Wide

Veteran "KTLA 5 Morning News" anchor Michaela Pereira will be leaving the station at the end of May to join CNN's new morning show in New York. Pereira will be the news anchor for the show, which will be hosted by Chris Cuomo and Kate Bolduan. The announcement was made jointly by KTLA and President of CNN Worldwide Jeff Zucker, who is aggressively shaking up the struggling network's lineup and personalities. "I've been looking forward to this announcement since I first joined CNN," Zucker said in a statement.

Three veterans from Sacramento were making strong showings Tuesday in the Los Angeles City Council election, with two pulling ahead of their opponents and a third headed to a possible runoff in the San Fernando Valley, according to partial returns. In a year of sweeping change for the council, state Sen. Curren Price (D-Los Angeles) was leading former council deputy Ana Cubas in the race to represent part of South Los Angeles, with nearly one-third of the precincts counted. On the Eastside, former Assemblyman Gil Cedillo was ahead of council aide Jose Gardea in the contest to replace Councilman Ed Reyes.

If you are a teacher in debt, there's good news and bad news. There are literally dozens of programs that could potentially help wipe out your student loans. But most of them have narrow requirements that may lock you out. Just ask Troy Dale, a high school counselor from Ellis, Kan. He and his wife have $23,000 in student loans that they've been paying down for nearly a decade. At their current rate, they'll still be paying off their student debts when their oldest child enrolls in college.

A drive along Angus Street in hilly Silver Lake requires navigating a gantlet of buckled concrete slabs and dirt-filled cracks. But on South Seabluff Drive in Playa Vista the ride is smooth, the pavement is black and you can smell the fresh asphalt. Despite the city's best efforts to keep up with the constant flood of road repairs, Los Angeles is a city divided - by its potholes, cracks and ruts. Interactive map: See your street's grade A Times analysis of street inspection data found wide disparities in road quality among the city's 114 neighborhoods.

Security researchers Nick DePetrillo and Don Bailey have discovered a seven-digit numerical code that can unlock all kinds of secrets about you. It's your phone number. Using relatively simple techniques, this duo can use your cellphone number to figure out your name, where you live and work, where you travel and when you sleep. They could even listen to your voice messages and personal phone calls — if they wanted to. "It's really interesting to watch a phone number turn into a person's life," DePetrillo said.

Five things to watch this week: 1Sam Bradford is injured, Tim Tebow is struggling and Notre Dame's Jimmy Clausen may have missed his chance in the final seconds against USC. That leaves this year's Heisman Trophy race wide open for Alabama tailback Mark Ingram to perhaps become the school's first winner. 2USC has won seven straight Pac-10 titles but this year's race could be the craziest it has been in years. Oregon leads with a 3-0 record, with seven teams bunched behind with one or two defeats.

The Wide World of Weird will return next Friday.

Since Cal State San Marcos has been unable after 10 months to find a woman or ethnic-minority candidate for its business dean position, perhaps it might consider a non-minority male ("CSUSM Reopens Wide Search for Business Dean," Oct. 15). I suggest that the Cal State system end discrimination by ending it; not by finding new victims. RAYMOND HARDCASTLE Vista

Wide receiver Earnest Gray, who ended a long contract holdout two weeks ago, was waived by the New York Giants.

A Compton jury heard conflicting portraits Tuesday of a 16-year-old girl charged with murdering her mother and stepfather, whose bodies were found more than a year ago buried in separate shallow graves. Cynthia Alvarez sat quietly wearing a pale-blue cardigan, her hair tied back in a ponytail, as a prosecutor told jurors that the teen had confessed to the October 2011 killings and carried them out with her boyfriend, Giovanni Gallardo. Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Kristin Trutanich said the young couple lay in wait for the two victims and, following the slayings, planned a Halloween party to take place in the family's mobile home in Compton.

Edward A. Frieman, a leading figure in American science for decades as a researcher with wide-ranging interests, a top-level governmental advisor on defense and energy issues, and director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, has died. He was 87. Frieman died April 11 at UCSD's Thornton Hospital in La Jolla of a respiratory illness, the university announced. His legacy extends to leadership posts in academia, government and private industry. There are "not many like him, and he will be sorely missed," said John Deutch, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former CIA director and deputy secretary of Defense.

Mark Yudof likes to point out that he was the first real outsider in more than a century chosen to run the sprawling University of California system. And he often jokes that, as a result of his leadership, it is likely to take a hundred years more before UC hires another. Maybe not. But the comment does represent a dilemma facing the UC regents as they look for his successor: No obvious heir apparent is lined up inside the system. So experts predict the search for a new president will concentrate on large public university systems elsewhere in the country that dealt, like UC, with dramatic declines in state support.

With no obvious inside candidate to be the next president of the University of California system, experts predict a wide search that will concentrate on similar university systems elsewhere but could also stretch beyond academia. Whoever replaces Mark Yudof will take a job that comes with intense political and financial pressures. UC has an annual budget of $24 billion, 230,000 students, 191,000 faculty and staff members, 10 campuses, five medical centers and three national laboratories.

SAN JOSE - Audrie Pott thought everybody at her high school knew what happened that night. The 15-year-old had been drinking during a Labor Day weekend party at a friend's house in the pricey Silicon Valley suburb of Saratoga. She either fell asleep or passed out. And she woke up to something her family's lawyer described as "unimaginable. " "There were some markings on her body, in some sort of permanent marker, indicating that someone had violated her when she was sleeping," attorney Robert Allard said Monday.

Like the NHL season, the annual deadline-day trading frenzy was late in starting. But a flurry of deals in the hour before Wednesday's noon Pacific time cutoff changed the complexion of several teams and added depth to others hoping for long playoff runs. The Ducks, seeking strength up the middle, acquired veteran center Matthew Lombardi from the Phoenix Coyotes for left wing Brandon McMillan. They also traded goalie Jeff Deslauriers to the Minnesota Wild for future considerations.

Panasonic: An article in Business on Tuesday about the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas said Panasonic's new 150-inch TV was 11 feet tall. It is 11 feet wide and 6 1/4 feet tall.

Did anyone notice that Ron Brown caught only 14 passes despite starting all last year? Should we be surprised with his one catch for five yards against Atlanta? The good NFL teams get two excellent wide receivers so a wide-open offense will be respected. The Rams only have one and he is in Fresno. I believe he's asking for less than Brown is currently earning. I'm real tired of promises of a new offense, the same run after run, and postgame explanations. LEWIS SEYMOUR Carson

My dream of a West Regional foursome of Wichita State, La Salle, Harvard and Iowa State came only half true. Los Angeles fell two underdogs short from hitting for the Cinderella cycle. The disappointment abated when, in Philadelphia, the hallucination that was Florida Gulf Coast University lived into Sunday evening. More than Coach K calling a timeout, or Kansas Coach Bill Self's perfectly coiffed hair, these are the story lines that make the NCAA tournament the best reality show on television.

It takes only one word to describe the extra touch of lunacy in this year's March Madness. That word is: Gonzaga. With the NCAA men's basketball tournament set to begin this week, the small Jesuit university is the nation's No. 1-ranked team, ahead of traditional powerhouses Duke, Indiana and Kansas. The Bulldogs' lofty status epitomizes a season that has produced no clear-cut favorites. A dozen or more teams have a solid chance to win the championship. Lesser names such as St. Louis and Virginia Commonwealth rank as legitimate dark horses.