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ABC went dark Saturday night on New York-area Cablevision systems. The static came as ABC and Cablevision were not able to come to an retransmission agreement by the midnight Saturday deadline imposed by Disney. The Alphabet's WABC-TV was in the middle of a season two off-net repeat of "Lost" -- "Three Minutes," which centers on Michael's decision to betray his fellow castaways -- when the cord was yanked. WABC replaced the feed it sends to Cablevision with a sternly-worded on-screen message: "Cablevision betrayed you again. First HGTV and Food Network, now they lost ABC 7. Enough is Enough. Go to...

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Thursday he is planning a second major wave of City Hall job cuts, moving to eliminate between 1,200 and 2,000 positions to get the struggling city through the remainder of the calendar year. Appearing at a luncheon hosted by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, Villaraigosa said the reductions would be sought for the fiscal year that starts July 1 — and come on top of the 1,000 jobs that he targeted last week for elimination. Villaraigosa said the cuts would lead, at a minimum, to reduced library hours and parks and recreation...

A day after Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ordered the elimination of 1,000 jobs to address the city’s budget crisis, Chief Deputy City Atty. Bill Carter wrote a memo stating the mayor does not have authority under the City Charter “on his own to order layoffs.” In the Friday memo, Carter advised employees in the office of City Atty. Carmen Trutanich that Villaraigosa lacks the power to compel city department heads to lay off employees, an opinion that puts the city's top lawyer at odds with the mayor. Trutanich has strenuously opposed City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana's proposal to eliminate...

His pristine Ferrari 512 BBi "Boxer" sits in the middle of Holger Schubert's living room in Brentwood, right next to stylish furniture, a built-in bookcase and a flat-screen TV that slides on tracks past walls of glass that frame an ocean view. But Los Angeles officials are about to slam shut forever the garage door that leads to the city's most extravagant parking space City planners have withdrawn permission for Schubert to use a bridge to connect his Ferrari's third-floor resting spot with North Tigertail Road. The ruling by the West Los Angeles Area Planning Commission tosses a mechanic's...

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa moved Thursday to eliminate 1,000 city jobs and begin planning layoffs of city employees, one day after the City Council failed to muster the votes to do so to deal with an ongoing budget crisis. “We’re living beyond our means, we have difficult choices to make, we must protect our economic future,” Villaraigosa said during a late afternoon news conference. “Unfortunately, instead of making progress, we are headed in the wrong direction. That ends today.”

After struggling for eight hours to counter a rapidly growing budget shortfall, the Los Angeles City Council put off a decision to cut 1,000 jobs Wednesday and, through other actions, managed to add $4 million to the problem. Unable to take more straightforward action on a shortfall that has grown to $212 million this year, the council voted to seek another list of possible job cuts and, after hearing pleas from a chamber packed with protesting employees and residents, promised not to act on layoffs for 30 days. Members also postponed the elimination of three city departments as they search...

Toyota Motor Corp.'s decision to blame its widening sudden-acceleration problem on a gas pedal defect came under attack Friday, with the pedal manufacturer flatly denying that its products were at fault. Federal vehicle safety records reviewed by The Times also cast doubt on Toyota's claims that sticky gas pedals were a significant factor in the growing reports of runaway vehicles. Of more than 2,000 motorist complaints of sudden acceleration in Toyota and Lexus vehicles over the last decade, just 5% blamed a sticking gas pedal, the analysis found. What's more, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has conducted eight investigations...

Citing strained food and fuel supplies because of rough weather and tough road conditions, San Bernardino County officials Sunday evening closed visitors' access to the Big Bear Valley. "It's been very difficult, if not impossible, for fuel trucks to get up the mountain and for trucks carrying food to get up to grocery stores," said David Wert, spokesman for San Bernardino County. "The gas stations are running out of gas, and the grocery stores are running out of food." The closure comes at the peak of ski season and is a blow to local businesses and resorts that rely on...

The Los Angeles Times is closing its printing facility in Orange County to cut costs. In a memo to employees, Times Publisher Eddy Hartenstein said the paper will generate "substantial savings" by consolidating its printing operations at one facility in downtown Los Angeles.

