Spat

For better and for worse, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has revolutionized Italy during the last 15 years, toppling walls between government and business, media and ideology, traditional parties and maverick movements. As the uproar over Berlusconi's latest public battle with his wife demonstrated Monday, his personality-driven, loose-cannon style at times sweeps away the boundaries between serious politics and personal gossip as well.

Barack Obama may have captivated the European imagination with his unexpected rise to the presidency and a softer-than-Bush foreign policy, but his political magnetism is showing its limits just two months into the job, as many European leaders balk at his call to match his administration's attempt to spend its way out of recession.

Re "Chick fails to get funds for legal battle," Dec. 11 It's disturbing that any elected city official would seek pro bono attorney services to take a case and then sue the city to pay the bill. According to Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, the tab for legal settlements and outside counsel surpassed $38 million in the City of Los Angeles in 2006 alone. Controller Laura Chick and City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo should use the conference room, not the courtroom, to settle their disputes.

Mexican and Guatemalan drug traffickers arguing about bets on a horse race in a rural border town fought a series of gun battles in which 17 people died, police said. Guatemala's National Police spokesman, Donald Gonzalez, said the traffickers were drinking in Santa Ana Huista on Sunday afternoon when the argument broke out, leading to a pursuit in which the men shot at one another with automatic weapons from racing trucks. Gonzalez said police found grenade launchers at the scene of the final shootout, along with hundreds of bullet cartridges and a truck with license plates from the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

Attendees at Thursday's board meeting of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority got a treat: a public spat between Los Angeles County Supervisors Gloria Molina and Zev Yaroslavsky that ended when Yaroslavsky walked out. His exit came after he had earlier described Molina's words as "selfish nonsense." At the root of the dispute were two items: rail safety and Measure R, the proposal to raise the sales tax by half a cent in Los Angeles County to pay for transit and freeway projects.

Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo and Controller Laura Chick agreed Tuesday to a cease-fire to their City Hall spat that spilled into the courts after Chick launched an audit of Delgadillo's workers' compensation unit. At the City Council's request, Delgadillo agreed to suspend a lawsuit he filed to block the audit, and Chick agreed to suspend the review. Delgadillo contended that Chick does not have the authority to perform the audit.

. -- Dairy Queen is facing a dilly of a problem -- a rebellion against the revamping of restaurants by a growing number of mostly mom-and-pop franchise owners. Claiming that DQ is forcing them to increase the size of restaurants or add table service under the threat of losing their franchises, owner associations with members in 10 states are suing the chain. Resistance to the Minneapolis-based corporation began in Michigan last month.

On Sept. 19, 2000, John McCain rose in the Senate to rail against what he called the "staggering" sums that the federal government planned to spend to help Salt Lake City stage the 2002 Winter Olympics. "The American taxpayer is being shaken down to the tune of nearly a billion and a half dollars," McCain said. The Arizona Republican vowed to "do everything in my power" to delay or kill "this pork-barrel spending" and to end the "fiscal abuse" related to the Olympics.

NEW ORLEANS -- A couple of time zones and nearly 2,000 miles away from the shadow cast by an owner's vexation, matters appeared to quell for a day. With a top-tier management rift turning public this week, the involved parties sought to bring the issue to an end -- publicly, at least -- with closed mouths and tight lips.