Visiting

When: 7:30. Where: Staples Center. On the air: TV: TWC SportsNet, TWC Deportes; Radio: 710, 1330. Records: Lakers 42-37, Warriors 45-33 Record vs. Warriors: 2-1. Update: Lakers center Dwight Howard intimated he would not seek payback for Golden State counterpart David Lee's smacking him in the mouth with an elbow March 25 during the Warriors' 109-103 victory in Oakland. "I just said, 'I'll remember it,'" Howard said. "It doesn't mean I want to come out [Friday]

BEIJING - U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry arrived in Beijing on Saturday in hopes of turning the Chinese government's obvious frustration with North Korea's nuclear program into decisive action. Kerry's debut trip to East Asia as secretary has been shadowed by ominous threats from North Korea of nuclear attacks against the U.S. mainland and Washington's allies in the region. The Chinese have been unusually vocal in their condemnation of their old communist ally, with many prominent scholars saying it is time to cut the ties forged by Mao Tse-tung back in the Cold War era. Touching down in Seoul on Friday afternoon, Kerry met with South Korea's new president, Park Geun-hye, and Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se.

Twenty years ago, veteran caver Chris Nicola received an offer from a Ukrainian friend to explore the well-known gypsum giant caves in the western part of the European country. Nicola quickly accepted the invitation. "My family on my mother's side had Cossack roots and they were known to come from the Ukraine," the New Yorker said over the phone this week. "I thought in the back of my mind I could do some family research. " But his main reason was to visit the 77-mile long Priest's Grotto cave, which is part of an extensive gypsum cave system.

WASHINGTON - The man who shot Ronald Reagan and three other men in 1981 has been behaving normally when he leaves the mental hospital in Washington, D.C., where he is being treated, according to Secret Service observations in newly released court documents. John Hinckley Jr., 57, shops at Wal-Mart, Target and PetSmart during visits to his mother's home in Williamsburg, Va. One of his first stops is often a Wendy's. At home with his mother, he performs lots of chores, plays guitar and makes art. He shows few of the symptoms that led to the 1982 finding that he was insane, and therefore not guilty of attempted murder and other charges in the assassination attempt.

First it was Texas Gov. Rick Perry who came to California with his cowboy swagger and boasts about lassoing away businesses. Then the South Dakota governor swept through to recruit dairy farmers. Soon after, the Iowa governor made an appearance. Now they're coming in pairs. Joining forces, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell are heading to California on Thursday to try their luck at wooing California businesses. On a two-day tour with stops in Costa Mesa, Palo Alto and San Francisco, the old friends plan to tout the wonders of doing business in their states.

BEIJING - As Gov. Jerry Brown tours some of China's economic hubs this week, he is breathing the kind of heavy, soiled air that blanketed Los Angeles decades ago. The soot and smog that are byproducts of this country's industrial progress are choking its people and threatening its economy. Chinese leaders are talking openly about the need to clean up the air, and to learn how from California. So Brown and a large delegation of business and political leaders have come to lend a hand, as well as to leverage China's need into business deals.

The sinking feeling that his life was about to capsize hit Scott London when the FBI knocked on the door of his Agoura Hills home one morning a couple of weeks ago. As the ex-KPMG auditor said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he was about to leave for work when a pair of FBI agents flashed their badges and asked to come inside. “They just showed up and said you're subject to an investigation,” London said of the life-altering conversation in his kitchen. “I felt about as bad as you could feel.

BEIJING -- As he brings his message of carbon reduction to top officials in China, Gov. Jerry Brown moved another step closer to broadening California's carbon-trading market Tuesday. Before crossing the Pacific, the governor sent a letter to the state Air Resources Board enabling it to move ahead with plans to link California's carbon-trading market with one in the Canadian province of Quebec. Carbon markets aim to reduce overall pollution by creating a system that limits the total amount of carbon emissions allowed but enables big polluters to buy the right to pollute more.

The process of getting into the U.S. for a visit is either easy and efficient or so frustrating that many tourists tell their friends to avoid a trip to the country. The starkly different portrayals of the nation's customs process come from two separate surveys issued in the Last month. The U.S. Travel Assn., a trade group for the nation's travel industry, released a survey in March that said the entry process is so frustrating and inefficient that 43% of travelers would recommend that others avoid visiting the U.S. The group has been lobbying the Obama administration to spend up to $150 million to add 1,000 more customs and border protection officers to speed up the entry process for foreign tourists.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey arrived in Afghanistan on Saturday for a weekend visit aimed at assessing the amount and type of training that American troops will continue to provide Afghan defense forces after 2014, military officials said. But his arrival was marred by new violence. Three foreign soldiers and two coalition civilian workers were killed hours after he landed when a bomb-laden vehicle exploded in southeastern Zabul province, NATO officials said, without identifying the nationalities of those killed.