As L.A.'s Chinatown changes, some see opportunity for renewal

In its heyday, Empress Pavilion fielded an army of 100 employees that brought the restaurant to life at dawn; a crew of 20 prep cooks chopped vegetables, wrapped dumplings and crimped shumai.

When doors opened at 9 a.m., a squadron of waitresses armed with steam carts fanned out across a vast 600-seat dining room, hawking tins of black bean spare rib and har gow in three languages. The wait to get in could last two hours.

Empress Pavilion — behind on rent and struggling to find customers — closed earlier this summer, the latest blow in Chinatown's three decades of slow decline. Today the aging community has the feel of a museum. Grimy storefronts gather dust, abandoned by second- and third-generation locals and ignored by a shrinking trickle of tourists.

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FOR THE RECORD:
Chinatown--An article in the July 27 A section about changes in L.A.'s Chinatown said that George Yu was the president of Chinatown's business improvement district; Yu is the vice president and executive director. The article also said that a new restaurant, Chego, took over a space formerly occupied by Mandarin Deli; the deli was located in an adjacent storefront.

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But a new Chinatown is emerging — one that is less Chinese.

The neighborhood is seeing a new wave of development that is decidedly more mainstream. Developers are building more than 500 new housing units, some hoping to lure downtown types north of the 101 Freeway. A Walmart Neighborhood Market and Starbucks are slated to open this year. Dim sum palaces and gift shops are giving way to single-origin coffee, artisan pasta and pan-Asian cuisine.

A long-delayed residential and retail development broke ground in May. But its latest design has shed the Asian architectural flourishes that traditionalists say is the mark of Chinatown.

The owner of the complex that housed Empress Pavilion is hoping to lure a new dim sum restaurant, but he also hopes to bring in some Thai businesses.

Some see a model in Little Tokyo, which has remained a Japanese enclave while attracting a diverse array of businesses and visitors.

"Why shouldn't we have a multicultural Chinatown?" asked George Yu, president of Chinatown's business improvement district. "Why shouldn't we have a good cup of [Starbucks coffee]? Little Tokyo has two of them, and no one says anything about that."

::

People have been writing Chinatown's obituary for decades now.

It began in the early 1980s, when booming Chinese enclaves in the San Gabriel Valley drained Chinatown of people and business. Monterey Park was declared the new Chinatown, and since then the epicenter of Chinese American life in the Southland has moved steadily east.

In the 1990s, an influx of Southeast Asian immigrants brought some new business to Chinatown, but the area's economic trajectory remained unchanged — even after the Gold Line light-rail station opened.

Census data shows that the area's overall Asian population has been steady over the last decade, with the population of Mainland Chinese declining by just 4%.

But the feel of the neighborhood is starting to change. Bars serving craft beer and boba and snacks and restaurants are surfacing amid a sea of dilapidated gift shops and souvenir stores. Starry Kitchen, a pop-up pan-Asian restaurant, has set up shop inside the Grand Star Jazz Club. General Lee's, a century-old Chinatown restaurant closed for two decades, reopens as a bar in August with a design by the same firm responsible for Culver City's Akasha and Hatfield's in Hollywood.

And on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, the Jia Apartments, a 280-unit residential development, will open later this summer with a Starbucks and an artisan pasta restaurant on the first floor. Blossom Plaza, a $95-million project, will add 237 new units and several new storefronts when it opens in 2016.

Many of the new units are aimed at downtown Los Angeles' fastest growing demographic — young professionals. Chinatown doesn't have Spring Street's bars or the loud glamour of L.A. Live, but the neighborhood is no longer eerily silent after sunset.

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Asiana crash focuses scrutiny on foreign pilots

The Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco earlier this month in which three died and dozens were injured has focused attention on foreign airline safety and training procedures at a time when international air travel has boomed.

Federal investigators are trying to determine how three pilots who were in the cockpit allowed the landing speed and altitude of their Boeing 777, which had no known mechanical problems, to drop to dangerous levels. The crew's training, qualifications and experience are under examination, accident investigation experts say.

Asiana Airlines has defended its safety record and, in a statement to The Times, said its pilot training program meets or exceeds South Korean, U.S. and international standards. But in the wake of the San Francisco crash, carrier officials added that they were "in the process of reexamining our procedures and training."

Significant disparities exist between the safety practices of major U.S. airlines and those of some foreign operators, experts say.

The United States and a handful of European nations, by a wide margin, have better-trained pilots, more sophisticated regulatory agencies that closely monitor operations, and airlines that vastly exceed minimum government requirements, according to a wide range of aviation experts in the U.S.

Although all commercial airlines that fly into the U.S. must meet minimum international standards, only a few rise to the same level as the domestic industry.

"I refer to the United States as the gold standard," said Marion Blakey, former chief of both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board and now president of the trade group Aerospace Industries Assn. "It would be impossible to point to a safer system."

To be sure, many foreign airlines have excellent safety records and well-trained crews. Accident rates and fatalities have been declining worldwide since 2000.

But international accident statistics bear out Blakey's assessment.

Since 1990, foreign-based airlines have accounted for 87% of nearly 300 crashes worldwide, even though they represent a much smaller share of passenger traffic. The FAA has restricted or banned air carriers from 23 nations, largely in Asia and Africa, from entering U.S. airspace. European authorities have blacklisted nearly 300 airlines.

Last year, the aviation arm of the United Nations and the International Air Transport Assn., which represents more than 240 carriers, launched a safety task force in Africa, where the accident rate is more than four times the world average. In addition, the FAA is evaluating India's Directorate General for Civil Aviation because of recent lapses in airline safety, some involving Air India pilots.

Although Asiana is not among the restricted airlines, it has had at least six serious safety incidents since 1990, including the San Francisco crash. The most deadly was a 1993 crash of a Boeing 737, which struck a mountain ridge while trying to land in South Korea, killing 68.

Other incidents included a runway collision that heavily damaged a Russian airliner in Alaska and a hard landing in Japan in 2009 that damaged the plane's rear fuselage. Japanese investigators determined that the pilot erred by coming in with the nose too high.

The largest U.S. carriers have not had a major crash in more than a decade.

The Federal Aviation Administration does not openly talk about the disparity between the safety of U.S. and foreign operators, but it is quietly addressed in some cases.

Air traffic controllers at Los Angeles International Airport, for example, advise foreign pilots to use automated systems for landing — a reflection of concerns about proficiency and language problems.

A century of aviation in the U.S. has resulted in a huge pool of pilots competing for coveted jobs, allowing only the best to move up through the ranks from general aviation to charter operators to commuter airlines to major carriers.

By the time a copilot is seated in a major carrier's cockpit, he or she has thousands of hours of experience, even though the FAA currently requires just 250.

"These foreign countries don't have the pipeline in all the aspects of aviation that we do, not only pilots but mechanics, engineers and inspectors," said Robert Ditchey, a former vice president for operations at US Airways.

Without such a merit-based system, some countries can end up with pilots selected more because of their government or family connections, said Jack Panosian, a former Northwest Airlines captain who teaches aviation law at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona.

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NSA faces backlash over collecting phone data

WASHINGTON — A reporter recently asked the National Security Agency's chief a blunt question: Why can't he come up with a better example of a terrorism plot foiled through the bulk collection of U.S. phone records?

In the weeks since Edward Snowden disclosed that the NSA had been collecting and storing the calling histories of nearly every American, NSA Director Keith Alexander and other U.S. officials have cited only one case as having been discovered exclusively by searching those records: some San Diego men who sent $8,500 to Al Qaeda-linked militants in Somalia.

Although intelligence officials and the White House continue to defend the mass data collection, support has clearly eroded among the public and in Congress. A coalition of libertarians on the right and civil liberties advocates on the left came six votes short of passing an amendment in the House last week to curtail bulk collection of phone records, but no one believes that will be the last word.

Even Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the House and Senate intelligence committee leaders who have defended the NSA's collection of phone records since the program was disclosed, are among those who concede that changes would probably be needed.

"We will work to find additional privacy protections with this program," Rogers said during House debate over the amendment.

The shift in public opinion about the government's data collection efforts is clear. A Pew Research Center survey released Friday asked Americans whether they were more concerned that government programs to combat terrorism were going too far and endangering civil liberties or that they were not going far enough and leaving the country unprotected. For the first time since Pew began asking that question in 2004, more Americans, 47%, said their greater concern was the threat to civil liberties, compared with 35% who worried the programs don't go far enough to protect the country.

As recently as 2010, only a third of Americans said they worried the government's anti-terrorism efforts went too far.

In part, that change may reflect the passage of time and the fading of the intense emotions generated by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But much of the shift seems attributable to Snowden's disclosures, the resulting debate and the difficulty that intelligence officials have had in convincing the public that their vast and expensive data-collection efforts are actually accomplishing much.

The government "has not done a good job justifying it," said Fred Cate, a privacy law expert and law professor at Indiana University. "I leave open the possibility that there are cases they can't talk about. It's also possible this is an entirely worthless program. Let's face it — a lot of government investments are."

If the government were to curtail the collection of telephone data or drop it entirely, the rollback would not be unprecedented. In 2011, according to Snowden's disclosures, the intelligence agencies quietly discontinued a then-secret program that collected email metadata on Americans — "to" and "from" information, not content — because it wasn't yielding much of value.

U.S. intelligence officials insist the telephone program is different. They collect and store domestic records of telephone calls, they say, so that they never repeat what happened before the Sept. 11 attacks, when an Al Qaeda terrorist was calling partners in Yemen, but the NSA didn't realize the calls were coming from San Diego.

