Los Angeles County

It's known in many circles as a "quiet crisis" -- a surging population of older Americans over the next 15 years. And for those who serve the homeless in Los Angeles, that portends a dramatically worsening situation. The nonprofit Shelter Partnership spent the last two years studying the plight of Los Angeles County's homeless elderly -- a population, it concluded, of 3,000 to 4,000. The study, which is being released today, marks the first time that the region's elderly homeless population has been studied.

A Superior Court judge issued a final written ruling Monday ordering Orange County's legal case seeking to roll back deputies' pensions to be handled in the Los Angeles County courts. Judge Thierry P. Colaw agreed with an argument by Orange County's public employee retirement board that the case could not be tried in Orange County because it involved a dispute between two public agencies within the county, and concurred that Los Angeles would be a "neutral county" close enough to be convenient for all parties in the case.

At least 11 people were slain in Los Angeles County over the weekend, and authorities suspect several of the killings were gang related. Nine took place in the city of Los Angeles. The number of killings is not unprecedented, but it is greater than the county's homicide rate, which is between two and three a day. Many of the names of the dead were not available from the coroner's office. Only one person has been arrested. The latest shooting occurred about 1:40 p.m.

A doctor who treated AIDS patients admitted to watering down medications and pleaded guilty to fraud charges, the U.S. attorney's office announced Thursday. Dr. George Steven Kooshian, who practiced in Orange and Los Angeles counties, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Santa Ana federal court to a total of four counts of billing fraud and making false healthcare statements. The charges stem from Kooshian's treatment of two patients in 2000.

During the last year, the homeless in Los Angeles County have been set on fire, stabbed, shot and beaten with baseball bats in attacks. Advocates for the homeless say the incidents have become more violent but until now no one has tracked such crimes countywide. Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday unanimously recommended that sheriff's deputies, prosecutors and the county Human Relations Commission start tracking and reporting attacks on the homeless as hate crimes.

Big Tujunga Canyon residents and others reeling from the Station fire called Monday for a federal investigation into what they termed a poor initial response to the deadly blaze by the U.S. Forest Service . "It was beyond irresponsibility, beyond neglect," said Cindy Marie Pain, who lost her Big Tujunga Canyon home to the fire, which broke out in the Angeles National Forest on Aug. 26. Pain and other residents said they were outraged by...

Nine members and associates of a Bell Gardens street gang, including a suspected hit man for a Mexican drug cartel, have been arrested on drug trafficking and weapons charges, federal officials said Friday. The suspects -- six U.S. citizens and three illegal Mexican immigrants -- were arrested Thursday as agents served search warrants in Bell Gardens and Los Angeles, officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. Their arrests culminated a nine-month investigation by the agency of the Barrio Evil 13 street gang.

Los Angeles office landlords will probably be forced to slash rents as much as 30% in the first half of the year as job cuts create more empty space, Grubb & Ellis Co. said Wednesday. Office vacancy rates in Los Angeles County jumped to 12.2% at the end of 2008 from 9.7% a year earlier, the Santa Ana broker said. "Southern California counties got caught in the economic whirlwinds of 2008, and there will be little or no letup in 2009," said Jack Kyser, an economist who worked on the report.

The man believed to be responsible for killing his wife, five children and himself in Wilmington had been fired from his hospital job along with his wife for allegedly forging a supervisor's signature on a child-care application, according to Kaiser Permanente officials.

Nancy M. Daly, a widely respected children's advocate, philanthropist and arts leader in Los Angeles, has died. She was 68. Daly, who had high-profile marriages to entertainment executive Robert A. Daly and former Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan, had been battling pancreatic cancer. She died Friday in St. Louis while traveling back to Los Angeles from New York in a motor home with her three adult children. "It's exactly what she wanted," her daughter Linda Daly said Saturday.