Mayhem

A Bakersfield man with a history of drug abuse remained jailed Monday after allegedly biting out one of his 4-year-old son's eyes and mutilating the other. Angel Vidal Mendoza, 34, has been charged with mayhem, torture, child cruelty and inflicting an injury to a child in the alleged attack on his son. Bakersfield police said in a search warrant that the child told investigators, "My daddy ate my eyes." Police said Mendoza appeared to be under the influence of PCP after the April 28 incident.

Roberta Busby's daughter Gabriella turned 5 recently. But the 27-year-old single mother of two couldn't join the family celebration. Busby remained secluded in an intensive care ward at the Grossman Burn Center in Sherman Oaks, recovering from second- and third-degree burns over 40% of her body. Nearly three weeks ago, she was set ablaze in what police say was a vicious attack at a Tarzana club where Busby worked as an exotic dancer.

In the seconds before the gunmen burst into the tiny Lozano Garza jewelry store in this city's downtown, three shoppers browsed the display cases. An unarmed security guard sat by the door. Then three men with assault rifles ran in, one after the other, the muzzles of their weapons ablaze. By the time anyone reacted to the gunfire, it was too late. The four people collapsed in the barrage of bullets. One of the gunmen helped another, apparently wounded by a comrade, out of the store.

The sickening discovery this week of 11 headless bodies heaped like broken dolls near the colonial city of Merida underscored a bitter lesson for Mexico: The battle to control the multibillion-dollar drug trade knows no boundaries. The bodies are piling up nationwide, even in normally tranquil and touristy spots such as Merida, not far from the Maya ruins of Chichen Itza. During a seven-day period ended Friday, more than 130 people died violently throughout the country. Headless bodies turned up in four states, including Baja California.

On a Monday in late August 1995 -- after "Mortal Kombat" was the top-grossing movie of the weekend -- the film's then-30-year-old director, Paul W.S. Anderson, had lunch with the king of exploitation films, Roger Corman, who asked him, "What do you want to do next?" Anderson said that he had always wanted to do a remake of the Corman-produced, 1975 B-movie classic, "Death Race 2000." "That's fantastic," Anderson remembers Corman replying. "We'll make it your next film." "And in typical Hollywood development fashion," Anderson now says, "cut to 13 years later -- and I've finally made the movie."

The whiskey is flowing at La Cantina when Calor Nortena kicks out the accordion jams for a homage to gangster Arturo Villarreal, who rose from drug cartel protege to crime boss in a six-year reign of mayhem and murder. "The law calls me a dangerous [criminal] so don't dare take me on because I have bullets to spare," the band members sing, as beer-swilling youths shout and long-nailed women twirl on the dance floor.

In a country where education is still considered a privilege and children beg parents to attend school, Kenyans have been shocked by the latest violence to rock their East African nation: students trying to burn down their schools. An unprecedented wave of student strikes and riots has closed about 250 high schools over the last month. There have been arson attacks at about half of them. Scores of teenagers have been arrested and thousands more sent home. One student died in a dormitory blaze.

Scooped up by gunmen as she walked near her home, 12-year-old Alexia Moreno hardly had a chance. The gangsters were driving straight into a shootout. Within minutes, she was dead, shot in the head as she cowered in the back seat. It was two weeks before her sixth-grade graduation. Alexia's death in a city so accustomed to death struck a nerve because she was, in this city tortured by killings, broad-daylight gun battles and rampant kidnappings, an innocent victim.

A daisy-chain dystopia filmed by three directors, "The Signal" combines the inconstancy of an omnibus film with the blandness of art by committee. The result feels less like a blend of distinct styles than an opportunistic hodgepodge. In the city of Terminus, madness has broken out, spawned by a mysterious TV broadcast that resembles an overactive lava lamp.