Hampton

Officials at the Atlanta Air Route Traffic Control Center in Hampton sent three controllers home for not wearing socks to work. "At no time was the control of air traffic affected one bit," Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jack Barker said.

Taylor Townsend has both confidence and charm. The 16-year-old can smile when she talks about some hubbub caused last year at the U.S. Open when it was publicly suggested the teenager might be too chubby. Since the suggestion was made by the United States Tennis Assn., which offers funding and coaching help to top athletes, the criticism carried more, um, weight. But Townsend has gone on her tennis way, which is to hit big ground strokes and use USTA coaches and trainers to keep making her better.

When archaeologists and Navy divers recovered the warship Monitor's steam engine from the Atlantic in 2001, the pioneering Civil War propulsion unit was enshrouded in a thick layer of marine concretion. Sand, mud and corrosion combined with minerals in the deep waters off Cape Hatteras, N.C., to cloak every feature of Swedish American inventor John Ericsson's ingenious machine, and they continued to envelop the 30-ton artifact after nine years of desalination treatment. This month, however, conservators at the Mariners' Museum here and its USS Monitor Center drained the 35,000-gallon solution in which the massive engine was submerged and began removing the 2- to 3-inch-thick layer of concretion with hammers, chisels and other hand tools.

The Angels named Mike Hampton, a former All-Star who went 148-115 with a 4.06 earned run average in 16 big-league seasons, as their pitching coach at double-A Arkansas on Friday, one of a number of baseball operations hires and promotions. Hampton, whose career was derailed by injuries after the left-hander signed an eight-year, $121-million contract with the Colorado Rockies in 2001, retired before the 2011 season. Hampton will be working under new double-A Manager Tim Bogar, who was hired after spending the past four years in the Boston Red Sox organization, including 2012 as the major league bench coach.

Producer and talent manager Steve Alexander and his wife, interior designer Vanessa Alexander , have sold a Malibu estate for $9.454 million. Set on 2.6 acres in the Serra Retreat area, the newly built house combines the feel of a Hamptons barn with modern details in loft-like spaces. Some 6,500 square feet of living space include an office, theater, gym, six bedrooms and six bathrooms. Outdoors is a swimming pool with cabana, a kitchen with a pizza oven and a fire pit. The former Creative Artists Agency agent represented such stars as Heath Ledger, Jeff Bridges and Natalie Portman before joining the Mosaic Media Group several years ago and returning to his origins as a producer.

Until a week ago, Veronica Long was wondering how she was going to explain to her four children that Santa might not make it this year. Her husband, Jonathan, used to make a good living as a music engineer and producer. But when the economy tanked two years ago, work dried up and he was forced to pawn his equipment. For a while, the family rented a room from a friend in Corona. But when the friend was evicted earlier this year, they suddenly were homeless. They are now staying in a room at the Union Rescue Mission on downtown Los Angeles' skid row. Last week, the shelter converted its chapel into a Christmas store where parents could pick out free toys and books for their kids.

Ruth Hampton, 74, a former beauty queen who appeared in 1950s motion pictures, died Thursday in Merriam, Kan., according to her son, Gregory Hampton Palmer. He did not give the cause of death. Born April 25, 1931, Regina Ruth Jane Hampton grew up in New Jersey and became a dancer. She performed with the Philadelphia Civic Ballet and New York's Radio City Music Hall Rockettes. The winner of several beauty pageants, she was crowned Miss New Jersey in 1952.

Re "Homecoming Vibes," June 10, about Lionel Hampton's special concert at Washington Preparatory High School: How does one describe this virtuoso? You don't. You listen, feel and listen some more. Will there be other Lionel Hamptons? I believe and hope so. While the audience watched and listened with indescribable delight, there was dedication pouring out for those performing students. This is the way it was during Hampton's earlier years and this is the way it should be today and can be again in our future.

Norah Lawlor's "In Hollywood East, It's a Wrap" (Sept. 6) shared the name-dropping shallowness of the latest Woody Allen movie. Viewing "The Hamptons" in these terms is like talking about "Hollywood" as an industry, or a small group of self-important celebrities, instead of a real place. That Hamptons, also the subject of a Page 1 story the same day, is actually a string of six or seven towns with a permanent population of probably 100,000, and swells to many times that during the season.

I had a routine physical exam a couple of weeks ago and paid a $40 co-pay. I thought it was strange, so I called my insurance company. They said I should not have had to pay a co-pay for a routine physical exam. I called the doctor's office and they referred me to their billing department, who refused to refund me the co-pay until my insurer reimburses them for the full amount of the physical. This doesn't sound correct to me. They collected a co-pay that they should not have collected.

