CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 3, 2013 | By Paige St. John
Gov. Jerry Brown's "ugly" proposal to federal judges to partially ease prison crowding by leasing empty jail beds in the state drew dismay from advocates on both sides of the criminal justice debate and a forecast of "dubious prospects" from a legislative leader who objects to the cost. "I strongly believe any additional taxpayer dollars ought to go into smart strategies to keep people from committing crimes once they're out," said state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento)
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 1, 2013 | By Paige St. John
Gov. Jerry Brown is pursuing a prison contract in California, too small to meet federal orders to reduce crowding, but enough to help Brown end the shipment of inmates to for-profit prisons out of state. According to bid documents, California offers to pay no more than $63 a day, on top of facility costs, to house up to 1,225 additional inmates in what the state calls "modified community" prisons. California currently has 600 inmates in one such private prison, paying more than $13 million a year to the GEO Group Inc . Bids for the new facilities are due May 28. At one point, California housed more than 5,600 inmates in 13 small "community" prisons built for state prisoners by local governments or by private prison operators.
TRAVEL
April 28, 2013 | By Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times
CARLSBAD, Calif. - The Legoland Hotel, which opened April 5, got plenty of little things wrong in its first weeks. But its designers got one thing enormously right, and that will make this place a screaming success: kid-centricity. "The dragon is made out of Legos!" my daughter, Grace, who is about to turn 9, said as we approached the hotel entrance a week after the opening. Inside the lobby, Grace; my wife, Mary Frances; and I found a faux fountain, a play pit full of little plastic bricks and dozens of deeply absorbed children who were collaborating on a rainbow-hued monolith, constructing pretend weapons, hollering, whispering, running, jumping and dragging their parents from one discovery to the next.
NATIONAL
April 21, 2013 | By Rick Rojas, Los Angeles Times
WEST, Texas - At the Veterans of Foreign Wars post just a few blocks past City Hall here, the donated mattresses form a stack that nearly touches the ceiling. Rows of folding tables are piled high with clothes, and the porch out back has enough water bottles to hydrate an army. That's just Saturday's haul. And the first thing visitors hear when they step inside: "You hungry?" PHOTOS: Texas explosion The smoky scent of barbecue wafted through the room, as did the smell of meatloaf fresh off the grill.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
April 17, 2013 | A Times Staff Writer
A Sacramento County woman was arrested this week after an infant found dead under a bed. The woman, identified as 24-year-old Courtney Addington, was examined in January by personnel at Mercy General Hospital for excessive bleeding. Although hospital staff said she showed signs of recently giving birth, Addington reportedly denied those claims, officials said. The hospital contacted Sacramento County sheriff's deputies, who stopped by Addington's home later that night.
SCIENCE
April 12, 2013 | By Amina Khan
Bed bugs have re-emerged as an urban blight in the past several years, forcing people out of homes, resisting chemical pesticides and evading other removal tactics. But researchers are building bug-catchers inspired by an age-old folk remedy to this “ancient scourge”: kidney bean leaves. Their experiments, described in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, tested the home-grown solution and even made synthetic leaves that could help scientists devise an easy, environmentally friendly method of trapping bugs before they establish a full invasion.