Intruder

The 9-year-old son of a Ventura County couple who were stabbed to death by an intruder last year attempted to get the man to leave by offering him his mother's and father's wallets. The son later told detectives he saw the man take his parents into a back bedroom, promising "not to hurt the children," then he heard his mother scream. The intruder fled. Details of the night of May 20, 2009, when Brock and Davina Husted, who was pregnant, were stabbed to death in their beachfront home in the Faria Beach Colony, were included in affidavits used to support Ventura County sheriff's detectives' search warrants that were recently unsealed.

A proposed law set to go before California's Legislature this month would make one of Hollywood's cherished utterances — "You're not on the list" — carry grave new consequences. It's a measure aimed at making the act of party crashing a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail, a $1,000 fine or both. The author of the legislation, Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Canada Flintridge), said crashers at high-profile events like the Academy Awards and other awards shows pose a threat to public safety that warrants a law in addition to the 25 sections of trespassing code already on California's books.

Attorneys on Thursday filed the first lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of a new Arizona law that makes it a state crime to lack proper immigration papers and requires local police to determine whether people are in the country legally. The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders sued in U.S. District Court, arguing that the law is an unconstitutional intrusion into the federal government's ability to regulate immigration and that it would lead to racial profiling.

Decisions on whether to ease restrictions on blood donation must be based on science and the protection of public health, not political considerations. As obvious as that sounds, the rules of blood donation have become the topic of a social and emotional debate more than one of scientific policy. Gay men want the federal government to loosen the virtual ban on their participation, saying it stigmatizes homosexuality. Hemophiliacs, whose bleeding disorder makes them frequent recipients of blood transfusions, are pushing back.

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.

Vultures circled over Everglades National Park's Anhinga Trail, where thousands of dead nonnative fish floated in the marshes. About half of the Burmese pythons that have turned up in the park recently have been dead. Dead iguanas have dropped from trees onto patios across South Florida. And in western Miami-Dade County, three African rock pythons -- powerful constrictors that can kill people -- have turned up dead. Although South Florida's warm, moist climate has nurtured a vast range of nonnative plants and animals, a January cold snap reminded these intruders that they're not in Burma or Ecuador anymore.

Ordinary Thunderstorms A Novel William Boyd HarperCollins: 404 pp., $26.99 William Boyd begins his new novel, "Ordinary Thunderstorms," with a set piece out of Alfred Hitchcock. Adam Kindred, a young climatologist visiting London for a job interview, chats with a stranger in a restaurant. On leaving, the stranger drops an important-looking file. Adam brings the file by the stranger's apartment, only to find the man in bed, stabbed and dying. (I'm really not giving anything away here, because all this happens within the first 10 pages.

It was a little more than a year ago that January Schofield, at age 6, began to drift from reality. Suicidal, violent and plagued by hallucinations of rats and cats who conversed and played with her, she began the first of seven psychiatric hospitalizations. As of today, Jani, 7, has been out of the hospital for 56 days, the longest period in 15 months. Together with her parents, Michael and Susan, and brother, Bodhi, 2, Jani is living a fragile existence -- haunted by delusions that sometimes tell her to hurt herself or others, even the people she loves.