Photo by Plankton 4:20 via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr More on the arrest of Kazuyoshi Miura, who is accused of killing his wife in LA in 1981 and is being extradited from Japan: Turns out it was his blogging that got the authorities' attention. Bad blogger! Bad! Another one from the Cold Case Files solved: 47-year-old Wayne Osbourne of Virginia has been charged in the 1988 murder of Diana Michael, who......

Illustration courtesy of the artist. We saw in this week's Los Angeles Downtown News that Doug Davis, the paper's former art director and current contributor of the "Urban Scrawl" political comic strip, has his first gallery show. It opens tonight in Downtown LA and runs until April 30. In "Urban Scrawl," Davis captures the essence of the city with his pen and ink -- skewering government officials, projects and Downtown life in general. At......

One of my favorite food writers, Jeffrey Steingarten, once did an elaborate and methodical taste test of several different varieties of tap and bottled water. After much research and even more adjectives, he came to the shocking conclusion that New York tap water was most pleasing to the palate. And now Los Angeles tap water has every right to brag as well: it won the award for best municipal water at the 18th annual......

The Daily Breeze is reporting that police were searching earlier this morning for a possible gunman at California State Dominguez Hills in Carson: Two students apparently reported around 8:30 a.m. they saw a gunman carrying an AK-47 assault rifle and wearing a green jacket and no shirt, according to news reports. The alleged gunman may have also had additional canisters of ammunition around his waist and he was headed toward Lacorte Hall, an building of......

Two Chinese immigrants in different parts of the country were charged in separate cases of espionage today, the Associated Press reports. One of them was based here:In Los Angeles, former Boeing engineer "Greg'' Chung was arrested on charges of working as an unregistered agent for the Chinese government who stole trade secrets from the defense contractor. Prosecutors say the stolen data largely focused on aerospace programs. Chung, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was indicted last week......

As we reported earlier, the two-month Writers Guild of America strike is nearly over. WGA-East members voted heard about the proposal earlier and West members weighed in at 7 p.m. Some are already questioning the deal, but most expressed relief that the work stoppage is about to come to an end. Stay tuned to LAist for excellent coverage. A man was shot this morning in North Hollywood by an alleged gang member who approached......

It's pretty simple- he got the most states and the most delegates. That's it. Sure, Hillary had her voting demographic victories last night, with Hillary keeping Latino support and Hillary did get New York and California, but at the end of the day those things are only important as the delegates they get you. Clinton's Northeast Sweep didn't pan out as well as hoped, with Connecticut going to Barack. Speaking of Connecticut, Obama had......

Don't forget: LAist Super Tuesday Election Party tonight at Seven Grand! Details and RSVP here. Did you have any problems voting in Los Angeles today? The Los Angeles Times and LAist report on problems in the precincts, especially for non-partisan voters. Is it still a long strange trip if it's only just begun? The last remaining members of the Grateful Dead are reuniting tonight in San Francisco to show their support for Obama. The......

While the remaining Republican candidates converged on Simi Valley yesterday to debate who was most like Ronald Reagan and the two Democratic candidates still standing in the race meet in Los Angeles later today to hash out who is most unlike Reagan, other political news sent shock waves through Washington D.C. that did not portend well for the Grand Ol' Party. Congressman Tom Davis, a Republican who represents the suburban 11th District of Virginia, said......

photo of the 2003 Pasadena Freeway bike ride by Virginia Renner Occidental Professor Robert Gottlieb's latest book -- Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City -- is going to be awfully tempting to Angelenos who care about urban planning, the environment and social change. Get a taste when he reads today at Dutton's at 2pm -- and then ask the store to order a copy for you. In his book, Gottlieb......

The bestests Christmas present ever a vintage Jiffy Kodak Series II camera used in World War II....

Picture it: North Hollywood, 2007. Two old pals get together to work on an installment of LAist's Neighborhood Project but are easily distracted by watching episodes of The Golden Girls on dvd. Deeply entrenched in a bout of hunger, the two turn to the internets to find a local pizzeria that isn't a great big multinational chain (one of them used to be the LAist Food Editor, after all, and has these lofty ideals about......

Reaction to Final BCS Standings....

The nightmares of all nightmares have happened. Ohio State will now be in the BCS Championship game by virtue of being ranked third in the BCS and both #1 Missouri losing to Oklahoma and #2 West Virginia losing to Pittsburgh in the Backyard Brawl. How the fuck is this happening? I thought once the Buckeyes lost to Illinois at home on November 10 they would effectively be gone from any discussion about a National......

Monday Shalom Auslander presents Foreskin's Lament 7pm @ Vroman's Valerie Plame Wilson presents Fair Game 7pm @ Carpenter Performing Arts Center, Long Beach Barbara Firestone presents Autism Heroes 7pm @ Dutton's Slash presents Slash 7pm @ Borders, Torrance Lawrence Wright presents The Looming Tower 7:30pm @ UCLA Tuesday David Plante, with host Mark Danielewski, presents ABC 7pm @ Book Soup Michael Lent presents Christmas Letters from Hell 7pm @ Vroman's Tommy Lasorda & Bill Plaschke......

Can we please do the OPPOSITE of adding fuel to these fires? A Sun Valley day laborer has been charged with arson after he was caught attempting to start a blaze in the Woodland Hills area earlier this week. Do you use your cell phone? Of course you do. The future of this important device lies in the hands of visionaries, such as the ones who are attending MobileCampLA on Sunday. And you too......

