Screws

MOST VINES ARE house gobblers, tree consumers, fence wreckers. Turn your back on them and they are out of control. They have been known to completely cover windows, to grow into an attic, to rip off shingles. They can even smother a tree. Undoing their damage is hard and heavy work, extricating them from their victims is a painfully slow process--like untying a thousand knots in a child's shoelaces.

SEATTLE - Federal regulators said Thursday they would not allow Royal Dutch Shell to resume exploratory drilling off the coast of Alaska until the company comes up with a detailed operations program and management plan for operating in the Arctic to head off the mishaps that plagued the company's debut drilling season in 2012. “Shell screwed up in 2012, and we're not going to let them screw up whenever they [resume] … unless they have these systems in place,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said after a new report found that Shell's contractors were repeatedly ill-prepared to meet the demands of operating in the harsh Arctic environment.

An elusive metal screw that worked loose and paralyzed a Bavarian nuclear reactor has defied two weeks of around-the-clock searching and may never be found, a spokesman at the plant said Wednesday. Norbert Eickelpasch said engineers conducting an annual overhaul of the 1,300-megawatt Gundremmingen reactor on the Danube River had discovered that five 15-ounce screws were missing from a water pump in the cooling system.

I'm writing this before Monday night's presidential debate, on the assumption that neither candidate changed the dynamic of the race too dramatically. But what if one did? What if Barack Obama announced in a fit of pique that "America doesn't deserve a president as awesome as me. " Or what if Mitt Romney pulled open a panel in his chest revealing that he is, in fact, an android? And he was made in China! Or the game-changer could be something more plausible. The point is, what if something was said or done that caused large numbers of voters to change their minds?

VALUE IS a relative concept. Just ask the folks at Lehman Brothers. But when it comes to ingredients and kitchen tools that beckon to the enthusiastic home cook, it's important to the bottom line -- in this case, a great meal -- to take a look at what's really worth your hard-earned cash -- and what isn't. We scrutinized our kitchens and the merchandise. Our thumbs-up, thumbs-down verdicts on a couple of dozen popular or hyped cooking items follow. No apologies -- we're opinionated.

Jay Burson, former Ohio State basketball player, had a neck brace removed. Burson had worn the brace, held in place with screws embedded in his skull, since breaking a vertebra in February.

As the son of a carpenter, I have always loved wood. When I spied faded fence boards at a writing studio I once rented, I tore them off their posts. I clad the studio's concrete beam with the lumber, and later I used the boards as an expansive desk topped with glass. After 25 years the planks have found a new incarnation: as a backdrop to a pot rack and a magnetic knife strip. After taking various wall measurements, I began to affix the boards with hardened-head, 3-inch steel screws.

About three inches of snow fell overnight in southern Indiana, slowing cleanup efforts and compounding the misery in areas hard hit by tornadoes in recent days, a state official said Monday morning. The snow creates problems such as hiding nails, screws, boards and other debris on roads, making it a bit more difficult to move in cleanup help, State Police Sgt. Ray Poole, public information officer for the state's joint information center, said in a telephone interview. The cleanup "hasn't come to a complete, screeching halt," Poole said, "but it does hide nails and screws, and we don't want people stepping on them.

To each his own. The thing I like about Tim McCarver and Jack Buck is they're both relaxed and having fun, which is what baseball and the World Series is all about. The things Larry Stewart knocks about McCarver and Buck are what I like about them: Tim says goofy things, Buck screws up. They're real. I can't think of a better team. STEVE FOSTER Los Angeles

A 35-year-old man, whose idea of a joke was to remove the screws from his disabled mother's crutches, was sentenced to death for the Christmas Eve, 1987, murders of a friend and the man's 4-month-old son, in a rampage that also left two other people dead. A witness testified that James Eugene Bigby of Kennedale, Tex., had laughed when the defective crutches caused his mother to fall.

In his new book, "Total Recall," former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger explains why he didn't want to talk to the media when it was discovered that he had fathered a child with the family housekeeper. "I wanted to protect my family's privacy," Schwarzenegger writes, "which remains a priority of mine today. " That being the case, a question comes to mind. If Schwarzenegger wants to protect his family's privacy, what was he doing on "60 Minutes" Sunday night, talking about that affair and admitting to a number of others?

As the son of a carpenter, I have always loved wood. When I spied faded fence boards at a writing studio I once rented, I tore them off their posts. I clad the studio's concrete beam with the lumber, and later I used the boards as an expansive desk topped with glass. After 25 years the planks have found a new incarnation: as a backdrop to a pot rack and a magnetic knife strip. After taking various wall measurements, I began to affix the boards with hardened-head, 3-inch steel screws.

Under tough questioning, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and his top assistant Friday told a blue-ribbon panel investigating deputy abuse that they failed to uncover problems roiling the nation's largest jail system. Baca, however, urged the commission to focus on solutions rather than dwelling on past shortcomings. "We know we screwed up in the past," he told members of the county Citizens' Commission on Jail Violence. "I'm a guy that says let's go forward.... I just need this commission to understand the limits of digging up dirt that doesn't have any water going into it. " Baca's testimony marked the most extensive public questioning he has faced about his management style and knowledge of problems inside the lockups since it was revealed last year that federal authorities were investigating allegations of deputy abuse of inmates.

Under tough questioning, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and his top assistant Friday told a blue-ribbon panel investigating deputy abuse that they failed to uncover problems roiling the nation's largest jail system. Baca, however, urged the commission to focus on solutions rather than dwelling on past shortcomings. "We know we screwed up in the past," Baca told members of the county Citizens' Commission on Jail Violence. "I'm a guy that says let's go forward.... I just need this commission to understand the limits of digging up dirt that doesn't have any water going into it. " Baca's testimony marked the most extensive public questioning he has faced about his management style and knowledge of problems inside the lockups since it was revealed last year that federal authorities were investigating allegations of deputy abuse of inmates.

This much is certain: The parents of a toddler in Camden, N.J., have one clean kid. But police also want to be sure the child is healthy after the boy got stuck in a washing machine -- the result of a father's attempt at good-natured fun gone awry.  Despite the undisputed idiocy of the move, which was captured on a video gone viral, there are no plans to arrest the parents.

About three inches of snow fell overnight in southern Indiana, slowing cleanup efforts and compounding the misery in areas hard hit by tornadoes in recent days, a state official said Monday morning. The snow creates problems such as hiding nails, screws, boards and other debris on roads, making it a bit more difficult to move in cleanup help, State Police Sgt. Ray Poole, public information officer for the state's joint information center, said in a telephone interview. The cleanup "hasn't come to a complete, screeching halt," Poole said, "but it does hide nails and screws, and we don't want people stepping on them.

Re "Looking Past Teenagers' Offenses," Personal Best, Feb. 22. Our volunteer graffiti-removal team donates their nights, weekends and holidays and much time from their families to remove the damage done by many of those that Robert Underhill entertains. While Underhill feeds cupcakes to young miscreants, we miss our dinners to scrub tagging and gang provocation from murals that dozens of good kids gave their weekends to create. Juvenile delinquent status in Los Angeles County is even more protective of offenders than diplomatic immunity.

A sixth-grader suffering from dwarfism will be able to walk and ride a bicycle like other children after operations to lengthen his legs by eight inches, hospital officials said Wednesday. The first stage of lengthening the legs of 13-year-old Juan Garcia "went extremely well," said Dr. Chad Price, a pediatric-orthopedic surgeon at Orlando Regional Medical Center. Price and the Italian surgeon who perfected the technique, Dr.

"Grey's Anatomy" 9 p.m. Jan. 5, ABC Episode: "Suddenly" The premise Dr. Teddy Altman (Kim Raver) is operating on a patient who came to the hospital for spinal fusion surgery but now is having heart problems. It turns out that a screw came loose and traveled to her heart, where it sliced the muscle in several places. Teddy tries to sew the heart back together, but she can't get good access to the mitral valve because of scarring. When a suture falls off, she decides to remove the entire heart from the patient's chest, repair it in a bowl of ice and then sew it back in. Teddy doesn't yet realize that her husband, Henry Burton (Scott Foley)

A delightfully useful and versatile term has been floating around a lot lately: "hot mess. " Usually it refers to a person, often (but not always) a woman, whose behavior is exceedingly self-destructive but who remains exceedingly compelling nonetheless. (Type "hot mess" into Google and names such as Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Charlie Sheen make a strong showing.) On the surface, hot mess is derogatory, not to mention a nifty way of shaming and objectifying someone at the same time.