Jill Stewart

Angelenos who drive between downtown, Hollywood and San Fernando Valley dodged a bullet with the cancellation of Metro and NBCUniversal's bizarre plan for a skyscraper at the Red Line subway stop near Universal City -- a $3 billion project dubbed Metro Studios@Lankershim. News stories yesterday left out the fact that......

Thankfully, we have CitywatchLA explaining how Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spends bundles of cash on pointless gestures. His trip to Asia, which will have zero effect on the Los Angeles economy, is burning $30,000 a day. Villaraigosa says he's going to create jobs by going to China. Villaraigosa, a long-struggling politician,......

Uh oh, John Deasy, the Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent, is issuing glowing claims to the media that he is nearly ready to cut a labor contract deal with the anti-reform leaders at United Teachers of Los Angeles. Deasy is making people nervous. There's no hint yet that he......

Shame on Los Angeles residents for conserving water. The Department of Water and Power (a widely hated agency, but also a public utility owned by all 4 million Angelenos) plans to slap everyone with a $5 per mo charge. Why? We hurt DWP's bottom line by saving water. Rick Orlov......

Presiding Judge Michael Nash in L.A. County Dependency Court has seen horrific child sexual predators who rape their toddlers and sickos who starve their foster children -- and social workers and judges who fail to act. But these fallible, troubled juvenile courts are held in secret. Now Nash plans to......

Way, way good news for folks in San Pedro living within breathable proximity of the abandoned, Westway tank farm, which the Port of L.A. will finally demolish. Locals hope that dirty industry on this fill-dirt pier will give way to beautification -- and a home for the Southern California Marine......

Cool news from USC: a computer team led by a professor who has been trying to crack the Zodiac Killer's weird hieroglyphics has instead cracked the dense Greek and Roman code in the Copiale Cipher, a 105-page manuscript of a secret society obsessed with ... eyeballs. City News Service reports......

Update: Yes, the posthumous winner was Roselle! Big cash prizes went to Roselle and others. See at bottom of second page. The hairy competition has been pitched, with 453 heroic dogs from around the nation fighting it out for the eight finalist slots in the first American Humane Association Hero......

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's controversial "clean trucks" plan to squeeze independent truckers out of the Port of Los Angeles as a favor to the Teamsters -- a green-washing plan he sold as merely a wholesome effort to reduce emissions from old trucks, has just been zapped by a federal......

Wow, this is pretty definitive: With all kinds of California newspapers bashing Proposition 13 (often inaccurately claiming that it has starved the state budget -- which has skyrocketed since 1978 even as compared to inflation), 63 percent of California voters are telling Governor Jerry Brown to keeps his hands off......