Evan Collins

U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday charged a former chief financial officer at McAfee.com Corp. with trying to defraud shareholders by exercising stock options in 2000, when he knew the financial statements were wrong. Evan Collins, 42, exercised 30,000 shares of Network Associates Inc., which had spun off McAfee and later repurchased the company, and sold them for a profit of about $250,000, the Justice Department charged in San Francisco federal court.

U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday charged a former chief financial officer at McAfee.com Corp. with trying to defraud shareholders by exercising stock options in 2000, when he knew the financial statements were wrong. Evan Collins, 42, exercised 30,000 shares of Network Associates Inc., which had spun off McAfee and later repurchased the company, and sold them for a profit of about $250,000, the Justice Department charged in San Francisco federal court.

WINTER HOURS: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems; By Mary Oliver; (Houghton Mifflin: 110 pp., $22) Like Wendell Berry (who also writes poems filled with observations of the natural world and prose about sustainable living and community), Mary Oliver lives with such a profound sense of responsibility--"to live thoughtfully and intelligently"--that it makes a reader wonder how her poems manage to get off the ground and soar with such lightheartedness.

WINTER HOURS: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems; By Mary Oliver; (Houghton Mifflin: 110 pp., $22) Like Wendell Berry (who also writes poems filled with observations of the natural world and prose about sustainable living and community), Mary Oliver lives with such a profound sense of responsibility--"to live thoughtfully and intelligently"--that it makes a reader wonder how her poems manage to get off the ground and soar with such lightheartedness.

In a holiday season in which theatrical offerings include such big-budget productions as South Coast Rep's perennial "A Christmas Carol," the Old Globe's new "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" as well as the upcoming Radio City Christmas Spectacular at Universal Amphitheatre, many smaller theaters are presenting alternative interpretations of the Christmas spirit. * Orson Bean commences his portrayal of Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" with a double-take and a drum beat.

Long before Clint Eastwood's wandering gunslinger became a matinee idol, a professed father killer was setting the hearts of Irish country lasses aflutter in John Millington Synge's 1907 comedy, "The Playboy of the Western World."

A few years ago, when a friend offered 15-year-old Evan Collins a compact disc of illegally downloaded music, Collins turned him down flat. "Me and my parents used to download music for free," said Collins, who lives in Bloomington, Minn. "But we decided it was like stealing from musicians. So I don't take stolen music from friends, either." But later that year, when Collins met a girl he liked, he made her a CD filled with songs by Linkin Park, Blue Man Group and Eiffel 65.

California junior running back Tarik Smith rushed for 174 yards and scored four touchdowns as California defeated San Diego State, 42-37, Saturday in a nonconference game. San Diego State (1-1) was playing without standout running back George Jones, who was suspended indefinitely Friday because of possible violation of NCAA rules. Jones rushed for 1,842 yards last season, including 147 in a victory over Cal.

"Let them keep their limbs whole and hack our English," says Sir Hugh Evans (Jim Marilley) in "The Merry Wives of Windsor." Pardon me, but was he talking to the members of the Pacific Theatre Ensemble? In the name of making merry with the "Merry Wives," the ensemble creates mayhem. Some of it works, much of it doesn't. This is another concept Shakespeare and potentially a good one, too: A contemporary "Merry Wives" set in Venice, Calif.

As students returned Monday to the Claremont Colleges from spring break, Topic A was the police allegation that psychology professor Kerri Dunn had vandalized her own car and spray-painted it with ethnic epithets two weeks ago in a hoax. "It's very awkward," Jessica Roundy, a senior at Claremont McKenna College said as she walked to a psychology class taught by Dunn until she was placed on leave.

"Beautifully simple himself," Maxim Gorky wrote of Anton Chekhov, "he loved everything simple." This statement is in the outstanding program notes for the Ensemble Studio Theatre's staging of Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard." Simplicity is director David Kaplan's watchword. But simplicity cuts two ways. Kaplan's set and staging, with the barest props and the faintest suggestion of the short-lived orchard, is aesthetically honest and self-effacing in this era of the designer-as-star.

They arrived with their pup tents, their placards and their shared conviction. Before it ended, close to 100 people would come to the small southwest Missouri town of Mt. Vernon for what they said was a single purpose--to save a life. They came from Atlanta, Chicago, Kenosha, and Miami, from St. Louis and Kansas City, just as they crisscrossed the country for Operation Rescue to "stop the killing" at abortion clinics. But this time was different.