Several hundred demonstrators marched outside the Federal Building in West Los Angeles on Saturday, demanding that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak relinquish power.

The protestors, who were organized via Facebook, carried signs in Arabic and English and waved
Egyptian flags. “The demonstration was to show the people of Egypt that we care about them and
we support them in their fight for freedom  and democracy,” said Amr Elshennawy, 23, an
Egyptian-born software engineer from Fullerton.

[CORRECTION: Elshennawy is an American of Egyptian descent.]

Elshennawy and several other young Egyptians put together the demonstration. The Facebook page for the event said, in part: “Tens of thousands of demonstrators have been in the streets all over the country demanding a better life, more freedom and an end to political and economical corruption.”

Protests were also staged in San Francisco, Washington and New York, and in cities around the world.

The demonstration attracted a mixed crowd of young and old, male and female. And it included protestors from other Arab countries. Police said that the event, which was scheduled for 11:30 a.m. through 4:30 p.m., was peaceful and that no arrests were made.

-- Margot Roosevelt

Photo: Ahmad Mostafa of Rancho Santa Margarita waves an Egyptian flag at the Federal Building in Los Angeles. Credit: Christina House / For The Times

Dr. Paul Farmer, U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, and Ophelia Dahl, who founded the nonprofit Partners in Health with him in Boston in 1987, are in Los Angeles this week to attend Saturday's “Haiti Stories” conference at UCLA’s Fowler Museum that runs from 1 to 6 p.m. and is free to the public.

Farmer, a Harvard medical professor whose work was chronicled in Tracy Kidder’s bestselling “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” and Dahl sat down Friday to talk to Los Angeles Times staff writer Molly Hennessy-Fiske about their work in earthquake- and disease-ravaged Haiti.

Farmer and Dahl spoke at the home of Dahl’s sister, Lucy Dahl, in Larchmont, which is decorated with photographs and other mementos from their parents, children’s author Roald Dahl and actress Patricia Neal.

Q: What do you feel the biggest public health challenges in Haiti are now, a year out from the earthquake?

Farmer: The biggest public health challenge is rebuilding health systems. In other words, if you look at cholera or maternal mortality or tuberculosis in Haiti, they’re major problems in Haiti, but the biggest problem is rebuilding systems. What I mean is going from community-based care to health centers to hospitals, putting in place a robust system. The second is how to coordinate all the different actors. There’s so many [nongovernmental organizations], there are different hospitals, there’s the health ministry, there are private providers -- it’s a very chaotic delivery situation.

Q: But wasn’t it that way before the earthquake?

Farmer: Yes. After the earthquake, some of the problems of -- I’m going to just call it healthcare delivery -- were exposed to a broader audience. ... The chronic problems that you’ve known about before -- weak health systems, not enough investment in primary healthcare or specialty care, and now, on top of that, this acute problem of the earthquake.

A pedestrian was killed and a motorist critically injured Sunday in a chain-reaction crash that shut down a busy West Los Angeles intersection.

The accident occurred just after 10 a.m. in the 1600 block of Federal Avenue near Santa Monica Boulevard when a car traveling southbound on Federal collided with a car that was eastbound on Santa Monica.

The driver of the eastbound vehicle lost control and struck a pedestrian who was standing on the southeast corner of the intersection, said Los Angeles police Officer Karen Rayner.

The car continued out of control and hit a vehicle stopped at a nearby gas station. Two people in the car that was being refueled were uninjured.

The driver who lost control was taken to a local hospital in critical condition. The driver of the southbound vehicle received minor injuries.

Authorities did not identify the pedestrian, who was described as a man in his 40s, or the driver who was critically injured. Police had no details on the cause of the accident and made no immediate arrests.

Seven Los Angeles Fire Department emergency vehicles were dispatched to the scene, said spokesman Devin Gales. Traffic around the intersection, close to the Veterans Administration and other federal buildings as well as UCLA, shut down a portion of Santa Monica Boulevard and tied up traffic on surrounding streets into the afternoon.

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-- Carla Rivera

Three more men were in custody Tuesday on suspicion of attempted murder during a pre-game brawl at the Rose Bowl that left two victims with stab wounds.

Arthur Cisneros, 25; Anthony Cisneros, 22; and Akira Cisneros, 24, all of Winnetka, were arrested Monday evening by Pasadena police detectives investigating the incident, said Lt. Tracey Ibarra, who oversees detectives.

Ibarra said the additional arrests resulted from interviews with witnesses and video captured of the fighting before the UCLA-USC football game.

The three were being held in lieu of $1 million bail each.

Arturo Cisneros, 44, who authorities say is the trio’s father, was arrested Sunday on suspicion of attempted murder. Also arrested were Joshua Elder, 24, of Temple City, and Steve Michael Radu, 27, of Monrovia.

Detectives are expected to ask prosecutors to charge the men in the attacks that left Joshua Dirling, 27, stabbed in the cheekbone and Vimal Patel, 24, with stab wounds to his body.

The arrests came as the city considers cracking down on the hours it allows tailgaters to gather before games in parking lot and fields around the stadium.

On Monday, the L.A. County Dist. Atty.’s office charged Elder and Radu with a variety of crimes connected to the incident, including felony resisting arrest. Elder also was charged with exhibiting a deadly weapon.

Witnesses told The Times that the brawl erupted after two groups of tailgaters began fighting when a football was tossed and accidentally hit a car connected with one of the groups.

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Video captures violent brawl before USC-UCLA game at Rose Bowl

New video surfaces after 2 stabbed in Rose Bowl brawl

Brawl in Rose Bowl parking lot sends two to hospital, three to jail

-- Richard Winton

Friends and relatives of the men stabbed before Saturday's USC-UCLA game at the Rose Bowl said they had been tailgating when a fight broke out over an errant football and escalated into a melee involving scores of people. 

