Apartments

Michael Jordan Appreciation Week in America culminates Sunday when the best basketball player in history hits 50, which wasn't this big a deal the first eight times Jordan saw that number next to his name as an NBA star. Except now we are talking years, not points. Only Dean Smith and the calendar could limit Jordan on the court, it seems, and Chicago's enjoyable exercise in nostalgia reminded us just how rare the Air was in our city from 1984 to '98. Every amazing Bulls highlight last week played like a song on the radio that took you back to a time worth reliving.

Genre filmmaking helps make sense of the world, creating codes by which the seemingly irrational ways of human behavior can be understood. With storytelling modes that travel from country to country - the crime picture, the horror film, the action movie - genres cross borders and barriers with audiences the world over. On-screen violence can be seen as an international language. When people decry or defend the graphic depiction of violence on screen, it is usually in reference to mainstream American movies.

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Jerry Brown continues to set himself apart from past governors when it comes to giving criminals a second chance, telling the Legislature on Friday that he rejected only a small portion of the hundreds of convicted killers cleared last year for release from prison. The report follows Brown's disclosure that he pardoned 128 people last year, mostly expunging the records of felons who had served their time. The governor signed off on parole for 377 convicted killers who have been serving life sentences, according to numbers provided by his staff.

As Congress looks toward meaningful immigration reform, we must take care not to neglect one of the most heartbreaking problems within the current, broken system: what happens to children when their parents or guardians are deported. Currently, according to the Applied Research Center's report "Shattered Families," at least 5,000 children of immigrants live in U.S. foster care because their parents were detained or deported. If the current trends hold, the center estimates, 15,000 more children over the next five years will be ripped away from their mothers and fathers as a result of federal immigration enforcement actions.

MIAMI — It would add some weight to the charter flight, but the Lakers should look into adding a small piano on the team plane. Kobe Bryant loves to sit and play Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" to calm himself after a bad loss, or a non-energetic victory, and he had that look about him Sunday evening. The Lakers played almost a perfect game through three quarters, led by Bryant, but fell apart in the fourth and lost to the Miami Heat, 107-97, at AmericanAirlines Arena. Bryant spent a long time in a side alcove of the visitors' locker room, partly to ice his knees and partly to talk to Coach Mike D'Antoni about what to do with the Lakers.

A Canadian developer has started work on a $100-million luxury apartment building in downtown Los Angeles, the first of three high-rise residential complexes it plans to build in the booming neighborhood. Onni Group of Vancouver is erecting a 32-story tower on a former parking lot at the northeast corner of Olive and 9th streets. The site is next door to a well-known 12-story office building that opened in 1926 as the headquarters of Pacific National Bank. Onni's building, to be known as 888 Olive, will have 283 units - each with a private balcony - over street-level shops and restaurants.

Recognizing the high cost of treating homeless patients, Los Angeles County plans to open a health clinic inside a skid row apartment building. Residents of the 102-unit building, scheduled to open this summer on 6th Street, will be carefully chosen based on their health needs and their regular use of the emergency healthcare system. "We're looking at our folks who are at risk of further deterioration and death and who are seen frequently in our expensive emergency rooms," said Marc Tortz, who directs the Housing for Health office for the county's Department of Health Services.

A Canadian developer has started work on a $100-million luxury apartment building in downtown Los Angeles, the first of three high-rise residential complexes it plans to build in the booming neighborhood. Vancouver-based Onni Group is erecting a 32-story tower on a former parking lot at the northeast corner of Olive and Ninth streets. The site is next door to a well-known 12-story office building that opened in 1926 as the headquarters of Pacific National Bank. Onni's building, to be known as 888 Olive, will have 283 units - each with a private balcony -- over street-level shops and restaurants.

A big empty lot north of Los Angeles International Airport in Westchester is getting an upgrade: $105 million worth of apartments and shops. Work has begun on a 260-unit complex near the southwest corner of Manchester Avenue and Rayford Drive called Playa Del Oro West, developer Decron Properties Corp. said. The development is the second phase of a project Decron began in 2002 with the purchase of 13 acres at Manchester and Lincoln Boulevard that included a 12-story hotel previously known as the Furama and before that as the Airport Marina Hotel.

WASHINGTON - With agreement to lift the nation's debt ceiling secured, Congress now turns to the next budget showdown: the deep automatic spending cuts due to start hitting the economy in March, which lawmakers appear unwilling - or unable - to stop. The Senate sent legislation to temporarily suspend the $16.4-trillion debt limit to the White House on Thursday for President Obama's signature. The vote was 64 to 34, with mostly Republicans and one Democrat opposed. Now, Congress must decide whether to stop the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts that are scheduled to begin March 1. Those reductions were once considered so severe they would force lawmakers to the table to negotiate a more balanced deficit reduction compromise.