A warped bicycle, incinerated vehicles and the remains of homes are seen along Claremont Drive in San Bruno, Calif., a day after a large natural gas pipeline exploded just down the street on Sept. 9, 2010. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times / September 10, 2010) Pacific Gas & Electric Co. announced Monday that it will pay $70 million in restitution to the Bay...

UC San Diego researcher Maurizio Seracini, left, and his team look at endoscope footage captured behind the Giorgio Vasari fresco on a wall in Florence, Italy. They think the fresco may cover a work by Leonardo da Vinci. (Dave Yoder / National Geographic / December 3, 2011) UC San Diego researchers say they have found tantalizing clues to a mystery that has...

 Jon Fleischman is a mainstay of Republican circles and produces the FlashReport political blog. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) Like so many budget sessions in Sacramento, this one had stretched late into the night. When the four leaders of the Assembly and Senate finally agreed on a package of spending cuts and modest reforms, a six-week standoff — which...

Nicollette Sheridan, left, and Teri Hatcher vie for the attention of the neighborhood bachelor in „Desperate Housewives.” (Peter „Hopper” Stone, ABC, Inc. / September 21, 2004) With „Desperate Housewives” winding up its lucrative eight-season run on ABC, its creator took a moment last week to distill what he called the...

Firefighters line up at a City Hall news conference last year to oppose cutbacks contained in Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s budget. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) The Los Angeles City Council made deep cuts to the Fire Department last year after being presented with data that overstated how quickly rescuers arrived at the scene of citizen calls for help. In...

San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and his wife, Eliana Lopez, speak to reporters in January. He pleaded guilty Monday to false imprisonment in a domestic violence case. (Jeff Chiu / Associated Press / January 13, 2012) Reporting from San Francisco — Just days before going to trial on domestic violence charges, San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi pleaded...