Predators

Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said. Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - The drug runners call it " el mosco ," the mosquito, and one recent evening on the southern tip of Texas, a Predator B drone armed with cameras buzzed softly over the beach on South Padre Island and headed inland. "We're going to get some bad guys tonight, I've got a feeling," said Scott Peterson, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection supervisory air interdiction agent. He watched the drone's live video feed in the Predator Ops room at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, about 50 miles away.

Of course there is a danger in generalizing, but based on the voters' treatment of mountain lions and lawyers in the primary election, may we conclude that we favor predators? JAMES REED Corona

Jonathan Quick 's stoic manner undoubtedly kept him sane while the Kings gave him precious little scoring support. But surely he let loose and celebrated Wednesday after learning he's a finalist for the Vezina Trophy as the NHL's top goaltender? "Yeah," Kings teammate Jarret Stoll said. "The opposite of what you just said. " Quick reacted calmly to news that he's vying for the Vezina with Henrik Lundqvist of the New York Rangers and Pekka Rinne of the Nashville Predators.

"Predators," plural, starts well and ends poorly, and in the middle it's in the middle. The original 1987 "Predator," featuring future politicians Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura, was an entertaining hybrid of the commando genre and "Alien"-inspired science fiction. The new one, directed by Nimród Antal ("Kontroll"), lifts its building blocks from an unproduced 1990s script by Robert Rodriguez, who ended up producing the revised screenplay by Alex Litvak and Michael Finch. For a while it's a worthy successor, or remake, or whatever it is. Instead of the Central American jungle of the original, the action takes place somewhere "else," let's say (the reveal comes early, but who am I to spoil your day?

NASHVILLE — David Legwand scored the shootout winner in the Nashville Predators' 4-3 victory over the Phoenix Coyotes on Thursday night. Steve Sullivan, Patric Hornqvist and Dan Hamhuis scored for Nashville in regulation, and Lee Stempniak, Wojtek Wolski and Keith Yandle countered for Phoenix. Nashville has won seven of its last eight. After winning nine consecutive games, the Coyotes have lost their last two. After each team scored once and missed once in the shootout, Phoenix's third shooter, Radim Vrbata, had Nashville goalie Pekka Rinne beaten, but the backhander rang off of the crossbar and bounced away.

Every year, shorebirds flap thousands and thousands of miles to the Northern Hemisphere, then back to the south. It's an exhausting round trip. Yet some sandpipers and plovers head deeper into the Arctic, tacking as many as 2,000 miles onto their journey. Why they do it has long puzzled biologists. "Why wouldn't they go in the low Arctic instead of the high Arctic? Why would you go so far north? It just increases the risk of getting lost or getting cold," said Allan Baker, senior curator of ornithology and head of the Department of Natural History at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Nashville, of course, was where it all ended for the Ducks last season. Ah, remember the playoffs? On Sunday, the Predators provided a stark reminder about what might have been last season and what could happen this postseason. They beat the Ducks, 3-1, at Honda Center, sweeping all four games of their season series with Anaheim. Nothing has been decided officially, but the Predators certainly will be playing beyond April 7 and the Ducks will be left to contemplate the wonders of the draft lottery.

Their first names have become synonymous with outrage and grief: Megan, Jessica, Samantha, Amber. Now, 17-year-old Chelsea King and 14-year-old Amber Dubois join the list of young lives likely cut short by sexual predators. And as in each of the previous cases, the heartbreaking discovery of the child's body is followed by a renewed determination to enact stricter laws, to toughen sentences and intensify monitoring -- to do something, anything, to keep children safe. And we do try. These murders continue despite sex offender registries and Jessica's Law, which restricted where offenders can live and strapped global positioning systems on the ankles of about 6,700 perpetrators.

President Obama has approved the use of armed Predator drone aircraft to launch airstrikes against ground targets in Libya, the latest sign of mounting concern in Washington that the NATO-led air campaign has failed to stop Moammar Kadafi's forces from shelling the besieged city of Misurata and other populated areas. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who announced the decision at a Pentagon news conference, said Predators armed with Hellfire missiles would be used to augment airstrikes by warplanes from other North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations against the intensifying attacks by forces loyal to Kadafi.

Nashville Predators captain Shea Weber was fined $2,500 by the NHL on Thursday for slamming Detroit Red Wings forward Henrik Zetterberg's head into the glass at the end of their playoff series opener  Wednesday. The fine for Weber, who was given a minor roughing penalty on the play, was the maximum penalty allowed under the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Zetterberg, who says his helmet was cracked by the shove, is expected to play in Game 2 of the Western Conference quarterfinals Friday.

