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Mario Villalobos, 58, allegedly confessed to the killing when he showed the body to a woman who was visiting Saturday night. The visitor, who goes by the name Bubbles, said Villalobos told her he was going to evict his roommate when the two got into a confrontation. “She kicked his dog … she pepper sprayed him and she was fighting and he was grabbing her,” Bubbles recalled Villalobos telling her. “She scratched him and then he grabbed her by her neck and squeezed it and squeezed it and squeezed it until she stopped moving,” Bubbles claimed Villalobos told her. Bubbles...

"Nightmare." That's how Scott Hounsell, the former executive director of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, describes the ordeal he went through two years ago, and is still trying to recover from today. "It was the most — the scariest, most devastating nightmare you could ever imagine ever going through ever," Hounsell added. "Because everything that you have and hold dear — my family, my career, everything — was threatened that it would be taken away from me." “ "It's scary. And I will never be able to get out of the shadow of this, ever. They fundamentally changed...

Pope Francis weighed in on a thorny topic in California history Saturday when he spoke at length at a Rome Mass about Father Junipero Serra, the controversial California mission founder set to become America's first Latino saint later this year. Addressing an audience that included many American priests, including Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez, the pope referred to the 18th century Franciscan priest as “one of the founding fathers of the United States” and praised his willingness to abandon the comforts and privileges of his native Spain to spread the Christian message in the New World. I wonder if...

A shallow magnitude 3.9 earthquake was reported Sunday morning one mile from View Park-Windsor Hills, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The temblor occurred at 4:07 a.m. PDT at a depth of 5.6 miles. The quake was classified by the USGS as "light" but was felt over a wide area of the L.A. basin. The Los Angeles Fire Department said it had received no reports of damage. A 3.5 quake rattled the same general area on April 12. Both quakes were centered on the Baldwin Hills/Inglewood border. The Newport-Inglewood fault runs along that area.

A magnitude 3.9 earthquake struck the Los Angeles area early Sunday morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The earthquake hit about 1 mile from Baldwin Hills at 4:07 a.m. local time, according to the USGS. It was felt throughout the LA area, in nearby Culver City and from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach.

The stepchildren of a woman killed in an automobile crash involving Bruce Jenner have sued the Olympic gold medalist. The wrongful death case was filed Friday in Los Angeles by the stepchildren of Kim Howe, whose car was pushed into oncoming traffic after Jenner's sport utility vehicle collided with it on Pacific Coast Highway in February. The lawsuit by Dana Redmond and William Howe does not specify how much they are seeking, but states they have sustained enormous damages. Jenner's publicist Alan Nierob declined comment. Demi Lovato Dedicates Song to Bruce Jenner Jenner has not been charged in the case....

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The billionaire wife of former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling got her revenge against a woman he secretly showered with gifts and whose recording of his racially offensive rant cost him ownership of the team. Shelly Sterling's victory Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court will force V. Stiviano to surrender a $1.8 million duplex and return $800,000 lavished on her in cash handouts and several luxury cars, including a Ferrari, during a shadowy relationship....

A downcast looking V. Stiviano has been pictured moving her belongings out of the $1.8 million Spanish-style duplex that a LA judge ordered to hand back to Donald and Shelly Sterling earlier this month. Sterling's alleged former mistress has suffered a dramatic fall from grace in recent weeks losing not just the expensive condo, but a total of $2.6 million in sugar daddy gifts. Stiviano, 32, looked less than happy on Thursday as she helped several heavily-tattooed young men put her possessions in a converted mailing truck that had graffiti all over it.

LOS ANGELES — A thriving French bakery that helped revive a stretch of a major boulevard has become a symbol of betrayal for Robert Smylie. The women behind the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood’s La Maison Du Pain on Pico Boulevard said a trip to Paris inspired them to open a neighborhood bakery. Carmen Salindong and her sister said they took out second mortgages, sold property and pooled their life savings to do so. “It was a wonderful story — but it wasn’t true,” said Smylie, 67. Instead, court documents say the women embezzled $5 million from Smylie’s law firm, where Salindong’s sister-in-law...

Black communities are seething over the epidemic of police killings of unarmed black men — in Baltimore, Charleston, Ferguson, Los Angeles, New York, Tulsa and elsewhere. Every day the newspapers, TV and Internet show appalling images of police brutality. The mass incarceration and high unemployment of blacks and the sharp disparity of wealth throughout society are intensified by the militarization of the police. Policies such as “zero tolerance” and “stop and frisk” have spiked an increase in the killing of blacks and Latinos.

