Qualified

WASHINGTON - Eight senators who have spent weeks trying to write a bipartisan bill to overhaul immigration laws have privately agreed on the most contentious part of the draft - how to offer legal status to the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants. According to aides familiar with the closed-door negotiations, the bill would require illegal immigrants to register with Homeland Security Department authorities, file federal income taxes for their time in America and pay a still-to-be-determined fine.

Apple and Samsung, there's a new challenger. HTC, the Taiwanese phone maker, has come out with a smartphone that can go head to head with the best of them. The HTC One features an attractive all-aluminum case, large 4.7-inch screen and a speedy 1.7-GHz quad-core processor that when put together makes the flagship smartphone worthy of its $200 price tag and a possible replacement for an iPhone or Galaxy S III. And Apple and Samsung defectors are exactly what HTC needs if it wants to stay in the race against its much bigger rivals.

EVERYBODY IN LA JOLLA knew the Brodericks. Daniel T. Broderick III and his wife, Betty, seemed to have a classic society-page marriage. Dan was a celebrity in local legal circles. Armed with degrees from both Harvard Law School and Cornell School of Medicine, the prominent malpractice attorney was aggressive, persuasive and cunning--a $1-million-a-year lawyer at the top of his game.

The stampede of student athletes up Figueroa Street from USC to Los Angeles Trade Tech College nearly two miles away drew curious attention during summer school registration at the downtown community college last June. Among those signing up were three 300-pound Trojans linemen, including one with academic troubles at the university.

PARK CITY, Utah - It was Samantha Berg's dream job: swimming with orcas. But with only a bachelor's degree in animal science from Cornell University and no hands-on experience with whales, the then-22-year-old assumed she was not qualified to perform stunts in a SeaWorld pool with the powerful 8,000-pound animals. Still, she decided to send her résumé to marine parks nationwide in the hopes that she might land a low-level gig and learn more about sea life. To her surprise, she was called in for an audition at SeaWorld's Orlando park, which asked her to prove her physical acumen by diving 25 feet underwater, picking up a weight, returning to the surface, carrying heavy fish buckets and then jumping up on stage even as she was struggling for breath.

The company that owns the Staples Center and the Los Angeles Kings announced late Tuesday it is being put up for sale, sparking a potential billion-dollar bidding war for some of the sports and entertainment world's glitziest properties. The Anschutz Co., run by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, said it is seeking a buyer for its AEG subsidiary, which also has stakes in the L.A. Live entertainment venue in downtown Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Kings professional hockey team and the Los Angeles Galaxy pro soccer team.

Even as federal regulators recently cracked down on loose mortgage lending, they hoped that credit unions and community banks would serve as a haven for marginal borrowers. Such neighborhood institutions know their customers, the theory goes, so they could better judge the risk in lending outside new rules for a so-called qualified mortgage. But smaller lenders are pushing back, saying they'll just scale back their mortgage business instead. They fear that lending at the margins will make them targets for bank regulators and plaintiffs' attorneys in cases of default.

One way or another, it's likely that drag-racing mogul Don Schumacher will be smiling this weekend. Five of the leading contenders to win the championships in drag racing's two premier classes, top fuel and funny car, drive for Schumacher and those titles will be decided this weekend at the Auto Club NHRA Finals in Pomona. It's the season finale for the National Hot Rod Assn.'s Full Throttle Series, in which the top-fuel dragsters and funny cars - dubbed "nitro" cars because they run on nitromethane fuel - reach speeds above 300 mph in 1,000-foot races.

WASHINGTON — It's a mortgage problem that is likely to intensify as home-owning baby boomers by the millions shift into retirement: Although they may have significant financial assets tucked away in retirement accounts, their diminished monthly incomes may not be sufficient to meet some lenders' hyper-strict underwriting rules. Jim Eberle of McLean, Va., found this out the hard way when he applied to refinance his mortgage. After spending much of his career working for banking industry trade associations in Washington, Eberle, 68, decided to take advantage of this spring's unprecedented low interest rates with a 2.89% adjustable-rate 30-year loan offered by a large Midwestern bank.

Should statin drugs be put in the water, or what? More than 13 million Americans are taking these medications to lower their cholesterol and hopefully stave off heart disease -- a job the drugs appear to excel at. Statins can lower "bad" LDL cholesterol by 20% to 60%. Over time, this can lower the risk of having a heart attack by about the same amount. For many years, it was believed that statins worked solely by reducing blood cholesterol, which can build up in sticky plaques in the arteries that supply blood to the heart, potentially blocking blood flow and causing heart attacks.