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Asthma sufferers have long relied on inhalers for relief from wheezing or coughing attacks. But as of Dec. 31, Primatene Mist -- the only available over-the-counter asthma inhaler -- was taken off shelves because of its adverse effect on the environment. Other inhalers are available, but these require a doctor's prescription. Some people with asthma aren't happy about the change, but lung doctors and asthma specialists agree that Primatene Mist wasn't the best option for patients anyway.

The parents of two USC graduate students slain near the campus last month have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the university, saying the school misled them when it claimed that it ranks among the safest in the nation. Ming Qu and Ying Wu, both 23-year-old electronic engineering students from China, were fatally shot April 11 while sitting in a parked BMW in the 2700 block of Raymond Avenue. No arrests have been made, but Los Angeles police say they believe the killings were the result of a robbery gone wrong.

The wait for tables is getting longer at Buck's, a popular breakfast spot for the tech elite and a weather vane for the Silicon Valley economy. Here, like everywhere else, Facebook is the talk of the town. "Charles Schwab was in the restaurant the other day, and I asked him to hook me up with some Facebook shares," said Jamis MacNiven, owner of Buck's, in the wealthy suburban enclave of Woodside. "He told me even he can't get Facebook shares. " The new tech boom officially gets underway Friday when Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rings Nasdaq's opening bell remotely from the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, launching the largest initial public offering of stock in Silicon Valley history.

WASHINGTON — One day after calling her dual Swiss-U.S. citizenship a "non-story," Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann asked the Swiss government Thursday to take her name off its rolls. "I am and always have been 100% committed to our United States Constitution and the United States of America," said Bachmann, a tea party favorite and former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Swiss citizenship was automatically conferred in 1978 when she married Marcus Bachmann, the son of Swiss immigrants, she said, and the recent news was merely because she and her family had updated their documents.

Often film sequels are slam dunks at the box office, a seamless continuation from where a previous hit left off. But as the new installment of the 15-year-old franchise "Men in Black" proves, getting to the big screen isn't always a cakewalk. One of the most troubled productions in recent Hollywood memory, Sony Pictures' latest movie in the Will Smith-Tommy Lee Jones sci-fi-comedy franchise encountered multiple script rewrites, a discontented star and a three-month production shutdown as writers and studio executives scrambled to fix a project that nearly fell apart . By the time it was over, the studio had run up a tab of nearly $250 million - making "Men in Black 3" one of the most expensive releases of the summer.

CINCINNATI - The Rev. Chris Beard is a theological conservative, make no mistake about it. He believes the Bible is the word of God. He believes the Holy Spirit speaks to him directly. He believes, as an article of faith, that abortion and same-sex marriage are wrong. Still, when a group of religious leaders in Ohio held two days of meetings in Cincinnati recently to talk about economic and racial justice, issues usually associated with the political left, there was Beard, a fourth-generation Pentecostal preacher with a disarming smile, a shaved head and a set of convictions that knock holes in the stereotypes about white evangelical Protestants.

When the White House sent a last-minute invitation for Asif Ali Zardari to attend the two-day NATO summit, they were taking a highly public gamble. Would sharing the spotlight with President Obama and other global leaders induce the Pakistani president to allow vital supplies to reach alliance troops fighting in Afghanistan? But long before the summit ended Monday, the answer was clear: No deal. Zardari's refusal to reopen the supply routes left a diplomatic blot on a summit that NATO sought to cast as the beginning of the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

Gasoline prices are keeping up their record-setting ways. California drivers paid an average of $4.358 for a gallon of regular gasoline, up 6.6 cents from a week earlier, the Energy Department said Monday. That's a fresh record high for this time of year and is 48.4 cents above the year-earlier price. Nationally, the average rose 7.2 cents to $3.793, also a record for this week, according to Energy Department statistics. A year earlier, the average U.S. price was 27.3 cents lower.

So how many omega-3 fatty acids are enough — and how should you get them? That likely depends on your age and your specific health concerns. The United States does not yet have guidelines for DHA or EPA, and consensus among nutrition experts is elusive. But specialty groups, some governmental agencies and individual experts have started to take a stand. For healthy adults without major medical issues, the European Food Safety Agency recommends a daily dose of 250 milligrams of combined EPA and DHA, while the National Heart Foundation of Australia suggests 500 milligrams.

BEIJING - "Beijing power struggle heralds end of China Communist Party," screams one headline. More sensational headlines purport to reveal how the wife of recently sacked Politburo member Bo Xilai poisoned an Englishman, who may have been her lover. And if that weren't enough, other stories claim that "Bo planned airline crash" and "slept with more than 100 women. " It's payback time for Chinese exiles, especially those with a printing press, television station or just a computer at their disposal.

