Battles

Vietnam veteran John Otte did his best to forget the war. He got married, raised two sons and made a career working at credit unions. But as Otte neared retirement, memories of combat flooded back. Starting in 2005, he filed a series of claims with Veterans Affairs for disability compensation, contending that many of his health problems stemmed from the war. The VA agreed, and now the 65-year-old with two Purple Hearts receives $1,900 a month for post-traumatic stress disorder and diabetes - and for having shrapnel scars on his arms.

Eric Garcetti held a narrow lead over Wendy Greuel late Tuesday as the two longtime city officials battled each other - and voter apathy - in the race to become the 42nd mayor of Los Angeles. With more than half the vote still uncounted, the contest remained too close to call. Greuel, addressing supporters at a downtown club, said she expected the election to go into "overtime. " Garcetti, speaking just before midnight, told supporters in Hollywood, "The results aren't all in, but this is shaping up to be a great night.

"Split state" used to sound simple to me, as though it were 50-50, North versus South, nice tidy halves. But Missouri wasn't just split in the Civil War. It was shattered. Rifts ran through every level of society all over the state — through counties, towns, church congregations, families, right down into individual souls. Missouri had rich slave owners who wanted to stay in the Union and poor farmers who never saw a slave but fought for the South. Even Julia Grant, wife of the Union general who would win the war, came from a wealthy slave-owning family with a plantation outside St. Louis.

In the campaign for mayor, Eric Garcetti spoke grandly about a city with plentiful summer jobs for low-income teens, a tunnel under the traffic-clogged Sepulveda Pass and even an end to homelessness. But a day after winning office, the mayor-elect faced some immediate and less lofty challenges: potentially bruising battles over employee salaries, police overtime pay and how to reverse cuts to ambulance staffing, sidewalk repairs and other basic city services. On Thursday, the City Council - a body that Garcetti will remain part of until June 30 - is set to decide whether and how to pay for a scheduled 5.5% raise for many city workers, a payout portrayed by the city's top financial advisor as a long-term budget buster.

The daughters of two legendary Democratic politicians have died: Kara Kennedy, the oldest child of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, and Eleanor Mondale, the daughter of former Vice President Walter F. Mondale. Both women had been battling cancer. Their deaths were announced by their families Saturday, according to the Associated Press. Kennedy, 51, died at a health club in the Washington area, said her brother, Patrick Kennedy, a former Democratic congressman from Rhode Island.

As an attorney who specializes in public access law, I read with great interest "Happy Trails for All?" [by Darrell Satzman, Nov. 7] regarding the successful integration of recreational use and development at the Oaks in Calabasas. Unfortunately, in the public access matters in which I have been involved, litigation has ensued more often than negotiation. As population density in the region increases and development pushes against open space, the battles of access versus exclusion will increase in both number and bitterness.

Dateline Afghanistan: Phil Jackson reports on the progress of the Northern Alliance in the Afghan war: "Well, after weeks of fighting and despite running their offensives incorrectly and just relying on their talent for battle, it appears that the Northern Alliance troops have managed to win a few battles and take some cities from the Taliban. They're definitely off to a slow start but as the war drags on we may see them develop as a fighting force." David Ando Rancho Palos Verdes The Times' photographers seem to catch Shaquille O'Neal quite often with his tongue sticking out of his mouth.

New York is campaigning in California this year, but the new contests are bringing back memories of old battles. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani came west first, beating the drum for Bill Simon for governor, and last week Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) jetted into the sunset to cut the ribbon on the "women for Davis" campaign in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Helpfully, the state Republican party--whose symbol is the elephant, an animal with a reputation for a long memory--sent out e-mails citing the 10-year-ago primary battle between Davis and now-Sen.

Re "We on the Gay Right Find Diplomacy Can Work Wonders," Commentary, June 20: Norah Vincent is trying to separate herself from what she calls the "gay left." Nice try, Norah, but it won't work. Most of the writings I have read of hers do not put her on the conservative side of issues. The so-called battles she refers to occur because she and her ilk continue to talk about their sexual appetites. It is almost an obsession. I really don't care about how she dresses and what her sexual proclivities are, and I wonder why she thinks so many others care.

"Second Serve" is a smash and so is Vanessa Redgrave. Redgrave is so extraordinary as Renee Richards--so commanding and convincing as a man, and as a woman, and as a tortured soul in sexual limbo--that Redgrave the real-life stormy political figure fades into the background. More about the politics later. Richards is the transsexual eye surgeon and former male amateur tennis champion who shot to prominence and controversy in the late 1970s when she began playing professionally as a woman.

EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS 1. Miami vs. 3. Indiana Season series: Pacers, 2-1. Key stat: Miami leads the NBA in field-goal accuracy during the playoffs, making 49.1% of its shots, while holding opponents to a league-low 40.9% shooting. Outlook: As usual, the drama between these teams started before the series opener. Indiana Coach Frank Vogel irritated Miami with his comment about the Heat's being "just the next team that's in our way," one year after he accused Miami's players of being the NBA's most egregious floppers.

Four days after her April 27 breast reconstruction, the third and final surgery aimed at sparing her an early death from breast cancer, Angelina Jolie was in good spirits at home. Upon paying a house call, her surgeon, Dr. Kristi Funk of the Pink Lotus Breast Center in Beverly Hills, found two walls of the actress' home covered with "freshly assembled story boards" for her next directorial project. "All the while she spoke," the doctor later wrote on her blog, "six drains dangled from her chest, three on each side, fastened to an elastic belt around her waist.

Los Angeles voters rejected a plan to hike the city's sales tax two months ago, but the battle over that measure lives on in a hotly contested City Council race. In multiple mailers sent to voters in the 13th council district, candidate John Choi and his backers in organized labor contend that Choi's rival, Mitch O'Farrell, supported the layoffs of 500 police officers. In one mailer, a downcast O'Farrell is pictured next to a crime scene and the words: "Votes to cut 500 cops. " Choi and his backers base the claim on O'Farrell's opposition to Proposition A, the March 5 ballot measure that was promoted by city leaders and others as a way to avoid reductions in police staffing.

WASHINGTON - The federal deficit is shrinking more quickly than expected, and the government's long-term debt has largely stabilized for the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday in a report that could strengthen the Obama administration's hand in the budget battles with congressional Republicans. The budget office continues to say the federal government faces a long-range budget problem - mostly caused by the costs of an aging population - but its new forecast pushes the crunch point for that problem off into a considerably more distant future: well after the 2020 presidential election.

Mitch O'Farrell is probably the only candidate running for Los Angeles City Council who can do a backward handspring, no problem. Before taking a job a decade ago as a field deputy in the office of Councilman Eric Garcetti, O'Farrell, 52, spent years as a restaurant manager, cruise ship dance instructor and competitive gymnast. If his path to politics was roundabout, the one forged by his opponent in next week's race to replace Garcetti in the 13th Council District was uncommonly direct.

All he asks, Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich frequently says, is that voters judge him on his record. As he wages an uphill battle to hang onto to his job in the May 21 election, Trutanich rattles off a list of reasons he should be "rehired" to head one of the nation's largest municipal law firms. He cites a substantially reduced reliance on costly outside attorneys, favorable outcomes in lawsuits that he says have saved taxpayers more than $300 million and a crackdown on illegal billboards that activists called scourges on their neighborhoods.

For Saddam Hussein, the mother of all battles turned into the mother-in-law of all battles. ROBERT C. LEWIN Santa Monica

E.F. Kitchen, a Venice-based fine arts photographer who works with platinum prints, spent years fascinated by the glint of light off of handmade armor. "It was a purely visual concept," says Kitchen, whose first name is Elizabeth and who loved "the materials, the craftsmanship, the creativity of the designs." But as she got to know one of her craftsmen better, she was exposed to a world of retro-medievalists who are a kind of West Coast equivalent of Civil War reenactors. "Oh, my God," she said to herself when she encountered the Society for Creative Anachronism, which stages historically informed mock battles involving thousands of troops.

Vietnam veteran John Otte did his best to forget the war. He got married, raised two sons and made a career working at credit unions. But as Otte neared retirement, memories of combat flooded back. Starting in 2005, he filed a series of claims with Veterans Affairs for disability compensation, contending that many of his health problems stemmed from the war. The VA agreed, and now the 65-year-old with two Purple Hearts receives $1,900 a month for post-traumatic stress disorder and diabetes - and for having shrapnel scars on his arms.

Four people who provided crucial information in the hunt for former Los Angeles Police Officer Christopher Dorner will split what is expected to be a $1-million reward in the case, authorities announced Tuesday afternoon. The division of the highly anticipated reward, sought by at least 12 people after a February gun battle that led to Dorner's death, was overseen by three retired judges and made public in a 12-page report released by the Los Angeles Police Department. The money will be paid in installments to a couple held captive by Dorner, a ski resort employee and a tow truck driver.