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Trying a slightly new look to these shorts...
• Former mayor Richard Riordan has joined the local office of Bingham McCutchen, the Boston law firm that merged with Riordan & McKinzie two years ago.
• LAPD officers shot at suspects 56 times last year—and missed 38% of the time. Seventeen of the targets died.
• Mayor Villaraigosa's commission appointees are covered in the Times, Daily News. (The Breeze posts later.) My list of the new commissioners from yesterday is here.
• Two morons caught bashing sleeping homeless people with baseball bats downtown claim they had just watched the "Bumfights" DVD. Brady Westwater has a story about one of the victims.
• Times columnist Patt Morrison is filling in for Larry Mantle as host of Airtalk on KPCC all this week and next.
• If you see dark clouds roiling today over the L.A. Times building on Spring Street it's because Tribune CEO and chairman Dennis Fitzsimons is visiting with Scott Smith, the president of the chain's newspaper group.
• OC Weekly managing editor Matt Coker feeds a daily blog he calls Clockwork Orange. When Gustavo Arellano fills in, he dubs it Clockwork Naranja—and posts a lot of items chiding the Times and the Register.
• Retired Times reporter Lee Austin died at age 95. He worked for Times Mirror for forty years.