Free Republic

When visitors and tourists come to Los Angeles, no doubt they make it a point to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The glitz, the glamor … the notorious rep? A new survey calls the iconic Walk the “Worst Tourist Attraction in the World.” KCAL9’s Hermela Aregawi went to the Walk of Fame to find out why it’s become, well, infamous. She found people from the world over who said, yes, the walk gets crowded sometimes but the people she spoke to mostly gave it high marks.

"This afternoon an individual was filming our girls at the school and the building perimeter extensively windows and exits," the school's principal said. "This caused anxiety to staff and students." Perez said she was filming the architecture of the building when the security guard started threatening her. The case was still under investigation. Perez was not accused of a crime.

A seven-day teachers' strike at the second largest school district in the nation ended Tuesday with the United Teachers of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District agreeing to a deal that gave educators much of what they wanted, but not everything. Tuesday night UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl said a "vast supermajority" of members voted in favor of the contract, but that the results wouldn't likely be formalized until Wednesday. He said his members would be "back to school tomorrow." At the beginning of the 35,000-member union's strike, Caputo-Pearl called it a "fight for the soul of public...

... Los Angeles, like cities nationwide, is transforming its streets. In July 2017 the city installed a “road diet” on a 0.8-mile stretch of Venice Boulevard in Mar Vista, reducing four lanes to two and adding bike lanes separated from traffic by parking buffers. The project is part of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Vision Zero initiative, which aims to eliminate traffic fatalities in the city by 2025. Launched in 2015, Vision Zero is the most radical transformation of how people move through Los Angeles since the dawn of the freeway era 75 years ago. By almost any metric it’s been a...

Twenty five years ago, at 4:30 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1994, the Northridge earthquake shook Angelenos from their beds. For those of us who lived through it, the memories of chaos early in the morning are unforgettable. "We were just literally startled awake by a freight train driving right through our bedroom," said my father, Mark Margolis, who along with my sister, my mother and myself, was sleeping just about seven miles from the epicenter. "I mean the blinds that were supposed to be hanging vertical were like out horizontal. So, there was a tremendous amount of movement." I was...

A strike by tens of thousands of teachers in Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest school district, is all but inevitable starting Monday after the two sides did not renew negotiations over the weekend. Talks broke down Friday when the teachers' union rejected as "woefully inadequate" a new offer from the LA Unified School District. With no new discussions scheduled, pickets are likely to begin at 7 a.m. as teachers stand firm on sticking points including higher pay and smaller class sizes. Schools will stay open if a walkout happens. The district, with 640,000 students, has hired hundreds of substitutes to...

Wild Pursuit and Standoff on 5 Fwy at Camp Pendleton A driver who struck a man on a motorized scooter during a wild, three-hour pursuit that moved through three counties is in custody after a standoff with California Highway Patrol officers along the 5 Freeway at Camp Pendleton Thursday afternoon. CHP officers pull a driver from a vehicle on the side of the 5 Freeway in the Camp Pendleton area after a lengthy pursuit and standoff on Jan. 3, 2019. (Credit: KTLA) The driver — of an older-model maroon Honda Civic — had eluded authorities despite multiple PIT maneuver...

Jason Blum Gets Booed and Removed from Stage After Speaking Out Against Trump at L.A.’s Israel Film Festival Blum was at the festival to accept the 2018 Achievement in Film & Television Award. Jason Blum spent the night of the midterm elections at the Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles, where he was on hand to receive the 2018 Achievement in Film & Television Award. Blum attempted to speak out against Donald Trump while making his acceptance speech, but his comments did not go over well with the crowd. Variety reports the mega-producer was booed and heckled by the crowd,...

A flea-borne typhus outbreak among homeless in downtown Los Angeles triggered an investigation by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health after several cases were reported, the agency said Thursday. NBC sources say the number may be upwards of at least a dozen. Typhus can cause fever, chills, body aches, nausea and vomiting, cough, and rash, but can be treated with antibiotics. If not treated however, it can be fatal. Flea-borne typhus is a bacteria that spreads to humans when they come in contact with infected fleas or rat feces. Animals such as cats, rodents and opossums all attract...

Police allege Donovan Ruiz sold "fentanyl to many users" and that one of his customers overdosed and died. The arrest took place at Cher's Malibu home. A man believed to be the son of one of Cher's assistants has been arrested at the star's Los Angeles home. [snip] Police claim Ruiz, 23, "was involved in the sales of suspected fentanyl to residents of Ventura and Los Angeles Counties". [snip] "Fentanyl sold by Ruiz was eventually consumed by a victim in the city of Thousand Oaks who later overdosed and died." [snip] Sergeant Eric Buschow told People magazine that the arrest...

he day the fence arrived, Gabe was sitting next to his tent, right at the heart of Los Angeles’ Skid Row. It was a chain link fence – about six feet tall – placed at the edge of the sidewalk, where it neatly enclosed Gabe, his neighbors, and the tented homes they have made for themselves on the streets of what is sometimes called the homeless capital of the country. “They put the whole sidewalk inside the fence,” said Gabe, an older black man with kind eyes and a disarming demeanor who has lived on the streets of Skid Row...

