Laundry

A major firm providing laundry services to business and governments nationwide has agreed to pay $6.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by hundreds of Southern California laundry workers who alleged the company violated Los Angeles' "living wage" laws. Cintas Corp., which operates industrial laundries and other facilities in the United States and Canada, denied any wrongdoing but agreed to settle the 5 -year-old case "in order to avoid the additional expense and distraction of ongoing litigation," the Cincinnati-based company said in a statement.

Thieves seem to be embarking on an anti-grime spree, some media outlets are reporting, saying thousands of dollars in Tide detergent is being swiped from shelves across the country. One Minnesota man stole about $25,000 worth of the liquid laundry detergent from a West St. Paul Wal-Mart over 15 months, authorities there say. Some stores, including a CVS in Prince George's County, Md., have taken to wrapping anti-theft devices around the handles of the orange bottles. Several publications have described the thefts as a widespread crime wave, even calling the detergent "liquid gold," but law enforcement authorities and some retail operators aren't so sure.

An 89-year-old driver crashed into a coin-operated laundry Tuesday, seriously injuring a customer. The driver lost control in the parking lot of a strip mall at Vanowen Street and Woodley Avenue at 2:45 p.m. and drove until "he was completely inside" the laundry, Fire Department spokesman Jim Wells said. A 65-year-old man was seriously injured.

Over the centuries, the great literary masters have taught us almost everything we need to know about the virtues of love and matrimony. But casino impresario Steve Wynn could probably write a book on the pitfalls of divorce. I'm not referring to his 2009 split with his wife, Elaine. That was gaudy enough to be covered on the gossip pages and resulted in her owning half his shares in Wynn Resorts, the publicly traded parent company of the Wynn and Encore casino-hotels on the Las Vegas Strip.

Oxnard police are offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a rapist who attacked a 60-year-old woman and left her bound and gagged at a coin-operated laundry. The woman was alone in the laundry at 150 E. Channel Islands Blvd. about 9:30 p.m. Feb. 22 when a man held a screwdriver to her neck and forced her into a back room, where he raped and robbed her. She was discovered, bound and gagged, about an hour after the assault.

A 44-year-old woman was shot three times Thursday night in the backyard of her Lancaster home, authorities said Friday. Latty DiSanzo Hart was checking on her dogs and hanging laundry in her backyard in the 1200 block of Milling Street about 9:30 p.m. when she was wounded, said Deputy Jeff Adams of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department station in Lancaster. Hart made it back into her home, where a family member called police, Adams said.

A traveler's laundry problems give a whole new meaning to the words soap opera. They range from triumph--washing three pairs of socks in a liter of bottled water--to tragedy--the bra that sparked an international incident. Forget all this fuss about laundering Contra funds or drug millions. That's a breeze compared to the laundering problems a traveler encounters on an overseas jaunt.

Two teen-agers were shot and killed as they cleaned up a self-service laundry after hours, but the slayings did not appear related to an earlier laundry homicide, authorities said Monday. The bodies of Miguel Perez Jr., 13, and his brother-in-law, Jose Merlos, 19, were found Sunday night at the Demain Laundromat, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Robert Stoneman. Authorities said about $200 was missing from a change machine.

The city's Board of Zoning Appeals has given final approval to a plan to replace a liquor store destroyed in last year's riots with a self-service laundry. Construction could begin in January. The board's 4-0 vote Tuesday was hailed as a victory for the community by local activists such as Sylvia Castillo, whose group, the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment, opposes the rebuilding of liquor stores. "It's a real success. We've collaborated all along," said Castillo.

They celebrated a victory Wednesday on South San Pedro Street, directly across from the Thankful Missionary Baptist Church and next door to the Watson Bros.' hand carwash. Daniel Whang's new O-Matic Laundromat rose from the ashes of his Ma's Liquor, a store that had burned down at 89th Street and San Pedro in the 1992 riots. As victories go, the opening of a laundry normally doesn't register that high on the public attention scale.

In the basements of the Disneyland and Paradise Pier hotels in Anaheim, big flat-screen monitors hang from the walls in rooms where uniformed crews do laundry. The monitors are like scoreboards, with employees' work speeds compared to one another. Workers are listed by name, so their colleagues can see who is quickest at loading pillow cases, sheets and other items into a laundry machine. It should come as no surprise that at the happiest place on Earth, not all the employees are smiling.

