Crime

Three years ago, landlord John Callaghan was granted city permits to enlarge a South Los Angeles single family home, creating three apartments. But he didn't stop there. He crammed as many as 44 rental rooms into a warren of narrow hallways, tiny, shared bathrooms and communal kitchens. Now, as the holidays approach, dozens of renters who paid as much as $500 per unit are being ordered to vacate the burnt orange three-story complex, in a neighborhood about a mile from the Coliseum.

More than a dozen members of a Long Beach gang have been arrested in connection with a series of shootings, including a 2009 killing, over a three-year span in the city, police said Wednesday. Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell said the arrests of 16 members of the Baby Insane Crips are part of a push to reduce gang violence. The gang gained notoriety in the 1980s and has been rooted in Long Beach for "generations," according to the chief. "They are a big gang in our city - our biggest - and one that's responsible for a lot of our violent criminal activity," he said.

Welfare payments to children of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County increased in July to $52 million, prompting renewed calls from one county supervisor to rein in public benefits to such families. The payments, made to illegal immigrants for their U.S. citizen children, included $30 million in food stamps and $22 million from the CalWorks welfare program, according to county figures released Friday by Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich. The new figure represents an increase of $3.7 million from July 2009 and makes up 23% of all county welfare and food stamp assistance, according to county records.

The prosecutor and defense attorneys agreed on at least one thing: Sonia Rios Risken was a loathsome person. The 60-year-old woman from Lomita was under investigation by the FBI in 2006 after her second husband, a retired naval officer, was fatally shot while visiting her relatives in the Philippines. Her first husband, a retired Marine, was shot to death 19 years earlier under suspiciously similar circumstances. When news leaked that federal agents suspected Risken of masterminding both slayings, local media dubbed her the "Lomita Black Widow.

A Van Nuys gynecologist has been charged with sexually assaulting a patient on two occasions while examining her at a Northridge hospital, court records show. Dr. Kevin Pezeshki, 43, of Tarzana is due in court Tuesday after being arrested last month on two counts of assaulting a female patient. Authorities are investigating whether Pezeshki may have other victims. Attorneys for the California attorney general representing the Medical Board of California will ask a judge Tuesday to require Pezeshki, as a condition for bail, to stop practicing medicine pending the resolution of the criminal case.

SHANGHAI - Gov. Jerry Brown's trade mission to China this week is intersecting with one of the most controversial issues of his governorship: California's $68-billion bullet train. The governor has staked part of his legacy on the rail network, a centerpiece of his vision for California. He is hoping that China, which is enjoying an economic boom and spent $77.6 billion on overseas investments last year, according to official figures, will pump some of its cash into the troubled project.

Reporting from Chowchilla, Calif. -- A woman who killed, dismembered and cooked her husband was deemed a risk to society and denied parole Wednesday in a lengthy and at times emotional hearing. Omaima Nelson, 43, a former nanny commonly compared to the fictional cannibal killer Hannibal Lecter at the time of the murder in 1991, held that she was a changed woman, eager to live the "good life God meant. " But first came the recounting of Nelson's earlier life: by her account, the victim of almost unimaginable abuse as a child in Egypt.

The future of crime fighting begins with a story about strawberry Pop-Tarts, bad weather and Wal-Mart. With a hurricane bearing down on the Florida coast several years ago, the retail giant sent supply trucks into the storm to stock shelves with the frosted pink pastries. The decision to do so had not been made on a whim or a hunch, but by a powerful computer that crunched reams of sales data and found an unusual but undeniable fact: When Mother Nature gets angry, people want to eat a lot more strawberry Pop-Tarts.