Law Order

Dick Wolf is known primarily for developing the "Law & Order" franchise. But with his series "Chicago Fire,"  Wolf is moving from the cool of the courtroom to the heat of infernos fought by dedicated Chicago firefighters. Just don't call "Chicago Fire"a procedural that will spotlight weekly fires and rescues. Wolf describes the series as an intense, character-driven drama that is a bit of a throwback to big-scale event TV. "This is not the fire of the week," Wolf said during a session about the NBC series at the TCA Press Tour.

When Sam Waterston sits down in a corner booth at a posh Beverly Hills hotel, one expects rarefied reflection from this stage and screen actor best known for his 16-season portrayal of crusading prosecutor Jack McCoy on "Law & Order" - and, sure, he gets to that. But more surprising is the way he dissolves into boyish laughter as he describes watching Jeff Daniels, his costar in HBO's"The Newsroom," crouched over a toilet in an explosive bathroom scene in "Dumb and Dumber. " "I didn't watch the movie until we already shot quite a bit [of 'The Newsroom']

EL HUJAYRAT, Egypt - The sheik walked through his courtyard to a room where sins are purged. When a man picks up a gun and fires it, Sheik Mohamed Abul Ismail is summoned to dispense justice, often before the grave is dug. Suspicious, with a temper as unpredictable as a water bug, he is a keeper of peace in a land prone to vendettas and a farming village accustomed to funeral processions trundling through the dust along wheat fields. He greeted an outsider the other day; men at the barbershop next door popped their heads out when they heard the word "journalist," a profession the sheik likens to droughts and crop-eating insects.

Terrance Winters of Yazoo City, Miss., voted for Haley Barbour in the past, and while he gives the ex-governor a mixed grade these days, particularly on economic matters, he's always given Barbour points for political shrewdness. Which is why Winters, a 31-year-old cook at a barbecue restaurant, is flummoxed by the mess that Barbour left behind after stepping down from office this week. "I actually don't know what he was thinking," Winters said. That is a question most of Mississippi, and the political world far beyond it, is asking.

Outpatient surgery centers in California that perform Lap-Band operations and other procedures will face new scrutiny under a law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown. The legislation requires private accrediting firms to inspect outpatient centers at least once every three years and allows for surprise inspections to ensure the centers meet safety standards for such things as cleanliness and proper use of medication. It also requires accrediting firms to demand improvements or revoke certification if a surgery center does not meet the standards.

Officer Sharif Ganasi was working the 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift, cruising the trash-strewn streets of Benghazi, alert for drunks and carjackers. His new black police uniform was too tight and too hot. He was drenched with sweat, his bulky body crammed into the tiny driver's seat of a white Hyundai compact. His hand-held radio kept cutting out. "We could use better equipment," he said as he guided car 23 through evening traffic in the de facto capital of Libya's rebels. Ganasi doesn't carry a gun or a badge.

"We were writing a story for Chris Meloni's character's mother, and she was going to be bipolar. Immediately we thought Ellen Burstyn. " So began Neal Baer's wooing of the Oscar-winning Burstyn to the set of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. " "We had lunch with her," he continues, "and it was kind of a date. It's a big deal to have them trust you. We told her about the part, and I said, 'You'll be on a beach and flip out,' and she said, 'Down and dirty?' and I said, 'As down and dirty as you like.'" "I'd never had anybody say they wanted to write a script for me," Burstyn recalls.

It has been a hallmark of the series "Law & Order" that its format — which lasted two decades in its original flavor and lives on in the current first season of NBC's "Law & Order: Los Angeles," or "LOLA" — has mattered as much as the characters who inhabit it. But of the many actors who have passed through this system over the years, perhaps none has departed quite as remarkably as did Skeet Ulrich, formerly the top-billed star of the L.A. franchise,...

After a year and a half absence, Vincent D'Onofrio, 51, returns to "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" as the brilliant but troubled detective Robert Goren for the show's 10th season, which debuts May 1 on the USA Network. I like your character, Det. Goren, but he seems to get a mixed reaction. I think some people don't get him. It's always been like that. I think that's OK. It's not for everybody, especially the way I play him is not to everybody's taste. People, I think, unless they allow themselves to take the leap of faith, they don't like the intelligence, the ridiculous amount of knowledge he has. It doesn't make it easy in a 40-minute show to solve a crime [persuasively]

A retired Mexican army officer widely credited with restoring law and order as the top police official in Tijuana was named Thursday to a similar post in Ciudad Juarez, the country's most violent city. Julian Leyzaola, who was a lieutenant colonel, was appointed public safety secretary by Ciudad Juarez Mayor Hector Murguia, who was elected last July. He takes over security in a city where fighting between drug cartels has sent killings skyrocketing, with more than 6,400 people slain since late 2006.