Fear

California already had what were arguably the nation's toughest sex offender laws in 2006 when voters, spurred on nightly by fear-mongering television hosts such as Nancy Grace and Bill O'Reilly, adopted this state's version of Jessica's Law . Proposition 83 required all convicted sex felons, whether violent or not, whether still on parole or not, and whether at high or low risk of reoffending, to wear electronic monitoring devices for the rest...

Nicolas Cendoya, the 19-year-old college student rescued last week after getting lost while hiking with a friend in the Trabuco Canyon area of Orange County, on Sunday offered his first detailed public account of the ordeal that nearly cost the two their lives. Cendoya said he and Kyndall Jack, 18, realized they were in trouble as night began falling during a lengthy and poorly planned Easter Sunday hike in the Santa Ana Mountains. By then their water bottle was nearly empty, and he was shirtless and drenched in sweat from an arduous climb.

NEW YORK - The government's disappointing jobs report disheartened investors about the pace of the global economic recovery, and short-circuited a rally that pushed stocks up more than 10% during the first three months of the year. Investors fled stocks Friday after the Labor Department reported that the U.S. added a mere 88,000 jobs in March. That number was well below the 190,000 jobs that analysts were expecting, and renewed fears that the labor market might be stalling. Wall Street had been growing more upbeat in recent weeks that the economy was steadily improving and sent major stock market indexes to record highs.

KAUFMAN, Texas -- The state's governor denounced what he called "attacks on the rule of law," and vowed justice. Kaufman County's new district attorney mourned her fatherlike predecessor, fatally shot along with his wife in their home two months after another colleague was killed. And as other officials gathered to speak to reporters inside the Kaufman County courthouse Thursday -- where Assistant Dist. Atty. Mark Hasse was gunned down by an unknown assailant in the parking lot on Jan. 31 -- authorities begged the public for tips, still without a formal a suspect in either Hasse's or Mike and Cynthia McLelland's slayings.

Things have not been looking good for travel guides lately. In mid March, BBC Worldwide announced that it would sell the Lonely Planet travel guide series for the low, low price of $77.8 million -- less than half of what it paid for the property in 2007, at a loss of more than $120 million. A week later, news came that Google, which owned rival travel guide Frommer's, would cease its print publication. But take heart, fans of the well-thumbed guidebook, the pocket-sized print paperback pointing the way to landmarks and restaurants, markets and train stations, beaches and ice bars.

SEOUL - Escalating the stakes of a standoff with Washington and its allies, North Korea is signaling that it will abandon two decades of negotiations to constrain its nuclear program and will close the door on any deal over its atomic weapons and production facilities. The regime said Tuesday that it would expand all parts of its nuclear arsenal, including reactivating a plutonium-producing reactor complex at Yongbyon shut in 2007 as part of a disarmament agreement. Although restarting the Soviet-era facilities could take more than six months, the announcement sparked concern among world leaders that a miscalculation could lead to military confrontation.

Alaska state troopers were attempting Monday to determine the cause of a rescue helicopter crash over the weekend in the mountainous region near Talkeetna in which all three aboard are feared dead. Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said the crash occurred Saturday night after the troopers helicopter had picked up a stranded snowmobiler near Larson Lake, seven miles east of the town that is one of the main centers for climbers attempting to scale Mt. McKinley. A second helicopter spotted the wreckage Sunday morning, but it was not yet known what caused the crash.

When a Texas prosecutor was gunned down in the courthouse parking lot last January, Kaufman County Dist. Atty. Mike McLelland stood in front of reporters and vowed to carry on. "We'll still make the walk, and we'll still show up," McLelland said after one of his assistant district attorneys, Mark Hasse, was shot to death by an unidentified assailant Jan. 31. "And we'll still send bad guys out of Kaufman County every chance we get. We're not stopping....

ATHENS - Despite widespread fear of panic and protests, Cyprus' cash-starved banks reopened Thursday, allowing customers to access their accounts under stiff regulations mandated by a harsh bailout plan that has raised questions about Europe's latest approach to financial-crisis management. Officials' anxiety proved unfounded, however, as not a single incident was reported throughout the day. Cypriots had been locked out of their accounts for nearly two weeks as the conservative-led government negotiated a controversial bailout scheme that secured a $20.5-billion international lifeline for the tiny Mediterranean island in exchange for a surprise swoop on bank accounts to cover for about a third of the rescue package.

My friend Mark says he is against gay marriage - but it's the marriage part, not the gay part he finds objectionable. Mark is a confirmed bachelor who marvels that anyone would want to get married. Still, he says, if gays and lesbians are crazy enough to want to tie the knot, they have as much right to do it as anyone else. Plenty of same-sex couples are, indeed, crazy enough to desire marriage. This is a recent revelation for quite a few Americans, and I include myself in that number.