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LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Is the highest-paid mayor in the United States broke?

With just over a month left in his second and final term, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will leave office in June reportedly without a place to live or a car of his own to drive, according to a report published Thursday.

Jill Stewart, L.A. Weekly’s managing editor, told KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO that Villaraigosa faces an uncertain political – and financial – future when he steps down June 30.

In order to maintain his current lifestyle, which includes frequent cross-country travel, a mayoral mansion at the taxpayer-supported Getty House, an Los Angeles Police Department security detail for his personal SUV, courtside seats to Lakers games, and several other perks, associates estimate Villaraigosa’s next gig would need to pay about $750,000 a year, according to Stewart.
“His friends are so concerned because he’s lived so flamboyantly and spent basically so much of other people’s money on a very, very costly lifestyle,” Stewart said, adding that Villaraigosa has lived “far better than Gov. Jerry Brown and far more flamboyantly than actual multi-millionaire mayor Richard Riordan.”

The report, entitled Antonio Villaraigosa’s Quest for Wall Street, Washington and Wealth, also cites mayoral associates and City Hall insiders in estimating Villaraigosa earns a salary of $232,735 a year, more than any of his mayoral counterparts nationwide.

And now, according to Stewart, Villaraigosa is broke.

“He didn’t save any money…we got his required economic interest reports where you see all their stocks and bonds and property,” Stewart said. “Nada.”
Outside of a rental property in Moreno Valley which brings in about $600 a month, Stewart said that Villarigosa has no major assets despite having been paid over $1.6 million during his time as mayor. Public pension information for Villaraigosa was not available, L.A. Weekly reported.

KNX 1070′s Jon Baird reports the outgoing mayor greeted Mayor-Elect Eric Garcetti at the Getty House to congratulate his successor Thursday and then left before reporters could ask about his future plans.

“I wanna give Eric Garcetti the opportunity, and again, I couldn’t be prouder to welcome him and congratulate him,” Villaraigosa said.

It’s still unclear where Villaraigosa will land: while staffers have been mum on the mayor’s job search, he is reportedly considering a number of possibilities after denying in February any interest in a Cabinet position in the Obama Administration.

According to L.A. Weekly, Villaraigosa may also have to wait until 2018 to make a bid for Governor of California, with Brown expected to run for reelection in 2014.

“He is asking anyone and everyone for jobs at think tanks; he thinks he could be a resident-in-scholar at UCLA or USC; he’d like to work on Wall Street,” said Stewart. “It’s incredible, he’s throwing a really wide net out there.”

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“The problem with the jury system is that anyone who’s not smart enough to come with an excuse to get out of jury duty doesn’t get out,” he continues. “Only the stupidest of the stupidest people end up on juries, you know? I’ve never met a smart person who’s done jury duty.”

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An Honor for the Creator of the GIF

By AMY O'LEARY



Among the thousands of file formats that exist in modern computing, the GIF, or Graphics Interchange Format, has attained celebrity status in a sea of lesser-known BMPs, RIPs, FIGs and MIFFs. It was honored as a “word of the year” in 2012, and Tuesday night, its inventor, Steve Wilhite, will be accepting a lifetime achievement award at The Webby Awards.

Now, almost any fragment of digital culture can be spun up into a grainy, gratifying animation. GIFs provide a platform for nearly everything, it seems — from rapid-fire political commentary to digital art to small moments of celebrity intrigue.

Has any file format received more attention, more accolades (or had more fun) than the GIF?

Invented in 1987, today the GIF has become the aesthetic calling card of modern Internet culture. Even Yahoo released one to announce the company’s acquisition of Tumblr this week, seen below.

