Seminars

Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black has canceled his scheduled appearance at a Christian evangelical conference after he was pictured with columnist Ann Coulter and other prominent conservatives in a brochure promoting the event. Black told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told participants at a Tokyo seminar Thursday that he did not think a U.S. economic slowdown was "probable," toning down his earlier warning about a recession later this year. "It is possible we can get a U.S. recession toward the end of this year, but I don't think it's probable," Greenspan said at the forum organized by international brokerage CLSA. On Monday, Greenspan said a recession was possible, though the timing was difficult to predict.

The teacher instructed us to measure 15 milliliters of wine by sucking on our glass pipettes and transferring the liquid to our waiting beakers. For the next half-hour, we tinkered on our own, adding a generous pour from B, a few drops of C until the formula was just right. On a recent weekend excursion to Napa and Sonoma, my husband, Kevin, and I rediscovered pipettes and other lab apparatus we hadn't seen since high school chemistry class.

Representatives of feuding Sunni and Shiite groups met Friday at a secret location in Finland to discuss ways to end the bloodshed in Iraq, officials said. The Crisis Management Initiative, a conflict-prevention group headed by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, said it was leading the seminar to examine how lessons learned from peace processes in South Africa and Northern Ireland could be applied to Iraq.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has recently feted such legendary Oscar-winning composers as Franz Waxman and Mikl?s R?zsa, who began making their marks in the 1930s. But with its upcoming seminar series, "The Music Sound Track," the organization is examining the present and the future of film composition. The three-evening program at the Linwood Dunn Theater examines the musical scoring process through the eyes of several of today's best-known composers.

The grape tomatoes looked harmless enough, nestled among the lettuce leaves and shredded cabbage on 100 salad plates. Actually, they were land mines, as lethal as the olives lurking nearby, capable of snuffing out the careers of the UC Irvine business students before they had landed their first jobs. Fortunately, the students were in the presence of etiquette maven Ann Marie Sabath.

As the Writers Guild tries to fortify itself against the inevitable slow bleed of numbers and commitment among its membership in its fifth week of striking, many gung-ho writers continue to find novel ways of surviving the monotony and social awkwardness of the picket lines. Notwithstanding the occasional field trip to a location shoot to disrupt filming, most writers have been stuck walking in tight loops in four-hour picketing shifts that can ultimately amount to a daily 10-mile hike.

SAN DIEGO -- Marine Staff Sgt. John Klacza, who took part in the assault on Baghdad in 2003 and will soon deploy to Okinawa and beyond, had a question about the potential negative side of multinational alliances in Asia. If the U.S. keeps encouraging alliances among Asian nations, he asked, couldn't that mean that if we went to war with one nation, we might have to go to war with all of that nation's allies, a scenario sort of like World War I?

Federal and state securities regulators will expand their crackdown on misleading investment seminars for senior citizens as part of an effort to protect them from fraud, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday. The SEC and state regulators announced Monday a joint program designed to protect seniors against fraud.

It was a suspicious crowd that gathered Saturday at UCLA for a special lesson on espionage. "Are you sure you're from the L.A. Times?" one woman in the audience warily asked a reporter. You couldn't blame her. More than 130 people who attended the daylong seminar were treated to a rare glimpse into the world of international deception by husband-and-wife team Antonio and Jonna Mendez, veterans who spent their careers helping the Central Intelligence Agency fight the Cold War.