Bumble Bee Foods and two employees were charged Monday with violating safety regulations in the death of a California worker who was cooked in an industrial oven with tons of tuna, prosecutors said.

It appears the long, frustrating wait for Dodgers fans hoping to see their team on TV will continue indefinitely. Multiple reports Thursday indicated the proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable – distributor of the Dodgers-owned SportsNet LA – was on the verge of collapsing. The merger between the companies had been viewed as a potential solution to the distribution impasse that has prevented about 70 percent of the local market from seeing the majority of Dodgers games since the start of last season. The collapse of that deal means "the status quo remains in place," said sports-media consultant...

An Indiana woman undergoing surgery in Los Angeles to remove a tumor experienced a twist worthy of a sci-fi plot when doctors discovered an embryonic twin in her brain. Yamini Karanam, 26, was unaware of what was happening in her head until she underwent a procedure designed to reach deep into the brain to extract the tumor. After waking up from the surgery, Karanam was surprised to learn of the "teratoma" -- her embryonic twin, a rarity in modern medicine, complete with bone, hair and teeth.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is seeking to recoup millions of dollars from technology giant Apple over a problem-plagued curriculum that was provided with iPads intended to be given to every student, teacher and administrator. To press its case, the Board of Education on Tuesday authorized its attorneys in a closed-door meeting to explore possible litigation against Apple and Pearson, the company that developed the curriculum as a subcontractor to Apple. L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines “made the decision that he wanted to put them on notice, Pearson in particular, that he’s dissatisfied with their product,” said David...

Immediately after takeoff from Sea-Tac, the pilot “reported hearing banging from beneath the aircraft,” according to the airline. “The captain immediately returned to Seattle, declaring an emergency for priority landing,” the statement said. “The aircraft was in the air for 14 minutes. After landing, a ramp agent was found inside the front cargo hold, which is pressurized and temperature controlled.”

The FBI secretly kept tabs on Nicholas Michael Teausant for six months, having a confidential informant meet with him repeatedly in Stockton at breakfast joints, a park and a flea market as the 20-year-old student allegedly spun his vision of jihad against the United States. Federal court papers say Teausant talked for months of his desire to train fighters in Syria, to bomb the Los Angeles subway system over the New Year’s Day holiday and to spark a civil war that would topple the U.S. government. :snip: In Internet postings quoted in the complaint, as well as conversations Teausant had...

I bring you shocking news, gentle readers. If you take thousands of incarcerated felons and turn them loose on society, and you then allow the federal government and cultural elites to demoralize the police officers charged with keeping these liberated hoodlums in line, you end up with higher crime. Who would have dared imagine it?This is the state of affairs in California, where a succession of imprudent decisions by judges [1], lawmakers [2], and the electorate [3] have combined to throw open the prison gates to swarms of men who in a sane world would have remained locked away...

On a recent Friday, Kwanza Brooks, a $7.25-an-hour McDonald’s worker, climbed into a 14-person van to take a four-hour ride from Charlotte, N.C., to Atlanta. As she and other workers headed south, Ms. Brooks, a short, fiery woman, swapped stories with her companions about unsafe conditions and unfair managers. Upon arriving, they joined more than 400 other people — including home care aides, Walmart workers, child care workers and adjunct professors. The gathering was a strategy session to plan for the fast-food movement’s next big wave of protests, which is now scheduled for April 15. But the meeting was also...

Authorities have surveillance footage showing the suspected arsonist in last December's spectacular downtown L.A. apartment complex fire parking his vehicle on the 110 Freeway and walking into the half-built structure with cans of fuel, a fire official told a community group.. Los Angeles Fire Department Battalion Chief Steve Ruda last week informed members of Echo Park's neighborhood council of new details about the fire, which caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. He said the suspect was still at large. Officials have offered a $170,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction of the arsonist behind the...

HBO caused a major stir on social media with Sunday night’s broadcast of “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief,” a blistering documentary about the Church of Scientology and its celebrity devotees. People Magazine published a teaser for the film Sunday, which was first screened in January at the Sundance Film Festival. Sensational in content but not in tone, Going Clear has been making headlines since its first screening at Sundance in January. It has also upset that secretive, combative and often embattled Church, which in a lengthy statement attacked the film as “insidious religious persecution by bullies toting...