“It’s been an incredibly enduring piece of technology,” said David-Michel Davies, the executive director of The Webby Awards. “Even as bandwidth has expanded,” he said, “it has been very exciting to see how much cultural cachè the format has gotten.”
But back in 1987, such things could not be imagined. Dial-up speeds were achingly slow. Image downloads were made even worse by interoperability problems. An article that year in the magazine, “Online Today” described the problem:

Mr. Wilhite, then working at CompuServe (the nation’s first major online service) knew the company wanted to display things like color weather maps. Because he had an interest in compression technologies, Mr. Wilhite thought he could help.
Steve Wilhite was featured in an October 1987 issue of the CompuServe magazine, “Online Today” for inventing the GIF.
“I saw the format I wanted in my head and then I started programming,” he said in an e-mail. (He primarily uses email to communicate now, after suffering a stroke in 2000.) The first image he created was a picture of an airplane.

The prototype took about a month and the format was released in June 1987.

“I remember when other people saw the GIF,” he said. Colleagues abandoned work on on other black and white formats, he said, as graphics experts began to spread the GIF online. A triumph of speed and compression, the GIF was able to move as fast as Internet culture itself, and has today become the ultimate meme-maker.

In the last decade, the animated GIF has reigned supreme, and while Mr. Wilhite has never himself made an animated GIF, he said the classic, “dancing baby” from 1996 remains a favorite.
Since retiring in 2001, Mr. Wilhite has led a quieter existence than his creation. He goes on RV trips. He built a house in the country with a lot of lawn to mow. He dabbles in color photography and Java programming. He uses e-mail and Facebook to keep up with family.
He is proud of the GIF, but remains annoyed that there is still any debate over the pronunciation of the format.
“The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations,” Mr. Wilhite said. “They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”

The webcast of Mr. Wilhite’s Webby Award acceptance speech will be on YouTube on Wednesday.

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Ray Manzarek: The Doors Keyboardist Dies

• View PhotoRay Manzarek: The Doors Keyboardist Dies

Ray Manzarek, a founding member of 1960s rock group The Doors, has died at the age of 74.
The keyboard player died in Rosenheim, Germany, with his family at his bedside following a battle with bile duct cancer.
He and singer Jim Morrison formed The Doors in 1965 after a chance meeting at Venice Beach in Los Angeles.
The Doors' original line-up, which also included drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robbie Krieger, was only together for a few years and they only made six studio albums.
But the band retained a large and obsessive long after Morrison's death, aged 27, in 1971 of a suspected heart attack and the band has sold more than 100 million records with songs such as Light My Fire and Riders On the Storm still considered "classic" rock favourites.
It reformed in 2002 with Ian Astbury replacing Morrison on vocals and Stewart Copeland, drummer in The Police, replacing Densmore on drums.
For Doors admirers, the band symbolised the darker side of the Los Angeles lifestyle, what happened to the city after the sun went down and the Beach Boys fans headed home.
"The Doors' vibe has more to do with Charles Bukowski than it does with Farrah Fawcett," said John Doe of punk band X, a friend of Manzarek's for more than 30 years, referring to the poet and Charlie's Angels' star respectively.
"It has more to do with Raymond Chandler and Nathaniel West, and Sunset Boulevard the movie, than it does with Beach Blanket Bingo,right? ... It's a real dark place out in LA."
Next to Morrison, Manzarek was the most distinctive-looking band member, his glasses and wavy blond hair providing the clean living look as a contrast to Morrison's Dionysian glamour - his sensuous mouth and long, dark hair.
Musically, Manzarek's spidery organ on Light My Fire is one of the most instantly recognisable sounds in rock history with his keyboard work would go on to be a touchstone of hits like Break On Through (To The Other Side) and Light My Fire.
"I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek today," said Doors guitarist Robby Krieger in a statement.
"I'm just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade. Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him."
Manzarek is survived by his wife, Dorothy, son and three grandchildren.

