Army sergeant killed in Afghanistan

A self-described "meat and potatoes" conservative, Tony Ruiz often argued politics with his son.

They clashed over perceptions of Islam after the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi was overrun. But Tony said his son, Clinton, made some good points.

"He drew a very clear distinction between Muslim radicals and the Islam religion," Tony said. "It actually did convince me."

He is still convinced, a month after his son, Sgt. Clinton K. Ruiz, was killed by small-arms fire in Afghanistan, serving a tour as a psychological operations specialist with the 9th Military Information Support Battalion, 8th Military Information Support Group.

"It was one man pulling the trigger," the elder Ruiz said firmly. "Harboring ill will is not going to serve my son's memory."

Born in Poway and raised in Murrieta, Clinton was the type of kid who could always find a reason to be in a good mood, Ruiz said. In junior soccer leagues he defended the ball like a "bulldog with a pork chop," but he always had a kind word for anyone who scored a goal, said his mother, Carla Trease.

When he lost at board games, he'd heap accolades on the victor until they started to laugh. He lavished praise on his mother's cooking, sang along to the radio in the car and never minded if his younger siblings followed him around.

"I don't know how he did it." Trease said. "I was never a good cook. but he just made you feel good just by being in the room."

At school, Clinton was confident and athletic, but never a prom king candidate. He was quiet, but his smile won him friends. He tested well, but homework bored him, said Trease, an elementary school teacher. He felt most at home on a four-wheeler, conquering the hills near their Riverside County home at top speed.

"He just always wanted to be going somewhere and doing something," Trease said.

After graduating in 2008, Ruiz enrolled in summer college classes because he knew Trease wanted him to try. But even then, the only class that excited him was a course on emergency medical triage, Trease said. Before the summer was out, he had joined the Army.

Kira Ruiz, Clinton's wife, first met him in training camp as they stood shoulder to shoulder in formation for morning drills. Clinton was wearing Rayban glasses with the logo blacked out in Sharpie because regulations prohibited recruits to wear brand names.

"I looked up at him and said 'nice glasses,' and he started laughing," said Kira, who was also a psychological operations specialist.

When Kira became a squad leader during drills, Clinton took a position at road guard to be a few paces closer. Soon, he asked her out. She refused. He asked again, every day, for three weeks.

"I wasn't sure I liked him as more than a friend," Kira said. "But he was pretty sure."

Won over by Clinton's persistence, she started dating him, sneaking moments between language classes at their base, Ft. Bragg. One morning Clinton appeared in Kira's bedroom and shook her awake. In his right hand, he was carrying a caramel macchiato; in his left hand, a ring.

They got married in the county courthouse, after Kira's deployment was moved up. Clinton's father got a text the day of the wedding.

"It said, 'I got married lol,'" Tony Ruiz said. "Not a big planner, that one."

Late last year, soon after Kira gave birth to their son, Caleb, Clinton reenlisted with the Army. The decision sent him to Afghanistan and put him face to face with the small-arms fire that claimed his life.

Trease fought his decision and recalls a strong sense of foreboding. She called, texted and emailed until she feared she was "sounding like a broken record," Trease said.

"But he would always call back. He'd always say, 'I know, Mom, I know,' " Trease said.

Clinton was killed in the Oruzgan province in mountainous central Afghanistan. His awards include the Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart and the National Defense Service Medal. He was buried at the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego.

One of the last times Trease saw her son, they were driving home from a dinner with her two sons.

She remembers it because the Ruizes are a family that sings in the car during road trips, Trease said. The song doesn't matter as much as singing loudly and remembering as many words as you can. The singer Adele came on the radio and someone turned up the volume. They all belted the song at the top of their lungs until the car pulled into the driveway.

"I just remember thinking, oh, I hope this song never ends," Trease said. "It was a good, long one."

frank.shyong@latimes.com

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Dire Scene as Rebels Prepare to Leave Goma,Congo

NAIROBI, Kenya — Lootings. Assassinations. A spreading sense of lawlessness.

That was the alarming picture that emerged on Friday from Goma, a rebel-held city in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, despite vows by the rebels to withdraw peacefully.

Human rights groups said that the M23 rebels who captured Goma last week were now going on an assassination campaign as they prepared to leave, creating a vortex of crime and confusion.

