PEOPLE AND EVENTS

* As head of minority outreach programs at the South Coast Air Quality Management District, Lourdes Cordova Martinez has heard many misconceptions about Latinos and pollution. But the one that concerns her most, she said, is that Latinos just don’t care about the environment. “My experience has shown me otherwise,” said Martinez, 30. The Pico Rivera resident, who has organized meetings on how pollution affects minority communities, said: “Latinos know what pollution can do to you, and they are eager to clean the air. They don’t want to leave this legacy for their children.”

* They listened to Lithuanian college students debate independence and wrestled with questions from Muscovites about racial discrimination and homelessness in America. And when the two-week American-Soviet Student Leadership seminar was over, USC senior Luisa Monge, a native of Costa Rica, saw the Soviet Union “as so much more real, rather than being this ‘evil empire.’ ” Monge, 27, one of 50 U.S. college students on the trip, found that Soviet and American students “were so much more alike than we had thought. They worry about the same things we do: careers, families, education, drugs, the environment. And they love rock ‘n’ roll music.”