Shepard Fairey, Echo Park's most (in)famous street artist, pleaded guilty today to criminal contempt in the fair use case he filed against the Associated Press back in 2009. The news agency countersued and accused him of violating copyright protections when he used one of their photographer's work in his iconic Barack Obama "HOPE" poster. more ›

Results are in for the December 2010 "Economic Stress Index" and things are downright pewter in the Golden State. The Associated Press index ranks counties with populations of 25,000 or more and calculates a score from 1 to 100 based on "unemployment, foreclosure and bankruptcy," reports CBS Local. Among the nation's 20 Most Economically Stressed counties, 15 of them are in California. more ›

Los Angeles-based artist Shepard Fairey might be left with only his "hope" when it comes to the suit and counter-suit battles being waged in court right now regarding his iconic adaptation of a photograph of Barack Obama for use in his 2008 Presidential campaign. more ›

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As reports and tweets comes out of of SXSW in Austin, TX where BusinessWeek's Sarah Lacy reportedly held a disastrous interview with 23-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, news of the popular social networking site with more of a national and local business twist hit the wires: Paramount will offer movie clips via a Facebook application, a first for the movie industry. more ›

After a 5-month investigation, the Associated Press found that Los Angeles drinking water has traces of Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications. "To be sure," the AP noted "the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose." more ›

• Remember when we told you that Los Angeles tap water was the best tasting in the world? Turns out that our delicious H20 might have been sprinkled with delicious drugs. The AP found that a multitude of pharmaceuticals, like antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones, have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans including water in Southern California. Little Johnny has taken such a liking to water these days, I wonder what's gotten into him.
• On Friday, Newport Beach police were baffled when they found a fully clothed woman dead and packed in dry ice in an upscale hotel room near John Wayne Airport. The room was rented from known Cocaine dealer and the woman, whose body was well preserved, was apparently wanted on drug charges in Colorado.
• Before she was ousted for saying Hillary Clinton was a "monster" for some of the "underhanded" tactics used to defeat Barack Obama in the Ohio Primary, foreign policy adviser Samantha Powers took a few questions at LA City Beat. Nowhere in the interview does she disparage Clinton, but she does offer some pretty enlightening opinions, such as this opus on how to have a dignified foreign policy: "...if we could just sort of remember that there are individuals at stake, that the “human” in human rights is not an abstraction." On second thought, I'm glad she resigned. We can't have those sorts of hippie, drugged out commie type of relations with the world. It would be un-American!
• In other political news, a Democrat won a special election to fill a congressional seat left vacant in Illinois by outgoing Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert. Bill Foster claimed the seat partly on the strength of Obama, who campaigned for him. Obama supporters claimed this was a signal of things to come in what many observers said was a national referendum as John McCain campaigned for the Republican.
• An off-duty cop in Temecula allegedly shot 2 and killed 1 person over some sort of melee at a Mexican restaurant in Riverside. Guns don't kill people, crazy ass people with anger management problems do.
• A 21-year-old member of the San Fernando Valley Illegal Soapbox Federation died this morning when his adorable little vehicle collided with a light pole in Tarzana. Thing is, it may not have been so adorable. The motto of the local soapbox federation is, "Action, Mayhem, Destruction, Bodily Harm...All For Free". I'm sorry, it seems pretty tough to macho yourself out when riding in a little cart made for 6-year-olds.
• Andy LaRoche got some bad news this weekend. The Dodger third baseman who was expected to share time with Nomar Garciaparra at the hot corner this season is out 8-10 weeks with a ligament tear in his thumb after getting hit trying to catch an attempted pickoff at third during a pre-season game Friday against the St. Louis Cardinals. Learn this name kids: Blake Dewitt. He's been tearing up Spring Training pitching and flashing some great leather. He could get some time at third in LaRoche's absence.

Say you're going to kill the President and the feds will see you in court a week later. That's what happened to a 50-year-old Pacoima man last week before getting arrested, according to the Daily News. Charles Madrid told the Secret Service what he would do if Bush were present right at that moment: "I'd deck his ass." more ›

A Fontana man was robbed at gunpoint Sunday night, according to The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. The suspect escaped with a bag of tacos. more ›

Chung, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was indicted last week on espionage, conspiracy and obstructing justices charges that were unsealed today. He has been the subject of an FBI investigation for nearly a year as part of an inquiry into another Chinese-born engineer convicted in 2007 of stealing military data for the Chinese government. [AP via KNX1070]The other person arrested today in a separate case is a Defense Department analyst based in Alexandria, Virginia. A more detailed Associated Press report is over at the LA Times. more ›

Via L.A. Land, the Associated Press is bringing us the latest chapter in the uplifting Horatio Alger story of CountryWide Financial Corp's Angelo Mozilo: more ›

