Settlements

Re "The Israel trip," Opinion, March 8 Ami Ayalon's suggestions to President Obama as he prepares for his trip to Israel make the assumption that the United States should continue in its role as mediator between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Obama has shown his clear bias toward Israel in many ways. He came out against the Goldstone Report, a United Nations investigation into the Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip in 2008; he never condemned the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara and the killing of a U.S. citizen by an Israeli commando; he blocked a Palestinian bid for U.N. observer status; and he has retreated from earlier demands of a settlement freeze on Palestinian lands.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google has agreed to pay a $7-million fine to settle a probe by 38 states and the District of Columbia that it collected personal data from unsecured wireless networks while operating its Street View fleet. The Connecticut attorney general's office, which led an eight-state committee that investigated the data collection, made the announcement Tuesday. Word leaked Friday that Google had reached a settlement with the states . As part of the agreement, Google must educate employees about the privacy of consumer data and sponsor a public service campaign to teach people how to secure their wireless networks.

Ray Boucher walked out of a downtown Los Angeles courthouse six years ago the envy of the legal field. As the lead attorney in the landmark $660-million sexual-abuse settlement with the Catholic archdiocese, he had won long-denied justice for hundreds of victims and made himself and other attorneys very rich. Flanked by grateful clients, he faced a crush of cameras with the confidence of a man who had achieved a new level of professional acclaim and personal wealth. These days Boucher returns frequently to that same courthouse.

On its website, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says pursuing damages when banks fail is a way to restore public confidence in the industry. Doing so, it says in an analysis of the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, creates “the perception as well as the reality that directors, officers and other professionals at financial institutions are held accountable for wrongful conduct.” But can confidence be restored if the public doesn't...

Three years ago, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. collected $54 million from Deutsche Bank in a settlement over unsound loans that contributed to a spectacular California bank failure. The deal might have made big headlines, given that the bad loans contributed to the largest payout in FDIC history, $13 billion. But the government cut a deal with the bank's lawyers to keep it quiet: a "no press release" clause that required the FDIC never to mention the deal "except in response to a specific inquiry.

Later this month, President Obama will visit Israel, a country intended by an act of international law to be the reconstituted Jewish national home. The visit will be highly charged, but at the same time, many Israelis have low expectations for what could come of it. The president's protracted but unsuccessful attempts to stifle Iran's nuclear weapons program, his insistence on zealously challenging Israel's right to a united Jerusalem and his inability to pressure the Palestinian Authority to fulfill its obligations are among the chief reasons for the lack of excitement in Israel.

As Israel pursues an expanded settlement agenda in Palestinian territory, even its friends are beginning to sound like its adversaries. The European Union issued a damning report this week, calling the Israeli government's construct-and-control strategy "the biggest single threat to the two-state solution" aimed at bringing peace to one of the Middle East's most violence-prone regions. And for the first time in its annual evaluation of Israeli settlement policy, the 27-nation bloc that is Jerusalem's most important trading partner hinted at a possible boycott of goods produced on illegally occupied land.

Hyundai Motor America is inching closer to a settlement of claims it inflated the fuel economy ratings of its vehicles. Details of the deal are still to be worked out, but the automaker is expected to reach a settlement in 38 lawsuits on the fuel economy mislabeling, which have been combined and are being heard in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Its corporate sister, Kia Motors America, is expected to also settle the litigation. Photos: Vehicles with overstated fuel economy claims In November, the South Korean automakers said they overstated the fuel economy on nearly 1 million late-model vehicles after the discrepancy was discovered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which monitors the fuel economy tests by automakers.

The county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday sought to determine whether Los Angeles airport officials have complied with a 2006 court settlement requiring them to spread the growth in flights at busy Los Angeles International Airport to others in the region. Supervisors directed the county counsel's office and William T Fujioka, the county's chief executive officer, to assess how well Los Angeles World Airports has implemented the agreement that ended a legal challenge to the plans of former Mayor James K. Hahn to modernize LAX. They must report to the board in 30 days.