Los Angeles News

Before she was Princess Anna in "Frozen" or even Veronica Mars, Kristen Bell was a musical theater geek.

After announcing her split from Antonio Banderas early in June, Melanie Griffith, 56, was seen a week later covering up her "Antonio" tattoo with what appeared to be makeup as she walked various red carpets.

New York City officials are turning up the heat on Elmo, Cookie Monster and Statues of Liberty impersonators - Times Square costumed characters who often demand money for posing in photos with tourists.

A broken water main near the UCLA campus Tuesday sent a geyser of water some 30 feet into the air, forced the rescue of people trapped in underground parking garages and covered some of the best-known parts of campus in water, including the school's famed basketball arena.

I've been getting quite a bit of mail on the story I posted Monday about a new book that covers the history of Pacific Ocean Park, the amusement park on a pier that was the place to hang in the late 1950s and '60s - Santa Monica's Crystal Pier.

A massive water main break inundated Sunset Boulevard near UCLA Tuesday afternoon, stranding cars, a bus and drivers in several feet of swiftly rising water and mud.

In one of its toughest crackdowns on the illegal sale of cigarettes to minors, City Attorney Mike Feuer announced a 30-day suspension of tobacco licenses to 14 retailers cited twice in the last five years for selling to young people.

The Young Hollywood Awards were handed out Sunday night in Los Angeles, but the ceremony was broadcast Monday night on the WB.

"We constantly review all of our businesses, and if a transaction makes sense strategically and financially, we will consider acting on it," Arthur Sando, a spokesman for Flynt Management Group LLC, said in an e-mail.

Gaffey is one of those wider-than-wide Los Angeles boulevards that handles six lanes of traffic and is now used primarily to exit and enter a main Los Angeles freeway.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's efforts to trim civilian employee pension costs suffered a major blow Monday when a labor panel voted to toss out new retirement rules touted by budget officials as a way to save the city $4 billion over the next three decades.

Biologists tracking mountain lions over the past decade worry that the big cats are inbreeding in the Santa Monica Mountains because they're cut off from other lions in the mountains above Simi Valley and further north, City News Service reports.

Los Angeles' popular Venice Beach teemed with people enjoying a weekend outing on the boardwalk and sand when lifeguards and other witnesses say a rare summer thunderstorm hit without warning, producing lightning that injured or rattled more than a dozen people and killed a 21-year-old man who was body surfing.

A rare lightning storm struck packed Venice Beach, Calif., Sunday, killing a 20-year-old man and injuring up to 12 others, one critically, after the same storm had struck a person on Catalina Island.

Los Angeles police officers responding to a call of a naked man running in a Jefferson Park neighborhood drove over a man who was lying in the street about two blocks west, officials said today.

More severe weather was expected Monday following lighting strikes that killed one person and injured 12 others at Venice Beach over the weekend.

One man was killed and at least eight others were hurt when lightning from a rare band of summer thunderstorms struck Venice beach in Los Angeles on a busy Sunday afternoon.

What: Conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic conclude the Americas & Americans festival with a celebration of film composers and a special guest performance by Gustavo Santaolalla and a suite from Dudamel's own score to “Libertador.