Varied Views of a Border

In some spots along the Mexican-American border, a well-fortified fence extends as far as the eye can see, while in others a wall ends abruptly in the ocean. Beyond these images of the United States’ southern border, we are interested in your photos.

An aerial view of the border fence in Tijuana, Mexico, where it meets the Pacific Ocean.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

An aerial view of a Border Patrol vehicle along a section of the border wall south of Mission, Tex., near the Rio Grande. In this case engineers built the wall along an existing levee in the floodplain just north of the river.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

An aerial view of the Rio Grande, which snakes its way through the Rio Grande Valley. Many do not understand the difficulty of building fences or monitoring thick brushland along the river. It is also complicated to block American farmers from accessing the river, which irrigates crops in this agricultural region.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

The rusted old border wall separates Tijuana, Mexico, right, and a Border Patrol-controlled buffer zone, left. Once high volumes of drug trafficking in this impoverished area have diminished significantly.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

The Border Patrol installed an iron fence to keep drug smugglers from using their roads to move drugs. This is an area south of Mission, Tex., where the river is quite narrow and easy to cross or float drugs across.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

A border fence ends in the rugged terrain in East Tijuana. This photograph was taken in the mountains east of San Diego.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

Migrants hoping to arrive in California by boat are traveling more and more northward to elude border patrol. Torrey Pines State Beach (pictured) is more than 30 miles from the border but was once a popular location because of its proximity to the road.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

A woman makes her way back to Mexico at the Nogales Port of Entry in Nogales, Ariz.
Joshua Lott for The New York Times.

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Kate Middleton 'Careful In Heels' at Weekend Wedding

By Simon Perry

03/02/2013 at 08:00 PM EST

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

Splash News Online

The Duchess of Cambridge arrived at a wedding in a different kind of carriage Saturday – a bus.

She and brother-in-law Prince Harry were spotted with a group of friends as they hopped off the coach for nuptials in the Swiss mountains.

They were there for the wedding of close friend and polo player Mark Tomlinson, who married Olympic equestrian Laura Bechtolsheimer in the town of Arosa.

Dressed in a pale coat accentuated with brown fur trim, a familiar James Lock hat and a Max Mara dress she's wore previously underneath, an expectant Kate was seen walking "gingerly up the steps to the church," an onlooker tells PEOPLE. "She was being very careful in her heels."

Her husband William – in traditional tailcoat – had previously arrived due to his role as an usher at the ceremony.

As guests arrived, police cordoned off an area so locals could catch a glimpse. "There was a big crowd there, and the police closed the street," the onlooker adds.

The couple are among 250 guests, including the royals' close friends James Meade and fiancée Laura Marsham, Guy Pelly and Olivia Hunt.

The Princes often spend summer afternoons playing polo with groom Tomlinson, who attended Marlborough College with Kate. The bride was part of the London 2012 Olympics team that also included William and Harry's cousin Zara Phillips.

The family made a weekend of the trip – while William and Harry hit the slopes on Friday, Kate, who's due in July, was spotted strolling with a sled in her hands rather than ski poles.

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Outside cash prominent in L.A. school board races

Outside spending is dominating campaigns for three seats on the Los Angeles Board of Education, surpassing $4.4 million through Friday.

The outcome of Tuesday's primary is expected to shape the path of improvement efforts in the nation's second-largest school system.

The costliest race is in District 4, which spans the Westside and the western San Fernando Valley. There, one-term incumbent and former teacher Steve Zimmer faces parent and attorney Kate Anderson.

The pro-Anderson and anti-Zimmer effort has spent more than $1.1 million. Also, Anderson's campaign has raised more than $250,000.

Conversely, the pro-Zimmer and anti-Anderson independent campaign has spent more than $950,000. Zimmer's campaign has collected $82,406.

Zimmer benefits from an independent campaign by employee unions and the L.A. County Federation of Labor. Anderson is backed by a coalition of wealthy donors, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and advocates for independently managed charter schools.

The coalition is the biggest money player, having assembled more than $3.2 million.

Spending in the other two races reflects campaign strategies of the coalition and the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles.

