Mismanagement

Accusing his ex-wife of character assassination, Broadcom Corp. founder Henry T. Nicholas III said her attempt to oust him as co-trustee of their family holdings was filled with "outrageous falsehoods," including misrepresenting herself as unable to meet her expenses when she had spent more than $100 million in the last two years. Stacey Nicholas' attorney, Adam Streisand, said he had not seen the filing in Orange County Superior Court and declined to comment. In a filing in probate court Nov.

Public animal shelters will never look like -- or be run like -- the Four Seasons. But according to animal welfare activists, volunteers and private rescuers, the shelters operated by the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care & Control sometimes resemble dog pounds of yore.

Tom Ramsey, the quarterback, remembers his knees knocking. "I might have been more nervous for that game than the Rose Bowl versus Michigan a couple of months earlier," he said this week. Tony Boddie, the tailback, remembers warming up on the field beneath the Coliseum's giant shadow. "Herschel Walker was on the other side," Boddie said. "Number 34. University of Georgia. Massive legs. Faster than anyone should be."

Don't expect to get free ice anymore from the federal government after a hurricane, the chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Wednesday. That was the first major announcement from FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison during his visit to the National Hurricane Conference here. And when the leader said he intended to resign soon, it quickly created a media stir.

Bud Selig stepped to a podium at Angel Stadium a few weeks ago, calling the Angels "a model for all our other franchises." Jerry Manuel, the new manager of the New York Mets, stepped to a podium at Angel Stadium on Tuesday. He did not call his team a model for anything, except failure. In describing the Mets' collapse last fall, he used two delightfully blunt words: "catastrophic demise." Omar Minaya, the general manager of the Mets, preceded Manuel to the podium.

Hollywood's leading preservation group has been ordered out of the community's most prominent historic estate for allegedly ignoring city rules and renting out the mansion for disruptive parties. Hollywood Heritage has supervised the famed Wattles Mansion for 25 years under an exclusive agreement with the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. The city purchased the mansion for about $2 million in 1968.

These are sad days for Raider Nation. All those skull-and-bones tattoos seem for naught. Their leader, Al Davis, has lost it. As the late radio mega-star Jim Healy used to say, he's gone the Leonard Tose route. His news-conference performance this week, in the firing of young coach Lane Kiffin, broke new ground in the category of bizarre. The only thing missing was somebody dragging a blindfolded Kiffin into the room, putting him on a plank and making him walk it.

Los Angeles Police Commission President Anthony Pacheco on Friday ordered the panel's civilian watchdog to investigate disclosures that the LAPD's fingerprint experts have bungled cases and implicated the wrong people in crimes. Pacheco -- responding to a story in The Times on Friday -- expressed outrage that top LAPD officials had not informed his five-member board about the extent of the problems in the department's Latent Print Unit.

A Los Angeles jury Tuesday found former city Housing Authority executives liable for mismanaging federal funds designated to help the poor get housing and jobs. The panel concluded at the end of a five-week trial that former Assistant Executive Director Lucille Loyce and then-Executive Director Donald Smith should pay the agency $528,000 for mismanaging taxpayer money and lying to the agency's board about it. Neither Loyce nor Smith has been criminally prosecuted.

Henry T. Nicholas III's former wife accused the Broadcom Corp. billionaire Wednesday of squandering $60 million from their fortune on personal indulgences, including a $3.1-million limousine bill, and making misguided investments that have left her so cash-poor she can't pay her tax bill.