Now in a water drought, Los Angeles County is planning to spend close to a million dollars on scientific magic that supposedly creates rain. It's called cloud seeding: Cloud seeding is the process of spreading either dry ice (or more commonly, silver iodide aerosols) into the upper part of clouds to try to stimulate the precipitation process and form rain. Since most rainfall starts through the growth of ice crystals from super-cooled cloud droplets (droplets......

Left: Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas, Right: City Councilman Benard Parks | Photos from their respective websites Yesterday's most contentious race was that for the seat for the 2nd District on the County Board of Supervisors. Considered a highly-paid and powerful lifetime position once you're seated, the race between California State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas and LA City Councilman (former LAPD Chief), Bernard Parks was extremely heated. With a mostly South LA constituency, no candidate took the......

The June 3 election had a meager turnout compared to February 5th's Super Tuesday primary and the expected numbers for the upcoming November presidential contest. Statewide, there are 16,123,787 registered voters and only 3,583,827 people, or 22.2%, came out to the polls in California, where the population was last estimated at 36,457,549 by the US Census Bureau. Locally, Los Angeles County had a lower turnout percentage -- 16.48%. 663,625 ballots were casted out of a......

Click here to play with this map! Holy! See all that blue? Most likely, your street has been caught on camera. After this past summer when Google initially released a very limited Street View function in Los Angeles, a vast improvement in coverage all over Los Angeles and Orange counties was recently released. Now, did they get your street this time?......

Who looks and studies the sample ballot? We all know how to vote, right? Well, after Super Tuesday's "double bubble" controversy (which was thankfully solved for the most part), it might be good to brush up on those bubble filling skills. And LAist Featured Photos contributor coffeextv found this statement upon looking through the sample ballot: "Shall Los Angeles County be declared the sun and leisure capitol of the world?" The photo is titled......

In the past, there have been government created top ten lists for Los Angeles's worst gangs and Santa Monica's most vulnerable homeless. Now, the Los Angeles County's Child Support Services Department has begun a program starting today that will put western style wanted posters around the county. These ten men are supposedly the worst offenders, owing over $2-million collectively in unpaid child support to a total of 17 children. The list is part of a......

UPDATE!!! The event has moved to in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater. Check Facebook for updated details.Coming on the heels of the announcement for Los Angeles' participation in World Pillow Fight Day scheduled for Saturday March 22 downtown, there's yet another spectacle of an event planned for the night before at Hollywood and Highland, sans bouncers and lines to wait in (h/t again to Bored-LA). According to the Facebook page, at 10:00 p.m. on Friday......

Not that we did not know already, but now it is official: Mike Huckabee announced shortly before 6:30 p.m. PST that he is dropping out of the race. The presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain is expected to hold his victory speech later tonight in Dallas (UPDATE: McCain began his victory speech at 6:48 p.m. PST -- "Stand up and fight for America, the contest begins tonight" MSNBC live on air reports that his teleprompter failed......

Today the small town of Montrose, known first as "Glendale's first suburb," hits the big 9-5, and the Founders Day Celebration is expected to be a big draw. Founders Day festivities will include awards presented to community members for service, a nine-tier birthday cake, historic photos on display, and "the ringing of the bell from the last of the Glendale & Montrose Railway Cars." The event is scheduled to run from 9 a.m. to 2......

The Daily Breeze has the low-down on the latest from Super Tuesday's ugly non-partisan voting mishap where nearly 50,000 votes went uncounted because of a tricky "double bubble" on ballots. Los Angeles County registrar Dean Logan has announced more than 50% of uncounted votes will be counted. Here are the technical details: The omission of the additional mark did not affect ballots cast purely for state propositions. Of the estimated 200,000 nonpartisan voters, 50 percent......

When police arrived last night to a call, the suspect was standing in the middle of the street holding a handgun. Luckily, no struggle occurred. Unfortunately, moments before it was not so good:Two women and a 4-year-old girl were killed and two other children were wounded in a shooting Monday night in a Baldwin Park neighborhood, police said. The slayings occurred after a man argued with his mother and then shot her with a handgun,......

You can't block a sidewalk, it's a public right-of-way, and in West Hollywood doing so can get you arrested as TMZ reports:By our count, six camerapeople were busted last night; two outside the salon where Brit was getting her hair done and four outside Villa nightclub where Lindsay was partying. Two TMZ photogs were among those busted. [...] One TMZ photog says he had just stepped off the sidewalk when he was cuffed and thrown......

One year ago, Los Angeles County received the distinction of being number one in the nation for the amount of medical marijuana dispensaries in the country, with close to 50 in operation. Recently, picking up your prescribed pot got theoretically easier with the launching of the world's first marijuana vending machines here in the City of Angels, which is causing international waves from objectors who cast doubt on the therapeutic validity of the Schedule 1......

Score one for the passengers: budget airline carrier JetBlue is announcing that they will begin service between LAX and airports in New York and Boston this May. They also have plans to increase service from their Burbank and Long Beach locations, meaning more flights for consumers to choose from, which will increase competition with other carriers (like Southwest) and thereby lower airfares. They'll now be flying to JFK Int'l three times a day, and......

An Op-Ed follow up to this morning's news... Via The LA Times, it seems all is not well with LA's super Tuesday results: Across Los Angeles County, many nonpartisan voters who cast ballots in the Democratic primary have learned to their dismay that their votes in the presidential contest did not matter. ... {California Democratic Party spokesman} had harsh words for L.A. County's voting system. "It's a terrible ballot design," he said. "It requires the......

