Botched

Emil Matasareanu, the bank robber shot by police in a wild gun battle in North Hollywood and given no medical care, was hit 29 times and bled to death from two bullet wounds to his thigh, the Los Angeles County coroner's office revealed Thursday. His partner, Larry Eugene Phillips Jr.

Had the psychics been right, 1997 would have gone down in history as the year rocker Mick Jagger became a member of Parliament and former television anchorman Walter Cronkite a critically acclaimed lounge singer. O.J. Simpson would be a big star on French television as the host of a "whodunit" show, and actor John Travolta a hero for landing a commercial jetliner when its crew came down with food poisoning.

On the first of September, the goal was the Super Bowl, but the Rams couldn't get interested. On the first of October, the goal was to regroup and at least make the 49ers breathe heavily, but the Rams couldn't get interested. On the first of November, the goal was to salvage the season by out-worming the rest of the NFC slugs to the third and final wild-card berth, but the Rams couldn't get interested.

State medical officials have accused a Burbank eye doctor of botching cataract surgery on one elderly patient who later went blind and of giving an excessive number of laser "shots" to another who was left with almost no vision in the treated eye. According to state records, Dr. Akim F. Czmus has been on probation since 1987 for falsely telling a Glendale hospital where he was seeking a job that he was certified by the American Board of Ophthalmology.

A former state fire captain was convicted Friday in the 1984 slaying of a restaurant manager stabbed during a botched late-night robbery at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Torrance. William Charles Marshall, now 46, had worked at the eatery as an assistant manager but was accused of stealing from the restaurant safe and was fired four days before the killing. During a monthlong trial, prosecutors argued that Marshall returned after the restaurant closed on Oct.

Moments after Jay Leno ripped President Bush in his monologue one night, the "Tonight Show" host interviewed "the president," "via satellite" from "Kyoto, Japan." A grinning president, looking not quite himself, appeared, greeting Leno in botched Japanese. Leno asked what he thinks of the Kyoto Accord. "Kyoto Accord, Kias, Hondas -- Jay, all those little foreign cars, same thing," said the commander-in-chief, his shoulders doing a bumpkin-like bounce as he heh-heh-hehs.

Fans clamored to get Marty McSorley's autograph last week. And, no, he wasn't using a crooked pen. The line at Staples Center was so long, you would have expected overpriced beer to be available at the end of it. Clearly, with the Kings again in the Stanley Cup Final, all is forgiven and forgotten. "It will never be forgotten," Kings fan Chuck Parido said, smiling. OK, but all is forgiven. "If we continue to have success this year, it will be forgiven more," Parido said.

ATLANTA - The owner of Grand Ole Opry, the renowned temple of American country music, sued the federal government Monday, alleging that the great Nashville flood of 2010 - which caused more than $250 million in damage to the Opry and related buildings - was the result of negligence on the part of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Weather Service. The spring 2010 flood of the Cumberland River resulted in 11 deaths in Nashville, affected 2,773 businesses and left an estimated $2 billion in private property damages, according to city government figures.

The 12 people assembled around the conference table unanimously agreed someone should pay for what happened to Todd O'Malley. The 5-year-old was gravely injured in a botched delivery, and his parents were suing. The lawsuit said the boy's cerebral palsy was caused by a lack of oxygen during birth. Hospital nurses ignored warning signs during his mother's labor, the suit said, despite knowing hers was a high-risk pregnancy. Twelve hours into labor, her uterus ruptured.

Washing that gray right out of your hair (to borrow from the famous song) is no longer a mandatory part of getting older. So asserts a growing cadre of American women who are embracing their naturally silver hair tones. Letting tresses go gray (or white or salt-and-pepper) may not be the Hollywood way, but it's become a hot topic for real women all over the country. Seeds of a colossal shift in thinking — away from the arcane preconception that going gray means "letting yourself go" — have already taken root.