was not the man she remembered. Instead, she provided a description of a different man than the one on the broadcast. Her father, James Patrick McGillivray, 53, was the first homeless man to be murdered in a string of stabbings that began Dec. 20 in northern Orange County.

A government program that helped homeowners finance and install green upgrades before a technical roadblock stalled it last year may be resuscitated by Congress. A group of legislators introduced a bill Wednesday to jump-start the Property Assessed Clean Energy program, known as PACE. The program made installations of energy-efficient solar panels, insulation and water conservation systems more affordable. More than half of the country had approved some version of the program in which local governments provided funding for home improvements.

In the beginning, there was Ma' Bell, Muff, Skull, and five others. They pedaled around downtown together, surprising a few motorists with a sight then quite rare in Los Angeles: bicyclists traveling in a peloton, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the city. "When you're a kid, you do those kinds of adventures," said one of those original riders, an East Hollywood resident in his late 30s who goes by his biking pseudonym, Roadblock. But they weren't kids. They were people in their late 20s and early 30s, most with professional careers.

Re "Subway extension runs into Westside roadblock," April 27 When I lived in Mexico City during the 1985 magnitude 8.0 earthquake, I witnessed epic destruction. Despite the severity of the damage inflicted by the temblor, the subway system was virtually unaffected. The trains resumed normal operations shortly after inspection. Beverly Hills leaders need to be fully informed by geological experts and transportation engineers as to any actual risks to the school buildings before taking a hard-line stand.

Re "College Park's Future Discussed by Officials," Feb. 12. Fifteen years ago Ventura County had a model of a proposed park it was going to build on vacant land at the corner of Highway 1 and Channel Islands Boulevard in southeast Oxnard. It was to be called College Park. The model sat in the lobby of the Government Center. Since I was a county employee, I would walk by and admire the model of College Park. My park. I live within a block of the land. Over the years the county proposed several plans for the park on this land but they encountered roadblock after roadblock.

A plan to provide additional resources to state and county authorities for farmers market enforcement, proposed in the aftermath of a cheating scandal last autumn, has not been incorporated into a general farmers market bill currently before the California state Senate, and it seems unlikely to be adopted this year. Southern California managers and farmers market leaders are rushing to submit comments in favor of the plan before a Senate vote scheduled to take place in the next week. After news reports last fall alleged that many vendors at certified farmers markets were actually selling produce bought from wholesalers, the California Department of Food and Agriculture scheduled listening sessions around the state, during which many market customers expressed outrage and called for stricter enforcement.

Scores of mostly Coptic Christian protesters were injured when their weekend demonstration blocking a street near the heart of downtown Cairo was attacked by motorists and residents as riot police stood by, prompting new questions about the ability and willingness of Egypt's military-led government to maintain security. The attacks came hours after an explosion at the tomb of a Muslim saint in the northern Sinai town of Sheik Zweid and a week after sectarian clashes left 15 dead and 200 injured.