Sisters

Under the bright lights of a hospital room, the sisters sat next to a frightened little girl who barely acknowledged them. She kept her head down, eyes fixed to the floor. Arefa was 6. Much of her face and hands had been singed, and a cloth hid a head wound that had not healed since a fire raged through her family's tent. She'd flown in the day before from Kabul without her parents. Jami Valentine and Staci Freeman watched as the doctor pulled back the sticky cloth. The stench intensified; the wound was severely infected.

Two sisters who successfully sued their 76-year-old mother over allegations that she subjected them to years of physical and sexual abuse during satanic rituals were denied a new trial Friday aimed at winning a monetary judgment. Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert D. Monarch reminded the sisters' attorney that the jury ruled in their favor after the April 12 trial, despite the fact that no monetary damages were awarded. "The jury gave them exactly what they wanted," Monarch said.

Investigators have uncovered a plot to kidnap one of the five sisters who run Italy's Fendi fashion empire, police sources said Wednesday. The plan came to light over the weekend when police found a piece of paper bearing the names of the five Fendi sisters at a kidnap gang's hide-out in the rugged countryside near Rome. Police raided the cave hide-out Saturday, arresting eight suspected gang members and freeing a rich cattle dealer, Gianni Comper, after 110 days of captivity.

Two sisters were sentenced to eight years in federal prison for enslaving several Mexicans and forcing them to beg for money in the U.S. El Paso residents Guadalupe Lozano, 27, and Teresa Lozano, 34, were convicted of involuntary servitude as well as smuggling and extortion, officials said. The defendants had forced numerous Mexicans, including three deaf-mutes, to beg for money and sell trinkets from 1992 to 1998.

Two young Lynwood sisters were electrocuted Wednesday as they sought relief from the summer heat in a bathtub, sheriff's deputies reported. The sisters, 6 and 9, were playing in the bathtub of their home in the 4200 block of Platt Avenue when a blow dryer fell into the water about 4 p.m. Their names were not released. The girls were being cared for by their 13-year-old cousin at the time of the accident and were exposed to electric current for at least four minutes, authorities said.

Three teenage sisters on their way to school were hit by a car driven by an 18-year-old man with a learner's permit Friday in South-Central, police said. One sister suffered a broken leg and a skull fracture and the other two had cuts and bruises. The girls, ages 13, 15 and 16, were crossing Broadway in a marked crosswalk near 67th Street about 7:15 a.m., said Officer Mike Partain, an LAPD spokesman.

Sisters are great to share secrets with, but the one thing the Coert sisters can't keep to themselves is milk. Or so say Erica, Amber and Andrea in the advertisement that won them a first prize in the "Milk It!" contest inviting Rolling Stone magazine readers to send in a photo of themselves with a two-sentence caption describing why they drink milk. Milk it they did--the Ventura sisters' white mustaches came out of a paint can.

Maoist guerrillas hacked to death three sisters whom they accused of helping counterinsurgency forces in a mountain hamlet 370 miles from Lima, police said Friday. Police said Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) rebels dragged the three out of their house Thursday night in the village of Runguyoq in Ayacucho, south of the capital, and, in a brief "people's trial" before the rest of the villagers, sentenced them to death for helping the army.

Re "Nuns' Vow Is a Matter of Survival," Oct. 10: While I do appreciate the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in St. Louis, as one of the 490 sisters of St. Joseph in the Los Angeles Province, I question why The Times would choose to write about our sisters there, when you have the same order here in Los Angeles. As the largest order in the Los Angeles Archdiocese we celebrate our 350 years of ministry in education, health care and social work and face the challenge of how we are to meet the needs of tomorrow.

A compact car carrying three college women home from a party ran a red light early Friday in Northridge and was broadsided by a two-ton delivery van, killing two of the women and critically injuring the third, authorities said. The victims, two of them sisters and roommates, were students at California State University, Northridge. The accident occurred about 3 a.m. as they drove home from a party celebrating the end of final exams and the beginning of Christmas break, police and friends said.