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Chanel Preston knows not everyone approves of her chosen profession. That's one of the risks that go with being one of the biggest stars in porn. But she never thought it would affect her ability to open a bank account.
Preston recently opened a business account with City National Bank in Los Angeles. When she went to deposit checks into the account days later, however, she was told it had been shut down, due to "compliance issues".
She found the manager she had originally worked with and asked what had happened. The bank, she was told, was worried about the Webcam shows she had on her site and had revoked the account.
(City National declined to comment on Preston's accusations and on whether it had any policy regarding accounts tied to the porn industry.)
Preston is hardly the only porn star who has had trouble with the banking industry. Several performers and porn insiders (who were afraid to go on the record due to possible repercussions from their banks) said they have been denied accounts from a variety of financial institutions. (Related:Most Popular Adult Entertainment Stars)
"The people within my [local] bank have urged me to downplay the nature of my business because corporate frowns on it," said one long-time industry veteran.
The issue seems to be reaching a boiling point, though. Earlier this week, Marc Greenberg, founder of the soft porn studio MRG Entertainment, filed suit against JPMorgan Chase in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging the bank violated fair lending laws and its own policy for refusing to underwrite a loan for "moral reasons".
Greenberg says he was approached by a representative of the bank about refinancing an existing loan. But once he started the process, he says he saw repeated delays for four months. That's when he said he reached out to a JPMorgan vice president for an explanation.
The vice president "was evasive in his response to plaintiff's application status requests and finally informed plaintiff during a telephone conversation that plaintiff's loan application was refused due to 'moral reasons,' because of JPMorgan's disapproval of plaintiff's former source of income and occupation as an owner of a television production company that produced television programs that dealt with the subject of human sexuality," the complaint reads.
(MRG was sold to New Frontier Media in 2006 for $22 million. Related:The Power Brokers of Porn)
Greenberg's attorneys claim they were told by the vice president that the application was denied because of the potential "reputational risk" to the firm.
The rejection, noted the suit, was confounding since Chase had long held the original deed of trust on the home, without any comment on Greenberg's career.
"JPMorgan purports to be so ashamed of nudity and human sexuality that it cannot process a refinance of a home loan of plaintiff, secured by plaintiff's house, because plaintiff's source of income six years ago included production of television programs that contained nudity and human sexuality," the suit reads.
JPMorgan Chase declined to comment on the accusations due to the pending litigation.
Preston noted she, too, has been denied a loan because of her profession—though at a different bank.
"[The loan officer] asked me 'are you affiliated with the adult entertainment industry?' When I said yes, she said 'We will not give you a loan.'," she said.
Whether the decision to deny Preston's business account or Greenberg's refinance application is discriminatory lending is a matter of debate—and, in Greenberg's case, something the courts will have to decide.
David Barr, a spokesperson for the FDIC, however, said institutions are permitted to make their own calls on who they work with to a certain degree.
"The decision to open or maintain an account is up to the individual institution," he said. "The rules are not prescriptive, which means that the bank must make its own assessment to determine the risks associated with an account and whether that account should be terminated or not opened in the first place."
And it is not uncommon for many businesses to take a moral stand about who they do business with. Indeed, some investment firms make it a point to avoid getting involved with tobacco producers or gun manufacturers because of the social issues tied to those industries.
Porn stars and adult entertainment industry insiders do note that the troubles they've experienced are tied to business—not personal—accounts. That may be because personal accounts are opened under their real names, which typically don't raise an eyebrow, while business is done under more well-known pseudonyms, which is when people take notice.
"It's kind of obvious about what I do when a young girl goes into a Valley bank with a different female name than the one on [their] driver's license," said Preston.
But such friction between people involved in the adult entertainment industry and banking institutions are likely to become more common. With the advent of the Internet, the $14 billion adult entertainment industry is undergoing a transformation. Film and video distribution is giving way to Internet sites and Web cams. As a result, barriers to entry in the industry are being lowered and more of the industry is being based out of homes and being run through small business arrangements and partnerships, necessitating banking services.

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My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman.Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65 percent risk of getting it, on average.
Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex.

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Dr. Joyce Brothers, Famous TV Psychologist, Dead at 85





Dr. Joyce Brothers -- once considered the most famous psychologist on the planet -- has died in NYC at the age of 85.

Brothers became famous after winning "The $64,000 Question" game show in 1955 -- the show that triggered the game show scandal in the '50s.

