Stewardship

With the world's oceans facing mounting threats from pollution, climate change and overfishing, the Obama administration on Friday held the first of several public hearings intended to help it draft a coordinated policy for managing the health of the seas. During their stop in Alaska, members of the White House's Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force said they expected to have a list of priorities for improving ocean stewardship in place by mid-September. By December, officials said, they planned to set out a broad strategy for sustainably allocating natural resources among interests such as fishing, oil and gas development, shipping, wind and tidal energy, boating and wildlife preservation.

An influential consulting firm is advising that shareholders vote News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and 12 others — including his two sons — off the board of directors of the media giant less than two weeks before the company's annual meeting. Institutional Shareholders Services Inc. said Monday that an overhaul was necessary in light of the phone hacking scandal that continues to rock News Corp. and has led to government inquiries of the company in England and the United States.

With only two years left in office, President Reagan is presumably beginning to worry about how future historians and future generations of Americans will judge the legacy of his eight years in the White House. Like other Presidents before him, he will undoubtedly do what he can--through memoirs and interviews with scholars--to embellish his successes and explain away his failures. It will be especially fascinating to see what ex-President Reagan has to say about his stewardship of the U.S.

Reporting from Las Vegas -- J. Terrence Lanni, a casino executive who helped Las Vegas shed its mob-run image and earn Wall Street's respect, died late Thursday at his home in Pasadena. He was 68 and had cancer. Lanni served as an executive with Caesars World before joining Kirk Kerkorian's MGM Grand Inc. in 1995. Under his stewardship, the one-casino company grew into a 17-resort conglomerate, with a slew of casinos on the Las Vegas Strip and a venture in booming Macao. The company is now named MGM Resorts International.

Towering willow oaks frame a wide spring sky. Birds whistle love calls as old as time. Here, members of Heritage Presbyterian Church make the connection between faith and the Earth. "We can give praise to God when we see yellow-rumped warblers," said Kathryn Cochrane, whose committee built the trail that meanders through the suburban church's Creation Awareness Center, a three-acre wood lot behind the parish parking lot. The project is one of dozens of recycling, creek-monitoring and other environmental efforts undertaken in recent years by U.S. churches and synagogues, especially those in politically liberal areas.

Shame on George Will, usually a conservative columnist, for blaming Bush and the previous Republican Administration for the nation's economic woes and soaring national debt ("Bush Sinks to a Modern Low in Stewardship," Column Right, Oct. 31). Doesn't he know that presidents can't spend a penny unless it is appropriated by Congress, dominated for most of nearly 40 years by Democrats? HOWARD LOCKWOOD, Lake View Terrace

It is tragic that plans are being made to sell a major portion of St. John's Seminary in Camarillo (May 6). The now-closed undergraduate school should remain as a Catholic college, given its prime location within the largest Catholic archdiocese in the U.S., even if that means turning over the administrative duties to another Catholic entity. Poor stewardship of church resources needs to cease before there is nothing left for posterity. Matthew D. Herrera San Luis Obispo

It was unfortunate to read that Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) believes that the Republican Party should remove the antiabortion plank in the party platform ("It's Bad for Party Business," Dec. 29). Conviction, integrity and commitment to the unborn baby should never be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency for the sake of unity. As an old military man, Ferguson should know that some things are worth fighting for. In the 1950s and '60s, the civil rights movement stirred controversy and divisiveness, but thank God that divisiveness pricked this nation's consciousness, which led to congressional passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As pro-life Republicans, we have a moral duty to promote life and responsibility with regard to our bodies.

Re "Maybe a Bit of Travel to Cure the Nein Blues," Commentary, Feb. 24: Who is Theodore Sorensen to pontificate? The John F. Kennedy industrial-strength propaganda machine rolls on: the Bay of Pigs, the White House-ordered assassination of South Vietnam's president and the introduction of American "advisors" there, spying on and illegally wiretapping Martin Luther King Jr.'s telephones, all under Kennedy's stewardship. (Does the buck ever stop anywhere near JFK?) And Sorensen was a prominent Kennedy advisor through it all. President Bush a "Lone Ranger"?

The series by Mark A. Stein and Louis Sahagun paints a bleak picture of the BLM's stewardship of the nation's public lands. However, this story pales against the enormous waste of taxpayer money and the rape of the Western environment perpetrated by the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the last century. The bitter rivalry between these two giant bureaucracies over the right to manage the invaluable water resources west of the Mississippi has led to waste, fraud and abuse of unprecedented proportions.

