LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Voters in Los Angeles went to the polls on Tuesday to choose a new mayor in an election between two liberal Democrats seeking to lead America’s second-largest city as it faces an increasingly gloomy financial outlook.

City Councilman Eric Garcetti, 42, and Controller Wendy Greuel, 51, are vying for the city’s top spot in a race shaped by dire fiscal constraints, the political clout of its public employee unions and a largely disinterested electorate.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Voters head to the polls on Tuesday to choose between two longtime fixtures of Los Angeles politics in a mayoral election shaped by the dire financial outlook of America’s second-largest city and the political clout of its public employee unions.

City Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel, both Democrats, advanced to the final stretch of their campaign after a flurry of weekend get-out-the-vote appearances in a race expected to draw one of the lowest turnouts in modern Los Angeles politics.

By Karen Brooks and Steve Gorman

(Reuters) – A single winning ticket for a record U.S. Powerball lottery jackpot worth $590.5 million was sold in Florida, organizers said late on Saturday, but there was no immediate word about who won or where in the state the ticket was bought.

The winning numbers from Saturday night’s drawing were: 10, 13, 14, 22 and 52, with a Powerball number of 11, and the odds of winning were put at one in 175 million.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Los Angeles has earned the dubious distinction for the second year in a row as the U.S. city with the most dog attacks on mail carriers, the U.S. Postal Service said.

California’s biggest city accounted for 69 such attacks in fiscal 2012, which ended in September, compared with 42 attacks each in Seattle, Washington, and San Antonio, Texas, which tied for second place. Chicago ranked third with 41 attacks.

LOS ANGELES, May 2 (Reuters) – A wind-driven brush fire
raging northwest of Los Angeles prompted the evacuation of
hundreds of homes and a university campus on Thursday as flames
engulfed several recreational vehicles and crept toward housing
subdivisions.

A second, smaller blaze some 80 miles to the east destroyed
two homes and damaged two others before firefighters managed to
quickly halt its spread.

LOS ANGELES, April 24 (Reuters) – Los Angeles may boast some
of the best weather among U.S. cities while scoring high in
celebrity sightings, but the Southern California metropolis
remains unable to shake off its more notorious No. 1 rankings
for worst smog and heaviest traffic.

Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest city, again topped
the charts for ozone pollution, and finished fourth for
particulate pollution such as dust and soot, in the American
Lung Association’s annual national air quality report card,
released on Wednesday.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A convicted felon suspected in the kidnapping and rape of a 10- year-old California girl who was snatched from her bedroom last month was arrested early on Wednesday in Mexico and returned to Los Angeles, FBI officials said.

Tobias Dustin Summers, also a reputed member of a white supremacist street gang in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, was wanted on 37 criminal counts stemming from the March 27 kidnapping, the FBI said.

By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) – A community college student who graduated from a police department “citizen academy” program last year was charged on Friday with shooting and wounding two women at a shopping mall-based campus in southwestern Virginia, police said.

The suspected gunman, Neil Allen MacInnis, 18, is accused of driving to the shopping center on Friday, walking into a satellite campus of the New River Community College inside the mall and opening fire on the two women as bystanders scrambled for cover.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A college student lost since Sunday in a California mountain canyon was rescued and flown to a hospital on Thursday, a day after her hiking companion was found dazed and dehydrated in a nearby ravine, authorities said.

A member of the Orange County sheriff’s search team fell and suffered a severe head injury as rescuers scrambled to reach 18-year-old Kyndall Jack in the rugged, heavily wooded canyon, sheriff’s Lieutenant Jason Park said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Rescue teams scoured a California mountain canyon on Thursday for a college student missing since Sunday as police questioned her hiking companion, who was found dazed and dehydrated three days after the pair reported themselves lost, authorities said.

Nicholas Cendoya, 19, was found Wednesday evening, conscious but “highly disoriented,” in a ravine about a half milefrom where he and 18-year-old Kyndall Jack had parked their car in the Cleveland National Forest, about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles, a spokeswoman for the Orange County sheriff said.