But since Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence agencies have gotten better at tracking terrorists abroad and keeping them from entering the U.S. The collection of phone records may no longer be essential, according to some lawmakers who have studied the subject.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a longtime critic of government surveillance, said last week that he had pressed the intelligence community behind the scenes about the collection of telephone records, and that he would lead an effort to reform NSA surveillance.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said, "I don't think the intelligence community has been very definitive either with the public or with Congress about how often this program has played a role in stopping plots, and what sort of role it has played."

For example, one of the cases that intelligence officials often mention — and that Alexander cited in his reply to the question from Politico's Josh Gerstein during a recent conference in Aspen, Colo. — is the investigation into a 2009 plot to target the New York subway system. But that investigation, although it apparently made use of domestic calling records, began with a tip from a less controversial NSA surveillance program aimed at foreigners.

Outgoing FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told Congress there had been 10 to 12 cases in which the phone data were important, but he offered none besides the one in San Diego, in which, he said, the collection had been "instrumental."

Schiff is pushing three legislative proposals. He wants judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA, which holds secret proceedings to oversee the surveillance, to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Currently, the Supreme Court's chief justice appoints sitting federal judges to the intelligence court. Almost all of its members have been Republican appointees, many with backgrounds as prosecutors or in other executive branch posts, which may incline them to favor the government, critics say.

Schiff also backs a plan pushed by some former judges of the foreign intelligence court to set up a team of lawyers who could argue before the court to represent privacy interests. The judges now consider government surveillance requests in hearings with only the lawyers representing the intelligence agencies present.

Schiff also wants to change the phone records program so that phone service providers keep the records, not the government. The NSA would query the records as needed with court approval, much as it does now. Administration officials have said that the government would have to pay the companies to store the vast amounts of data involved and that having the data held separately by each company would greatly increase the costs and complexity of the system.

"I think there will be reforms to the FISA court, and I think there will be a restructuring of this program," Schiff said.

Regardless of what happens in the near future, another date is looming: In 2015, the law that gives the government its surveillance authority will be up for renewal. For the current programs to continue, a bill would have to pass the House and Senate.

Without major changes, "there are not the votes" to keep the current data collection programs running, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) told intelligence officials at a House Judiciary Committee hearing this month.

In 2001, Sensenbrenner sponsored the Patriot Act, the law under which the Justice Department says it is acting. He believes the government has stretched the law he helped write.

Unless the intelligence agencies agree to changes, he warned, they're "going to lose it entirely."

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

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Bloodshed rises in streets of Egypt

CAIRO — Doctors rushed over floors scattered with bandages as the dead, covered with blood-drenched sheets, were identified by relatives in a makeshift hospital. The bodies were carried toward streets filled with mourners in a nation slipping deeper into violence.

The call to prayer pierced the sky and faded as thousands of Islamists, many tending wounds, prostrated in front of the Rabaa al Adawiya mosque, site of a monthlong sit-in. Worshipers whispered of vengeance and pictures of the newly fallen fluttered in the sun.

This was Cairo on a scorching Saturday after predawn clashes in which the Health Ministry reported that at least 80 people, mostly supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood movement, had been killed by police and civilian gunmen.

The ferocity of those hours spoke to an Egypt that appears to be coming undone. The deaths suggested a perilous turning point in a struggle between Islamists and the new military-backed government over the country's political destiny. Morsi was overthrown in a coup on July 3 and his supporters are demanding his reinstatement.

The killings stoked resolve among the Brotherhood but they also illustrated the narrowing options the group faces against a military that claims a popular mandate to stem "violence and terrorism."

The army has vowed to end the demonstration at the mosque soon, which may ignite more bloodshed at a time that foreign capitals are increasingly worried about Egypt's trajectory.

"We must live in dignity or die trying to get it," said Moataz Moussa, standing near the barricades. "They call us terrorists but we are not. We have only stones against the army's weapons."

The military is seeking to crush the Muslim Brotherhood, which over the last two years rose from an outlawed opposition group to Egypt's dominant political force. The campaign of Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi, commander of the armed forces, against Islamists mirrors the harsh tactics of other former military leaders, including President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in a 2011 uprising.

"This is not about being a Brotherhood member or not. We just want freedom and justice," said Ahmed Wahba, a burly man whose shirt was wet with sweat. "We stood in line for hours last year to vote for a new democracy. But what good has it done us? Democracy is down the toilet. This is a bloody coup."

There are conflicting reports of what happened to Wahba's compatriots between midnight and daybreak Saturday.

Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said security forces fired tear gas to stop Morsi supporters from blocking the 6th of October Bridge, a key Cairo thoroughfare. The police responded, he said, after Morsi's followers marched toward the bridge from the Rabaa al Adawiya mosque.

Ibrahim did not explicitly say whether security forces fired other weapons. He said, however, that "the police have not and will not aim any firearm at the chest of any protester."

The general prosecutor's office said that Morsi supporters fired at police first. The state news agency reported that the pro-Morsi "crowd attacked security forces with shotguns, pistols and Molotov cocktails."

That account differs from the version told by Brotherhood members, wounded protesters and doctors in the field hospital near the mosque. They say 120 people were killed, many of them by live ammunition, when police and unknown gunmen, including snipers, attacked peaceful protesters in clashes that intensified through the night.

"The early injuries we saw were mostly from tear gas. Then, a little later, we treated birdshot wounds," said Dr. Esam Arafa, who volunteered at the field hospital. "But around 2 a.m. there was a terrifying escalation. We saw injuries from live bullets. Protesters were shot in the chest, head and eyes. I've seen no less than 1,000 wounded patients."

The field hospital radiated fatigue and sorrow. The wounded and the dead were ferried in by trucks, cars and motorcycles. Medical supplies were quickly unpacked; stitches were counted, birdshot plucked from skin. Women wept and men parted to make way for television cameras and corpses carried from a room that served as a morgue.

"I saw things I didn't want to see," said one man.

"The world must know this," said another.

"We are Egyptians," said a third.

By late morning, rubber gloves streaked with blood littered the floor and the stench of death began to rise.

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Landmark California regulations under federal fire

WASHINGTON — California has a reputation for having some of the nation's most aggressive rules on workplace safety, consumer protection and environmental quality — regulations that force companies to make costly adjustments to the way they do business worldwide.

Now some of those companies, banking on congressional gridlock and sympathetic Republican leaders in the House, are fighting back. And officials in Sacramento worry that some of the state's landmark laws may be in danger.

At the top of their worry list is a measure with bipartisan support that would strengthen federal environmental laws on dangerous chemicals, but at the price of rolling back a pioneering California law that tries to protect consumers from the most toxic materials. State leaders are scrambling to fend off the bill, which they say is written so broadly that it also could undermine California's clean water laws and its effort to combat global warming.

"We are alarmed," said Debbie Raphael, director of the state Department of Toxic Substances Control. "We have programs in place that are very effective and have moved the marketplace to benefit not just California but the entire world. This … puts all that at risk."

The U.S. government has the power to block the laws of California or any other state if the statutes have an impact on interstate commerce or otherwise interfere with federal authority. But Washington has tended to do that sparingly. Democrats there typically don't have a problem with the state's liberal policies, and Republicans have preferred to avoid infringing on states' rights.

But Republicans have taken up the argument that they need to curb such regulatory trailblazing to protect the rights of other states, particularly deep-red ones that don't want their industries faced with either following California's rules or being cut off from the country's biggest market. They argue that the state's regulations have gotten more aggressive. State officials say a more conservative Republican Party now puts business interests ahead of protecting states from Washington's authority.

Beyond the proposed federal Chemical Safety Improvement Act, a wide range of California measures are under siege. Agricultural interests have persuaded much of Congress that a state law prohibiting the sale of eggs laid by hens confined to tiny cages should be invalidated. California's foie gras ban has been under attack, as has its ban on the sale of inefficient light bulbs.

A proposed rule by one federal agency threatens the state's ban on cutting fins off sharks to sell for soup. A House panel recently amended a transportation bill to shift final authority over California's planned high-speed rail line to Congress, where many Republicans complain the project infringes on the rights of landowners in its path.

A measure that would have blocked California's authority to enforce state water law protections for endangered species made it through the House last year, though it stalled in the Senate.

"It's a constant push and pull," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law. "When a state puts in regulations a business finds onerous, it turns to Congress."

The toxics legislation has caused particular alarm in California.

It was hatched in the Senate, which has usually been the chamber that has protected California against legislation pushed by the Republican-controlled House. It was co-written by the late Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), a liberal who had strong ties to consumer groups, and Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), a conservative who has long championed less regulation for industry.

The two struck a compromise that would significantly strengthen the federal Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate chemicals.

Under current law, EPA authority is limited to chemicals that already have been proved to be dangerous. As a result, only a fraction of the tens of thousands of chemicals on the market has been tested by the federal government. Vitter agreed to back new authority for the EPA to screen all chemicals for safety. But in exchange, he insisted on provisions, backed by the chemical industry, that could prohibit states from adding regulations of their own.

In the spring, news of the deal was hailed as a breakthrough on Capitol Hill, where consumer activists and environmental groups had lost repeated battles to strengthen the existing law, which they considered toothless.

Then details from the fine print emerged.

California officials objected that the measure not only would prohibit the state from imposing its own rules on the manufacture and sale of chemicals, but also that the language had such broad sweep, it could invalidate several other state laws as well.

