Kern County

Sunny Weekend Gives Way To Winter Storm, Snow For L.A. Area

Update: The National Weather Service has upgraded this to a "winter storm warning." First posted at 9:03 a.m. We hope you enjoyed that almost summer-like weekend. Early spring!, you exclaimed. Punxsutawney Phil is right, you yelled with joy. Not so fast. Winter is returning to Los Angeles with ... More >>

Taft School Shooting NOT In L.A.'s San Fernando Valley

Following another school shooting, this one at Taft High School near Bakersfield, the LAPD has had to clarify that this DIDN'T happen at the Taft campus in the San Fernando Valley. Really. The media is so East Coast-biased (it's not like more than 15 million people live in the area from Bakersfiel ... More >>

West Nile Virus Found in ... Beverly Hills?

Just in time for the impending heat wave (yeah, it's actually going to get even hotter), L.A. County officials announced that the West Nile Virus has been detected in tony Beverly Hills of all places. Now, before you blame that gilded city for being a dirty bird, note that the infected crow in ques ... More >>

Francisco Aguilar, San Diego Child Rapist, Found Hanging From Electronic Cable in Lancaster Jail; Cellmate Suspected

Francisco Aguilar, a 36-year-old child rapist serving a life sentence for the "aggravated sexual assault" he committed in San Diego County many years ago, was found blue-faced in his prison cell early Tuesday morning. It looks like the prison-justice fairies, who have been especially active over th ... More >>

American Idol Meets Arts Journalism, in KCET's Artbound

Ever been inside a disco ball-esque "steam egg" with a bunch of sweaty, half-naked strangers? Talked to Filipino inmates who wrote, directed and starred in their own musical, filmed within prison walls (and that went viral with more 50 million YouTube views)? Writers for KCET's new arts journalism ... More >>

L.A.'s Sewage Crap Export Flap

Each week, enough black sludge to fill Staples Center arrives in Kern County

Joseph Hyungmin Son of Austin Powers Fame Suspected of Murdering California Prison Cellmate

Joseph Son: Random Task or targeted murder?​In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Joseph Hyungmin Son plays a bad-guy henchman, "Random Task," who can fatally twist the head of a foe like you snap a twig. Maybe he really is that badass in real life, or at least bad. Because Son is b ... More >>

Glen Hartford's Hollywood Dream and How It Came to Ruin

Post Vacation Syndrome: Scientists Explain Why Labor Day Leaves You Feeling Like Crap

Hot-dog hangover doesn't help any.​One would think, after one whole extra day of not doing whatever it is you've signed up for, life-wise -- work, school, saving celebrity geese from massive drainings of Echo Park Lake, etc. -- that one would feel rejuvenated; autumn-crisp; ready to face the s ... More >>

VIDEO: Canyon Fire Lights Up Wind Farm Over Tehachapi Pass

YouTubeEarth, wind & wildfire​The massive fire ignited by a double-fatality plane crash in Blackburn Canyon, Tehachapi, on Sunday has since raged through nearly 15,000 acres of Kern County. A dozen homes have been destroyed, and 650 more are under evacuation orders. Bakersfield Now has some in ... More >>

'Rooster Subcommittee' Formed to Combat Overrun Bird Farms in Riverside County

Roosters!​Norco, a blossoming desert town (to put it nicely) in the northwest corner of Riverside County, used to be just the kind of no-man's-land where 25 to 50 early-rising roosters would go unheard by everyone but the farmer's wife and the tumbleweeds. Not anymore! Just call it desert ge ... More >>

Cockfighting: Ofelia Ochoa Sues After Husband Killed By Rooster

​In January, 35-year-old Jose Luis Ochoa was killed at a cockfight. One of the roosters, who had a long, razor-sharp spur attached to it, stabbed Ochoa in the leg. At the time, when the killing hit the TV news, it was unclear what really happened. Now, however, Ochoa's family is stepping forward ... More >>

$9 Billion California High Speed Rail Route: The Planning is So Inept That it's Souring Residents from North to South

California bullet train: little rooting for the route​Investigative reporter Tracy Wood writes today about the inept, cloaked, and somewhat creepy PR strategy followed by the California High Speed Rail engineers and Parsons Brinckerhoff, who have not followed basic transparency and outreach ru ... More >>

Cockfighting: California Man, Jose Luis Ochoa, Killed by Rooster at Cockfight

One cockfight in California went terribly wrong.​The Mexican sport of cockfighting has drawn the ire of animal rights activists, who say it's inhumane to strap razors to the feet of foul and let them go at it as cash-fisted men cheer them on. Here, then, is a tragic tale of one cockfighting f ... More >>

