How do you fix the state budget? You take away money from two of the most important and already-lacking services in the state: transit and early education programs via voter approved set aside money for those type of projects. Not only that, money for local governments could be taken away too (that means less money to do the dirty work of the city and county such as hospitals). Of course, within his first hour of......

Update: The outcome of this incident has been updated here.On July 4th, about 300 cyclists gathered at the Manhattan Beach Starbucks for a Holiday Ride to the top of Mandeville Canyon Road in Brentwood. The Holiday Ride is a regular event that takes place 5-6 times a year drawing cyclists from all over the greater LA area. Mandeville Canyon, off Sunset Blvd., is a steep and challenging ride and the crowd quickly thinned out......

Last year in May, Edith Isabel Rodriguez died at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. Her death became national headlines because Rodriguez was dying (literally throwing up blood on the floor) in the waiting room as nurses and other hospital staff continued to ignore her as they walked by. Rodriguez's husband, Jose Prado, and another person in the waiting room called 911 explaining that she was in need of help. But dispatchers refused saying she......

Photo by timsamoff via Flickr Thirteen hospitals statewide were fined on Wednesday by the California Department of Public Health. In total, five from the Los Angeles area were cited: Pomona Valley Medical Center, Los Angeles County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance and Los Angeles County Olive View- UCLA Medical Center in LA County and Garden Grove Hospital and Medical Center and St. Joseph Hospital in Orange County, according to wire reports. Reasons varied from......

It all started in the media with Britney Spears. Staff at UCLA Medical snuck an unauthorized look at her medical records which led to the hospital looking into firing thirteen employees, suspending six others and disciplining six physicians. And UCLA admitted to the LA Times this wasn't the first time staff had spied on Spears' records leading to sackings. It happened in 2005 when she gave birth to her son Sean Preston at Santa Monica-UCLA......

Photo by Tom Andrews via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr 45-year-old murder suspect Hovik "John" Mankyan, who engaged police in a lengthy standoff on Good Friday in Palmdale, is reportedly "clinging to life" in the hospital. Mankyan, who is wanted for a 2004 North Hollywood homicide "ingested poison and severed arteries" prior to surrendering. Honors on Ice: The Anaheim Ducks will honor SWAT officer Randal Simmons, who died in the line of duty,......

Photo by [Kwasi B.] via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Just when you thought they had faded into obscurity, Segways are reappearing on the scene. This time they'll be the mode of transport for patrols in LA-area Target stores' parking lots. The company says they like to use them because they add 8 inches of height for the rider, and run on batteries. Some passengers at LAX were evacuated for about two......

Photo by el daverino via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr A Musical Valentine to Santa Monica: Sia just announced a last-minute show (definitely her last before Coachella!) for tomorrow, February 14th at 2PM in Santa Monica at the Starbucks Hear Music Coffeehouse on Third St. Promenade, first come first serve. She kicks off her North American tour the following day, Friday, in San Diego. The 15-year-old boy shot on Tuesday at a......

File this under "oops." After a Saturday morning solo car crash involving a son and mother in Tarzana on Ventura Blvd., fire and police officials failed to notice a woman in the passenger seat under the air bag after removing her son from the driver's seat.The woman, whose identity was not released, had apparently been left in the car at the accident scene in Tarzana even as her son was taken to a hospital, police......

A balcony collapsed last night around 9 p.m. in San Pedro, leaving the eight adults who fell about 8-10 feet in the accident with mild to moderate injuries.No injuries are reported in a small fire that tore through several garages and an apartment building this moring in the Hollywood Hills, according to ABC7. The fire took place at 8054 Fareholm Drive in the Laurel Canyon area, and the cause is as yet unknown. The price......

The Dodgers continued their off season wheeling and dealing, singing Japanese All-Star pitcher Hiroki Kuroda to a three-year deal believed to be worth $36 to $40 million. "This is a huge pickup for the Dodgers," said The Daily News' Tony Jackson, who may have been first to break the news. It's a lot of money, but winning the World Series does not come cheap. Just ask the Rockies. Two teens (age 18 and 19)......

LAPD concluded that no crime was committed in the possible rape being investigated early this morning on USC's University Park Campus. We have no crime," said Los Angeles Police Department Officer April Harding of the Media Relations office. "The woman was interviewed and she admitted she was drinking and passed out. She was not raped." -- Fox The woman, a USC undergrad, was reported as passed out in a basement classroom around 3:30 a.m. by......

There's still time to win Tori Amos tickets -- the concert ends tonight at midnight! To enter the contest, leave a comment telling us what your favorite Tori song is. Get over there and put the damage on! An update on the Sherman Oaks apartment fire that left one person dead: authorities have ID'd the victim as a 63-year-old man who died at the hospital after receiving second- and third-degree burns. There was another......

Angelenos should be empathizing today with their Coloradian brothers and sisters today, who were shocked by the tragic shooting deaths of two staff members at a missionary center in Colorado Springs. There were two mysterious shootings last night in very different parts of the city: The first occurred around 7:40pm in Tujunga, where an unidentified man was gunned down by an assailant in a moving car. The man was found dead of two shotgun......

Photo from Sunday's early morning fire on Dickens St. in Sherman Oaks Early Sunday morning, a fire started in a three-story Sherman Oaks apartment building that took the Los Angeles Fire Department 30 minutes to knockdown. At the scene, all residents were outside, talking amongst each other and hugging before first and second story tenants were allowed to return to their units 90 minutes later. A 40-year-old woman was sent to the hospital for......

