Free Republic

LOS ANGELES -- Los Angeles Department of Water and Power officials said an outage Monday afternoon was linked to human error at a receiving station. Power officials reported outages from the San Fernando Valley to downtown Los Angeles. Workers connected the wrong wires, causing a surge of power that led to shutdowns at three power generating stations, according to officials. Receiving stations take high-voltage power from generating stations and convert it to lower voltage. It can then be used throughout the city. Ron Deaton, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said the system is designed...

LOS ANGELES - Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa unseated Mayor James Hahn on Tuesday to become the city's first Hispanic mayor in more than a century, confirming the rising political power of Latinos in the nation's second-largest city.After a lackluster term tainted by corruption allegations at City Hall, Hahn was turned out of office in favor of a high school dropout and son of the barrio who turned his life around to become speaker of the California Assembly and then a member of the Los Angeles City Council.With 70 percent of precincts reporting, Villaraigosa had 202,861 votes, or 59 percent, to 140,416...