Dwarfs

Pancho Real was at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church with his wife and daughter one Sunday in October 2006 when his cellphone rang. He was summoned to a park near his home on Drew Street, a drug and gang haven in Northeast Los Angeles, to kill a man he didn't know. The Mexican Mafia wanted a paroled Avenues gang member named Frank "Kiko" Cordova dead. Real left church with his family and called another gang member, Carlos Renteria. At the park that afternoon, they figured out who Cordova was but saw he was among children.

Snooping abroad for clues to illicit plots is one of the CIA's primary missions, but the agency disclosed Friday that it had discovered a criminal operation embarrassingly close to home. Joseph P. Romello, 41, an upper-management CIA veteran of 12 years, pleaded guilty Friday to charges that he conspired to defraud the agency and the U.S. government of about $1.2 million, the Justice Department and the CIA announced. Acting on an anonymous tip to CIA Inspector General Frederick P.

Individual stars can be seen in this image of the dwarf galaxy NGC 2366 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope operated by NASA and the European Space Agency. The galaxy is about 10 million light-years away in the constellation Camelopardalis (the Giraffe) but is too dim to be seen with the naked eye. The bright blue object in the upper right corner is a nebula, a cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other gases that has its own ID number, NGC 2363, but that is part of the dwarf galaxy.

French and Canadian researchers have discovered the coldest brown dwarf star ever observed, a ball of gas about 15 to 30 times the size of Jupiter and with a temperature of about 660 degrees Fahrenheit. Located about 40 light-years from Earth, the star, called CFBDS J005910.83-011401.3, is an isolated object, meaning it doesn't orbit another star. Two classes of brown dwarfs are known: those with temperatures from 2,200 degrees to 3,600 degrees and those with temperatures below 2,200 degrees.

Mayor Lee P. Brown suspended the city's affirmative action director for three days without pay for referring to a city councilman who is a dwarf as a "midget." Brown ordered Lenoria Walker to apologize to Councilman Joe Roach and set up a sensitivity training program for city employees. He refused to ask for her resignation. Roach opposes a contracting program overseen by Walker and backs an amended plan to include people with disabilities--a policy that would affect dwarfs, among others.

Fortunately for scientists, the universe is a delightfully complex place. Every once in awhile, an explanation arises that seems to explain rather neatly some facet of the universe. If the explanation were really adequate then that facet would no longer be of much interest to the scientists. However, in almost every case something arises that shows the explanation to be wrong, or, at best, incomplete. Joyfully, scientists then get back to work.

President Clinton's friends showered him with gifts last year, including a suit, a sofa, golf clubs and cuff links, but his enemies cost him far more in legal bills stemming from the impeachment scandal. According to financial disclosure forms released by the White House on Monday, the president got a $2,500 suit, a $1,088 sofa, a $320 Harley Davidson leather jacket as well as ties, sweaters, cashmere and crystal as gifts last year. But his biggest present was $2.

While politicians and the media continue to clamor for reductions in the federal deficit, private indebtedness in the United States has quietly grown to alarming and potentially threatening proportions. It's time we paid attention to the private sector's balance sheets as well as the public's. It is most useful to categorize the private-sector books into three principal groups: corporate, household and farm.

Who did kill JonBenet Ramsey? Are her rich parents still under that "umbrella of suspicion"? What about Gary Condit? Who's he dating these days? If it was essential for the public to know then, why is it not essential today? Why are inquiring media minds--from whom we take so many of our cues--no longer inquiring? And Elian Gonzalez, so tender, so pure, so vulnerable, so worthy of living the rest of his life saluting the flag on U.S. soil.

Snowzilla the snowman is back -- bigger than ever. The original Snowzilla towered 16 feet over Billy Powers' yard in his Anchorage neighborhood last winter. Now with snow piling up again, Powers is resurrecting the giant figure, supersized. This time he expects it to tower at least 25 feet, top hat and all. "A snowman's good for everybody," Powers said.