New California legislators get a warm welcome — from lobbyists

SACRAMENTO — The day after being elected to the state Assembly, several incoming lawmakers were in AT&T's luxury suite at the Sacramento sports arena, watching the Kings with the company's top Capitol executive.

The next day, the California Dental Assn. feted the state's freshman legislators. That was before more than 20 legislators jetted off to Hawaii, China, Brazil, New Zealand and other locales — with some trips paid for in large part by healthcare, energy and communications companies.

"It's the start of lobbyists inculcating them, saying 'Hey guys, line up and receive your gifts,' " said Bob Stern, former chief counsel to the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

It's a new day in Sacramento, with one of the largest-ever freshman classes elected in districts drawn for the first time by an independent, bipartisan commission.

And the lobbying campaign to shape their minds has begun.

The intent of the redistricting — as well as a rule change that allows lawmakers to serve up to 12 years in either legislative house — was to make the Capitol more accountable. In theory, the changes would reduce the influence of lobbyists and give lawmakers more time to gain expertise and independence.

But old traditions die hard.

Following the example of veteran legislative leaders, including Assembly Speaker John Pérez (D-Los Angeles), more than a dozen Democratic freshmen headed off to AT&T's suite at the Sleep Train Arena.

Lawmakers are not allowed to take more than $420 in gifts per year, and they are supposed to report what they receive. But sidestepping the rules is hardly a challenge.

The freshmen who joined Pérez didn't have to report the value of their tickets because the gathering was hosted by the state Democratic Party.

Jose Medina, a newly elected assemblyman from Riverside, said the event was totally appropriate. Spending time with lobbyists is "part of my job,'' he said.

"At the end of the day, I'll make my decision based on what is best for the people I represent," he said.

Jim Frazier, a freshman assemblyman from Oakley, called the evening "a great opportunity to start meeting the people who worked so hard to represent their districts."

Other freshman Democrats in the suite included Ken Cooley of Rancho Cordova, Marc Levine of San Rafael, Phil Ting of San Francisco, Kevin Mullin of South San Francisco, Rudy Salas of Bakersfield, Bill Quirk of Hayward and Reggie Jones-Sawyer of Los Angeles.

Jones-Sawyer was one of 15 legislators who flew a few days later to Maui for a five-day conference at the Fairmont Kea Lani organized by the California Independent Voter Project.

The group, which paid some of the legislators' travel expenses, has been funded over the years by tobacco giant Altria Group Inc., Southern California Edison, Eli Lilly & Co., Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the California Beer & Beverage Distributors, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Assn., Chevron Corp. and the state prison guards union.

In between rounds of golf and poolside lounging, the sponsors talked with lawmakers.

"I was learning about the issues," said Jones-Sawyer, the only freshman on the trip. "There were some things I didn't know — such as how businesses really need help to flourish here in California."

Phillip Ung, an advocate with California Common Cause, said he found the explanations bewildering.

"They have obviously convinced themselves that the people's business is best solved poolside with mai tais in hand," he said. "Congress banned this type of travel years ago."

Other lawmakers went to China, Australia, New Zealand or Brazil this month, in some cases paid for by special interests.

Those in Brazil were sponsored by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy, which is bankrolled by Chevron, PG&E, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and Southern California Edison, among others.

The sponsors sent representatives to accompany Assemblyman Steven Bradford (D-Gardena), who is chairman of the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee, as well as Sens. Anthony Cannella (R-Ceres), Mimi Walters (R-Laguna Niguel), Bill Emmerson (R-Hemet) and Michael Rubio (D-East Bakersfield).

The group paid for airfare, hotels, meals and ground transportation, said P.J. Johnston, a spokesman for the nonprofit foundation.

The lawmakers were there to meet with government and business leaders in Brazil to discuss reducing pollution, setting low-carbon fuel standards, transportation projects and other issues, Johnston said.

"Brazil provides real-world insight into issues California's decision-makers are grappling with, putting them in a larger perspective and offering lessons learned from a country with a rich history of challenges and successes in these areas," he said.

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

Times staff writer Anthony York contributed to this report.

