News

The Calderon family is a powerful political clan in southeast Los Angeles County.
But the local dynasty is now under scrutiny after FBI raids on the Sacramento office of Democratic state Senator Ron Calderon of Montebello.
Last week Calderon told reporters, “My intention at this point is to do my job I was elected to do, attend my hearings, get my bills passed out of committee …

Last week, the Anaheim City Council rejected a motion that would’ve placed the issue of district voting on the ballot next year.
The issue is currently in the news because the ACLU is trying to force the matter via the courts.
The activists who say Anaheim’s current at-large electoral system is discriminatory toward Latino voters have an unlikely ally: Mayor Tom Tait. He’s a Republican who …

For the last two years, Los Angeles’ Echo Park Lake has been off-limits to the public, surrounded by chain-link fences and “Do Not Enter” signs. In a $45 million restoration project, the lake was closed, drained, scrubbed clean and refilled. That was a response to growing levels of pollution in the lake that violated State of California health standards. The pollution also lead to …

One week has passed since 23-year-old John Zawahri opened fire in Santa Monica, killing five people, starting with his father and brother.
Last night, Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks revealed that Zawahri left behind a farewell note. She summarized some new information in the case, such as how Zawahri had been denied the ability to buy a gun two years ago, and how he …

It’s summer time, and it may get hotter and hotter every year with a stunning snowfall loss in the Southern California mountains. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences released  a report today called Mid- and End-of-Century Snowfall in the Los Angeles Region, predicting that L.A. area mountains may lose a lot of snow.
Due to continual greenhouse gas emissions, …

We all know Los Angeles is one of the most car-centric world cities. But L.A. also has a tiny but growing population of people who choose to commute on their bicycles instead of in their cars.
To encourage that trend, the City of Los Angeles is moving forward with an ambitious plan to create hundreds of miles of new bicycle lanes over the next 30 …

Wallace Neff was a “starchitect.” He designed houses for the wealthiest tycoons and biggest Hollywood stars of the 30′s 40′s and 50′s, including Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland and Groucho Marx.
But Wallace Neff didn’t live in a mansion himself. He lived in a 1,000 square-foot bubble made of concrete. And he believed that this simple dome was one of his greatest architectural achievements. He called …

Two high school seniors each won an $18,000 Chevrolet Sonic for showing up to school on time everyday. Vanessa Umana and Euri Tanaka had perfect attendance. The cars were part of a year-long contest to encourage perfect attendance at Los Angeles Unified schools.
LAUSD has awarded monthly prizes to hundreds of students who never miss a day of school. Rewards donated by local companies included …

Two people were shot in Santa Monica just blocks away from Santa Monica College, which is mourning last week’s mass shooting which killed six people. The shooting took place early Tuesday morning. Details are still sketchy. NBC reports:

Two men in their 20s were taken to a hospital, said Santa Monica Police Sgt. Richard Lewis.Their conditions were unknown.A gunman walked up to the victims in …

Investigators are still piecing together the details of Friday’s deadly shootings in Santa Monica that killed 5 people. Police shot and killed the gunman in the library of Santa Monica College; he died on campus.
The first incident happened at a house north of the college, but culminated at the school. And that fact has led law enforcement to not label what happened on Friday …

The Los Angeles Times this afternoon posted a profile of Margarita Gomez, one of the five victims of Friday’s shooting at Santa Monica College. Gomez, 68, was a familiar face here on campus. She lived across the street and usually visited twice a day to collect recyclables. The Times spoke to Gomez’s son, Rafael Torres:

Although she had worked at a ceramics company for almost …

The San Onofre nuclear power plant has been offline for 16 months, ever since a radiation leak was discovered to be caused by unusual wear on the steam generator tubes.
The plant’s operator, Southern California Edison, has been lobbying the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow the plant to re-open at lower power for a trial period.
But after heavy opposition from activists and lawmakers, So Cal …

While our focus in covering last week’s shooting has been on keeping up with the news, KCRW also happens to be located on Santa Monica College campus, where the rampage ended. This is an account of what happened behind the scenes at the station and how it stayed on-air after being evacuated.
KCRW General Manager Jennifer Ferro was leading a small station tour when a …

Santa Monica College officials announced Sunday that Marcela Franco, 26, died at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. She is the fifth victim to die from the shooting rampage that ended on the school’s campus Friday. Counting the shooter, who has been identified in news reports as 24-year-old John Zawahri, the death toll now stands at 6 dead with several injured.
Franco was shot alongside her …

The Los Angeles Times has a remembrance of Carlos Navarro Franco, 68, who died after being shot Friday in a rampage that left five people dead and culminated in a shootout in the Santa Monica College campus library. From the Times:
For 22 years, Carlos Navarro Franco tended the grounds of Santa Monica College. An immigrant from Mexico, he was proud that his hard work …

Following the deadly shooting that culminated at Santa Monica College, the school is providing counseling services at the Bundy campus 9 a.m. to 6 p.m Sunday; and at the main campus from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday. Additionally, SMC faculty, staff and students are invited to gather today from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Bundy campus, at 3171 S. Bundy Ave., to …

The overall death toll from yesterday’s violence in Santa Monica stands at five, including the suspected gunman. But a sixth person, a woman, is in grave condition at a hospital.
The Los Angeles Times has identified the gunman as John Zawahri, citing five law enforcement sources in Washington and Los Angeles.
The Times reports the gunman was apparently angry over his parents’ divorce and had some …

While many details have surfaced about the shooting rampage that terrorized several blocks of Santa Monica on Friday, detectives continue to struggle with the big unanswered question: Why?
Police officials have repeatedly stressed that they do not consider the violence that ended inside the Santa Monica College Library a “school shooting.” The Santa Monica Police Department had scheduled a press conference for noon today.
UPDATE: A …

 
UPDATE — The Santa Monica Police Department revised an earlier death toll from six victims to four during a Friday night press conference. The sole suspect was fatally shot by the police and a second man detained is no longer believed to be involved.
Two of the victims were found in a burning Santa Monica house — the first of three crime scenes. They are …

If you attended Coachella in April and you mindlessly pogoed so ecstatically to New Order playing the Mojave stage that you lost your 2-pound set of car keys on a ratty Zelda carabiner, well, then you were bound to lose something that night, weren’t you? Luckily for the hundreds of carefree careless concertgoers, the party doesn’t stop after the last band packs up.
Every year, …