“I think it will be extremely chaotic over the next few days,” said Ida Sawyer, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Residents in Goma reported that the rebels were piling cases of ammunition and other looted supplies onto trucks, with some of it heading toward neighboring Rwanda, while a new document sent to a United Nations Security Council committee said that the Rwandan Army had crossed the border into Congo and had helped the fighters capture Goma in the first place.

Rwandan troops “openly entered into Goma through one of the two official border crossings,” said the document, which was signed by Steve Hege on behalf of a United Nations investigative panel of which he is the coordinator, and was leaked by a third party.

The panel has accused Rwanda — with help from Uganda — of creating, equipping and commanding the rebels. In the document, the panel contended that once the rebels and Rwandan soldiers chased the Congolese Army out of Goma, “these troops together took control over the entire city, marching through downtown dressed in a combination of R.D.F. and new M23 uniforms,” using R.D.F. to signify the Rwanda Defense Force.

Rwanda has strenuously denied any covert involvement in this round of conflict. But it has sent thousands of soldiers across the border to overthrow the Congolese government at least twice in the past, justifying such actions by blaming Congo for insecurity across the region.

Some of Rwanda’s staunchest allies, including the United States, have recently cut aid to Rwanda amid the allegations of meddling in Congo. On Friday, the BBC reported that the British government had suspended more than $33 million in aid, which Rwanda desperately needs to keep its government running.

Congo and Rwanda seem to be heading into yet another turbulent, acrimonious phase, with tensions growing by the day. It began this spring when more than 1,000 former rebels who had been integrated into the Congolese Army mutinied. The rebels named themselves the M23 after March 23, 2009, the date of a failed peace deal between the two sides.

Most of the rebel commanders were Tutsi, the same minority ethnic group that dominates politics and the economy in Rwanda, and many of them had fought in the Rwandan Army.

The rebels indicated this week that they would abide by a regional agreement signed last weekend to leave Goma. “And we are continuing with that plan,” Bertrand Bisimwa, an M23 spokesman, said Friday.

He said the rebels had begun withdrawing from Goma and planned to station all troops about 12 miles outside the city, as the agreement demanded.

But another rebel spokesman contradicted him, telling The Associated Press that the rebels would not be able to leave Goma for “logistical reasons” until Sunday.

Aid workers in Goma said on Friday that they could not see any sign of a rebel pullout.

“I’m not seeing big movements of soldiers,” said Richard Nunn, a coordinator for Oxfam. “I still see some rebel soldiers in town. It’s very difficult to say what’s going on right now.”

Other residents reported an increase in carjackings and break-ins, saying that Goma was becoming virtually lawless at night. Many people fear that a vacuum could open up when the rebels leave, and that the Congolese Army could be even worse.

When Congolese troops hastily retreated from Goma last week, Mr. Nunn said, “there was a lot of rape, a lot of insecurity, a lot of extortion and some killings.”

“It was a mess, and people are worried about the same kind of thing happening when they come back,” he added.

The deal struck last weekend calls for one battalion of government troops to return to Goma’s streets and for a mixed force of rebels, government troops and a yet-to-be-named “neutral force” to guard the airport, from which millions of dollars in minerals is exported every month.

The rebels have clearly infiltrated the police in Goma, with officers who speak the principal Rwandan language strutting around the city last week in uniforms so freshly sewn that loose threads still hung off them. Congolese officers who had been disarmed said that only Tutsi officers were allowed to carry guns.

Most analysts believe that the rebels will officially withdraw from Goma soon, after cleaning out everything of value (there were reports that they robbed the central bank this week). Because the Congolese government is so weak and its army is in such disarray, the rebels are expected to extract a new deal that will give them top positions in the army and an even firmer grip on a large and lucrative swath of eastern Congo.

Residents said that at least 10 people in Goma had been assassinated in the past 10 days, with many more disappearances. After one magistrate was struck in the face with a machete and nearly killed last week, United Nations peacekeepers evacuated more than 20 other magistrates.

“We’ve confirmed several cases of targeted killings by the M23 in and around Goma,” said Ms. Sawyer, the Human Rights Watch researcher. She said the victims included “those who refused to join the M23 or act as informants, individuals deemed uncooperative during looting incidents, and other suspected ‘enemies.’ ”

The rebels have denied any wrongdoing.

Mr. Bisimwa, the rebel spokesman, said that he had heard the same accusations but that no one had offered proof.

“Where are the facts?” he asked.

