Commuting

Retail giantTarget Corp., which is already working on stores in Westwood and downtown Los Angeles, announced plans for another smaller-format urban shop at the Beverly Connection shopping center on West 3rd Street near the Beverly Center. California will have four of these urban stores, dubbed CityTargets, with three in Los Angeles and one in San Francisco. The Westwood store, at the Westwood Market Place near UCLA, will open first, in July, followed in October by the downtown Los Angeles store in the Fig at 7th mall.

California is set for a major debate on the death penalty following qualification Monday of a November ballot measure that would replace capital punishment with a life term without possibility of parole. If passed, the measure would make California the 18th state in the nation without a death penalty. During the last five years, four states have replaced the death penalty and Connecticut is soon to follow. Growing numbers of conservatives in California have joined the effort to repeal the state's capital punishment law, expressing frustration with its price tag and the rarity of executions.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday commuted the potential life sentence of a woman convicted of killing her infant grandson 15 years ago, saying "it is clear significant doubts surround" her guilt. Shirley Ree Smith, 51, who was freed in 2006 after nearly a decade in prison but was destined to be reincarcerated after a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year, said it "hasn't sunk in yet" that the threat of more prison time has been lifted. "I just can't believe this is finally over with," said Smith, choked with tears of relief, when reached at her daughter's home in Alexandria, Minn.

Sears Holdings Corp. is slashing costs after losing $2.4 billion in the fourth quarter, including the closure of 120 of its department stores. But one expense remains sky-high: the cost of charter flights for Chief Executive Louis J. D'Ambrosio, who lives in Philadelphia and commutes to Sears' headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Ill. Sears spent $793,224 last year shuttling D'Ambrosio by private jet back and forth, according to its latest proxy...

As the Metro bus lumbered through South Los Angeles carrying passengers headed to work or school, Jesus Navarro could barely keep his eyes open after finishing a graveyard shift in Westwood. The slender 30-year-old security guard with a long, black metal flashlight poking out of his backpack wasn't worried about nodding off. Line 305, which zigzags diagonally for about 20 miles across Los Angeles, carries him home, and he doesn't have to change a seat. "It's a blessing that you have one bus … that can take you from point A to point B," Navarro said.

Gov. Jerry Brown is giving strong consideration to a clemency petition for a grandmother whose conviction for shaking her infant grandson to death was overturned by an appeals court and reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court, lawyers close to the case said. The governor, who received the petition Wednesday, is being asked to commute the life sentence of Shirley Ree Smith, a 51-year-old grandmother who was sentenced to 15 years to life in 1997 for causing the death of a child. Although Brown is notoriously unpredictable, a longtime advisor said he would be "very surprised" if Brown did not grant clemency to Smith, who has spent 10 years in prison for a death she has maintained was a tragic case of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, not a crime against a beloved child.

With patience, frustration and a lot of help from their GPS devices, L.A. commuters faced down a true "carmageddon" as a spectacular tanker truck explosion kept a key freeway closed and turned the already tough Christmastime traffic into an endurance contest. Commutes between eastern suburbs and Los Angeles that once took half an hour doubled and tripled as other freeways and surface streets clogged for miles. When the 60 Freeway - which normally carries about 225,000 cars daily - closed Wednesday afternoon, it took Patty Ortega three hours to get home to North Whittier after she made the fateful choice to take Beverly Boulevard and Olympic Boulevard.

After riding L.A.'s Commuter Express for more than 20 years, Janis Risch said the 423 bus from Agoura Hills to downtown is showing its age: In heavy downpours, the roof leaks. In sweltering heat, the air conditioner sometimes dies. So it was with a smile Wednesday that Risch climbed aboard one of the city's new commuter buses for its inaugural run. "These feel much better," Risch, 60, said as she leaned back into her adjustable seat. Over the next three months, transit officials plan to roll out 95 new buses.

There's the grown son bridging the distance with his alcoholic father, an old woman's girlhood memories of working in her grandfather's dumpling restaurant, a student's search for an inspiring former teacher. Like pages ripped from a diary, they're personal stories about love, loss and just coping with everyday life in this crowded and stressful society. But these private thoughts are presented in a public place: The short tales, signed by their authors, are part of a new storytelling program on Seoul's Metropolitan Subway System.