The neighborhood kids in San Diego’s Logan Heights took one look at Armando Rodriguez’s dark skin and gave him a nickname: Shadow. Then he grew up to cast his own light as a pioneering educator and civil rights activist who served in the administrations of four U.S. presidents. Rodriguez died Sunday…

Los Angeles has a new water project in mind that could cost $8 billion, take 16 years to complete and provide as much as one-third of the city’s supply. Local officials aren’t talking about building a new dam or lining the coast with desalination plants or towing icebergs from the Arctic. They…

Linda O’Keefe was 11 years old when she vanished July 6, 1973, on her way home from summer school in Corona del Mar. Her body, still clad in the flowered white dress that her mother had sewn, was found the next day. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled and her body discarded in the…

By TAMMY WEBBER CHICAGO — Police tapped into Chicago’s vast network of surveillance cameras — and even some homeowners’ doorbell cameras — to track down two brothers who later claimed they were paid by “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett to stage an attack on him, the latest example of the city’s high-tech approach to public safety….

By ANDREW TAYLOR WASHINGTON — House Democrats on Friday introduced a resolution to block the national emergency declaration that President Donald Trump issued to fund his long-sought wall along the U.S-Mexico border. The move sets up a fight that could result in Trump’s first veto. It starts the clock on a constitutional clash between Trump…

By CHRISTOPHER WEBER LOS ANGELES — A federal judge in California ruled Thursday that a twin son of a gay married couple has been an American citizen since birth, handing a defeat to the U.S. government, which had only granted the status to his brother. The State Department was wrong to deny citizenship to 2-year-old…

Cindy Borgeson was eating a cheeseburger at In-N-Out when she got a call from Newport Beach police that she thought would never come. It had been more than four decades since her 11-year-old sister, Linda Ann O’Keefe, was sexually assaulted and strangled. The killer had vanished after dumping the…

Homebuying in Newport Beach, Laguna Beach and Costa Mesa fell 8 percent in a year with the steepest countywide drop in sales in 11 years. Last year saw the fewest Orange County homes sold since 2014 and the 8.6 percent drop in sales vs. 2017 was the largest year-over-year percentage decline since 2007. Key culprits…

While Orange County cities are absent on the growing list of those banning plastic straws, the once-ubiquitous cylinders are getting harder to find at county schools. That’s thanks in good measure to 12-year-old Newport Beach SCUBA diver and ocean lover Chloe Mei Espinosa, who has good reason to celebrate National Skip the Straw Day on Friday,…

Every four years, aspiring presidential nominees leave behind families, jobs and, frequently, their dignity to prove they are worthy of the votes of everyday people. Senators, governors, million- or billionaires, they traipse through cornfields in Iowa, eat barbecue in South Carolina, get sand…