Marjorie Miller, the L.A. Times editor in charge of the foreign staff, announced a new deputy this afternoon. It's David Lauter, confirming the speculation we heard last week. Miller's memo to the newsroom and foreign correspondents follows, along with the news that Henry Chu is moving to the New Delhi bureau from Rio de Janeiro.

Also at the LAT: Both Ed Chen and Warren Vieth are coming off the White House beat, according to Wonkette's Eric Pfeiffer. [Actually, Vieth has taken the buyout and decided to leave the paper.]

And in LAT Blogville: Michael Hiltzik chides fellow bloggers Bill Bradley and Mickey Kaus.

Miller on Lauter:

I am pleased to announce the appointment of David Lauter as Deputy Foreign Editor. He will start Feb. 15.

David joined The Times in 1987 as a reporter in the Washington bureau, where he covered Congress, two presidential campaigns and the White House under presidents Bush and Clinton. He became National Political Editor in 1995 and supervised coverage of the 1996 Clinton-Dole campaign.

After another stint as a national reporter, David moved to Los Angeles in 1998 to be Specialist Editor, supervising the science, legal affairs, religion and education teams. In 2001, he became Deputy Metro Editor, where he helped launch the California section and manage the department. He played a key role in shaping coverage of the recall of Gov. Gray Davis and the 2003 wildfires, which won a Pulitzer Prize.

David has worked with Foreign on several occassions. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, he assisted the foreign staff in eastern Europe, covering the end of the communist governments in Czechoslovakia and Romania. Last year, he worked closely with us on the South Asia tsunami and the death of Pope John Paul II, as well as on Iraq.

Prior to the Times, David worked for the former House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, for a newsletter covering energy and environmental issues, and for the National Law Journal, covering the Supreme Court. He graduated from Yale in 1979 with a BA in history.

David and his wife, AnnJ Gumbinner, live in Los Angeles with their daughter, Miriam, 14.

Best, Marjorie

Miller on Chu:

To: The Staff From: Marjorie Miller, Foreign Editor

I am pleased to announce that Henry Chu will join the paper's New Delhi bureau in March.

Henry has most recently been chief of the Rio de Janeiro bureau, where he wrote moving news features and sharp stories on Latin American trends. He has chronicled the reentry of Colombian guerrillas into mainstream society and profiled figures such as nonagenarian architect Oscar Niemeyer. His tale of an illiterate worker who turned his small home into a lending library drew tremendous reader response.

Before Rio, Henry served as Beijing bureau chief from 1998 to 2003, and was a Metro and Valley reporter prior to that. He is a 1991 graduate of the METPRO training program, and has a bachelor of arts degree in history and literature from Harvard University.

Henry, along with New Delhi bureau chief Paul Watson, will cover a sprawling and newsy beat that extends from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka.