CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
April 25, 2014 | By Emily Alpert Reyes
A bitter political tug-of-war over who will host a Fourth of July fireworks show at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum took another turn Friday when City Councilman Bernard C. Parks withdrew his bid to host the show -- and said he would hold a separate event. Parks said he was pulling out because Councilman Curren Price had received a copy of his "blueprint" for the proposed event, which he argued should have remained confidential. He said he would hold his Independence Day fireworks event elsewhere, without indicating a location.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 24, 2014 | By Robert Abele
A determined historical sweep masks a small-minded bid for easy outrage and heartstrings-pulling in the schematic World War II drama "Walking With the Enemy. " Set in 1944, when the war was essentially over for the Nazis but their reign of terror in occupied territories was still going strong, the movie focuses on the efforts of a young, displaced Hungarian Jew named Elek (Jonas Armstrong) to find his family after escaping from a camp, which turned into a concerted effort to save many Hungarian Jews.
WORLD
April 23, 2014 | By Yuriko Nagano and Julie Makinen
TOKYO -- Hiroshi Kyoso says he values Japan's relationship with the United States highly and feels warmly about Washington's new ambassador to Tokyo, Caroline Kennedy. But as the 90-year-old veteran of World War II arrived Wednesday morning to pray at Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine -- a controversial site that commemorates nearly 2.5 million of Japan's war dead including 14 top war criminals -- Kyoso said he saw no connection between the shrine and Japan's ties with America. If a Japanese leader visits Yasukuni, he said, it's only natural.
OPINION
April 23, 2014 | Times Editorial Board
Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy is being portrayed by some as a man of principle, an iconoclast who should be admired for his willingness to stand up to the federal government. But in fact he's a petty scofflaw who seems to think that he has the right to pick and choose which rules must be obeyed. Bundy is the cattleman who grazes his herd on federal land operated by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, but unlike more than 15,000 other ranchers, he refuses to pay the associated grazing fees.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 22, 2014 | By Oliver Gettell
Another day, another potential Steven Spielberg movie. As a number of competing projects and producers vie for the director's attention to be his next film, Spielberg has added a Cold War thriller starring Tom Hanks to his ever-expanding list of candidates, according to the Hollywood Reporter . The yet untitled film written by Matt Charman would tell the true story of James Donovan (Hanks), an American attorney who was enlisted by the CIA to slip behind the Iron Curtain and negotiate the release of downed U-2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
April 21, 2014 | By Anh Do
Along with its manicured greenbelts and meticulously neat neighborhoods, Irvine suddenly has something else on its hands: an international incident. Members of its vast Chinese American community are fighting a city decision to bow to the demands of Vietnamese Americans, who arrived by the hundreds this month to demand that Irvine abandon its plans to formalize a relationship with a town in coastal Vietnam. A parade of speakers spent hours pleading with council members to reject the proposal, saying it would be insulting for the city to forge a “friendship” with a country they'd fled to escape a brutal communist regime.