Bears

Cyberspace is a-twitter with the news that Ryan Seacrest is expected to close escrow this week on Ellen Degeneres' Beverly Hills compound, but there's been nary a peep about where she and spouse Portia de Rossi have decamped. Look no further than the Hal Levitt-designed midcentury in Beverly Hills that changed hands in April, according to area real estate agents familiar with that deal. The 8,500-square-foot house, built in 1958, features walls of glass, soaring ceilings, multiple fireplaces, a library, a black-and-stainless-steel kitchen, a sunken living room, four bedrooms and six bathrooms.

A bleary-eyed Chui Hom tripped down her apartment stairs at 8 a.m. sharp and started her car. She didn't get far. The vehicle inched across Riverside Terrace, a narrow one-way lane in Echo Park, and stopped on the other side. Hom is part of Los Angeles' Great Street-Sweeping Do-Si-Do. Twice a week, residents of Koreatown, Pico-Union and other neighborhoods with more apartments than parking spaces race to their cars, hoping to move them before parking enforcement officers arrive and ticket them for blocking street sweepers.

Kerry Kennedy and Andrew Cuomo were married Saturday in a ceremony that merged two of America's most powerful political families. They swore mutual commitment to the oppressed--"the people who have disappeared in El Salvador, the children in shelters in New York." The bride, 30, is the daughter of Ethel Kennedy and the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and is executive director of the human rights center in New York City that bears his name. The groom, 32, is New York Gov. Mario M.

Sylvain Georges rode alone for almost 114 of the 116 miles from Palmdale to Big Bear Lake during Stage 6 of the Amgen Tour of California on Friday. Then he had to hold the trophy. For that Georges needed help. The 28-year-old Frenchman on the AG2R La Mondiale team did his lonely journey at the front of the field and for his reward he got not only the fifth stage win of his career but a trophy that was three feet tall, two and a half feet wide and 39 pounds, according to the creator, Kirby Craig of Kirby's Carving's of Big Bear Lake.

A young boy was mauled to death by two polar bears after closing hours Tuesday at the Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn and authorities at first feared that the animals had devoured two other youngsters. But the two other youths were later located by police and were unharmed, according to wire service reports. The two bears were slain by repeated blasts from police shotguns. The dead boy, identified as Juan Perez, 11, of Brooklyn, was partially devoured by the bears.

Regarding the "Jungle Book" item in the News and Briefs column (Jan. 5): In a letter that appeared in the Feb. 1992 issue of Outdoor Photographer, Galen Rowell writes of Alaskan brown bears being hunted in the areas of the Chenik Brown Bear Photography Camp and the nearby McNeil River. These bears are habituated to photographers and "eco-tourists" and their value alive surely exceeds their worth dead. The Alaska Board of Game should wise up. TOM HINKLE West Covina

Donna Munson, 74, considered the black bears that swarmed across her land in southwestern Colorado to be her pets. She fed them dog food and scraps -- poking the food through a metal fence she'd built around her porch -- attracting so many bruins that neighbors sometimes counted as many as 14 on her property at a time. On Friday, one of them killed and ate Munson, slashing her head through the fence and dragging her body underneath it to consume her. "She was dead-set on continuing to feed the bears, and unfortunately, she paid the ultimate price," said Ouray County Sheriff's Investigator Joel Burk, who had to shoot a bear that tried to approach Munson's remains as he interviewed witnesses at the scene.

Nothing beats the gluttonous life offered in Monrovia. It's a magical place where half-eaten slices of pizza and the salty remnants of Thai takeout abound. Here the grass is laden with rotting avocados and pomegranates and aching paws can be soaked in a choice of dozens of swimming pools. It's all enough to citify a country bear. Once a well-kept secret limited to a few adventurous souls, Monrovia seems to have become all the rage with the bears of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Timothy Treadwell, the avowed bear man of the Alaska wilderness, lived poor and little known for most of his 46 years despite a desire for the spotlight of celebrity. He claimed to have led a life of drugs, brawls and booze until, in the late 1980s, he found his way to the grizzlies, most recently in Katmai National Park and Preserve on the Alaska Peninsula about 300 miles southwest of Anchorage. His cause: to save them from hunters and poachers who apparently didn't exist.

Jay Cutler got the last laugh. The Pro Bowl quarterback, who forced a blockbuster trade out of Denver last spring and became the Chicago Bears' first franchise quarterback since Sid Luckman , returned to Invesco Field on Sunday night and led his new team to a 27-17 exhibition win over the Broncos. Cutler disregarded the thousands of hecklers, including Broncos pass rusher Elvis Dumervil , in leading Chicago on three scoring drives, capped by a 12-play, 98-yarder just before halftime that gave the Bears a 17-3 lead.