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Dennis Quaid Files for Divorce, Seeks Joint Custody

By Mike Fleeman

11/30/2012 at 09:20 PM EST

Kimberly Buffington-Quaid and Dennis Quaid

Casey Rodgers/NBC/AP

Dennis Quaid is ready to end his marriage for good.

After his wife of eight years, Kimberly Buffington-Quaid, sought legal separation in October, the Vegas star filed Friday for divorce in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The actor requests joint physical and legal custody of their 4-year-old twins, Thomas and Zoe, and offers to pay spousal support, according to the petition.

This will be the third divorce for Quaid, 58, who was previously married to Meg Ryan and P.J. Soles.

Kimberly, a former real estate agent, initially filed for divorce in March. She
put the divorce on hold a month later, pulling the papers so they could work on their marriage, before then filing for separation.

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Kenya village pairs AIDS orphans with grandparents

NYUMBANI, Kenya (AP) — There are no middle-aged people in Nyumbani. They all died years ago, before this village of hope in Kenya began. Only the young and old live here.

Nyumbani was born of the AIDS crisis. The 938 children here all saw their parents die. The 97 grandparents — eight grandfathers among them — saw their middle-aged children die. But put together, the bookend generations take care of one another.

Saturday is World AIDS Day, but the executive director of the aid group Nyumbani, which oversees the village of the same name, hates the name which is given to the day because for her the word AIDS is so freighted with doom and death. These days, it doesn't necessarily mean a death sentence. Millions live with the virus with the help of anti-retroviral drugs, or ARVs. And the village she runs is an example of that.

"AIDS is not a word that we should be using. At the beginning when we came up against HIV, it was a terminal disease and people were presenting at the last phase, which we call AIDS," said Sister Mary Owens. "There is no known limit to the lifespan now so that word AIDS should not be used. So I hate World AIDS Day, follow? Because we have moved beyond talking about AIDS, the terminal stage. None of our children are in the terminal stage."

In the village, each grandparent is charged with caring for about a dozen "grandchildren," one or two of whom will be biological family. That responsibility has been a life-changer for Janet Kitheka, who lost one daughter to AIDS in 2003. Another daughter died from cancer in 2004. A son died in a tree-cutting accident in 2006 and the 63-year-old lost two grandchildren in 2007, including one from AIDS.

"When I came here I was released from the grief because I am always busy instead of thinking about the dead," said Kitheka. "Now I am thinking about building a new house with 12 children. They are orphans. I said to myself, 'Think about the living ones now.' I'm very happy because of the children."

As she walks around Nyumbani, which is three hours' drive east of Nairobi, 73-year-old Sister Mary is greeted like a rock star by little girls in matching colorful school uniforms. Children run and play, and sleep in bunk beds inside mud-brick homes. High schoolers study carpentry or tailoring. But before 2006, this village did not exist, not until a Catholic charity petitioned the Kenyan government for land on which to house orphans.

Everyone here has been touched by HIV or AIDS. But only 80 children have HIV and thanks to anti-retroviral drugs, none of them has AIDS.

"They can dream their dreams and live a long life," Owens said.

Nyumbani relies heavily on U.S. funds but it is aiming to be self-sustaining.

The kids' bunk beds are made in the technical school's shop. A small aquaponics project is trying to grow edible fish. The mud bricks are made on site. Each grandparent has a plot of land for farming.

The biggest chunk of aid comes from the United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has given the village $2.5 million since 2006. A British couple gives $50,000 a year. A tree-growing project in the village begun by an American, John Noel, now stands six years from its first harvest. Some 120,000 trees have already been planted and thousands more were being planted last week.

"My wife and I got married as teenagers and started out being very poor. Lived in a trailer. And we found out what it was like to be in a situation where you can't support yourself," he said. "As an entrepreneur I looked to my enterprise skills to see what we could do to sustain the village forever, because we are in our 60s and we wanted to make sure that the thousand babies and children, all the little ones, were taken care of."

He hopes that after a decade the timber profits from the trees will make the village totally self-sustaining.

But while the future is looking brighter, the losses the orphans' suffered can resurface, particularly when class lessons are about family or medicine, said Winnie Joseph, the deputy headmaster at the village's elementary school. Kitheka says she tries to teach the kids how to love one another and how to cook and clean. But older kids sometimes will threaten to hit her after accusing her of favoring her biological grandchildren, she said.

