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NTSB investigators go with the red light theory on the Metrolink crash in Chatsworth, Whitman puts in another $20 million, bracing for layoffs at City Hall and the case against Erroll Southers. Plus more, all after the jump.
- NTSB investigators concluded in draft findings presented today in Washington that the Metrolink train in the 2008 Chatsworth disaster ran a red light, rejecting witness reports that the light was green. LAT
- Candidate Meg Whitman donated another $20 million this week to her campaign for governor. LAT
- City leaders are circulating a letter preparing for as many as 1,000 layoffs and other cuts, citing "Revenues are significantly lower than original projections." LAT, DN
- The City Council voted to extend the city's restaurant smoking ban to outside cafes and within 40 feet of mobile food trucks. LAT
- Erroll Southers, the assistant chief of Los Angeles airport police who withdrew his name from consideration as President Obama's head of TSA, admitted to twice accessing confidential law enforcement records on his ex-wife's boyfriend when Southers was an FBI agent. LA Daily
- John Eastman, dean of the Chapman School of Law, took out papers to run for state attorney general this year as a Republican. OC Register
- Former Democratic state senators Martha Escutia and Joe Dunn are teaming with longtime Democratic strategist Richie Ross in a new Sacramento consulting venture dubbed The Senators Firm. Capitol Weekly
- Once again, the Cambodian community is speculating, and the media is writing, that the 1996 murder of actor and 'killing fields' survivor Haing Ngor in Chinatown was tied to dictator Pol Pot. LAT
- Los Angeles Times reporter Tina Susman, who flew into Orlando's airport on a cargo flight from Haiti, accused the airport's manager of bullying her and another reporter. Orlando Sentinel
- Michael Brune, an environmental organizer and head of the Rainforest Action Network, was named executive director of the Sierra Club. Carl Pope will stay as executive chairman. LAT
- The new issue of L.A. Youth is out with a lead story by a 17-year-old describing his return to the Catholic faith. L.A. Youth
- Putting his personal spin on cutbacks at the LA Weekly, laid-off cartoonist Mr. Fish blogs "there are perhaps as many as 100 office chairs in the Culver City building...that have never known ass. Never."