CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
March 19, 2014 | By Johanna Neuman
Robert S. Strauss, a one-time chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a Washington insider who combined earthy Texas charm with raw political power, died Wednesday. He was 95. A spokesman for Strauss' Washington law firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, confirmed his death but would release no other details. A U.S. trade representative in the Carter administration, Strauss was a poker-playing, cigar-chomping, power-lunch-eating rainmaker who was so successful at recruiting mega-clients that he stopped billing by the hour in the 1970s.
OPINION
March 18, 2014 | Jonah Goldberg
Will everyone please stop talking about a new Cold War? However badly things work out between Russia and the United States and the West, a new Cold War isn't in the cards because Russia today isn't the Soviet Union. Sure, we are in a diplomatic and geostrategic conflict with Russia, which was the heart of the old Soviet Union. Also, Russia wants much of the real estate that belonged to the Soviet Union before it collapsed. And Vladimir Putin is a former KGB colonel who now waxes nostalgic for the good old days.
OPINION
March 5, 2014 | Doyle McManus
Here's a chilly thought: We are seeing the dawn of a second Cold War between Russia and the West. But this one should be easier to manage than the first was. The headlines over the last week have echoed the bad old days of the 20th century: Russian troops marching into someone else's territory. Poland calling on NATO to help secure its borders. Americans and Russians trading angry charges at the United Nations. But just as in the last Cold War, remaining calm is the starting point for strategy.
SPORTS
February 15, 2014 | David Wharton and Stacy St. Clair
The conversation was short, limited to basic words and gestures. But the two bobsledders -- one Russian, one American -- understood each other. "Was good?" Alexander Kasjanov asked, pointing toward the track at the Sanki Sliding Center. "U.S. pilot Steven Holcomb slung an arm around his competitor's shoulder as they walked back toward their sleds. As Holcomb had explained earlier: "We all get along. " "Most of the athletes at these 2014 Sochi Olympics are a generation removed from Cold War tensions that once fueled an intense rivalry between Russians and Americans.
NEWS
February 14, 2014 | By David Wharton and Stacy St. Clair
SOCHI, Russia - The conversation was short, limited to basic words and gestures. But the two bobsledders - one Russian, one American - understood each other. "Was good?" Alexander Kasjanov asked, pointing toward the track at the Sanki Sliding Center. U.S. pilot Steven Holcomb slung an arm around his competitor's shoulder as they walked back toward their sleds. As Holcomb had explained earlier: "We all get along. " Most of the athletes at these 2014 Sochi Olympics are a generation removed from Cold War tensions that once fueled an intense rivalry between Russians and Americans.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 6, 2014 | By Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times Film Critic
The excellent new drama "In Bloom," Georgia's Oscar entry in the foreign-language category, has the heartbreak and hope of a country slipped inside a coming-of age-story of two 14-year-old girls. The 1990s, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, were a potent and chaotic time in Georgia, one that filmmaker Nana Ekvtimishvili remembers as shaping her attitudes about women's roles in an evolving society. She wrote her own childhood into Eka's (Lika Babluani) and Natia's (Mariam Bokeria)