Celebrity in Los Angeles comes and goes like a fickle wind. But Mike Antonovich's date with a sort of self-proclaimed stardom seems to occur regularly every five years.

The recent re-translation of the ancient--and seemingly gender-biased- -Italian motto that appears on Maryland's state seal is being hailed by feminists and others. But the change is purely symbolic.

You know you're in trouble when you're facing the death penalty and your lawyer would rather go to jail himself than work on your case.

Among the first things you see on entering Kerrville, Texas, are dozens of yellow portable toilets. It's not the kind of pleasant welcome that city officials had planned on when they changed zoning restrictions in 1997. That's when planners decided to zone for a "gateway" into town that would foster tourism with hotels, restaurants and other visitor services.

In many parts of the Northeast, E-ZPass makes it easy for drivers to pay tolls without stopping. But the electronic-payments program hasn't been so easy on the pocketbooks of the governments running it.