Study Shows More Kids are Murdered in L.A. County Than Anywhere in California, but Only Because We Have More People

​Despite being home to the greatest number of 10- to 24-year-olds murdered in California, Los Angeles County actually ranked No. 6 in the state for the highest youth murder rate per capita in 2009, according to a report released Monday. The study, "Lost Youth: A County-by-County Analysis of 2009 ... More >>

I-5 Freeway At L.A. Grapevine Still Closed After Night From Wintery Hell

Bakersfield NowNot a good start for weather in 2011​What a depressing way to start a brand-new year of the infamous Los Angeles commute. All those holiday stragglers who waited until Sunday night to drive home -- hoping to avoid the mass SoCal exodus/influx, not realizing it was really this z ... More >>

California Bullet Train To Los Angeles Via Bakersfield: Real Or A $43 Billion Mirage?

Money is so tight, the new leg doesn't actually go into Bakersfield as pictured.​The California High-Speed Rail Authority, ridiculed for its secrecy, mismanagement, conflicts of interest and crazy overspending -- and for choosing as the California bullet train's first leg a "route to nowhere" ... More >>

L.A. County Population Grew Only 0.7 Percent Last Year -- And Yes, 'It's A Job Thing'

Tom BakerWhere have all the people gone?​Population statistics for all the economically bleeding counties of California were released yesterday by the state Department of Finance, and guess what they show: Sure enough, it's been another hard year for the state, whose total number of residents ... More >>

The Chosen One

How the labor-Latino political machine decides who serves in Sacramento

Lakers' Jerry Buss Headed To Basketball Hall Of Fame

nba.com​The Basketball Hall of Fame was widely expected to announce the induction of Lakers co-owner Jerry Buss Monday morning. The 77-year-old was one of 19 finalists for the honor. In the largest sports deal at the time, Buss purchased the Lakers, the Forum, the Los Angeles Kings hockey tea ... More >>

Environmentalists Sue To Stop Tejon Ranch Development

Environmentalists are suing to stop a 5,000-acre development at Tejon Ranch, a picturesque property 60 miles north of Los Angeles made famous by the Chandler family that once owned the Los Angeles Times.Harry Chandler on Olvera Street.​ The suit claims that Kern County let the Tejon Mountain ... More >>

Dorothy Green's Final Fight: Before She Died, Heal the Bay Founder Said California's Drought Is a Fake

"If we managed water differently — better — there would be plenty of water for the state of California."

Throwing the Book at Najee Ali

Four years? Robbers get less time than the hated/loved black activist

The Election That Wasn't

With Tuesday's expected turnout at historic lows, electors are being treated like superdelegates, and missing out on the juicy infighting.

The Child in Hard Time

Meet Alonza Thomas, first-time juvenile offender, now superpredator

We Rule, You Don’t!

Lovin’ L.A., angrily

The Subway Mayor

How a bus-only politician — and a car-obsessed city — are learning to love the underground

Sour Grapes

California’s farm workers’ endless struggle 40 years later

Ruffled Feathers

Audubon sues the DWP for the sake of songbirds

Don’t Mince Birds

Wind power for Los Angeles faces down a new foe

Fight of the Condors

Can the giant birds survive Tejon Ranch development?

Letters

No Escape for an O.G.

Kershaun “Li’l Monster” Scott thought South-Central was tough. Then he moved to Kern County

Chong Family Values

Letters

Los Angeles: June, 2002

A semi-comic fantasy about an aspect of the future that may prove pertinent to L.A.

The Gods of Small Things

The Center for Biological Diversity cares as much about the unarmored threespine stickleback as it does a cathedral forest of trees, which is why it is reinventing the environmental movement and could be saving Southern California in the process.

A Killer’s Plea

Clarence Ray Jr.’s defense wants California’s highest court to spare his life because he’s mentally retarded

The World According to AARP

Butterfly Meets Bazooka

An L.A. Times community news reporter is fired for e-mailing a congressman

Operation Miscue

How legal problems, cultural shifts and internal turmoil muffled America’s radical anti-abortion movement, and why the battle isn’t over

It Ain’t Yellowstone, But It’s Home

Let Them Eat Cars

California’s a tightwad on food stamps

Love and Hell

Merle Haggard's Twin Oracles

Money for a Whistle Blower

MTA reaches out-of-court settlement with fired worker who alleged kickback

Alatorre Takes the Fifth — 108 Times

A federal suit may connect the dots on the doings of L.A.’s sleaziest councilman