Los Angeles Times

SPARKS, Nev. -- The driver of a big truck that plowed into an Amtrak train in Nevada Friday had five traffic violations since 2008, four of them for speeding in California and Alabama, according to records from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles.

The driver, Lawrence R. Valli, 43, of Winnemucca, Nev., was identified Monday by the Nevada Highway Patrol. He was driving a truck owned by John Davis Trucking Co. in the crash.

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Dodgers filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, a move that owner Frank McCourt said would stabilize the financial future of the team. The move also could extend the battle for ownership of the Dodgers well beyond this season.

McCourt has obtained $150 million in interim financing, according to the court filing in Delaware. If the bankruptcy court approves that financing Tuesday, McCourt would meet Thursday’s payroll deadline and could remain in control of the club throughout the bankruptcy proceedings, with the intention of negotiating a television rights deal within 180 days that would satisfy the court by paying off all creditors in full.

LOS ANGELES -- Vanessa Perez was a homework scofflaw. The Marshall High School senior didn't finish all of it -- largely because she worked 24 hours a week at a Subway sandwich shop.

Alvaro Ramirez, a junior at the Santee Education Complex, doesn't have his own room and his mother baby-sits young children at night. "They're always there and they're always loud," he said, explaining his challenges with homework.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second-largest school system, has decided to give students like these a break. A new policy decrees that homework can count for only 10 percent of a student's grade.

Critics -- mostly teachers -- worry that the policy will encourage students to slack off assigned work and even reward those who already disregard assignments. And they say it could penalize hardworking students who receive higher marks for effort.

A $1.4 billion project to remove four hydroelectric dams and restore habitat to return Chinook salmon to the upper reaches of the Klamath River amounts to an experiment with no guarantee of success, an independent science review has concluded.

LOS ANGELES -- Playing an aloof, sexy Viking vampire sheriff on HBO's "True Blood" requires many things of Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgard, not least among them a willingness to endure long stretches of night shoots and a commitment to spend at least a certain amount of time in the gym. Anyone who's watched the show, which returns for its fourth season Sunday, knows that virtually every major character is afforded plenty of screen time wearing not much at all.

LOS ANGELES -- The victories, and a national championship they produced, are vacated.

The trophies -- a copy of Reggie Bush's Heisman statuette and a crystal football for a Bowl Championship Series title -- are now ghosts of Heritage Hall.

The forfeiture of those wins and mementos is just a fraction of what USC lost in the wake of some of the harshest penalties in college sports history -- delivered largely because the NCAA found numerous violations relating to Bush.