Larry Mantle

The Los Angeles City Council, heading into the Martin Luther King holiday weekend, voted to cut $18 million. That's a dent in the $63 million deficit for this year, but there's still a ways to go, as well as a projected $360 million deficit for the coming fiscal year. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spoke with KPCC's Larry Mantle Tuesday about the budget, layoffs and more, providing a state of the city for 2011.

Catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of the world, the Beach Boys sang. It sounds so harmless, but for centuries sailors have told tales of giant waves, 100 feet high or more, coming seemingly from nowhere and swallowing ships.

Daniel Schorr’s friend and broadcast colleague, Roger Mudd, told KPCC’s Larry Mantle that Schorr's work on the Watergate Scandal was the pride of the CBS Washington bureau.

California voters will decide this November whether the state should legalize the growth and sale of marijuana, with profits going to help local municipalities balance their budgets. Supporters say the proposition would allow for better regulation of the drug, while opponents say it would increase usage.

California Senate Democrats responded to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's May Revise on Monday, proposing $4.9 billion in new taxes to close the state's $19.1 billion budget shortfall. Over $2 billion in added revenue would come from delaying corporate tax breaks, while $1.4 billion would come from changes to personal income taxes.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is changing a long-standing policy that allowed 12,000 L.A. students attend schools outside the district.

Last Sunday, February 28th, about 400 “Film Week” listeners attended our yearly Academy Award preview. Not only was the turnout a thrill, but the back-and-forth between our critics was particularly spirited. The show airs Friday at 10:30 a.m. on KPCC.

The Los Angeles city attorney wants police to be able to arrest graffiti taggers for hanging out with one another, regardless of whether they’ve committed a crime.

Firefighters have built a line around almost a quarter of the area the Station Fire has burned, but they still have about 95 miles of fire line to build, mostly at the eastern end of the fire near the San Gabriel Wilderness Area.

Like many popular singers, soul diva Aretha Franklin cultivated her vocal gifts in church. But she told KPCC’s Larry Mantle that it’s taken much of her lifetime to recognize how to maintain her instrument at its best.