Defense

It wouldn't be spring practice without a little on-the-job training. UCLA's Taylor Lagace and Nate Iese have been moved to new positions. Lagace came to UCLA as a safety but has been shifted to linebacker. Iese arrived as a linebacker and is now a defensive end. "You recruit these kids when they are 16, 17 years old and they change a little bit," UCLA Coach Jim Mora said. "Some of these guys, they are such great athletes we start thinking, 'We have to get this guy on the field.'" At 6 feet, 201 pounds, Lagace is small for a linebacker, but UCLA expects he will literally and figuratively grow into the position.

Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen once compared his corporate strategy to an episode of "Seinfeld. " “You initially didn't know exactly where things were going, but it seemed to all come together in the end,” he said. “This is what is happening at Dish.” For Ergen, that means turning a satellite broadcaster into a telecommunications giant. Concerned about slow growth in the pay-TV business, Ergen has made a $25.5-billion unsolicited bid for Sprint Nextel. A merger would give Dish the ability to package Internet and phone service with its satellite offerings.

SHERMAN, Texas - Sgt. John Russell designed his new house here so there would be room for everyone: for him and his wife, Mandy, his wife's parents and his own. There was a doggie door for Louie and Queenie - "the little ones," he called them in his emails. It was where he wanted to spend the rest of his life when he got home from Iraq, he'd say as he shared photos of the latest construction. After a dispute with a co-worker, Russell fretted that he'd get demoted and would not be able to make the payments.

After losing two infielders to injury in the span of three days, the Angels called up Luis Jimenez from triple-A Salt Lake on Friday and immediately inserted him into the lineup. "I didn't expect that right away. But I came prepared," said Jimenez, who raced to his locker to text his aunt after learning he would be starting at third base. "I'm in the lineup. Put the game on," Jimenez, who was making his big-league debut, told his aunt. And provided she made it to the TV in time, she saw her nephew ground sharply to third in his first big-league at-bat in the third inning.

Marqise Lee and Nelson Agholor have established themselves as USC's top receivers. They also might be the Trojans' best cornerbacks, Coach Lane Kiffin said Thursday. Despite injuries and USC's struggles at the position this spring, Kiffin deemed it unlikely that Lee and Agholor would play on defense in the coming season. "I've thought about it, maybe," Kiffin said. "Hopefully, we won't be in that situation with numbers so that we'd have to do that. Given three-year starter Nickell Robey's early departure for the NFL draft and the position group's propensity to give up big plays this spring, Kiffin has described the cornerback spot as "a huge concern.

Dietrich Riley wore a Cheshire cat-like grin as he sat on a bench outside Morgan Center at UCLA. His expression was the polar opposite from the hangdog look he carried around spring football practice a year ago. Riley has dealt with the unknown. He had been rushed to a hospital after a head-first collision with California running back Isi Sofele during a 2011 game. To play football again, he needed neck surgery. And there were no guarantees. The kind of direct, point-A-to-point-B path that Riley employed on the field as a hard-hitting safety didn't help him off the field.

A prosecutor urged jurors Monday to find a man who pretended to be a member of the Rockefeller family guilty of murder, saying he was a "master manipulator" who buried the victim's body in a San Marino backyard nearly three decades ago. Deputy Dist. Atty. Habib Balian told the jury in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom that strong circumstantial evidence pointed to Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter's guilt, noting that the German native was staying in a guest house on the property where John and Linda Sohus were living when the couple disappeared in 1985.

Japan readied its missile defense systems Tuesday against a possible North Korean weapons test, saying it would shoot down any missiles or debris if Japanese territory was threatened. Patriot anti-missile batteries were deployed on the grounds of the Defense Ministry in Tokyo and at military installations in and around the capital, according to Japanese news reports. The PAC-3 batteries will also be based on the island of Okinawa, which hosts the bulk of U.S. troops in Japan, sooner than planned in response to North Korea's threats, the Asahi Shimbun reported . Deploying the anti-missile system in Tokyo is “part of our moves to establish a system to protect the lives of our citizens and ensure their safety,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a news conference, according to Jiji Press . Suga earlier said that the missiles will be used solely to protect Japan, according to the Japan Times . Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has pushed for Japan to reinterpret its constitution, which bans waging war, to allow Japan to intercept missiles fired at United States targets.

A defense attorney for a man accused in the 1985 slaying of his San Marino landlady's grown son called his client a “con” and an “impostor” who hid from authorities because he had committed immigration fraud and other white-collar crimes, not because he was a killer. Attorney Jeffrey A. Denner told the jury Monday in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom that Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter was an intelligent man who defrauded well-educated people from coast to coast, including his Harvard-educated wife and daughter.

He mixed with the well-to-do in the upscale suburb of San Marino, proclaiming himself an English baronet who taught film at USC. He briefly settled in a wealthy Connecticut enclave, convincing locals he was a successful television producer. He talked his way onto Wall Street, persuading one firm to let him run a bond trading desk. But it was his fraudulent claims of being a member of the famous Rockefeller family that led to his most lucrative success - and, ultimately, his downfall.