For the most part, though, the children in Nyumbani appear to know how lucky they are, having landed in a village where they are cared for. An estimated 23.5 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have HIV as of 2011, representing 69 percent of the global HIV population, according to UNAIDS. Eastern and southern Africa are the hardest-hit regions. Millions of people — many of them parents — have died.

Kitheka noted that children just outside the village frequently go to bed hungry. And ARVs are harder to come by outside the village. The World Health Organization says about 61 percent of Kenyans with HIV are covered by ARVs across the country.

Paul Lgina, 14, contrasted the difference between life in Nyumbani, which in Swahili means simply "home," and his earlier life.

"In the village I get support. At my mother's home I did not have enough food, and I had to go to the river to fetch water," said Lina, who, like all the children in the village, has neither a mother or a father.

When Sister Mary first began caring for AIDS orphans in the early 1990s, she said her group was often told not to bother.

"At the beginning nobody knew what to do with them. In 1992 we were told these children are going to die anyway," she said. "But that wasn't our spirit. Today, kids we were told would die have graduated from high school."

___

On the Internet:

http://www.trees4children.org/

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U.S. Moves Toward Recognizing Syria Opposition

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Rebels in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, in August. The opposition to the Syrian government is developing a political structure.

WASHINGTON — The United States is moving toward recognizing the Syrian opposition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people as soon as it fully develops its political structure, American officials said Thursday.

A decision to recognize the group could be announced at a so-called Friends of Syria meeting that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to attend in Morocco on Dec. 12. It is the most immediate decision facing the Obama administration as it considers how to end the government of Bashar al-Assad and stop the violence that has consumed Syria.

President Obama has not signed off on the move, and the meetings to decide the issue have yet to be held. Debates within the administration concern legal issues about the implications of diplomatic recognition, how such a move might affect efforts to enlist Russian support for a political transition in Syria and, most importantly, the state of the opposition.

Britain, France, Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council have already recognized the opposition, which was enlarged and overhauled at a meeting in Doha, Qatar, last month at the insistence of the United States and other nations. It is formally known as the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.

“They are a legitimate representative of the Syrian people’s aspirations,” Robert Ford, the American ambassador to Syria, said Thursday at a conference on the Syrian humanitarian crisis. “They are making real progress and I expect that our position will evolve as they themselves develop,” he added.

American officials who favor the move are hoping to use formal recognition as a reward to the opposition for uniting opponents of the Assad government inside and outside Syria and fleshing out its political structure so that it can play a credible role if Mr. Assad is ousted.

The National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces is in the process of developing a series of committees on humanitarian assistance, education, health, judicial and security issues. If opposition leaders are able to present their group at the Morocco meeting as a functioning organization, one senior American official said, recognition by the United States might follow at the gathering, a conference of more than 70 nations that is to be held in Marrakesh.

“We’ve been looking for them to establish a leadership structure that’s clear to everybody, but also discrete committees that can deal with the various issues that they are assuming responsibility for,” Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, said Thursday. “We don’t want to get ahead of the game here.”

At an appearance here on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton expanded on Ms. Nuland’s remarks. “We have been deeply involved in helping stand them up, and we’re going to carefully consider what more we can do,” she said at a conference co-hosted by the publisher of the magazine Foreign Policy. “It appears as though the opposition in Syria is now capable of holding ground, that they are able to bring the fight to the government forces.”

Mr. Ford and other experts attending a conference organized by the Middle East Institute and International Relief and Development, two nongovernment organizations, described a deepening humanitarian crisis because of the Syrian conflict. The number of internally displaced people in Syria has soared to about 2.5 million, according to Kelly Clements, a deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

The number of refugees has also climbed. About 140,000 Syrians have registered for assistance as refugees in Jordan, some 25,000 of whom are in refugee camps. There are also believed to be more than 100,000 additional Syrian refugees who have not registered. In Turkey, there are 125,000 Syrian refugees in camps and another 75,000 who are not residing in camps, she said. In Lebanon, there are an estimated 135,000 Syrian refugees, none of whom live in refugee camps.

In Iraq, some 60,000 Syrians have registered as refugees, half of whom live in camps. More than 35,000 additional Iraqis who fled the conflict in Iraq for Syria have since returned to Iraq.

The Assad government, Mr. Ford said, has often interfered with the delivery of humanitarian assistance. He also said that Iran had helped the Assad government track down opposition figures who are voicing their view on the Internet.

