Drain

Target Corp. has agreed to pay $22.5 million to settle a multiyear government investigation into the alleged dumping of hazardous waste by the retail chain, according to court documents filed this week. The settlement, pending final approval by a judge, is part of a bigger push by prosecutors throughout the state to crack down on environmental violations by big-box retailers and follows multimillion-dollar settlements in recent years with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Home Depot. Under the tentative agreement, the Minneapolis-based retail giant admits no wrongdoing but will pay about $3.4 million to the California attorney general's office.

China's central bank raised lenders' required reserves Friday for the fourth time in just over two months, stepping up the fight against inflation that it has vowed will be a top priority for the year. By forcing banks to lock up more cash with the central bank, Beijing hopes to drain excess money from the economy and tame rising prices, which it worries may stir social unrest. The move, expected after China's top leaders planted the task of taming inflation at the top of their agenda, underscores the central bank shift to what it called "prudent" monetary policy in December from its previous "moderately loose" stance.

Major portions of Brisbane resembled a watery ghost town Thursday as muddy waters from the overflowing Brisbane River inundated Australia's third-largest city, part of massive flooding throughout Queensland state that has left officials and residents reeling. In Brisbane, a city of 2 million, 11,900 homes and 2,500 businesses were completely flooded, an additional 14,700 houses and 2,500 businesses were at least partly covered by water, and 120,000 houses were without power, Mayor Campbell Newman said.

Thousands of California homeowners recently received official-looking letters from a company called Home Emergency Insurance Solutions informing them that they face the prospect of thousands of dollars in unforeseen costs because they lack coverage for the pipes that bring water to their homes. Luckily, Home Emergency Insurance Solutions is ready to step up with policies running $4.95 a month. So is this something homeowners should consider? A spate of municipal water pipes going kerblooey last spring might prompt some to think so. But consumer advocates and utility officials say you need to be careful.

It is one of the Southland's enduring contradictions. The region that laid pipe across hundreds of miles and tunneled through mountains to import water also built an extensive storm drain system to get rid of rainfall as quickly as possible. That's exactly what happened during the last week, when tens of billions of gallons of runoff that could lessen the region's need for those faraway sources were dumped into the Pacific. Enough water poured from Los Angeles streets to supply well over 130,000 homes for a year.

Ronda Mills is used to drawing crowds. She produces art festivals throughout Southern California, including multiple events annually in Palm Springs and Burbank. But one place she doesn't like seeing a lot of traffic is her Wells Fargo checking account, which has been repeatedly drained by scammers in Canada and India who have fraudulently linked it to online PayPal accounts. This has happened four times over the last two years, and each time Mills, 54, has had to close her checking account and open a new one. The latest breach occurred this month.

This summer, the small city of Maywood made national headlines when it laid off most of its workers, disbanded the Police Department and contracted most city services to the neighboring city of Bell. Maywood's move was quickly overshadowed by the salary scandal in Bell, which resulted in the indictments of eight current and former city officials on charges of public corruption. Now Maywood is working to extricate itself from Bell and rebuild its own city government. But an examination into how Maywood found itself in this position offers a window into the struggles of this group of small, largely working-class communities that straddle the 710 Freeway southeast of downtown L.A. Maywood's problems have their roots in an effort seven years ago to provide police services to another neighboring city, Cudahy.

"Braving Iraq," which comes from the PBS series "Nature" and airs Sunday on KCET, is a story mostly of people, water, reeds and birds (but also of frogs, water buffalo and bugs) in which the people, as they are wont to, play both villain and hero. The chief villain is Saddam Hussein, the late Iraqi dictator, who turned to desert 90% of one of the world's great wetlands, the 6,000-square-mile Mesopotamian Marshes . The representative hero is Azzam Alwash, an Iraqi native who left for the United States in 1978 and returned after the 2003 invasion to help get the water flowing again.

The Museum of Contemporary Art announced Thursday that it finished its fiscal year with a $5.5-million surplus and has used most of it to continue replenishing the endowment it had illegally raided during nearly a decade of overspending. Although dipping into its reserves helped MOCA mount acclaimed exhibitions, it left the downtown museum nearly broke at the end of 2008. A merger with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was considered before Eli Broad stepped in with $30 million in pledges that enabled it to maintain its independence.

A major sewage spill that has closed a two-mile stretch of beach near Marina del Rey released about 500,000 gallons of raw sewage into a storm drain that runs to Ballona Creek and eventually spills into the ocean, authorities said. The spill ranks among the worst in the last two years along the Los Angeles County coastline. The beach will probably remain closed for three days. Residents reported a manhole overflowing with sewage near Centinela Avenue and Sepulveda Boulevard about 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, said Ron Charles, spokesman for the Los Angeles Public Works Department.