The Inland Empire's version of "Carmageddon" begins Friday night when Caltrans shuts down sections of northbound Interstate 215 in San Bernardino as part of an ongoing $723-million freeway-widening project. The "Big Shift," as transportation officials are calling it, is necessary to reconfigure traffic lanes during construction. The closure begins at 11 p.m. Friday and is scheduled to end at 6 a.m. Monday. It will occur in stages between 2nd Street and Highland Avenue. The southbound lanes will be open.

Keith Miller got a beast of a wake-up call Thursday morning. The 71-year-old had just stepped outside his Altadena home to get the newspaper when he saw "this huge bear, looking like a Volkswagen, staring at me," Miller said. "It ran one way and I ran the other. " Before Miller made it back inside, he turned to see where the bear - which had been snacking on leftover birthday cake tossed in a garbage can - was headed. That's when he saw two cubs scamper up an oak tree in his frontyard.

No. 19 Chicago Bears: DE Shea McClellin, Boise State - - McClellin is a farm boy from Marsing, Idaho, who has been taking care of at-risk animals since he was a child, including nursing baby skunks back to health. He's a talented and relentless football player, too, collecting a combined 16 1/2 sacks over the past two seasons. He ran a 4.63 in the 40 at the combine, second-best among defensive linemen. Comment: McClellin isn't huge, but he's relentless and would be a solid bookend to Julius Peppers.

A proposed California Senate bill to outlaw the use of dogs to hunt bears and bobcats in the state gets a hearing Tuesday before the Natural Resources and Water Committee and the dozens of supporters and opponents expected to show. The hunting of bears and bobcats (not mountain lions) is legal but highly regulated in California. There are quotas, seasons and various limitations, such as a ban on killing cubs or mother bears with cubs in tow. The state does allow hunters to deploy dogs, often outfitted with radio telemetry devices on their collars, to track bears or bobcats.

SEATTLE -- Just when they thought Ted Nugent didn't have any more arrows to unleash, it turns out he did: specifically, an arrow aimed at a bear during a hunting trip in southeastern Alaska that has now landed the rocker-turned-outdoorsman in federal court. In a plea agreement filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, Nugent will plead guilty to one count of transporting an illegally hunted bear - an offense that could result in a $10,000 fine. Nugent, 63, was on Alaska's Sukkwan Island in May 2009 filming an episode of his Outdoor Channel television show, “Ted Nugent Spirit of the Wild,” which is described on his website as the “ultimate hands-on conservation lifestyle television show.” According to court documents, he was bow hunting near a bait station designed to attract black bears when he fired an arrow that wounded a bear, which then ran off. Nugent “failed to locate and harvest the wounded black bear,” the plea agreement said, and then four days later, he shot and killed another black bear at one of the registered bait sites and then transported it off the island.

Polar bears tend to be camera shy, which caused problems for the filmmakers of the newWarner Bros./Imax adventure"To the Arctic,"opening Friday. The 40-minute 3-D documentary examines extreme temperature changes in the Arctic, which has led to the permanent ice pack melting quickly and endangering the existence of animals such as polar bears, caribou, seals, walruses and birds that are indigenous to the region. Narrated by Meryl Streep, "To the Arctic" is the latest movie from two-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker Greg MacGillivray ("The Living Sea," "Dolphins")

The stoning and killing of a young black bear in Yosemite National Park by members of a Boy Scout troop raises disturbing questions ("Criminal Probe Targets Scouts in Bear's Death,"Aug. 17). The Humane Society urges law enforcement authorities to take appropriate action if the stoning is determined to be an act of cruelty rather than self-defense. There can be no questions, however, about the motives of other people who are killing bears in California. Starting in late August and running through December, trophy hunters will kill more than 1,500 bears for the animals' heads and hides.

In only a few short weeks, the community of Big Bear, overcome by Cocomania, has given the public an education unsurpassed in local history (Part A, March 27). It has taught us that misguided passion (not to be confused with compassion) has united residents and politicians alike, openly disregarding state laws and demeaning and threatening those who enforce them. It has maximized tourism through the sales of T-shirts and beverages topped with gummy bears and littered mountain roads with distracting signs.

SEATTLE -- Polar bears are skating on thin ice in Alaska these days: Warming temperatures have resulted in dramatic shrinkage of sea ice, leaving the bears with fewer ice floes on which to rest and hunt seals. But at least for the moment, the Endangered Species Act won't be used to control the greenhouse gas emissions that conservationists say are contributing to climate change and posing one of the biggest threats to the bears' survival. The Obama administration on Tuesday released a proposed rule that -- like an earlier version put forward under President  George W. Bush -- exempts operations outside the bears' normal territory from restrictions on activities.

ST. LOUIS -- Once he's elected president, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Friday, he'll work to extend America's 2nd Amendment right to bear arms to the entire world. In a speech to the National Rifle Assn. 's annual convention in St. Louis, Gingrich glossed over the fact that he has effectively suspended his campaign for president and spoke boldly about what he intends to do in the White House. He said he will begin with an investigation into the “Fast and Furious” program, a failed effort by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to monitor gun sales along the Mexican border.