October 5, 2026
October 5, 2026
Santa Monica police are investigating a traffic collision at 22nd Street and Wilshire Blvd. Wilshire Blvd is closed to through traffic for the investigation. A Tesla S Car with it's airbags deployed seen at intersection; Police were interviewing people from the Tower Medical Center. This is a breaking news...
A 28-year-old laboratory technician at Russia's Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute died of pneumonia of unknown origin after possible exposure to a dangerous pathogen, leading authorities to place nearly 200 contacts under medical observation and quarantine several hospitals in Siberia, according to Russian officials and independent media reports. Darya Shipilova was hospitalized on September 29 in Shelekhov, a satellite town of Irkutsk, with severe pneumonia and placed...
A man suspected of fatally shooting Culver CityBus driver Bruce Rodriguez in Mar Vista has been booked for murder, Los Angeles police said, as family, coworkers and neighbors gathered Saturday night in Culver City to remember the 42-year-old father of two. The shooting happened around 5:15 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, on a Culver CityBus near Mitchell and Centinela avenues, in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles. Other accounts placed the scene along Centinela near...
Sheriff's deputies are still searching for three masked suspects after a man was shot Thursday evening outside the Fugazi store on Holloway Drive in West Hollywood. Later accounts corrected the early report that he had been shot inside a black Ferrari: he was wounded on the sidewalk, and the Ferrari was struck by the getaway car as the suspects fled. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department units responded around 5:15 to 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, to the 8700 block of...
A RAND study released this week concludes that Santa Monica's economy has declined more sharply since the mid-2010s than the comparison areas examined, even as citywide crime and homelessness trends are more mixed than the downtown experience alone would suggest. The report supplies a quantitative baseline for debates over commercial vacancy, visitor spending, and the spatial distribution of unsheltered homelessness. From 2015 to 2025, clothing and accessories sales fell 75...
The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner has identified the couple found dead September 26 inside a home in the 3100 block of Pico Boulevard as Nicole Rabitzsch, 47, and Hendrik Rabitzsch, 48. Santa Monica police said Hendrik Rabitzsch fatally shot his wife before taking his own life. Investigators determined the shooting occurred at about 6:42 a.m. Both died of gunshot wounds to the head, according to the medical examiner. Officers went to the residence that...
A half-cent countywide sales tax approved by Los Angeles County voters in June took effect Wednesday, Oct. 1, raising the county base rate from 9.75% to 10.25% and lifting combined rates in many cities above 11%. Measure ER, formally the Essential Services Restoration Act, passed on June 2, 2026, by 50.64% (1,013,747 yes to 987,977 no). County officials project the five-year general sales tax will generate about $1 billion a year for health services, public health, and...
10.1.26: On September 30, flydubai Flight FZ1073, a Boeing 737 MAX 8, left Dubai for Tel Aviv with 174 people on board, including 27 children, most of them Israeli. About two and a half hours into the flight, over northern Saudi Arabia, the Omani first officer allegedly stabbed the captain, Indian national Smit Machchhar, and tried to take the aircraft. Israeli officials say he was standing over the controls and appeared to be trying to crash the jet or sabotage its systems....
The green mermaid has packed up again. The Starbucks at 1030 Wilshire Boulevard, at 11th Street closed permanently over the weekend, joining a growing list of Santa Monica coffeehouses the Seattle chain has abandoned in the last year. The last cups went out Saturday, September 26, after which the store locator, the app, and the usual weekday line of commuters all went quiet. The Wilshire shop was not a novelty kiosk. It had seating, a restroom, and years of regulars who...
A week after a, err, business trip to Beijing; Elon no longer follows Shivon, mother of 4 of his kids. She took that as proof that, well, he met someone else. Perhaps even in Beijing. Who hasn't Been there, done that, right? I mean, not with Elon necessarily, but with some other guy women find attractive..... Chads, right? A week after Elon texted Shivon Zilis that he would've invited her to a dinner with Xi if he'd known partners were coming, he unfollowed her on X. She...
California's homeowners insurance market is in crisis. Carriers have restricted new business, premiums have soared, the FAIR Plan has ballooned, and too many disaster survivors still wait too long for fair payment. The next commissioner will decide whether we stabilize that market or gamble it on an untested experiment. I have known Ben Allen since he was a kid in Santa Monica. He grew up here, served on the Santa Monica-Malibu school board, and has represented this...
LOS ANGELES - City Councilmember Nithya Raman walked into a packed Jewish Federation mayoral forum at the Skirball Cultural Center on Tuesday night and told a crowd of about 1,000 that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The word landed like a brick. Parts of the hall groaned. Raman said she understood it was "a deeply painful word" with a "historical context" that mattered "for the world, not just for the room." Then she used it anyway. She said she is "not an expert,"...
