Threats

Gasoline prices are keeping up their record-setting ways. California drivers paid an average of $4.358 for a gallon of regular gasoline, up 6.6 cents from a week earlier, the Energy Department said Monday. That's a fresh record high for this time of year and is 48.4 cents above the year-earlier price. Nationally, the average rose 7.2 cents to $3.793, also a record for this week, according to Energy Department statistics. A year earlier, the average U.S. price was 27.3 cents lower.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — A South African art gallery that displayed a controversial painting showing the country's president with his genitals exposed announced Tuesday that it was closing its doors temporarily because of threats. The decision came after vandals defaced the artwork earlier in the day. Lara Koseff, spokeswoman for the Goodman Gallery, said there had been numerous threats made against the gallery after its display of "The Spear," by Cape Town artist Brett Murray.

Threatening graffiti found in three men's restrooms led Oakland University to cancel campus classes, sports and cultural activities for two days. The school in Rochester sent out a security alert Saturday after finding one threatening message, and officials said they found similar messages in men's restrooms in two other buildings. The school didn't reveal contents of the threats.

As he sat at the podium, Coach Mike Brown's infectious smile and enthusiasm suddenly evaporated. It had nothing to do with the Lakers' 2-0 deficit to the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference semifinals. It had nothing to do with basketball.

A 15-year-old boy Friday admitted that he posted criminal threats on the website Wikipedia last month that targeted fellow students at Glen A. Wilson High School, officials said. The teen admitted to six counts of making criminal threats, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. A seventh charge was dismissed, Robison said. The teenager was charged in connection with the posting of two threatening messages on the Wikipedia entry for Wilson High on April 16 and 17. In the messages, he threatened to shoot six students and "a good majority" of the school badminton team.

Death threats and a $10,000 bounty offered for a citizen's arrest of George Zimmerman have raised concerns about the threat of "vigilante justice" in the racially charged case. A group identifying itself as the New Black Panther Party is offering $10,000 to anyone who makes a citizen's arrest of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin slaying. The reward, and an earlier spate of death threats, also raise questions about whether law enforcement is taking steps to protect Zimmerman and his family.

David Rothenberg has dreaded this day since kindergarten. The father who doused him with kerosene and set him afire seven years ago is getting out of prison Wednesday. And although Charles Rothenberg has vowed never again to hurt his son, David doesn't buy it. He has practiced self-defense and all the best ways to flee his Orange County home. He knows the fastest routes on his bicycle from his junior high school.

Sen. Robert Krueger (D-Tex.) and his wife, Kathleen, have lived in fear for eight years. They have picked up the phone to hear a former campaign worker screaming obscenities or making death threats. They have heard the man pounding at the family door or endlessly ringing the doorbell. And they have found terrifying notes in their mailbox. The former worker is now in jail for the third time.

Is there anything that could persuade muckraking Tijuana journalist Jesus Blancornelas to lay down his pen? A nearly successful assassination attempt by the Tijuana drug cartel failed to silence him. He waves away the inconvenience of life with 13 army bodyguards as just another bizarre plot twist in his episodic career.

Los Angeles police detectives are interviewing friends and associates of Nicole Brown Simpson and have seized copies of answering-machine tapes from her home in an effort to establish that O.J. Simpson pursued his ex-wife with the vengeance of a stalker and that her murder on June 12 was the final act of that pursuit.

SAN DIEGO -- Bud Black was a member of Mike Scioscia's original coaching staff with the Angels. Three of those coaches ascended to managerial jobs - Black with the San Diego Padres, Joe Maddon with the Tampa Bay Rays and Ron Roenicke with the Milwaukee Brewers. Never in Scioscia's 13 years had one of his coaches left involuntarily - until this week, that is. Hitting instructor Mickey Hatcher , another of Scioscia's original coaches, was fired by General Manager Jerry Dipoto . "Your initial reaction is surprise," Black said.

A New York federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that opponents contend could subject them to indefinite military detention for political activism, news reporting or other 1st Amendment activities. U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan ruled Wednesday in favor of a group of writers and activists who sued President Obama, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and the Defense Department. Obama signed the bill into law Dec. 31. The complaint was filed Jan. 13 by a group including former New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges.

Two Southwest Airlines flights with ties to Orange County and Phoenix were stopped Tuesday night after threats were made to the planes. The first incident began about 7:30 p.m. after Flight 1184 arrived at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix from John Wayne Airport, an FBI spokesman told The Times. The plane was taken to an isolated area of the airport after authorities received an unspecified threat, said Special Agent Manuel Johnson of the FBI's Phoenix division.

Concerned that mobile phone networks are becoming surveillance tools, the American Civil Liberties Union recently asked hundreds of local law enforcement agencies whether they've tracked people's movements through their cellphones. Most of those that responded said they had, usually obtaining the information from mobile phone companies without a warrant. The practice has become so routine, the ACLU found, that phone companies are sending out catalogs of monitoring services with detailed price lists to police agencies.

State regulators found inadequate environmental safeguards at a Coachella Valley soil recycling company blamed for noxious odors that sickened children at a nearby school but said the mountains of contaminated soil do not pose a serious health threat. Western Environmental Inc., which operates a waste facility on the reservation of the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians near Mecca, did not meet California hazardous waste standards "in a number of significant areas," according to a state Department of Toxic Substances Control report released last week.

WASHINGTON - A top U.S. commander is seeking authority to expand clandestine operations against militants and insurgencies around the globe, a sign of shifting Pentagon tactics and priorities after a grueling decade of large-scale wars. Adm. William H. McRaven, a Navy SEAL and commander of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, has developed plans that would provide far-reaching new powers to make special operations units "the force of choice" against "emerging threats" over the next decade, internal Defense Department documents show.

A New York man has been arrested and charged with stalking and threatening pop singer Janet Jackson after he tried to gain entry into her Encino home while claiming that she is his wife, authorities said Wednesday. Frank Jones, 33, was arrested about 10 a.m. Monday as he stood in the driveway of the gated Jackson family compound, said Deputy City Atty. Holly Beckner.

Threats A Novel Amelia Gray Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 281 pp., $14 paper In her bracing debut novel, "Threats," Los Angeles transplant Amelia Gray writes one of the most gorgeously clinical paragraphs about a blackhead you'll likely ever read. The description is somewhere between a David Attenborough nature documentary, soft-core pornography and David Cronenberg's 1986 movie "The Fly. " Here are a few choice lines regarding the blackhead's existence and its extraction by a skilled facialist: "The woman layered the [blackhead]

WASHINGTON - Add cyber-security to the list of tough problems Washington can't agree on how to tackle. A bipartisan bill whose chief sponsors are the chairman and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee has run into trouble, including opposition from leading privacy groups and the White House. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, introduced by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Rep.C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), passed the Republican-controlled House on Thursday night.

WASHINGTON -- The White House's threat to veto the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act is prompting more amendments from its supporters as the bill heads toward a planned House vote on Friday. President Obama's senior advisors will recommend he veto the bill if it passes Congress in its current form, the administration said on Wednesday, pointing out that the bill goes too far in releasing companies from liability if their computer networks are not secure and does not include enough oversight to limit how information gathered by the government can be shared.