Hersheys announced Thursday that it will stop production of Ice Breakers Pacs in response to complaints by law enforcement that the nickel-sized bags resemble drug packets. Associated Press writer Peter Jackson reports on Hershey CEO David West's announcement: more ›

As the results of today's caucuses--including one being held at Caesar's Palace--in Nevada continue to stream in, most are projecting Senator Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney the winners of the Democratic and Republican races, respectively. more ›

Read the "sassy" version of this story here. more ›

How much Britney coverage is too much? Whatever it is, it's not enough. In an e-mail memo, obtained by Gawker, sent this morning from Frank Baker, Assistant Bureau Chief, Los Angeles, he tells staff that "virtually everything involving Britney is a big deal." more ›

If you still wondering how the process looks and why it feels different from the primaries that the rest of the country partake in, watch this video after the jump from Why Tuesday to help fill in those missing pieces. more ›

Article by Adam Rose and Ryan Jesena. more ›

UCLA hires Rick Neuheisel to become their football coach. more ›

The LA Times is reporting that the authorities have named 5 men as suspects in the arson case of the brush fires that tore through Malibu and burned over 50 homes beginning on November 24.

The suspects were identified by sheriff's officials as Brian Allen Anderson, 22, William Thomas Coppock, 23, and Brian David Franks, 27, all of Los Angeles, and Eric Matthew Ullman, 18, and Dean Allen Lavorante, 19, both of Culver City, authorities said. Anderson, Coppock and Franks had been booked and were in custody as of late Thursday, according to the sheriff's inmate information website.

Former major leaguer Mark Littel doesn't have balls of steel, but he's got a product that would convince you otherwise. Watch as he takes a direct hit in his, um, strike zone from a pitching machine. On purpose. Without flinching. Littel is promoting the Nutty Buddy as the best athletic cup known to man. He's sunk $40,000 of his own money into the project (designed with the help of a couple golf balls and... more ›

Pour a lil cough medicine on the floor for this dead homie: paramedics were called to the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in response to a 911 call this morning, where they found rapper Pimp C, also known as Chad Butler, dead of mysterious causes. The artist had just performed a show at the House of Blues with Too $hort a few days ago. From the Los Angeles Times: "The hotel released the following... more ›

The local tv news is doing something interesting today, they're really hyping their user- viewer-generated photographs during their broadcasts. more ›

Happy Halloween Britney! Her pink leopard print leotard is amazing. Exactly what I would be doing after I lost custody of my kids- partying at Heidi Klum's Halloween party - Daily News more ›

There are 14,000 firefighters our there right now helping protecting us. 3,000 of them are prison inmates who began working the front lines yesterday.A spokesman for the corrections department says it's close to the most the state has ever used. The inmates go through a four-week training program. They must be physically fit, have no history of violent crime and have between four months to three years remaining on their sentences. They're paid $1... more ›

Some Trekkies are having heart palpitations over this: William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk, will not be in the 2008 release of Star Trek. While Leonard Nimoy gets to play the resurrection of his character, Spock, there is no place for Shatner and the cocky and horny Boston Legal character is disappointed, he told the Associated Press: 'I couldn't believe it. I'm not in the movie at all. Leonard, God bless his heart, is in, but not me. 'I thought, what a decision to make, since it obviously is a decision not to make use of the popularity I have to ensure the movie has good box office. It didn't seem to be a wise business decision.'' more ›

The Associated Press busted a big story today. In order to see if Comcast was indeed interfering with filesharing, the AP tested a big file on the Internet via the popular filesharing software BitTorrent, a digital copy of the most famous text in the world - the Holy Bible. more ›

The fallout from Appalachian State’s upset over Michigan extended beyond Michigan falling out of the Associated Press Top 25 poll. The AP announced on Thursday that lower division schools are now eligible to be included in the poll. It’s great that the Championship Subdivision (aka Division I-AA) has a chance of being ranked alongside the big boys. While I highly doubt that a team even as accomplished as Appalachian State will crack the Top... more ›

Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, who was arrested in June for soliciting gay sex in a Minnesota bathroom, announced on Saturday that he would resign his senate seat on Sept. 30. more ›

One of our favorite summer tv shows is CBS's "Big Brother", a reality show where they put a bunch of people together in a house and make them live together in the valley and vote each other out until there's just one winner. Cameras are everywhere, and almost every move is documented 24/7 and broadcast via the Internet. CBS broadcasts edited versions of the progress twice a week, and Showtime airs live footage from... more ›

Even with their lead singer and co-founding member Paul Stanley flat on his back with doctors temporarily stopping his heart to rectify a ticker pulsing at 190+ beats-per-minute, rock group KISS went on with the show Friday in San Jacinto. Performing as a trio for the first time ever in their storied 33-year career, Gene Simmons led Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer through more than a dozen classic Kiss tunes at the Soboba Casino... more ›