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A lifeline in Hollywood for young homeless people

Give thanks for the nearly new Nikes, left abandoned beneath the 101 Freeway overpass. They were just M.J.'s size. He had needed shoes, but had no money to buy them.

Give thanks for the tote bag, holding the Vienna sausages that Sam hands M.J. on Hollywood Boulevard. Sam is 4 1/2 months pregnant with her fifth child — their third together — and by April, when the baby is due, she and M.J. , both 26, hope to have a roof over their heads.

Give thanks especially for My Friend's Place, provider of the sausages and so much more.

The privately funded center perched above the Hollywood Boulevard exit is a haven where young homeless people can nurture fragile dreams.

It gives them what food it can afford. It gives them clothes, clean underwear and socks, toilet paper, toiletries and hot showers.

If and when they are ready, it gently helps them head toward self-sufficient lives off the street. In the meantime, it is their daily lifeline, which they huddle close by to grab.

It's easy on this still-sad stretch of the boulevard to notice only the garish come-ons: from Atomic Tattoo, No Limit Tobacco & Accessories, Liquor to Go, Original Tommy's burgers and Palms Thai Restaurant (where Thai Elvis sings).

But scan the sidewalk, and Sams and M.J.s are everywhere — skateboarding around the edges of a parking lot, clutching cardboard signs on offramps, buffered from cold winds by bus-stop glass.

On the south side of Hollywood and Bronson, the bus stop serves as an all-day gathering place, where a 22-year-old who calls himself Lone Ranger can rest before heading to an offramp to "fly a sign" that reads "Vision of a Taco." Where Rancid, who chose her nickname for the band, can puff on a joint and swap bracelets with Sam. (Rail thin, in the shortest shorts, she says she's legal now but ran away from her Hollywood Hills home when she was 9.) Where those who "spange" — or ask for spare change — can feel safe enough to count their coins.

Behind the bus stop is a self-storage business whose windowless, temperature-controlled bays would be luxury shelter for Sam and M.J. As the sun readies to set on this chilly night, they do not know where they will sleep.

They lived for a while in a tent under the overpass. Then Caltrans workers carted off the shelter and many of their belongings.

Before election day, they had earned some cash handing out condoms for the Yes on B campaign, and spent a week in a low-rent hotel room.

More recently, they've been spooning under a Harry Potter blanket in the hollow beneath a flight of stairs, at the lowest level of the parking garage at Hollywood & Highland. But on this morning, they were rousted from that spot — which, post-discovery, will no longer be available to them.

Give thanks that the clothes they have gotten at My Friend's Place are warm.

Sam wears brown wool dress pants and three layers on top — a thick, hooded sweater buttoned over the small swell of her belly, on top of a gray tank top and T-shirt. M.J. has on gray suit pants and a thick, royal blue sweat shirt with the letters "CHELSEA FC" stitched on the back. When the sunlight starts to slip away, he takes it off, zips Sam into it, and stands on the curb, crossing his thin arms for warmth.

Sam and M.J. met in Pennsylvania 10 years ago, around the time she ran away from the Pennsylvania Dutch couple who had adopted her. They took off for the California sun in 2008, and lasted here for more than two years — until they were picked up by police and sent home to do time for stealing a relative's car to make their getaway.

In October, they returned to Hollywood, leaving much in their wake.

M.J. has a 5-year-old daughter who lives with her mom in Pennsylvania. Sam's brother has her 7-year-old son. Her 5-year-old daughter lives with that child's father. Sam and M.J.'s 3-year-old son, born when they were last here, went into the system and was adopted. Their 1-year-old daughter is with a Pennsylvania foster family, who send photos of the chubby, smiling baby.

They know they've made many wrong turns — drinking, doing drugs, stealing to survive. They've filched liquor and sold it by the shot on Venice Beach. They've plucked basic necessities off store shelves.

But they want better.

So this week, when My Friend's Place served up a big Thanksgiving meal — with more than enough home-cooked turkey, mashed potatoes and pie to stuff all the young people who came through its doors — Sam and M.J. skipped the feast and headed to Santa Monica. Sam had an interview for a program that, if she gets in, will care for her through her pregnancy and the baby's first months, and then help them find housing.