Re "Boundaries of religious freedom," Opinion, Aug. 15 As long as the Orthodox Jewish community in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., pays for the eruv to be built, why does anyone care about an almost invisible string? What I don't understand, though, is having religious conviction and then manipulating one's environment to make that religion more convenient to practice. If there is a prohibition on carrying keys and pushing strollers during the Sabbath, then don't carry keys or push strollers.

At the end of July, a group of disgruntled residents of Westhampton Beach, N.Y., filed a lawsuit contesting the building of an eruv in their neighborhood. In a dispute made famous by "The Daily Show" mockumentary featuring an " eruv hat," residents have expressed in their lawsuit worries that if an eruv were to be built in Westhampton Beach, it would constitute a "constant and ever-present symbol … that the secular public spaces of the village have been transformed for religious use and identity.

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. - They never got close, and Mitt Romney may not have even seen them, but protesters - some from Occupy Wall Street - took political theater to a new level Sunday outside the beachfront estate of billionaire David H. Koch, where the Republican candidate was raising money. Some of the 200 protesters marched down mile-long Coopers Beach toward the home in a cloud of sand, bearing banners and signs: "Your $50,000 ticket equals my child's education," "end corporate personhood" and "don't forget to tip the help.

WASHINGTON - The Senate Ethics Committee publicly admonished Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) for improperly meeting with a lobbyist and former aide to Sen. John Ensign, the Nevada Republican who resigned from the Senate after having an affair with the aide's wife. The qualified reprimand for violating the ban on meeting with former staff-turned-lobbyists falls short of a censure or criminal violation. But the committee said it was "improper conduct" for Coburn to meet with Douglas Hampton, the former aide who tried to work as a lobbyist after the affair forced him out of Ensign's office.

Hotel brands generally received low scores in a large survey of customer service experiences. Hampton Inn and Marriott were the only two out of 12 major hotel brands to receive "good" ratings in a study by Temkin Group, a customer service research firm. "Many of the hotel brands in our study aren't delivering the level of hospitality that consumers want," said Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group. The research is based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers in January 2012.

"A Dangerous Method," the intellectually stimulating look at the formative days of psychoanalysis, presents Viggo Mortensen in a transformative performance as Sigmund Freud, Michael Fassbender as his restrained protégé and rival, Carl Jung, and a bold Keira Knightley as the patient-turned-practitioner who came between them. But it was almost a Julia Roberts movie. "I first heard of and was intrigued by the story of Sabina Spielrein in a book by Aldo Carotenuto, 'A Secret Symmetry,'" says screenwriter Christopher Hampton of the character played by Knightley.

The richest of the rich in America is worth $2.8 billion, while the poorest of the rich checks in at a mere $150 million. But who's counting? Forbes magazine, that's who, and its 1985 list of the nation's 400 richest people is topped by Sam Moore Walton of Bentonville, Ark., who has made $2.8 billion through his Wal-Mart discount stores. Walton, who danced a hula on Wall Street last year when profit goals were met, replaced Gordon Getty, the front-runner for the past two years.

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. - They never got close, and Mitt Romney may not have even seen them, but protesters - some from Occupy Wall Street - took political theater to a new level Sunday outside the beachfront estate of billionaire David H. Koch, where the Republican candidate was raising money. Some of the 200 protesters marched down mile-long Coopers Beach toward the home in a cloud of sand, bearing banners and signs: "Your $50,000 ticket equals my child's education," "end corporate personhood" and "don't forget to tip the help.

Producer and talent manager Steve Alexander and his wife, interior designer Vanessa Alexander , have sold a Malibu estate for $9.454 million. Set on 2.6 acres in the Serra Retreat area, the newly built house combines the feel of a Hamptons barn with modern details in loft-like spaces. Some 6,500 square feet of living space include an office, theater, gym, six bedrooms and six bathrooms. Outdoors is a swimming pool with cabana, a kitchen with a pizza oven and a fire pit. The former Creative Artists Agency agent represented such stars as Heath Ledger, Jeff Bridges and Natalie Portman before joining the Mosaic Media Group several years ago and returning to his origins as a producer.

Gil Bernal, a tenor saxophonist who during his long career played a variety of styles with artists such as Spike Jones, Lionel Hampton and Ry Cooder , has died. He was 80. Bernal died of congestive heart failure July 17 at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, his family said. Adept at playing pop, jazz or blues, Bernal sang and played with Hampton's big band and had memorable sax parts on such 1950s songs as Duane Eddy's "Rebel Rouser" and the Robins' "Smokey Joe's Cafe.