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Wednesday, March 9, 2011

100-year-old twins inseparable and best friends

Times photographer Mel Melcon had been wanting to photograph a pair of 100-year-old identical twin sisters, Venice Shaw and Inez Harries, but because of a mix-up, the assignment was given to another photographer.

Discouraged at first, Melcon later found out that the siste...

Libya keeps foreign journalists on tight leash

Reporting from Tripoli, Libya A burst of gunfire and squealing tires kicked off what was scheduled to be a day of anti-government protests in Tripoli, Libya's capital. The foreign journalists in town, all watched by minders, struggled to find out what was happening.

"Al Qaeda is on the loose," claimed an offi...

Fourth Wall Studios raises $15 million for cross-media productions

Fourth Wall Studios has landed an initial investment of $15 million from one of Los Angeles' wealthiest individuals to develop and create digital entertainment "experiences" that cross various media platforms.

Patrick Soon-Shiong, a biotech billionaire who has never before invested in the entertainment busine...

Facebook streams 'The Dark Knight' in a first step to challenge Netflix, Apple, Hulu

On Tuesday, Warner Bros. offered up its hugely popular film "The Dark Knight" for rent on Facebook.

So far, that's the only movie that can be streamed over the Internet and watched within Facebook, but Warner Bros. has said that more of its films will soon be available too, as reported by Ben Fritz on the Times' Company Town blo...

Ayatollah Rafsanjani, Iranian opposition backer, loses clerical post

Reporting from Tehran and Beirut The Iranian opposition's most powerful sympathizer lost his post Tuesday as chief of an important clerical council that oversees the country's supreme leader.

Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a for....


'The Expendables' aims to come back -- but with Stalllone in a different guise

The follow-up movie is a priority at producer Millennium Films, where it's being developed by Stallone, the creative force behind the original. But Stallone, who both starred in and directed the 2010 summer hit, isn't, at the moment, plan...

Dance competitions face off in live venues

After the opening night show of Battle of the Dance, Andres Gelabert sat in the lobby of his new 40,000-square-foot venue, sipped a glass of Champagne and professed a lifelong love of dance that predates the current craze for all things terpsichorean fueled by certain television sho...

Red Riding Hood' movie premiere: Amanda Seyfried, Catherine Hardwicke, Gary Oldman and the 'Idol' Top 13

The werewolf-hunting Gary Oldman turned up with wife Alexandra Edenborough, facing the cameras along with fellow cast members Shiloh Fernandez (Red's crush), Max Irons (Red's parents' crush), Virginia Madsen, Adrian Holmes and Kacey Rohl.

Also spotted: Josh Brolin and Diane Lane, "The Twilight Saga" vetera...

Charlie Sheen fired from 'Two and a Half Men'

The move comes after several weeks of very public battling between the actor and CBS, Warner Bros. and "Two and a Half Men" co-creator Chuck Lorre.

In a statement, the studio said, “After careful consideration, Warner Bros. Television has terminated Charlie Sheen’s services on 'Two and a Half Men' effective immediately.”

Production on the show was stopped in late Janua....

'Real World' keeps turning, and keeps viewers tuning in

The premise was simple: Put a bunch of twentysomethings in a cool pad and watch their lives unfold on camera. And yet the seemingly basic (and cheap) idea behind "The Real World" helped birth a genre that has eaten television whole.

A show that started as a nove...

Consolidation seen as inevitable for Southern California's newspapers

Not so many years ago, it wasn't very hard to understand ownership of Southern California's newspapers. The Chandlers had the Los Angeles Times, the Hoiles family controlled the Orange County Register, the Copleys reigned at the San Diego Union-Tribune and MediaNews Group, a chain run by William Dean Singleton, owned a passel of suburban dailies.

Now those durable names have sol...

'Kill the Irishman' revisits Cleveland's explosive mob past

A quick rundown of well-known Mafia cities brings to mind places like New York, Chicago and Las Vegas. But Cleveland? Fuhgeddaboutit …
But there was a time — back in the 1970s — when the Ohio city was a raging mobster battleground. And when it came time to take out a rival, locals did more tha

Cole bombing suspect to face military tribunal at Guantanamo

The first captive at the U.S. naval base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be charged in a military tribunal during the Obama presidency is expected to be one of the prison's most notorious inmates — Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole that killed 17 sailors.

And his case, beset with Nashiri's allegations of torture and mistreatment, is fraught with complic....

Ex-American Apparel worker accuses CEO of forced sex

A former employee of the troubled Los Angeles clothing firm American Apparel Inc. accused the company's chairman and chief executive, Dov Charney, in a lawsuit of holding her captive and forcing her to perform sexual acts.

The suit, filed in a New York trial court in Brooklyn, seeks $250 million in dama...

