1990s

LAS VEGAS - On this day, there was no Johnnie Cochran. There was no brash fist-pumping former Heisman Trophy winner in a tailored suit hugging his lead defense attorney after beating murder charges in a California courtroom. After a nearly five-year absence, in which he was locked away in a northern Nevada prison cell, O.J. Simpson returned to the public spotlight Wednesday. The 65-year-old fallen football star, once known for his manic bursts of speed on the field, has been in scores of end zones, TV commercials, movie trailers and two well-publicized Los Angeles court trials.

Everyone knew the day was coming and now it's a reality. After 75 years of horse racing, Betfair Hollywood Park will end its operations following the final race of its autumn meeting Dec. 22. The words "sad day" were repeated often Thursday afternoon at the Inglewood track, where owners, trainers, jockeys and fans reacted somberly to the news. The official announcement came in a letter from track President Jack Liebau sent to the California Horse Racing Board on Wednesday informing them that Hollywood Park Land Co. would not be requesting any 2014 racing dates.

When singer Roy Orbison was touring England in 1968, it had been four years since he last appeared at the top of the charts with "Oh, Pretty Woman," even though he continued playing live and recording long after the pulse of rock music shifted away from his signature brand of sweepingly operatic pop. At a show in Leeds on that tour, he met 18-year-old German fan Barbara Ann Marie Wellhoener Jakobs, and within a year the two were married....

After struggling for months with wobbly finances and internal dissension, the director of UCLA Medical Center announced Tuesday that he will leave his job to take a top post at the University of Kentucky's medical center. Dr. Michael Karpf, 58, has been with UCLA since 1995 and oversaw the school's three hospitals and 18 primary-care clinics.

Ray Lucia calls his investment strategy "Buckets of Money" on his nationally syndicated radio talk show. Federal regulators call it something else. The Securities and Exchange Commission accused the San Diego radio personality of misleading investors to think that his strategy helps retirees "generate inflation-adjusted income for life. " They are seeking an order that would prevent the wealth manager from making such claims. Lucia, whose radio program is broadcast daily in most of the nation's top markets, promotes his fee-based investment program at seminars held at upscale resorts throughout the country.

He was a 16-year-old inmate doing time at the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, Calif., who came up with the idea of forming a Latino "gang of gangs" inside the prison walls. These convicts would put aside Mexican American street gang rivalries, protect themselves from overzealous guards and band together to battle black and white inmates.

Reporting from Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey-- Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, N.J., has a long and winding roller coaster history that's filled with as many twists and turns as the amusement park's many record-breaking rides. Photos : Top 10 Six Flags Great Adventure roller coasters Great Adventure was a must-see on my road trip across America's coaster belt, in large part because of the park's three world-class rides: El Toro, Kingda Ka and Nitro.

Check off another milestone for Apple Inc. — it's now the most valuable company of all time. The technology behemoth achieved that distinction with the latest jump in its seemingly irrepressible stock price. Apple shares have been on a steady uptick for years, and investors now value the company at $623.5 billion. That surpassed the previous high of $616.3 billion, not adjusted for inflation, notched by rival Microsoft Corp. at the end of the late-1990s dot-com boom. To put that in perspective, Apple is now worth 17 times as much as Ford Motor Co., seven times as much as McDonald's Corp.

Coconut milk used to be something that came in a can and was good to have on hand for making pina coladas or Thai curries. These days, coconut milk can also be found in cartons in the milk aisle and in pints in the ice cream section — and as yogurt, coffee creamer and even kefir. Some consumers are turning to coconut-milk products because they're eager for a new dairy alternative, but others are switching to them in the belief that they promote weight loss. Consumers should be aware that the evidence in support of such claims is very slim — and that coconut milk in any form is high in saturated fat, says Ruth Frechman, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Assn.

In the early 1990s, executives of the now-defunct American Stock Exchange hatched a revolutionary idea: a hybrid mutual fund-type investment that would trade like a stock. But in an era when hot-handed mutual fund managers had rock-star status, the concept of the “exchange-traded fund,” or ETF - low-cost, pre-programmed portfolios designed to simply replicate a broad or narrow swath of the market - didn't get a lot of people's hearts pounding. Twenty years later, however, exchange-traded funds have ballooned into a $1.4-trillion industry in the U.S. and $2 trillion worldwide.