Brothers won by answering a series of questions on the subject of boxing -- and although there was a lot of talk that producers slipped her the answers, it was never proven and Brothers emerged unscathed.

The good doc went on to do countless television and radio appearances. She was always the go-to person for reporters when a criminal did something that defied logic.

She also did cameo appearances in movies -- including "Naked Gun" and "C.H.i.P.s" ... and also appeared on TV shows like "The Love Boat."

Brothers was married to internist Milton Brothers since 1949 ... he died in 1989 ... and the couple had a daughter, Lisa.

She had her own relationships advice TV show in New York by 1958 ... and her books have been translated into 26 different languages.

A rep for Brothers tells us she died after a long illness.

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Detroit’s Emergency Manager Offers Dire Report on City
DETROIT — An emergency manager assigned to lead this city back from the brink of financial ruin has taken his first detailed look at Detroit’s woes, and the picture of debt and disarray he paints may be bleaker even than earlier grim portrayals.
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Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

Kevyn D. Orr, the emergency manager assigned to lead Detroit back from the brink of financial ruin, is presenting his report to Michigan’s treasurer on Monday.

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In a report to be presented to Michigan’s treasurer on Monday, Kevyn D. Orr, the emergency manager appointed in March to take over operations here, described long-term obligations of at least $15 billion, unsustainable cash flow shortages and miserably low credit ratings that make it difficult to borrow.
And in the face of those fiscal troubles, Mr. Orr, a longtime bankruptcy lawyer, portrayed city operations in Detroit as in need of significant repair, including overhauls of the city’s Police Department and Fire Department, among others.
“No one should underestimate the severity of the financial crisis,” Mr. Orr said in a statement issued by his office on Sunday. “The path Detroit has followed for more than 40 years is unsustainable and only a complete restructuring of the city’s finances and operations will allow Detroit to regain its footing and return to a path of prosperity.”
The account from Mr. Orr, 45 days into his time in Detroit, is required under a Michigan law that dictates the state’s oversight of cities that appear headed for financial collapse. But Mr. Orr’s findings, painfully detailing the city’s problems over more than 40 pages, also seem likely to become a new focal point for debate for some in Detroit who have questioned the seriousness of the city’s troubles and the need for state intervention at a level rarely seen for a city of its size.
“It’s not as bad as what they’re trying to make it out to be,” Edward L. McNeil, a local official for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said on Sunday. Mr. McNeil had not viewed a copy of Mr. Orr’s report, which was not made public until late Sunday, but he said he had grown accustomed to overly negative assessments of Detroit by the state and its representatives.
“All of this was a cooked deal for them to take control of the city and take the assets,” Mr. McNeil said. “This has been a sham.”
In his filing for the state, Mr. Orr made clear that the city must fundamentally restructure its financial liabilities. Noting that retirees from the city now outnumber current workers by more than two to one, Mr. Orr said pension and health care costs must be addressed.
Mr. Orr found that the Detroit Police Department, led by five chiefs over the last five years, suffers from “extremely low” efficiency, effectiveness and morale, and said its equipment and technology were out of date. The Fire Department has 52 facilities across the city, but as many as 12 may be essentially out of service on any given day, Mr. Orr said, because of “staffing and equipment constraints.” Meanwhile, he said, at least 60,000 parcels of land across the city are vacant, as are 78,000 buildings.
“The city’s operations have become dysfunctional and wasteful after years of budgetary restrictions, mismanagement, crippling operational practices and, in some cases, indifference or corruption,” he wrote. “Outdated policies, work practices, procedures and systems must be improved consistent with best practices of 21st-century government.”
While Mr. Orr’s report is titled “Financial and Operating Plan,” it amounts more to a detailed assessment of the city’s problems than a plan for what precisely he will do to fix them. Mr. Orr, who has the authority to make significant changes to union contracts, sell city assets and privatize city services, is expected to amend the plan in the months ahead.
Under state law, an emergency manager may lead a city to seek bankruptcy protection in court, an option that city and state officials have said they view as remote and undesirable. Such a bankruptcy, known as Chapter 9, would be the largest, in terms of debt and population, for a municipality in the nation.
Patrick O’Keefe, a financial consultant from the Detroit area who has dealt with municipal turnarounds, said Mr. Orr’s outline of Detroit’s troubles was needed before any plan for fixing the problems could gain support — particularly from those who may be asked to make concessions, like employees, unions and creditors.
“There are still constituencies that are in a state of denial as to how deep the problem is,” Mr. O’Keefe said. “I think if there’s any meaningful negotiations that are going to take place outside of Chapter 9, people have to agree on what the facts are.”
This city, once the nation’s fourth largest, has a shrunken tax base but still has a vast 139 square miles of land to maintain. And by Mr. Orr’s assessment, some of the city’s problems are simply described, if not simply resolved.
“The City of Detroit continues to incur expenditures in excess of revenues despite cost reductions and proceeds from long-term debt issuances,” Mr. Orr wrote. “In other words, Detroit spends more than it takes in — it is clearly insolvent on a cash flow basis.”

