Ruse

The Calabasas City Council is flexing its new muscles in the form of an anti-growth agenda, suspending and blocking building permit applications. Calabasas has in its employ a geology professor, Dr. Slosson, who invokes the Weber Report, a study done in the late 1960s by a state geologist with the Division of Mines and Geology who mapped a portion of the Santa Monica Mountains, of which a small part is Calabasas Highlands. Essentially, the Weber Report says that approximately 11,000 years ago a landslide may have occurred there.

The postcard from France was unexpected, its message brief: "Mom, I think we need a geography lesson but not too bad - Linda & John. " Linda Sohus had told her mother she and her husband, John, were going on a two-week trip to Connecticut for an interview John had for a job working with computers. She made plans to see the play "Cats" with her mother when she returned. So when the postcard came in from Paris a few months later, her mother, Susan Mayfield, was confused, she testified Thursday.

The uproariously odd Danish documentary "The Red Chapel" is in essence a prankish charade gone very wrong. Filmmaker Mads Brügger gained rare access to North Korea under the ruse of a cultural exchange, having formed a fake theater troupe with two young Danish Korean comedians, one of whom has a developmental disability. (He refers to himself as a "spastic. ") The Danes do not speak Korean and the Koreans do not speak Danish ? they communicate in English, and the language loophole allows the Danes to talk privately right in front of their ever-watchful hosts, essentially commentating on events as they unfold.

The 22-year-old Palmdale man who created Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend broke his silence for the first time, saying he perpetrated the elaborate hoax to build a relationship with the football star. Ronaiah Tuiasosopo pretended to be Te'o's girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, for months, communicating on the phone and through social media. Tuiasosopo went so far as to disguise his voice to sound like a woman's when he spoke to Te'o on the phone, his attorney, Milton Grimes, said in an interview with The Times.

Hilburn's article is among the most inane that I have ever read in Calendar. Does he truly believe that a popularity poll conducted among the same folks who really care how many buckles Michael Jackson wears will influence millions of English speakers on six continents to change their vocabularies? Or is this just a ruse so that Hilburn could get Bruce Springsteen's name in print on a slow news day? HOWARD WILSON Fullerton

Linda Ricchio, convicted last month in the so-called "Fatal Attraction" killing of her estranged lover, told her probation officer that she is angry at the victim's family because "they're out to condemn me." "I'm not angry in a threatening way," she said. "I'm just upset that they can't look at this objectively. . . . I mean, Ron (Ruse, the victim) had some involvement with this, too. I had to listen to these people say . . . that he and I were never happy." In a letter to Ruse's family, Ricchio wrote: "I am sorry for the heartache, the anguish, for the loss we have all suffered and endured resulting from this unintentional tragedy."

Former Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o, who has kept a low profile following the news that his girlfriend never existed, spoke Friday evening, saying that he was the victim of the hoax, not one of its perpetrators. "I wasn't faking it," he said in an interview with ESPN's Jeremy Schaap. "I wasn't part of this. " Schaap conducted a 2 1/2-hour interview with Te'o at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., where Te'o is preparing for next month's NFL combine. And, Schaap said, the player was adamant he did not participate in the ruse.

Re Joe Loya's cogent remarks in "Rage Behind Bars" (Opinion, June 23): Issues of race and religion have always been at the forefront of our culture. They define us. Like it or not, in their many manifestations they are socially and politically a part of our vernacular and our collective conscience. Unfortunately, today, identifying with one's oppressors has increased the number of bad guys (who were once good guys) exponentially. How easy it has become for society to legitimately perpetuate this ruse and to avoid the very real and more insidious problem of "class."

The city's neon lights vibrated in the polished hood of the black BMW as it cruised up Las Vegas Boulevard. The man in the passenger seat was instantly recognizable. Fans lined the streets, waving, snapping photos, begging Tupac Shakur for his autograph. Cops were everywhere, smiling. The BMW 750 sedan, with rap magnate Marion "Suge" Knight at the wheel, was leading a procession of luxury vehicles past the MGM Grand Hotel and Caesars Palace, on their way to a hot new nightclub.

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

Former Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o, who has kept a low profile following the news that his girlfriend never existed, spoke Friday evening, saying that he was the victim of the hoax, not one of its perpetrators. "I wasn't faking it," he said in an interview with ESPN's Jeremy Schaap. "I wasn't part of this. " Schaap conducted a 2 1/2-hour interview with Te'o at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., where Te'o is preparing for next month's NFL combine. And, Schaap said, the player was adamant he did not participate in the ruse.