Nothing has come easily for the Kings this season, and their battle will continue to Saturday's season finale. Their 6-5 shootout loss to the San Jose Sharks Thursday night at Staples Center was a strange ending to a bizarre game. They knew before the opening faceoff that they had clinched a playoff spot thanks to Dallas' loss at Nashville, but their aim was to win the Pacific Division title and secure home-ice advantage. They looked well on their way to that after taking leads of 3-1 and 4-3 -- and pulling even at 5-5 with 3:21 left in the third period on Justin Williams' second goal of the game -- but they were derailed when they couldn't beat Sharks goaltender Antti Niemi in the shootout and Jonathan Quick yielded a shootout goal to Joe Pavelski.

Nashville, of course, was where it all ended for the Ducks last season. Ah, remember the playoffs? On Sunday, the Predators provided a stark reminder about what might have been last season and what could happen this postseason. They beat the Ducks, 3-1, at Honda Center, sweeping all four games of their season series with Anaheim. Nothing has been decided officially, but the Predators certainly will be playing beyond April 7 and the Ducks will be left to contemplate the wonders of the draft lottery.

One successful finish off a two-on-one does not erase about a year of star-crossed misery. At least, for the Kings' Dustin Penner , it represented a start. Penner's goal in the third period against Nashville on Saturday put the Kings ahead for good and ignited a three-goal outburst from them en route to a 4-2 win over the Predators at Staples Center. They have won four straight games and the surge keeps them in the midst of the packed Western Conference race, a battle seemingly changing by the hour.

When: 5 PST. Where: Bridgestone Arena. On the air: TV: FS West; Radio: 1150. Records: Kings 30-23-12, Predators 38-20-7. Record vs. Predators: 1-1. Update: Nashville, again. The Kings were just here on Feb. 27, losing 2-1. This is the first of a four-game trip taking them to Nashville, Columbus, Detroit and Chicago. Kings Coach Darryl Sutter called out linemates Anze Kopitar and winger Dustin Brown on Feb. 20, saying they had been stale together.

When we think of predators, we don't usually think of sea otters, those cute, furry creatures seen in televised nature specials or on visits to aquariums. But that's what they are, situated near the top of the marine food chain, and their story illustrates the conflict between mankind and all top-level predators, as well as the need to expand our view of the financial and environmental benefits these creatures confer. Sea otters once abounded in coastal waters around the North Pacific Coast from Russia to Mexico.

For Ryan Smyth, it was like trying to explain the inexplicable. The best he could do was shrug, shake his head and offer a question of his own. "If it's goaltender interference, that's a penalty, right?" he said. "The guy should be in the box. That's what the rulebook says." But it's not what referee Dean Morton said. As a result, the Kings lost a go-ahead goal on a penalty that the officials said really wasn't a penalty but was called one anyway. And when Nashville scored minutes later on what the Kings said really was a penalty that wasn't called, the Predators skated out of Staples Center with a 3-2 win that left the home team's players with a foul taste in their mouths.

AT NASHVILLE When: 5 PST. Where: Sommet Center. On the air: TV: Channel 56; Radio: 830. Records: Ducks 18-19-7, Predators 26-15-3. Record vs. Predators: 1-1-0. Update: If this trip to Nashville and Chicago seems familiar, well, it is. The Ducks played road games against the same teams last weekend, losing to the Predators, 3-1, and to the Blackhawks, 5-2. Ducks forward Teemu Selanne's return from a broken hand will be a game-day decision.

Between the mid-1930s and the mid-1960s, American movies could be fairly described as squeaky clean. During that time, married couples depicted in films slept in twin beds, and if there was a romantic scene on a bed, one actor had to have a foot firmly on the ground while kissing. Violence, even in war films and films noir, was more implied than illustrated, and language was definitely G-rated. Just to get Rhett Butler to say his famous "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" in 1939's "Gone With the Wind" almost took an act of Congress.

The arrival in California of the lone wolf OR7 serves as both a marker of one of the great successes of the Endangered Species Act and a reminder of how much California has changed since wolves last roamed within its borders, more than 80 years ago. It's been easy to cheer from afar the wolf's return from extinction in the lower 48 states. But OR7's border crossing from southern Oregon on Thursday puts Californians on notice that one day, the reintroduced gray wolf population is expected to at least partly reestablish itself in the state.