Survivors

Rose Steward woke up, certain someone else was in her bedroom. She saw a man, a red bandanna over his face and a knife in his hand, illuminated by a street light. She began to shake violently. For the next five hours, the man raped and choked her, twice to the point she lost consciousness. She was certain she would die. She grieved she was too young, only 22, and that her murder would destroy her mother. She struggled against panic and fought with her wits, pretending to like her attacker, cajoling him and sympathizing with him. When he finally left at dawn, she kissed him goodbye - then ran for help.

BENGHAZI, Libya - The U.S. ambassador was missing, his compound was in flames and the safe house where survivors took shelter had come under fire. But the U.S. rescue team had to wait, stymied by the disarray in post-revolutionary Libya. The eight-member American team had rushed here from the Libyan capital, Tripoli, arriving at the airport about 2 a.m. on Sept. 12, hours after the attack on the U.S. mission that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and State Department staffer Sean Smith.

Grieving family members gathered outside the 1950s Chips diner in Hawthorne to remember Filimon Lamas, 33, and his 4-year-old son, who were killed in a weekend rampage in which five members of the Inglewood family were shot by a masked gunman believed to be wearing body armor. Two police departments also announced that they have set up assistance funds for the surviving members. "This here is our way to reach out and give this beautiful family, the recovering wife, the recovering children a start," said Hawthorne Police Chief Robert Fager.

Former King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, an unpredictable and crafty political survivor whose fortunes were entwined with U.S. military involvement in Indochina, died Monday of natural causes in Beijing, where he had undergone medical treatment, Chinese state media reported. He was 89. Sihanouk had various forms of cancer, diabetes and hypertension and had sought medical care in China since 2004, when he abdicated in favor of his son due to old age and health problems. He died two weeks short of his 90th birthday.

Nobody disputes that 85-year-old Lorraine Sullivan steered her Toyota Corolla into oncoming traffic, causing a crash that killed her longtime boyfriend, who was in the front passenger seat. But she is not the one in a Santa Ana courtroom this week facing a wrongful death lawsuit for the 2010 accident. Her doctor is. Dr. Arthur Daigneault, who practices near the retirement community of Laguna Woods Village and caters to the elderly, is being sued by the family of William Powers.

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details. For Dick Cooksley, the nightmares from that most trying and lethal time of his life still linger: slogging through island jungles in the dreaded Bataan Death March, watching as some of his fellow soldiers and friends were beheaded by their Japanese captors. But Cooksley, now 92 and living in Arizona, survived it all - three long years of enemy captivity in seven different camps. This week, nearly seven decades after his release, the retired Army captain received long overdue recognition of his suffering: the Bronze Star Medal.

Five pilot whales are expected to survive after a 22-member whale pod stranded itself at Avalon Beach State Park on Florida's eastern coast this weekend. The sudden, unexplained stranding brought an army of volunteers who tried to keep the whales hydrated and upright Saturday. Residents covered the beached whales with towels and drenched them with buckets of water, ultimately to little avail. “I got down there to snap a few pictures but only took a handful before I threw the camera down and jumped in,” one volunteer, Waldo Waldie, wrote in a Facebook album with photos of the effort.

The day my ex-husband earned a hall pass from rehab to see our children for dinner, I got in my car, drove to the Santa Monica bluffs and screamed and wailed and cried and pounded my fists on my dashboard. Then I went home and made Sloppy Joes and corn. The idea for the post-divorce dinner certainly wasn't mine. It was conceived by a family therapist on my ex's residential treatment dream team. At the beginning of our first session, as we avoided each other's rage-filled eyes and sat as far away as possible (I would've preferred video conferencing)

Erin Hunter, author of the best-selling fantasy cat clan series "Warriors," is going canine with a six-book companion series about dogs. "Survivors," launched last week, follows a lone dog whose circumstances force him to join a pack. Like "Warriors," "Survivors" will be penned by a team of authors who write under the name Erin Hunter. We caught up with Gillian Philip - the Erin Hunter who wrote the series kickoff "Survivors: The Empty City. " Why follow a series about cats with another animal fantasy series about dogs?

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have... a"Survivor"contestant? Children of the '80s will remember Lisa Whelchel as Blair Warner, the spoiled blond who drove her roommates crazy for nine seasons on “Facts of Life.” In recent  years, the former sitcom star has garnered headlines as the result of her, shall we say, creative approach to child discipline , but now Whelchel's back in the news for a surprising...