Simone Wilson

California governor hopefuls Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown have both taken their fair share of pot shots this election season. It's gotten downright catty: "Job killer." "Whore." "Jerryfails.com." "Schwarze-Megger." "Man-ica Lewinsky." "Boo. I'll only stop if Meg does." "No deal, sucker." But Whitman's recent trip down memory lane made it......

Oh, the shame! Looks like another public servant may have been funneling community funds into his own account -- and this time, poor dying children were at stake. (Sort of.) The Center for Public Accountability revealed their latest suspect this morning: Gilbert Varela, chief executive of Central City Community Health......

Best way to communicate with your 13-year-old daughter, en route to lord-knows-where on the arm of some creepy 22-year-old with a history of sex crimes against minors? YouTube, of course! "Help!" the girl's father pleas in his social-media debut, sure to go viral. "My little daughter, Miranda Paige Hemphill, age......

In the month since we last reported on New York City's booming bedbug epidemic, the situation's gotten worse than we ever could have hoped. It was embarrassing enough when the nasty little vamps invaded fashion palaces like Niketown and Elle Magazine. (Turns out Victoria's Secret and Hollister were also targets.)......

The state Controller's new salary-tracking website is already coming in handy. Drooling for some more Bell scandals, we stumbled upon the public-official salary listings for West Hollywood -- a relatively small L.A.-area city with a population of 37,580 and a skyscraper budget for public officials. (With more than a little......

Not even death could part a Costa Mesa homeless woman from her 59-year-old friend -- identified as Signe Margit, another transient known for hanging around Mile Square Regional Park in Fountain Valley -- for the last 10 months. The former was found to be keeping Margit's mummified corpse in her......

Holding public officials accountable is so hot right now. The state Controller's Office made its heroic contribution to the transparency trend today, unveiling a website it's been cooking up (on low heat) for the past three months. On August 3, Controller John Chiang demanded all cities and counties in California......

Jose Fernando Santillanes, a 36-year-old Latino man, was tinkering with an electric vault in an empty South Gate lot on Saturday afternoon. His wife, 33-year-old Maria Cortez, stood by. Their two kids -- ages 3 and 9 -- sat just 15 feet away, waiting in the family pickup. That's when......

A black woman and her son, who were fatally shot on Thursday, Oct. 21, have been identified as 64-year-old Gladys Bloodworth and 25-year-old Jeremy Bloodworth. The shooting took place at about 2:30 a.m. in their single-story home at 12613 South Harvard Boulevard in unincorporated Athens, according to City News Service......

A married couple strangled to death at their house in Hawthorne on Wednesday, Oct. 20, were identified as Robyn Turnage, 57, and Leamond Turnage, 69. Their bodies were found at about 3:45 p.m. in a house the husband's mother owned on the 4100 block of West 142nd Street, near Rosecrans......