Dead People

How is it that the most interesting people I read about anymore are in the obituaries? FRANK L. BURKE Los Angeles

A new study by the Pew Center on the States concludes that 24 million voter registrations in the United States - about 1 in 8 - are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate. More than 1.8 million dead people are listed as active voters, and 2.75 million voters have active registrations in more than one state. At first blush, these findings might seem to shore up those - mostly in the Republican Party - who argue that voting fraud is endemic and must be combated by stronger enforcement measures, such as a requirement that voters carry photo IDs. But the authors of the study don't draw that conclusion, and reforms to address inaccurate records need not impose burdensome identification requirements that disproportionately disadvantage minorities and the poor.

Placard protocol Re "Dead still alive on DMV disabled list," July 20 I read with interest the article about the misuse and misunderstanding by many of the disabled placards because I encountered this dilemma when my mother passed away several years ago. Her updated placard came in the mail, with a letter clearly stating that if the recipient had died, the placard was to be returned along with a note explaining that the person...

In "The Fades," which premieres Saturday on BBC America, Paul (Iain De Caestecker) and Mac (Daniel Kaluuya) are best friends; they would have to be, having no other ones. Seventeen going on 14, they share a world in which all useful metaphors, if little practical knowledge, are available in the works of Spielberg, Lucas and Tolkien. We've met them before, in many places: Mac is the Virgin Who Can't Stop Talking About Sex; Paul is the Guy Who Would Be Hunky If He'd Only Stand Up Straight.

It's spooky time again. Plastic pumpkins with their horrific smiles are lurking around every corner. And soon little princesses and Harry Potters will be swarming the streets in search of sweet prey. So let us call upon the dead on the Web and search for the uncalm spirits who wander the Internet seeking to become the ghost in your machine. Why just ghosts? Aren't there plenty of scary things on the Net? Yes, we've seen Barney's home page.

It doesn't exactly rank with the plot of "Night of the Living Dead," but police said Wednesday that dozens of the deceased may have been on illegal shopping and check-cashing sprees in the San Fernando Valley. Or at least the names of the dead were being used on the sprees--until two bounty hunters inadvertently shut down a credit fraud ring. Three men were arrested Monday in Reseda after the bounty hunters stumbled onto an "identification mill" while tracking one of the men.

Locked inside his home in this holy town, Hassan Dalou finds it hard to believe that for two weeks, the Israeli army has controlled the garbage-choked streets outside his front door and enforced a curfew so strict that it has created food shortages. Just down the road from the home where he and his family have lived for generations, a grim standoff between the Israeli army and Palestinian gunmen barricaded inside the Church of the Nativity continues, holding Bethlehem hostage.

Lester and Dorothy Schafer took the high-tech route in planning their funeral. They digitalized themselves for a "scrapbook" to be scanned by survivors at the cemetery where they plan to be buried. "I think funerals are bad. They are sad," Dorothy Schafer says. "With this, they will remember us in a different way."

In "The Fades," which premieres Saturday on BBC America, Paul (Iain De Caestecker) and Mac (Daniel Kaluuya) are best friends; they would have to be, having no other ones. Seventeen going on 14, they share a world in which all useful metaphors, if little practical knowledge, are available in the works of Spielberg, Lucas and Tolkien. We've met them before, in many places: Mac is the Virgin Who Can't Stop Talking About Sex; Paul is the Guy Who Would Be Hunky If He'd Only Stand Up Straight.

It may not sound like it, but "In Heaven, Underground: The Weissensee Jewish Cemetery" is a playful, poetic and all-around charming documentary, an off-center look at an unusual institution. That would be Berlin's Weissensee, a 130-year-old veritable necropolis whose 115,000 graves make it the largest such establishment still in use in Europe. Yes, one of its administrators admits, there are a lot of dead people around, "but they don't hurt you. It's very peaceful. " It's also quite beautiful, a fully mature 100-acre forest in what was once East Berlin, and director Britta Wauer, working with cinematographer Kasper Kopke, has included numerous moments of random, unexpected beauty.

