Betrayal

There she was, the recently widowed Mary Ellen Samuels, lying on her back in a hotel bed in Cancun, wearing only a smile and about $20,000--cold cash. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the Polaroid snapshot now officially known as People's Exhibit 2 promises to be a star prosecution witness for Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Maurizi, who is alleging that Samuels killed her husband--and then the hit man she hired to do the job--for financial gain.

CULIACAN, Mexico - The cartel henchman nicknamed "El Loco" was reported behind the latest atrocity in Mexico's ever-more-depraved drug war: mutilating 49 people and piling their bodies - heads, hands and feet missing - by the side of a road leading to the U.S. border. Authorities say he acted this month on orders from the top commanders of the brutal Zeta paramilitary force, who wanted to send a message to the long-dominant Sinaloa cartel and its allies, in a new phase of a conflict that has claimed more than 50,000 lives in less than six years.

On the West Side of San Bernardino, most everyone knew Johnny and Gilbert Agudo. They'd grown up in the tight-knit barrio. Handsome and charismatic, they were the presidents of two cliques of the West Side Verdugo street gang: Johnny, 31, of 7th Street Locos and Gilbert, 27, of the Little Counts. United, they led their gangs in feuds with rivals from other parts of town. But then things took an unexpected turn.

Night after night, in households from Puebla to Pico Rivera, tens of millions of loyal viewers tune in to their Spanish-language telenovelas , gasping at the seductions and betrayals on tear-jerkers like "Abismo de Pasión" ("Abyss Of Passion"). Now network executives, desperate to capitalize on the addictive powers of the prime-time soap operas, are copying the formula with English-language versions, starring marquee names. In some cases, they're even borrowing the five-nights-a-week format.

Jennifer Lawrence slides into a booth at the casually elegant Culina restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel. She's on a lunch break from the daylong grind of promoting the international release of "Silver Linings Playbook," but she's not eating because she just shared a "brick" of homemade lasagna that a journalist gave her during her last interview. Lawrence does accept the focaccia bread and olive oil a waiter offers and politely declines another offering once she's finished. "If I'm going to wear this skirt," Lawrence says, laughing, pointing to the mid-length white number she's sporting, "I can't fit another thing into my gut. " When the waiter touts the lightness of the bread, Lawrence interjects.

It's the last show of the Beach Boys' 50th anniversary tour, at the tail end of our triumphant stand in London, first at Royal Albert Hall and then Wembley Arena, and we're in the final moments of "Fun, Fun, Fun…" Looking at the beaming faces, I'm filled with an enormous sense of pride for my bandmates and our fans. We didn't just show up for this tour like some museum act. We sang well. We played well. We moved people and we touched a lot of hearts. And it was beautiful. That's not easy for any band, let alone one with our history.

"Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948" Madeleine Albright Harper: 480 pp., $29.99 Madeleine Albright is a formidable figure. She was a member of the National Security Council and the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. When she became secretary of State in 1997, she was the first woman to hold the position. Her manner is direct, with a frankness uncommon for her level of statecraft. Nowadays she teaches at Georgetown, has a school of international studies named for her at her alma mater, Wellesley College, and writes the occasional book.

We may look these days at Mexico as a place of peril, what with drug trafficking, kidnapping and wanton murder. But we ignore Mexico as an arts center at our own peril. When it comes to classical music, we might not recognize our own music had we not once had inspiration and help from south of the border. Do we need now to be reminded that Mexico City has been an opera center a lot longer than Southern California has been - and that it still is one? We do. Fortunately, Long Beach Opera has done the reminding with its most gratifyingly ambitious undertaking in quite a while: what it is calling the U.S. premiere of what it is calling Gabriella Ortiz's "Camelia la Tejana: Only the Truth.

"It took me nearly a decade to stop believing in the myth of the beneficent doctor." These sobering words in the opening section of this important work by Peter Rutter MD, a psychiatrist in private practice in San Francisco, a faculty member of the C. G. Jung Institute, and an associate clinical professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California Medical School, bring to our attention an issue that many would prefer to avoid.