Both the Democrat and American Independent parties held open primaries on Super Tuesday. Voters who declined to state an affiliation were handed a "nonpartisan" ballot and were allowed to select a presidential candidate in either of the open primaries. The Los Angeles Times is reporting today that a large number of those voters in LA County may have failed to mark a special bubble on their ballots which could mean their votes won't be counted:......

On Tuesday, 3,878,340 Californian's went to the polls. More than 42% voted for Barack Obama and 52% supported Hillary Clinton, who carried the state on the back of Los Angeles County and much of the California interior, including the heavily Latino communities of San Joaquin and Fresno Counties. How did the rest of the state vote? Our exclusive map, broken down by how each candidate fared in each of California's 58 counties. Click on the......

Calling it the "double bubble" where Decline-To-State/Non-Partisan voters had to ink a Democratic bubble at the top of their card in order for their ballot to count, Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo called on the Los Angeles County Registrar and California Secretary of State to review and make sure the intent of everyone's vote counted. "In Los Angeles County alone, 776,000 voters are susceptible to double bubble trouble," Why Tuesday? writes in a......

Video by Zach Behrens/LAist LAist and Video The Vote teamed up to visit Dharma & Greg/Pump Up The Volume actor Mimi Kennedy over at her Van Nuys polling location where she is the poll inspector. She also happens to be the National Chair of the Progressive Democrats of America and sits on the California Election Protection Network. In the video, see the spot you're supposed to check if you are registered as a non-partisan......

In a quite quickly put-together press conference slated for 2:00 p.m. today at the First Street Steps at City Hall, Councilmen Eric Garcetti and Dennis Zine will be reminding voters that if you're nonpartisan or 'decline to state,' you must mark the box at the top of the ballot if you want to vote for an American Independent or Democratic candidate. Unconfirmed field reports are saying that the LA County Registrar is expecting to disqualify......

Photo by tanakawho via Flickr There have been 59 homicides in Los Angeles County so far this 2008. 2007 saw 845 (though, that can change). Of those 845 homicides, LA Times reporter Jill Leovy wrote about every one of them "in a straightforward, comprehensive way" in The Homicide Report, a genius creation that will go down in bloging history. Leovy is pretty much done with the blog while Ruben Vives begins to take over......

"Found on sidewalk near Hope & 8th" Ball-busting: The City of Los Angeles is considering mandating spaying and neutering for all cats and dogs because shelters are overcrowded and so many animals go unadopted. Enforcement is expected to be easygoing, as in if your pet minds its own business you'll stay under the radar, but if your neighbor logs in a complaint about your barking dog and his junk is still ready to make......

The LA River in all its glory. DEBATE WATCHING Now with John Edwards out of the picture, Hillary and Barack only have eyes and one-liners for each other. Watch them duke it out during the Democratic candidates debate tonight with friends and bloggers in the comfort of CineSpace (because really, you don’t want to be anywhere near Hollywood and Highland). RSVP at RSVP@gatherinc.com. Doors open at 4:30 pm // CineSpace // 6356 Hollywood Blvd., Los......

Be careful who you root for. L.A. County Federation of Labor's leader Maria Elena Durazo is taking some heat for her recent endorsement of Barack Obama, and her subsequent decision to take a leave from her post to work on his campaign. Speaking of labor...today was the launch of the Los Angeles County Business Federation, a coalition of local businesses hoping to emulate--and perhaps defend against--the organizational power of unions. The group "so far......

During 1985 in Riverside, huge and unusual footprints were found. The Press-Enterprise newspaper at the time ran an article on the findings claiming that the prints were made by Bigfoot. Five years later near Palm Springs campers were alarmed by a series of terriyfing screams, heavy breathing and the movement of something large outside their tent. In the morning large footprints were discovered leading away from the camp area and into the thicket. Legend......

At 11:13 p.m., the Los Angeles Fire Department alerted of a small helicopter has crashed at the southbound 110 Freeway and Century Blvd. One person was dead on board the fiery crash. Fire officials are describing it as a "small, private type, possibly home made type" aircraft. "The Federal Aviation Administration and California Highway Patrol would investigate the cause of the accident.," reports the LA Times. "The Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County......

We get to call it a "Winter Storm" because it's storming and it's January, and not to overstate the obvious, but it is Winter Storming like nobody's business out there. Although the rain may have tapered off somewhat in the overnight hours, the greater Los Angeles area is bracing for another onslaught of downpours, with more high winds, flood risks, and snow. Snow? What? Huh? Yes, Angelenos, we're talking the little white specs that......

Brace yourselves, Southlanders--there could be tornadoes brewing out there. The National Weather Service in Oxnard has issued a Tornado Warning for southwest Los Angeles County in southwest California, including the cities of Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Topanga until 9:45 p.m. PST. [KABC] Although it's a brief warning, the overall weather picture remains grim here in the greater Los Angeles area. We're under warnings and advisories galore; the flood advisory is still up for Ventura and......

Photo by Fire Monkey Fish via flickr. Forget medical marijuana storefronts, the feds have found a new kind of place to storm into -- museums. Today, four Southern California museums, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena and the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, were raided in an attempt to bust an "alleged illegal smuggling of Southeast Asian......

It was a bloody weekend all across the Southland: after a body was found under the 118 overpass, two separate party shootings with fatal results and two more dead in separate incidents in the O.C., more violence broke out in South L.A. late last night. An adult man and a teenage girl, aged 14, were wounded in a seemingly random shooting attack last night outside of a housing project in South Los Angeles. The......