Industrial City

The name Glasgow, Gaelic for "dear green place," is well-suited to this city, which claims to have more parks than any other city in Britain. Many of them provide lovely settings for the 35 museums and galleries that the city is also famous for, and which house fascinating historical artifacts and works by some of the world's leading artists. Budget travelers will be happy to find that many of these facilities are open free of charge.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - When I told friends I was planning a trip to Birmingham, the reaction was universal. "Alabama?" one asked. "On purpose?" I shared their skepticism, viewing the travel literature with the jaundiced eye of a longtime Angeleno who puzzled over the concept of vacationing in the South. But I was flying here for a business meeting that had been scheduled for Presidents Day weekend, so why not take some extra time and look around? It's not the oldest or most storied city in the South.

Three freight cars packed with explosives blew up at a railroad station 65 miles south of the industrial city of Gorky, killing at least 68 people and injuring 230 others, the Soviet government reported Sunday. The explosion, which occurred Saturday morning at Arzamas, 250 miles east of Moscow, hurled the freight train, including the locomotive, high into the air. It gouged a crater 80 feet deep and 165 feet in diameter and destroyed or damaged more than 400 buildings.

Voters in Vernon - all 42 of them who turned out this week - have approved three tax measures that leaders in the southeast Los Angeles city said were critical to closing an estimated $8-million general fund deficit. Officials had threatened deep cuts to the city's police and fire departments if the measures did not pass. While only 112 people live in the city, there are more than 1,800 businesses that will be hit hardest by the taxes. "More than anything, this vote is an acknowledgment in the city of Vernon that public safety is important," city spokesman Fred MacFarlane said after Tuesday's balloting, adding that residents and businesses alike have made it clear that they don't want to contract out police and fire services.

In this shivering, snowy, blockaded city, people do their complaining with humor and by candlelight. Question: What's the best kind of birth control in Armenia? Answer: Who needs birth control when we all live in overcoats? Armenia was once considered among the most promising of all the former Soviet republics. Now, in this newborn nation it is simply too cold to undress. People sleep in their clothes and fantasize about a hot bath. The politics of this debacle are not simple.

Emotions ran high in this western industrial city Sunday as thousands of Turks took to the streets for the second day in the wake of the worst attack against foreign residents in Germany since World War II. An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 mainly Turkish protesters marched through the city center shouting "Nazis out! Nazis out!"

Eric T. Fresch is Vernon's million-dollar man, a lawyer and former administrator who is not only one of the nation's highest paid public officials ever, but one of the least known. No photos of Fresch hang in City Hall, and his image cannot be found on the Internet. Until recently, his name rarely appeared in print. He's not a familiar figure even in Vernon, where he has raked in $7.5 million in salary and fees since 2005, routinely flying down to the small southeast Los Angeles County city from his Marin County home on Mondays and back on Wednesdays ?

Twelve workers were killed and 12 injured when explosives used by construction workers blew up by accident in the industrial city of Helwan, south of Cairo, police said Wednesday.

A quarter of a million people in the industrial city of Leeds were without running water Friday after a centuries-old main burst last week, authorities said. Twenty schools were closed and soldiers were brought in to maintain supplies at hospitals, while thousands of residents relied on tanker supplies and standpipes in streets for water.

Halfway through "Chinatown," the modern noir primer on water and power in Los Angeles, private detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is offered some sage advice. A morally challenged rainmaker named Noah Cross - played by John Huston - takes Gittes aside to warn him: "You may think you know what you're dealing with, but, believe me, you don't. " That line could be embossed on a welcome sign to Vernon. Founded in 1905, the industrial city was baptized in a water skirmish with Los Angeles, which sat upstream along the L.A. River.

Halfway through "Chinatown," the modern noir primer on water and power in Los Angeles, private detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is offered some sage advice. A morally challenged rainmaker named Noah Cross - played by John Huston - takes Gittes aside to warn him: "You may think you know what you're dealing with, but, believe me, you don't. " That line could be embossed on a welcome sign to Vernon. Founded in 1905, the industrial city was baptized in a water skirmish with Los Angeles, which sat upstream along the L.A. River.

