Wire

Regarding "Full of Fight," (Nov. 29): I myself am not only a backyard wrestler, but me and my stepbrother are in charge of a backyard wrestling federation in Moorpark called CCW, which stands for Chaos Championship Wrestling. We don't use barbed wire; we use pizza pans to hit each other because they bend easier. We rarely use chairs, and we use tables because they break the fall and do not hurt the slightest bit. I also wanted to thank you, because whenever the media does a special or a story on backyard wrestling--even though they are all bagging on us--we just grow in popularity.

E-mail orders from out of town come in all the time at Our Kitchen Is Your Kitchen, a Bellingham, Wash., bakery. So when "Steven Nicole" sent an e-mail order for a $1,500 five-piece wedding cake to be billed to his credit card, co-owners Miykal Gates and Terri Zweber and their staff created the elaborate cake, modeled after a photo their customer e-mailed, complete with silk floral arrays on top. Nicole authorized the bakery to charge his...

In the northwest corner of Fran Siegel's studio, not far from a giant roll of bubble wrap, you'll find a horizontal band of wire netting suspended between a pair of slender metal armatures, several feet above eye level. But for a few scraps of foil and colored film tied to some of the wires, it isn't much to look at. Indeed, under most conditions, there is a good chance that you wouldn't notice it at all. When the sun reaches the right point in the sky, however, angling through a nearby skylight to fall directly across the wires, a twinkling composition of light and shadow springs to life on the wall behind.

Re "Making Sabbath a day at the beach," Oct. 25 Orthodox Jews believe it's wrong to push strollers on Saturdays. But many don't want to live by their own rules, so they create eruv -- rule-free areas that are marked by wire. They can build all the eruvs they want on their own private property, but they have no right to litter public property with miles of wires that endanger birds and ruin views. The right to practice one's religion is limited when it negatively affects other people and the environment.

Besides vampires and Hells Angels, rats may be the most public relations-challenged species of all time. Think about it. What are these pointy-nosed, pointy-tailed creatures good for? Chewing walls and wires, gnawing attic treasures, housing fleas and spreading the plague. So, how surprising to learn the other day that doctors in New York (not the surprising part) have wired rats to obey human commands. No, not to walk into rat traps. The doctors stuck three little wires into rat brains.

Jeanne Cooper Emmy winner starred in 'The Young and the Restless' Jeanne Cooper, 84, the enduring soap opera star who played grande dame Katherine Chancellor for nearly four decades on CBS' "The Young and the Restless," died Wednesday in her sleep, according to the network. Cooper's son, actor Corbin Bernsen, said last month in Twitter messages that she had been suffering from an undisclosed illness. A Los Angeles resident, Cooper joined the daytime serial six months after its March 1973 debut, staking claim to the title of longest-tenured cast member.

A San Fernando Valley doctor and evangelical minister who federal prosecutors said used bogus herbal medications to offer false hope to dozens of people suffering from diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's was found guilty Tuesday of nearly a dozen federal charges. Twenty-eight victims or family members of victims who died while taking the products testified against Christine Daniel, 57, who was found guilty Tuesday on four counts of mail and wire fraud, six counts of tax evasion related to income tax filings as well as one count of witness tampering.

WASHINGTON - Disclosure of a highly classified intelligence operation in Yemen last year compromised an exceedingly rare and valuable espionage achievement: an informant who had earned the trust of hardened terrorists, according to U.S. officials. The operation received new scrutiny this week after the Justice Department disclosed it had obtained telephone records for calls to and from more than 20 lines belonging to the Associated Press news service and its journalists in April and May 2012 in a high-level investigation of the alleged leak of classified information.

Dallas Willard Influential Christian philosopher taught at USC for 47 years Dallas Willard, 77, an influential Christian philosopher who taught at USC for 47 years and chaired the philosophy department in the early 1980s, died Wednesday in Woodland Hills, the university said. He had cancer. In "The Great Omission," "Renovation of the Heart," "The Divine Conspiracy" and other books, Willard wrote about spiritual formation and Christian discipleship for the general reader, often giving practical advice for living a Christian life in a secular world.

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors secretly obtained telephone records from more than 20 lines belonging to the Associated Press and its journalists in an attempt to learn who leaked information on how the CIA thwarted an apparent terrorist plot hatched in Yemen. The Associated Press on Monday called the action a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into news gathering. The government subpoenaed records covering a two-month period in early 2012 from telephones in the wire service's offices in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., as well as the homes and cellphones of at least five reporters and an editor.