Zach Behrens

Graphic by Kaveh Taherian/DigiSocks Design The state reports 69 cases of swine flu, including six from LA County, but it appears they are not importing data from Long Beach, which runs its own citywide health department. The oceanside city reports five cases, totaling 74 cases for California by LAist's count. Cases in surrounding counties are as follows, says the state: Orange: 2 Ventura: 2 San Bernardino: 4 San Diego: 25 Additionally, they say there's...

Oof. Not only did The Onion pull their print editions out of our fair city today, so did the free and cheap drink mavens at MyOpenBar.com. In an e-mail sent out this afternoon, they announced a slow down in operations: "Looking for free booze? Oh. Yeah. About that... We had to fire the entire staff after squandering most of the Myopenbar fortune on Cadillacs and Courvosier. Call it an 'MC Hammer,' call it a...

Agapito Nicolas | via LA Times The same day USC student Adriana Bachan died near campus in a hit-and-run, a 56-year-old man also died in a similar incident across town. Agapito Gaspar Nicolas was hit by an alleged silver Volkswagen Jetta while in a marked crosswalk on Figueroa Street at Avenue 51 in Highland Park. He later died in the hospital While Bachan's death took the media, police and city politicians by storm, Nicolas'...

As predicted by health officials last week, Swine Flu would undoubtedly hit Los Angeles County. That news came Saturday night shortly before the 11 p.m. news hour--it was a total of three then--and today the number was upped to 11 across the county. Five of those cases are in Long Beach. The best advise is not to stress yourself out over this and just make sure you keep healthy. Here are recommendations--you've heard them...

Jared Irmas/City of LA $20.3 million of stimulus money from the federal government will go towards Hire LA, the city's program to place 16- to 24-year-olds in summer and permanent full time jobs around the city. “Hire LA will create over 16,000 jobs for Los Angeles youth and set them on-course toward a steady paycheck and a better life,” Mayor Villaraigosa said in a statement. “Today, Los Angeles becomes the first city in the...

Photo by VeryBadLady via Flickr Break into this Mar Vista man's car and you just might get shot. When three men were burglarizing his car early Sunday morning, he didn't call police, he stuff a pistol in his pants and confronted them. That led to a fight and one of the hamburglars getting shot in the cheek. The 23-year-old is now in the hospital in stable condition and the resident was released after the...

The National Weather Service is predicting a great five-day outlook if you live near the coast: upper 60s and 70s all week long (and weekend, too!). For those inland, it will be in the 70s until Wednesday things move north on the thermometer into the lower 80s until the weekend when the 70s make a return. However, the Valley never gets it so sweet: save for Wednesday and Thursday when temperatures in some ares...

Ask a motorcop why they write tickets to cars disobeying signs and pedestrians walking against the man's hand and you'll hear a lot of them say it's a sign of "arrogance." When justified like that, they have no problem writing hundreds of tickets. Last Friday, StreetsblogLA blogger Damien Newton observed a sting at Western and Wilshire: "I counted two pedestrians who didn't make it across before the red. One of whom was an elderly...

That was a nice shaker. At 6:11 p.m., a 4.4 magnitude earthquake struck in the Santa Monica Mountains, south of Westlake Village and northwest from Malibu. The Los Angeles Fire Department is in "Earthquake Mode as a preventive measure." They have no reports of damage yet. UPDATE: As of 7:05 p.m., the fire department has stepped down from "Earthquake Mode." However, there is now one reported minor injury that occured when an elderly woman,...

Detective Lydia Adams, right, is pissed she has to arrive to Hollywood & Highland while working a South LA murder Did you watch Southland on NBC last night? Only four shows in and it looks like they'll be green lit for season two already. Last night's episode was extremely interesting, literally ripping topics from the headlines just months old: The Rape Kit backlog: The show focused on a backlog of 3,000 rape kits, which...

From last year's march (more photos here) | Photo by Tom Andrews/LAist Although the turnout is expected to me much smaller than in 2005 and 2006, today's marches will bring tens of thousands of people together over the causes they believe in. "Most of the groups agree on the same policy measures -- legalize illegal immigrants, stop work-site and residential raids, and end the separation of families through deportations," the LA Times reported. Traffic...

Photo: jmlawlor As the feds try to acquire a large chunk of Malibu real estate to protect it from development, Pepperdine University has donated 72 acres of pristine Santa Monica Mountains habitat above Pacific Coast Highway to the state. The newly obtained Little Las Flores Canyon will connect to Tuna Canyon Park and will provide a continuos wildlife corridor to Topanga State Park. "It features a deep canyon system formed by Little Las Flores...