San Jose Mercury News

Jason Demers became a convert the hard way. In late November, a skate blade sliced into his wrist during a scramble in front of the San Jose Sharks' net during a loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Twelve stitches were required to close the laceration and it was another two weeks before he was back in the lineup, but it could have been much worse. Now the 22-year-old defenseman is one of a handful of Sharks wearing cut-resistant sleeves or socks designed to protect vulnerable areas from one of the most harrowing hazards of the game they play.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Logan Couture has all the right answers. Even though he is just a rookie. The Sharks have known this for a while.

"He's really a complete player," captain Joe Thornton said. "The way he plays offense, the way he skates ". . . and he takes his defense very seriously."

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Last year, Tommie Smith tried to sell his famed gold medal from the 1968 Olympics. Now, it's Lee Evans' turn.

Evans, the San Jose State runner who won gold medals in the 400 meters and the 1,600 relay in Mexico City, said he hopes to raise $250,000 from the sale of both medals to help build a school in Liberia.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- Alert the authorities. The AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro Am is in danger of becoming way too much fun on Sunday.

Bill Murray and his partner might win the whole thing.

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam -- To most Westerners, the idea of paying someone to stick little scoops and tweezers into their ears is downright unnerving. To Vietnamese, it's an art.

Though the procedure may sound like torture, men line up day in and day out to experience this unorthodox probing. It's part of the country's pampering culture and is offered in corner barbershops, the oases where Vietnamese while away hot afternoons with luxurious shampoos, relaxing shaves and facials. But it's the picking that elicits moans of ecstasy.

Many returning Vietnamese-Americans head straight to these barbershops, or "hot tocs," after disembarking from long United and EVA Air flights at Tan Son Nhat International Airport.

NASA's humanlike robot to fly in space

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SAN JOSE, Calif. -- To watch NASA's Robonaut 2 tip its head and gaze down at its open palms as it flexes its fingers and opposable thumbs is to believe there must be a human behind the opaque gold visor on the robot's face. In fact, there are only cameras.

Robonaut 2, which NASA hopes to launch Feb. 3 aboard the space shuttle Discovery on a flight to its permanent home on the International Space Station, will be the first humanoid-like robot to fly in space. Based on technology nurtured in part at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., and built jointly by the space agency and General Motors, the robot has a head, two arms and a humanlike chest and shoulders. It has fingers, thumbs and wrists with enough dexterity to grip a pen and write "hello." It can even dial an iPhone.

Robonaut 2 was built "to bring robots to the next level," said Vytas SunSpiral, a senior robotics researcher at Ames, "to where you could see them working in people's houses, or out in public."

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Deepening his legal troubles, a California police officer now faces federal criminal charges for allegedly supplying confidential information to a member of the Hells Angels to pay off a debt.

In an indictment unsealed on Monday in federal court in San Jose, Clay H. Rojas, a five-year veteran of the Santa Clara police department, is charged in fraud and conspiracy counts with furnishing inside information to William "Billy" Bettencourt, a suspected member of the Hells Angels Santa Cruz chapter. Rojas, the indictment alleges, provided the confidential information, such as criminal and DMV records, to Bettencourt.