Two weeks ago, Lovett's 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl Green, was standing with a group of friends on Harvard Boulevard, just south of 206th Street, when two men approached them in broad daylight. Without saying a word, one suspect pulled a gun and opened fire, killing Green and wounding three others, witnesses and police said.

"This reminds me of a really bad time in the history of this country," Hahn said. Yet "here we are in Los Angeles, in 2006."

Residents say the Latino gang has terrorized their neighborhood for years and in some instances has forced them to change where they shop, how they commute, even how and when they step outside their homes. They say they feel confined to a three-street area, stretching south from 207th to 209th streets, between Western and Denker avenues.

"They circle the block and see if anybody's out and if there is, they come back and start shooting," Johnson said. "They're always looking around for somebody."

The Saturday morning riot, which left 51 inmates injured, capped a second year marked by racial tension in the Chino prison and other prisons and jails statewide. Though inmates lined up by race during Saturday's fighting, officials have not determined whether the riot was racially motivated. It's not unusual for factors such as crowding, gangs and racial tensions to contribute to prison violence, said Lt. Mark Hargrove, prison spokesman.

The fighting started between two inmates, one black and one Hispanic, and when the riot was over, there were only five makeshift weapons found. These facts would hint that the violence was spontaneous, Hargrove said.

The injuries were concentrated among black inmates -- the prison's minority population. Of the 27 inmates who were hospitalized, all but three are black. One of the three is Hispanic, and two are white. Such numbers would usually indicate an organized attack by one race-based gang against another, he said.

In December, the prison dealt with a smaller riot involving 60 black and Hispanic inmates. The prison had two riots in June divided along similar racial lines and a 200-inmate riot between blacks and Hispanics in 2005.

Five postage stamps were released on Wenesday, June 29, 2005, by the Mexican government depicting an exaggerated black cartoon character known as Memin Pinguin, a child character from a comic book started in the 1940s that is still published in Mexico. The release comes just weeks after Mexican president Vicente Fox riled many by saying that Mexican migrants take jobs in the United States that "not even blacks" want.

Our political classes, who of course know all that I have been saying here, had a plan to finesse the situation by simply “regularizing” the illegals, thus at least removing the stigma of law-breaker from them. That plan went up in the smoke of 9/11.

Fuzzy stratification based on merit, in which those with skills rise to the right level regardless of their colour, would be vastly better than the thought-control regime we've currently reached, in which we all agree to pretend that what we see all around us doesn't exist, or exists by coincidence.

Fuzzy stratification based on merit, in which those with skills rise to the right level regardless of their colour, would be vastly better than the thought-control regime we've currently reached, in which we all agree to pretend that what we see all around us doesn't exist, or exists by coincidence.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- James Jackson, a 26-year-old black employee of 180 Connect, was preparing for another day of installing cable, telephone and Internet service to residential customers of Cablevision in Nassau County, New York on December 7.

When he walked to the fenced-off area to pick up equipment for the day's jobs he looked up and was shocked to see a vicious, racist symbol in his workplace. A noose was hanging in the fenced-off equipment area, visible to the dozens of installers, the majority of whom are black, but accessible only to his boss and an equipment manager, both of whom are white.

The principal of Churchill High School, a college-preparatory powerhouse in Potomac, sent an e-mail apology last night to the community, acknowledging racial insensitivity in her handling of a fight at the school this week.

Principal Joan C. Benz acknowledged she had offended parents and students in an earlier letter, sent home with students yesterday, which described rising tensions on campus culminating Wednesday in a fight in front of school. In that letter, Benz wrote, "Every incident revolving around this two-month ordeal has been Black-on-Black violence."

In her apology, Benz wrote, "I did not intend to single out one group of students in a negative light. I am particularly sorry that my choice of words reflected racial insensitivity."

The president of the Montgomery County branch of the NAACP yesterday contested the racial references in Benz's letter.

"It's inflammatory," Henry Hailstock said in a telephone interview. "It's a statement that should not have been said. . . . I don't think any administrator should be making statements as insensitive as that."

Rather than singling out the students as African Americans, Hailstock said, Benz "needs to be trying to build coalitions." He added that the county group's parent council will contact the school system to discuss the issues of violence and the dress code.

Rather than singling out the students as African Americans, Hailstock said, Benz "needs to be trying to build coalitions."