Photographs

A nude photograph of Prince Andrew was splashed across the centerfold of Britain's raciest tabloid newspaper Thursday. The Sun's photograph of Queen Elizabeth's sailor-son, dubbed "Randy Andy" by the tabloid press during his bachelor days, sparked angry protests from members of Parliament. "So That's Why All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor," the Sun headline said of the photograph of the prince skinny-dipping in a Canadian river eight years ago.

They call it \o7el barrio bravo\f7, which more or less translates as "the brave 'hood." But it takes more than courage and a certain ferocity of spirit to survive in Tepito, this tough metropolis' most Darwinian precinct. Humor probably helps. A sense of camaraderie too. Above all, caution. Then there's the tremendous pride that Tepito residents feel about their much-stereotyped and stigmatized neighborhood just north of the capital's historic center.

Mary Laurent-Barela of San Dimas was desperately trying to find anything to solve her son's murder. It had been almost a year since his death when a family friend suggested she contact NASA, which has worked with the FBI to improve video images of crime scenes. She searched the NASA website and came across David H. Hathaway, a NASA astronomer who in his spare time works on high-profile cases for law enforcement. Laurent-Barela called Hathaway immediately. And kept calling.

The campaign of an Orange County supervisorial candidate, whose slogan is "Honesty, Integrity and Leadership," has been caught doctoring a photo so that it places the politician close to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The photo into which Trung Nguyen was inserted appeared over the weekend in two Vietnamese-language daily newspapers, Vien Dong and Viet Bao Kinh Te. The papers are heavily circulated in Little Saigon, home to the largest Vietnamese community outside Southeast Asia.

An elementary school aide was arrested Thursday after allegedly showing sexually graphic pictures to fifth- and sixth-graders on school computers and his cellphone, police said. Homero Martinez, 31, of Santa Ana was booked into the Orange County Jail on $20,000 bail. Tynes Elementary School has placed him on administrative leave. Saddleback High School in Santa Ana, where he coached varsity softball, fired him, police said.

Shortly after 18-year-old Nikki Catsouras died in a car accident, her relatives began receiving mysterious e-mails and text messages. When they opened the messages, the family members were confronted again and again with gruesome, detailed scenes of the crash, including photos that showed the woman's decapitated body. Catsouras' uncles looked closer at the photos and believed they recognized a surprising source: they had been taken by California Highway Patrol investigators.

California Highway Patrol investigators have concluded that someone within their agency was responsible for the improper release of grisly crash scene photos that landed on hundreds of websites showcasing morbid curiosities. The leak of the evidence photos has resulted in a $20-million claim filed against the CHP by the family of Nikki Catsouras, 18, of Ladera Ranch. Catsouras was killed in the October crash.

I've been toying with www.picnik.com, a beta site that makes online digital photo editing a snap. Upload a photo from your computer (including Macs) or a website and you can do the basics: Tool around with colors (I made elephants turn blue), get rid of red eye, crop, rotate, resize. What's hot: It's online (no download), free (so far), easy to figure out and handy if you don't have a photo editing tool on your computer. Plus it's fun to play with.

This hippo pool lies 50 yards from a dining area at the Serengeti National Park river camp where Terry Powers and his fiancee, Jennifer Rusin, spent eight days last fall. Powers, of Irvine, said the big neighbors were not that neighborly. "You'd go to the water's edge and they'd grunt and jostle, as if saying, 'You think you're gonna come in here?' " He used a Nikon N65 for the shot.

More Americans than ever are wearing their photographs. Or eating them. Or showcasing them on calendars, greeting cards and china plates. In the versatile digital age, picture-bearing merchandise is a booming segment of the photo printing market. Now, the mostly online arena appears poised to gravitate big-time to the corner pharmacy. Scores of online players, led by Shutterfly Inc., Eastman Kodak Co.'s KodakGallery.com and Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Snapfish.