Threats

Mailings of a suspicious white powder to 10 Church of Scientology addresses prompted the evacuation of dozens of people and the closure of a major thoroughfare Wednesday as hazmat teams were called to examine the packages. The letters were sent via the Postal Service to Scientology properties in Hollywood, the San Fernando Valley, Santa Monica, Glendale and Tustin.

The leader of Hezbollah told thousands of mourners Thursday that his Shiite Muslim militant organization would strike Israel to avenge the assassination of one of its most elusive top commanders. Israel has denied orchestrating the car bomb attack that killed Imad Mughniyah on Tuesday in Damascus, the Syrian capital.

More than half the students were absent Friday at an Anaheim high school where a cryptic note in the campus newspaper raised fears of a potential violent act. Of the 2,200 students at Savanna High, more than 1,400 failed to show up for classes, district officials said. Absences at the school are usually only a fraction of that, said Pat Karlak, a spokeswoman with the Anaheim Union High School District. "The scare did have an impact," she said. "No doubt about it." Supt.

Charles Madrid has been struggling with anger management issues for years. The 50-year-old radio technician from Pacoima has been known to lose his temper over everything from dirty dishes in the kitchen sink to the war in Iraq. His mother says he's harmless. But after a recent outburst in which he allegedly threatened to kill President Bush, the U.S. Secret Service isn't so sure. Madrid was arrested last week and is being held in a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles.

A campaign of harassment by nationalists has led several cinemas to cancel screenings of an award-winning movie about Yasukuni Shrine, the controversial memorial that venerates Japan's war dead and war criminals alike. Five cinemas in Tokyo and Osaka have dropped plans to show the documentary "Yasukuni" beginning April 12, saying they feared for the safety of staff and patrons if they showed the film by Chinese director Li Ying.

The young assassins prowled Khartoum's streets for hours on New Year's Eve, looking for Westerners on the way home from parties. They stopped a Land Cruiser but released it after seeing two children in the back seat. Another foreigner was let go because he was the "wrong" nationality, said Khartoum state Gov. Abdul Halim Mutaafi. "They wanted Americans or British," he said.

A teenager accused of plotting to bomb his high school is a straight-A student whose parents sought help from mental health experts after he slammed his head into a wall last week, authorities said Monday. Ryan Schallenberger's parents took him to a hospital three days before his Saturday arrest after he made a 4-inch dent in the wallboard, prosecutor Jay Hodge said at a court hearing.

California's capital city may be best known for politics, but it has another claim to fame: It's America's most flood-threatened city not named New Orleans. A recent state report predicts that the right combination of unlucky weather conditions could put some parts of the city under more than 20 feet of water, causing a $25-billion disaster that would cripple state government and ripple through the California economy.

Eight years ago, the prospect of a George W. Bush administration so distressed some famous American liberals that they threatened to move to Canada. Members of that momentary Chicken Little brigade included Alec Baldwin, Barbra Streisand and Eddie Vedder -- none of whom, by all reports, ever budged. Four years later, Robert Redford and a host of other angry Democrats insisted that a second Bush administration would force them over the world's longest undefended border.

In case decapitating their victims and dumping the heads in picnic coolers didn't make the point, the killers left a note. "This is a warning," it said, listing an alphabet soup of Mexican police agencies and the noms de guerre of several well-known drug figures. "You get what you deserve." The message, scrawled on a poster in black ink, accompanied four severed human heads that Mexican authorities recently found on a highway in the northern state of Durango.