"We're going to live in Venice Beach and we're going to have a nice little apartment. Like I said, it's going to be little," she said, hugging M.J. "But it will be ours, and we're going to have our son."

Give thanks for the way hope hangs on against the odds, and for all those who work to keep it alive.

nita.lelyveld@latimes.com

Follow City Beat on Twitter @latimescitybeat or at Los Angeles Times City Beat on Facebook.

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Essay: A rookie Thanksgiving Day cook takes over the kitchen

It is Thanksgiving morning. As you read this, the bird, a fine 16-pounder, is coming to room temperature on the counter. The green beans have been topped and tailed, and my fingertips smart from peeling smoking-hot chestnuts for the stuffing. I've reminded my mother-in-law that she needn't bring the cranberry sauce — my cranberries are chilling in the refrigerator next to the bottles of Alsatian Riesling.

I still have to blanch the Brussels sprouts, whip the cream and peel a mountain of potatoes, but I am locked into the rhythm of the day. My knife work is clumsy, and my soufflés may occasionally fall, but I know how to do this meal. I'm not sure which direction the bourbon will flow this afternoon or which smoldering resentments are going to erupt into hot flame, but the turkey skin will be crisp, the mashed potatoes buttery and the gravy tawny and smooth.

Other American holidays have special dishes associated with them, and the calendar would be poorer without Easter lamb, Hanukkah latkes or fried chicken on the Fourth of July. But Thanksgiving is the cook's holiday, the only one that revolves entirely around food. The sweet scent of fresh sage and caramelized onions and the faint burble of turkey stock on the stove signify family, and warmth and home.

I should note that even though I have rehearsed this menu two dozen times, this is the first time I have cooked an actual Thanksgiving dinner. The honor went to my mother until her passing in 1994, and, until this year, the family gathered at an aunt's house in Walnut Creek.

During those years, I held an annual pre-Thanksgiving dinner, on the Sunday before the holiday, when I plied my friends with creamed leeks and chard-stem gratin before hitting them with whatever the year's turkey happened to be. Fashions in turkey tend to change from year to year, and when you're a food writer, you are almost obligated to try wet-brined turkey one year and dry-brined turkey the next; Chinatown turkey stuffed with sticky rice and Chinese sausage or Cuban turkey rubbed down with lemon and garlic; high-heat turkey done in 75 minutes or turkey slow-roasted at a temperature that alarms epidemiologists.

But a Sunday-night turkey dinner is different from Thanksgiving, and it is futile to pretend that it is not. Even if you don't like putting marshmallows on your sweet potatoes, on the actual holiday you will include them if your family has always served them that way. If you disdain canned fried onion strips, get over it. If you embargo ambrosia, you will inevitably discover everyone in the backyard, gathered around Aunt Debbie's forbidden bowl. The stuffing you make will probably be the one that your grandmother used to make, and your children won't like it any more than you did when you were 9 years old.

As willfully unconscious as we are of a time before Brussels sprouts were roasted with aged balsamic and fashionably artisanal lardons, even the most ardent cooks among us are not so far removed from the boxed stuffing, canned yams and mashed-potato buds of our fairly immediate past. When Ruth Reichl was food editor at The Times, she wrote about Ian Dengler, a food historian who could tell you where you grew up when you told him what your family ate. ("When someone says, 'It's just the ordinary turkey,' I know right away that I'm dealing with the great Middle West," Dengler said.)

Consider the continuing reliance on Butterball, purveyor of bland birds and the target of animal rights groups claiming birds have been abused: The company hotline still fields 12,000 calls on Thanksgiving Day alone. Facebook feeds this week have been clogged with debates between cooks sharing tips on blind-baked pie crusts and noncooks eyeing supermarket pies; between those who make cranberry sauce from scratch and those for whom the relish barely exists without telltale ridge marks from the can. Nostalgia for the canned sauce is so great that a company called Pacific Natural Foods is marketing an organic version.

Still, I have developed my own traditions over two decades of alternative Thanksgiving, and this year, as I attempt my first "real" adult celebration, they are going to die hard. My brother, who once threw a childhood fit over a hunk of boiled cauliflower, is probably not going to try my Brussels sprouts, no matter how delicious. But I'm serving them anyway. My creamed leeks are not part of our family's repertoire — the recipe was born one year in a failed attempt to make Paula Wolfert's stuffed potato pancakes — but I can't imagine Thanksgiving without them. I will make my stuffing with apple sausage and chestnuts instead of corn bread and the sagey breakfast sausage my mother used to love, because at this point my own children would protest if it were otherwise.

