Intruder

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon said Friday that he should have been notified by L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley's office that a case involving an intruder at his home had been dismissed and the suspect released from a state mental hospital. Alarcon spoke out one day after an intruder broke into his Panorama City home for a second time in six months. Lawrence Lydell Payton, 42, was arrested Thursday night on suspicion of burglary at Alarcon's Nordhoff Street home.

Shark movies have been suffering under comparisons to "Jaws" for more than 35 years, and with good reason: Steven Spielberg's 1975 waterborne frightfest remains a classic. "Dark Tide," directed with hopelessly flagging energy by John Stockwell, barely musters up enough interest to be thuddingly bad. Halle Berry stars as a shark-loving, Cape Town-based marine biologist who's backslid into a life of guided tours since losing close friends to great-white attacks on one of her uncaged, communing-with-sharks excursions a year prior.

In response to "Intruder Killed After Struggle at House," Dec. 31: It's about time that The Times prints an article that shows the true necessity of private citizens owning firearms. The article also highlights some of the criminal record of the slain intruder. This was a career bad guy. How many chances should a convicted criminal get to go on repeating his crimes? The police are barely more than an after-the-fact investigative service. They don't arrive most times until after the crime has been committed.

San Bernardino County sheriff's investigators are investigating whether a Los Angeles police sergeant arrested on suspicion of committing a burglary last weekend in a foothills community is responsible for other break-ins nearby. Sgt. Lucien "Lou" Daigle, 44, was arrested Sunday after a homeowner reportedly confronted him inside her large Mentone home and doused him with a potent form of pepper spray typically used to ward off bears. Daigle, an 18-year LAPD veteran, fled but crashed his car a few miles away, apparently overcome by the repellent, said San Bernardino County Sheriff's Sgt. Paul Morrison.

Two rarely seen but important films dealing with African Americans ? "Intruder in the Dust" (1949) and "The Learning Tree" (1969) ? are making their DVD premieres Tuesday from Warner Archives to celebrate Black History Month. Based on William Faulkner's novel, "Intruder in the Dust" was one of the first Hollywood films dealing with racial bigotry. Juano Hernandez earned a Golden Globe nomination as best newcomer for his seminal turn as a proud black farmer who is arrested and goes to trial for allegedly killing a white man. "The Learning Tree" marks the first time a major studio film was directed by an African American.

A 30-year-old Northridge man was shot to death in his home Tuesday evening by an attacker who rang the doorbell, then forced his way inside past the victim's wife, police said. Police found Bennett Adam Young on the floor in the rear of his home in the 10900 block of Darby Avenue about 6:15 p.m., Police Sgt. Jim Darling said. He had been shot in the upper body.

A 13-year-old girl was stabbed by an intruder at her South Gate home early Tuesday and died at a hospital, authorities said. The girl was stabbed at her home on Bryson Avenue about 3:30 a.m. while she was alone in a family room where she, her parents and three brothers had been watching television earlier in the evening, Sgt. Russ Galbreath said. "Family members heard her scream," he said.

A 79-year-old woman was raped in her home by an intruder who broke in through a kitchen door and stole about $30 from her purse, police said Tuesday. The victim, who lived alone in an apartment on Royal Palm Drive, was watching television in her living room around 8:30 p.m. Sunday when the intruder broke in and then struck her several times in the head with his fist, Police Sgt. Ron Smith said. The woman suffered a bloody nose in the attack as well as several bruises, Smith said.

Ron Oatman had considered getting rid of the .38 he kept in his bedroom, afraid his grandchildren would find it and hurt themselves. * But that was before his Monday night encounter with a black-bearded, bare-chested intruder covered with tattoos and armed with a 4-foot bamboo pole, who had broken into his home claiming to be the Pied Piper. By Tuesday, Oatman was glad he decided to keep his gun. "God, his eyes, he looked like the devil," said Oatman, 57, a retired air-conditioning repairman.

A Marine on leave was bound, gagged and set on fire by an intruder who broke into his Hollywood motel room, police said. The 23-year-old lance corporal, whose name was not released pending notification of relatives, reportedly suffered second-degree burns and was listed in stable condition at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital. He told officers that the intruder tied him up with telephone and electric cords, stuffed a sock in his mouth and set fire to papers beneath him.