In District 2, which stretches outward from downtown, the coalition supports two-term incumbent Monica Garcia. She is the mayor's closest ally on the school board and a steadfast supporter of L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy.

The coalition hopes to push Garcia to victory on Tuesday by helping her capture more than 50% of the vote in a field with four challengers. The coalition has spent the lion's share of a $1.2-million independent campaign; some unions also have chipped in with significant contributions. Garcia's campaign has raised nearly $430,000.

Garcia's challengers have raised a combined $46,000. The teachers union has divided a modest $18,000 among three of the challengers. Its goal is to force a runoff, and to that end, UTLA launched an anti-Garcia campaign at a cost of $90,000.

District 6, in the eastern San Fernando Valley, is an open seat. There, the coalition hopes to sweep Antonio Sanchez past two other candidates. Independent campaigns on his behalf — including support from some labor unions — have logged more than $1 million in expenditures. Sanchez's own campaign has reported donations of close to $55,000.

There are no independent campaigns on behalf of Monica Ratliff, who has raised about $15,000, or Maria Cano, who has raised about $17,000.

Hoping to preserve campaign resources, the teachers union has not helped fund a candidate in this contest, although it endorsed all three.

howard.blume@latimes.com

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IHT Rendezvous: Muslims Seek Dialogue With Next Pope

LONDON — As the Catholic Church’s cardinal electors gather at the Vatican to choose a new pope, Muslim leaders are urging a revival of the often troubled dialogue between the two faiths.

During the papacy of Benedict XVI, relations between the world’s two largest religions were overshadowed by remarks he made in 2006 that were widely condemned as an attack on Islam.

In a speech at Regensburg University in his native Germany, Benedict quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor as saying, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

In the face of protests from the Muslim world, the Vatican said the pope’s remarks had been misinterpreted and that he “deeply regretted” that the speech “sounded offensive to the sensibility of Muslim believers.”

For many in the Muslim world, however, the damage was done and the perception persisted that Benedict was hostile to Islam.

Juan Cole, a U.S. commentator on the Middle East, has suggested that although the pope backed down on some of his positions, “Pope Benedict roiled those relationships with needlessly provocative and sometimes offensive statements about Islam and Muslims.”

Despite the Vatican’s efforts to renew the interfaith dialogue by hosting a meeting with Muslim scholars, hostilities resumed in 2011 when the pope condemned alleged discrimination against Egypt’s Coptic Christians in the wake of a church bombing in Alexandria.

Al Azhar University in Cairo, the center of Islamic learning, froze relations with the Vatican in protest.

Following the pope’s decision to step down, Mahmud Azab, an adviser on interfaith dialogue to the head of Al Azhar, said, “The resumption of ties with the Vatican hinges on the new atmosphere created by the new pope. The initiative is now in the Vatican’s hands.”

Mahmoud Ashour, a senior Al Azhar cleric, insisted that “the new pope must not attack Islam,” according to remarks quoted by Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, and said the two religions should “complete one another, rather than compete.”

A French Muslim leader, meanwhile, has called for a fresh start in the dialogue with a new pope.

In an interview with Der Spiegel of Germany this week, Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris, said of Benedict, “He was not able to understand Muslims. He had no direct experience with Islam, and he found nothing positive to say about our beliefs.”

Reem Nasr, writing at the policy debate Web site, Policymic, this week offered Benedict’s successor a five-point program to bridge the Catholic and Muslim worlds.

These included mutual respect, more papal contacts with Muslim leaders and a greater focus on what the religions had in common.

“There has been a long history of mistrust that can be overcome,” she wrote. “No one should give up just yet.”

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David Bowie Makes Triumphant Comeback with New Album: PEOPLE's Critic

By Chuck Arnold

03/01/2013 at 08:40 PM EST

Ten years after his last album, David Bowie is back – and so is his swagger.

Forget the moody musings of "Where Are We Now?" – the reflective comeback single that he dropped, seemingly out of nowhere, on his birthday last month (Jan. 8). The Next Day – which, though not released until March 12, began streaming in its entirety on iTunes on Friday – represents much more of an emphatic, energetic return from the 66-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.