There will be arguments. There will be tears. There will be buttermilk mashed potatoes. And my elitist Heritage bird, farmers-market-sourced, organic-cranberry dinner may become the family's new Thanksgiving tradition. Or not.

jonathan.gold@latimes.com

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Fight between Riordan and unions upstages L.A. sales tax decision

A ferocious battle between former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and the city's police and civilian unions broke out at City Hall on Tuesday, overshadowing a City Council action to help stabilize municipal finances by putting a sales tax increase on the ballot.

The 82-year-old Riordan strode to the podium Tuesday morning, urging the council to refrain from putting a sales tax hike on the ballot until it exhausts other ways of repairing its chronically underfunded budget.

"What Los Angeles needs is more jobs, not more taxes," Riordan said shortly before the council voted 11 to 4 to place a half-cent sales tax increase before voters during the March 5 primary. "Enough is enough. More and more taxes will not be used properly to bail out our budget problems."

The subtext of the day, however, was taking place behind the scenes. Riordan's camp distributed copies of an email in which a union organizer called on members to sign "fake names/addresses" on a sweeping pension initiative ballot petition being circulated and bankrolled by Riordan.

If roughly 265,000 valid signatures are collected, the measure switching new city workers into 401(k)-style retirements instead of defined-benefit pensions would appear on the May 21 general city election ballot. Riordan called the email a "dirty trick" meant to thwart that effort.

In an interview with The Times, he said changes to the pension system are essential to keeping city government solvent, and that he's ready for a tough campaign.

"I am prepared to make it happen," the multimillionaire businessman said when asked about the potential cost of facing off with unions known to raise large amounts of money for city political campaigns. "A lot of other people will be chipping in. I have the advantage of having a lot of good contacts with a lot people who care about this city as I do and will help."

Signing fictitious names to a voter petition is a felony under the California Elections Code, according to Kimberly Briggs of the city's Election Division. At Riordan's request, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley has agreed to investigate the union email.

Later in the day, events compelled the Service Employees International Union Local 721 to take the embarrassing step of disavowing the organizer's email.

"SEIU 721 in no way recommends that its members or anyone else falsify signatures on any petition," said Ian Thompson, a union spokesman. "We are firmly against that kind of behavior. The email in question was sent without the knowledge of the union's leadership. The person who sent the email has been disciplined for his action." The sender was identified as four-year union employee Paul Kim, a worksite organizer.

The Los Angeles police officers' union in recent days got in its own swipe at Riordan, faulting him for failing to conduct an actuarial study of the potential costs or savings to the city should his pension measure pass. The Police Protective League contends 401(k)-type plans would cost the city even more than the current taxpayer-backed pensions.

Riordan shot that down, saying previous studies conducted in California and nationwide show that retirements that shift risk from the taxpayer, as in a defined benefit pension, to the public employee, as in a 401(k)-style contributory plan, make labor costs more predictable.

"We are doing another study right now mainly for political purposes because the opponents have thrown that at us," he said. "But it's clearly not true."

Meanwhile, a measure to increase the sales tax in the city by half a cent, hiking collections by $215 million a year, won final approval. The council majority has said 5,000 positions have already been cut, furloughs imposed and pensions trimmed to try to control costs.

Now, however, new revenue is needed to stabilize the budget. The only other possibility is more layoffs and service reductions in libraries, parks, street paving and police and fire budgets, some council members say.

Although the sales tax hike does not need support from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to appear on the ballot, the mayor declined to sign the measure, saying that the city should pursue additional workforce reductions before seeking a sales tax hike. The mayor also advocates privatizing the Los Angeles Zoo and the Los Angeles Convention Center, as well as consolidating some departments, to save money.

catherine.saillant@latimes.com

christine.maiduc@latimes.com

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LAFD looks at ways to speed up emergency response times

Los Angeles Fire Department officials, facing criticism over slow response times to 911 calls, are considering two new strategies that could get rescuers to the scene of medical emergencies more quickly.

