Wolf

A stream of highly charged particles from the sun is headed straight toward Earth, threatening to plunge cities around the world into darkness and bring the global economy screeching to a halt. This isn't the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before - and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Much of the planet's electronic equipment, as well as orbiting satellites, have been built to withstand these periodic geomagnetic storms.

NBC evidently believes laughter is the best medicine: The struggling network will have a strong dose of comedy on four nights in its fall lineup plus the Season 3 return of"The Voice. " Keeping its Thursday sitcom block essentially intact with existing series, NBC will push the low-rated comedies"Community"and"Whitney"to Fridays and open up Tuesdays and Wednesdays for new sitcoms such as "Go On," "Animal Practice" and "Guys With Kids. " Nearly one-quarter of NBC's fall prime-time schedule will consist of sitcoms; last fall, the figure was just 14%. Also on the schedule: the Monday one-hour series "Revolution," the new sci-fi drama from producer J.J. Abrams, and, for Wednesday, "Chicago Fire," from "Law & Order" mastermind Dick Wolf.

Hunters were combing the snowy brush around Chignik Lake, Alaska, on Friday in an attempt to hunt down up to four wolves that killed a 32-year-old special education teacher in the first known fatal wolf attack in the U.S. in modern times. But the wolves were elusive, and villagers were hoping that state game officials would send in a helicopter to help track the animals, Village Council President Johnny Lind said. "They've been looking and scouting around, and the wolves are definitely still around, but they're smart, and they take off before you can get close to them," Lind said.

Digby Wolfe, an Emmy Award-winning comedy writer who helped producer George Schlatter develop "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In," a landmark TV series that became an overnight sensation in the late 1960s, has died. He was 82. Wolfe, who later became a professor of writing at the University of New Mexico, died of lung cancer Wednesday at his home in Albuquerque, said his wife, Patricia Mannion-Wolfe. The British-born Wolfe - an actor, writer, singer and comedian whose early career included writing for the BBC's satirical "That Was the Week That Was" and hosting an Australian TV variety show - moved to Los Angeles in the mid-'60s.

Randy Wolf said an offer from the Dodgers might have given him pause. But the offer never came, not even in the form of a proposal for arbitration. So on Wednesday, Wolf agreed to the terms of a three-year, $29.75-million deal with the Milwaukee Brewers that includes an option for a fourth year. "I have sentimental ties to L.A., obviously," said Wolf, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley and took a hometown discount to pitch for the Dodgers in 2007. "It made the decision a lot easier because the Dodgers weren't involved."

Re "Predator becomes prey in Wyoming," Sept. 28 I am appalled by "hunters" riding on snowmobiles who chase a wolf to utter exhaustion and then, when the animal can run no farther, put a bullet in its brain. This is neither ethical nor humane. By the way, I am a Montana native and I know what ethical hunting is all about. Janis Hansen Klinger Sherman Oaks

The past of Ricardo Resendez follows him through life like the shadow of a wolf. He feels it behind him most of the day, and at night, the worst time, it crouches at the edge of his memory, red eyes staring through the darkness. "It won't go away," he says in anguish as we talk across a restaurant table, where even the clatter of dishes and forks brings the wolf closer in flashing images. Medication meant to dull his pain works sometimes, and booze will get him through a few hours.

The 1950s gave us the Rat Pack. The ‘80s, the Brat Pack. These days, the Wolf Pack is roaming the film scene. Although the "Twilight" franchise may have helped spur the vampire craze with the Cullen brood, the saga's gang of shape-shifters is bringing sexy back to werewolves. And in "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," which hits theaters June 30, that's no different. "The Cullens are very reserved," said Alex Meraz, who plays Wolf Pack member Paul. "They're vampires, but they're not out killing people.

Thank you for including "Farewell, Leader of the Pack" in your Jan. 13 editorial pages. This warm, sensitive tribute to one of our fellow Earth mates has made my day happier. I am not an animal rights activist. I simply appreciate nature and all her creatures that share this beautiful Earth. While saddened by [the wolf] No. 2's defeat in his valiant fight to live, these few paragraphs are a heart-warming testimony to his life. Long may his genes live. Dorothy A. Duplissey Huntington Beach

The Nov. 28 article, "Alaska Starts Aerial Wolf Hunt," left out three crucial points. One, Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski ignored the wishes of 70% of Alaska's voters to protect the wolves from aerial hunts. Two, the hunts are carried out in a cruel way in which the wolves are chased down to the point of exhaustion and collapse, then they are shot at point-blank range. And three, the "effort to boost the moose and caribou population" has nothing to do with protecting these species; it's to ensure a large enough population to appease the hunting lobby, which brings millions of dollars.

