Trends

After years of rapid growth, illegal immigration has slowed in California, with the state's share of the nation's 11.9-million undocumented migrants dropping by nearly half to 22% from 42% since 1990, according to a new study released Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center. The study found that California is still home to the nation's largest concentration of illegal immigrants, numbering 2.7 million last year, but that more of them have dispersed to Georgia, North Carolina and other states.

President Obama's push for healthcare reforms gets a boost today from a new study by Harvard University researchers that shows a sizable increase over six years in bankruptcies caused in part by ever-higher medical expenses. The study found that medical bills, plus related problems such as lost wages for the ill and their caregivers, contributed to 62% of all bankruptcies filed in 2007. On the campaign trail last year and in the White House this year, Obama had cited an earlier study by the same authors showing that such expenses played a part in 55% of bankruptcies in 2001.

Defaults on privately insured U.S. mortgages rose 35% in November to a record, an industry report showed Monday, adding evidence about the depth of the U.S. housing slump. The number of insured borrowers falling more than 60 days late on payments jumped to 61,033 last month from 45,325 in November 2006, according to data from members of the Washington-based Mortgage Insurance Companies of America. The missed payments, often a prelude to foreclosure, represented a 2.9% increase from October.

Nationwide sales of previously owned houses and condominiums fell 20% in November from the same month a year ago, according to data released Monday. But the month's sales were up slightly over October. The National Assn. of Realtors saw the October-to-November rise as an indication that the housing market might be approaching a bottom. Lawrence Yun, the organization's chief economist, called the modest bump up in sales "a sign that the housing market is stabilizing."

After decades as the computer of choice for homes and businesses, the desktop PC is being pushed to the scrap heap by its smaller, nimbler sibling: the laptop. They've been around since the early 1980s, but portable computers are finally taking over. Last year, for the first time, American consumers bought more of them than desktops. Sixteen of the 20 bestselling PCs on Amazon.com this holiday season were laptops. U.S.

The number of homicides in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties either saw a sharp drop or remained mostly unchanged last year compared to 2006, according to new crime statistics. Homicides fell from 12 in 2006 to six in 2007 in the area patrolled by the Orange County Sheriff's Department, officials said. The sheriff's jurisdiction includes 12 of the county's 34 cities, serving a population of about 3.2 million people.

Bucking the trend in many other wealthy industrialized nations, the United States seems to be experiencing a baby boomlet, reporting the largest number of children born in 45 years. The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Latinos. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births. But non-Latino white women and other racial and ethnic groups were having more babies too.

The first rule of selling station wagons is don't talk about station wagons. That's the marketing plan behind the stealthy return of one of the auto world's most practical -- and most ridiculed -- designs. For years, the mere idea of a wagon has been poison in the car world, resurrecting queasy carpool memories of ungainly giants like the Ford Country Squire and the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser for a whole generation of drivers.

Walt Disney Co. is no stranger to fantasy worlds, transporting audiences -- whether to a cottage in the woods with a young princess in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" or to the Great Barrier Reef aboard the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage ride at Disneyland. Now, Disney is spinning its tales in the newest mass medium -- online virtual worlds, where children adopt cartoonish avatars and play games.

Romance packages at spectacular seaside resorts? Those are so 2007. This Valentine's Day, truly groovy couples will nibble chocolate-dipped strawberries, sip Champagne and gaze into each other's eyes not in a deluxe suite on the Gold Coast but in a shoe store. And not just any shoe store: Footcandy in Brentwood is the only place in town to find the big three --Jimmy Choo, Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin--under one roof. What could be more romantic than that? For $350, the 11/2-year-old boutique is offering a "Romance Your 'Sole' Mate" package that gives lucky couples the run of the shop for an hour, a 15% discount on all the shoes they snatch up ($770 jeweled D'Orsay pumps by Choo--grab 'em!