Update: Dec. 7, 1998

SWITCHED AT BIRTH Investigators last month completed a probe into how newborns Callie Conley and Rebecca Chittum, below left and right, were swapped before leaving a Virginia hospital in 1995. The inquiry concluded that no crime was committed, yet the girls' ID bands somehow got misplaced. Hospital records show that at 6 a.m., Callie weighed more than Rebecca. After 8:30 a.m., the results were reversed. That no medical personnel noticed could mean legal trouble for the hospital. Now relatives are fighting over Rebecca, the biological daughter of Paula Johnson. Rebecca's two sets of grandparents were supposed to raise her jointly after the couple who had reared her died in a July car crash. But one set of grandparents now wants sole custody.

TREE HUGGER As of Dec. 10, environmental activist Julia Hill, also known as Butterfly, will have spent a full year perched in the branches of a Northern California redwood dubbed Luna. Butterfly's sit-in, a protest against logging by the Pacific Lumber Co., was reported in our May 11, 1998, issue. Last month the California Department of Forestry suspended Pacific Lumber's timber operating license for repeated violations of the state's forest-practice rules. But since the citation does not prevent Pacific Lumber from hiring outside contractors, Butterfly believes Luna and surrounding trees are still at risk, and she has no plans to come down.

SCOFFLAWS DO BETTER At the beginning of the year, the state of California's ban on smoking in all bars and restaurants went into effect, as reported by Steve Lopez in our Jan. 12, 1998, issue. Since then, barkeeps who have complied say they are suffering financially and complain that bars continuing to allow smoking have been largely unpunished and are profiting nicely. In the first six months of 1998 there have been 408 complaints, but the city of Los Angeles has issued only three citations for smoking violations. Statewide, similarly meager enforcement is reported.