First thing Friday, 1.13.06

♦ With his hotel plans for downtown at risk despite the city's subsidy, Philip Anschutz stepped in and with KB Home will build and own the 50-story hotel and condo tower across the street from Staples Center.

♦ Protecting the few remaining mountain yellow-legged frogs means that rock climbers won't be able to use Williamson Rock in the Angeles National Forest this year, and they aren't too happy about it.

♦ Mayor Villaraigosa repeated his assertion that Los Angeles is the "capital of homelessness."

♦ Photo op of the day: Gov. Schwarzenegger, Mayor Villaraigosa and a supporting cast will stand beside the 405 at noon to announce the state will speed up construction of the car-pool lane between the West Side and the Valley. The Daily News already has the story.

♦ Starting now, when you call 911 on your mobile phone from a Los Angeles street you are supposed to get the LAPD. Calls from a freeway will go to the CHP. We'll see.

♦ All tickets to visit the Getty Villa are taken through July, according to Modern Art Notes.

♦ Kathleen Connell gives up $22,000 in laundered campaign funds from the 2001 mayor's race.

♦ Long Beach police can't find 85 of their 272 shotguns, and a bunch of service revolvers are missing too.

♦ USA Today has joined the newspapers who blog about the Oscars trend with The O-Factor.

♦ Retired KFWB news anchor Don Herbert has a self-published book out called We'll Have More Music, Right After the News.

♦ Looks like Life & Times is repeating Saul Gonzalez's segment with me on Wilshire Boulevard, tonight at 6:30 on KCET. Also, the KCET website has a page up on Diane Gamboa's photographs of the East L.A. music scene in the 1980s.