Parents

The most ballyhooed name change of the year became official Friday morning when a Los Angeles County Superior Court commissioner approved the former Ron Artest's request to become Metta World Peace. Amid labor discord that threatens to delay, if not wipe out, the NBA season, there is World Peace. Photos: Famous name-changers He is 6 feet 7, wears No. 15 for the Lakers and once participated in the infamous "Palace brawl. " Anyone now making his acquaintance will be meeting Metta World Peace.

Dear Liz: Our mother just turned 64, and our father is divorcing her. She hasn't worked in years because of significant physical and mental health issues. My sister and I have been trying to figure out how she's going to survive on $750 a month, which is the equivalent of half his Social Security. She has always had serious issues with money management, which is why there are no retirement savings or a house. We are now about to embark on the maze of social service benefits that an older woman below the poverty line can receive, partly so we can decide whether she's better off staying put where she is in Arkansas, moving to my sister's in Texas, moving to be near me in Maryland, or moving to her childhood home of Chicago, where most of her friends are. For a lot of complicated reasons (mostly related to the mental health issues)

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. "Suddenly there was someone speaking a certain kind of truth to you. You'd say, 'Wow!

The parents of two USC graduate students slain near the campus last month have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the university, saying the school misled them when it claimed that it ranks among the safest in the nation. Ming Qu and Ying Wu, both 23-year-old electronic engineering students from China, were fatally shot April 11 while sitting in a parked BMW in the 2700 block of Raymond Avenue. No arrests have been made, but Los Angeles police say they believe the killings were the result of a robbery gone wrong.

A new study showing an estimated 7% of American teens and adults carry the human papillomavirus in their mouths may help health experts finally understand why rates of mouth and throat cancer have been climbing for nearly 25 years. The evidence makes it clear that oral sex practices play a key role in transmission. The new data, published online Thursday by the Journal of the American Medical Assn., are the first to assess the prevalence of oral HPV infection in the U.S. population.

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

Expectant parents must make several important medical decisions. Among them: whether to have prenatal genetic testing, request pain medication during labor, strive for a natural birth or circumcise a male baby? Perhaps one of the most overlooked parts of childbirth preparation is whether to save or donate the infant's umbilical cord blood. Umbilical cords are usually discarded as medical waste.

Like many other spouses of undocumented immigrants, Gina Pope constantly worries that her husband suddenly could be deported and that she would be left to raise their two children by herself. Pope, a U.S. citizen, wants to apply for him to get a green card but knows that would mean his traveling to his native Peru, with the risk of not returning for months or years. Now, after more than a decade of waiting for the immigration rules to change, Pope is cautiously optimistic that her husband, who owns a residential construction business and has a temporary work permit, may finally be able to become a legal resident.

The Hispanic population in the United States grew by 43% in the last decade, surpassing 50 million and accounting for about 1 out of 6 Americans, the Census Bureau reported Thursday. Analysts seized on data showing that the growth was propelled by a surge in births in the U.S., rather than immigration, pointing to a growing generational shift in which Hispanics continue to gain political clout and, by 2050, could make up a third of the U.S. population. "In the adult population, many immigrants helped the increase, but the child population is increasingly more Hispanic," said D'Vera Cohn, a senior writer at the Pew Research Center.

David Joyce marched his way to the front of the U.S. immigration line using his pocketbook, sinking half a million dollars into a Vermont ski resort. The British citizen had spent years in a futile effort to secure green cards for himself, his wife and their 9-year-old son so they could relocate to sunny Florida. Then, a fellow emigre tipped him off to a little-known federal program that helps foreigners gain permanent U.S. residency by investing in American businesses. Graphic: Number of investors' visas to U.S. "In six months, we had our green cards," said Joyce, 51. "Considering everything we've been through, this was easy.

The United States has reached a historic tipping point, with children born to Latino, Asian, African American and mixed-race parents now constituting a majority of all births, the Census Bureau reported Thursday. The long-expected demographic shift is considered a milestone for the nation, though one that California passed three decades ago when births to racial and ethnic minorities surpassed those to white parents. The new report shows that minorities accounted for about 2 million, or 50.4%, of U.S. births in the 12 months ending July 1 of last year.

