Underworld

Underworld Awakening , with Kate Beckinsale back in the role of vampire avenger Selene, awoke to the top spot in the weekend's box-office sweepstakes, with total receipts of $25.4 million in the United States and Canada, according to studio estimates. Beckinsale appeared in the first two installments of the undead franchise, but sat out the third. In Underworld Awakening , the fourth in the series, Beckinsale returns as Selene, newly thawed and cranky after 12 years of cryogenic freezing.

Mob boss Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo once explained to an associate how he was different from former Philadelphia Mafia chief Angelo Bruno. "Bruno was a racketeer," Scarfo said. "I'm a gangster. " The difference is underscored in the Pennsylvania Crime Commission's 1990 report, a 364-page document that tracks the rise and fall of the Scarfo crime family during the 1980s, the mob's most violent decade. Titled Organized Crime in Pennsylvania, a Decade of Change, the book is a veritable "Who's Who in the Underworld," and is expected to replace the commission's 1980 report as a major reference source for law enforcement agencies, academics and the media.

Gruesome dismemberment, death by fire, by machete, by gunshots in the face. International conspiracy and conspiracy theories and theorists. Voodoo herbs. Plots and counterplots. Emeralds. The shooter on the grassy knoll. Hippies, Black Panthers, and the CIA. Castro. Papa Doc. Hip Nixon. Paranoid Hoover. Wacko Howard Hughes. Dead King. Dead Kennedys. And all this is a historical romance, "much less frenetic than previous books. " It is if you believe James Ellroy, the accomplished writer whose novel Blood's a Rover appears this week.

Charles Brown, 34, a city sewer inspector, spends his days crawling in and out of Philadelphia's plumbing. Winifred Lutz, 66, a distinguished sculptor and professor emeritus at Temple University's Tyler School of Art, spends her days creating high-concept art. Adam Levine, 50, an environmental historian, spends his days thinking, writing and consulting on urban watersheds. What on earth do these three people have in common? The ghost creeks of Philadelphia. Brown, Lutz and Levine have all contributed to a project designed to raise awareness and appreciation of the hundreds of waterways that run through the city.

He was the friendly old man who could be seen each day walking his dog around his South Philadelphia neighborhood, leaving his apartment at precisely the same time, getting a newspaper and then crossing East Passyunk Avenue for a cup of coffee. But this old man was no one to fool with. For nearly 50 years, authorities said, Felix Bocchino made his way as a gambler, swindler, drug trafficker, extortionist and long-surviving member of the Philadelphia mob. Yesterday, at age 73, that career ended violently.

An admitted Southwest Philadelphia drug dealer told a federal jury yesterday that he routinely purchased three to five kilograms of cocaine a month from reputed drug kingpin Alton "Ace Capone" Coles from early in 2003 until summer 2005. Desmond Faison said three of those kilograms usually were converted into small doses of crack cocaine sold by a network of dealers working for him around the Paschall Homes in Southwest Philadelphia. The remainder, he said, was resold to dealers from other parts of the city or from New Jersey.

Nicky Scarfo never had to pay for a meal in an Atlantic City restaurant. When the now-imprisoned mob boss stopped at a bar, the drinks were always on the house. Reservations? Forgetaboutit. Those were some of the "perks," say law enforcement and underworld sources, that the diminutive crime boss enjoyed as a result of his control of Local 54 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union in the early 1980s. About $20,000 a month in cash siphoned from the union's coffers was also part of the package, according to federal authorities who took control of the local in 1991 and have since declared it mob-free.

Ask an Italian-American privately about prejudice, and you'll hear about the offhand remarks. I've had people express astonishment that I am the holder of a master's degree from an Ivy League college. I know businessmen who find people assuming that they must be linked to the mob. A woman I know found herself explaining to a date that no, she didn't owe her nice home in the suburbs to underworld connections. Among ourselves, we ask why we allow the stereotype to persist. Now, 30-odd years after "The Godfather," we have to decide how willingly we are going to tolerate "The Sopranos.

An undercover TV journalist reporting on crime and drugs in Rio de Janeiro's shantytowns was tortured and put to death with a sword by a drug lord who runs his territory like a medieval fiefdom, police said yesterday. Tim Lopes, of the Globo television network, was captured June 2 as he tried to infiltrate a dance party in the Vila Cruzeiro shantytown in northern Rio, where gangs sold drugs and staged illicit sex shows. Lopes, 50, was taken to a nearby shantytown, Favela da Grota, where he was shot in the feet, beaten and killed with a Samurai-style sword by drug baron Elias Pereira da Silva, known as Elias Maluco, or Mad Elias, police said.

This week's Feminine Beauty Topic For Women is: Hair Care. In terms of appearance, hair is one of the most important features of a woman's entire body. In a recent survey, the Gallup organization asked 1,500 men what part of a woman they look at first, and they denied that they look at women at all, because their wives were standing right next to them. But they were lying. They definitely look at women, and one of the things they notice is hair. "Yes, that woman probably had hair," they'll say, if questioned.