Family

CLEVELAND - Amanda Berry, one of the three women who was kidnapped and held prisoner for about a decade in a Cleveland house, returned to the embrace of her family on Wednesday. Berry, now 27, arrived at her sister Beth Serrano's Cleveland home, several miles from the house on Seymour Avenue where Berry, her 6-year-old daughter and two other women were imprisoned. Yellow ribbons were tied to the trees and the front of the house was festooned with balloons, stuffed animals and a huge banner proclaiming: “WELCOME HOME AMANDA.” PHOTOS: Kidnapping victims found Berry and her family entered through a back door, away from a media horde outside the home and moments later her sister came forward.

When he died, Michael Jackson had a cocktail of anti-depressant and mood drugs in his system as well as a level of the anesthetic propofol typical of a patient undergoing major surgery. The revelation came during testimony Monday in the lawsuit Jackson's mother and children have filed against AEG, the entertainment giant that was promoting the singer's comeback concert series in London when he died. Dr. Christopher Rogers, the Los Angeles County deputy medical examiner, testified that after toxicology tests found Jackson had used propofol, he consulted with an anesthesiologist.

Despite bitter attacks in recent weeks, the two candidates for mayor of Los Angeles grudgingly conceded in a debate Sunday night that their rival was (mostly) honest and not so different on many of the plans they have for leading the city. That didn't mean City Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel didn't find plenty of opportunity for attacks on each other's trustworthiness and independence. But they also laid out records that they said made them most qualified to replace Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is leaving office June 30 after serving the maximum two terms.

William C. Cox Jr., the patriarch of the Bancroft clan that controlled Dow Jones & Co. for 105 years and sold it to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. in a decision sparking a family feud, died Wednesday at his home in Hobe Sound, Fla., according to his daughter, Ann Bartram. He was 82. The cause was complications from diabetes. Cox was at the center of a protracted family dispute that ultimately led to the sale of New York-based Dow Jones, owner of the Wall Street Journal, to News Corp.

By Kari Howard These songs are a personal soundtrack for this week's wonderful Column Ones, but one below is featured on an actual soundtrack, for the Danny Boyle movie “The Beach.” The band is called Underworld, and Boyle has used them for several of his films, not to mention the completely brilliant soundtrack for the London Olympics he produced last summer. (I can die happy: I've heard the Sex Pistols' “God Save the Queen” at the Olympics.) But Boyle's movies have always had some of the best soundtracks.

For three years, Brad Cross would rise at 5 a.m. and drive his grandson, Aaron, 53 miles from their home in Rialto to Santa Ana so Aaron could attend Mater Dei High School. He'd drive back to Rialto, then return to pick up Aaron after baseball practice. That's 212 miles a day, five days a week, and helps explain why his 2007 Nissan Sentra has passed 285,000 miles on its odometer. "I hated it, but we had committed to take Aaron to that school," Brad said. Aaron Cross' only sacrifice was listening to his grandfather's collection of oldies music.

Somewhere between her Chilean family's life-or-death political realities and its intuitive, fantastical imagination is where Isabel Allende writes. Where she lives is the Bay Area, arriving in California about 25 years ago with a famous surname she's gone on to burnish, novel by novel. As perhaps befits an emigre author, Allende's books are routinely translated into two dozen languages. Here she muses in English about what the future of the written word holds for authors like her, and for the readers who love them.

Pale and emaciated, Michael Jackson lay on his bed in his $100,000-a-month Holmby Hills mansion looking like an end-stage cancer patient who had come home to die. The scene inside the house where Jackson lived as he prepared for a comeback tour was described Tuesday in stark detail by Richard Senneff, the lead-off witness in a wrongful-death case brought by the pop legend's mother and three children against entertainment firm AEG. FOR THE...

In the wake of Christopher Dorner's claim that his firing from the Los Angeles Police Department was a result of corruption and bias, more than three dozen other fired LAPD cops want department officials to review their cases. The 40 requests, which were tallied by the union that represents rank-and-file officers, have come in the two months since Dorner sought revenge for his 2009 firing by targeting police officers and their families in a killing rampage that left four dead and others injured.

As Michael Jackson's highly anticipated comeback shows approached, promoter AEG was so desperate to become No. 1 in the concert industry that its executives ruthlessly pushed the pop star to perform, caring little about his health, an attorney said Monday. In his opening statement, Brian Panish, who represents Jackson's mother and his three children, told the jury that Anschutz Entertainment Group was willing to do whatever it took to catch up to its competitor, Live Nation. "AEG had a problem, and they wanted to fix it," he said.