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.

The pair emerged as the top two vote-getters in a non-partisan primary in March to replace Antonio Villaraigosa, a charismatic two-term liberal and former labor organizer who faced off against the city’s unions to implement budget cuts borne of the economic downturn.

A public opinion poll conducted on the mayoral race last week by the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Times found Garcetti leading Greuel, his former City Council ally, by 7 percentage points among likely voters, and by 6 percentage points among those who already had voted by mail.

However, the same poll showed Garcetti’s lead narrowing since April and 11 percent of voters still undecided, while surveys earlier this month put the two in a statistical tie.

Turnout for the election, marked by a heavy dose of negative political ads and two candidates seen as largely indistinguishable in their positions, was expected to be low, with perhaps fewer than 25 percent of registered voters casting ballots.

Greuel would be the first woman elected Los Angeles mayor and Garcetti, the first Jew. His mother is Jewish, and he was raised Jewish.

One expert, Loyola Marymount University political scientist Fernando Guerra, told the Los Angeles Times he saw a “very high” chance of the outcome remaining unknown for days or weeks after the election, due to a large share of voters casting ballots by mail, peculiarities in the city clerk’s tabulation process and the apparent closeness of the race.

At a polling place in the affluent Brentwood section of Los Angeles, entertainment lawyer Richard Posell, 72, said he voted for Garcetti.

“I watched two of the debates, and while there is very little space between the two as far as policy, I like his style better,” he said.

Hector Barrera, 60, voted for Greuel, saying: “I think she brings new blood to City Hall. I just had a good feeling about her.”

A third voter, Susan Rubinyi, a writer who declined to give her age, admitted she had difficulty deciding who to support.

“It was hard for me to choose between the two,” she said. “So I voted for one in the primary and one this time.”

FISCAL WOES

Garcetti served as council president from 2006 to 2011 and has called attention to his record on environmental initiatives and his role in the urban revival of once-blighted areas in Hollywood.

Greuel has touted her current role as a city controller in uncovering waste and fraud. In her former council post she touted her dedication to street repairs in her suburban district and embraced the nickname “Pothole Queen.”

Whoever emerges as the winner will face a city government whose fiscal well-being has been crippled by dwindling tax collections wrought by the housing collapse and prolonged recession of recent years, along with rising public sector wages, pension obligations and other unfunded liabilities.

California’s largest metropolis has a projected budget deficit set to top $1 billion cumulatively over the next four years and both Garcetti and Greuel have vowed to slash city business taxes to help spur economic growth.

Both said they would seek to renegotiate a five-year, 25 percent pay increase they supported in 2007 for most of the city’s 30,0000 municipal workers, which the city’s powerful public employee unions are sure to resist.

The influence of organized labor became a key issue during the race, with Garcetti questioning Greuel’s ability to wring concessions from public employee unions after they contributed heavily to her campaign.

Garcetti leads in campaign spending overall, with $9.4 million in expenditures, compared with $8.9 million for Greuel, according to City Ethics Commission figures. Much of that money has gone to a slew of negative television ads from both sides.

Also on the ballot on Tuesday was a combative race for city attorney between incumbent Carmen Trutanich and another longtime local politician, former Assemblyman Mike Feuer. Trutanich, who was trailing in the polls, sent a barrage of emails aimed at questioning Feuer’s ethical standards, including one with the headline, “Pants on Fire.”

Three competing measures to regulate medical marijuana dispensaries that many residents complain are overwhelming their neighborhoods are also on the ballot. The measure that wins the most votes would go into effect.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman and Dana Feldman; Writing by Steve Gorman; Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Bill Trott and Eric Beech)

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.

Garcetti, 42, and Greuel, 51, who is seeking to become the first woman elected Los Angeles mayor, emerged as the top two vote-getters in a non-partisan primary contest in March, setting up their head-to-head showdown on Tuesday.

A public opinion poll conducted last week by the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Times found Garcetti leading Greuel, his former City Council ally, by 7 percentage points among likely voters, and by 6 percentage points among those who already had voted by mail.