There's a father-son handoff of sorts in the sublimely catchy opening dance number for Rohit Shetty's comedy "Bol Bachchan," with legendary Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan singing and dancing with son Abhishek, the film's star. The wink-wink aspect of the movie's title becomes further apparent when the farcical plot kicks in: Abbas Ali (Abhishek), a jobless Muslim fallen on hard times, breaks the lock on a Hindu temple to save a drowning boy but is introduced to the village by a risk-averse buddy as "Abhishek Bachchan" to avoid being identified as Muslim.

Egyptian security forces on Thursday raided the offices of 17 nongovernmental organizations, including three U.S.-based agencies, as part of a crackdown on foreign assistance that has drawn criticism from the West and threatened human rights groups and pro-democracy movements. The move appeared to be part of a strategy to intimidate international organizations. The ruling military council has repeatedly blamed "foreign hands" for exploiting Egypt's political and economic turmoil.

Under intense pressure from Arab states, Syria has signed a pact to pull its armed forces from the streets, release political prisoners and engage with opposition groups after seven months of unrest that has ravaged the strategically situated nation and unsettled the entire region. On the surface, the move appears to be a major concession from an increasingly isolated President Bashar Assad, who has been the target of international condemnation and sanctions. But some of Assad's opponents question whether the agreement signals a true change in attitude to the uprising, or is simply an effort to buy time for his regime.

A phony vaccination campaign orchestrated by the CIA to help find and kill Osama bin Laden is undercutting Western-backed immunization drives against polio and other diseases, and now has the Pakistani doctor involved in the program possibly facing treason charges. A Pakistani government commission investigating the U.S. raid that killed Bin Laden in May recommended late Thursday that treason charges be filed against Dr. Shakeel Afridi, who helped carry out the fake vaccination effort designed to obtain DNA evidence from the Al Qaeda leader's sprawling compound in Abbottabad.

Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for. Using ruse of debt collection There are few things more intimidating than a telephone call from a collection agency. Some scam artists have been using that fear to bully people into giving up their debit card numbers on the telephone, then draining their bank accounts, the Better Business Bureau said in a recent alert. In some instances, the callers have personal information about the target, including actual debts, making the call seem legitimate.

Beverly E. Fisher, who became famous at 17 as Beverly Aadland, the final girlfriend of 50-year-old swashbuckling Hollywood actor Errol Flynn, has died. She was 67. Fisher died Tuesday at Lancaster Community Hospital from complications of diabetes and congestive heart failure, said Ronald Fisher, her husband of 40 years. Beverly Fisher had a torrid two-year affair with Flynn that began when she was 15. The charming, womanizing actor had gained fame in the 1930s but his name had been tarnished in the 1940s, when he was accused of statutory rape and acquitted.

In the parlance of their trade, the Beverly Hills robbers were "professionals." They had staked out the 21-room mansion for weeks, even conducting dress rehearsals during which they crept along the service alley and climbed the 7-foot-high wrought-iron fence--masks, gloves and radios at the ready. They knew there was a staff of two--the butler and his wife--and that, each night, the butler headed toward North Elm Drive to walk the dog, a Belgian Schipperke. This night, Jan.

The uproariously odd Danish documentary "The Red Chapel" is in essence a prankish charade gone very wrong. Filmmaker Mads Brügger gained rare access to North Korea under the ruse of a cultural exchange, having formed a fake theater troupe with two young Danish Korean comedians, one of whom has a developmental disability. (He refers to himself as a "spastic. ") The Danes do not speak Korean and the Koreans do not speak Danish ? they communicate in English, and the language loophole allows the Danes to talk privately right in front of their ever-watchful hosts, essentially commentating on events as they unfold.

Stephanie Lazarus, the Los Angeles police detective charged in the 1986 murder of an ex-boyfriend's wife, admitted to investigators the morning of her arrest that she had confronted the victim on multiple occasions, but denied having a role in the killing, according to the transcript of her interrogation. The interview transcript, which became public during a hearing in Los Angeles County Superior Court, offers a detailed account of how LAPD homicide detectives duped their unsuspecting colleague into talking about the case, and of Lazarus' disbelief and panic as she realized she was the target of the investigation . "You're accusing me of this?