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She answers the knock at the door, smiles exquisitely, floats through the afternoon light of her Brentwood home with casual grace. It's another full day for Hedda Bolgar, who sees patients four days a week, teaches on the fifth day, drives a Prius, is planning a trip to New Zealand, and needs to get through this interview before 5 p.m., when her personal trainer arrives. She turned 99 last month. "I was put on this Earth to accomplish certain things," says Bolgar, a psychologist and psychoanalyst.

Sophia Amoruso doesn't care if you're offended by the name of her company. "If it's a big shock when you hear it," she says, "you're probably not our customer anyway. " She's earned the right to be dismissive. Amoruso, 28, is the founder and chief executive of Nasty Gal, a fast-rising e-commerce site that has managed to keep a low profile despite a cult following of young women who can't get enough of the company's edgy and provocative clothing. Sales rocketed 10,160% from 2008 to 2011, making Nasty Gal the fastest-growing company in Los Angeles and the fastest-growing retail company period, at least according to the Inc. 5000 list released this month.

In a dramatic debut at the 2012 New York International Auto Show, Lincoln billed the mid-sized 2013 MKZ as the standard bearer for a transformed Lincoln, the first of an array of new models to entice younger buyers. What went unsaid was that the brand, once the choice of presidents and movie stars, had seen better days. Sales only continued their long slide in 2012, with just 82,000 Lincolns going out the door - about half of what Cadillac sold and about 213,000 fewer than class-leading Mercedes, according to Motor Intelligence.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has found that retailer Wet Seal Inc. discriminated against a former African American store manager. It's just the latest problem plaguing the struggling Foothill Ranch company, which in the space of five months has fired its chief executive, overseen a board overhaul and revamped its strategy to bolster flagging sales. Now, the federal agency tasked with enforcing laws against workplace discrimination has determined that Nicole Cogdell, a former manager of a Wet Seal store in Pennsylvania, was "subjected to a hostile work environment" because of her race.

Pressed to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to settle clergy sex abuse lawsuits, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony turned to one group of Catholics whose faith could not be shaken: the dead. Under his leadership in 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles quietly appropriated $115 million from a cemetery maintenance fund and used it to help pay a landmark settlement with molestation victims. The church did not inform relatives of the deceased that it had taken the money, which amounted to 88% of the fund.

When a convicted rapist was recently charged with murdering 10 L.A. women, some longtime residents were reminded of a grisly case from the 1920s. On Feb. 2, 1928, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies found a burlap bag containing a headless body in a La Puente ditch. A male teenager had been shot through the heart with a .22-caliber rifle.

National swim team coaches from the United States, Hong Kong and Australia suspect the Chinese women's team of using steroids in the wake of China's world-best performances during last month's Asian Games. Richard Quick, coach of the U.S. national team and Stanford women's team, said he felt obligated to speak out after the Chinese produced three times that rank No. 1 in the world this year and three others that are No. 2 during the competition at Beijing.

California's luxury housing market is booming. In activity reminiscent of real estate's bubble years, the number of homes statewide selling at more than $5 million reached an all-time high last year, while those selling at $1 million or more rose to the highest level since 2007, a real estate information service has reported. Sales are up because well-heeled U.S. and international buyers, confident that the housing recovery is solid, are looking for places to park their cash, real estate experts said.

When my family doctor called five years ago with the news that my PSA levels had spiked, I hung up the phone and did what all of us do. I panicked. I thought, "So this is how I'm going to die. " Then came the delayed second reaction: This can't be right! I'm a teetotaling, nonsmoking, very fit middle-aged baby boomer, a husband and a father of a 13-year-old daughter. This just wasn't in the Tarot cards. Fortunately, I have five or six very close doctor friends, so I called one of them right away.

We know it's noisy out there in the restaurant world. Customers' complaints are growing, critics are including noise commentary in their reviews, and restaurateurs, to some extent, are trying to figure out ways to modify the acoustic mayhem. But just how noisy is it? With a decidedly unscientific approach, all it took was a sound meter app (deciBel Pro) and visits to a dozen restaurants and bars across Los Angeles to find out. In many cases, we're all dining with the noise equivalent of a lawn mower running next to us: That's 90 decibels.