A gunman shot and wounded two men in the parking garage of a North Hollywood synagogue early Thursday and Jewish schools and temples were put on alert in case it was not an isolated attack.

Even if you don’t believe in ghosts, walking through a graveyard can be a little spooky - especially in autumn as the trees lose their leaves, flowers wither away and light fades in the late afternoon. But cemeteries can make fascinating destinations. Sometimes a few words on a tombstone can suggest a whole life story; sometimes you can find a famous name, a beautiful work of art, or landscaping worthy of a botanical garden.

Richmond’s police chief says his department is prepared to put Chris Brown to work performing manual labor such as graffiti removal and picking up trash as part of a sentence imposed by a California judge. The manual tasks were listed in a letter written by Richmond Police Chief Bryan T. Norwood to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg, who sentenced Brown in the beating of his ex-girlfriend, pop singer Rihanna.

The thought hit as soon as the bus pulled up: “I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.“ Actually, what I really had was a notebook, a pen and a digital recorder. Oh yeah, and a seat on Esotouric’s Raymond Chandler Bus Tour, having decided to learn whether L.A. really is, as Chandler’s hard-bitten detective Philip Marlowe once said, “just a big dry sunny place with ugly homes and no style.“

The Richmond area’s traffic congestion is holding steady, with the average driver wasting about 20 hours per year, according to a national traffic study released today.

A Los Angeles police detective who testified at the Rodney King trial has shot herself to death after walking into a sheriff’s station.

LOS ANGELES The metal sign said “Laker Country” and for the better part of yesterday, downtown Los Angeles belonged solely to the 2009 NBA World Champion Lakers. How could you tell? Maybe it was the way construction workers suddenly stopped pounding nails to wave to the players as they rolled by atop double-decker buses. Or perhaps it was how the car salesmen at Felix Chevrolet suddenly forgot about deals and bargains as the Lakers entered the intersection of Figueroa and Jefferson.