About Xilla Valentine

From street bashings in Seattle to the baseball bat murder of an Ecuadorean immigrant in New York, episodes of anti-gay violence punctuated a year  ending with police investigating the alleged gang rape of a lesbian near San Francisco.

A gunman was killed and a 6-year-old hostage was shot in the leg during a two-hour standoff with police Tuesday afternoon at a restaurant east of Los Angeles.

Debate centers on two competing principles: desire to spend money on environmentally conscious programs vs. spending on ‘shovel-ready projects.’

He was a distinguished investor who traced his lineage to the French aristocracy, hobnobbed with members of European high society and sailed around the world on fancy yachts.

Retailers have blamed the global financial crisis for a litany of ills over the past year. Now, they are looking to the economy to explain recent spikes in shoplifting from their stores.

Matisyahu deployed a large, mirrored, rotating dreidel during the first of eight New York City shows in his Festival of Lights series.

Citing division among its membership, the Screen Actors Guild delayed a vote that would authorize the union to call a strike.

The economy shrank at a 0.5 percent annual pace in the third quarter, as expected, according to government data released on Tuesday.

Facing revenue shortfalls and an inability to attract investors to municipal bonds, many states are stopping infrastructure projects midstream.

Obama’s environment, energy, and urban affairs appointees are poised to enact policies that environmental justice activists have long been pushing for. read more

    A senior federal banking regulator has been removed from his job after government investigators concluded that he knowingly permitted IndyMac Bancorp to present a misleading picture of its financial health in a federal filing only months before the California thrift was seized by regulators. read more

AP – The weather outside was frightful from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Ore., on Monday, with last-minute holiday shoppers shivering and stranded travelers hoping for the best as Christmas rapidly approached.