Mr. Ford indicated that the subject of providing arms to opposition fighters was also being reviewed, but said that any discussion of arms needed to be part of a broader strategy for a political transition if Mr. Assad leaves power. “Arms are not a strategy; arms are a tactic,” he said.

He suggested that the government was still able militarily. “There is no sign of any kind of political deal to be worked out between the opposition groups and the regime,” he said. “The fighting is going to go on.”

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Apple overcomes last hurdle, iPhone 5 cleared for sale in China as Android continues to dominate

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The X Factor Announces Top 6

TV Watch

The X Factor

11/29/2012 at 09:40 PM EST

From left; Demi Lovato, Britney Spears and Simon Cowell

FOX

Mario Lopez called the first elimination on Thursday's The X Factor a "bit of a shocker."

And so was the second.

The top eight contestants sang No. 1 hits Wednesday in an emotional night. Keep reading to find out which two performers were sent packing – and who's in season 2's top six ...

Paige Thomas was the first to go – which is shocking because she toned down her over-the-top performing style to sing Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" like a like a "legitimate pop star," according to Simon Cowell.

That left Demi Lovato with just one singer on her team: CeCe Frey, who was told (by Cowell) to "pack her bags" Wednesday after her performance of "Lady Marmalade."

But L.A. Reid's contestant Vino Alan and Team Britney's Diamond White were in the bottom two and had to sing for survival. He performed "Trouble" and she sang Beyoncé's "I Was Here."

L.A. voted to send home Diamond; Britney returned the favor and voted to send home Vino. Demi voted Vino out as well. That left Simon ... and he fell in line with the female panelists, voting to get rid of Vino. Either one would have been a shock but Vino had been ranked third last week.

Here's how the top six rank this week:
1. Carly Rose Sonenclar
2. Tate Stevens
3. Emblem3
4. Fifth Harmony
5. CeCe Frey
6. Diamond White

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Clinton releases road map for AIDS-free generation

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an ambitious road map for slashing the global spread of AIDS, the Obama administration says treating people sooner and more rapid expansion of other proven tools could help even the hardest-hit countries begin turning the tide of the epidemic over the next three to five years.

"An AIDS-free generation is not just a rallying cry — it is a goal that is within our reach," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who ordered the blueprint, said in the report.

"Make no mistake about it, HIV may well be with us into the future but the disease that it causes need not be," she said at the State Department Thursday.

President Barack Obama echoed that promise.

"We stand at a tipping point in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and working together, we can realize our historic opportunity to bring that fight to an end," Obama said in a proclamation to mark World AIDS Day on Saturday.

Some 34 million people worldwide are living with HIV, and despite a decline in new infections over the last decade, 2.5 million people were infected last year.

Given those staggering figures, what does an AIDS-free generation mean? That virtually no babies are born infected, young people have a much lower risk than today of becoming infected, and that people who already have HIV would receive life-saving treatment.

That last step is key: Treating people early in their infection, before they get sick, not only helps them survive but also dramatically cuts the chances that they'll infect others. Yet only about 8 million HIV patients in developing countries are getting treatment. The United Nations aims to have 15 million treated by 2015.

Other important steps include: Treating more pregnant women, and keeping them on treatment after their babies are born; increasing male circumcision to lower men's risk of heterosexual infection; increasing access to both male and female condoms; and more HIV testing.

The world spent $16.8 billion fighting AIDS in poor countries last year. The U.S. government is the leading donor, spending about $5.6 billion.

Thursday's report from PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, outlines how progress could continue at current spending levels — something far from certain as Congress and Obama struggle to avert looming budget cuts at year's end — or how faster progress is possible with stepped-up commitments from hard-hit countries themselves.

Clinton warned Thursday that the U.S. must continue doing its share: "In the fight against HIV/AIDS, failure to live up to our commitments isn't just disappointing, it's deadly."

The report highlighted Zambia, which already is seeing some declines in new cases of HIV. It will have to treat only about 145,000 more patients over the next four years to meet its share of the U.N. goal, a move that could prevent more than 126,000 new infections in that same time period. But if Zambia could go further and treat nearly 198,000 more people, the benefit would be even greater — 179,000 new infections prevented, the report estimates.

In contrast, if Zambia had to stick with 2011 levels of HIV prevention, new infections could level off or even rise again over the next four years, the report found.