JERUSALEM — Historian Ben-Zion Netanyahu, the father of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the man said to have had the most profound influence on the conservative Israeli leader, died early Monday in his Jerusalem home. He was 102. The elder Netanyahu served as the personal secretary of Zionism's prominent Revisionist leader, Zeev Jabotinsky, in the United States during World War II, lobbying for the creation of a Jewish state. He also pursued his academic work, specializing in medieval Spanish Jewry and the roots of the Spanish Inquisition.

CBRE Group Inc., the world's largest commercial real estate brokerage, turned a profit in the first quarter as U.S. property sales took off. The Los Angeles firm said Tuesday that income from arranging transactions to buy or rent space in offices, warehouses and other commercial properties helped revenue increase 14% from a year earlier to $1.35 billion. Growth was driven primarily by activity in the United States as leasing transactions fell off in Europe and sales slid in Asian markets.

At the age of 8, Curtis Tang, then living in Alhambra was a child prodigy in Go, the ancient Chinese board game that Henry Kissinger recommended as a key to Chinese thinking. Played with white and black stones on a crosshatched board, the game's object is to surround more territory than your opponent. So old, its year of origin is murky, Go is deceptively simple. But in Asia and much of the rest of the world, it's considered the richest game of strategy ever devised, and its mastery is a matter of unmatched prestige.

BEIJING - The spectacle unfolding on a launchpad on the west coast of North Korea creates a picture of a boastful and media-savvy regime willing to brush off international condemnation - but perhaps not completely unified behind its youthful new leader. Despite warnings from the United States, as well as China and Russia, Pyongyang said Wednesday that it was fueling a three-stage rocket for imminent launch, depending on weather conditions. "We don't really care about the opinions from the outside.

The painful rise of gasoline prices across the U.S. may have finally reached its end, for now. But analysts said more time is needed to determine whether this is a peak or just a pause. There were some encouraging signs. Overnight, the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline saw an all-too-rare decline of 0.2 cents to $3.927, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report. The AAA uses prices compiled from more than 100,000 retail outlets by the Oil Price Information Service and by Wright Express.

The interventionist liberals of the Obama administration were a doleful bunch last week. It was the 20th anniversary of the siege of Sarajevo, when a Bosnian Serb army battered a city full of civilians with artillery while the United States issued ineffective cries of alarm. The comparison with this year's massacres in Syria was painfully apt. Now, as then, the United Nations Security Council has asked both sides to stop shooting, to no great effect. Now, as then, the United States and its allies are rejecting the idea of military intervention as too difficult, too risky, too likely to add to the violence instead of ending it. In Bosnia, it took the United States more than three years and many massacres to decide that diplomatic measures and sanctions weren't enough.

How can you tell if you or someone you know is having a heart attack? Sometimes the symptoms can be surprisingly subtle. "They can be very different from person to person, between women and men and even within an individual who has more than one heart attack," says Dr. David Rizik, director of Interventional Cardiology for Scottsdale Healthcare Hospitals, in Scottsdale, Ariz. Men and women may experience atypical heart attack symptoms. In contrast to the "classic" chest-splitting, gasping-for-breath symptoms, many heart attacks begin with symptoms that are so mild they are often mistaken for indigestion or muscle ache.

Today, a century and a half after Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," the overwhelming majority of scientists in the United States accept Darwinian evolution as the basis for understanding how life on Earth developed. But although evolutionary theory is often portrayed as antithetical to religion, it has not destroyed the religious faith of the scientific community. According to a survey of members of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center in May and June this year, a majority of scientists (51%)

With the possibility of a confrontation looming with Iran, one historical example that should command American attention in its hour of decision - but is being neglected - is the bloody conflict that Iran fought against Iraq from 1980 to 1988. It is worth recalling the fierceness of that struggle to gain some appreciation of the enormity of any decision by Washington to go to war with Iran, for it may foretell what Tehran is capable of doing when it feels its Islamic Revolution is at stake.

She doesn't remember the details of that horrific day one year ago, when she was nearly swallowed alive by a massive tsunami triggered by the largest earthquake in Japan's recorded history. About all Masako Unoura-Tanaka remembers is the cold. Her wet hands. And the words she screamed to her aunt as she slipped into the debris-choked waters while trying to climb to a nearby rooftop for safety: "I don't want to die here! Help me!" Unoura-Tanaka, a Los Angeles resident who was visiting Japan at the time, spoke Sunday in Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles, where more than 300 people gathered at three memorial events to burn incense, offer prayers and pay tribute to those who died and those still suffering from the tragedy in northeastern Japan.