California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris described the measure in an email to The Times as "a no-win that puts Californians at risk from toxic chemicals and inhibits the development of safer, cleaner products." Her office has concluded that the measure would imperil Proposition 65, which voters enacted in 1986 to limit contamination of groundwater and make businesses disclose when consumers are exposed to carcinogens.

The California Environmental Protection Agency has "identified dozens of California laws and regulations that may be at risk of preemption" under the chemicals bill, Secretary Matt Rodriquez wrote in a letter to senators. He warned that it "could jeopardize California's ability to control greenhouse gases and thereby meet the state's targets under AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006."

Vitter's office did not respond to requests for comment. Other supporters of the measure say it is not intended to unravel the state's toxics law, its global warming policies or other state laws. They say it will be amended to make that clear.

"This is a compromise we think supports national commerce and innovation and also recognizes places where a state rule is appropriate," said Anne Womack Kolton, vice president of communications at the American Chemistry Council. "It gives states the ability to preserve some of their authority."

California officials are looking to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who shares some of their concerns and heads the Environment and Public Works Committee, to take up their fight at a hearing this week.

Others in the delegation are exasperated.

"I have a state that wants to set the bar higher," said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), who helped write several major California regulatory laws while serving in the Assembly. "On human health, on animal cruelty, on all sorts of things. The federal government should be supporting that. But there are some industries that are on a race to the bottom."

evan.halper@latimes.com

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Bloodshed rises in streets of Egypt

CAIRO — Doctors rushed over floors scattered with bandages as the dead, covered with blood-drenched sheets, were identified by relatives in a makeshift hospital. The bodies were carried toward streets filled with mourners in a nation slipping deeper into violence.

The call to prayer pierced the sky and faded as thousands of Islamists, many tending wounds, prostrated in front of the Rabaa al Adawiya mosque, site of a monthlong sit-in. Worshipers whispered of vengeance and pictures of the newly fallen fluttered in the sun.

This was Cairo on a scorching Saturday after predawn clashes in which the Health Ministry reported that at least 80 people, mostly supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood movement, had been killed by police and civilian gunmen.

The ferocity of those hours spoke to an Egypt that appears to be coming undone. The deaths suggested a perilous turning point in a struggle between Islamists and the new military-backed government over the country's political destiny. Morsi was overthrown in a coup on July 3 and his supporters are demanding his reinstatement.

The killings stoked resolve among the Brotherhood but they also illustrated the narrowing options the group faces against a military that claims a popular mandate to stem "violence and terrorism."

The army has vowed to end the demonstration at the mosque soon, which may ignite more bloodshed at a time that foreign capitals are increasingly worried about Egypt's trajectory.

"We must live in dignity or die trying to get it," said Moataz Moussa, standing near the barricades. "They call us terrorists but we are not. We have only stones against the army's weapons."

The military is seeking to crush the Muslim Brotherhood, which over the last two years rose from an outlawed opposition group to Egypt's dominant political force. The campaign of Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi, commander of the armed forces, against Islamists mirrors the harsh tactics of other former military leaders, including President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in a 2011 uprising.

"This is not about being a Brotherhood member or not. We just want freedom and justice," said Ahmed Wahba, a burly man whose shirt was wet with sweat. "We stood in line for hours last year to vote for a new democracy. But what good has it done us? Democracy is down the toilet. This is a bloody coup."

There are conflicting reports of what happened to Wahba's compatriots between midnight and daybreak Saturday.

Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said security forces fired tear gas to stop Morsi supporters from blocking the 6th of October Bridge, a key Cairo thoroughfare. The police responded, he said, after Morsi's followers marched toward the bridge from the Rabaa al Adawiya mosque.

Ibrahim did not explicitly say whether security forces fired other weapons. He said, however, that "the police have not and will not aim any firearm at the chest of any protester."

The general prosecutor's office said that Morsi supporters fired at police first. The state news agency reported that the pro-Morsi "crowd attacked security forces with shotguns, pistols and Molotov cocktails."

That account differs from the version told by Brotherhood members, wounded protesters and doctors in the field hospital near the mosque. They say 120 people were killed, many of them by live ammunition, when police and unknown gunmen, including snipers, attacked peaceful protesters in clashes that intensified through the night.

"The early injuries we saw were mostly from tear gas. Then, a little later, we treated birdshot wounds," said Dr. Esam Arafa, who volunteered at the field hospital. "But around 2 a.m. there was a terrifying escalation. We saw injuries from live bullets. Protesters were shot in the chest, head and eyes. I've seen no less than 1,000 wounded patients."

The field hospital radiated fatigue and sorrow. The wounded and the dead were ferried in by trucks, cars and motorcycles. Medical supplies were quickly unpacked; stitches were counted, birdshot plucked from skin. Women wept and men parted to make way for television cameras and corpses carried from a room that served as a morgue.

"I saw things I didn't want to see," said one man.

"The world must know this," said another.

"We are Egyptians," said a third.

By late morning, rubber gloves streaked with blood littered the floor and the stench of death began to rise.

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As L.A.'s Chinatown changes, some see opportunity for renewal

In its heyday, Empress Pavilion fielded an army of 100 employees that brought the restaurant to life at dawn; a crew of 20 prep cooks chopped vegetables, wrapped dumplings and crimped shumai.

When doors opened at 9 a.m., a squadron of waitresses armed with steam carts fanned out across a vast 600-seat dining room, hawking tins of black bean spare rib and har gow in three languages. The wait to get in could last two hours.

Empress Pavilion — behind on rent and struggling to find customers — closed earlier this summer, the latest blow in Chinatown's three decades of slow decline. Today the aging community has the feel of a museum. Grimy storefronts gather dust, abandoned by second- and third-generation locals and ignored by a shrinking trickle of tourists.

---

FOR THE RECORD:
Chinatown--An article in the July 27 A section about changes in L.A.'s Chinatown said that George Yu was the president of Chinatown's business improvement district; Yu is the vice president and executive director. The article also said that a new restaurant, Chego, took over a space formerly occupied by Mandarin Deli; the deli was located in an adjacent storefront.

---

But a new Chinatown is emerging — one that is less Chinese.

The neighborhood is seeing a new wave of development that is decidedly more mainstream. Developers are building more than 500 new housing units, some hoping to lure downtown types north of the 101 Freeway. A Walmart Neighborhood Market and Starbucks are slated to open this year. Dim sum palaces and gift shops are giving way to single-origin coffee, artisan pasta and pan-Asian cuisine.

A long-delayed residential and retail development broke ground in May. But its latest design has shed the Asian architectural flourishes that traditionalists say is the mark of Chinatown.

The owner of the complex that housed Empress Pavilion is hoping to lure a new dim sum restaurant, but he also hopes to bring in some Thai businesses.

Some see a model in Little Tokyo, which has remained a Japanese enclave while attracting a diverse array of businesses and visitors.

"Why shouldn't we have a multicultural Chinatown?" asked George Yu, president of Chinatown's business improvement district. "Why shouldn't we have a good cup of [Starbucks coffee]? Little Tokyo has two of them, and no one says anything about that."

::

People have been writing Chinatown's obituary for decades now.

It began in the early 1980s, when booming Chinese enclaves in the San Gabriel Valley drained Chinatown of people and business. Monterey Park was declared the new Chinatown, and since then the epicenter of Chinese American life in the Southland has moved steadily east.

In the 1990s, an influx of Southeast Asian immigrants brought some new business to Chinatown, but the area's economic trajectory remained unchanged — even after the Gold Line light-rail station opened.

Census data shows that the area's overall Asian population has been steady over the last decade, with the population of Mainland Chinese declining by just 4%.

But the feel of the neighborhood is starting to change. Bars serving craft beer and boba and snacks and restaurants are surfacing amid a sea of dilapidated gift shops and souvenir stores. Starry Kitchen, a pop-up pan-Asian restaurant, has set up shop inside the Grand Star Jazz Club. General Lee's, a century-old Chinatown restaurant closed for two decades, reopens as a bar in August with a design by the same firm responsible for Culver City's Akasha and Hatfield's in Hollywood.

And on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, the Jia Apartments, a 280-unit residential development, will open later this summer with a Starbucks and an artisan pasta restaurant on the first floor. Blossom Plaza, a $95-million project, will add 237 new units and several new storefronts when it opens in 2016.

Many of the new units are aimed at downtown Los Angeles' fastest growing demographic — young professionals. Chinatown doesn't have Spring Street's bars or the loud glamour of L.A. Live, but the neighborhood is no longer eerily silent after sunset.

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Asiana crash focuses scrutiny on foreign pilots

The Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco earlier this month in which three died and dozens were injured has focused attention on foreign airline safety and training procedures at a time when international air travel has boomed.

Federal investigators are trying to determine how three pilots who were in the cockpit allowed the landing speed and altitude of their Boeing 777, which had no known mechanical problems, to drop to dangerous levels. The crew's training, qualifications and experience are under examination, accident investigation experts say.

Asiana Airlines has defended its safety record and, in a statement to The Times, said its pilot training program meets or exceeds South Korean, U.S. and international standards. But in the wake of the San Francisco crash, carrier officials added that they were "in the process of reexamining our procedures and training."

Significant disparities exist between the safety practices of major U.S. airlines and those of some foreign operators, experts say.

The United States and a handful of European nations, by a wide margin, have better-trained pilots, more sophisticated regulatory agencies that closely monitor operations, and airlines that vastly exceed minimum government requirements, according to a wide range of aviation experts in the U.S.

Although all commercial airlines that fly into the U.S. must meet minimum international standards, only a few rise to the same level as the domestic industry.

"I refer to the United States as the gold standard," said Marion Blakey, former chief of both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board and now president of the trade group Aerospace Industries Assn. "It would be impossible to point to a safer system."