Advocacy groups said the blueprint offers a much-needed set of practical steps to achieve an AIDS-free generation — and makes clear that maintaining momentum is crucial despite economic difficulties here and abroad.

"The blueprint lays out the stark choices we have: To stick with the baseline and see an epidemic flatline or grow, or ramp up" to continue progress, said Chris Collins of amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.

His group has estimated that more than 276,000 people would miss out on HIV treatment if U.S. dollars for the global AIDS fight are part of across-the-board spending cuts set to begin in January.

Thursday's report also urges targeting the populations at highest risk, including gay men, injecting drug users and sex workers, especially in countries where stigma and discrimination has denied them access to HIV prevention services.

"We have to go where the virus is," Clinton said.

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The lure of fishing endures even when they're not biting

Jordan and Stephanie Martinez planned to celebrate their one-month wedding anniversary with a night out at their favorite Thai restaurant. But what's a date without fishing? So first, they drove in from Alhambra for a little pole time at Belmont Veterans Memorial Pier in Long Beach.

Carrying folding camp chairs and tackle boxes, the Martinezes joined a handful of lone fishermen and families staking out spots along the pier's metal railing and dropping their lines. From Vietnamese, Filipino, Mexican and African American backgrounds, they shared bait, admired each other's catches flopping around in plastic buckets of ice, and traded fish stories.

What they didn't do is complain about the fish not biting. They didn't care. They came out, even with rain in the forecast, to break away, enjoy the peace and camaraderie.

"We don't even need to fish," Jordan Martinez, 23, a FedEx driver, said. "We're just here for the fun."

Belmont is the homely stepsister to the Redondo Beach and Santa Monica piers, with their restaurants, honky-tonks and vintage arcade games like Zoltar the Fortune Teller. The T-shaped pier doesn't have much in the way of frills — just portable toilets and street lights with metal shades shaped like pith helmets. An American flag flaps over a bait shop at the end.

What the pier, a third of a mile long and as wide as a city street, does have is space. And, on a chilly autumn night this week, a bizarre but strangely enchanting view. Christmas lights hung from a metal frame form a Christmas tree in front of the bait shop. In the distance, the Queen Mary's stacks were also strung for the holidays. The moon rose, spilling ribbons of milky light across the waters.

Way offshore, a twinkling breakwater built by the Navy slashed through the bay. Closer in, several islands were alight. It took a minute to realize the islands weren't real: they were camouflage for oil and gas drilling equipment. With their pastel towers and unnaturally jaunty palms, they looked like where Gilligan pulled up after the S.S. Minnow shipwrecked, or the atoll where castaways slump in old New Yorker cartoons.

I was drawn to the pier by a half-baked desire to start fishing again. While the cool kids worked on their tans in Balboa, my family vacationed at the then-unfashionable Oxnard Beach, which seemed to be socked in solid in dense fog every day of the year. But at dawn, my father would take us fishing off the now-vanished Point Mugu Pier. He was a World War II veteran, but even so, it remains a mystery to me how he got us on the restricted naval base that once included the pier.

Although the ocean perch we caught and fried up remains my favorite breakfast, I had failed to interest my kids in fishing. And without equipment or somebody to tell me what to do, I hadn't fished for decades.

But the Belmont pier was my kind of place. Nobody seemed to know what they were doing. They paid no heed to the "do not eat" list of fish contaminated by DDT, PCBs and mercury posted on the pier in four languages — English, Spanish, Chinese and Khmer. If it's big enough to keep, it's big enough to eat.

"That's for kids," Benilda Badeo, a Long Beach caregiver for the elderly, said as she laughed off the do-not-eat warning and prepared to take home several forbidden smelt. "I'm already an adult."

Several fishermen and women admitted they didn't know one fish species from another. Icie Gibson, 29, of Compton, said she didn't "eat anything with eyes on the same side of the head."

"There was one here came up biting on the line of the pole," Gibson said. "That thing was vicious. I said, oh no, that's not an eater."

The fishing lore they passed around was contradictory. Martin Estrada blamed the near-full moon for his bad luck.

"The moon has to be gone to best catch fish," said the 42-year-old Long Beach gardener. "I just like to waste my time here."

John Colima, on the other hand, held that fish flee the darkness. He said he suspended a light bulb above the water line or threw in glow sticks to attract the little buggers.

Colima, his face obscured behind the light from his headlamp, arrived with a hoop net as well as his pole. The net was for catching lobsters, he said.