Adali Gutierrez rarely mentioned his scarred and disfigured chin. He kept quiet about the mangled lower lip that twisted when he talked. A 21-year-old raising four orphaned siblings had bigger worries. Today, however, he speaks without hesitation. A plastic surgeon has fashioned him a new lip and smoothed over the divots in his skin. Faded are the lesions that reminded him constantly of the night his parents were gunned down in Mexico. It was January 2010. Maria and Guillermo Sr. had arrived at a police station to bail out Adali, who had been stopped for drunk driving.

The parents of Kendrec McDade have reviewed the autopsy report of their 19-year-old son, who was fatally shot in March by Pasadena police, and said they were concerned that he may have been shot from behind. The report, released by the L.A. County coroner's office Friday, shows that the unarmed McDade was shot four times at point-blank range by one officer and was alive and handcuffed after being struck by a total of seven bullets. At a news conference Saturday, Caree Harper, an attorney for McDade's family, said the bullets that hit McDade's arms and one that hit his hip appear to contradict the police's assertion that none of the shots came from behind him. A diagram in the report appears to indicate one bullet entered McDade through the back, but the narrative states that bullet's trajectory was "front to back and downward.

A case underway in a nondescript Victorville courtroom lacks the trappings of a trial of the century -- there's no celebrity in the dock, no DNA evidence or CNN trucks broadcasting from the parking lot. But the case could have monumental consequences for California children. The trial pits a group of parents at Desert Trails Elementary School against the district that runs that school, and it turns on two related questions: How much power does California law give parents to seize control of a failing school?

In Los Angeles, red carpet treatment is not just for celebrities. Here, mere mortals can find specialists - medical concierges, cat whisperers, image consultants - for almost everything. And that includes experts who are hired to help families prepare for their newest members. Enter the baby planner. Before the advent of the current expert culture, it was a role that used to be filled by mothers, grandmothers and best friends, doling out advice, shopping lists and favors.

Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives are seeking to question Christopher A. Benton, the son of Pepperdine University President Andrew K. Benton, in connection with the death of a Malibu woman almost two weeks ago. The body of 25-year-old graphic designer Katie Wilkins was found in her parents' garage on West Moon Shadows Drive by her brother, Steve, the evening of April 28. Det. Tim O'Quinn of the sheriff's homicide bureau said Wilkins apparently...

In an effort to prevent alcohol and drug use on graduation night, Huntington Beach High School parents on Saturday put away their business suits, donned their blue jeans and took up a fistful of penny nails they will use to build a place for the graduates to party safely. The parents, many of whom are upscale professionals, have come together each Saturday since last September to remodel the high school's gymnasium to fit the senior's choice of theme for the traditional Grad Night celebration, "Jungle Safari."

Alicia Silverstone's new video has much of America saying Ewwwwwww! The "Clueless" actress who is known for her healthy, vegan cooking and animal rights activism, posted a video on her website Tuesday that shows her feeding her child. The clip has gone viral. Why? It's all in her method as she seemingly takes her maternal nesting instinct to a new level. The video shows her feeding her child Bear Blu like he's...a baby bird. She chews of his food and then -- how else to say this?

Every parent knows what it's like to fail his or her child in some important way. We speak a hurtful word. We are absent at a critical moment, or we simply fail to hear what our children are telling us. The three moms I met this week at the Homegirl Café know this feeling well. It was a few days before Mother's Day and we sat down together for lunch and talked about the many sorrows they've inflicted on their children. "You make wrong choices, and your kids pay for them," Veronica Duran, a 39-year-old mother of two, told me. The personal histories of these three moms include drug abuse, homelessness and stints in prison that caused them to miss many, many of their sons' and daughters' birthdays.

"Mad Men" actress January Jones ate her placenta (to be fair, dried and made into a pill). Alicia Silverstone chews up veggies and deposits them mama-bird-style into her baby son's mouth. And model Gisele Bundchen says her diaper-free son was toilet trained at 6 months. So what do these parents know that your average sleep-deprived parent - who barely has time to shop for food, let alone chew it for their kids - doesn't? Here, experts weigh in on the evidence. Pre-masticating In a breakfast-time video, Silverstone chews up the vegetables in her miso soup.