Zach Behrens

In Venice | Photo by youdiejoe via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr Need a career? California is facing a doctor shortage. And add to that this about a communication gap: in L.A. County, "47 percent of the population and only 5 percent of doctors are Latino. Statewide, 18 percent of doctors speak Spanish." Despite a cap placed on the oil well in the Gulf, oil continues to leak. February 6th is now Ronald Reagon...

Photo by CarbonNYC via Flickr A 35-year-old man was shot and killed this morning just feet from the LAPD's Central Division police station early this morning. At around 12:45 a.m., an argument between two men on the 500 block of Maple Street developed before at least one shot was fired, witnesses told police. “There were dozens of people on the street when it happened, and word travels fast in Skid Row," said Lt. Paul...

via Southern California Cougar-Bobcat study State investigators are looking into separate deaths of mountain lions in Southern California, according to the OC Register. A mountain lion being tracked via GPS collar by scientists was shot and killed in Trabuco Canyon on July 3rd. Department of Fish and Game are not releasing any details until the investigation has been completed, but the paper calls the deaths questionable. Another lion was found dead, likely from a...

A 4th/Colorado station rendering City officials in Santa Monica are trying to decide how the downtown Expo Line station should be developed, according to the Santa Monica Daily Press. Ideas being floated around include ground floor retail and residences above for a mixed use development or a vision to keep the station in a more park-like environment featuring open space. The end-of-the-line station at 4th and Colorado (map) is across the street from the...

A shooting inside a store in the East Hollywood area has left two people dead, according to police. At about 12:40 p.m., the LAPD was called to a t-shirt store on the 5400 block of Sunset Boulevard. Inside, two men were found with fatal gunshot wounds. Officer Cleon Joseph described it as a "possible murder-suicide." Few details were available this afternoon as the investigation was ongoing....

Photo by lars 5 via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr Spreading the California love: there was an earthquake felt in Washington D.C. this morning. The oil-spewing well capped by BP earlier this week is holding up so far. Schwarzenegger wanted to pay more than 200,000 employees minimum wage to fight the budget deficit. That idea is not going very far. The feds are giving California money to prevent wildfires from growing. Help design how...

As always on the weekends, there are DUI checkpoints. Some are announced, some are not. At least one organized by the LAPD tonight will be set up in the Cahuenga Pass tonight from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. on Cahuenga Boulevard between Lankershim and Broadlawn (map). That's right near a Metro Red Line subway station. "The summer months are a dangerous time of the year and your odds of being involved in an alcohol...

Photo by captain sean via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr An $800,000 salary for the city manager of Bell? Wow. That's a lot more than anyone gets paid around here. Justice for downtown residents: a nearly year-old park at LAPD's headquarters is getting closer to having living grass again. A cyclist, reportedly going 40 mph in Newport Beach this morning, died in a crash this morning. The city of L.A. has purchased a large...

Photo by nailmaker via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr When your neighborhood kind of blows, the key to putting it on the right track is persistency and not giving up after being stonewalled by the first person you try to get help from. The LA Weekly today publishes a talk with Allan DiCastro, the president of the Mid-City Neighborhood Council, and finds how he has slowly but surely taken his neighborhood to a better...

Two homes have reportedly burned after lightning sparked a brush fire in a Lake Elisnore neighborhood this afternoon. Evacuations were called for and one sheriff's deputy was injured when he rescued an elderly woman from a house. In other parts of Riverside County, a handful of small and large fires burned, some near the cities of Temecula and Sage. "We've got small fires and larger fires," a Riverside County Fire Department spokeswoman told the...

If there's anything to say about today, it's that you could call it a mixed bag. The Los Angles region's varied geography is showing its pretty self off today. Temperatures are expected to reach over 100 in some areas today -- most notably, the valleys -- while some areas have already seen (and others are to see) some scattered showers, according to the LA Times. Some inland areas have even seen hail, flash flooding...

The Culver Hotel | puck90/LAist Featured Photos Amid these belt tightening times, Santa Monica wants to raise the sales tax and Culver City has a similar idea, but they want to hit up tourists for some extra money instead. The City Council Monday night took steps to place a measure on the November ballot that would increase the Transient Occupancy Tax rate from 12 percent to 14 percent, according to the Los Angeles Wave....