Weapons

President Obama will ask Congress for $27 billion for border and transportation security in the next budget year, fulfilling a promise to the Mexican government to battle the southbound flow of illegal weapons and setting the stage for immigration reform by first addressing enforcement, administration officials said Tuesday. The spending, an 8% increase over this year's, will enable the administration to hire more agents and enhance security at air- and seaports.

Credit Johnny Depp and his pirate pals. Or thank Viggo Mortensen and the inhabitants of Middle-earth, or all those lightsaber-wielding Jedis. But the bottom line is that even after the advent of more advanced weaponry, swords are simply cool. Enter the Academy of Arms. Barely 2 months old, the nonprofit "Knightly Martial Arts" school is already offering instruction on three different forms of swordplay: English Broadsword, German Longsword and Italian Longsword. Known to historical re-enactors and Renaissance Faire performers everywhere, these are not the namby-pamby instruments used by the glove-smacking, satisfaction-demanding dandies of the 18th century.

A routine vehicle search by Los Angeles Airport Police ended with the nonroutine discovery of 16 guns and roughly 1,000 bullets stowed in the bed of a pickup truck late Friday morning. The driver, Phillip Joseph Dominguez, 47, of Orange, was booked on suspicion of transportation of weapons and held in lieu of $50,000 bail, according to the LAPD.

Some of them are said to be big enough to accommodate railroad cars. They may reach a depth of 60 feet, and are reported to be equipped with cables and electric motors that move food, fuel -- and probably some of the heaviest rockets that Hamas aims at Israel. They also are one of the main reasons fighting is continuing in the Gaza Strip.

In their legal battle over gun ownership and the 2nd Amendment, gun- control advocates never expected to get a boost from the Bush administration. But that's just what happened when U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement urged the Supreme Court in a brief Friday to say that gun rights are limited and subject to "reasonable regulation" by the government and that all federal restrictions on firearms should be upheld.

Gun-control advocates have been largely stymied in their efforts to get significant new firearms restrictions, but they still believe they can achieve one goal: closing a loophole that allows sales at gun shows without background checks on purchasers. This week, two Senate Democrats introduced legislation to close that loophole in federal law, despite a recent failure in Virginia -- where a gunman killed 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech in April -- to change a similar state law.

Nerves are raw at area campuses after potential threats of violence emerged at two Southland schools, coming at the end of a month that has seen a spate of deadly shootings across the nation. Many parents of students at one Anaheim high school planned to keep their children home today and police plan a major campus presence after a cryptic message was published in the school newspaper.

It was sunset, and a pair of Iraqi soldiers were sitting in a roofless house by the Iranian border, awaiting orders. Suddenly, Abu Baqr recalls, his friend let out a gasp and fell silent, a sniper's bullet in his forehead. Abu Baqr couldn't help him, couldn't move for fear of being shot. He lay beside his friend's corpse until morning. "How would you feel after that?" Abu Baqr asked. "You come out of that, you only come out bad."

A Fullerton high school history teacher who was jailed this week when police -- acting on a tip -- found a shotgun and marijuana in his car in the school parking lot was the "victim of an elaborate setup," police said Thursday. Investigators are now convinced that Gregory Abbott, 31, of Placentia, who has taught at Sunny Hills High School for seven years, is innocent and was actually a victim, said Sgt. Mike MacDonald of the Fullerton Police Department.

In a message clearly aimed at China, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today that fast-growing Asian powers "risk blundering" into confrontation and sparking a new arms race unless they follow widely accepted international rules. Gates said the U.S. supported the rapid economic growth of emerging Asian nations.