Antonio Villaraigosa

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will select a new police chief at a time when crime is declining and the city is enjoying a prolonged respite from racial strife, sparing him from the political perils that bloodied the three previous mayors facing similiar appointments. Even the potential gift of a controversy-free selection process, however, does little to diminish the pressure on Villaraigosa to name a successor capable of measuring up to William J. Bratton. The outgoing police chief is largely credited with transforming the LAPD into a more effective and accountable agency that has salved decades of animosity with minorities in Los Angeles.

If Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has his way, Los Angeles County will soon embark on a commuter rail building boom the likes of which the region has never seen. The mayor today will unveil an ambitious but politically risky transportation plan that fast-tracks several high-profile rail projects to be completed within the next decade. That's a big speed-up, because officials have generally been talking about completing them within 30 years. Villaraigosa has made building more rail a priority of his administration, though he's the first to admit it's going to take more than speeches and good intentions to get it done.

The second and final terms of City Controller Laura Chick and City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo ended in July, and now, with the departure of Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton, so does the second and final term of Mayor James K. Hahn. Hahn? Wait a minute, you say. He had no second term. He's been gone from City Hall for four years, soundly defeated by Antonio Villaraigosa in their second mayoral showdown. Voters thought they were making a clean break when they rejected Hahn in 2005.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will announce his selection of the city's next police chief Tuesday, the mayor's staff said Sunday evening. After summoning the three finalists for a second round of interviews Sunday, Villaraigosa decided to take an additional day to mull over the weighty choice. The mayor had tentatively planned to name his choice for chief Monday. Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Charlie Beck, Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell and Deputy Chief Michel Moore returned Sunday to Getty House, the mayor's official residence, to meet one-on-one with Villaraigosa for about an hour each.

Lowe's Cos. posted fiscal third-quarter profit that met analysts' estimates. Net income fell to $344 million, or 23 cents a share, from $488 million, or 33 cents, a year earlier, the home-improvement retailer said. Excluding a write-down in the value of some stores and a tax benefit, earnings totaled 24 cents a share, in line with analysts' estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue declined 3% to $11.4 billion in the three months that ended Oct. 30.

Antonio Villaraigosa: An article in Section A on Tuesday about Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's decision not to run for California governor said his second term ends in 2012. It ends in 2013.

Even as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa promises to enlist teachers and parents in his reform plan for Los Angeles schools, he has largely overlooked another group with a stake in his new enterprise: students. Villaraigosa might want to listen to 16-year-old Yamileth Capetillo, who goes to class on an empty stomach many days because her crowded high school, the Santee Education Complex near downtown, runs out of hot food for the second lunch shift.

A few minutes after 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, dozens of volunteers filtered into a storefront campaign headquarters where a massive photograph of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton smiled out from a window beneath a dingy Whirlpool appliance sign. The plan for the day was to get boots on the ground for a door-to-door canvass of Nashua, about 15 miles down the Merrimack River from Manchester. The Clinton organizers were eager to get started on the crucial last Sunday before Tuesday's primary.

Faced with a budget shortfall that has doubled in three months, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called Monday for paring city spending by suspending most hiring, asking thousands of workers to take unpaid furloughs and selling vacant fire stations.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's campaign for a $243-million telephone users tax has received a major contribution from an unlikely source -- a Texas oilman whose company could see a windfall from one of the mayor's environmental initiatives. Proposition S, which is on Tuesday's ballot, took in a $150,000 contribution last week from billionaire T. Boone Pickens, the co-founder of Clean Energy, which bills itself as the nation's largest supplier of liquid natural gas.