New overlay requires 11-digit dialing
By KEVIN UEDA Special to the Daily Press
CITYWIDE — For thousands of phone users on LA’s westside, the seven-digit number is a thing of the past starting today.
An overlay of the 310 area code will take full effect today,which will require residents and businesses to re-enter phone numbers to accommodate a calling system new to the region.
Residents must now dial 1 + 310 + a seven-digit number for all local calls from a land line, even if it is to the next-door neighbor, according to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). However, if the local call is made by a cell phone, the caller does not have to dial “1” before the area code and seven-digit number, according to CPUC officials.
The CPUC approved the overlay in August of 2005 to remedy a shortage of phone numbers, foreseen by the North American Numbering Plan Administration (NANPA), said CPUC spokeswoman Susan Carothers. At the time, the 310 area code had about 381,000 phone numbers left.
New phone customers in the existing 310 areas — including the westside, South Bay and part of Ventura County — will be designated a 424 area code after Aug. 26. The designation does not work retroac- RAMALLAH, West Bank — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a frenetic set of meetings amid intense Israeli-Hezbollah fighting, said Tuesday the United States wants an “urgent and enduring”peace where problems are solved without war.
Talking to reporters after meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Rice said, “We need to get to a sustainable peace, there must be a way for people to reconcile their differences.”
Earlier, meeting in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, she said the time has come for a new Middle East.“I have no doubt there are those who wish to strangle a democratic and sovereign Lebanon in its crib,” Rice said. “We, of course, also urgently want to end the violence.”
In Washington, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, publicly reiterated his call for an immediate end to violence, in a news conference with President Bush following the two leaders’ meeting in the Oval Office.
“I also emphasized the importance of immediate cease-fire and call on international community to support the Lebanese government, to support the Lebanese people to overcome the damage and destruction that happened,” al-Maliki said, standing next to Bush in the East Room.
Bush expressed concern for the civilians killed and harmed by Israeli bombs, but stopped short of calling for an immediate cease-fire that might not last.
“I told him (al-Maliki) I support a sustainable cease-fire that will bring about an end to violence,” Bush said.
In Israel, Rice reiterated the United States’ position that a cessation of hostilities in Lebanon must come with conditions, saying there is “no desire” on the part of U.S. officials to come back in weeks or months after terrorists find another way to disrupt any potential cease fire.
“It is time for a new Middle East,” she said. “It is time to say to those that don’t want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail. They will not.”
Olmert welcomed Rice warmly and vowed that “Israel is determined to carry on this fight against Hezbollah.” He said his government “will not hesitate to take severe measures against those who are aiming thousands of rockets and missiles against innocent civilians for the sole purpose of killing them.”
In what amounted to a score for U.S. diplomacy, Olmert’s office told Rice that Israel will allow the opening of safe passages in Lebanon for the transport of humanitarian aid to all areas of the country.
Rice, who then left for Rome for more meetings on the Mideast, is working on two essential fronts — Israel’s tensions with the Palestinians as well as the fighting to its north along its border with Lebanon, where two weeks of fighting with Lebanese Hezbollah militia have left hundreds of civilians dead, mostly on the Lebanese side.
During a meeting with that included about a dozen U.S. and Palestinian officials — but not members of Hamas — Rice and Abbas talked about getting additional aid to the debt-laden Palestinian government as well as the state of an Israeli soldier captured last month by Hamas-linked militants.
Rice told Abbas that while she and other allies are engaged in resolving the situation in Lebanon, the U.S. has not forgotten the Palestinians’ plight.
“The Palestinian people have lived too long with violence and the daily humiliations that go along with the circumstances here,” she said.
“I assured the president that we had great concerns about the sufferings of innocent people throughout the region,” she told reporters, saying that “even as the Lebanon situation resolves, we must remain focused on what is happening here.”
“You have our pledge that our common work of bringing a two-state solution to the people of Palestine and the people of Israel that we will not tire in our efforts,” Rice said.
Abbas renewed a call for an Israeli- Palestinian truce, following a monthlong Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, launched to free a captured Israeli soldier.
More than 432 people have been reported killed in Lebanon and Israel since fighting broke out July 12 between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas after Hezbollah killed eight Israeli soldiers and captured two others, provoking Israel’s biggest military campaign against Lebanon in 24 years.
In Washington, Henry Crumpton, the State Department’s counterterrorism coor-dinator, said Israel was faced with “stalwart defenses”and “it is going to be hard for Israel to get it done.”
He told reporters that Hezbollah can cover about one-third of Israel’s territory with long-range missiles. “I don’t think the international community understands this,” the former CIA official said.
“I don’t think it is going to end in a few days,” Crumpton said of the Israeli offensive in Lebanon.
Syria’s delivery of missiles to Hezbollah has “completely stopped,” he said, attributing the suspension to delivery problems in a combat environment rather than any change of heart.
Rice took a motorcade to Ramallah for her meeting with Abbas. About 45 minutes before Rice’s arrival, police scuffled with hundreds of Palestinians in an anti-U.S.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 26, 2006. Read the original PDF.