Hazing

Four young men in San Luis Obispo surrendered Thursday to face charges alleging that a fraternity hazing ritual caused the alcohol death of a university freshman from Texas, police said. Carson Starkey, 18, of Austin was found dead in December with a blood-alcohol level between 0.39% and 0.44%. Police said he had to drink a bag full of alcoholic beverages as part of the fraternity pledging process.

Six employees at Taft High School were reassigned Tuesday while school district and law enforcement officials investigate an alleged hazing incident in the boys locker room on the Woodland Hills campus. Los Angeles Unified School District officials declined to identify the employees who were removed from the school and assigned to district offices, but district sources said Principal Sharon Thomas and volleyball coach Arman Mercado were among them.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials said Friday that they were investigating an alleged hazing incident involving the boys' volleyball team at Taft High School. The probe was launched after district officials learned Tuesday of "allegations of a hazing gone bad" at the school, said David Holmquist, the district's chief operating officer. He declined to discuss details, citing the ongoing investigation. After the allegations surfaced Tuesday evening, L.A. Unified Supt. Ramon C. Cortines ordered a preliminary inquiry.

In "The Carter," the documentary about Lil Wayne that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last month, the superstar rapper is filmed in some compromising positions. Namely, he's shown taking his medicine. In one scene, the extravagantly tattooed and dreadlocked rhymesayer pours a viscous purple liquid from a prescription bottle into a soda jug then mixes himself a cocktail, gulping it out of a giant Styrofoam cup.

A dirty brown haze sometimes more than a mile thick is darkening skies over vast areas of Asia and in the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, changing weather patterns and threatening health and food supplies, the United Nations reported. The so-called atmospheric brown clouds are a mix of particles, ozone and other chemicals that come from cars, coal-fired power plants, burning fields and wood-burning stoves and fireplaces. A report commissioned by the U.N. Environment Program said the clouds dim light by as much as 25% in some cities, including Karachi, Pakistan; New Delhi; Shanghai; and Beijing.

An early poster and the website for the devastatingly powerful documentary “Haze” proclaims, "Coming to a theater near you." Yet, as the makers of the film about college binge drinking learned earlier this year, theatrical distributors were hardly rushing to make that promise a reality, and it became obvious that "Haze" would never reach the multiplex. With many documentaries, such news can mark the end of the road.

The return of trade winds has begun clearing volcanic smog from Oahu and Hawaii's other smaller islands. The National Weather Service expects Honolulu to be clear of the smog, called vog, today. Increased sulfur dioxide emissions from the Big Island's Kilauea Volcano and a lack of trade winds have been blamed for the haze.