<p>A group of thieves has been taking a big bite out of Apple Store customers by purloining computers in more than 100 "follow away" burglaries across the region, authorities said.</p> <p>Last month, the Orange County district attorney's office charged three Los Angeles residents -- Garzon Diaz, Louis Lopez and John Rodriguez -- with burglary and grand theft in connection with 28 cases in which thieves broke into vehicles and stole computers from customers who had visited Apple retail stores.</p>

<p>GMAC Financial Services is close to getting approximately $3.5 billion in additional aid from the U.S. government, on top of $12.5 billion already received since December 2008, according to people familiar with the situation.</p> <p>The announcement, expected within days, will coincide with GMAC taking additional steps to absorb losses related to its mortgage operations, these people said. The cleanup is designed to return the Detroit-based finance company to profitability in the first quarter of 2010, according to one of these people.</p>

The Obama administration's new plan to give a boost to small businesses reflects continued trouble in that sector, which is facing new failures even as much of the nation's economy is stabilizing. As credit lines have shrunk and consumers have cut back on spending, thousands of small businesses have closed their doors over the last year. The plight of struggling firms has been aggravated by the reluctance of banks to lend money, said Brian Headd, an economist at the Small Business Administration's office of advocacy. "While bankruptcies are up, overall, small business closures are up even more," Headd said. California...

With colleges and universities cutting back because of the recession, the job outlook for graduate students in language and literature is bleaker than ever before. According to the Modern Language Association’s forecast of job listings, released Thursday, faculty positions will decline 37 percent, the biggest drop since the group began tracking its job listings 35 years ago. The projection, based on a comparison between the number of jobs listed in October 2008 and October 2009, follows a 26 percent drop the previous year. “Students thinking of going to graduate school in English should understand that right now their chance of...

In what he described as a “sweeping new policy,” Supt. Ramon C. Cortines today announced that the Los Angeles Unified School District would begin aggressively weeding out poor-performing teachers and administrators. “This district can rightly be criticized for the promotion of ineffective teachers over the years,” he said in a prepared statement. “That is about to change. We do not owe poor performers a job.” The policy encourages district supervisors to consider firing some of the 404 probationary teachers who were found to need improvement in their last performance evaluation. It also urges greater scrutiny of 339 administrators who have...

The head of AT&T’s wireless unit said Wednesday that the carrier is working to improve its network for iPhone and other smart-phone subscribers in New York and San Francisco. Manhattan and San Francisco, particularly the city’s financial district, “are performing at levels below our standards,” Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T Mobility, said at an investors conference. Those two cities see especially high smart-phone penetration, which has put pressure on AT&T’s data network. The company expects to see gradual improvements in New York and plans to replace some microcells in San Francisco, he said. “This is going to...

AT&T Inc. plans to take steps toward curtailing excessive data usage by some iPhone customers as it battles growth in both wireless traffic and perceptions of network problems. Ralph de la Vega, who run's AT&T's wireless and consumer businesses, said Wednesday the company will introduce "incentives" to encourage customers to cut back on their data usage. Mr. de la Vega said AT&T's strategy wasn't set yet, but said the incentives wouldn't affect the majority of AT&T's subscribers. He said details will likely be available early next year. The wireless industry has been wrestling with the exponentially growing use of data...

Weis is quoted as saying: "Let me ask you this question: You guys know about things that go on in different places. Was I living with a grad student in Malibu, or was I living with my wife in my house? You could bet that if I were living with a grad student here in South Bend, it would be national news. He’s doing it in Malibu and it’s not national news. What’s the difference? I don’t understand. Why is it okay for one guy to do things like that, but for me, I’m scrutinized when I swear. I’m sorry...

Last April, a Department of Corrections officer was watching a television news story about a series of armed robberies around Puget Sound when he saw a Pierce County Crime Stoppers sketch that bore a striking similarity to a man he'd once monitored — Maurice Clemmons. The officer passed on the tip to Clemmons' current supervising officer, who called Crime Stoppers. Yet, somehow, the tip didn't filter down to all the detectives working the cases. A Crime Stoppers operator told the officer that they had "received too many tips/leads already," according to the second DOC officer's notes. Crime Stoppers "refused to...

Democrats have begun to hash out how to pay for a mix of unemployment benefits, state aid, tax credits and other incentives they hope will turn around the country's surging unemployment rate. Funding for the initiatives would come from two sources. For job creation, the principal target would be a pot of more than $150 billion that was set aside last year to bail out the tottering financial system. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she would like to tap the Troubled Asset Relief Program fund to pay for any "investments that we have in jobs." ... Republicans lawmakers...

Hollywood blockbusters aren't usually born in movie theaters in Dallas, Birmingham or Nashville. But that's exactly where “The Blind Side” has taken off -- a show-business phenomenon driven by audiences in the South and Midwest storming to a movie about Christian charity and football that stars Sandra Bullock. In one of the more extraordinary box-office stories of the year, writer-director John Lee Hancock’s movie about Baltimore Ravens lineman Michael Oher -- who as a homeless black teen was taken in and nurtured by a well-off, churchgoing white couple -- nearly toppled the smash sequel "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" at...