After reports that a dangerous drug-resistant bacterium, carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae , or CRKP, had spread to at least 356 patients in Southern California last year, Times staff writer Molly Hennessy-Fiske spoke with Dr. Kavita Trivedi, medical epidemiologist with the California Department of Public Health's Antimicrobial Stewardship Program Initiative, about what can be done to reduce the spread of such drug-resistant "superbugs....

Daniel M. Finley rode into town barely a month ago, and the new president of the Autry National Center is already fixin' for a showdown with Doc Holliday, the Earp brothers and the Clanton gang. The lifesize figures of the OK Corral gunslingers have stood on the Griffith Park museum's lower level since it opened in 1988, in an exhibit representing the famed 1881 shootout in the Arizona Territory town of Tombstone. The problem, Finley says, is that there's no action ? push a button and all you get is an audio account of the gunfight, with lights shining on whichever character is supposed to be speaking.

A foolish housekeeping mistake ended up costing the life of a beloved giant panda at the Jinan Zoo in China last week. Zoo staff were disinfecting an area that shared a ventilation system with the enclosure for Quan Quan , a 21-year-old panda that had given birth to seven cubs, earning her the title of "heroic mother." Toxic fumes from the cleaning job caused her lungs to collapse. Tragic accidents can befall animals in any setting — at a zoo, in a forest. But there is a special responsibility due to animals when humans hold them in captivity.

President Obama on Monday is set to create a national stewardship policy for America's oceans and Great Lakes, including a type of zoning that could dramatically rebalance the way government regulates offshore drilling, fishing and other marine activities. The policy would not create new regulations or immediately alter drilling plans or fisheries management. But White House documents and senior administration officials suggest it would strengthen conservation and ecosystem protection.

With the world's oceans facing mounting threats from pollution, climate change and overfishing, the Obama administration on Friday held the first of several public hearings intended to help it draft a coordinated policy for managing the health of the seas. During their stop in Alaska, members of the White House's Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force said they expected to have a list of priorities for improving ocean stewardship in place by mid-September. By December, officials said, they planned to set out a broad strategy for sustainably allocating natural resources among interests such as fishing, oil and gas development, shipping, wind and tidal energy, boating and wildlife preservation.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa vowed to double the rate of academic improvement at schools under his stewardship in benchmarks announced Tuesday. The marching orders apply to the 10 schools that make up the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, Villaraigosa's high-stakes effort to improve some of the city's lowest-achieving campuses. The partnership assumed leadership of the schools July 1. Villaraigosa unveiled his goals before 300 teachers, administrators, parents and students gathered in the auditorium of Markham Middle School in Watts.

Re "Landowners Dealt a Blow by Justices," April 24: I think it's time we moved away from absolute property rights in this country. Landowners should not have unlimited power to pollute Lake Tahoe or any other natural area. People should not be allowed to buy up forests and cut them down, destroying natural life forms, just because they own the land. Ownership should mean stewardship of the land, holding it and protecting it for future generations and honoring the land itself and the nature that sustains us. Just as we take children away from violent and abusive parents, we should protect the land from abusive owners.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Nov. 24 commentary on the Bush administration's horrible stewardship of our environment is a clarion call from an ever-shrinking wilderness to all Californians to get involved. If you can't find the time to write or phone your elected representatives, then at the very least, vote. Vote for candidates who don't just promise but have shown leadership in protecting our coastline, our water supplies, the air we breathe and the land we inhabit. On the federal level, we must continue to demand that a state's rights be upheld, for only a state's citizenry can truly understand and resolve the environmental, social and economic problems in its own backyard.

Four of the seven public agencies that voluntarily participate in Orange County's investment portfolio have withdrawn almost all their cash in recent months amid concerns over Treasurer Chriss Street, and others are reviewing whether to keep their money in the pool, according to public finance managers. Voluntary investors in the pool make up a small fraction of the total, and the amount withdrawn -- just under $4 million -- is a pittance in the county's overall $6.95-billion investment fund.

Re "Burnt park not down for the count," May 10 Fire in chaparral, the dominant -- and native -- habitat of Griffith Park, is 100% natural. As with many urban parks, Griffith has been described as our city's "lungs" -- a big, wild place where coyote and even bobcat sightings are nothing extraordinary. It also has been the canvas onto which generations of Angelenos have imparted their personal vision for the park, from the redwoods in the bird sanctuary to the tropical gardens of the vista points.