Snowball

Even Hank Cousine admits that he's not the sort of fellow you would expect to find suing the Los Angeles Police Department for excessive force. On the other hand, having been labeled as one of the department's 44 "problem" officers by the Christopher Commission several years ago, perhaps he is something of an expert on the topic. "I've never been on this side of the table before," Cousine said in an interview this week, noting the irony in his status as victim and plaintiff.

A snowball fight on the Michigan State University campus involving hundreds of students left at least seven people injured, one of whom was knocked unconscious. The students began hurling snowballs Thursday evening. Authorities reported property damage and injuries ranging from cuts and bruises to an unidentified woman who was knocked unconscious.

Felony assault charges against a Washington State linebacker were dropped after three witnesses testified that he was defending himself when he struck another student during a snowball fight. Whitman County chief deputy prosecutor Ron Shirley moved to dismiss the second-degree assault charges Thursday after testimony indicated that Anthony McClanahan apparently was defending himself during the Jan. 19, 1990, snowball fight.

Viburnum is often called the snowball bush because many of its varieties have pom-poms of white flowers covering the plant when it is in bloom. From a distance, the flowers look like snowballs and are actually clusters of very small flowers. The viburnums offer gardeners an astonishing variety of useful shrubs and occasionally small trees that blend well into almost any landscape. Many are suitable for grouping in shrub beds and borders and many are useful as foundation plantings.

This has been a special week of preparation for the Chargers' special teams, who must contend with Denver's Abominable Snowfan come Sunday afternoon. Through the years, field goals have been missed because of lunging linebackers, blitzing safeties and towering linemen--but never because of a snowball. It happened, of course, on Monday night. A splattering snowball distracted San Francisco holder Matt Cavanaugh and aborted a field-goal attempt of "gimme" distance by Ray Wersching.

Back where they began last week, on the road and in snowy climes, the Clippers make what could be their last stand for the 2002-03 season today against a team with similar hopes and dreams. The Clippers and the Toronto Raptors aren't where they hoped to be at this point in the season, with the Clippers last in the Pacific Division and the Raptors ahead of only the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Central.

Many things baffle me. Such as, how can I hit so many red lights? On my deathbed, I want the final red-versus-green total presented to me, just to see if my suspicions are correct that the reds were wildly disproportionate. It'd make me feel better in my final moments knowing I wasn't paranoid. But even that is a minor vexation compared to the attention given the Iowa caucuses. Not that it's a surprise -- we do this dance every four years.

Trent Klatt and Mikael Renberg scored goals two minutes apart in the third period as the Flyers rallied to tie the Avalanche, 4-4, Saturday night at Denver and extend the season's longest unbeaten streak in the NHL to 16 games. Philadelphia trailed, 4-2, after two periods before coming back and improving to 13-0-3 in the streak.

A rush of U.S. merger activity in the first months of 1988 will shatter records if it keeps up. So far in 1988 more than $32 billion worth of mergers have been completed, according to IDD Information Services. Billions of dollars more have been proposed. For the record year of 1986, there were $220 billion worth of U.S. mergers completed. Experts say that if deals keep entering the pipeline as fast as they have been so far this year, the record will easily be toppled.

Michael Thomas and his five young children had just finished an afternoon of skiing and were driving back down the mountain when the avalanche hit. There was no warning, he said, just a wave of snow that swept their sport-utility vehicle off the road and sent it sliding 100 feet on its side with Thomas, his wife, two teenage resort workers and the children, ages 3 to 10, all strapped inside.