Is holiday shopping driving you to drink? Are you feeling stressed, nervous, or sick to your stomach? It's time for an intervention. For one week All Purpose has become The Brand Pharmacy, a cure for all your shopping ailments. The store features tuxedo shirts, leather bow ties, and knits by Filius. CITIZEN:Citizen objects include the black ccPhone and the Shoplifter tote bag. Are silk blindfolds on your holiday shopping list? All Purpose carries lifestyle......

For those of you who might not be familiar with the story, this is a tale of suspicion, revenge, and MySpace gone terribly wrong. In 2006, Lori Drew of Dardenne, Missouri, invented a fake profile on MySpace pretending to be a young boy named "Josh". Her intent was to use "Josh" to romance and keep tabs on her daughter's ex-best-friend, Megan Meier, who Drew believed was harassing her daughter via MySpace. "Josh" also "friended"......

Rodney King, whose videotaped beating by LAPD officers (and their subsequent acquittal) sparked the Los Angeles riots in 1992, was shot late last night, according to San Bernardino police. King was shot in the face and arm with a pellet gun (LA Times) or perhaps a shotgun (KNX, USA Today) while riding his bike home to Rialto. King, the 42-year-old man who gained national fame when his 1991 beating by Los Angeles police was caught......

Besides having the same middle name, Wagstaff, Dick Clark and MF Doom do not have a whole lot in common. This year, however, both will be the main attraction at New Year's Eve festivities. While I lied about MF Doom's middle name being Wagstaff (that really is Clark's middle name), I am not lying when I tell you that the masked man will be headlining the Deep Urban Breaks' New Year's celebration. Just like the......

One of the best known personalities in tv advertising, Dick Wilson, better known as Mr. Whipple died today in the Valley, he was 91. The iconic character actor made over 500 commercials where he'd try to protect the precious tp from being felt up and smelled, while at the same time falling for its charms. Says the AP: The man famous as TV's "Mr. Whipple" died of natural causes at the Motion Picture &......

Amy Winehouse got booed offstage during the opening of her new tour after ranting about her husband's incarceration - BBC Britney Spears runs over another photographer last night while leaving The Four Seasons - TMZ Rumer Willis has been named "Miss Golden Globe" by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association - Defamer Little Zahara's family wants her back in Africa! They are claiming that Angelina Jolie's adoption paperwork is wrong - Digital Spy Dave Letterman opens......

If you saw last night's Dallas - Philly game during "Football Night in America" you saw NBC dim the studio lights of the Costas set because it would allegedly save enough electricity to power the homes of 1,000 American households for a year or some nonsense. If only they would do us all a favor and cut Costas' mic. Some of us would live in the dark for a week if such a deal......

Injured Lamar Odom, who has been a huge disappointment to the Lakers, totaled his Mercedes Benz in Hawthorne yesterday, t-boning a woman in a Geo Prism who had to be removed via the jaws-of-life. The small forward sustained a concussion from the accident but was healthy enough to watch the Lakers lose to the Rockets last night. Odom, who is inactive for the Lakers because of left shoulder surgery in the offseason, was on......

Last weekend we were happy to take part in the Harvest Festival, as part of a year-long 90th Anniversary celebration for the historic San Antonio Winery, a place much loved by LAist. The gracious Riboli family hosted the event, which was held at the winery, which has been in its same location on Lamar Street in East Los Angeles since 1917. There was food provided by the winery's onsite Maddalena restaurant, and wine aplenty......

Good thing the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) put out a Red Flat Alert (move your car if you live in the hills or you could be towed) last night for today -- a major brush fire began this morning around 5:50 a.m. near Tampa Ave and Sesnon Bl (yo, Valley, people, this is Porter Ranch) in Los Angeles County territory according to alerts from the LAFD. In the name of mutual aid, the......

Jessica got rufied and gang-raped. A Harry Potter-loving nerd beat up his sister then killed himself. And a deranged student fired off a semi-automatic weapon into the cafeteria of a high school. Yes, it was a busy day in hell, as told by the cast of Hollywood Hellhouse. But it was all in a day’s work. Created by Maggie Rowe, Hollywood Hellhouse is a spoof of Christian-themed haunted houses that are put on by......

Cornell Greathouse was shot in the throat with a stray bullet from a gangster's gun in 1993 that left him paralyzed. He was dancing at the time. The injury made him a quadriplegic and confined him to a wheelchair. In January of 2005 while he was being arrested by four Pasadena police officers, he was removed from his chair and hung across a concrete wall so he could be searched. Because the quadriplegic are......

There are some people, mostly retirees, who haunt the halls of the downtown LA courthouses, attending trials for entertainment. High-profile trials are mobbed, but the regulars know the secret is to attend the preliminary hearings instead. When the hearings were held for the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, the courtroom was practically empty. I only worked half-days, and I had graduated from taking acid to pills, so I had a lot of patience for just hanging......

Pediatric doctors at the Mattel Children's Hospital rallied against President Bush last week upon hearing that he might actually veto a bill that would invest $35 million in children's health insurance, SCHIP. It was vetoed anyway. This week the UCLA School of Public Health received a $4.25 million grant to research/improve health in low-income families. -- Daily Bruin I guess we could start by, gee...investing in child health insurance for low income families? Football......

Believe it or not but there's not a lot of hiking happening with many of us here at LAist. Sure there's Zach and a few other show-offs, but even they could tell you that if you start lacing up your hiking boots and notice someone stretching with a freaking sword, things will probably not end well. Such was the case yesterday afternoon up in Mt. Baldy when three "friends" got into an argument while......