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Fresh off the news that Kiefer Sutherland's drama Touch has been canceled, Deadline.com reports that Fox is considering resurrecting 24.
The network reportedly wants to bring back the real-time series for a limited run that would see Sutherland reprise his Emmy-winning role as Jack Bauer. Homeland co-creator and executive producer Howard Gordon, who served as 24's showrunner towards the end of its eight-season run, would oversee the limited series run.
Fox cancels Touch after two seasons
A 24 movie has been in the works since the thriller series went off the air in May 2010, but the film version never materialized. In March, director Antoine Fuqua said the long-awaited movie adaptation is "not happening." Sutherland's salary negotiations were reportedly the final nail in the coffin.

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PHOENIX, Ariz. –- Jodi Ann Arias, a California native who testified she killed her ex-boyfriend in self-defense, was found guilty Monday of murder.

The eight-man, four-woman panel, which heard four months of testimony and final arguments, deliberated over four days before returning the verdict. Arias, 32, was convicted of first-degree murder and could receive the death penalty.

The defense, which rested its case without producing a single shred of evidence that Arias was the victim of domestic violence at the hands of Travis Alexander, will now scramble to present their pre-sentencing testimony.


During his three hours of closing arguments last week, prosecutor Juan Martinez descriptions of the brutal murder were so vivid that members of the victim’s family were left in tears. In the moments leading up to the verdict, people chanted "Justice for Travis" outside the courthouse.

Arias stood accused of stabbing 30-year-old Alexander nearly 30 times, shooting him in the head and cutting his throat from ear to ear in his Mesa home on
June 4, 2008.


"She killed him three times over," Martinez said in closing statements.

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OCEANSIDE, Calif. — The lead singer of the Grammy-nominated metal band As I Lay Dying was arrested Tuesday in Southern California over allegations he tried to hire an undercover detective to kill his estranged wife.

Tim Lambesis, 32, was taken into custody while shopping at a retail business in Oceanside, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department said in a statement.


Detectives received information Thursday that Lambesis had solicited someone to kill his wife, who lives in nearby Encinitas, the statement said. A task force from several law enforcement agencies launched an investigation that led to the arrest.


He was charged on three federal counts – one count of solicitation to commit murder and two counts of conspiracy to commit crime.

The department would give no further details on the investigation.


As I Lay Dying formed in San Diego in 2000 and has released six albums, including 2007's "An Ocean Between Us," which reached No. 8 on Billboard's charts. A single from the album, "Nothing Left," was nominated for a Grammy for top metal performance. Their last album, "Awakened," came out in September on Metal Blade Records.


It was not clear whether Lambesis had hired an attorney, and a phone message seeking comment left at a number listed in his name was not immediately returned.


The band, which plays in an aggressive style that features metal guitar riffs at the furious pace of hardcore punk, was scheduled to tour the country with several other metal acts starting later this month.


