California, Los Angeles | featured news

Irma Zamora ran into the electrified water at the Valley Village site and was killed. Another woman died trying to help her. Officials call them heroes. Irma Zamora's husband urged her not to get out of the car as they approached the scene of a spectacular traffic crash in Los Angeles' Valley Village neighborhood.

LL Cool J plays a special agent on TV's "NCIS: Los Angeles" and now he's caught an actual bad guy. Los Angeles police say the rapper grabbed and held a burglary suspect at his Studio City home Wednesday morning.

Paul Chapel III, a former third-grade teacher at Pacoima's Telfair Elementary, faces 25 years to life in prison, the L.A. County district attorney's office says. A former Telfair Elementary teacher pleaded no contest Monday to molesting 13 students at the Pacoima school and faces 25 years to life in prison, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said.

Phyllis Diller, the housewife turned humorist who aimed some of her sharpest barbs at herself, punctuating her jokes with her trademark cackle, died Monday morning in Los Angeles at age 95.

British-born filmmaker Tony Scott, director of such Hollywood blockbusters as "Top Gun" and "Crimson Tide," jumped to his death on Sunday from a bridge over Los Angeles Harbor, the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office said.

A cluster of earthquakes that began Tuesday night continued Wednesday in northern Orange County, keeping residents on edge but causing little significant damage. Photos emerged of bottles falling off a supermarket shelf in Anaheim Hills, but fire officials said they didn't get reports of anything more serious. At a news conference Wednesday morning, Kate Hutton of the U.S. Geological Survey at Caltech said there had been at least 30 quakes since last night, but only three could be felt by residents.

Marvin Hamlisch, the singularly productive and sensationally decorated composer of musicals like "A Chorus Line" and songs like "The Way We Were," died in Los Angeles on Monday after a brief illness.

The Los Angeles City Attorney's Office confirms to E! News criminal charges have been filed against freelance photographer Paul Raef from a July 6 high-speed freeway chase that ended with Bieber getting a speeding ticket and the shutterbug seemingly getting away.

A Los Angeles County judge ordered the co-founder of frozen yogurt giant Pinkberry on Thursday to stand trial for allegedly assaulting a homeless man on the side of an East Hollywood road after the victim testified that the entrepreneur repeatedly struck him with a tire iron.

Faced with more than 370,000 signatures supporting a porn condom-use ordinance, Los Angeles County supervisors seem likely to put such a measure on the ballot this fall. For years, Los Angeles County supervisors ducked any responsibility for making sure that adult film actors wear condoms to guard against HIV infection while on the job.