Chuck

Darlene, Bob, Betty and Chuck--their names remain enshrined in embroidery on old bowling shirts. Little did they suspect that those bowling shirts, with their tacky ads for Al's Diner and the Corner Bar stitched on back like miniature billboards, would someday be treasured as quaint souvenirs from America's happy days. After all, "bowling shirts are not good looking," says Donna Saucedo, who nevertheless owns 20 of them.

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

Brit­ish roots mu­sic band Mum­ford & Sons took the top hon­or for its album "Ba­bel" at the 55th Grammy Awards ce­re­mony Sunday. The night mostly dis­trib­uted hon­ors broadly to an ar­ray of young­er gen­er­a­tion acts in­clud­ing New York in­die trio Fun., Aus­trali­an elec­tron­ic pop artist Gotye, rap­per-R&B sing­er Frank Ocean and Ak­ron, Ohio, rock group the Black Keys. See the complete list of 2013 Grammy winners and nominees below. #story-body-text h2 { font-weight: bold !

After announcing a controversial decision to shut down its Reader Web feed aggregator, Google is once again drawing heat -- this time for changing the way users write emails on Gmail. With the change, users now have to compose their email in a new window that pops up on top of the inbox. Previously, users were switched to a new page to write their email. Google has been experimenting with the pop-up feature since October and says it is faster and simpler than the previous way of writing emails on Gmail.

OAKLAND - It was a quiet evening by this city's standards, and still the police emergency lines were lighting up. As screams rang out behind her, a caller said her neighbor was being beaten. A woman reported that a front door down the street had been bashed in by a possible intruder. Another said a family member with a knife and supply of methamphetamine was threatening to kill herself. By 7:30 p.m. there were 40 calls requiring squad cars on the eastern half of town but no officers available to respond.

In a year that has seen would-be action heroes Jeff Speakman and Brian Bosworth make well-orchestrated attempts to muscle their way into the action-adventure movie arena, Columbia Pictures is clearly betting that Jean-Claude Van Damme could be the next Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal--or even Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Double Impact," the $15-million action film in which Van Damme plays dual roles, opened well Aug. 9 and has grossed $15.

At the time of his famous father's unusually public death, Aaron Stewart was 10 years old, a fifth-grader. "I was in class and I got called into the principal's office," Payne Stewart's only son recalls of that nightmarish moment nearly a decade ago. "I thought I was in trouble." If only it had been so. Instead, he soon learned what millions of television viewers already knew: His father, one of golf's most recognizable figures and winner of three major championships, was gone. It was Oct.

He has a Harley in his garage, LSD in his past and a "liveskunk" he occasionally holds in his lap aboard airplanes. He talks up Jesus at stadiums and on surfboards. And he gets letters threatening his life. Greg Laurie, the man behind all those Harvest Crusade bumper stickers, has carved out an unusual niche among evangelists.

Her picture is on the wall at the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Iowa, but with it are not the usual helmet, gloves and driving suit. Evelyn Pratt's legacy is a red bullhorn. For more than 30 years, the feisty little woman from El Monte has barked orders to sprint car drivers, from Williams Grove Speedway in Pennsylvania to old Ascot Park and most tracks in between where sprint cars have run.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. took over Sunday as the newest and probably last U.S. commander in Afghanistan, charged with ending America's longest war even as insurgents continue to challenge the U.S.-backed Afghan government. Dunford, a four-star Marine officer, arrives as the U.S.-led NATO coalition has closed three-quarters of its 800 bases and as it watches to see whether the Afghan security forces it trained can keep the Taliban insurgency at bay. A ceremony inside the coalition's heavily guarded compound in Kabul marked the end of the 19-month tenure of Gen. John R. Allen, whose command was marred by a rash of deadly "insider" attacks by Afghan forces against their U.S. and NATO trainers and by strained relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.