If the Internet boom of the 1990s inspired computer programmers and entrepreneurs bent on changing the world, its bust gave rise to hundreds of writers happy to chronicle it - perhaps, most famously, "And Then We Came to the End" by Joshua Ferris. Much of Paul La Farge's novel "Luminous Airplanes" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 245 pp., $25) takes place in the slow days during which the boom was waning, and our unnamed protagonist is frittering away his days at a dying web company "like the middle of Moby-Dick; no whale in sight, only occasional contact with another passing ship, and nothing to fill the time except digression.

The cyber-security industry is on Defcon 1 high alert. The recent rash of attacks on dozens of websites including those of the CIA, the FBI and even PBS is roiling the security industry and increasing demand for cyber-defense experts. "Every time one of these breaches makes the news, I will tell you, my phone rings off the hook," said Chris Novak, a manager of Verizon Communications Inc.'s Investigative Response Team, which now has nearly 100 members, more than double from a year ago. With the surge in attacks in recent months, Novak sees the team tripling in size this year.

Despite the overwrought claims made by its opponents, male circumcision is not remotely tantamount to mutilation. Complications are rare and generally minor and short term. And circumcision has been linked to various health benefits. Nevertheless, a measure to ban male circumcision in children has obtained the required 12,000 signatures to qualify for the November ballot in San Francisco — and an anti-circumcision group is now targeting Santa Monica for a similar ballot proposal.

First of two parts If screenwriter Babs Greyhosky was penning this episode of her life, the young woman she calls her "goddaughter" would be at home with her children right now. But managing the action in the real world isn't as simple as a storyline on TV. It began with a phone call from a panicked young woman who was locked up at the sheriff's station in La Crescenta. Deputies had raided her South Los Angeles house looking for drugs and guns linked to an Altadena gang.

There were winners and losers in the eleventh-hour spending compromise reached by President Obama, Senate Democrats and House Republicans. Among the conspicuous losers was the District of Columbia, which found itself overruled by Congress on two policy matters. First, the deal prohibits the use of public funds for abortion in the district. Second, it reinstates for five years a school voucher plan that leaders of the district opposed. Both actions are unjustifiable intrusions on the authority of the district government and dramatize the second-class status of the nation's capital.

A federal appellate court Monday upheld a judge's ban on the most controversial parts of a tough new Arizona immigration law, setting the stage for a showdown before the Supreme Court on how far a state can go in trying to expel illegal immigrants. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a federal judge in Arizona who found that provisions of the law, known as SB 1070, were an unconstitutional intrusion into immigration and foreign policy, which is the prerogative of the federal government.

An elderly widow shot and killed an ex-convict armed with a screwdriver who broke into her home in Artesia, authorities said. The 70-year-old woman fired four shots from a .38-caliber handgun when the intruder confronted her at her bedroom door, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Richard Adams said. Three of the shots hit the man, who died in the home, Adams said.

A woman ironing alone in her Northwood Village home was raped by an intruder and robbed of $9 in cash Tuesday afternoon, police said. Investigators said the man threatened the woman with a large screwdriver, then fled after raping her and rifling her purse. The 31-year-old woman said her doors and windows were locked, but officers said they found no evidence of forced entry.

Flying home from Michigan on Air Force One, President Obama sat in front of a television and watched Hosni Mubarak deliver a surprising speech: He would not quit. Earlier in the day, Obama had told an audience that "we are witnessing history unfold," a sign that he understood the Egyptian president would resign. Now Obama was watching a defiant Mubarak announce that he was transferring some presidential powers but would remain in office. Returning to the White House, Obama summoned Vice President Joe Biden and top foreign policy aides to the Oval Office.

Two rarely seen but important films dealing with African Americans ? "Intruder in the Dust" (1949) and "The Learning Tree" (1969) ? are making their DVD premieres Tuesday from Warner Archives to celebrate Black History Month. Based on William Faulkner's novel, "Intruder in the Dust" was one of the first Hollywood films dealing with racial bigotry. Juano Hernandez earned a Golden Globe nomination as best newcomer for his seminal turn as a proud black farmer who is arrested and goes to trial for allegedly killing a white man. "The Learning Tree" marks the first time a major studio film was directed by an African American.