Newspapers

Most of the fashion world is focused on New York Fashion Week and the ingenuity of high-end designers this week. But we found some fashion ingenuity closer to home in the person of Miss Lillie Laing, 10, who used her father's paper shredder, glue, a ballet tutu, needle and thread to make an outfit from a Sunday print edition of the Los Angeles Times. She wore the ensemble to a school event awhile back, earning the nickname Miss L.A. Times. Lillie started her budding fashion career by making toilet paper clothes for her Barbies, according to mom Martine Laing.

David Perdue was on his way to sneak in some surfing before work Thursday morning when police flagged him down. They asked who he was and where he was headed, then sent him on his way. Seconds later, Perdue's attorney said, a Torrance police cruiser slammed into his pickup and officers opened fire; none of the bullets struck Perdue. His pickup, police later explained, matched the description of the one belonging to Christopher Jordan Dorner - the ex-cop who has evaded authorities after allegedly killing three and wounding two more.

The officers' radio crackled with an urgent warning: He could be coming your way. It was around 5 a.m. in Torrance on Thursday and police from nearby El Segundo had seen a pickup truck exit a freeway and head in the general direction of the Redbeam Avenue residence of a high-ranking Los Angeles police official, which was being guarded by a group of LAPD officers. Police were on the lookout for Christopher Jordan Dorner, a disgruntled ex-cop suspected of hunting down members of the LAPD and their families in a twisted campaign of revenge.

At 6:45 a.m., Alan Smolinisky pads out to his driveway in a hillside cul-de-sac just west of the Getty Villa. He wears black-and-white-checked flannel pajama bottoms and a pristinely white T-shirt that glows like a beacon in the muted light. In one arm, he carries 15-month-old Charlie, named for billionaire investor Charles Munger. Bending carefully toward the concrete apron, Smolinisky lets Charlie scoop up three newspapers stuffed in plastic bags. As Charlie sucks on a bottle in the kitchen, Smolinisky unwraps the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, separating sections into carefully considered piles - news, features, markets coverage.

Bishop Robert W. Finn wishes the independent National Catholic Reporter weren't so independent. Finn is the bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph in Missouri. The National Catholic Reporter is a 48-year-old not-for-profit newspaper based in Kansas City. Finn was convicted in September of shielding priests from sexual-abuse allegations -- prompting editorials from the newspaper calling for his resignation. Now, Finn, who is on probation, has taken to his own diocese's journalistic bully pulpit to denounce the paper.

Question: I am a first-time landlord who just bought a six-unit apartment building as a personal investment. My Christian faith is extremely important to me and affects every aspect of my life. I would prefer to rent out the apartments in my building to other Christians, not because I am prejudiced against non-Christians but because I like the idea of creating a community of believers living together in fellowship. I have been told that the fair housing laws do not allow me to specify in my advertising that I will accept only Christian tenants.

A White Plains, N.Y., newspaper has removed an online interactive map that detailed who has handgun permits in two counties. The posting of the map on the paper's website last month had sparked outrage and prompted changes in state law to give permit holders greater privacy. The Journal News map showed the names and addresses of people with pistol permits licensed by Westchester and Rockland counties. Journal News President and Publisher Janet Hasson said Friday the decision to take down the map came in response to a provision in New York's new gun law that was passed last week.

Dear Abby: "What would you do with a man who refuses to use a deodorant, seldom bathes, and doesn't even own a toothbrush?" "Absolutely nothing," she replied. The wry answer from Abigail Van Buren - the pen name of Pauline Friedman Phillips - was typical of the advice she dispensed for more than 40 years to newspaper readers around the world through her "Dear Abby" column, which debuted in 1956 in the San Francisco Chronicle. She got the bug to write it from her identical twin, who was already providing more homespun counsel in a syndicated newspaper column as Ann Landers.

Under the watchful eye of a librarian at the Huntington, Paul Bryan Gray gently turns the delicate pages of an 1855 edition of El Clamor Público , Los Angeles' first newspaper published entirely in Spanish. These bound volumes are like old friends for Gray, who spent two years reading every line during more than a decade of work on his new book "A Clamor for Equality," a biography of El Clamor 's remarkable 18-year-old editor, Francisco P. Ramirez. "I was fascinated by this guy Ramirez," says Gray, 74. "He was a civil rights activist when people didn't talk about it. He was a community organizer before there was such a thing....

BEIJING -- A spat over a censored New Year's editorial in a leading newspaper has quickly escalated into a widening challenge to the Chinese government's limits on media freedoms. Journalists at the muckraking Southern Weekly have staged a strike and called for the resignation of a provincial propaganda chief accused of rewriting a front-page editorial on political reform to reflect loyalty to the ruling Communist Party. The incident has sparked outrage among prominent scholars, intellectuals, celebrities and university students who have voiced their support online for the newspaper since the edited article was published Jan. 3. On Monday, hundreds of people staged a demonstration outside the Southern Weekly's headquarters in Guangzhou, carrying flowers and signs calling for a relaxation of censorship.