Venice Beach resident Karen Wolfe says she will file a police complaint against a community activist and blogger who published on his website her name, address and a photograph of her home as a place where the homeless would be welcome to camp overnight. Mark Ryavec, president of Venice Stakeholders Assn., listed not only Wolfe's name and home address but also those of 10 other activists, journalists and politicians who he said shouldn't mind having the homeless set up tents and sleeping bags outside their doors because they had expressed sympathy for them.

French investigators Thursday were trying to establish whether a gunman killed by police after a 32-hour siege had accomplices still at large or was a lone assassin acting out his own bitter agenda. They also want to determine how Mohamed Merah, 23, amassed an arsenal of weapons while reportedly under surveillance by France's intelligence services after he spent time with Islamic extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Merah, who police say confessed to gunning down seven people in a nine-day rampage and told them he was linked to a fringe Al Qaeda group, died late Thursday morning with a shot to the head after battling the French equivalent of a SWAT team.

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Congress acted legally when it eliminated Endangered Species Act protections for the Northern Rocky Mountain population of gray wolves and opened the door to wolf hunts. The opinion, by a Democrat-appointed panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, found that when Congress last year ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove protection for that distinct wolf population, lawmakers were amending the law and not violating the separation of powers doctrine.

UNDERRATED Anders Parker : The singer-songwriter's mid-'00s solo albums "Tell It to the Dust" and "The Wounded Astronaut" were hidden gems with a mix of dusty Americana and jagged, Crazy Horse guitars. Hopefully, Parker's work on "New Multitudes," a diverse and dusty new collection of unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics with Son Volt's Jay Farrar, Centro-Matic's Will Johnson and My Morning Jacket's Jim James, will bring him closer to the surface. 'Travels to the Edge With Art Wolfe' : In an age where anyone with a phone can live their own Diane Arbus fantasies, there's still no substitute for a professional.

The Wolf Gift A Novel Anne Rice Alfred A. Knopf: 401 pp., $25.95

How's your back feeling? Sore? If you want a deep-tissue massage, forget the spa. What you need is a good bite from a werewolf. As one discovers, in Anne Rice's novel "The Wolf Gift," the shift from human to wolf and back again is like a really sexy shiatsu session: "He felt it … in the millions of hair follicles covering his body. And there was the sharp contraction in his stomach, not painful.... He staggered into the bedroom and fell across the bed. Deep orgasmic spasms ran through the muscles of his thighs and calves, through his back, his arms.

A Bedouin shepherdess stabbed to death a wolf that attacked her, the newspaper Okaz reported Thursday. Okaz said the wolf surprised Umm Rajnan as she was tending her flock near a desert village about 125 miles from the city of Medina. As the wolf began attacking her sheep, Umm Rajnan slipped into her tent and grabbed a large knife, the newspaper said. When the wolf jumped at her, she stabbed it repeatedly until it fell dead at her feet, Okaz said.

Thanks for the nice article on Maurice Sendak ("Facing the Frightful Things," Oct. 11). As the mother of a 3-year-old, I think Mr. Sendak could drop in for dinner and we'd be able to talk like old friends. However, your piece made a critical error regarding Max's journey to "Where the Wild Things Are." Hey, any 3-year-old can tell you, especially right before Halloween, that Max wore his wolf suit, not his pajamas. ABBY HAIGHT ARNOLD Santa Monica

In response to the arrival of Journey, the Oregon wolf that is now roaming northern California's Shasta County, the California Department of Fish and Game has put together a gray wolf Web page . The DFG put up the new page in response to a huge wave of public interest in the wolf, which is known as OR7 because of its origins in Oregon's Imnaha wolf pack. The page is pretty bare-bones at this time, but relays some important information. Along with some fact sheets about how to tell a wolf from a coyote (wolves are almost double the size of a coyote, and have a square-ish face, as opposed to the triangular face of the coyote)

During award season, any role smaller than nomination-size tends to get overlooked. But sometimes those small roles do more than support the lead actors. Sometimes it takes just a few minutes of screen time to shock an audience, to illuminate years of the main character's life or, in some cases, to set the film's third act on its head. Here we talk to three such performers — at various stages in their careers — who all had a powerful effect on the films they inhabited and came away richer for it. ROBERT FORSTER: Scott Thorson, "The Descendants" For a small role that literally packs a punch, look no further than Robert Forster's.