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LOS ANGELES, June 8 (UPI) -- Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced Friday he will be moving out of his official residence next week because of a split with his wife. While Corina Villaraigosa remains temporarily in Getty House with the couple's two teenage children, the mayor will return to the home the couple left after his election, The Los Angeles Times reported. "Each of us loves our children more than anything in the world, and we are committed to working together for their benefit," the mayor said in a statement announcing that he and his wife are separating after...

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa soared through his first year in office on a wave of public support that made him a daunting political force almost destined for higher office. But a recent rough patch has raised questions about whether he has lost some of that early luster. The courts snubbed Villaraigosa's plan to gain significant control over Los Angeles public schools. Chicago inched out L.A. for a chance to bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. A police riot squad beat immigrant-rights marchers and journalists in MacArthur Park last month, prompting the mayor to cut short a highly promoted...

A judge Friday delivered a stinging rebuke to Los Angeles' labor and political leadership, barring the city from enforcing a ballyhooed new ordinance that would have extended the city's "living wage" protections to workers at hotels near Los Angeles International Airport. The eight-page order by Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe went far beyond merely blocking a law that had been considered a point of pride for the city's powerful labor interests. As a practical matter, Yaffe dealt a political defeat to the City Council, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the union that championed the law. During a yearlong political and...

Planned Parenthood Heroes LA mayor honored by local and national Planned Parenthood groups for helping defeat parental notification initiative; UFW’s Dolores Huerta also given award Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who describes himself as a “Catholic,” was given Planned Parenthood’s “Hero Award” on Friday, March 30, for his role in the defeat of Proposition 85, the Parents’ Right to Know and Child Protection Initiative. “The Honorable Antonio R. Villaraigosa, mayor of the City of Los Angeles, was honored with the Planned Parenthood Hero Award for his support of Planned Parenthood’s mission and contribution to the defeat in November of Prop....

Los Angeles (AP) -- A Superior Court judge blocked a new law extending the city's "living wage" law to workers at airport-area hotels from taking effect until May at the earliest. Wednesday's ruling came in response to a challenge filed by seven of the 12 hotels that would be required to pay all workers $10.64 an hour including health benefits under a law signed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Did Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Democrats' rising political star, sell out Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides? Literally? Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's little-noticed appointment of Villaraigosa's sister to a $149,160-a-year judgeship on the Los Angeles County Superior Court has some Democratic Party loyalists accusing the mayor of a familial financial gain in what they say is his failure to aggressively support Angelides. Mary Lou Villar, 52, the mayor's younger sister, who goes by Villaraigosa's original name, was appointed to the judgeship in April. Villar, a Democrat who resides in Alhambra, is a former legal-aid attorney who had worked for the past 15...

I attended a social event last weekend, at which the guests were Republican/ conservative activists of varying degrees of intensity. Among the attendees were a current Southern California congressman, a former GOP state chairman, a couple of GOP nominees for statewide offices, a couple of county chairmen, some technician types, a few finance committee types, and so on. I tell you this not to drop names (as I told Lady Thatcher a few weeks ago, I simply hate name droppers ... ahem) but rather to give you a feel for the kind of folks who were there, necessary to understand...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles' first Latino mayor in the modern era, will skip huge pro-immigration rallies planned for Monday to meet with pro football officials in Dallas, leaving organizers feeling like "a ship without a captain." Oscar Sanchez, an organizer of the Great American Boycott in Los Angeles, said the mayor's office previously told the group he would speak at a downtown Los Angeles rally on Monday -- then backed out. Instead, the mayor will be in Dallas speaking with National Football League officials about the possibility of bringing a team back to Los Angeles. Activists...

MEXICO CITY – Mexican lawmakers issued a declaration of support for immigrant protests planned in the United States on Monday and said they will send a delegation to Los Angeles to show their solidarity. The declaration, issued late Thursday by all the political parties in the lower house of Congress, contrasts with the position of Mexico's Foreign Department, which has said it will discipline any consular officials who take part in the protests. The delegation of lawmakers will meet with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, it said in a news release from Congress. “The only thing we are looking for...