"We'll never be rid of these stars/ But I hope they live forever," sings Bowie, sounding like the immortal rock god he is over the glittering guitar-pop bounce of "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)."

It's one of many driving, guitar-charged tracks on The Next Day: You can just imagine Ziggy Stardust getting his groove on to the bouncy beat of "Dancing Out in Space," while "(You Will) Set the World on Fire" is a rocking, fist-pumping anthem for today's young Americans.

Elsewhere, "Dirty Boys" is a sleazy grinder that, with its saxed-up funkiness, harks back to his soulful periods like 1975's Young Americans. In another nod to Bowie's past, The Next Day was produced by Tony Visconti, who also worked on the star's Berlin Trilogy albums from 1977 to 1979.

On one of the standouts, the melodic, midtempo "I'd Rather Be High," the album takes a political turn with Bowie's anti-war message: "I'd rather be dead or out of my head/ Then training these guns on those men in the sand."

It's moments like these that make The Next Day a triumphant comeback from a much-missed icon.

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Chinatown landmark named for pioneering jurist

He was the first Chinese American graduate of Stanford Law School and the first Chinese American judge to be appointed to the bench in the continental United States.

On Friday, he became the first Chinese American to have a Los Angeles landmark named after him: Judge Delbert E. Wong Square, which encompasses the intersection of Hill and Ord streets at the western edge of Chinatown.

Councilman Ed Reyes hopes that someday the stretch of Hill Street that runs in front of the Chinatown public library will be named after Wong, who died in 2006 at age 85. Wong and his wife, Dolores, were instrumental in getting the library built, so the location would be fitting.

"The square is a starting point," said Reyes, who presided over the dedication.

A street in Little Tokyo bears the name of Judge John Aiso, the nation's first Japanese American judge.

Wong was born in the Central Valley town of Hanford in 1920, the son of a grocer from China's Guangdong province. The family later moved to Bakersfield, where Chinese and other minorities were restricted to the balconies of movie theaters and could only use the public swimming pool on Fridays, according to an oral history by Wong's son, Marshall Wong.

Wong graduated from UC Berkeley and enlisted in the Army Air Forces during World War II. As a navigator on a B-17 Flying Fortress, he completed 30 bombing missions in Europe, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross and four Air Medals.

When he returned home, Wong decided to attend law school. His parents disapproved, fearing that racial prejudice would prevent him from finding work.

After graduating from Stanford, Wong found that his job options were indeed limited. The few Chinese American attorneys in California practiced immigration law. Wong gravitated to the public sector, working as a deputy legislative counsel and then as a deputy state attorney general.

In 1959, Wong became the first Chinese American judge in the continental United States when then-Gov. Pat Brown appointed him to the Los Angeles County Municipal Court. He later joined the Superior Court, serving for more than two decades. He continued to make headlines in retirement, leading a probe into racial discrimination at the Los Angeles Airport Police Bureau and working as a special master in the O.J. Simpson case.

Wong and his wife were among the founding benefactors of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center and the Chinatown Service Center. They were also pioneers in another arena: housing. After a real estate agent told them that Chinese could not buy in Silver Lake, they sought out the property's owner, who was happy to sell to them.

Wong's widow and three of his four children attended Friday's dedication.

California now has more than 90 Asian American trial judges. Four of seven state Supreme Court justices are Asian American, including Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. But young people passing through Judge Delbert E. Wong Square should remember those who paved the way, perhaps even drawing inspiration from them, Marshall Wong said.

"The children who grow up in this neighborhood will pass by and wonder, 'Who was Judge Wong?' Hopefully, they'll learn something about his story and his work and think, 'Maybe I should go to law school and be a judge someday.'"

cindy.chang@latimes.com

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India Ink: The Truthers of Pakistan

“As the security situation in Pakistan continues to deteriorate, trading conspiracy theories has become the new national pastime,” Huma Yusuf wrote in the Latitude Blog, “nothing is more popular on the airwaves, at dinner parties or around tea stalls than to speculate, especially about American activities on Pakistani soil.”

These rumors include speculations about the role of Indian spy agency R.A.W., which some Pakistani officials claim “funds and arms the Pakistani Taliban.”

