Will anyone listen to new controller?
What won what whereSoon-Shiong buys up Brentwood, a Manson girl comes up for parole again, what to do about L.A.'s watering rules, the jury deliberates in Oscar Grant killing and an architecture obituary. Plus more as we return from the long holiday weekend.
- Billionaire Patrick Soon-Shoing is buying up houses in a Brentwood neighborhood, apparently to amass a large tract and build a compound, but he's not talking about it. LAT
Plus: Soon-Shoing's sale of Abraxis is seen as a potential boon for local philanthropy. LABJ - Former Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, incarcerated at the California Institution for Women at Frontera, has her 19th parole hearing today. AP
- Jury deliberations are to resume in Los Angeles today in the trial of Johannes Mehserle, a white former Bay Area transit police officer accused of killing an unarmed black man, Oscar Grant, in Oakland. Police in Oakland and Los Angeles are bracing for possible reaction to a verdict. ABC News
- The City Council may take up new changes in the watering restrictions today. DN wires
- The DWP is scaling back its plans for solar panels on the bed of Owens Dry Lake. LAT
- Supervisor Don Knabe is looking for a new communications director to replace David Sommers, who is moving to director of multimedia operations for the county. Sommers, there since 2005, is the guy to talk to about applying. They're looking for someone "well-rounded in media relations, speechwriting, social media management, legislative strategy development, and acting as his spokesman."
- The Los Angeles Times Readers' Representative posted some reader reactions to the paper's ad section for King King and Universal that mocked the paper's LATExtra news section. RRJ
- Former Times editor Tom Caswell describes his reaction when he found he had been duped by the LAT ad section: "A surge of anger went through me....I could scarcely believe that such a deliberate deception, such an egregious breach of journalistic ethics, had been committed by a daily traditionally considered to be among the best in the United States." Truthdig
- Matt Holzman of KCRW interviews Diana Nyad about her plans to swim from Cuba to Florida on "The Politics of Culture" at 2:30 p.m. KCRW
- Stephen Kanner, architect and co-founder of the A+D Museum, died of cancer at age 54. LAT
- Hollywood talent agent Ed Limato died Saturday at home in Beverly Hills. He was 73. IndieWire
- Betty Lou Young, a longtime resident of Rustic Canyon who wrote books about the history of Pacific Palisades and campaigned to preserve the Santa Monica Mountains, died at 91. LAT