On any given day we have the chance to see major theatre, dance, and music performance in Los Angeles. Many organizations bring performing arts to our local kids. The city is full of generous volunteers who make mentoring a priority. One of these non-profits, the Virginia Avenue Project (VAP) celebrates its fifteenth year of changing the lives of the kids they serve by inspiring them to work hard, have fun creating theatre, and plan......

Back in 2004 when both the University of Miami (FL) and Virginia Tech defected to the ACC from the Big East conference (and Boston College the following year), critics around the country proclaimed the Big East to be a dead football conference. The Big East had the threat of losing their BCS conference status especially after they added Louisville, Cincinnati and South Florida to their ranks. What a difference several years make. While the......

After taking a week off of work (and writing this with almost no care in the world) Saturday should be a very mundane day what with the expected rain. However I can’t take any solace in the fact that there aren’t a lot of games to be excited about. Compelling Matchups #12 South Carolina Gamecocks at #2 LSU Tigers. The ole ball coach has the Cocks riding high on defense. It’s surprising since Steve......

Visiting Washington D.C. during the summer is like reliving all your high school field trip nightmares. Every snotty-nosed kid and their mother was there. Despite the heat, humidity, and the rampant smell of Republican carcass, I had a great time. When Maryland and Virginia donated some land for Charles L'Enfant to build Washington D.C., as a capital city for this nation, I don't think they envisioned the polarity and contrast that metropolitan east coast city......

Two weeks into the college football season, and I’m disappointed. A lot of the top-ranked teams just haven’t been as dominating as I thought. USC’s win over Idaho last week left a bad taste in my mouth. California struggled this week against Colorado State. And where in the world was Louisville’s defense? And Wisconsin just squeaking by UNLV? But in the face of these underwhelming performances, there were a couple that really impressed me.......

The first time I heard Clipse was on the Neptunes 2003 release "The Neptunes Present... Clones". Ever since, I've been hooked by their undoubtedly catchy rhymes and complex lyrics. It took them a while to create a follow up from their first album Lord WIllin', due to problems with their record label, however they came out with their newest release, Hell Hath No Fury, in November 2006. Finally, Tuesday night I was lucky enough......

The fallout from Appalachian State’s upset over Michigan extended beyond Michigan falling out of the Associated Press Top 25 poll. The AP announced on Thursday that lower division schools are now eligible to be included in the poll. It’s great that the Championship Subdivision (aka Division I-AA) has a chance of being ranked alongside the big boys. While I highly doubt that a team even as accomplished as Appalachian State will crack the Top......

For the second year in a row UC Santa Barbara was ranked the 10th Best Party School by the Princeton Review. In their newly released 2008 edition of The Best 366 Colleges, the university 90 minutes north of LA was the only California school to make the Top 10. The top ranked party school this year was West Virginia University, a school that has made the list seven times in the past 15 years.......

In what is likely to be just the second amongst many casualties in the presidential race (if you'll remember, Democratic hopeful and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack already dropped out in late February), Republican candidate James Gilmore formally announced that he was dropping his 2008 bid a few days ago, citing low fund-raising numbers. While several of his Republican rivals had already managed to raise tens of millions of dollars in the previous quarter,......

Visiting the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda used to be as much an edifying journey through the 37th president's life as an exercise in fact-checking and second-guessing. The room dedicated to covering the Watergate scandal, for instance, treats you to several nuggets of wisdom that make you wonder whether you were really awake in that history class you took a while ago. Consider this: did you know that Watergate was actually nothing more......

Fall Out Boy, +44, The Academy Is . . ., Paul Wall @ Honda Center Metal Skool, Virginia City Revival, Glass Pinata, Silver Needle @ Key Club The Adored, Lola Ray, The Neon Trees @ Knitting Factory The Ghost Lullaby, Peachfuzz, Jessie Deluxe, Ready the Jet, The Dirges @ Safari Sam's Thee Fine Lines, Quan & the Chinese Take-Outs @ The Scene Suicide Club, Totally Radd, Protection, Love Lies Sleeping @ Viper Room......

- Gustavo Arellano, who writes the syndicated column “¡Ask a Mexican!” for the OC Weekly, is profiled in the New York Times. - Hollywood loves top cop Sheriff, Lee Baca. Now he faces questions over his handling of Paris Hilton. - From University of Virginia to UCLA, here comes Gene Block. - Summing up City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's last couple weeks. Photo taken at the UCLA Sculpture Garden by Zach Behrens for LAist.com......

They're the best band you'll see all summer. Yes, even better than Rage Against the Machine. Pound-for-pound Arcade Fire has more songs, better songs, and you can't call it comeback. Plus the Canadians will be playing two nights in a venue in a park that will still smell of the remnants of an actual fire. Unless Rage has a stage that looks like a 1970s super computer, another point must be awarded to the......

At the height of the strange filmic subgenre affectionately known as the "Rupert Pupkin documentary," a genre popularized by American Movie and bowdlerized by Windy City Heat, sits the drunk, demented, one-legged granddaddy of them all: Dancing Outlaw. If you've never seen Dancing Outlaw, then stop right here. I don’t mean stop reading this review, I mean stop everything else you are doing in your life and get a hold of this movie immediately.......