Secret

California's legal efforts to end federal oversight of prison mental health care have run into trouble with the U.S. district judge hearing that case a second time. In an order filed Monday, Judge Lawrence Karlton asked California to explain why he should not throw out statements of four of the state's expert witnesses, who contend they found adequate mental health care in the 10 prisons they toured. Lawyers for prisoners contend the experts' testimony was based on secret tours of the state's prisons that were organized in 2011, without notifying plaintiffs or the court.

I know the look. For the last three decades, every year at this time, I get the look. A friend or family member will slowly approach with a piece of wrinkled paper, a chewed-off pencil and a wistful stare. It's always someone who doesn't follow sports. It's often someone who doesn't know whether a basketball is inflated or stuffed. I know the look. I call it Bracket Eyes. "Hey, can you help me with my pool?" It is a question about the NCAA basketball tournament, otherwise known as This Country's Biggest Sports Event for People Who Don't Like Sports.

WASHINGTON - The CIA has stepped up secret contingency planning to protect the United States and its allies as the turmoil expands in Syria, including collecting intelligence on Islamic extremists for the first time for possible lethal drone strikes, according to current and former U.S. officials. President Obama has not authorized drone missile strikes in Syria, however, and none are under consideration. The Counterterrorism Center, which runs the CIA's covert drone killing program in Pakistan and Yemen, recently shifted several targeting officers to improve intelligence collection on militants in Syria who could pose a terrorist threat, the officials said.

In the divided world of American politics, it's not easy to find an issue on which the legal affairs correspondent for the Nation and the former chairman of the American Conservative Union agree. But we've found one: the crucial importance of transparency in government, especially when the president claims the power to kill us without charges or trial, by directing the launching of a remote-control drone. As this is Sunshine Week, a national initiative to promote dialogue about the importance of open government, what better time for the president to make good on his promise to lead the most transparent administration ever and tell us what's up with the drone policy?

Miranda Kerr's car crash had the Victoria's Secret angel sporting a neck brace earlier this week, but the model said Thursday that she is healing. " Thank you all for your love and support. I am on the mend!" she tweeted in tandem with a pink photo with "love" written in black script. Orlando Bloom's wife and her assistant were involved in a car accident Monday on an L.A. freeway when another motorist rear-ended her vehicle. The motorist is said to have been arrested and could be charged with reckless driving.

A group advocating transparency has released audio of Pfc. Bradley Manning reading his 35-page, handwritten statement about why he gave massive troves of secret government documents to the website WikiLeaks. Audio and transcript below. The Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit conglomerate of activists and journalists formed in December , released the audio Tuesday morning. Manning, 25, pleaded guilty in military court Feb. 28 to 10 criminal charges of misusing classified material, including unauthorized possession and willful communication of information from military databases.

BEIJING - For a 25-year-old computer whiz enlisted in a People's Liberation Army hacking unit, life was all about low pay, drudgery and social isolation. Nothing at all like the unkempt hackers of popular imagination, the young man wore a military uniform at work in Shanghai. He lived in a dorm where meals often consisted of instant ramen noodles. The workday ran from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., although hackers were often required to work late into the evening. With no money and little free time, he found solace on the Internet.

A good idea for a ghost story is dead on arrival in "The Condemned," a would-be thriller whose intended horror-tinged chills register as ho-hum hokum. Set in a clunkily haunted house in Puerto Rico, where it's a sure bet that a doctor's long-buried secrets will out, the feature doesn't build foreboding - it telegraphs it, as if in very slow motion. The camera creeps, along with the story of the Puttnams: Ana (Cristina Rodlo) and her dying father (the late Axel Anderson, in a mostly silent role)

Adults (especially parents) often find fault with the teenage brain. But they should admit that it is a powerful learning machine--and that sometimes, the grown-ups wish they could recapture its nimbleness. New research, conducted by researchers at Yale University and published Wednesday in the journal Neuron, homes in on the genetic and chemical mechanics that could make that possible. The new research, says the study's senior author, Dr. Stephen M. Strittmatter, helps point the way to therapies that might allow victims of stroke or spinal cord damage to "set back their brain's clock" to a stage of development that would foster the rapid relearning of lost skills.

Rex Scouten, whose 48-year career in the White House began with the Trumans and ended with the Clintons, and whose duties included helping first families transition to their oversized new home, died Feb. 20 at a hospital near his home in Fairfax, Va. He was 88. The cause was complications from hip surgery, said his daughter Carol Scouten. Scouten started as a Secret Service agent and ended his career as curator of the White House's art and furnishings. Most of his years were spent as chief usher of the White House, primarily managing the 132-room mansion.