One program, known as "quick launch," reduced the time it took to get fire units moving by an average of 50 seconds — roughly in half — during a test period in 2006. The experiment allowed dispatchers to send units before fully determining the nature of emergencies, according to internal LAFD documents obtained by The Times.

The test was discontinued because so many rescue units were being dispatched that it created gaps in coverage, department officials said during a Fire Commission meeting Tuesday. "It ties up resources," Fire Chief Brian Cummings explained to reporters.

FULL COVERAGE: 911 breakdowns at LAFD

But with pressure building to reduce response times, Cummings and the fire commissioners said Tuesday that the department will reexamine the program to see if it can be improved.

The agency also plans to roll out a separate program that would quickly alert paramedics and emergency medical technicians whenever a 911 call is received from their area. The alert would give rescuers a head start on gathering gear and getting into their trucks while dispatchers collect information on the nature of the emergency, according to the commander of the LAFD dispatch center.

The department is struggling to improve its data analysis and trying to reassure the public and elected officials about its emergency response performance. Fire officials have been under scrutiny since March, when they acknowledged that for years they had produced reports that made it appear rescuers were getting to victims faster than they actually were.

Fire commissioners on Tuesday also discussed a study by a special task force that found the department has produced inaccurate response-time data that should not be relied upon. Some of the faulty reports were used by City Council members when they decided to shut down fire engines and ambulances at more than one-fifth of the city's 106 firehouses.

A Times investigation earlier this year found LAFD's dispatchers lag well behind national standards that call for rescuers to be sent to those in need in under 60 seconds on 90% of 911 calls. Those findings were confirmed this week in the report from the task force, which was headed by Asst. Chief Patrick Butler and included experts from inside and outside the department.

The quick-launch dispatching experiment was conducted over a four-week period in the summer of 2006. Dispatchers normally ask callers a series of carefully scripted questions to determine the severity of a medical incident. The answers typically must be entered into a computer before firefighters are dispatched.

The pilot program got rescuers rolling earlier in the 911 call-handling process. The 50-second reduction in average dispatching time exceeded officials' expectations and was "especially encouraging," according to an internal LAFD study obtained by The Times.

But Asst. Chief Daniel McCarthy, commander of the LAFD dispatch center, said firefighters were being sent to shooting scenes and other potentially dangerous locations not knowing what to expect.

"We put people at risk when we did that," McCarthy told The Times.

He said the department also will deploy a new dispatching system known as "quick alert." Rescuers will be notified over loudspeaker and by Teletype as soon as a medical 911 call is received involving their fire station's service area, speeding up so-called turnout time. Special notification equipment is expected to be installed at fire stations over the next 18 months, McCarthy said.

Last week, The Times reported that waits for medical aid vary dramatically across Los Angeles' diverse neighborhoods. Residents in many of the city's most exclusive hillside communities can wait twice as long for rescuers as those living in more densely populated areas in and around downtown, according to the analysis that mapped out more than 1 million dispatches since 2007.

Cummings acknowledged the findings on Tuesday, saying waits for help are longer in areas farther from fire stations.

"It is a matter of geography," the chief said. "Personally, if I had a serious medical condition, I'd live close to a hospital."

FULL COVERAGE: 911 breakdowns at LAFD

robert.lopez@latimes.com

ben.welsh@latimes.com

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Intelligence officials edited talking points on Libya attack

WASHINGTON — Authorities with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the CIA, decided to remove the terms "attack," "Al Qaeda" and "terrorism" from unclassified guidance provided to the Obama administration several days after militants attacked the U.S. mission in Benghazi, a senior official said Tuesday.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, relied on the so-called talking points when she appeared on several Sunday TV talk shows five days after the Sept. 11 attacks in eastern Libya. She asserted that the violence, which killed four Americans, erupted out of a protest over a film made in the U.S. that mocked Islam.

Critics accused Rice and other administration officials of twisting the intelligence for political reasons when it later emerged that the CIA had concluded that the lethal assault involved militants, some of whom had links to Al Qaeda's North African affiliate. The White House has argued that Rice was relying on information provided by the CIA and other agencies and didn't deviate from it.

