Featured Articles From the Los Angeles Times

In the face of slumping travel and tourism spending, Disney Cruise Lines and Los Angeles city officials announced plans Monday to base a Disney cruise ship in the Port of Los Angeles beginning in 2011, which could create an estimated 2,600 jobs in the region. The 964-foot-long Disney Wonder, currently based in Port Canaveral, Fla., will move to San Pedro to make room for two new cruise ships that will begin operating out of Florida in 2011 and 2012. Although U.S.

Nearly five years after replacing a legendary pastor in one of the nation's most prominent African American pulpits, the Rev. John J. Hunter counts his blessings. Since taking the helm of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles in October 2004, Hunter says, he has been privileged to bring 3,000 new souls to Jesus. He and his staff have launched such new community services as a summer enrichment program for children deprived of summer school by budget cuts.

If you're searching for a bright spot in a dismal economic climate, look no farther than your roof. The downturn is helping to make solar panels more affordable. Manufacturers are cutting prices to move inventory. Uncle Sam is helping too. As part of the economic stimulus package, the federal government this year boosted tax credits to homeowners who switch to solar power. Together with state incentives, those subsidies could slash the cost of some systems in California by 50% or more.

Almost everyone has their own Michael Jackson moment. Mine came when I was lucky enough to see what was probably the most important live performance of his career, the night he caused the world to stop and gasp. It was five minutes that broadened his reach from pop star to entertainment icon at a level that nobody had seen before and which hasn't been matched since. On March 25, 1983, Motown threw itself a self-congratulatory showcase, a multi-act fundraiser to fight sickle cell disease.

The lanky 19-year-old from South Korea has lived in the Southland since he was 9 years old. He is as comfortable speaking English as his native Korean. And he desperately wants to join the Army. Late last week, the teenager walked into a recruiting office in an Eagle Rock mall wearing a pendant shaped like a dog tag around his neck. Until recently, local recruiters would have had to turn him away. His student visa would not have qualified him to enlist.

The slowing economy is spawning store closures and layoffs in Southern California's typically solid grocery industry. On Friday, Albertsons will shut the first four of nine stores closing between now and April 9. About a dozen workers are losing their jobs, and the chain is working to reassign hundreds more to other stores. Ralphs is demoting more than 150 meat cutters to clerks, slashing their pay by more than a third to $13.47 an hour.

The Rev. Robert H. Schuller, the founder of the Crystal Cathedral and a pioneer of the megachurch movement, is passing his leadership role to his eldest daughter, a spokesman said Wednesday. Schuller announced during Sunday's service in Garden Grove that Sheila Schuller Coleman will take over leadership of the entire ministry, effective immediately, said spokesman Mike Nason.

Sun Yaoting was 8 when his father castrated him with a single swoop of a razor. The year was 1911, and China was in turmoil. Just a few months later rebels deposed the emperor, overturned centuries of tradition and established a republic. "Our boy has suffered for nothing," his father said, weeping and beating his breast, when he learned that the emperor had been overthrown. "They don't need eunuchs anymore!" Little did he know that the child nevertheless would earn a place in Chinese history.

Today's surgeons can nick out your gallbladder via your belly button and excise your thyroid gland without cutting your neck. Now some doctors have added one of recent history's most grueling operations to the ranks of minimally invasive surgeries.

For people who've assumed they'll take the option of continuing their employer-based health insurance -- at their own expense -- if they lose their jobs during 2009, it was sobering news. For those who have lost their jobs, it was painfully unsurprising.

Regulators took on the mortgage industry's best-known figure Thursday, accusing former Countrywide Financial Corp. Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo of hiding his alarm about risky loans the company was making at the height of the housing boom while he was reaping nearly $140 million in profits on stock sales.

It's just past noon in Laguna Woods, and retired Navy pilot David Masters, 71, has just wrapped up 18 holes on the golf course. The scene beyond him is something out of a postcard: bright green grass framed by blue sky and snow-capped mountains. Just around the corner, a group of retirees pokes gentle fun at one another while they lawn bowl. And in a nearby clubhouse, another social club gathers to chat, share drinks and eat coffeecake.

A few years ago, Countrywide Financial Corp. was not only the nation's biggest home lender but also highly regarded -- an "apple pie" company, as a former marketer for the Calabasas lender recalls. Linked more recently with high-risk loans, co-founder Angelo R. Mozilo's huge paydays and FBI investigations, the Countrywide name became "too toxic to resuscitate," as another expert puts it -- and a liability for Bank of America Corp., which snatched it up last year as it neared collapse.

With thousands of Chrysler and General Motors Corp. dealerships closing, customers could be confronted with problems over warranty coverage, trade-ins or other matters. Both automakers pledge to make the contraction as painless as possible, but that doesn't mean there won't be problems. "When all of these relationships are disrupted, you can't help but have some elements of chaos, and some practical problems occur," said Aaron H. Jacoby, a Los Angeles lawyer who represents car dealers.

One occupies $232 million worth of serious architecture on a promontory overlooking downtown Los Angeles. The other rents cramped space in a South L.A. church. One has an address that shouts prestige, with neighbors that include the city's Roman Catholic cathedral and Music Center. The other is across the street from an apartment building for the recently homeless. Two new high schools for the arts debuted this week -- a rare enough feat in a down economy. Despite the vast differences in their circumstances, it may be too early to say which of the two has the most potential to nurture the next generation of artists and performers.