Bedding

LAS VEGAS - A UCLA basketball team that has sleepwalked through parts of the season has taken the metaphor to an entirely new level. On Thursday, the Bruins won a basketball game in their pajamas. In their 80-75 comeback victory over Arizona State in the second round of the Pac-12 tournament, the Bruins were resourceful, resilient, and just so darn cute. Thanks to new uniforms provided by Adidas - the athletic department's owner, er, sponsor - the Bruins looked like Care Bears.

Faced with severe overcrowding and emergency room wait times that average 12 hours, Los Angeles County officials are considering adding 150 more beds to County/USC Medical Center. The county opened a new state-of-the-art hospital in 2008 to replace an aging general hospital tower. But even before the doors opened, officials worried that it wouldn't be big enough. The new hospital has 600 inpatient beds, 224 fewer than its predecessor. It didn't take long for the problem to become apparent.

Every day, when he wakes up or goes to sleep, offensive lineman Cameron Hunt of Corona Centennial is reminded why he works so hard. "I have a little poster up in my room," he said. "It has a picture of Vista Murrieta's championship and it has a picture of us winning state in 2008. Every time I wake up or go to bed, that's what my goals are and dreams are. " So understand that the 6-foot-4, 255-pound senior will have a lot of motivation on Friday night when Centennial (12-1) plays at Vista Murrieta (13-0)

NEW YORK -- A nanny accused of stabbing to death two young children left in her care pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder Wednesday from a hospital bed, where she has been held since trying to commit suicide by slashing her own throat and wrists. Yoselyn Ortega's alleged crime horrified New York City, where the sight of nannies accompanying toddlers is a common one, especially in upscale neighborhoods like the Upper West Side, where Ortega worked for the family of Marina and Kevin Krim.

The California Air Resources Board has ruled that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is solely responsible for controlling the choking dust storms that arise from the dry Owens Lake bed. The board said the DWP must take additional air pollution control measures on 2.9 square miles of the dry lake, which was drained to provide water to Los Angeles. The powder-fine dust arising from the bed often exceeds federal health standards. The DWP argues that it has already reduced dust pollution 90% at a cost to ratepayers of $1.2 billion.

Leaders of Los Angeles County's embattled child welfare system believe they have solved one of their most intractable problems - finding a place for some of the most troubled foster children to lay down their heads at night. For more than a decade, thousands of children - - unruly teenagers, premature infants and others - have spent uneasy nights in a high-rise building's waiting room, cramped together without sufficient beds or food while social workers struggle to find them a place in foster care.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power filed a lawsuit Friday that would limit its spending on measures to stop massive dust storms at Owens Lake. The agency argues that the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District is unreasonable to order the DWP to eliminate dust on 2.9 miles of remote, geologically challenging lake bed. The DWP has already spent $1.2 billion to fulfill a 1997 agreement with the air pollution district to combat the powder-fine dust from the dry Owens Lake bed. The agency has reduced particle air pollution by 90% by introducing vegetation, gravel and flooding into vast areas of the lake bed. The 100-square-mile lake east of Sequoia National Park was transformed into dusty salt flats after 1913, when its supply of snowmelt and spring water was diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

The former live-work compound of artist Sam Francis is on the market in Santa Monica at $18.75 million. The reinvented property features two houses, waterfalls, a bridge, glass walkways over stream beds and Japanese gardens on nearly half an acre. There are eight bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, a bar, a media room, an office, a wine cellar and a sauna in an 8,000-square-foot main house and a 4,400-square-foot secondary home. Francis, who died in 1994 at 71, was a painter, muralist and printmaker whose works were influenced by Abstract Expressionists and, later, Zen Buddhism.

Nothing like having the head coach tuck you in at night. UCLA Coach Jim Mora excels at micromanaging, right down to doing bed checks himself at the team hotel the night before the game. Players were surprised to find their coach doing the chore usually left to subordinates. “He comes into the room, says, 'What's up,' just to make sure our minds are right,” quarterback Brett Hundley said. Hundley and Kevin Prince, his roommate, decided to play a trick on their coach the night prior to the Nebraska game.

"What's that?" Visitors often ask that in New Orleans, which is a trove of unexpected juxtapositions. Just steps off the French Quarter's raunchy Bourbon Street, for instance, is the stately Hermann-Grima House, a Federal-style brick mansion with French Louisiana balconies and galleries. Ring the doorbell. Why it's a treasure: The Hermann-Grima House, named after two early owners, is an interpretation of a wealthy New Orleanian's home between 1830 and 1860. Carpets were made on an 1830s loom; furniture is typical of the era. Each October, the house is draped in mourning for a funeral.