United States

Throughout 2001, President George W. Bush and I spent time negotiating an important bilateral agreement on immigration policies and programs. We optimistically pieced together an innovative framework, and were close to reaching our goals, when the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 derailed our plans. Now, in 2013, and in remarkably similar circumstances, President Obama and a bipartisan group of congressional leaders are again working courageously on immigration issues. I join the millions of voices echoing around the world in expressing my outrage and sorrow about the events in Boston this month.

Ready to chuck his electric bills, Camarillo resident Marc Weinberg last year asked his homeowners association for permission to put solar panels on his roof. When the Spanish Hills Homeowners Assn. said no, Weinberg sued the group. Under the state's Solar Rights Act, he argued, a homeowners association can't unreasonably block solar installations. Weinberg won, and the Spanish Hills Homeowners Assn. was ordered to not only permit the solar panels but to cover the tens of thousands of dollars that Weinberg had spent on legal fees.

" Hot Sur " (Hot South), the just-published novel by Colombian author Laura Restrepo, carries a disturbing dedication: "A Javier, que pasa los días de su vida en una cárcel de Estados Unidos" -- To Javier, who spends the days of his life in a U.S. jail. That's a pretty blunt and compelling way of opening a book. But if you're familiar with Restrepo's previous novels, several of which have been published in English -- "Leopard in the Sun," "The Dark Bride," "Delirium" -- you know that she specializes in hooking readers from the first page with dramatic set-ups that could've been lifted from a crime thriller or a telenovela . Then her taut, nuanced, ironic narratives quickly reel you in to confront the starkest and darkest of current realities: warfare, drug violence, desperate urban poverty, the embattled and fragmented modern Self.

The state bullet train agency is pushing full throttle to start construction of the important first phase of the California high-speed rail system in as little as six weeks, prompting scrutiny of the state's selection of a construction company with the worst technical scores among bidders. Tutor Perini Corp. won the competition to build the first 29 miles of the high-speed rail route on a low bid of $985 million, even though its design quality, safety plan and engineering, among other factors, ranked at the bottom of five teams seeking the work.

The 2,500th member of the U.S. military killed in Iraq was Cpl. Michael A. Estrella, a 20-year-old Marine from Riverside County enamored of the military since his Junior ROTC days at Hemet High School. Estrella was killed June 14 by a sniper while on foot patrol in Haditha, in the insurgent stronghold of Al Anbar province. He was a field radio operator with the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force, based in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.

It was a dumb idea, yet so simple there was a certain inevitability about it. When my son Alex was 18, we were so inspired by "Road Fever," Tim Cahill's book on his record-setting drive from South America's Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic, that we sought some similarly impressive challenge. We devised a road trip through all the 48 contiguous states, charting and plotting and mapping an 8,000-mile counterclockwise course. We would aim high. We would go for a record. Then reality crept in.

China will almost certainly pass the United States in the total size of its economy within a decade or so. But if one looks also at military and "soft power" resources, the U.S. is likely to remain more powerful than China for at least the next few decades. Does it matter? When nations worry too much about power transitions, their leaders may overreact or follow strategies that are dangerous. As Thucydides described it, the Peloponnesian War - in which the Greek city-state system tore itself apart - was caused by the rise in the power of Athens and the fear that created in Sparta.

Saudi Arabia remains the world's leading source of money for Al Qaeda and other extremist networks and has failed to take key steps requested by U.S. officials to stem the flow, the Bush administration's top financial counter-terrorism official said Tuesday. Stuart A.

More than 4,000 miles of train tracks stretch through California, winding up the blustery Cajon Pass and snaking through the desert surrounding Barstow. Those tracks could be seeing a lot more traffic in the next few years as trains loaded with Chinese-made toys, electronics and clothing roll eastward, connecting West Coast ports with cities across the U.S. Warren Buffett is a believer. In November, the world's second-richest man paid $34 billion for railroad giant Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.

The Fourth of July weekend seems like a good time to examine some of the heat and rhetoric lately surrounding one of the basic building blocks of our society: immigration. There is widespread concern that too many immigrants are coming in and, worse, that waves of unskilled workers will form a permanent underclass and change the historic dynamic of American society. These are serious matters. Immigration is part of the DNA of America, and it's as necessary today as ever.