Lobstering in Southern California? Granted, they're spiny, strange and altogether different from Maine's finest. But Colima, 40, rhapsodized about their delectability, dipped in soy sauce or melted butter.

And, drawn by mussels bristling off the pier footings, lobsters were easy to catch, said Colima, 40, a phone installer. He assured me he'd caught lobsters a half-foot wide.

Unfolding his camp chair, he sat down and scored several little silver fish with his knife, slipped them into his net and dropped it over the side. Lobsters would be crawling into the net in 15 minutes, he predicted, half an hour tops.

An hour later, with the lobsters still stubbornly refusing to show, I asked another lobster fisherman, Tuan Lai of Anaheim, to report on the catch the next day.

Reached by phone, Lai, 19, a Golden West College student, said he plied his own net for two or three hours but came up with nothing but little blue crabs. And no one else did any better, he added.

"I don't know what happened," said Lai, who, Internet-trained in lobstering, insisted that earlier in the month he'd snagged a small one. Perhaps the gig was up with the lobsters, he theorized. "Maybe the lobsters are just kind of smart," he said.

gale.holland@latimes.com

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U.S. Is Weighing Stronger Action in Syrian Conflict

Francisco Leong/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Rebels in northern Syria celebrated on Wednesday next to what was reported to be a government fighter jet.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, hoping that the conflict in Syria has reached a turning point, is considering deeper intervention to help push President Bashar al-Assad from power, according to government officials involved in the discussions.

While no decisions have been made, the administration is considering several alternatives, including directly providing arms to some opposition fighters.

The most urgent decision, likely to come next week, is whether NATO should deploy surface-to-air missiles in Turkey, ostensibly to protect that country from Syrian missiles that could carry chemical weapons. The State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said Wednesday that the Patriot missile system would not be “for use beyond the Turkish border.”

But some strategists and administration officials believe that Syrian Air Force pilots might fear how else the missile batteries could be used. If so, they could be intimidated from bombing the northern Syrian border towns where the rebels control considerable territory. A NATO survey team is in Turkey, examining possible sites for the batteries.

Other, more distant options include directly providing arms to opposition fighters rather than only continuing to use other countries, especially Qatar, to do so. A riskier course would be to insert C.I.A. officers or allied intelligence services on the ground in Syria, to work more closely with opposition fighters in areas that they now largely control.

Administration officials discussed all of these steps before the presidential election. But the combination of President Obama’s re-election, which has made the White House more willing to take risks, and a series of recent tactical successes by rebel forces, one senior administration official said, “has given this debate a new urgency, and a new focus.”

The outcome of the broader debate about how heavily America should intervene in another Middle Eastern conflict remains uncertain. Mr. Obama’s record in intervening in the Arab Spring has been cautious: While he joined in what began as a humanitarian effort in Libya, he refused to put American military forces on the ground and, with the exception of a C.I.A. and diplomatic presence, ended the American role as soon as Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was toppled.

In the case of Syria, a far more complex conflict than Libya’s, some officials continue to worry that the risks of intervention — both in American lives and in setting off a broader conflict, potentially involving Turkey — are too great to justify action. Others argue that more aggressive steps are justified in Syria by the loss in life there, the risks that its chemical weapons could get loose, and the opportunity to deal a blow to Iran’s only ally in the region. The debate now coursing through the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and the C.I.A. resembles a similar one among America’s main allies.

“Look, let’s be frank, what we’ve done over the last 18 months hasn’t been enough,” Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, said three weeks ago after visiting a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. “The slaughter continues, the bloodshed is appalling, the bad effects it’s having on the region, the radicalization, but also the humanitarian crisis that is engulfing Syria. So let’s work together on really pushing what more we can do.” Mr. Cameron has discussed those options directly with Mr. Obama, White House officials say.

France and Britain have recognized a newly formed coalition of opposition groups, which the United States helped piece together. So far, Washington has not done so.

American officials and independent specialists on Syria said that the administration was reviewing its Syria policy in part to gain credibility and sway with opposition fighters, who have seized key Syrian military bases in recent weeks.

“The administration has figured out that if they don’t start doing something, the war will be over and they won’t have any influence over the combat forces on the ground,” said Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence officer and specialist on the Syria military. “They may have some influence with various political groups and factions, but they won’t have influence with the fighters, and the fighters will control the territory.”

Jessica Brandt contributed reporting from Cambridge, Mass.

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