Mistakes

You look fat in that. Of course I'll be late. Your baby reminds me of Gollum's uncle. This is what the 2013 Subaru BRZ might say if it could talk. The all-new, rear-wheel-drive sports car starts at $26,265, and boy is it honest - perhaps more so than any other car on the market today, save for its mechanical twin, the Scion FR-S. The two were jointly developed by Subaru and Scion's parent company, Toyota, with both assembled by Subaru in Japan. The question about the BRZ is, can you handle the honesty?

Barely four years after Wall Street's wrong-way bets plunged the world into a financial crisis, JPMorgan Chase & Co. admitted it lost $2 billion from a trading portfolio that was supposed to have helped the bank manage credit risk. "These were egregious mistakes," said Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, who is considered one of the world's savviest bankers. "We have egg on our face, and we deserve any criticism we get. " The announcement stunned the financial industry, in part because it came from such a highly regarded bank.

When the White House sent a last-minute invitation for Asif Ali Zardari to attend the two-day NATO summit, they were taking a highly public gamble. Would sharing the spotlight with President Obama and other global leaders induce the Pakistani president to allow vital supplies to reach alliance troops fighting in Afghanistan? But long before the summit ended Monday, the answer was clear: No deal. Zardari's refusal to reopen the supply routes left a diplomatic blot on a summit that NATO sought to cast as the beginning of the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

Which is it? Either Magic Johnson, the face of the Dodgers, is clueless on how the organization will be run ... Or he knew he wasn't telling the truth when he became the dominating voice of last week's news conference and told the media enough already with the questions about Frank McCourt. We can all understand "enough already with Frank McCourt," but the Guggenheim folks should have taken that into consideration when they bought the Dodgers. Now they have some explaining to do. But so far for Magic, it's been one turnover after the next.

Just over a year ago, 16-month-old Delaney Lucille Gonzalez walked with her family into UCLA Medical Center for routine surgery to repair a cleft palate. Three days later, she was disconnected from life support and died in her mother's arms. "To bring a healthy child in there for surgery so minor," her mother, Jodi, said recently, clutching a headband she had made for Delaney, "you just don't accept that she's going to die."

A woman who alleged that she was wrongly diagnosed as HIV-positive at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center has reached a settlement with the county, lawyers for both sides said Friday. Plaintiff Lynn Howard claimed the hospital's staff told her she was HIV-positive in October 2002, according to the lawsuit. She was told two years later that she was HIV-negative. But county attorney Richard Reinjohn said hospital personnel never told Howard she was HIV-positive.

An Ohio woman who gave birth to a baby boy after a fertility clinic implanted her with the wrong embryo is a "guardian angel," the boy's biological parents said Saturday. Paul and Shannon Morell of suburban Detroit said in a statement that they would be "eternally grateful" to Carolyn Savage, of Sylvania, Ohio, for her decision to give birth to their child despite the clinic's mistake. "We will be eternally grateful for his guardian angel, Carolyn Savage, and the support of the entire Savage family," the Morells said.

If it is true that we learn from our mistakes, the Clintons are sure getting a heck of an education. Hoping they will graduate soon. JOHN J. PERNIN Pacific Palisades

ABOUT THIS SERIES This is the second in a series of occasional articles that will examine how DNA evidence is transforming criminal justice. -- State crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona's DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles. The men matched at nine of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people.

A jury in Ocala, Fla., recommended that a man convicted of arranging for his mother to be killed be sentenced to life in prison for the deaths of four other people slain by mistake. Dorsey A. Sanders III, 33, was convicted on four counts of murder, conspiracy and accessory in the Floral City slayings. He could receive the death penalty when Circuit Judge John Thurman sentences him on Aug. 19. Prosecutors said Sanders, 33, hired John C.

Mitt Romney didn't exactly fire Richard Grenell, who is gay, as his foreign policy spokesman. But when the religious right got wind of Grenell's hiring, his job started to shrink. Grenell was told to sit in on conference calls with reporters and not say anything, which is tantamount to firing him. He was told to be silent not merely on gay issues. He was told not to talk about anything, even foreign policy. A spokesman who is not allowed to speak - even internally - doesn't have much of a job. So Grenell quit, three weeks after he was hired.

Los Angeles County officials were justifiably criticized for the rushed and, at least initially, haphazard manner in which they excavated the historic remains discovered when construction crews working on La Plaza de Cultura y Artes accidentally struck the vestiges of a 19th century cemetery. The earth under the courtyard of the new downtown museum, dedicated to Mexican and Mexican American heritage, yielded the bones and artifacts of more than 100 people. They were most likely a mix of Mexican, Spanish, European, African and Indian settlers who had been buried in a Catholic cemetery.

Dear Liz: Last year I bought an electric vehicle, motivated in part by the $7,500 federal tax credit. I consulted with my tax preparer, a CPA, to ensure I would generate enough income to fully use the one-time, use-it-or-lose-it credit. In December 2011, I informed her of the exact type of that year's income (earned income, capital gains, dividends, interest and so on) and detailed all my deductions. She assured me that based on those numbers my tax burden was $8,600, more than sufficient to use the credit.

They were sellers of pastel-toned huggable plush toys with names like "Baby Frenz Forever" and "Jungle Pals. " At the same time, authorities say, they were receiving bricks of U.S. dollars wrapped in cellophane that were drug proceeds to be laundered into clean pesos for drug lords in Mexico and Colombia. On Monday, authorities announced charges against the City of Industry-based Woody Toys Inc. and seven owners, employees and customers in what marks the second case in two years involving toy exporters allegedly acting as conduits for the drug trade.

Women are more likely than men to mistake the gas pedal for the brakes, according to federal safety regulators. "The most consistent finding across data sources was the striking overrepresentation of females in pedal misapplication crashes, relative to their involvement in all types of crashes," the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a report supporting its proposal this week to require automakers to make brake-throttle override...

Free advice time, Magic Johnson edition: Do not do it. Don't ever prop up Frank McCourt again. And most definitely, do not sit next to him again at Tuesday's home opener. That was hard to watch, and just as difficult to understand. Los Angeles almost universally opened its arms to the news that Magic's group won the Dodgers' bidding war for three reasons: 1) Magic is local sports icon; 2) he has spent the past 32 years living in Los Angeles; 3) his name is not Frank McCourt.

With nine starters returning on offense, the competition to become USC's starting quarterback probably won't be determined by who makes the most plays. It could come down to who makes the fewest mistakes. Sophomore Aaron Corp arguably took an early lead Tuesday by avoiding what befell junior Mitch Mustain and freshman Matt Barkley: interceptions. Meanwhile, Corp emerged unscathed in the turnover department as the Trojans completed the second of their 15 workouts.

Angels nine-time Gold Glove-winning right fielder Torii Hunter returned to his Newport Beach home from Wednesday morning workouts at Dodger Stadium and settled in for a movie on the couch when he heard someone fiddling with his front door. “I grabbed a knife and was about to start Bruce Lee-ing on whoever was there,” Hunter said. Good thing Hunter didn't take the steak knife outside, where police were waiting with guns drawn after the outfielder's home alarm had accidentally been activated by a door that was opened in the house.