To be sure, many foreign airlines have excellent safety records and well-trained crews. Accident rates and fatalities have been declining worldwide since 2000.

But international accident statistics bear out Blakey's assessment.

Since 1990, foreign-based airlines have accounted for 87% of nearly 300 crashes worldwide, even though they represent a much smaller share of passenger traffic. The FAA has restricted or banned air carriers from 23 nations, largely in Asia and Africa, from entering U.S. airspace. European authorities have blacklisted nearly 300 airlines.

Last year, the aviation arm of the United Nations and the International Air Transport Assn., which represents more than 240 carriers, launched a safety task force in Africa, where the accident rate is more than four times the world average. In addition, the FAA is evaluating India's Directorate General for Civil Aviation because of recent lapses in airline safety, some involving Air India pilots.

Although Asiana is not among the restricted airlines, it has had at least six serious safety incidents since 1990, including the San Francisco crash. The most deadly was a 1993 crash of a Boeing 737, which struck a mountain ridge while trying to land in South Korea, killing 68.

Other incidents included a runway collision that heavily damaged a Russian airliner in Alaska and a hard landing in Japan in 2009 that damaged the plane's rear fuselage. Japanese investigators determined that the pilot erred by coming in with the nose too high.

The largest U.S. carriers have not had a major crash in more than a decade.

The Federal Aviation Administration does not openly talk about the disparity between the safety of U.S. and foreign operators, but it is quietly addressed in some cases.

Air traffic controllers at Los Angeles International Airport, for example, advise foreign pilots to use automated systems for landing — a reflection of concerns about proficiency and language problems.

A century of aviation in the U.S. has resulted in a huge pool of pilots competing for coveted jobs, allowing only the best to move up through the ranks from general aviation to charter operators to commuter airlines to major carriers.

By the time a copilot is seated in a major carrier's cockpit, he or she has thousands of hours of experience, even though the FAA currently requires just 250.

"These foreign countries don't have the pipeline in all the aspects of aviation that we do, not only pilots but mechanics, engineers and inspectors," said Robert Ditchey, a former vice president for operations at US Airways.

Without such a merit-based system, some countries can end up with pilots selected more because of their government or family connections, said Jack Panosian, a former Northwest Airlines captain who teaches aviation law at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona.

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NSA faces backlash over collecting phone data

WASHINGTON — A reporter recently asked the National Security Agency's chief a blunt question: Why can't he come up with a better example of a terrorism plot foiled through the bulk collection of U.S. phone records?

In the weeks since Edward Snowden disclosed that the NSA had been collecting and storing the calling histories of nearly every American, NSA Director Keith Alexander and other U.S. officials have cited only one case as having been discovered exclusively by searching those records: some San Diego men who sent $8,500 to Al Qaeda-linked militants in Somalia.

Although intelligence officials and the White House continue to defend the mass data collection, support has clearly eroded among the public and in Congress. A coalition of libertarians on the right and civil liberties advocates on the left came six votes short of passing an amendment in the House last week to curtail bulk collection of phone records, but no one believes that will be the last word.

Even Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the House and Senate intelligence committee leaders who have defended the NSA's collection of phone records since the program was disclosed, are among those who concede that changes would probably be needed.

"We will work to find additional privacy protections with this program," Rogers said during House debate over the amendment.

The shift in public opinion about the government's data collection efforts is clear. A Pew Research Center survey released Friday asked Americans whether they were more concerned that government programs to combat terrorism were going too far and endangering civil liberties or that they were not going far enough and leaving the country unprotected. For the first time since Pew began asking that question in 2004, more Americans, 47%, said their greater concern was the threat to civil liberties, compared with 35% who worried the programs don't go far enough to protect the country.

As recently as 2010, only a third of Americans said they worried the government's anti-terrorism efforts went too far.

In part, that change may reflect the passage of time and the fading of the intense emotions generated by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But much of the shift seems attributable to Snowden's disclosures, the resulting debate and the difficulty that intelligence officials have had in convincing the public that their vast and expensive data-collection efforts are actually accomplishing much.

The government "has not done a good job justifying it," said Fred Cate, a privacy law expert and law professor at Indiana University. "I leave open the possibility that there are cases they can't talk about. It's also possible this is an entirely worthless program. Let's face it — a lot of government investments are."

If the government were to curtail the collection of telephone data or drop it entirely, the rollback would not be unprecedented. In 2011, according to Snowden's disclosures, the intelligence agencies quietly discontinued a then-secret program that collected email metadata on Americans — "to" and "from" information, not content — because it wasn't yielding much of value.

U.S. intelligence officials insist the telephone program is different. They collect and store domestic records of telephone calls, they say, so that they never repeat what happened before the Sept. 11 attacks, when an Al Qaeda terrorist was calling partners in Yemen, but the NSA didn't realize the calls were coming from San Diego.

But since Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence agencies have gotten better at tracking terrorists abroad and keeping them from entering the U.S. The collection of phone records may no longer be essential, according to some lawmakers who have studied the subject.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a longtime critic of government surveillance, said last week that he had pressed the intelligence community behind the scenes about the collection of telephone records, and that he would lead an effort to reform NSA surveillance.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said, "I don't think the intelligence community has been very definitive either with the public or with Congress about how often this program has played a role in stopping plots, and what sort of role it has played."

For example, one of the cases that intelligence officials often mention — and that Alexander cited in his reply to the question from Politico's Josh Gerstein during a recent conference in Aspen, Colo. — is the investigation into a 2009 plot to target the New York subway system. But that investigation, although it apparently made use of domestic calling records, began with a tip from a less controversial NSA surveillance program aimed at foreigners.

Outgoing FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told Congress there had been 10 to 12 cases in which the phone data were important, but he offered none besides the one in San Diego, in which, he said, the collection had been "instrumental."

Schiff is pushing three legislative proposals. He wants judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA, which holds secret proceedings to oversee the surveillance, to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Currently, the Supreme Court's chief justice appoints sitting federal judges to the intelligence court. Almost all of its members have been Republican appointees, many with backgrounds as prosecutors or in other executive branch posts, which may incline them to favor the government, critics say.

Schiff also backs a plan pushed by some former judges of the foreign intelligence court to set up a team of lawyers who could argue before the court to represent privacy interests. The judges now consider government surveillance requests in hearings with only the lawyers representing the intelligence agencies present.

Schiff also wants to change the phone records program so that phone service providers keep the records, not the government. The NSA would query the records as needed with court approval, much as it does now. Administration officials have said that the government would have to pay the companies to store the vast amounts of data involved and that having the data held separately by each company would greatly increase the costs and complexity of the system.

"I think there will be reforms to the FISA court, and I think there will be a restructuring of this program," Schiff said.

Regardless of what happens in the near future, another date is looming: In 2015, the law that gives the government its surveillance authority will be up for renewal. For the current programs to continue, a bill would have to pass the House and Senate.

Without major changes, "there are not the votes" to keep the current data collection programs running, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) told intelligence officials at a House Judiciary Committee hearing this month.

In 2001, Sensenbrenner sponsored the Patriot Act, the law under which the Justice Department says it is acting. He believes the government has stretched the law he helped write.

Unless the intelligence agencies agree to changes, he warned, they're "going to lose it entirely."

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

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Landmark California regulations under federal fire

WASHINGTON — California has a reputation for having some of the nation's most aggressive rules on workplace safety, consumer protection and environmental quality — regulations that force companies to make costly adjustments to the way they do business worldwide.

Now some of those companies, banking on congressional gridlock and sympathetic Republican leaders in the House, are fighting back. And officials in Sacramento worry that some of the state's landmark laws may be in danger.

At the top of their worry list is a measure with bipartisan support that would strengthen federal environmental laws on dangerous chemicals, but at the price of rolling back a pioneering California law that tries to protect consumers from the most toxic materials. State leaders are scrambling to fend off the bill, which they say is written so broadly that it also could undermine California's clean water laws and its effort to combat global warming.

"We are alarmed," said Debbie Raphael, director of the state Department of Toxic Substances Control. "We have programs in place that are very effective and have moved the marketplace to benefit not just California but the entire world. This … puts all that at risk."

The U.S. government has the power to block the laws of California or any other state if the statutes have an impact on interstate commerce or otherwise interfere with federal authority. But Washington has tended to do that sparingly. Democrats there typically don't have a problem with the state's liberal policies, and Republicans have preferred to avoid infringing on states' rights.

But Republicans have taken up the argument that they need to curb such regulatory trailblazing to protect the rights of other states, particularly deep-red ones that don't want their industries faced with either following California's rules or being cut off from the country's biggest market. They argue that the state's regulations have gotten more aggressive. State officials say a more conservative Republican Party now puts business interests ahead of protecting states from Washington's authority.

Beyond the proposed federal Chemical Safety Improvement Act, a wide range of California measures are under siege. Agricultural interests have persuaded much of Congress that a state law prohibiting the sale of eggs laid by hens confined to tiny cages should be invalidated. California's foie gras ban has been under attack, as has its ban on the sale of inefficient light bulbs.

A proposed rule by one federal agency threatens the state's ban on cutting fins off sharks to sell for soup. A House panel recently amended a transportation bill to shift final authority over California's planned high-speed rail line to Congress, where many Republicans complain the project infringes on the rights of landowners in its path.

A measure that would have blocked California's authority to enforce state water law protections for endangered species made it through the House last year, though it stalled in the Senate.

"It's a constant push and pull," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law. "When a state puts in regulations a business finds onerous, it turns to Congress."

