Waste

In the first month of the season, the Ducks were a below-average power-play team. Part of the reason they have an 18-3-3 Pacific Division-leading record before starting a three-game trip in Minnesota on Tuesday is their 11 goals in 28 power-play opportunities since Feb. 18. That 39.3% clip has elevated them to the NHL's top power-play team, at 27.8%. "We're doing a good job of moving the puck around, looking for the open man. When you do that, you're going to have a lot of success," defenseman Cam Fowler said.

Complaining about "rats the size of small dogs," debris that falls like thick snow and a pervasive, rancid odor, neighbors at a public hearing Friday protested a plan to expand a Sun Valley recycling operation into one of the largest waste-transfer facilities in the state. "Vermin run rampant," said Gary Aggas, president of the Sun Valley Neighborhood Council and one of many residents to testify before a city planning officer about the matter. "Dust blows through the neighborhood constantly....

A key contractor involved in the troubled cleanup at the former Hanford, Wash., nuclear weapons complex admitted Tuesday that it had engaged in criminal time card fraud and agreed to pay $18.5 million to settle the allegations. The project, which involves construction of a $13.4-billion treatment plant to process highly radioactive bomb waste, is years behind schedule, has exceeded its original cost estimate and is paralyzed by technical issues that have halted the work. The problems, however, have not dimmed political support for the project, given the threat that about 56 million gallons of radioactive sludge at the site could eventually leak and reach the nearby Columbia River.

On the morning after he became the top vote-getter in a bruising, four-candidate contest for Los Angeles city attorney, former lawmaker Mike Feuer got up early Wednesday and hit the phones, already campaigning for the May runoff against incumbent Carmen Trutanich. "This is the time to seize this momentum and carry it forward," Feuer said after unofficial returns from Tuesday's municipal primary showed him with almost 44% of the vote to Trutanich's 30%. Two other candidates, private attorneys Greg Smith and Noel Weiss, finished with 17% and nearly 7%, respectively.

Complaints about the massive open-air recycling facility in Sun Valley flow in each month in minute, sometimes stomach-turning detail. Rats have skittered off the property of Community Recycling & Resource Recovery and into a nearby business, according to calls logged by the city. Churning dust is said to be "making everyone's eyes burn," making breathing difficult and causing bloody noses among workers at a neighborhood paving firm. Gulls scavenging from piles of food waste have scattered bits of garbage from the sky. And then there is the stench, variously described in the logs as "a dead animal smell," a "rotten egg odor" and "putrid.

PHOENIX - By squeezing a 48-game schedule into 98 days, the NHL effectively erased the idea of a day off this season. Which is just fine with Ducks center Andrew Cogliano, who hasn't taken a day off since making his NHL debut seven years and 430 games ago. But that doesn't mean Cogliano and his teammates don't get tired. And they were exhausted Saturday when, playing their second game in 22 hours and fifth in a week, the Ducks wasted Cogliano's second career hat trick, twice giving up third-period leads before losing to the Phoenix Coyotes, 5-4, in a shootout.

Two state senators have called for an investigation into the state agency responsible for protecting people and the environment from hazardous chemicals after a consumer group released a report Thursday criticizing the agency for failing to do its job. Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog has accused the Department of Toxic Substances Control, which is responsible for managing hazardous waste, of allowing polluters to operate on expired permits for...

Next month, Los Angeles voters will go to the polls in a first round of balloting to elect a new mayor and other city officials. The election is taking place just four months after the presidential balloting, which means that Angelenos have been caught in a months-long cycle of nonstop electioneering. No sooner was the presidential election over than a new round of debates, television commercials and mailers started up for the city election. It's no wonder that only a small fraction of registered voters will cast ballots this March.

"We need to buy a movie studio. " Amid the conferences, panels, meetings and informal conversations in the wake of the presidential election, this idea has been a near constant among conservatives who feel like the country is slipping through their fingers. Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee combined raised just more than $1 billion, and all we got are these lousy T-shirts. Since conservatives are losing the culture, goes the argument, which in turn leads to losing at politics, maybe that money could be better spent on producing some cultural ammo of our own?

SEATTLE - An aging tank of high-level radioactive waste is leaking at the Hanford nuclear site in south-central Washington state at the rate of up to 300 gallons a year, federal authorities disclosed Friday after discovering a dip in the volume of toxic sludge in the tank. Though more than a third of the 149 old single-shell tanks at the site are suspected to have leaked up to 1 million gallons of nuclear waste over the years, this is the first confirmed leak since federal authorities completed a so-called stabilization program in 2005 that was supposed to have removed most liquids from the vulnerable single-shell  tanks.