Friday desk-clearing

Light posting this weekend, but first...

♦ Michael Sonnenschein exits as co-editor of FishbowlLA. He bids farewell on the blog, and Claude Brodesser gives marching orders for the new regime.

♦ A US Airways pilot at LAX was detained by airport police for being drunk drinking before his flight to Philadelphia. Someone complained that the pilot smelled of alcohol.

♦ Unconfirmed scuttlebutt on Times Foreign moves: Jakarta correspondent Richard Paddock moving to the Washington bureau to cover education, Paul Watson from New Delhi to Jakarta, Laura King from Jerusalem to Istanbul, Barbara Demick from Seoul to Beijing, Richard Boudreaux from Baghdad to Jerusalem, Alissa Rubin from Vienna to Paris. Kim Murphy already got London, as I reported, leaving an opening in Moscow.

♦ The Times' Washington bureau has lost ten people already this year, not counting book leaves for Bob Drogin, Peter Gosselin, Peter Wallsten, Tom Hamburger, Ron Brownstein and Steve Braun.

♦ Final LAT note: Sounds as if West magazine is interviewing candidates to fill the Style editor slot vacated abruptly by Kent Black shortly after the mag relaunched.

♦ Bernard-Henri Lévy is back in town and spreading his special kind of L.A. love. Reportedly he is also dining with KCRW's Ruth Seymour and others at the French consulate.

♦ Los Angeles County pulled a body marker from the Dachau death camp out of a public auction after complaints from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

♦ Weekend shows: NBC News Conference will have Dr. Jim Smith of RAND on to talk about research on illegal immigration, plus segments on greenhouse gas legislation in Sacramento and the centennial of the 1906 quake in San Francisco...Deadline L.A. on KPFK will have William Kelly on to talk about the upcoming water crisis in L.A.

♦ Looking ahead: Patt Morrison takes over "Talk of the City" on KPCC Monday with Los Angeles' city planner Gail Goldberg and Gloria Jeff, new general manager of the city Department of Transportation.