Crime

Those searching for answers to the question " Is medical marijuana good medicine? " will find few in Dr. David Sack's Times Op-Ed article.   On the one hand, Sack concedes, "Marijuana can effectively treat neuropathic pain, and it has been shown to improve appetite and reduce nausea," an acknowledgment substantiating the plant's therapeutic utility. However, he later warns that cannabis' ability to provide relief for certain other conditions, such as lupus and anxiety, remains unproven.

Crime reports are up significantly for the latest week in eight L.A. neighborhoods, according to an analysis of LAPD data by the Los Angeles Times' Crime L.A. database . Five neighborhoods reported a significant increase in violent crime. Arlington Heights (A) was the most unusual, recording six reports compared with a weekly average of 1.8 over the last three months. Koreatown (F) topped the list of three neighborhoods with property crime alerts. It recorded 54 property crimes compared with its weekly average of 35.8 over the last three months.

Your choices in San Francisco hotels are overwhelming. The prices can be too. So during our staff visit to the City by the Bay, we looked for reasonably priced hotels that had charm, location or both. We came back with 14 ideas on places to bed down. It's not a complete list, but it is eclectic, like the city itself. Mystic Hotel. This property, which opened in April, stands on a tunnel-adjacent block of Stockton Street that you'll never see on a picture postcard, yet it has style, as do the Burritt Tavern bar and restaurant downstairs.

Kelly Soo Park's DNA was all over the crime scene where an aspiring model lay strangled. It was on the victim's clothing and the inside of the locked front door of her Santa Monica apartment. It was on the victim's cellphone, which had been used to make a 911 call that did not go through, and the knob of a stove that was left on, filling the home with gas. It was even on the victim's neck. The evidence was overwhelming, a prosecutor told a jury last month, arguing that Park killed Juliana Redding as part of a business dispute.

At Olympic High, Santa Monica's alternative school for students who have struggled in traditional programs, inappropriate behavior is not uncommon. But what a veteran English teacher saw on the computer screen of a student named John Zawahri stopped him cold. The solitary teen who regularly ditched class was surfing the Internet for assault weapons, the teacher recalled Monday. Alarmed, he sent Zawahri to the principal's office. Within days, the police were involved and Zawahri was admitted to UCLA's psychiatric ward.

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

LAREDO, Texas - This border city is trying to clear its name. It is so conjoined with its Mexican sister city across the Rio Grande, Nuevo Laredo, that the two are often referred to as "Los Dos Laredos," or simply Laredo. That was great for tourism in happier days. But as drug cartel violence exploded in Nuevo Laredo in recent years, pictures broadcast around the world of gunfights, decapitated bodies piled in abandoned minivans, and severed heads dumped in coolers often bore the same headline: "Laredo.

The trouble began sometime after the first pitch at the Dodgers' opening day game against the San Francisco Giants. Dodgers fans Louie Sanchez, 29, and Marvin Norwood, 30 — friends and neighbors from Rialto — yelled taunts at Giants fans and threw soda at them, according to several law enforcement sources. They were so unruly that people sitting nearby in the stands behind third base later reported the pair to police. As the game wound down, the men allegedly grew more hostile.

Philip Hsiang and his wife, Mary Ann, used to pay almost $1,000 a year for a pair of cellphones under a family plan contract. But as recession gripped the economy a few years back, the Davis couple opted for low-cost prepaid phone service and never looked back. They shaved $800 off their annual phone bill, even though Hsiang could easily afford the pricier plan on his salary as an electrical engineer. "As a Chinese immigrant to the U.S., it's a virtue to be frugal," Hsiang said.

The sentencing of six Florencia 13 gang members to life in prison appears to bring to a close a prolonged and terrifying spate of violence in the Florence-Firestone district allegedly brought on by orders from a prison gang member in solitary confinement 700 miles away. Beginning in 2004, the unincorporated Los Angeles County area north of Watts was the site of one of the region's worst gang sieges since the early 1990s, evolving into what some residents felt was a race war. The violence left dozens of people dead, including many with no gang affiliation, and required enormous county resources to combat.

SACRAMENTO - FBI agents searched offices in the Capitol on Tuesday - the first such raid in 25 years - serving warrants and carting away evidence in what law enforcement officials said was a corruption probe that began in Los Angeles County. As the agents combed the offices of state Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello) and the Latino Legislative Caucus into the evening, a federal law enforcement source said Calderon, a member of the caucus, was "the focus of the investigation.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for police to take DNA samples from all people arrested in serious crimes, a major step toward expanding a national database that will match new suspects to evidence from old crime scenes. The decision means that a mouth swab for DNA is likely to become as common as taking fingerprints and a mug shot of those who are taken to a police station under arrest. That's a major victory for investigators, who say DNA testing is the most effective way to catch serial rapists, killers and other violent criminals.

Crime reports are up significantly for the latest week in 13 L.A. neighborhoods, according to an analysis of LAPD data by the Los Angeles Times' Crime L.A. database . Seven neighborhoods reported a significant increase in violent crime. Brentwood (A) was the most unusual, recording three reports compared with a weekly average of 0.4 over the last three months. Mount Washington (H) topped the list of six neighborhoods with property crime alerts. It recorded nine property crimes compared with its weekly average of 3.1 over the last three months.

BEIJING - In China's southern Hainan province, a school principal and a housing authority official were arrested after they allegedly took six girls ages 11 to 13 out to sing karaoke, got them drunk and spent the night with them in a hotel. A principal in Anhui province was arrested on suspicion of molesting nine girls, and a 50-year-old math teacher in the same province was charged with raping a 7-year-old girl. A kindergarten security guard was arrested, accused of molesting children.

The number of reported hate crimes in Orange County fell by 21% last year, even though such crimes based on sexual orientation almost doubled, according to a report released Thursday. The Orange County Human Relations Commission found that 61 hate crimes were reported to authorities in 2012, continuing a general downward trend since reported hate crimes peaked at 101 in 2006. The most frequent target, the commission said, were blacks and people perceived to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

The music thumps, the lights flash, the shot glasses wait for willing lips. But the bouncers are reduced to kicking at the curb, hoping somebody, anybody, will round the corner. Friday nights are slow lately in Rosarito Beach's party zone, and everyone knows the drug war is to blame. Hundreds of corpses discovered in and near Tijuana. Some of them headless, others dissolved in barrels of lye. People hear that, and they stay away. At least, most people do.

Despite past assurances that tourists are safe in their country, Mexican tourism officials are again faced with trying to explain away another report of crime against foreign visitors. The latest incident took place in the resort town of Acapulco, where six Spanish tourists on vacation were raped Sunday by masked gunmen. Unlike many crimes involving drug violence in the country's interior states, the rapes took place near the beach, where the tourists were renting bungalows near four-star hotels.