The toxics legislation has caused particular alarm in California.

It was hatched in the Senate, which has usually been the chamber that has protected California against legislation pushed by the Republican-controlled House. It was co-written by the late Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), a liberal who had strong ties to consumer groups, and Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), a conservative who has long championed less regulation for industry.

The two struck a compromise that would significantly strengthen the federal Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate chemicals.

Under current law, EPA authority is limited to chemicals that already have been proved to be dangerous. As a result, only a fraction of the tens of thousands of chemicals on the market has been tested by the federal government. Vitter agreed to back new authority for the EPA to screen all chemicals for safety. But in exchange, he insisted on provisions, backed by the chemical industry, that could prohibit states from adding regulations of their own.

In the spring, news of the deal was hailed as a breakthrough on Capitol Hill, where consumer activists and environmental groups had lost repeated battles to strengthen the existing law, which they considered toothless.

Then details from the fine print emerged.

California officials objected that the measure not only would prohibit the state from imposing its own rules on the manufacture and sale of chemicals, but also that the language had such broad sweep, it could invalidate several other state laws as well.

California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris described the measure in an email to The Times as "a no-win that puts Californians at risk from toxic chemicals and inhibits the development of safer, cleaner products." Her office has concluded that the measure would imperil Proposition 65, which voters enacted in 1986 to limit contamination of groundwater and make businesses disclose when consumers are exposed to carcinogens.

The California Environmental Protection Agency has "identified dozens of California laws and regulations that may be at risk of preemption" under the chemicals bill, Secretary Matt Rodriquez wrote in a letter to senators. He warned that it "could jeopardize California's ability to control greenhouse gases and thereby meet the state's targets under AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006."

Vitter's office did not respond to requests for comment. Other supporters of the measure say it is not intended to unravel the state's toxics law, its global warming policies or other state laws. They say it will be amended to make that clear.

"This is a compromise we think supports national commerce and innovation and also recognizes places where a state rule is appropriate," said Anne Womack Kolton, vice president of communications at the American Chemistry Council. "It gives states the ability to preserve some of their authority."

California officials are looking to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who shares some of their concerns and heads the Environment and Public Works Committee, to take up their fight at a hearing this week.

Others in the delegation are exasperated.

"I have a state that wants to set the bar higher," said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), who helped write several major California regulatory laws while serving in the Assembly. "On human health, on animal cruelty, on all sorts of things. The federal government should be supporting that. But there are some industries that are on a race to the bottom."

evan.halper@latimes.com

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As L.A.'s Chinatown changes, some see opportunity for renewal

In its heyday, Empress Pavilion fielded an army of 100 employees that brought the restaurant to life at dawn; a crew of 20 prep cooks chopped vegetables, wrapped dumplings and crimped shumai.

When doors opened at 9 a.m., a squadron of waitresses armed with steam carts fanned out across a vast 600-seat dining room, hawking tins of black bean spare rib and har gow in three languages. The wait to get in could last two hours.

Empress Pavilion — behind on rent and struggling to find customers — closed earlier this summer, the latest blow in Chinatown's three decades of slow decline. Today the aging community has the feel of a museum. Grimy storefronts gather dust, abandoned by second- and third-generation locals and ignored by a shrinking trickle of tourists.

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FOR THE RECORD:
Chinatown--An article in the July 27 A section about changes in L.A.'s Chinatown said that George Yu was the president of Chinatown's business improvement district; Yu is the vice president and executive director. The article also said that a new restaurant, Chego, took over a space formerly occupied by Mandarin Deli; the deli was located in an adjacent storefront.

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But a new Chinatown is emerging — one that is less Chinese.

The neighborhood is seeing a new wave of development that is decidedly more mainstream. Developers are building more than 500 new housing units, some hoping to lure downtown types north of the 101 Freeway. A Walmart Neighborhood Market and Starbucks are slated to open this year. Dim sum palaces and gift shops are giving way to single-origin coffee, artisan pasta and pan-Asian cuisine.

A long-delayed residential and retail development broke ground in May. But its latest design has shed the Asian architectural flourishes that traditionalists say is the mark of Chinatown.

The owner of the complex that housed Empress Pavilion is hoping to lure a new dim sum restaurant, but he also hopes to bring in some Thai businesses.

Some see a model in Little Tokyo, which has remained a Japanese enclave while attracting a diverse array of businesses and visitors.

"Why shouldn't we have a multicultural Chinatown?" asked George Yu, president of Chinatown's business improvement district. "Why shouldn't we have a good cup of [Starbucks coffee]? Little Tokyo has two of them, and no one says anything about that."

::

People have been writing Chinatown's obituary for decades now.

It began in the early 1980s, when booming Chinese enclaves in the San Gabriel Valley drained Chinatown of people and business. Monterey Park was declared the new Chinatown, and since then the epicenter of Chinese American life in the Southland has moved steadily east.

In the 1990s, an influx of Southeast Asian immigrants brought some new business to Chinatown, but the area's economic trajectory remained unchanged — even after the Gold Line light-rail station opened.

Census data shows that the area's overall Asian population has been steady over the last decade, with the population of Mainland Chinese declining by just 4%.

But the feel of the neighborhood is starting to change. Bars serving craft beer and boba and snacks and restaurants are surfacing amid a sea of dilapidated gift shops and souvenir stores. Starry Kitchen, a pop-up pan-Asian restaurant, has set up shop inside the Grand Star Jazz Club. General Lee's, a century-old Chinatown restaurant closed for two decades, reopens as a bar in August with a design by the same firm responsible for Culver City's Akasha and Hatfield's in Hollywood.

And on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, the Jia Apartments, a 280-unit residential development, will open later this summer with a Starbucks and an artisan pasta restaurant on the first floor. Blossom Plaza, a $95-million project, will add 237 new units and several new storefronts when it opens in 2016.

Many of the new units are aimed at downtown Los Angeles' fastest growing demographic — young professionals. Chinatown doesn't have Spring Street's bars or the loud glamour of L.A. Live, but the neighborhood is no longer eerily silent after sunset.

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Asiana crash focuses scrutiny on foreign pilots

The Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco earlier this month in which three died and dozens were injured has focused attention on foreign airline safety and training procedures at a time when international air travel has boomed.

Federal investigators are trying to determine how three pilots who were in the cockpit allowed the landing speed and altitude of their Boeing 777, which had no known mechanical problems, to drop to dangerous levels. The crew's training, qualifications and experience are under examination, accident investigation experts say.

Asiana Airlines has defended its safety record and, in a statement to The Times, said its pilot training program meets or exceeds South Korean, U.S. and international standards. But in the wake of the San Francisco crash, carrier officials added that they were "in the process of reexamining our procedures and training."

Significant disparities exist between the safety practices of major U.S. airlines and those of some foreign operators, experts say.

The United States and a handful of European nations, by a wide margin, have better-trained pilots, more sophisticated regulatory agencies that closely monitor operations, and airlines that vastly exceed minimum government requirements, according to a wide range of aviation experts in the U.S.

Although all commercial airlines that fly into the U.S. must meet minimum international standards, only a few rise to the same level as the domestic industry.

"I refer to the United States as the gold standard," said Marion Blakey, former chief of both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board and now president of the trade group Aerospace Industries Assn. "It would be impossible to point to a safer system."

To be sure, many foreign airlines have excellent safety records and well-trained crews. Accident rates and fatalities have been declining worldwide since 2000.

But international accident statistics bear out Blakey's assessment.

Since 1990, foreign-based airlines have accounted for 87% of nearly 300 crashes worldwide, even though they represent a much smaller share of passenger traffic. The FAA has restricted or banned air carriers from 23 nations, largely in Asia and Africa, from entering U.S. airspace. European authorities have blacklisted nearly 300 airlines.

Last year, the aviation arm of the United Nations and the International Air Transport Assn., which represents more than 240 carriers, launched a safety task force in Africa, where the accident rate is more than four times the world average. In addition, the FAA is evaluating India's Directorate General for Civil Aviation because of recent lapses in airline safety, some involving Air India pilots.

Although Asiana is not among the restricted airlines, it has had at least six serious safety incidents since 1990, including the San Francisco crash. The most deadly was a 1993 crash of a Boeing 737, which struck a mountain ridge while trying to land in South Korea, killing 68.

Other incidents included a runway collision that heavily damaged a Russian airliner in Alaska and a hard landing in Japan in 2009 that damaged the plane's rear fuselage. Japanese investigators determined that the pilot erred by coming in with the nose too high.

The largest U.S. carriers have not had a major crash in more than a decade.

The Federal Aviation Administration does not openly talk about the disparity between the safety of U.S. and foreign operators, but it is quietly addressed in some cases.

Air traffic controllers at Los Angeles International Airport, for example, advise foreign pilots to use automated systems for landing — a reflection of concerns about proficiency and language problems.

A century of aviation in the U.S. has resulted in a huge pool of pilots competing for coveted jobs, allowing only the best to move up through the ranks from general aviation to charter operators to commuter airlines to major carriers.

By the time a copilot is seated in a major carrier's cockpit, he or she has thousands of hours of experience, even though the FAA currently requires just 250.

"These foreign countries don't have the pipeline in all the aspects of aviation that we do, not only pilots but mechanics, engineers and inspectors," said Robert Ditchey, a former vice president for operations at US Airways.

Without such a merit-based system, some countries can end up with pilots selected more because of their government or family connections, said Jack Panosian, a former Northwest Airlines captain who teaches aviation law at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona.