Ms. Yusuf attributes this “penchant for conspiracy theories” partly to decades of military rule. “Mostly, however,” she wrote, “conspiracy theories persist because many turn out to be true.”

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American Idol Reveals Its Top 20

By Steve Helling

02/28/2013 at 11:20 PM EST

From left: Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj, Keith Urban

Michael Becker/FOX

American Idol has been on the air for 12 seasons. From the early days of Kelly Clarkson, the judges continually hounded the contestants on song choice. Simon Cowell (remember him?) would criticize contestants for being "cabaret," "old-fashioned" and, worst of all, "boring." Some of this season's contestants have been watching Idol since they were in elementary school, which makes it all the more inexplicable that they still choose to sing songs like Peggy Lee's "Fever," which is 57 years old.

The show began with the 10 contestants rising from the floor, Hunger Games-style. Five of them will continue, while five of them met their end. Find out who made it through to the next round …
Spoiler Alert! The final picks for the Top 20 follow:

Cortez Shaw: His ballad arrangement of David Guetta's "Titanium" was excellent – and it was a nice change to hear a song that was current and relevant. "Your range surprised me today," judge Randy Jackson said. "When you hit those big notes, I was shocked."

Burnell Taylor: He's lost 40 lbs. since auditioning, and singing John Legend's "This Time," he brought down the house – despite oddly exaggerated hand movements. "I would pay to hear you sing," said Nicki Minaj, sharing the best compliment of the night. Mariah Carey was also pleased, simply saying, "This was fantastic."

Lazaro Arbos: After delivering an emotional performance of Keith Urban's "Tonight I Want to Cry," the 21-year-old singer from Naples, Fla., was unanimously sent through to the next round. The Cuban-born Arbos has arguably the season's most poignant backstory, with a severe stutter that vanishes when he sings. Minaj remains a big fan, telling him: "You feel it. You stay in it. Don't change nothing."

Nick Boddington: The New York City bartender performed "Say Something Now" by James Morrison and did a passable – if unremarkable – job. "I kept waiting for the feeling of being connected to you as a person," said Urban. Carey agreed, saying, "I needed to feel you more connected to the song."

Vincent Powell: Singing Lenny Williams's "'Cause I Love You," he effortlessly broke into a falsetto that elicited cheers from the audience. After calling him a "sexy old-fashioned" singer, Minaj added, "I could envision a whole bunch of 50-year-olds throwing their panties at you." Powell, who works his day job as a church worship leader, laughed nervously.

And yes, it was guys' night, but finalist Zoanette Johnson made a cameo when she stood up and cheered Powell's performance, prompting host Ryan Seacrest to run over with a microphone. (For a brief moment, It felt like a '90s-era episode of Ricki Lake, which is actually a very good thing.) "Get it, Papa Smurf," Johnson screamed. "You go get it."

Leave it to Zoanette to steal the show on guy's night.

Tonight's finalists will join Charlie Askew, Curtis Finch Jr., Paul Jolley, Elijah Liu and Devin Velez – and 10 female finalists – to sing for America's votes next week.

Who are you rooting for?

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Las Vegas Strip shooting suspect is arrested in L.A.

A man suspected in a deadly car-to-car shooting in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip was arrested Thursday at a Studio City apartment complex, bringing an end to a weeklong manhunt.

Los Angeles police and FBI agents surrounded the suburban apartment complex in the 4100 block of Arch Drive about noon and ordered Ammar Harris to surrender. Officers said there was a woman inside the apartment where he was holed up; she was not arrested.

Harris, 26, is being held on suspicion of murder and is expected to be extradited back to Nevada.

"This arrest is much more than just taking Ammar Harris," said Las Vegas Sheriff Doug Gillespie, speaking at police headquarters near the Strip. "The citizens of our community as well as tourists who visit and work in the Las Vegas Valley are entitled to a safe community."

Harris — described by law enforcement officials as a man with an "extensive and violent criminal history" — is accused of being the gunman in the Feb. 21 shooting that killed three people, including Kenneth Cherry Jr., an Oakland native and rapper known as Kenny Clutch.

