CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
July 9, 2011 | Sandy Banks
My column on sexual assault allegations against a prominent French politician accused of attacking a hotel maid struck a nerve with readers this week. Make that two nerves — two very different nerves. Most women I heard from were gratified by my willingness to believe the maid's account. I think the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund now charged with sexual assault, ought to go forward. Let a jury decide whether to believe the woman, whose own past is pockmarked with scams and lies.
ENTERTAINMENT
June 21, 2011 | By John Horn, Los Angeles Times
Premier Fiesta Mexicana is the kind of working-class bar that most Southern Californians drive past without even seeing. The Bell Gardens restaurant and nightclub offers a dinner show with mariachi music and is packed most weekends, but on a summer night nearly a year ago, Carlos Galindo wasn't there looking for a good time. He was looking for a truck — and a way out of a desperate situation. Carlos, the lead character in director Chris Weitz's "A Better Life" — a new movie about the personal struggles of a Mexican gardener in the United States illegally — had scraped together every last dollar to buy a used pickup.
ENTERTAINMENT
June 14, 2011
SERIES Pretty Little Liars: The end of last season found Aria, Emily, Hanna and Spencer (Lucy Hale, Shay Mitchell, Ashley Benson, Troian Bellisario) resolving to put an end to "A" once and for all. In the season premiere, all eyes in Rosewood are on them (8 p.m. ABC Family). The Nine Lives of Chloe King: Based on a book series by Celia Thomson, this new drama series stars Skyler Samuels as a teenager who has special catlike powers, including enhanced agility and a set of claws (9 and 10 p.m. ABC Family)
OPINION
June 3, 2011 | By Joshua Page
Soon after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its recent decision that California would have to reduce its prison population to relieve overcrowding, a representative of Crime Victims United of California took to the airwaves with harrowing predictions. "It's a disaster," Nina Salarno Ashford, a board member of the group, told an interviewer. "They're going to be letting sex offenders out. They're going to be letting kidnappers out. They're going to be letting a whole host of really bad people back into California without the resources to protect the good citizens of California.
BUSINESS
April 24, 2011 | By Lew Sichelman
As crime victims go, real estate agents don't compare to taxi drivers, who suffer the highest rate of homicide of any occupation, according to government statistics. But every so often an agent is killed, robbed or beaten while showing a house for sale. So realty companies and trade organizations have made their agents' safety a top concern. Rarely, though, do agents pass along safety tips to their clients. As a result, sellers may go about the business of putting their homes on the market oblivious to the dangers.
NATIONAL
April 19, 2011 | By Robin Abcarian and Geraldine Baum, Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times was awarded the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for public service for revealing official corruption in Bell and the feature photography award for Barbara Davidson's images of victims struggling to recover in the aftermath of gang violence. In a series of articles beginning last summer, a team of 20 reporters and editors, led by staff writers Jeff Gottlieb and Ruben Vives, revealed that Bell officials secretly enriched themselves with extravagant salaries and benefits while illegally raising taxes on the city's residents, who are among the poorest in Los Angeles County.