Gangs

Two young women have been arrested on suspicion of being part of the Cali Female Bombers (CFB) graffiti crew responsible for hundreds of acts of spray-painted vandalism in the city of Vista in northern San Diego County. Ramona Montes, 18, and Elizabeth Marie Reyes, 20, face felony charges, the Sheriff's Department said. Reyes was identified by her tag DASE, Montes by her tag HAZE, authorities said. Reyes was arrested on suspicion of 523 incidents of graffiti vandalism, costing the city $154,000 to clean up. Montes was arrested on suspicion of more than 300 incidents, costing more than $105,000 to clean up. The Sheriff's Department uses a web-based service called Graffiti Tracker that keeps a database of graffiti incidents, enabling investigators to find patterns involving names, initials, places and other characteristics.

Would you do a double-take if I said that that words were a recurring theme in this week's Great Reads? Yes, beautiful language is a mainstay in these stories, but this week, two standouts focused on words. Exhibit A: The words “Los Feliz.” I pronounce it Los FEE-lus. I know it's not correct, but it's “right” (marks me as an old-timer, I know). Exhibit B: The word “delight.” Silicon Valley types have been tripping all over themselves to use the word. At least it's better than another buzzword that makes me go urghhh: freemium.

BEIJING -- One scene of the new documentary “Chimeras” shows the young Chinese artist Liu Gang wandering with his camera around a town in China that's been built to resemble an English village. Liu is in Thames Town, a development outside Shanghai that's eerily empty, aside from the couples posing in matching outfits for wedding photographs on faux cobbled streets. In a series of satirical, candid shots called “Better Life,” Liu explores China's conflicted aspirations. Our ideas of a better life, the artist explains, are “all indeed fantasies from the West.” Finnish filmmaker Mika Mattila's thought-provoking “Chimeras” -- which played this week at the San Francisco International Film Festival -- is a documentary about the search for a uniquely Chinese aesthetic in an international art world dominated by the West.

An inmate charged with murder in a 2010 Baldwin Park gang shooting was mistakenly released from the Los Angeles County jail system last month because of a clerical error, sheriff's officials revealed Friday. The department waited nearly a month before alerting the public that Johnny Mata was on the loose. Mata was set free April 4 from the Sheriff's Department's Inmate Reception Center in downtown Los Angeles, according to Capt. Chuck Antuna. "A clerical error occurred and he was released," Antuna said.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Good grief, Charlie Brown! The "Peanuts" character and his pals are joining the social network Path. The San Francisco start-up has struck its first brand partnership with the "Peanuts" gang, still one of the most powerful brands in entertainment marketing which, like beloved global icons such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, has remained relevant to new generations. Starting Friday, Path users can attach virtual stickers of Linus, Snoopy, Woodstock, Lucy and, of course, Charlie Brown, to messages they send friends on Path to convey thoughts and feelings more expressively than with a few typed words.

A Monday morning shooting in El Sereno appeared to be gang-related, Los Angeles police said. A man, described as Latino and in his 30s, was shot multiple times about 7:10 a.m. while in his pickup truck. The man managed to briefly continue driving until he crashed near Huntington Drive and Monterey Road. He was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. No suspects have been arrested and no one else was injured. Authorities closed the intersection while they investigated.

Paramount Pictures may stand to gain a great deal from its forthcoming "Pain & Gain," but for Marc Schiller, it's only generating pain.  Schiller, an accountant who resides in Boca Raton, Fla., was a victim of the Sun Gym gang, whose exploits are documented in the upcoming movie. The film, starring Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson, centers on bodybuilders who went on a crime rampage involving kidnapping, extortion and murder in South Florida in the 1990s. In 1994, Schiller was abducted and tortured by the gang.

Canadian police are reopening their investigation into the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old girl who later hanged herself, saying new information has come to light, according to Canadian news media. Police have faced a torrent of criticism for not pressing charges against four youths accused by relatives of Rehtaeh Parsons, whose alleged assault, continued bullying and later suicide spurred outrage in Canada and abroad. Her parents said classmates shared photos of the attack online but that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told them there weren't grounds to bring the case to court.

Outraged Canadians are demanding police action after an alleged gang rape and suicide in Nova Scotia, a tragedy that has drawn parallels to recent assault cases in Ohio and California . Seventeen-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons hanged herself last week after enduring more than a year of bullying in the aftermath of an alleged rape. In an impassioned message posted on Facebook, her mother, Leah Parsons, wrote that four boys assaulted Rehtaeh in November 2011 and spread a photo of the act online, branding the teen a “slut” and launching an avalanche of harassment from her classmates.

If you're going to the Louvre Museum anytime soon, watch your wallet. The world's busiest museum reopened Thursday with the presence of uniformed police officers aimed at deterring aggressive gangs of pickpockets who target visitors and staff, Agence France-Presse reports . About 200 museum workers walked off the job Wednesday and forced the museum to shut down, leaving disappointed visitors without a chance to see the Mona Lisa, Venus...