By CYNTHIA HUBERT, Sacramento Bee

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Animal shelters across the nation are overloaded with pit bulls, muscular terriers with a reputation for violence and fighting.

Media reports on pit bull maulings are commonplace.

On the first night he slept indoors in more than 15 years, Jeff Latchaw tossed and turned and fretted.
It was much too quiet. The mattress was too soft. Latchaw got in and out of bed, over and over.

With international attention focused on Sacramento's sprawling tent city of homeless, the city has moved in to close down the camp. But campers are scattering to other sites.
Homeless advocates are demanding a legal homeless tent city with basic services, but police have been instructed to enforce a city ordinance against camping.

Shirley Tan, a petite stay-at-home mother of twins, is wearing pink slippers on her feet and a black electronic bracelet around her left ankle.
"I feel like a criminal," said Tan, sitting on the sofa of the ocean-view home she shares with her longtime partner, Jaylynn Mercado, their 12-year-old sons and Mercado's mother, Renee.

Time is growing short for the California boy who "sees" with sound.
Ben Underwood, the blind teenager who has dazzled people all over the world with his ability to navigate using a tongue-clicking skill called echolocation, is getting weaker day by day.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- When teenagers or younger adults take their own lives, the losses trigger society's alarm bells. But it is older people, particularly men 65 and older, who have the highest rate of suicide of any age group.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Doris Wogec is standing inside Mercy San Juan Medical Center's maternity unit, gazing at one of her star pupils."This baby knows just what to do," she says, referring to tiny Alyssa Bracamonte, whose mother, Tammie, is feeding the bundled newborn. "She would be great in a video."

No one wants to raise the white flag of personal bankruptcy, California lawyer John Roberts insists.For the young and strong, wiping out suffocating debt can offer a fresh start, but for seniors on fixed incomes, it can signal a lower standard of living.

Cathy Liu wore her trademark smile last month as she watched her former colleagues celebrate."I was proud of them," she says of the young doctors in training who graduated to the next level of medical residency at the University of California, Davis."I wanted to be there. I felt happy."But deep inside, Liu admits, she also felt a twinge of sadness.

OMG! The shortcuts and symbols that teen-agers use in electronic conversations are creeping into their schoolwork!That's one of the conclusions of a study released this week by the Pew Internet and American Life Project and the National Commission on Writing. It's no surprise to teens.