Mortgage rates soared again this week, approaching levels not seen since 2019. The average rate on a 30-year loan reached 3.92%, up from 3.69% the previous week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday. A year ago, the long-term rate was 2.81%. The last time the 30-year rate was higher was in May of 2019 when…
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LOS ANGELES — A disbarred personal injury lawyer who operated in Irvine, Los Angeles and El Segundo faces sentencing Thursday for stealing the majority of a multimillion-dollar settlement that should have been paid to a car accident victim, as well as cheating on his taxes. Philip Layfield was found guilty of 22 counts, including wire…
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LOS ANGELES — The number of annual high-risk fire days in Southern California could double by 2100 thanks to steady temperature increases brought on by climate change, according to a UCLA study released Thursday. The study, published in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment, found that in terms of actual acreage burned in the…
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I don’t get it. If none of us will “look back on our lives and regret the things we didn’t buy,” as celebrity spokesperson Ewan McGregor purred in the Super Bowl Expedia commercial, then why am I so vexed by which cryptocurrency to hoard? Or which electric vehicle to plug in? And doesn’t anyone sell…
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By TOM KRISHER | The Associated Press DETROIT — U.S. auto safety regulators have launched another investigation of Tesla, this time tied to complaints that its cars can stop on roads for no apparent reason. The government says it has 354 complaints from owners during the past nine months about “phantom braking” in Tesla Models…
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As the greatest inflation spike of the last 50 years occurs, the utter failure of economists, their models and many pundits to foresee what was coming is worth highlighting. Of course, the biggest malfunction in the story was that of the Federal Reserve itself, which had a clear mandate to keep prices stable, and seems…
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At the Ravens’ offseason planning meetings in the Bahamas last month, team officials talked about how they should spend and how they can spend more. This is one of the most important offseasons in franchise history. It also might be among their least flexible. “I think we’ll have enough salary cap room to do everything…
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An initiative passed narrowly by voters in 2020 to protect wildfire victims and seniors has opened the door to massive tax increases that threaten tenants and the roof over their heads. Proposition 19 removed important taxpayer protections from the state constitution that for 35 years guaranteed that parents or grandparents could transfer property to their…
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Support our high school sports coverage by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribe now Fairmont Prep’s girls basketball team continued to play the role of bracket-buster in the CIF Division 1 playoffs on Wednesday night. Center Siyanda Salter scored off an offensive rebound and putback with 1.6 seconds left in regulation to lift the host Huskies past…
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Southern California homebuying got off to a slow start in January with both prices and sales dipping. The pace of closed transactions cooled from December, according to DQNews data released Wednesday, Feb. 16. The median sales price in the six-county region also fell slightly to $687,000 from an all-time high of $695,000. Rising mortgage rates…
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