Eric T. Fresch, the former top Vernon official whose tenure became a lightning rod in last year's effort to disincorporate the small industrial city, was found dead at a state park in the Bay Area, officials said Friday. The body of Fresch, 58, was discovered by rangers Thursday evening at Angel Island State Park, which is located in San Francisco Bay not far from Fresch's home in Tiburon. Tiburon Battalion Chief Ed Lynch said Fresch had been cycling around the island with his wife before they got separated.

Two former administrators in the city of Vernon who received lavish compensation will have their retirement benefits slashed in what state pension officials described as the largest public pension reduction in state history. Bruce Malkenhorst, who had the biggest public pension in California, $545,000 a year, will see his yearly benefit drop to about $115,000. His successor, Eric T. Fresch, will have his pension stripped completely. Fresch, who made as much as $1.6 million in 2008, has yet to formally retire but one expert estimated his pension's value at about $300,000 a year.

Council elections in the city of Vernon are usually formalities. The last time a new candidate was voted into office, Richard Nixon was still president. But this spring, after a series of corruption scandals and a reform effort at City Hall, the industrial city is holding its first open, competitive council election in years. The race has stirred up the tiny community, bringing door-to-door campaigners, fliers and candidates' forums for the first time in recent memory. Vernon only has 74 registered voters, though, and some of them resent all the commotion.

A council member in City of Commerce pleaded guilty Monday to a felony conspiracy charge stemming from his attempts to influence an investigation into his campaign's financial dealings, the U.S. attorney's office said. City Councilman Robert Fierro reimbursed some contributors to his 2005 campaign with cash in a scheme that hid the true source of the funds, according to a sworn statement from his treasurer, who has also pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge. Later, when he learned of an FBI investigation into the scheme, he urged a contributor to tell "false stories" before the grand jury, the statement said.

Reporting from Sacramento -- Businesses, unions and other interests set a record last year for what they spent lobbying California's government: more than $285 million, according to disclosures required by the state this week. Their expenditures were up 6% from the year before and just above the previous record of $281.7 million, in 2008. The California Teachers Assn. spent the most last year, $6.5 million, as schools were battling potential funding cuts and lawmakers acted on bills involving charter schools and other education issues.

An avalanche of red mud and rock killed at least 120 people, including 43 children, when it thundered down a mountainside and onto a slum area, officials said today. Some residents estimated up to 500 people were missing in the scores of buried shacks. At least seven of the children killed were attending first Holy Communion parties when buried under the landslide Sunday in Villa Tina, an impoverished area of the industrial city of Medellin.

Eric T. Fresch, the former top Vernon official whose tenure became a lightning rod in last year's effort to disincorporate the small industrial city, was found dead at a state park in the Bay Area, officials said Friday. The body of Fresch, 58, was discovered by rangers Thursday evening at Angel Island State Park, which is located in San Francisco Bay not far from Fresch's home in Tiburon. Tiburon Battalion Chief Ed Lynch said Fresch had been cycling around the island with his wife before they got separated.

The state senator who helped save Vernon from disincorporation this week is calling for an audit of its struggling power utility. State Sen. Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) on Monday led an effort to block legislation that would have disbanded Vernon and made it part of Los Angeles County. On Tuesday he requested an emergency meeting of the Legislature's Audit Committee to consider an audit of the Vernon Light & Power Department, citing concerns about the utility's financial health.

For months, Assembly Speaker John Pérez tried to make the case that corruption and secrecy were so deeply rooted in the city of Vernon that the only solution was to disband its municipal government, a first in modern California history. But a coalition of labor leaders and business owners feared a loss of jobs. Other municipalities worried that disincorporation would set a dangerous precedent. And Los Angeles County supervisors balked at inheriting Vernon's financial problems. On Monday, the campaign came to an abrupt end when the state Senate rejected Pérez's bill, AB 46, on a 13-17 vote, with 10 senators abstaining.