Charles Rappleye

Photo by Virginia Lee Hunter CARLOS OLIVA MENJIVAR GOES BY THE street name "Pelon." Loosely translated, it means "Baldy," but seven months in county jail have left him with a bristling thatch of jet-black hair. Still, you can't miss his gang affiliation tattooed on his forehead. Just below the hairline......

It had all the celebratory air of a ribbon cutting last week when honchos from Staples Center shared the stage with the mayor of Los Angeles and a key councilwoman to announce plans to invest $300 million in a new football stadium on the south end of downtown. Tim Leiweke,......

THERE IS A SCOOP IN LABYRINTH, THE first book that seeks to make sense of the sprawling police scandal that wracked Los Angeles over the past four years. It arrives in the final chapter, two pages before the epilogue, and it's supplied by Nick Broomfield, the British documentarian who made......

THE RELEASE OF INTERNAL ENRON DOCUMENTS detailing market-manipulation strategies with nicknames like "Death Star" and "Ricochet" has caused an uproar in Congress, which called on the memos' authors to testify this week on how these practices contributed to the California energy crisis. But for Eric Woychik, an energy analyst, the......

The energy crisis that cost California as much as $40 billion in 2000 and 2001 did not, in fact, result from a shortage of electricity, according to testimony by state officials before Congress last week. Instead, it was an economic crisis brought on by manipulation of the wholesale energy market......

When Sonia Flores was his lover, Rafael Perez -- L.A.’s most famous corrupt cop -- persuaded her to tell lies that sent five men to prison. When Perez spurned her, she told incriminating stories about the ex-cop, but it was Flores herself who did the time, for lying to investigators......

The appointments of U.S. ambassadors and justices of the Supreme Court might be subject to public debate, but not the appointment of the top cop in Los Angeles. That was the verdict of the city Police Commission early this week as it continued -- in private -- its review of......

Just by sitting on its robes, the U.S. Supreme Court last week condemned public transit in Los Angeles to a fractious and uncertain future. The justices voted unanimously not to hear an appeal by the Metropolitan Transit Authority to overturn the binding agreement it signed six years ago with the......

Illustration by Melinda Beck ENRON CEO JEFF SKILLING TOOK IT from all directions when he traveled to San Francisco last June to address the white-glove crowd at the Commonwealth Club. First the announcement came early that week that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would extend price caps to any companies......