ROSEMEAD, Calif. — Southern California Edison says two solar-powered plants will be built east of Los Angeles to supply the utility with enough energy for 170,000 homes.

WASHINGTON — Wholesale prices dropped sharply in July, and over the past 12 months fell by the largest amount in more than six decades of record-keeping.

WASHINGTON — Construction of new homes and apartments dipped slightly last month, missing expectations, in a sign that the building industry’s recovery from the housing bust is likely to be bumpy and gradual.

The company relaunched by Steven Spielberg as an independent studio finally has financing in place and plans to make about six movies a year.

Nearly a year after embarking on plans to relaunch DreamWorks as an independent studio, Steven Spielberg finally has the financial means to greenlight his own movies.

It’s moving away from its animation roots — under the guidance of Rob Sorcher, who helped AMC develop ‘Mad Men’ and ‘Breaking Bad’ — but almost all its new reality shows are flopping.

When 14-year-old Ashley Rosario went looking for her favorite Cartoon Network shows such as “Chowder” and “The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack” and instead found reality programs, she did what any normal teenager does these days. She made a video complaining about it and posted it on YouTube.

Sony Pictures’ low-budget ‘District 9′ steamrolls past the competition on the way to a $36.9-million debut.

Photos, addresses, family ties, court documents, details from MySpace profiles — the moment information is published online, it can be copied and re-posted, and often is.

When Maya Rupert wrote an article frowning at several Southern states for officially celebrating Confederate History Month, Internet critics lined up to fire back. ¶ But this time, they arrived with more than harsh words. ¶ The 28-year-old Los Angeles attorney’s detractors dug up a photo of her and posted it, along with details of political contributions she’d made, in an online discussion of the article she wrote for the L.A. Watts Times. They called their finds evidence of her bias on the emotionally charged subject. ¶ “It really surprised me when I found out that people could see how much I donated to Obama,” Rupert said, referring to the $400 she gave to the candidate last year, the record of which is available through several online watchdog sites. ¶ After that, Rupert said, “they pulled a picture off my firm’s website and said, ‘Of course she’s black.’ ” ¶ Until recently, personal information has been scattered across cyberspace, to be found or not depending on the luck and sophistication of the searcher. But a new crop of “snooper” sites is making it easier than ever for anyone with Internet access to assemble the information into a digital portrait. ¶ “It’s amazing what you can Google,” one of the people who criticized Rupert wrote in an online forum. ¶ Rupert has since learned that the photo and campaign contributions were just a small part of her online “footprint” — an expansive dossier that she did not realize was available to anyone searching her name. ¶ On Snitch.name, users can enter a name — their own or someone else’s — and watch as the site culls information from dozens of search engines, social networks and directories.

Re: “Yoga mats in the outfield,” Aug. 3:

College students can save hundreds of dollars every semester if they shop around, experts say. Instead of buying new or even used, consider renting or borrowing.

It’s bad enough to pay thousands of dollars a year to send a child to college. But there’s more: Many students and parents don’t realize how much they’ll also have to spend on textbooks.

Why not make a week or two of community service a condition of medical licensing? If you want to practice medicine in California, let’s say, you would need to volunteer every year.

Thousands of people lined up last week for free medical treatment at the Forum in Inglewood. The arena floor resembled a vast healthcare assembly line as hundreds of patients at a time were seen by dozens of doctors, dentists and optometrists.