Last month, the Free Britney movement and Ms. Spears’ request to remove her dad as conservator was a well-publicized success. A Los Angeles judge suspended Jamie Spears as conservator of Britney’s estimated $60 million estate and designated a CPA as the temporary replacement to oversee her finances. The court suspended Mr. Spears based on allegations that he violated his fiduciary duty. Fiduciary duty is a legal obligation of the highest degree for one party to act in the best interest of another. But I didn’t do anything wrong! Mr. Spears’ response to the court’s decision to remove him suggested he didn’t believe he did anything wrong. “But Jamie believes every single decision he has made has been in her best interest,” his attorney told CNN. Britney Spears said in a court filing that she

  The congregation at Canoga Park Lutheran Church celebrates its 75th anniversary with two services on Oct. 17. The church is on Jordan Avenue at Valerio Street. (Google Street View)  Here is a sampling of religious services in the San Fernando Valley area, Oct. 16-23.   Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost at Prince of Peace Episcopal Church: Two services, 8 and 10 a.m. Oct. 17. The 10 a.m. service is also live streamed on the church’s YouTube here: bit.ly/3mRk9ZK. Readings: 1 Timothy 6:6-16; Philippians 4:6-7; Matthew 20:1-16. Masks are required. 5700 Rudnick Ave., Woodland Hills. Voice mail, 818-346-6968. Email: office@popwh.org. Find the service bulletin and hymns here: www.popwh.org/happenings.html Changed Lives, Changing Lives: The Rev. Rob Denton begins a five-part sermon series “Hig

Three gunshots echoed around Joshua Hatcher. The window of his car shattered next to him. Then Hatcher looked right at his niece, Shamara Young. She wasn’t ducking, or trying to dodge the bullets flying into his passenger’s seat. The 15-year-old was just sitting there with a gunshot wound in her head as Hatcher struggled to keep driving. “That’s when I kind of went hysterical — everything came to my mind at once,” Hatcher said. Cradling her body with his free hand, he hit the gas and drove straight to a hospital, where doctors confirmed what he already suspected. Shamara’s death, on Oct. 6 — after a road rage encounter that stretched for nearly two miles across East Oakland — marked the city’s 109th homicide, a grim milestone that equaled last year’s number of killings, with nearly three m

Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth in Bergman Island. | IFC FilmsBergman Island is a delightful anagram of a movie, and one of the best films of the year. Making art requires wrestling with ghosts. They’re inescapable. Specters of the artist’s heroes loom invisibly from some great beyond, peering at the scribbles or dances or paintings. Traces of every person who’s ever praised or criticized the artist’s talent, no matter how qualified — an aunt, a gallery director, a high school theater critic — linger in the air, whispering. Only very confident, very arrogant, or very foolish artists entirely tune them out. Ingmar Bergman, the revered Swedish filmmaker, believed in ghosts more than anything. Or so Chris and Tony (Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth) are told when visiting his home on Fårö Island, off the S

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) in front of the US Capitol on September 30. | Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images“There isn’t a middle ground between a livable and unlivable world.” After months of discussion and debate, Democrats are at an impasse on a raft of infrastructure legislation that could make or break President Joe Biden’s effort to fight climate change. The rift, as it’s framed in countless news stories, is between progressives who want an ambitious social and climate spending bill and moderates who have protested the price tag. But there’s a problem with portraying these disagreements as a conflict between moderates and progressives. This picture leaves out the unarguable scientific reality that pollution is warming the planet at an unsustainable and dangerous rate. Ther

Bay Area residents need to get serious about meeting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request in July for Californians to voluntarily cut their water usage by 15%. The alternative won’t be pretty. It seems we forgot what the failure to conserve supplies can lead to during a prolonged drought. In 2015, then-Gov. Jerry Brown mandated that urban users across California cut use by 25%, the first in state history. That came a year after the state largely ignored Brown’s request for a 20% voluntary cut in water use. Now 90% of the state is gripped by extreme or exceptional drought. But residents throughout the state — including Bay Area counties — are largely failing to meet Newsom’s request. As of July, Californians had reduced their home water use by just 1.8%, and Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego

Photo: Mark Fisher/SmartWool.Scouting Report: This comfy shirt goes from the desk to the trail to the bedroom I’m a pretty serious hiker and camper, so I like to stay up-to-date on all the latest outdoorsy gear, from hardcore hiking boots and fire pits to an ultra light tent that doubles as hiking poles. As such, I was psyched to get my hands on the original cold-weather SmartWool base layer shirt. It’s called a “base layer”shirt because that’s exactly what it’s designed to be – a base layer. Depending on how much warmth you need, you can just wear the shirt on its own or layer up with a fleece, hoodie, jacket, and/or windbreaker for extra warmth. The lightweight shirt is made for all things outdoors – hiking, biking, climbing, camping, skiing, paddling – pretty much any activity where ...