Friends said a man identified as Vimal Patel, 24, was in the intensive-care unit at Huntington Memorial Hospital. Joshua Dirling, 27, was stabbed in the cheek and a knife tip was embedded in his cheekbone, but he is expected to recover, relatives said.

The two were part of a group of about 15 or 20 people who had been drinking and cooking-out since 6:30 in the morning. The group they ended up brawling with had also been there drinking since the morning, witnesses said.

The fight, which involved 50 to 75 people, broke out about 4:30 p.m. in Parking Lot 1 on the north side of the Rose Bowl, officials said.

Patel, a student at Cal State Fullerton, was tossing a football with a friend when the ball accidentally hit a black Mercedes-Benz belonging to someone in the other group, according to his friend Martin Keeley.

That prompted three men to come over and start a confrontation that ended in Patel being stabbed, his friends said.

Keeley said he jumped in to defend his friend.

"I grabbed the first guy I could and wrestled him to the ground," he said, the shirt he was wearing still torn and stained with blood hours later as he waited for news of his friend at the hospital.

Others also quickly joined the fray. 

"It was just people and punches being thrown," Keeley said.

The stakes are unusually low for the annual USC-UCLA football game Saturday at the Rose Bowl. The Trojans are banned by NCAA sanctions from postseason play and the mediocre Bruins didn't win enough games to be bowl eligible.

The rivalry, however, is as heated as ever. On Monday, pranksters dumped Trojan red dye in three fountains at UCLA. On Friday morning, the Bruins allegedly (smirk) struck back, painting "UCLA" on a Trojan practice field and splashing blue and yellow paint in various places on the USC campus.

This week's shenanigans pale in comparison to previous bouts of prank rivalry between the schools, a battle that dates to 1941 and USC's theft of UCLA's 295-pound victory bell. Other stunts over the years included planting 20,000 gold-and-cardinal-painted crickets in UCLA's library, kidnapping USC fans and chaining them to fire hydrants -- and numerous sneak assaults on statues of Tommy Trojan and UCLA's Bruin Bear.

Here's a sample of the social media reaction to this week's events:

What do you think? Do you have a favorite USC-UCLA rivalry story? Share them in comments below or send us a Twitter update using the #LATchatter hashtag.

-- Martin Beck

twitter.com/latimesbeck

As Congress nears a showdown on legislation to legalize undocumented young people who attend college or join the military, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block on Friday urged passage of the measure, saying the nation needed their skills in an increasingly competitive globalized economy.

"We're in an international marketplace that is extraordinarily competitive," Block said in a White House teleconference featuring Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and other university heads. "We've got to make sure that every single one of our young people have an opportunity to contribute to our competitive advantage."

Locke said immigrant entrepreneurs have accounted for a quarter of all venture-capital-backed companies that have gone public in the last 15 years.

The teleconference was part of escalating advocacy on both sides involving the legislation, known as the Dream Act.

With a comprehensive overhaul of the immigration system dead for now, the Dream Act is seen as the best chance to win legal status for at least some undocumented migrants before Republicans take control of the House of Representatives in January.

Most Republicans oppose the act as unjustified "amnesty" for lawbreakers or say no legalization should be considered until the border is secured.

Democratic leaders say they intend to bring the bill to a vote in the next few days, but Republicans are vowing to block any consideration until George W. Bush-era tax cuts are extended.

The day before their annual football grudge match, USC got a coat of UCLA colors Friday when blue and yellow paint was splashed on the Trojans' track stadium.

The synthetic turf at USC's Cromwell Field was found emblazoned at 4:30 a.m. with large "UCLA" letters in blue and yellow paint, and more paint was splashed on flagpoles at Trousdale Parkway and Exposition Boulevard, said Capt. David Carlisle of the USC Department of Public Safety.

The field is periodically used by the football team for practice in weeks when they will play an away game on synthetic turf, and the flagpoles line a walkway where fans make their trek from campus to the Los Angeles Coliseum on game days, Carlisle said.

A UCLA neuroscientist who conducts animal research received a package with razor blades and a threatening message, a university spokesman said Tuesday afternoon.

David Jentsch, who does research on rodents and primates, received the package earlier this month, spokesman Phil Hampton said.

In  a news release issued Tuesday, the Animal Liberation Front said it had obtained statements from animal activists called “The Justice Department of UCLA,” which claimed responsibility for sending AIDS-tainted razor blades to Jentsch, whom the group alleges has injected the rodents with addictive drugs.

"How would Jentsch like the same thing he does to primates to be done to him?" the statement said.

Hampton said the incident is under investigation by the FBI and UCLA police. Activists claimed to have sent a  similar package to one of Jentsch's researchers, but there is no evidence that package was received, UCLA said.

For several years, UCLA researchers have been harassed by groups seeking to halt animal research.

In March 2009, Jentsch's vehicle was blown up outside his home, an incident for which extremists also claimed responsibility, UCLA said in a statement.

Jentsch's work, much of it funded by the National Institutes of Health, has provided key information on biochemical processes that contribute to methamphetamine addiction affecting teens and disabilities affecting speech and behavior of schizophrenia patients, UCLA said.

"Responsible use of animals in research aimed at improving the health and welfare of the mentally ill is the right thing to do," Jentsch said in  a statement. "We will continue to do so because we have a moral responsibility to society to use our skills for the betterment of the world."

[For the record 6:26 p.m: An earlier version of this post said the Animal Liberation Front had claimed responsibility for sending the razor blades.]

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-- Robert J. Lopez

Photo: UCLA professor David Jentsch at a pro-animal research rally in 2009. Credit: Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times