Lambesis, known for his signature growling vocals, had recently raised more than $78,000 from fans to fund his side project, Austrian Death Machine, a metal band mocking the film work of Arnold Schwarzenegger, according to the Los Angeles Times. The top prize, for those who spent $5,000, was to have the winner's initials tattooed on Lambesis' buttocks, the newspaper said.

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Israeli jets bombed a military research facility north of Damascus early Sunday, a senior official told NBC News -- the second Israeli attack on targets in Syria in recent days. Heavy explosions shook the city, and video shot by activists showed a fireball rising into the sky after Sunday's strikes, according to Reuters.
On Friday, Israeli warplanes launched strikes against targets inside Syria, U.S. officials told NBC News. It’s believed the primary target was a shipment of weapons headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon, they said. A senior U.S. official said the airstrikes were believed to be related to delivery systems for chemical weapons.
An Israeli spokesman in Washington said that Israel would not comment specifically on the reports but said that “Israel is determined to prevent the transfer of chemical weapons or other game-changing weaponry by the Syrian regime to terrorists, especially to Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

It wasn’t clear whether the Israelis alerted the U.S. before the attack. White House officials referred all questions to the Israelis.
Syrian government sources denied having information of a strike. Bashar Ja'afari, the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, told Reuters: "I'm not aware of any attack right now."
But Qassim Saadedine, a commander and spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army, told the news agency: "Our information indicates there was an Israeli strike on a convoy that was transferring missiles to Hezbollah. We have still not confirmed the location."
Rebel units were in disagreement about what type of weapons were in the convoy, Reuters reported. A rebel from an information-gathering unit in Damascus that calls itself "The Syrian Islamic Masts Intelligence" said the convoy carried anti-aircraft missiles.
In an interview with Telemundo, President Obama says that while he won't comment on reported Israeli airstrikes over Syria, he backs Israel's efforts in guarding against the transfer of advanced weaponry to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. NBC's Kristen Welker reports.

The rebel, who asked not to be named, added: "There were three strikes by Israeli F-16 jets that damaged a convoy carrying anti-aircraft missiles heading to the Shi'ite Lebanese party (Hezbollah) along the Damascus-Beirut military road. "One strike hit a site near the (Syrian) Fourth Armoured Division in al-Saboura but we have been unable to determine what is in that location".
However, Saadedine told Reuters he did not think the weapons were anti-aircraft. "We have nothing confirmed yet but we are assuming that it is some type of long-range missile that would be capable of carrying chemical materials," he said.
In January, Israeli fighter jets attacked a convoy of sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles believed on their way to Hezbollah.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon publicly acknowledged the January airstrike inside Syria in a joint press conference with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in Tel Aviv on April 22. Ya’alon said any Syrian delivery of sophisticated weapons to rogue elements like Hezbollah would be a “red line” for Israel and “when they crossed this red line, we operated. We acted.”
Syria is in the middle of a civil war pitting rebels against the regime of President Bashir Assad. Tens of thousands have already died, and the possible use of the nation’s stockpile of chemical weapons has been of grave concern to the U.S. and other nations.

Last week, the White House said there was evidence that Syria’s government may have used chemical weapons against its own people. But PresidentBarack Obama has cautioned against rushing to actionagainst Assad’s government, saying that the U.S. required more evidence before getting involved in the civil war there.
The U.S. has long believed that Syria was stockpiling chemical weapons. Intelligence reports indicate that it has sarin and the nerve agent tabun along with traditional chemicals like mustard gas and hydrogen cyanide. A 2011 CIA report said Syria was also developing the potent nerve agent VX, which could render a city uninhabitable for days.
Syria has said that it hasn’t used and will not use chemical weapons.
On Tuesday, Hezbollah’s leader warned the rebels that his militia was ready to intervene on Assad’s side in Syria’s civil war. There have been concerns that Syrian SCUD missiles that might be capable of carrying chemical weapons could be transferred to Hezbollah.

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