During the August 18, 2018, airing of Breitbart News Saturday, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry explained that he chose, in part, to withhold $600 million from Citigroup and Bank of America because they are “trying to become the social police.” On August 16, 2018, Breitbart News reported Landry’s decision to withhold the $600 million, a decision shared by the Louisiana Bond Commission and State Treasurer John Schroder. The decision to withhold the money came after Citigroup and Bank of America each unilaterally placed gun control demands on their customers, going so far as to stipulate that bank-sponsored gun regulations had...

On 9 August 2018, a Cheri Bentham was waiting for a package to be delivered at her semi-rural residence on Hoo Shoo Too road, next to the Amite River. It was afternoon and about 93 degrees in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A white man, about 5'6″ appeared at her door, and started to make some suggestive and alarming comments. He said he had been watching her house. From wbrz.com: Benham was busy trying to get her three small dogs back inside when she noticed the man was touching himself inappropriately outside his clothes. As his remarks became lewder, she ran...

**SNIP** The Los Angeles Theater Center was decked out Thursday like a trade show for left politics. Booths featuring community organizers, single-payer healthcare enthusiasts, and direct action groups like Occupy ICE handed out literature and chatted up attendees. Off in the corner they were selling Ocasio-Cortez T-shirts, but community groups were far more prominent. Many of these groups met with Ocasio-Cortez that morning at a breakfast organizing meeting. When the program began, Ocasio-Cortez took a seat on stage while presenters spent an hour pitching the crowd of more than 500 on their projects. The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment...

Dogged by accusations of political money laundering, Los Angeles school board member Ref Rodriguez pleaded guilty Monday to a felony count of conspiracy and resigned from office as part of an agreement with prosecutors. In the deal, Rodriguez, 47, who had no previous criminal record, will avoid jail time. Instead, he will get three years’ probation and 60 days of community service. His resignation was effective immediately.

A gunman who opened fire outside a Trader Joe's in Silver Lake was in custody after a tense standoff that claimed the life of one woman inside the store. Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the death, saying the woman was pulled out of the store by authorities and declared dead at the scene. The mayor released no other details, saying police were trying to reach next of kin. The incident began as family dispute in South Los Angeles involving a man in his late teens. Police said he shot his grandmother and a second woman at her residence. He then took...

The LAPD arrested a Democratic Los Angeles councilman on Monday after he and other demonstrators blocked the entrances to a downtown Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center for about an hour. Dramatic footage showed Mike Bonin, a fierce critic of President Trump, being led away in plastic zip-tie handcuffs shortly before noon, after police informed protesters they were engaged in an unlawful assembly. Images and videos posted to social media showed dozens of demonstrators waving signs and chanting slogans, with several blocking access to the detention center's driveways and entryways. Eighteen protesters were arrested in total, according to local...

LOS ANGELES — A man wearing only boxer shorts, socks and high-top sneakers shut down all southbound lanes of the 110 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles after scaling an exit sign on Wednesday morning. The man was seen dancing, using a vaporizer pen, shouting into a bullhorn and unfurling several political signs, the Los Angeles Times reports.

A 54-year-old man who works as an adoption manager with the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services has been arrested on suspicion of possessing child pornography, police said Tuesday. Police arrived about 5 a.m. to raid Carlos Castillo’s Hollywood apartment, which he shares with his longtime partner, neighbors in the building told KTLA. Castillo was allegedly in possession of more than 600 images and videos of child pornography. Los Angeles Police Department Officer Herrera confirmed Castillo’s arrest Tuesday. A person who answered the phone at Castillo’s residence on Tuesday said he did not want to comment on...

DOES Louisiana hot sauce, a principal ingredient in the spicy New Orleans cocktail sauce commonly served with raw shellfish, kill certain bacteria found in raw oysters? The answer is yes, at least in the laboratory, researchers said in a preliminary report at a national scientific meeting on microbes and antibiotics yesterday. Principal ingredients of the traditional New Orleans cocktail sauce were found to kill a rare but sometimes fatal bacteria called Vibrio vulnificus. Dr. Sanders said that he saw his first case of V. vulnificus infection 10 years ago and that his interest in studying the sauces arose from lectures...