PLANTASTIC: The Ahmanson Ranch project proposed for...

PLANTASTIC: The Ahmanson Ranch project proposed for the Simi Hills may be stuck in court, but the American Planning Assn. lauds it as a good example of how to build housing projects. The as-yet-unbuilt, 3,050-home project won the association’s comprehensive planning award. . . . Among the homey features: fiber-optic technology allowing residents to telecommute.

ROAD KILLED: A problematic six-mile stretch of Mulholland Drive between Encino and Woodland Hills will be closed at night and during potential fire periods, the Los Angeles City Council decided Wednesday. . . . One fire official put it simply: “We don’t want people up there” (B1).

EXTREME THRILL: Bob Pereyra’s life is going downhill . . . As the pioneer of street luge racing, Pereyra is among the handful of Valley residents competing in the ESPN Extreme Games, a plethora of thrill-seeking challenges. “This competition is so important,” said Pereyra, above, who hopes to legitimize street luge (C8).

IS EIGHT ENOUGH?: The debate over how soon to send a mother and newborn home from the hospital has been growing since Kaiser Permanente of Los Angeles introduced a voluntary program allowing patient discharge just eight hours after childbirth. . . . Now The Times profiles the first eight hours together for a San Fernando mother and her newborn at Valley Presbyterian Hospital (E1).

VALLEY LAW: Forget about O.J.--the fifth-graders at El Oro Way Elementary in Granada Hills learned their own lesson about the justice system Wednesday. After studying “The Case of the Missing Millionaire,” a fictitious project developed by UC Berkeley, students presented the same evidence in two mock trials. The result: Two juries delivered different verdicts. . . . “It showed them that the performance of law is everything,” said teacher Vicki Woehrle.