The Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration and longtime Los Angeles civic leader and Democratic politics figure died Friday at home of complications from bladder and kidney cancer,

Alexandra Wallace, the UCLA political science student whose video mocking Asian students and their families became a huge social media sensation, says in a letter to the Daily Bruin that...

Bunch of awards for journalists handed out today.

Good story by Kurt Streeter on Kelly Gneiting, a sumo wrestler who stands six feet, weights 405 pounds and has a 60-inch waist.

It sounds as if the four missing New York Times journalists are in the hands of the Libyan armed forces.

In a sign of how bad it may be, Japanese officials finally accept help from American nuclear experts.

Channel 5's morning anchor explains how he came to be sent to cover the Japan disaster on short notice — and why he and his crew, producer Toni Molle and photographer Mike McGregor, came back so soon.

Lynsey Addario (almost off-camera, on left) and Tyler Hicks (on the right, in the glasses) are the two New York Times photographers missing in Libya. This photo by Reuters...

Sion Milosky, a surfer in Hawaii of growing repute, became only the second surfer known to die at the famed surfing spot off Half Moon Bay.

This might help prevent locals from going a little crazy over the arrival of airborne radiation particles from Japan.

Effort to defend LAX against criticism lands a little short of the runway.

Nikki Finke alleges at Deadline Hollywood that The Hollywood Reporter "deleted embarrassing information about Summit Entertainment principals from a financial story about the studio's refinancing in order to 'horse-trade' it for the cover story interview with Jodie Foster that appears in this week's print edition.

When CBS Outdoor didn't respond, an LAPD officer asked The Eastsider LA to get involved.

More on Japanese radiation, state budget cuts, Smear arrested, Villaraigosa and Carlos Fuentes on the radio and SPJ cancels tonight's event.

"Unbroken" beats out Keith Richards' "Life" for the top spot in hardcover nonfiction.

Experts said that small amounts of radioactive isotope that escaped from the crippled Japanese nuclear power stations would blow across the Pacific in the upper atmosphere.

The crash Wednesday morningat Long Beach Airport claimed Tom Dean and Jeff Berger, developers at LCW Partners who were involved in a city of Long Beach land swap for the Los Cerritos Wetlands, and Mark Bixby, a bicycle advocate and member of one of Long Beach's founding families.

Don't plan to drive between Big Sur and Carmel or Monterey any time soon.

A cartoon by Donna Barstow featuring J. Brown, Lady Lockyer and the new cool kids.

Channel 5's morning anchor flew into LAX tonight and tweeted there's a new addition to the customs procedure: a radiation wand.

City Council veteran Jan Perry did what everyone expected her to do and filed the papers to form a fundraising committee for a 2013 mayoral bid. Nice and quiet, no...

The nuclear power generating station near San Luis Obispo on the central California coast was allowed to open without an emergency plan for earthquakes — and still doesn't have one, the HuffPost says.

Rebecca Mansour, who lives in Hollywood and got an MFA from American Film Institute, is in Sarah Palin's inner circle as message crafter and social media defender.

The New York Times says the Libyan government is helping try to locate the four: two reporters and two photographers.

Los Angeles author Steve Oney's next book will be on the history, travails and tribulations of National Public Radio.

No Morning Buzz today, folks. Mark's morning headlines are here at LA Biz Observed....

Blogdowntown's weekly print edition hit the streets last August, and it stopped regular publication in February.

The Long Beach-raised rap music star Nathaniel D. Hale, known in the music industry as Nate Dogg, died today, his family told the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

File this in the corner of your mind where you're a least a little concerned about editorial standards at the new AOL.

Ahead of the vernal equinox and the Persian celebration of Nowruz, the L.A. Fire Department blog has posted a reminder — in english and Persian.

Release from the office of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says "no immediate threat to the United States" from radiation in Japan.

Los Angeles Magazine asked the Chicago native to riff a little on life in Manhattan Beach.

L.A. Creek Freak posted this video of Friday's tsunami wave rolling uphill in Ballona Creek.

L.A. food writer and author Charles Perry writes about his former roommate in a Visiting Blogger post for LA Observed — and insists he did not turn on the former LSD designer.

Kevin James, who does midnight to 3 a.m. on KRLA, is throwing his microphone in the 2013 race for mayor in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles author James Ellroy on Sunday received France's Order of the Arts from Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand. Note photo caption.

Manuel Jamines killing, date of Jane Harman election, more politics and media notes and sizing up the radiation threat to California.

Danger of nuclear disaster reaches a new level in Japan, "threatening to overshadow even the massive damage and loss of life spawned by a devastating earthquake and tsunami."

Dana Goodyear has a good piece in this week's New Yorker on therapist Barry Michels and psychiatrist Phil Stutz, whose niche is helping Hollywood creative types.

Video goes viral and sparks angry comments, death threats, official denunciations and mocking remixes.

Author Ellen Collett knows a well-written LAPD incident report when she sees one.

Ratings are down by half compared to a year ago and donations by former members have also dropped off, but KCET chief executive Al Jerome says that the station's broadcast...

KPFK will start airing AJE on weekdays at 3 p.m., plus Truthdig Radio and Brad Friedman on Wednesdays.

Blogger Simone Wilson concedes she didn't know whether CBS' Logan was raped by crowd in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

As if the March 11 quake off Japan's northeast coast needed any more historic cred, the USGS recalculated it upward in magnitude.

An abbreviated batch of politics, media and news notes today.

This clip catches the start of Friday's tsunami flooding into the streets of Kesennuma, in Miyagi Prefecture, and watches up close for six astounding, frightening minutes.

John Montorio, the former features editor at the Los Angeles Times, will be named the top features editor of the newly AOL-ized Huffington Post.

As Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democrats go looking for Republican votes to pass a state budget, one of the political realities they face is that elected Republicans in California fear being picked on by KFI's afternoon talk hosts, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou.

Ann Brenoff writes on the L.A. Times op-ed page that "without question, the recession changed my life for the better."

As part of the publicity onslaught for "The Lincoln Lawyer," the new movie from Michael Connelly's mystery of the same name, the author and lead actor Matthew McConaughey chat for a Times reporter while parked in an SUV on Connelly's old street above Laurel Canyon.

The Rafu Shimpo website has, of course, gone heavily into disaster relief and communication mode.

Japan is probably the most prepared country in the world, but the spreading misery and risk of nuclear disaster shows that you can't prepare adequately for an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami.

The blogger behind the site called With Malice — "the half-crazed ramblings of a Laker fanatic in Japan" — has posted his reactions to news coverage and the local reality of the quake and tsunami.