U.S. intelligence officials supported the administration claims Tuesday, contending that language in the talking points was changed by intelligence officers to protect information that was classified at the time.

"Early drafts of the talking points included several analytic judgments that were debated and adjusted during the internal intelligence community coordination process," said the senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue involved classified material. "The adjustments were focused on producing talking points that provided the best information available at the time, protected sensitive details and reflected the evolving nature of rapidly incoming intelligence."

Officials at the CIA and at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, headed by James R. Clapper, "were all communicating on an email chain, which is normal in our coordination process," the official said. "Suggestions were being made and implemented in a collaborative manner."

The CIA drafted the initial talking points, and they were not "edited to minimize the role of extremists, diminish terrorist affiliations, or play down that this was an attack," said a second U.S. official familiar with how the material was edited.

David H. Petraeus, the former CIA director, told the House and Senate intelligence committees in closed hearings Friday that he believed almost immediately that the Benghazi assault was an organized terrorist attack, according to lawmakers who attended the hearings. But he said the CIA initially withheld reports that extremists with links to Al Qaeda were involved to avoid tipping off the terrorists.

Petraeus also said some early classified reports supported the possibility that some attackers were motivated by violent protests in Cairo earlier that day over the anti-Islam video.

When the CIA drafted language that Rice could use for her TV appearances, it circulated the language to officials at Clapper's office, which has a supervisory role in the intelligence community. In the editing process, the word "attack" was changed to "demonstration," and the phrase "with ties to Al Qaeda" was removed, officials said. The word "terrorism" also was removed.

If intelligence professionals were responsible for the changes, it might dispel charges from some Republicans that political operatives at the White House had manipulated the narrative to downplay the possibility of an Al Qaeda attack when the Obama administration was campaigning on its successes in degrading the terrorist group.

One of the most vocal critics, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said he was "somewhat surprised and frustrated" Tuesday after CBS broke the news.

During the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last week, McCain said, "senior intelligence officials were asked this very question, and all of them, including the director of national intelligence himself, told us that they did not know who made the changes. Now we have to read the answers to our questions in the media."

McCain said the episode "is another reason why many of us are so frustrated with, and suspicious of, the actions of this administration when it comes to the Benghazi attack."

Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and an embassy computer specialist were killed when the militants stormed and set fire to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. Two CIA contractors were killed several hours later when mortar rounds were fired at a CIA compound about 1 1/2 miles away.

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

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Obama visit to Myanmar mixes diplomacy and tourism

YANGON, Myanmar — Barack Obama was riding in his motorcade, the first U.S. president to visit long-isolated Myanmar, when he suddenly ordered an unscheduled detour Monday.

The Secret Service scrambled. Police raced ahead to clear crowded roads. Tourists were chased away.

Soon Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton were barefoot in the muggy afternoon. They hiked up a long set of marble stairs and took in the 325-foot-tall Shwedagon Pagoda, which is covered with gilt leaf and topped by a jewel-encrusted spire. It is the oldest Buddhist pagoda in the world and the most revered site in this overwhelmingly Buddhist nation.

After consulting a guide, Obama walked over to a statue for those born on Fridays, which he was. Tradition calls for pouring a cup of water over the Buddha's shoulder once for each year of age, plus one, to douse the "human flames" of emotion that cause suffering. Obama is 51. "I'm going to do it 11 times," he announced. No one complained.

After finishing, Obama turned to reporters and explained, "I was dousing 11 flames." Known to some as Mr. Cool, he offered anger as an example. The guide named a few others, including lust and hatred.

So went a whirlwind day for a president who showed himself willing to set aside the bloodshed in the Middle East, the "fiscal cliff" back home and other crises to mix tourism with diplomacy for a few hours in a nation struggling to emerge from decades of oppressive military rule.

He met with President Thein Sein, once viewed as a roadblock to democratic reform, who vowed to follow Obama's campaign slogan: "Forward!" He visited Aung San Suu Kyi, the dissident-turned-politician and a fellow Nobel laureate, at the lovely lakeside home that was her prison for 15 years, a scene almost unimaginable not long ago. He met with civil society activists and opposition party leaders. He spoke at a university. All in six hours.