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NSA faces backlash over collecting phone data

WASHINGTON — A reporter recently asked the National Security Agency's chief a blunt question: Why can't he come up with a better example of a terrorism plot foiled through the bulk collection of U.S. phone records?

In the weeks since Edward Snowden disclosed that the NSA had been collecting and storing the calling histories of nearly every American, NSA Director Keith Alexander and other U.S. officials have cited only one case as having been discovered exclusively by searching those records: some San Diego men who sent $8,500 to Al Qaeda-linked militants in Somalia.

Although intelligence officials and the White House continue to defend the mass data collection, support has clearly eroded among the public and in Congress. A coalition of libertarians on the right and civil liberties advocates on the left came six votes short of passing an amendment in the House last week to curtail bulk collection of phone records, but no one believes that will be the last word.

Even Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the House and Senate intelligence committee leaders who have defended the NSA's collection of phone records since the program was disclosed, are among those who concede that changes would probably be needed.

"We will work to find additional privacy protections with this program," Rogers said during House debate over the amendment.

The shift in public opinion about the government's data collection efforts is clear. A Pew Research Center survey released Friday asked Americans whether they were more concerned that government programs to combat terrorism were going too far and endangering civil liberties or that they were not going far enough and leaving the country unprotected. For the first time since Pew began asking that question in 2004, more Americans, 47%, said their greater concern was the threat to civil liberties, compared with 35% who worried the programs don't go far enough to protect the country.

As recently as 2010, only a third of Americans said they worried the government's anti-terrorism efforts went too far.

In part, that change may reflect the passage of time and the fading of the intense emotions generated by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But much of the shift seems attributable to Snowden's disclosures, the resulting debate and the difficulty that intelligence officials have had in convincing the public that their vast and expensive data-collection efforts are actually accomplishing much.

The government "has not done a good job justifying it," said Fred Cate, a privacy law expert and law professor at Indiana University. "I leave open the possibility that there are cases they can't talk about. It's also possible this is an entirely worthless program. Let's face it — a lot of government investments are."

If the government were to curtail the collection of telephone data or drop it entirely, the rollback would not be unprecedented. In 2011, according to Snowden's disclosures, the intelligence agencies quietly discontinued a then-secret program that collected email metadata on Americans — "to" and "from" information, not content — because it wasn't yielding much of value.

U.S. intelligence officials insist the telephone program is different. They collect and store domestic records of telephone calls, they say, so that they never repeat what happened before the Sept. 11 attacks, when an Al Qaeda terrorist was calling partners in Yemen, but the NSA didn't realize the calls were coming from San Diego.

But since Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence agencies have gotten better at tracking terrorists abroad and keeping them from entering the U.S. The collection of phone records may no longer be essential, according to some lawmakers who have studied the subject.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a longtime critic of government surveillance, said last week that he had pressed the intelligence community behind the scenes about the collection of telephone records, and that he would lead an effort to reform NSA surveillance.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said, "I don't think the intelligence community has been very definitive either with the public or with Congress about how often this program has played a role in stopping plots, and what sort of role it has played."

For example, one of the cases that intelligence officials often mention — and that Alexander cited in his reply to the question from Politico's Josh Gerstein during a recent conference in Aspen, Colo. — is the investigation into a 2009 plot to target the New York subway system. But that investigation, although it apparently made use of domestic calling records, began with a tip from a less controversial NSA surveillance program aimed at foreigners.

Outgoing FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told Congress there had been 10 to 12 cases in which the phone data were important, but he offered none besides the one in San Diego, in which, he said, the collection had been "instrumental."

Schiff is pushing three legislative proposals. He wants judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA, which holds secret proceedings to oversee the surveillance, to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Currently, the Supreme Court's chief justice appoints sitting federal judges to the intelligence court. Almost all of its members have been Republican appointees, many with backgrounds as prosecutors or in other executive branch posts, which may incline them to favor the government, critics say.

Schiff also backs a plan pushed by some former judges of the foreign intelligence court to set up a team of lawyers who could argue before the court to represent privacy interests. The judges now consider government surveillance requests in hearings with only the lawyers representing the intelligence agencies present.

Schiff also wants to change the phone records program so that phone service providers keep the records, not the government. The NSA would query the records as needed with court approval, much as it does now. Administration officials have said that the government would have to pay the companies to store the vast amounts of data involved and that having the data held separately by each company would greatly increase the costs and complexity of the system.

"I think there will be reforms to the FISA court, and I think there will be a restructuring of this program," Schiff said.

Regardless of what happens in the near future, another date is looming: In 2015, the law that gives the government its surveillance authority will be up for renewal. For the current programs to continue, a bill would have to pass the House and Senate.

Without major changes, "there are not the votes" to keep the current data collection programs running, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) told intelligence officials at a House Judiciary Committee hearing this month.

In 2001, Sensenbrenner sponsored the Patriot Act, the law under which the Justice Department says it is acting. He believes the government has stretched the law he helped write.

Unless the intelligence agencies agree to changes, he warned, they're "going to lose it entirely."

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

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Bloodshed rises in streets of Egypt

CAIRO — Doctors rushed over floors scattered with bandages as the dead, covered with blood-drenched sheets, were identified by relatives in a makeshift hospital. The bodies were carried toward streets filled with mourners in a nation slipping deeper into violence.

The call to prayer pierced the sky and faded as thousands of Islamists, many tending wounds, prostrated in front of the Rabaa al Adawiya mosque, site of a monthlong sit-in. Worshipers whispered of vengeance and pictures of the newly fallen fluttered in the sun.

This was Cairo on a scorching Saturday after predawn clashes in which the Health Ministry reported that at least 80 people, mostly supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood movement, had been killed by police and civilian gunmen.

The ferocity of those hours spoke to an Egypt that appears to be coming undone. The deaths suggested a perilous turning point in a struggle between Islamists and the new military-backed government over the country's political destiny. Morsi was overthrown in a coup on July 3 and his supporters are demanding his reinstatement.

The killings stoked resolve among the Brotherhood but they also illustrated the narrowing options the group faces against a military that claims a popular mandate to stem "violence and terrorism."

The army has vowed to end the demonstration at the mosque soon, which may ignite more bloodshed at a time that foreign capitals are increasingly worried about Egypt's trajectory.

"We must live in dignity or die trying to get it," said Moataz Moussa, standing near the barricades. "They call us terrorists but we are not. We have only stones against the army's weapons."

The military is seeking to crush the Muslim Brotherhood, which over the last two years rose from an outlawed opposition group to Egypt's dominant political force. The campaign of Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi, commander of the armed forces, against Islamists mirrors the harsh tactics of other former military leaders, including President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in a 2011 uprising.

"This is not about being a Brotherhood member or not. We just want freedom and justice," said Ahmed Wahba, a burly man whose shirt was wet with sweat. "We stood in line for hours last year to vote for a new democracy. But what good has it done us? Democracy is down the toilet. This is a bloody coup."

There are conflicting reports of what happened to Wahba's compatriots between midnight and daybreak Saturday.

Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said security forces fired tear gas to stop Morsi supporters from blocking the 6th of October Bridge, a key Cairo thoroughfare. The police responded, he said, after Morsi's followers marched toward the bridge from the Rabaa al Adawiya mosque.

Ibrahim did not explicitly say whether security forces fired other weapons. He said, however, that "the police have not and will not aim any firearm at the chest of any protester."

The general prosecutor's office said that Morsi supporters fired at police first. The state news agency reported that the pro-Morsi "crowd attacked security forces with shotguns, pistols and Molotov cocktails."

That account differs from the version told by Brotherhood members, wounded protesters and doctors in the field hospital near the mosque. They say 120 people were killed, many of them by live ammunition, when police and unknown gunmen, including snipers, attacked peaceful protesters in clashes that intensified through the night.

"The early injuries we saw were mostly from tear gas. Then, a little later, we treated birdshot wounds," said Dr. Esam Arafa, who volunteered at the field hospital. "But around 2 a.m. there was a terrifying escalation. We saw injuries from live bullets. Protesters were shot in the chest, head and eyes. I've seen no less than 1,000 wounded patients."

The field hospital radiated fatigue and sorrow. The wounded and the dead were ferried in by trucks, cars and motorcycles. Medical supplies were quickly unpacked; stitches were counted, birdshot plucked from skin. Women wept and men parted to make way for television cameras and corpses carried from a room that served as a morgue.

"I saw things I didn't want to see," said one man.

"The world must know this," said another.

"We are Egyptians," said a third.

By late morning, rubber gloves streaked with blood littered the floor and the stench of death began to rise.

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Landmark California regulations under federal fire

WASHINGTON — California has a reputation for having some of the nation's most aggressive rules on workplace safety, consumer protection and environmental quality — regulations that force companies to make costly adjustments to the way they do business worldwide.

Now some of those companies, banking on congressional gridlock and sympathetic Republican leaders in the House, are fighting back. And officials in Sacramento worry that some of the state's landmark laws may be in danger.

At the top of their worry list is a measure with bipartisan support that would strengthen federal environmental laws on dangerous chemicals, but at the price of rolling back a pioneering California law that tries to protect consumers from the most toxic materials. State leaders are scrambling to fend off the bill, which they say is written so broadly that it also could undermine California's clean water laws and its effort to combat global warming.

"We are alarmed," said Debbie Raphael, director of the state Department of Toxic Substances Control. "We have programs in place that are very effective and have moved the marketplace to benefit not just California but the entire world. This … puts all that at risk."

