CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
August 8, 2011 | By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles County officials are exploring an unconventional solution for handling the prisoners the state is passing off to them: passing them off to someone else. By year's end, hundreds of criminals who would have done their time in state prisons are expected to go instead to county lockups as part of the governor's plan to thin the population in California's chronically overcrowded prisons. Taking some of those inmates and shipping them out again is being considered as a last resort, county officials said.
FOOD
January 21, 2011 | By David Karp, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Grapefruit may be the most misunderstood of California's fruits. Excellent locally grown examples are available year-round at farmers markets, but it's also easy to fall for fruit ? often similar-looking and grown just a few miles away ? that may be ludicrously sour or overmature. Choosing quality fruits depends on understanding the calendar of varieties and growing areas, which may seem inscrutable to the uninitiated but is easy to learn. Grapefruit originated in the Caribbean, as a natural hybrid of pummelo and sweet orange, and needs virtually tropical heat over a long season to achieve a pleasing balance of sweetness and acidity.
FOOD
January 20, 2011 | By David Karp
January is peak season for oranges from the San Joaquin Valley, the state's leading growing area. It takes a little more care to obtain top-quality citrus from this district, where each variety has a relatively defined season, than fruit from Southern California, where citrus can hang on the tree much longer. Some of the best choices right now are Page, Washington navel and Moro blood oranges. Page hybrid Page is not a purebred orange, or even a mandarin, as it's sometimes called, but a hybrid of Minneola tangelo and clementine made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1942.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 7, 2011 | By Lee Romney, Los Angeles Times
The San Joaquin Valley town of Chowchilla ? known for its dairy farms and prisons ? has defaulted on a municipal revenue bond, underscoring the tight times and drastic choices faced by struggling California cities. The city, which has a skeletal manufacturing base, failed to make its January payment on a bond issued in much flusher times to renovate the ample City Hall, which houses a government that has seen a 45% cut in its workforce since mid-2009. But Assistant City Administrator Wayne Padilla said Thursday that he had negotiated with the bond trustee to draw down on bond reserves Friday and make the January payment, the last one due for this fiscal year.
BUSINESS
December 20, 2010 | By P.J. Huffstutter, Los Angeles Times
King Cotton is back. More than a decade after the state's "white gold" crop started losing its luster, booming commodity prices have farmers cashing in on growing export demands ? and have turned great swaths of Central California a snowy white during harvest season. Cotton-picking machines chug across old vegetable fields, former vineyards and land long fallow. Stacks of Pima cotton, as long as a semitrailer, stand row upon row as far as the eye can see, waiting to be shipped to mills and turned into Jockey underwear, Fieldcrest towels or L.L. Bean shirts.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 7, 2010 | By Scott Kraft, Los Angeles Times
The beige notice appeared on Becky Quintana's doorstep one recent morning here in Seville, a century-old settlement nestled amid fruit and almond groves in the Central Valley. "Boil your water," it warned in bold, capital letters. Alarming as that was, the blue "unsafe water alert" that came the next day was more worrisome: Don't drink, cook or even wash dishes with the water ? and don't boil it, because that just concentrates the nitrates. But, a day later, more pastel-colored circulars arrived.