Obama offered an explicit path ahead when he addressed a crowd of about 1,500 at a dilapidated and sooty university building that was once a hotbed of political protest. Obama said Myanmar, also known as Burma, "must" pursue democratic institutions, and he challenged the government to work toward unification and civil rights. Obama, who rarely talks about his race, drew a direct line to his personal experience.

"I stand before you today as president of the most powerful nation on Earth, but recognizing that once the color of my skin would have denied me the right to vote," he said.

Obama spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, where his mother was an anthropologist, and he clearly enjoyed being back in Southeast Asia. Rich with natural resources, Myanmar is part of the administration's efforts to embrace engagement as part of his foreign policy, and to check China's influence in its own backyard. Obama's stop in Myanmar was bookended by trips to Thailand and Cambodia, both also wary of China's growing ambitions.

Human rights activists have argued that Obama's visit is too much too soon, noting that Thein Sein's government still detains political prisoners, withholds citizenship from a minority group and has yet to fully embrace democracy. In response, both the White House and Thein Sein were careful to push a message of progress and goodwill.

Thousands of supporters thronged the streets and chanted Obama's name as the presidential motorcade made its way to Suu Kyi's home. The garden had been spruced up with new rosebushes and freshly planted flowers for the occasion.

The soft-spoken Suu Kyi warned of the dangers of being "lured by a mirage of success." She urged Obama to apply continued pressure on Thein Sein's government.

Privately, the two, who first met in September in Washington, exchanged pleasantries, aides said.

Publicly, Obama took the chance to single out Clinton, who visited Suu Kyi's home last year, as key to pushing along Myanmar's reform movement. Clinton and Suu Kyi had greeted each other Monday with a warm embrace, like old friends.

"This is her last foreign trip that we're going to take together, and it is fitting that we have come here to a country that she has done so much to support," Obama said, looking for Clinton in the audience.

"Where did Hillary go?" he said, in a slightly awkward moment.

"Oh, I'm right here, sir," came a demure voice from the crowd.

kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

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Israel, Hamas keep up attacks as talks continue in Egypt

GAZA CITY — As negotiators worked on a tenuous cease-fire deal, Israel and Hamas pounded each other for a sixth day and anger rose in the Gaza Strip over the increasing number of casualties.

Hopes for a truce grew Monday night when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened Cabinet members to discuss the details of what was said to be a multiphase, multiyear cease-fire agreement.

Officials in Egypt, where the talks were underway, expressed cautious optimism. Arab League leaders and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was visiting the region, were trying to help negotiate a deal. The White House said President Obama, who is visiting Asia, called Netanyahu and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on Monday.

Israel is seeking assurances from Egypt that Hamas will halt rocket fire into Israel and not be allowed to rebuild the weapon caches that Israel has destroyed in recent days. Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, wants an end to the land and sea blockade that has crippled its economy, and to targeted killings of its leaders by Israel.

Any sort of agreement must overcome huge obstacles. Israel views Hamas as a terrorist organization and the Islamist militant group refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist.

Even if the two don't alter those stances, any internationally endorsed truce would usher in a new phase in their relationship. Previously Israel and Hamas have refused direct negotiations, occasionally reaching informal agreements brokered through intermediaries, such as last year's deal to release captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

There are sizable risks for both sides, but also opportunities, said Doron Avital, a lawmaker with Israel's centrist Kadima party and a former commander of an elite military unit.

Hamas would win some of the international legitimacy it craves, but it would also need to moderate its behavior, just as the Palestine Liberation Organization did after signing the Oslo peace accords in 1993.

"It might elevate the status of Hamas, but that will also mean that Hamas will have to play realpolitik," Avital said. "It can't stay a terrorist organization forever. There's an interesting potential here."

Heated comments by Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal during a Cairo news conference Monday underscored the level of animosity. He called Netanyahu a "child killer" and "murderer."

"It is Netanyahu who asked for a truce," Meshaal said. "Gazans don't even want a truce."

For Israel, besides gaining an end to rocket attacks from Gaza, a deal might start the process of encouraging Hamas to become more moderate. And if Egypt guarantees an agreement, it would be directly invested in keeping Hamas unarmed.