The U.S. government has the power to block the laws of California or any other state if the statutes have an impact on interstate commerce or otherwise interfere with federal authority. But Washington has tended to do that sparingly. Democrats there typically don't have a problem with the state's liberal policies, and Republicans have preferred to avoid infringing on states' rights.

But Republicans have taken up the argument that they need to curb such regulatory trailblazing to protect the rights of other states, particularly deep-red ones that don't want their industries faced with either following California's rules or being cut off from the country's biggest market. They argue that the state's regulations have gotten more aggressive. State officials say a more conservative Republican Party now puts business interests ahead of protecting states from Washington's authority.

Beyond the proposed federal Chemical Safety Improvement Act, a wide range of California measures are under siege. Agricultural interests have persuaded much of Congress that a state law prohibiting the sale of eggs laid by hens confined to tiny cages should be invalidated. California's foie gras ban has been under attack, as has its ban on the sale of inefficient light bulbs.

A proposed rule by one federal agency threatens the state's ban on cutting fins off sharks to sell for soup. A House panel recently amended a transportation bill to shift final authority over California's planned high-speed rail line to Congress, where many Republicans complain the project infringes on the rights of landowners in its path.

A measure that would have blocked California's authority to enforce state water law protections for endangered species made it through the House last year, though it stalled in the Senate.

"It's a constant push and pull," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law. "When a state puts in regulations a business finds onerous, it turns to Congress."

The toxics legislation has caused particular alarm in California.

It was hatched in the Senate, which has usually been the chamber that has protected California against legislation pushed by the Republican-controlled House. It was co-written by the late Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), a liberal who had strong ties to consumer groups, and Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), a conservative who has long championed less regulation for industry.

The two struck a compromise that would significantly strengthen the federal Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate chemicals.

Under current law, EPA authority is limited to chemicals that already have been proved to be dangerous. As a result, only a fraction of the tens of thousands of chemicals on the market has been tested by the federal government. Vitter agreed to back new authority for the EPA to screen all chemicals for safety. But in exchange, he insisted on provisions, backed by the chemical industry, that could prohibit states from adding regulations of their own.

In the spring, news of the deal was hailed as a breakthrough on Capitol Hill, where consumer activists and environmental groups had lost repeated battles to strengthen the existing law, which they considered toothless.

Then details from the fine print emerged.

California officials objected that the measure not only would prohibit the state from imposing its own rules on the manufacture and sale of chemicals, but also that the language had such broad sweep, it could invalidate several other state laws as well.

California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris described the measure in an email to The Times as "a no-win that puts Californians at risk from toxic chemicals and inhibits the development of safer, cleaner products." Her office has concluded that the measure would imperil Proposition 65, which voters enacted in 1986 to limit contamination of groundwater and make businesses disclose when consumers are exposed to carcinogens.

The California Environmental Protection Agency has "identified dozens of California laws and regulations that may be at risk of preemption" under the chemicals bill, Secretary Matt Rodriquez wrote in a letter to senators. He warned that it "could jeopardize California's ability to control greenhouse gases and thereby meet the state's targets under AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006."

Vitter's office did not respond to requests for comment. Other supporters of the measure say it is not intended to unravel the state's toxics law, its global warming policies or other state laws. They say it will be amended to make that clear.

"This is a compromise we think supports national commerce and innovation and also recognizes places where a state rule is appropriate," said Anne Womack Kolton, vice president of communications at the American Chemistry Council. "It gives states the ability to preserve some of their authority."

California officials are looking to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who shares some of their concerns and heads the Environment and Public Works Committee, to take up their fight at a hearing this week.

Others in the delegation are exasperated.

"I have a state that wants to set the bar higher," said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), who helped write several major California regulatory laws while serving in the Assembly. "On human health, on animal cruelty, on all sorts of things. The federal government should be supporting that. But there are some industries that are on a race to the bottom."

evan.halper@latimes.com

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DWP called on to change unlimited paid sick-day policy

Several top Los Angeles officials, including Mayor Eric Garcetti, are calling for changes to a policy that allows employees at the city's Department of Water and Power to collect unlimited sick pay.

The policy, revealed by The Times on Friday, allows employees to take paid days off well beyond the agency's stated cap of 10 per year.

Since 2010, the utility has paid $35.5 million in extra sick days, the Times investigation found. Last year, 10% of the department's roughly 10,000 employees took at least 10 extra days off, and more than 220 employees took at least 20 extra working days off.

In a motion submitted at Friday's City Council meeting, Councilman Paul Koretz said the policy should be investigated "promptly and publicly."

"Clearly, this policy permits abuse and lack of accountability, with the city and the city's ratepayers all at risk," Koretz's statement read. The motion, seconded by Councilmen Paul Krekorian and Mitch O'Farrell, calls for DWP managers and the utility's ratepayer advocate to report back to the council regarding the policy "and any possible abuses and reforms" within 30 days.

Garcetti also voiced concerns about the policy, which he said needs to be changed. An aide to City Controller Ron Galperin said he is considering launching an audit to look at the utility's sick-day system.

The utility's officials pledged to fix the problem while also seeking to downplay its scope.

DWP spokesman Joe Ramallo said "a relatively small number of employees" had taken advantage of the policy. He noted that more than half of the utility's employees didn't take a single sick day in 2012.

Koretz said news of the sick-day policy was "a step back" for an agency that has often faced criticism over its well-compensated employees and perceived lack of transparency. DWP employees receive about 50% more pay than other city employees and 25% more than employees at other utilities in the region.

"These are exactly the kinds of things that have to be rooted out for the DWP to be the transparent, honest and effective organization we want it be," Koretz said.

The controversy over sick pay came as Garcetti took a hard line against any quick deal on a proposed new labor contract for more than 8,200 DWP workers.

"We won't be rushed into a decision until we look at all the details," Garcetti said Friday.

Brian D'Arcy, the DWP union leader who ran a ferocious campaign against Garcetti in the May election, has been trying for weeks to line up council support for a new salary agreement. The city's current contract with the union, Local 18 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, expires in fall 2014.

Under the deal, outlined in a memo obtained by The Times, DWP employees would forgo a scheduled raise of 2% to 4% that is supposed to take effect Oct. 1. They would also get no raises the next two years. In 2016, they could get a pay hike of up to 4%.

But the deal would not meet Garcetti's demand that DWP employees start to pay a share of their health coverage.

Newly hired employees, however, would have to contribute 3% of their salary toward retirement health coverage — up from zero for current employees. They would also face bigger salary deductions for pension coverage than what current workers pay.

After a private meeting with fellow members of the city's negotiating panel Friday, Garcetti played down the possibility of any power struggle with Council President Herb Wesson over the proposed deal.

"This city has been consistent in its unified negotiating stance to address pensions, healthcare costs and salaries," Garcetti said.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

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Vietnamese Americans agitate for human rights in their homeland

Until Communist captors locked his dad in a 9-by-9-foot jail cell, Khoa Nguyen did not fully appreciate the battle his father was fighting.

As a boy, he remembered him talking about the struggles in his homeland, the basic human rights he believed his countrymen in Vietnam had been denied.

His parent's activity with a pro-democracy group finally drew his father from the family's comfortable Garden Grove home to Vietnam, where he hoped to train residents to use nonviolent methods in lobbying for reforms. Instead, he was charged with subversion and arrested.

"I did not completely understand his passion until he went to prison," Nguyen said. "Then it became important. It became urgent."

From UC Davis where he studies chemistry, the 20-year-old monitored his father's nine-month captivity, which ended suddenly — and unexpectedly — in January when officials allowed Nguyen Quoc Quan to return to the U.S., where he received a hero's welcome in the Vietnamese American community.

Now, at a time when Vietnam's top leaders make their first visit to the U.S. since 1995, when the two nations resumed diplomatic relations, Khoa Nguyen is among those pushing for improved human rights and free speech in a country that many Vietnamese Americans haven't seen since the fall of Saigon.

Ahead of President Truong Tan Sang's meeting with President Obama on Thursday, Vietnamese American activists branded Vietnam "the new Myanmar in terms of repression," blasting its government's history of detaining dissidents, censoring the Internet and stifling the "development of civil society."

The group Viet Tan, also known as the Vietnam Reform Party, is one of the strongest voices in the effort to bring political change to Vietnam. Regarded by the United Nations as a "peaceful" organization, it is seen as an enemy of the state in Vietnam, where it is banned.

In Vietnamese American communities, such as Orange County's bustling Little Saigon, Viet Tan is a source of both news and inspiration to some.

"I've been reading Viet Tan news and catching up on the names behind the news," said Mary Tran, who researched the party for a term paper at UCLA. "Every Vietnamese newspaper covers the human rights abuses that they highlight and the ongoing arrests of dissidents. That they document this is fascinating because their purpose is a purpose I believe in."

Ha Nguyen, eating lunch at Pho Quang Trung in Little Saigon, spent part of the week in the Vietnamese enclave passing out fliers that urged Obama to "push for the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience" in Vietnam — as a condition of an expanded U.S.-Vietnam partnership. The Anaheim retiree said he supports Viet Tan's campaign.

"I like how they work behind the scenes to try and inspire change," he said. "It must start with improving social welfare and restoring civil rights."

Viet Tan pushed hard for the release of Nguyen Quoc Quan, a former math teacher and longtime member who helps mobilize young people to join the cause.

Like his father, Khoa Nguyen has now applied to join the party. Founded in 1982 as the National United Front for the Freedom of Vietnam, the group operated underground for more than two decades. Potential members still must find sponsors within the party and enroll in training, learning about history, political strategy and social media, especially how to use video to spread messages.