Las Vegas police said Harris opened fire from his Ranger Rover on Cherry's Maserati on Las Vegas Boulevard after an altercation at a valet stand at the Aria hotel resort.

The Maserati then sped into the intersection at Flamingo Road, where it rammed a Yellow Cab, which erupted in flames near the mega-wattage casinos of the Bellagio, the Flamingo and Ceasars Palace. The explosion killed the taxi driver and passenger inside.

Cherry and a passenger in his Maserati were taken to a hospital, where Cherry was pronounced dead. Four other vehicles were involved in the fiery crash, which left three other people with injuries.

"What I can tell you is that Mr. Harris' behavior was unlike any other I've seen, and I've been in this community in law enforcement for 32 years," Clark County Dist. Atty. Steve Wolfson said.

"I cannot imagine anything more serious than firing a weapon from a moving vehicle into another moving vehicle on a corner such as Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo."

Even in a city accustomed to spectacle, the shooting and collision were shocking.

On the night of the shooting, Harris was accompanied by three people in his Range Rover, none considered suspects, said Lt. Ray Steiber of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. On Saturday, Las Vegas police found Harris' black Range Rover at an apartment complex in the city. The district attorney charged Harris with murder even though he could not be located, and a federal magistrate signed off on a charge of fleeing the jurisdiction.

Federal court documents show Las Vegas homicide detectives suspected that Harris may have fled to California because his phone showed he made calls in the state.

According to law enforcement sources, Harris operated as a pimp in Las Vegas. In a video released by Las Vegas police, Harris flashed a fistful of $100 bills as he bragged about the money. He boasted about money, guns, expensive cars and run-ins with the law on social media accounts, authorities said.

On one social media site, using the name Jai'duh, someone authorities believe was Harris posted pictures of stacks of $100 bills and a Carbon 15 pistol.

Harris' record includes a 2010 arrest in Las Vegas on suspicion of pimping-related offenses of pandering with force and sexual assault. He has previously been arrested on suspicion of a variety of crimes in South Carolina and Georgia, authorities said.

Harris is slated to appear in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Monday for an extradition proceeding.

richard.winton@latimes.com

john.glionna@latimes.com

kate.mather@latimes.com

Glionna reported from Las Vegas. Times staff writer Andrew Blankstein contributed to this report.

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Japan to Begin Restarting Idled Nuclear Plants

Junji Kurokawa/Associated Press

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivers his policy speech at the lower house of parliament in Tokyo.

TOKYO -- Japan will begin restarting its idled nuclear plants once new safety guidelines are in place later this year, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday, moving to ensure a stable energy supply despite public safety concerns after the Fukushima disaster.

In a speech to Parliament, Mr. Abe pledged to restart nuclear plants that pass the new guidelines, which are expected to be adopted by a newly created independent watchdog agency, the Nuclear Regulation Authority, as early as July.

All but two of Japan’s 50 operable nuclear reactors were shut down following the March 2011 triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which spewed radiation across northern Japan after a huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out vital cooling systems. Responding to public safety concerns, leaders from the previous Democratic Party government had vowed to slowly phase out nuclear power by the 2030s in favor of cleaner alternatives like solar and wind.

However, Mr. Abe, who took power after his Liberal Democratic Party won national elections in December, has vowed to scrap that planned phase out, saying that Japan needs stable and cheap electricity from nuclear power to compete economically.

On Thursday, Mr. Abe said that Japan had learned the need for tougher safety standards from the Fukushima accident, which forced more than 100,000 people to evacuate. He said the new safety standards will be enforced "without compromise."

However, he did not specify when plants that meet those new standards will be allowed to resume operations. Mr. Abe also said Japan will continue seeking energy alternatives in order to reduce its dependence on nuclear power, even without going so far as to eliminate it.

In the case of the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown, the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, recently admitted that it had failed to take stronger measures to prevent disasters for fear of inviting lawsuits or protests against its nuclear plants.

In the October 2012 report, Tepco said that before the accident it had been afraid to consider the risk of such a large tsunami, fearing admissions of risk could result in public pressure to shut plants down. The report was intended to showcase internal changes as the government considers when to allow other reactors to resume operation.

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