Youth

After Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted and went missing for 18 years, Meghan Dorris, an elementary school classmate, went to college and traveled the world: Egypt, Costa Rica, Spain, Japan, Jordan. Two years ago, Dorris returned home. She remains close to high school friends, attends their weddings and keeps tabs on their growing families. "I just wonder what Jaycee would have done," Dorris, 28, said Sunday as she walked through town, a crisp breeze rustling aspens, sun sparkling on the cerulean lake.

Children and seniors demand many of the same things from their technology: They want it to work right away. They don't want it to do a million things. And they need it to be secure. "Both groups need simple things with less functionality and more protection," said Robin Raskin, a former PC Magazine editor who founded twin conference sessions on technology for the two age groups at this week's Consumer Electronics Show.

Wearing a T-shirt labeled "YouthBuild" and wielding a green-paint-covered roller, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis visited Los Angeles on Monday to kick off United We Serve, President Obama's summer service initiative to create change in U.S. communities through long-term volunteer involvement, creating jobs along the way. "Our hope is our future, and volunteerism is one way of giving back . . .

By the time Josh Brandy graduated from La Canada High School in 2002, he was staying out all night and experimenting with drugs. He grew estranged from his family and started stealing to feed his habit. By the beginning of 2008, Brandy was locked up in jail, facing 14 years in state prison. Less than a year later, the 26-year-old is sober, studying full time at Los Angeles City College and working part time building computers for the music industry.

Sydney Shiotani considers herself an artist. The 8-year-old gripped a brown coloring pencil, her electric green nail polish glistening in the sun, and began etching her very own masterpiece on a white card stock. Huddled over her workstation, she adorned the card with heart-shaped embellishments and finished the piece by drawing an ivy-like border -- featuring petite leaves sketched with a gel pen. "I'm done!" she declared. "Can I do another one?" She did. And beside her Sunday afternoon were dozens of other children doing the same at the multicultural trading cards station -- just one of many workshops and performances that make up the annual Children's Festival of the Arts, a daylong celebration of arts and culture in Hollywood.

It was a seminar that top executives at Sony and Paramount couldn't afford to miss. Forty-six of them -- including Sony Pictures Chairman Michael Lynton, co-Chairman Amy Pascal, Paramount Film Group President John Lesher and marketing teams from around the globe -- crowded around a table recently in one of Sony's conference rooms. The reason: to hear a presentation on Tintin, the 80-year-old comic strip series by Belgian artist Herge about a boy reporter and his loyal dog, Snowy.

Whether it turns out that he died of heart disease, a cocktail of potent prescription drugs or just years of indulgence and excess, one verdict is inescapable: What really killed Michael Jackson was an overdose of showbiz values. Like so many child stars before him, from Judy Garland and Sammy Davis Jr. to Tatum O'Neal and River Phoenix and Lindsay Lohan, Jackson never found himself a home in the real world.

Incensed when a government official hailed the conservative newspaper Kayhan as a paragon of dissent, a 20-year-old who lives in Southern Iran logged on to a popular website. The praise for the state-controlled daily was "the biggest political joke of the year," Ali wrote in a message posted on his profile. "I can't believe what a stupid nation we have and what a stupid president we have and that people are still following him."

A day after reporting his four young children missing, a shrimp fisherman broke down and confessed that he threw them off an 80-foot-high bridge to their deaths, authorities said Wednesday. Lam Luong, 37, was charged with four counts of capital murder, and divers searched the murky waters for the bodies of the youngsters, who ranged in age from 4 months to 3 years.

MySpace says it can't guarantee that the people who sign up for its social networking site aren't underage or sex offenders. But it averted a potential legal battle Monday by agreeing to keep trying. A group of 49 state attorneys general probing safety issues at MySpace and other online social networks signed a deal with the Beverly Hills-based unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.