With no cease-fire in place, Israel has massed soldiers and armor along the Gaza border in preparation for a possible invasion. But ground fighting would almost certainly lead to more Israeli and Palestinian casualties, and voices on both sides have cautioned against it.

Some said the negotiations may have led to an uptick in violence in recent days, as each side attempts to intimidate the other before a truce is called.

Palestinian casualties were relatively low in the first days of the conflict, but have increased as Israel's air campaign hit targets in more populated areas. On Monday, Israel attacked the Sharouk communications building in Gaza City where it said four senior members of the Islamic Jihad militant group were meeting.

Among the dead was Ramez Harb, a Palestinian journalist. Israel said he was a legitimate target because he served in the information department of Islamic Jihad.

Hamas' Health Ministry said 107 people had been killed in Gaza, including more than two dozen children. At least 850 people had been wounded.

Three Israelis have died in the barrage of rockets from Gaza and a dozen have been wounded, including three on Monday. An additional 135 rockets were fired Monday, pushing the total over the last week to more than 1,000. Hamas has fired rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for the first time.

The White House said Obama, in his conversation with Morsi, emphasized that the rocket fire into Israel must end.

In a somber sign of the climbing death toll, hundreds of Gazans crowded around the Shifa Hospital morgue Monday morning in a familiar ritual: collecting the bodies of loved ones.

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Northbound 710 Freeway closed after truck spills liquid asphalt

Shelby Grad

November 19, 2012, 10:58 p.m.

The northbound lanes of the 710 Freeway were closed in Bell Gardens on Monday night after a truck carrying liquid asphalt collided with several cars.

There were no immediate reports of injuries in the crash, which occurred about 8:30 p.m.

CBS-TV Channel 2 reported that the truck dumped 1,500 gallons of liquid asphalt onto the roadway and that it would take some time to clean it up.

It's unclear when the freeway will reopen.

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In L.A., inexperienced teachers more likely to be assigned to students behind in math, study says

A new study has found that inexperienced teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District are disproportionately more likely to be assigned to lower-performing math students, perpetuating the achievement gap.

The study also found that L.A. Unified teachers "vary substantially" in their effectiveness, with top teachers able to give students the equivalent of eight additional months of learning in a year compared with weaker instructors.

Such findings raise "deep concerns," said Drew Furedi, the district's executive director of talent management, who oversees teacher training. "For us, it's a call to action."

The study by the Strategic Data Project, which is affiliated with Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research, analyzed the performance of about 30% of L.A. Unified teachers and presented findings based primarily on students' standardized math test scores from 2005 through 2011 in grades three through eight. The study's authors acknowledged that test scores were only one measure of teacher effectiveness.

The study also found that teacher performance after two years is a fairly good predictor of future effectiveness. That finding could be used to challenge moves to overturn laws that let teachers gain tenure after just a few years — a growing effort by those who argue that administrators need more time to make that decision.

"Two years gives you a substantial amount of information," said Jon Fullerton, the research center's executive director.

Fullerton said L.A. Unified teachers varied more than those in three other school districts studied in North Carolina and Georgia. More so than in the other districts, Los Angeles schools also disproportionately placed newer teachers with less-proficient students: Their students were, on average, the equivalent of six months behind peers assigned to more experienced instructors.

The study did not explore the reasons for the situations it found, but it was aimed at providing "information and insight" to the district to craft responses, Fullerton said.

The study also found:

•The performance of math teachers improved quickly in the first five years, then leveled off.

• Those with advanced degrees were no more effective than those without, although L.A. Unified pays more to teachers pursuing such degrees.

• Long-term substitute teachers — who have been employed more frequently to fill in amid widespread layoffs — have positive effects in teaching middle-school math.

No single finding can produce a strategy to erase the district's substantial achievement gap between white students and their black and Latino counterparts, the study said, noting that the difference in performance on fifth-grade math tests was roughly equivalent to more than 1 1/2 years of learning. Multiple strategies would be needed, the study said.

Furedi said one key area of action would be the placement of effective teachers with lower-performing students. District Supt. John Deasy has made it clear that principals should strive to "understand where teachers are and place those with success in front of kids who need them most," Furedi said.

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com

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