Features

 “A DELICATE TRUTH.” Viking. By John le Carre. $28.95.

In “A Delicate Truth,” John le Carre plunges us into Operation Wildlife, a secret anti-terrorist strike being staged in Gibraltar by an odd mix of British Special Forces and American mercenaries.

In 2004, psychic Sylvia Browne went on national television and told Amanda Berry’s mother that her daughter was dead. Now that Berry has turned up alive after 10 years in captivity, Browne is facing calls to stop offering her services to victims’ families and detectives.

Are psychics ever actually useful in missing persons investigations?

No. Academics have repeatedly tested the abilities of psychics to provide any useful information in a crime investigation, and the results are damning. A British study published in 1996, for example, pitted self-proclaimed psychics against undergraduate psychology students. Each participant was handed an item that was involved in a solved crime, such as a scarf or a shoe, and the subjects simply uttered whatever notions popped into their minds. They were also given a list of statements about the crimes, only some of which were true. The psychics were no better than the students at making predictions, and neither group performed better than chance. Those results have been replicated in dozens of studies.

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Green chili strips, chili soup, chili lasagna, chili margaritas and chili-tinis pepper the menus. Chili ristras, chili wreaths, chili earrings, chili trail mix, chili brittle and chili chocolate spice up the markets. There’s even the Chile Pepper Institute, where I learn which pepper recently snatched the “world’s hottest” title from the 1,001,304 SHU (Scoville heat unit) Bhut Jolokia.

Cravings for something spicy are amply satisfied in Las Cruces.

Chili peppers, the fruits of plants from the genus Capsicum, were brought to this part of southern New Mexico in the late 1500s by Spanish colonial expeditions. In Spain, chilies had become a culinary hit after explorers carried them back from the Caribbean. It’s understandable, given their addictive qualities.

On Sundays, Mormon speakers may share stories of supermoms who run marathons, home-school their 10 children, help out at the homeless shelter and sing Bach cantatas -- all while leading daily prayers, scripture study and blogging about it.

Few members, however, will hear about the greatest mom of all: Heavenly Mother.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Tex. -- Replicas of two of Christopher Columbus’ ships, a gift from Spain, are deteriorating while city officials consider what to do with them.

A local group will not refurbish the two on exhibit at the city museum, and the company managing the museum doesn’t want them.

After five years and an estimated $1 billion spent trying to build a single integrated electronic health record (iEHR) system with the Department of Veterans Affairs, defense health officials have been taken off the project, sources confirm.

Wielding the hook was Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel who signaled disappointment with his management team to a House panel this month, saying he halted a solicitation for bids from commercial electronic record designers because “I didn’t think we knew what the hell we were doing.”