Disproving the notion of a Social Security trust fund 'lockbox'

The "lockbox," you may recall, was the concept presidential candidate Al Gore used during the 2000 election to signify his devotion to the security of Social Security. The principle supposedly was to sequester the program's annual surplus, which was then running about $150 billion a year, so that it couldn't be frittered away on irresponsible government spending.

After the election, the lockbox disapp...

EGYPT: Evaluating proposed constitutional amendments

The amendment to Egypt's constitution recently announced by Chancellor Tareq Bishri's commission -- if adopted by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and approved by a majority of citizens in a general referendum -- will lay the foundation for constraining the near-absolute powers granted to the president by the 1971 constitution.

They are also a positive step toward administeri....

EGYPT: State security revelations bring Wikileaks to mind

Documents recently turned over to Egyptian and Arab media by protesters who stormed offices of the State Security Investigations Service across Egypt are at the center of a saga of revelations that bring Wikileaks to mind.

The files, which contain detai...

Air attacks put Libya town on edge

Reporting from Ras Lanuf, Libya The day dawned with the shrill whine of a warplane. Then there was a rough growl as a jet fighter, heard but not seen, swooped low on another bombing run.

Everyone in this rebel-held oil city — fighters poised on antiaircraft batteries, terrified resid...

Dust washers in India sweep streets for flecks of gold

Reporting from Ahmadabad, India Like her mother and grandmother before her, Ganga Gohel, 80, crouches in a narrow alley, carefully working an 8-inch brush over the cracked concrete with gnarled hands, her back permanently bent after a lifetime on the job.

In a nation where thoroughfare...

Obama administration taking cautious approach on Libya

Reporting from Washington The Obama administration is drawing careful limits on its potential military involvement in the increasingly bloody struggle between the Libyan government and rebel forces, despite growing calls for Western interven...

Redondo Beach, dead fish, perhaps millions of them, collect in King Harbor

Redondo Beach awoke Tuesday to find a carpet of death laid atop the water, as if Davy Jones himself had burped up a couple hundred years worth of lunches. Thousands of silvery sardines floated atop the King Harbor marina fin-to-fin, with hundreds of thousands more, perhaps millions, pil...

Wall street market turns 2, but can it make it to 3?

Hold the champagne. For the second anniversary of the bull market in stocks, a barrel of crude might be a better gift.

As Wall Street marks two straight years of share price gains, investors who expect more to come are betting that oil's latest surge is just another minor obstacle — like so many others that have failed to hal...

Jailhouse informant plays a critical role in trial for a brutal double murder

Arthur Davodian's roommate arrived home to discover a gruesome scene at his Tujunga condominium.

Davodian's headless body was stretched out on the living room floor, punctured with stab wounds up to six inches deep.

A trail of blood led through the apartment's hallway to a bedroom where the door had been kic...

Couple to give record $200-million gift to USC

The University of Southern California will announce Wednesday its largest donation ever, a $200-million gift from alumnus David Dornsife, the chairman of a large steel fabricating company, and his wife, Dana.

The Dornsifes' donation will go to USC's College of Letters, Arts and Scie...

Senators walk political tightrope on budget

Reporting from Washington Senators expecting tough reelection challenges in 2012 struggled Tuesday to decide between competing proposals that would cut federal spending this year, as legislative leaders set votes as part of the effort to fend off another threatened gover...

Bell election: Voters recall embattled council members and elect new representatives

Bell residents voted overwhelmingly to recall four embattled council members Tuesday with 100% of the votes counted in the small southeast Los Angeles County city.

More than 95% of the city's residents voted to recall council members Teresa Jacobo, Oscar Hernandez and George Mirabal, as well as Councilman Luis Artiga, who resig...

Colombian troops free 21 kidnapped oil workers

Colombian officials said Tuesday that government troops rescued 21 of 23 oil field workers who were kidnapped the day before by suspected leftist rebels in remote Vichada state.

Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera said the overnight military operation, code-named Minotaur, was greatly helped by a hostage who escaped shortly after the abduc...

NPR 'appalled' by its executive's 'tea party' remarks in video

Reporting from Washington NPR is distancing itself from remarks made by a fund-raising executive who said the American "tea party" movement is a comprised of "white, middle-America gun-toting" and "seriously racist, racist" people.

The comments, apparently made by Ron Schiller, NPR's exiting vice president for development, were reco...

Puerto Rico expands film tax credits in bid for larger Hollywood role

With its lush mountains, tropical rain forest and sugar-white beaches, Puerto Rico has long prided itself as a “paradise of locations” for filmmaking.

But the U.S. territory has never been ranked in the top tier of filming destinations, in part because it had only a small pool of money allocated for its tax-credit program. That could change no...