LOS ANGELES – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday embraced Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's school takeover plan, giving the mayor a highly visible ally in his drive to gain control of the Los Angeles Unified School District. “Mayor Villaraigosa has shown bold leadership,” the Republican governor told reporters in Sacramento. “This is exactly the kind of thing that ought to be done. “I am 100 percent behind him on this and if there's a bill that comes down here, I will sign that,” Schwarzenegger said. “We want to help him in that move, because we all know that it is inexcusable that...

Schwarzenegger Names Four to Los Angeles Superior CourtRiverside Jurist Nominated to Succeed Justice Ward on Fourth District Court of Appeal Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday named three local attorneys and an administrative law judge to fill vacancies on the Los Angeles Superior Court. Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board Administrative Law Judge Mary Lou Villar, civil litigators Steven D. Blades and Juan Carlos Dominguez, and former federal prosecutor Ray G. Jurado, now with the Los Angeles County Office of Independent Review, would succeed one judge who died and three who retired. The governor yesterday also nominated Riverside Superior Court Judge Douglas Miller as...

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's frustration at not being told personally by the White House about the details of the reported terror plot against the city's tallest building stems from a greater annoyance: Nearly 7 1/2 months after taking office, Villaraigosa said Friday that he still has not succeeded in speaking or meeting with President Bush. Villaraigosa said that his office contacted the White House on two occasions last summer to set up meetings with Bush when the mayor was traveling to Washington, but that the White House turned down both. (snip) Dana Perino, a White House press secretary, said...

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Thursday he was blindsided by President Bush's announcement of new details on a purported 2002 hijacking plot aimed at a downtown skyscraper, and described communication with the White House as "nonexistent." "I'm amazed that the president would make this (announcement) on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels," the mayor told The Associated Press. "I don't expect a call from the president _ but somebody." Bush has referred to the 2002 plot before but he publicly filled in the details Thursday. Bush said Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, in a nationally televised Spanish-language speech, faulted the White House Tuesday for policies he said pushed more Americans into poverty and failed to address a crisis in education. "America can do better," the mayor said in response to President Bush's State of the Union address. "Under this administration, 4 million people have fallen from the working class into the ranks of the poor," the mayor said. "Six million children are on the verge of failing out of school and 11 million Americans can't read a bus schedule or fill out a job application....

LOS ANGELES A consultant to top state Democratic leaders has admitted that he molested two brothers while working at a Y-M-C-A more than 30 years ago. John Robert Stevens was an adviser to former Governor Gray Davis and Assembly speakers Antonio Villaraigosa (vee-yah-ry-GOH'-sah), Herb Wesson and Fabian Nunez. In April, he testified in a deposition for a lawsuit accusing the Y-M-C-A of Metropolitan Los Angeles of failing to protect the boys from Stevens' abuse. He admitted he fondled and masturbated the brothers, who were then 13 and 10, when he was youth director of the Rio Vista Y-M-C-A in South...

Calling on Los Angeles to renew its dreams and work with him to meet the challenges of making the streets safer, the schools better and the air cleaner, Antonio Ramo Villaraigosa was sworn in Friday as the city's 41st mayor and the first Latino mayor since 1872. With more than 5,000 officials and residents packed onto the South Lawn of City Hall, Villaraigosa promised to work to bring the city together and urged the public to think big about how the city can become a world leader. "Let's swear a common oath today. Let's make Los Angeles a city of...

WOODLAND HILLS - A series of fights broke out today at Taft High School ahead of a scheduled visit by Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa, and school officials disputing claims by parents and students who said the brawls appeared racially motivated. As many as 17 patrol cars and an LAPD helicopter were dispatched to the Ventura Boulevard campus about 10 a.m., a Los Angeles Police Department spokeswoman said. Taft Principal Sharon Thomas said there were three separate fights among ninth-graders lining up to take standardized tests in a multi-purpose room. Six students were detained for questioning and the others were sent to...

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...