Navy Corpsman Peter Ruggiero, who spent months living in the dust and dirt of Afghanistan, looked at his new barracks room and was impressed. "I feel like I've just checked into a Comfort Inn," said Ruggiero, 21. Marine Lance Cpl. Vincent Shafer, 19, wanted to be succinct in his description of his new digs, with the private bath, walk-in closet, microwave, refrigerator and space for a television and computer. Photos: New barracks "It's so, so … contemporary," he said.

The man Los Angeles police have named as the prime suspect in a vicious assault on a San Francisco Giants fan at Dodger Stadium on opening day was ordered back to state prison Monday to serve 10 months for violating his parole. Deputy Parole Commissioner Ali Zarrinnam ruled that there was sufficient cause to put Giovanni Ramirez, 31, back behind bars because he had access to a gun that had been placed in a laundry basket at the residence where he was staying. The LAPD said the gun was discovered May 27 as they were serving a search warrant in connection with the Bryan Stow beating case.

We really, really don't want to be writing about Weinergate. Seriously. The travails of Rep. Anthony Weiner seem so much like a piece of here-today, gone-tomorrow political theater, a manufactured controversy just titillating enough to keep the Twittersphere thrumming, that we'd rather not add to the national embarrassment by throwing more ink at it. And yet… Does anybody actually believe the distinguished Democratic member from New York when...

WASHINGTON ? The White House said Monday that President Obama's State of the Union address will take a different course than the annual speech typically follows, eschewing a "laundry list" of proposals for Congress to consider but offering a broad outline of how to tackle the nation's economic challenges. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs avoided offering specifics about the speech at his daily briefing, preferring to leave that job to Obama on Tuesday night. He did say that any decisions about policy planks of the speech "have well been made" already and that Obama will continue making revisions of his remarks, as is his custom, "well into early tomorrow evening.

NOTE:   This is a blog about two guys attempting to lose weight over a six-week period.  They kicked off their weight loss "strategies" on Monday . Maybe I've become lightheaded due to the lack of saturated fats, but I am beginning to believe that there are things we can learn from the cast of "Jersey Shore. " At the ridiculous heart of the "gym, tan, laundry" mantra often uttered by the muscle-bound gentlemen of the hit MTV show are elements of narcissism and personal pride.

It is an improbable source of mom-and-apple-pie wisdom: a laundry company's sign board on a dowdy strip of Anaheim Street at the edge of the Cambodian business district. Yet there, week in and week out, year after year, Nuway Linen and Uniform Rental Service of Long Beach dispenses doses of homey sayings in four lines of 80 characters or less. Drivers never know, cruising down Anaheim, what gem of Ann Landers-like advice will confront them, encouraging, teasing or sermonizing. "If you worry about missing the boat, remember the Titanic," Nuway counsels the keep-up-with-the- Joneses set. "To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing," the laundry instructs the sensitive.

Katayone Adeli (pronounce it cat-a- yohn ) whizzes toward Melrose in her polished black BMW, making telephone calls while she drives. It's Sunday afternoon, but she's looking very put-together in a cheap-chic Hanes T-shirt and amber beads under a mahogany-color jacket from her newest fashion collection. As with most young professionals today, poverty holds no charm for this successful 26-year-old. In her case, success goes by the name of Laundry, a casually elegant, Los Angeles-based fashion collection.

Karen Blocker, an early riser, was about to head off for an elegant breakfast of eggs Benedict when the walls of her stateroom aboard a cruise ship bound for the Mexican Riviera began to shake. Then the public address system crackled to life, summoning the crew of the Carnival Splendor to the engine room. She opened her door onto a smoky hallway. The ship slowed, then stopped. At that point, the 50-year-old human resources manager from Phoenix was certain of just one thing: She had to get out of her room ?

If you're following the divorce proceedings of Dodgers owners Frank and Jamie McCourt -- in which Frank's lawyers allege, among other things, that Jamie lived in one Malibu residence and used the property next door as a laundry room -- you've probably been wondering some of the same things I have. First, is having an entirely separate house to do the wash a good thing? Isn't that actually a huge pain? Isn't it pretty much tantamount to having to schlep to a Laundromat? I mean, even the hand-to-mouth likes of me has had a washer and dryer at home since my mid-30s.