It may not sound like it, but "In Heaven, Underground: The Weissensee Jewish Cemetery" is a playful, poetic and all-around charming documentary, an off-center look at an unusual institution. That would be Berlin's Weissensee, a 130-year-old veritable necropolis whose 115,000 graves make it the largest such establishment still in use in Europe. Yes, one of its administrators admits, there are a lot of dead people around, "but they don't hurt you. It's very peaceful. " It's also quite beautiful, a fully mature 100-acre forest in what was once East Berlin, and director Britta Wauer, working with cinematographer Kasper Kopke, has included numerous moments of random, unexpected beauty.

Placard protocol Re "Dead still alive on DMV disabled list," July 20 I read with interest the article about the misuse and misunderstanding by many of the disabled placards because I encountered this dilemma when my mother passed away several years ago. Her updated placard came in the mail, with a letter clearly stating that if the recipient had died, the placard was to be returned along with a note explaining that the person...

Syrian security officers opened fire on protesters Friday, leaving as many as 20 dead, as people poured into the streets across the nation in defiance of President Bashar Assad and his promise of limited reform, according to opposition activists. Meanwhile, the European Union slapped fresh sanctions on Syria and its principal regional ally, Iran, which has been accused of collaborating in the crackdown against protesters. Friday's anti-government marches, some tied to Friday prayers, reportedly were some of the largest in the 3-month-old protest movement that has convulsed the strategically situated Arab nation.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas is blasting a campaign mailer sent out by an independent political action committee that listed more than a dozen dead community and religious leaders as endorsing Councilman Bernard C. Parks' reelection campaign. Ridley-Thomas, who ran against Parks for the Board of Supervisors in 2008 and has endorsed his challenger Forescee Hogan-Rowles in Tuesday's council race, said Friday that he was appalled by the literature sent to 8th Council District voters by the Los Angeles Jobs PAC, which is sponsored by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

The father of a young woman who is fighting the foreclosure of her Diamond Bar home pleaded guilty in February to a federal tax fraud charge, court records show. The daughter, Zeenat Ali, said her father, Ather Ali, has been estranged from the family for three years, having moved out of the home before his indictment in December 2008. Zeenat Ali was profiled in a Los Angeles Times story Thursday focusing on her seven months of court battles to save the family home, including her lawsuit alleging wrongdoing by Deutsche Bank, Downey Savings and Arvest Bank subsidiary Central Mortgage Co. The banks wouldn't comment.

The first time I saw a dead body I was groping around in the dark in 125 feet of water looking for a drowning victim. A few members of my diving club had volunteered to help the grieving family find her: Collectively, we had enough brashness coupled with the insouciance of ignorance to go looking for this poor soul after the sheriff's divers said it was too dangerous at that depth. That's testosterone at work for you. We fanned out across the muddy bottom, holding onto a guide rope.

That kid from "The Sixth Sense" sees dead people. John Edward, the host of "Crossing Over," purports to talk to dead people. Sonya Fitzpatrick outdoes both as host of Animal Planet's "The Pet Psychic," which premiered June 3. Fitzpatrick chats telepathically with animals dead or alive--or so she would have us believe.

REAL ESTATE means a lot in America -- ask the Indians. Or ask some of the first white Californians to be displaced by gentrification. They can't answer, being dead. In 1900, San Francisco outlawed burials within city boundaries. Too much money could be made buying and selling land to waste it on the departed. The dead would have to find somewhere else to forever lay their heads.

They are living with the dead. More than two weeks after Tropical Cyclone Nargis wiped away all but one of this village's houses, decomposing corpses still lie on muddy pathways, or are trapped in eddies along the shore of the broad Pyamaia River nearby. The stench overpowers every corner of U Thon Tun's badly damaged home, where 25 survivors have taken refuge beneath a leaky roof patched with tarp. The wind and the rain, which pours down on them every day, cannot erase the sickly smell.