Viet Tan leaders work to roll back restrictions against basic rights in Vietnam, promoting freedom of the press, boosting grass-roots movements and engaging in international advocacy, said Dung Tran, the group's Southern California spokesman. "We selectively recruit those with energy and passion and a deep understanding of what it means to bring democracy to our country," he says.

"I am proud that others know of the party's work and my father's work," said Khoa Nguyen, who has attended training sessions in Canada. "Him being jailed unjustly is the first time I felt this is real. We're doing something other people might not like, and if needed, we can go to jail as a family. My dad was always talking to me about fighting to give power back to the people — to empower people."

Now back in Orange County, Nguyen Quoc Quan said he never considered his jailing as something "heroic.

We carry out our mission quietly," he said. The real heroes, he said, are the "brave political prisoners" who remain in Vietnam.

Nguyen Quoc Quan said last year, when he went to the place he and other refugees still call Saigon (it was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the war), it was to conduct "nonviolent training."

But according to the Vietnamese consulate in San Francisco, he flew to his homeland in April 2012 using an alias, "Richard Nguyen." He "acknowledged to authorities that he planned to cause social turmoil and disturb public events in Vietnam through Viet Tan agents inside Vietnam," officials said.

"In reality, they don't have any proof" to bolster their accusations, Nguyen Quoc Quan responds.

Someday, he expects to return to Vietnam to resume his mission. "There will be a time when I need to come back because we value life and bringing good to people's lives.

"I am simply doing social work."

anh.do@latimes.com

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Dozens killed as Egyptian police break up pro-Morsi rally

were killed by police and other gunmen early Saturday as security forces moved to break up a monthlong demonstration by thousands of Islamists camped outside a Cairo mosque.

The death toll could rise. Al Jazeera reported that at least 75 people had been killed and thousands injured in predawn clashes that followed warnings from the army for Morsi's backers, including his Muslim Brotherhood movement, to disperse from the Rabaa al Adawiya mosque.

 "Over 100 fathers, brothers, sons, husbands have been lost today," said Gehad Haddad, a Brotherhood spokesman, in a tweet. "Their loved ones [are] weeping [for] them but vowing not to let their deaths be in vain."

The casualty numbers could not be independently verified. But the deaths appear to mark a perilous turning point in the battle between Islamists and the new military-backed government over the nation's political future. Morsi was overthrown in a coup on July 3 and his supporters are demanding his reinstatement.

The country's volatile atmosphere -- tanks clattered and riot police gathered -- sharpened hours after state media reported that prosecutors had accused Morsi of espionage, murder and conspiring with the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The allegations infuriated Morsi's Islamist supporters, who cursed the military and chanted, "God is great."

Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi, commander of the armed forces, set the mood for a showdown when he vowed this week to crush what he called "terrorism and violence." Even the police, once the reviled symbol of an oppressive state, were seen by many Egyptians as partners with the army against the Brotherhood and ultraconservative Islamists.

Military helicopters, in a bit of psychological warfare, dropped leaflets on Brotherhood supporters at Rabaa al Adawiya.

"Everything the armed forces do is for you [citizens] and holds no resentment for religion or humanity or any threat to life or freedom. So join us hand in hand," the leaflets read. "We are not your enemies and you are not ours, we support you so you may support your country and not raise your weapon against your brother."

The streets around Rabaa al Adawiya were streaked in tear gas, scattered with rocks and busy with ambulances, trucks and motorcycles ferrying the wounded to a field hospital near the mosque. Egyptian media reported that many of those killed and wounded were hit with live ammunition in the upper body. Security forces denied they fired bullets.

Saber Mohamed Hassan, a carpenter, stood with thousands outside the mosque, listening to preachers and vilifying the army.

"Sisi is either going to surrender or is insane with power enough to continue in his call for a civil war," he said. "He might try to disperse the sit-in, but we have a million martyrs ready."

ALSO:

Twin bombings in Pakistan kill at least 40

Pope Francis counsels young prisoners in Brazil

Sixty years of Korean armistice: One war, two histories, no peace

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

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Florida gunman kills 6, then is shot dead by SWAT team

HIALEAH, Fla. — A gunman holding hostages inside a South Florida apartment complex killed six people before being shot to death by a SWAT team that stormed the building early Saturday following an hours-long standoff, police said.

Sgt. Eddie Rodriguez told The Associated Press that police got a call around 6:30 p.m. Friday that shots had been fired in a building with dozens of apartments in Hialeah, just a few miles north of Miami.

Although a crisis team was able to briefly establish communication, Rodriguez said talks eventually "just fell apart" with the gunman, who was holding two hostages on the fifth floor. Both survived when officers stormed the building, fatally shooting the gunman during an exchange of gunfire.

"They made the decision to go in there and save and rescue the hostages," he said.

The dead bodies of three women and two men were found at two apartment units inside the building, which Rodriguez said was in a "very quiet neighborhood." Another man who was walking his children into an apartment across the street also was killed. Rodriguez said it wasn't immediately clear whether the gunman took aim at him from an upper-level balcony or if he was hit by a stray bullet.

"From up there, he was able to shoot at people across the street, catching this one man who was just walking into his apartment," Rodriguez said.

The entrance to the neighborhood, which is lined with apartment buildings, remained blocked off early Saturday, including to those who live in the building where the standoff occurred.

Miriam Valdes, 70, said she lives on the fifth floor of the building — one floor above where the shooting began. She said she heard gunfire and later saw smoke entering her apartment.

She described running in fear to the unit across the hall, where she stayed holed up as officers negotiated with the gunman.

From the apartment, Valdes said she could hear about eight officers talking with the gunman.

She said she heard the officers tell him to "let these people out."

"We're going to help you," she said they told him.

She said the gunman first asked for his girlfriend and then his mother but refused to cooperate.

Rodriguez said police were still investigating the motive and identifying the gunman and victims.

"Investigators are talking with families of the victims, neighbors, people that were present when all this began," he said. "That way we can start to piece together this huge puzzle that we're working with."

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Afghanistan bomb hunters learning to shed risky habits

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — Several weeks ago, Afghan army Capt. Mohammed Naweed came across a roadside bomb. As an engineer trained to find and remove explosives, he set about disabling the homemade device.

"It was booby-trapped with another bomb that exploded," Naweed recalled. The blast wounded him slightly in his legs.

"Next time," he said, "I'll follow the '5 and 25' rule."

That would be the rule taught by U.S. Army engineers: Check five meters around you, then 25 meters more to make sure the first bomb doesn't trigger a second one nearby.

Naweed's team is slowly learning the bomb-hunting trade here in the fertile farmlands and towering mountains of northern Afghanistan. Afghan soldiers have taken over most road-clearance duties from U.S. forces; they are now finding — or getting hit by — the roadside bombs planted here.

The bombs, known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, have been the single biggest killer of U.S. and coalition troops, responsible for about 60% of combat deaths and injuries in the 11-year-old war. Increasingly, Islamist insurgents are aiming the bombs at Afghan forces as the U.S. hands over combat responsibilities.

Over the last 15 months, nearly 3,500 Afghan soldiers and police officers have died in action, an estimated half of them because of roadside bombs, according to the ministries of defense and interior. The number of U.S. deaths over that period is about 300.

An American bomb-hunting team stationed in Kunduz, a platoon nicknamed the Predators, is essentially working itself out of a job by training Naweed's 81-man unit. It's a slow and often frustrating endeavor, the team says, but the Afghans are improving.

At first, it was "like trying to baby-sit an adult," said Spc. Uche Okoh, a U.S. Army mentor. Afghan soldiers have been known to dig at buried bombs with pickaxes, shoot them with assault rifles or just cut their wires and leave the bombs intact.

"Oh, we had lots of casualties," Naweed said. "Usually we couldn't find an IED until it exploded on us."

The Afghans have improved with U.S. training and equipment, said Sgt. Anthony Storm, who helps mentor Naweed's unit.

"Sometimes they do it the right way in training, then go back to their old ways out in the field," Storm said. "You know, just poking at the ground."

As Storm spoke, Afghan Sgt. Huseen Bafuay was drenched with sweat in a bulky, protective bomb disposal suit that made him look like a deep-sea diver. He was attempting to disable a dummy bomb buried on a dirt roadway as part of an exercise.

Another Afghan soldier had used a metal detector to locate the device, then screamed a warning. Bafuay, lying on his belly in the cumbersome suit, carefully scraped away dirt to reveal a yellow plastic jug filled with fake homemade explosives.

The Afghan called for a wheeled robot named Talon. After fiddling with a joystick and computer controls linked to the Talon, an Afghan engineer sent the robot rolling over.

Once the dummy device was disarmed, several Afghan soldiers rigged a wire-and-pulley contraption to yank it loose. They tugged and jerked furiously. Nothing. Finally Naweed walked over and calmly hoisted the bomb out of the ground.

By this time, Bafuay had removed his bomb suit helmet. His face was crimson. The helmet fan had broken.

"If the U.S. guys don't fix it, it doesn't get fixed," Naweed said, shrugging. "I'm wondering who's going to fix all these things after the Americans leave."

Col. Nicholas Katers, commander of Joint Task Force Triple Nickel, a 5,000-strong U.S. engineering unit that includes route-clearance teams, worries that poor maintenance and repair skills will cost the Afghans dearly.

The U.S. military has supplied older versions of the robot and the electronic detection and jamming system known as Symphony, along with other devices. But to Afghan troops, Katers said, the Symphony system "is just an invisible magic box." Afghan soldiers, most of whom are illiterate, often don't know whether their systems are functioning properly or at all.

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