Carmen

The Los Angeles City Ethics Commission voted Thursday to hike campaign contribution limits for candidates in the upcoming municipal election, despite warnings that the panel is tipping the scales in favor of well-connected incumbents. On a 3-1 vote, the commission allowed candidates for City Council to accept $700 per donor per election cycle, up from the current $500 limit. Candidates for citywide offices — mayor, city attorney and city controller — will see the maximum increased from $1,000 to $1,300.

Carmen Pantages Considine, 89, daughter of a theater magnate and former wife of a well-known producer during Hollywood's Golden Age. Considine was born to Alexander Pantages, the legendary vaudeville impresario whose namesake theaters continue to dot the American landscape (the Pantages in Hollywood for one). She married John W. Considine Jr., producer of such Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer successes as "Boys Town," "Johnny Eager," "Broadway Melody of 1936" and several more. In Culver City on Tuesday.

For the first eight years that she was building her company, Carmen Rad didn't pay much attention to events put on by business networking groups. Now Rad, who is president of the CR&A Custom digital printing company, goes to at least one a week. "There is a tremendous advantage to joining, and you can't just join one. You need to join more than one because each organization will have a different added value," said Rad, who is on the board of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Assn.

When Kimberly Mao paid a local doctor last summer a little more than a million dollars for a sprawling ranch in horse country here, folks thought she was just another well-to-do city dweller seeking a rural retreat in the piney woods of East Texas. But weeks after the 47-year-old Hacienda Heights woman purchased the property, bulldozers began cutting a winding course of bumps and berms into the soil, turning the tranquil farm into a raceway for the fast-growing sport of motocross.

The problem with Martin Bernheimer's review of "Carmen" (" 'Carmen' Hits the Pavilion," Jan. 24) was that he was not harsh enough. What a disaster. For $85, I expect a wonderful "Carmen." It's simple, you have a terrific score, so why change the format? And the dancing, Oi ! ELAINE STONE Marina del Rey

No, Gabriel Ruelas kept telling himself, it was all wrong. Jimmy Garcia wasn't supposed to die. He, Ruelas, was the one who was supposed to die young. That's the way it had always been in the dreams. Night after night they would come to him in his restless sleep. The circumstances were different, but the result was always the same. Gabe Ruelas dead before his time. Although he has been a boxer since age 12, he never died in the ring in the dreams. Often it would be in a car accident.

thetford, vt. -- This year, Carmen Tarleton wasn't there to help her two daughters shop for school clothes. Nor did she see them off on their first day of school. That late-summer ritual was left to close friends and relatives: Tarleton is fighting to recover from what one doctor calls "the most horrific injury a human being could suffer." Three months ago, Tarleton was burned over 80% of her body when she was doused with lye, allegedly by her estranged husband.