Beverly Center

An Atlanta-based rapper was fatally shot in the valet waiting area of the Beverly Center mall Monday by a suspect who fled in a silver Mercedes SUV, according to police. Officers later detained a "person of interest" as he approached the ticketing area at Los Angeles International Airport armed with a gun. The shooting occurred about 3:10 p.m. in the parking garage of the popular Westside mall, sending diners in nearby restaurants diving for cover.

For 15 years, Pet Love has been a fixture in the busy Beverly Center mall, its brightly lighted interior showcasing furry puppies for sale behind glass-walled kennels. But for the last six months, the sixth-floor pet store has been targeted by the Best Friends Animal Society, a national animal rescue and welfare organization that is waging a campaign to get Los Angeles pet shops to stop selling animals born in what the group calls inhumane puppy mills.

If President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney were ever to be impeached, their foes could cite this Independence Day as a milestone -- the day that the nation's first "impeachment headquarters" opened its doors in a storefront near the Beverly Center. "This is an impeachment 4th of July," Byron De Lear, a Green Party activist, said Wednesday. He called removing Bush and Cheney "a patriotic duty to restore the integrity of the United States."

The attorney for an Atlanta man accused of killing rapper Dolla earlier this week said his client opened fire after feeling threatened by the rapper and his entourage during a chance encounter at the Beverly Center. Aubrey Louis Berry, 23, was arrested Monday at Los Angeles International Airport on charges of shooting Dolla, whose real name was Roderick Anthony Burton II, while he stood at the valet waiting area of the popular Westside shopping center.

Macy's is stepping into the high-profile collaboration game, teaming up with New York designer Rachel Roy for an exclusive collection called Rachel Rachel Roy out this month. The American retail institution is betting that Roy's talent for blending uptown sleek with downtown street will appeal to the shopper who might not be accustomed to finding her sensibility at the mall. And other designers are likely to look with interest at the reach Roy's collection gains in a department store such as Macy's -- the 151-year-old retail giant has 840 locations in 45 states and had sales of $24.9 billion last year.

Robert Geller wasn't just jumping on the seasonal trend bandwagon when he sent a sunny, upbeat collection down the runway Friday. He was undoubtedly in a good mood when he began designing the collection in February, just a few days after influential GQ magazine named him its best new menswear designer in America. And, while most designers have been trucking in a particularly American brand of can-do boosterism, Geller drew inspiration from his native Germany as it was in the late 1950s, a time of rebuilding and looking forward.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to approve a 12-story condominium building near the Beverly Center that had drawn fire for months from neighborhood activists and a nearby hotel. The unanimous vote will allow MCLV Properties LLC to demolish 84 apartments at the corner of 3rd Street and Wetherly Drive in the Beverly Grove neighborhood and build a 95-unit residential building. Opponents had included the Burton Way Foundation, a nonprofit group focused on the neighborhood near Beverly Center, and Burton Way Hotels, the owners of the nearby Four Seasons Hotel.

There are so many exciting ways to practice fitness, but workout clothes are often stuck in some 1990s cardio dance class. Inspired by a typical L.A. woman's weekend wardrobe, Bebe introduces PH8, a sportswear collection that can easily transition from Pilates class to coffee date at Intelligentsia. Tara Poseley, PH8 brand president who was formerly with the Gap, was clued in on how women's fitness needs have changed. Instead of wearing a sports tank and stretch pants for spin class and then changing into day wear, women need clothes that can go from yoga to lunch at the farmers market.

Re "Beverly Hills doesn't want to miss the subway," Nov. 27 Does Beverly Hills want a subway that people will use, or a subway as an expensive ornament? Routing the proposed Red Line subway extension under the empty buildings on Wilshire Boulevard makes little sense. The subway should jog north from the county Museum of Art to the congested Farmers Market area, then west to the Beverly Center, downtown Beverly Hills and Century City. Then, it should tunnel northwest to UCLA. Putting the subway too far away from destinations such as the Grove, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the Park La Brea apartments is pouring money down an endless hole.

Puppy protest: An article in Wednesday's California section on the Pet Love pet shop's move from the Beverly Center, following a campaign against the shop by an animal welfare group, gave the wrong last name of Green for Beverly Center's general manager, Jeff Brown.