However, the same poll showed Garcetti’s lead narrowing since April and 11 percent of voters still undecided, while surveys earlier this month put the two in a statistical tie.

The winner will succeed two-term Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa as California’s largest metropolis struggles to rebound from a sustained economic slump with a projected budget deficit set to top $1 billion cumulatively over the next four years.

Villaraigosa, who chaired the 2012 Democratic National Convention and ranks as one of the nation’s highest-profile Latino politicians, is barred from running again by term limits.

The city’s fiscal well-being has been crippled by dwindling tax collections wrought by the housing collapse and prolonged recession of recent years, along with rising public sector wages, pension obligations and other unfunded liabilities.

Both Garcetti and Greuel have vowed to slash city business taxes to help spur economic grown.

Both said they would seek to renegotiate a five-year, 25 percent pay increase they supported in 2007 for most of the city’s 30,0000 municipal workers, a tack the city’s powerful public employee unions are sure to resist.

LABOR POLITICS

The influence of organized labor became a key issue during the race, with Garcetti questioning Greuel’s ability to wring concessions from public employee unions after they contributed heavily to her campaign.

To date, the police officers’ union has given more than $1.4 million to groups supporting Greuel’s candidacy, according to campaign records published by the city. The firefighters have spent nearly $500,000.

The union representing the powerful Department of Water and Power – the nation’s largest municipal utility – has supported Greuel with about $2 million.

Greuel, who served as a deputy mayor under the late former Mayor Tom Bradley, has touted an endorsement from former President Bill Clinton, for whom she worked in the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department.

Garcetti leads in campaign spending overall, with $9.4 million in expenditures, compared with $8.9 million for Greuel, according to City Ethics Commission figures. Much of that money has gone to a slew of negative television ads from both sides.

Garcetti has received backing from some smaller unions, along with white-collar sources such as real estate developers, businesses and Hollywood, a key constituency of his council district.

Garcetti touts his role in a reform passed by the City Council in 2012 that curbed wages and benefits for new hires, and increased existing pension and healthcare contributions.

Yet he not only backed wage hikes in 2007 but voted for big salary and benefit increases for Department of Water and Power workers in 2005 and 2009.

Known as a consensus builder, Garcetti served as council president from 2006 to 2011 and has called attention to his record on environmental initiatives and his role in the urban revival of once-blighted areas in Hollywood.

Greuel has touted her current role as a city controller in uncovering waste and fraud, while in her former council post she was known as the “Pothole Queen” for her dedication to street repairs in her suburban district.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Bill Trott)

(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.

The grand prize, accumulated after two months of drawings, surpassed the previous record Powerball payoff of $587.5 million, set in November 2012, but fell short of the $600 million sum lottery officials had been advertising.

Organizers had said the final jackpot total could end up slightly higher or lower than expected depending on final sales reported by all 43 participating states, plus the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The largest jackpot in U.S. history stands at $656 million, won in the Mega Millions lottery of March 2012. That prize was split between winners in Maryland, Kansas and Illinois.

The Multi-State Lottery Association, based in Iowa, announced Saturday’s Powerball results in a brief message on its website, saying, “There was one winner sold by the Florida Lottery for the last drawing’s $590,500,000 grand prize.”

There was no further information immediately disclosed about the winning ticket, such as where in Florida it was sold or whether more than one individual purchased it.

Had Saturday’s drawing failed to yield a winner, the jackpot for the next drawing, set for Wednesday, would have risen to $925 million. After Saturday’s results were announced, the jackpot was reset back to $40 million.

“IF I WIN”

The extremely long odds of winning did not deter people from buying up tickets at staggering rates. California was selling $1 million in tickets every hour on Saturday, said Donna Cordova, a spokeswoman for the California Lottery, which has only been selling Powerball tickets since April 8.

Texas Lottery officials reported $1.2 million in hourly sales between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. local time, with ticket sales for the Saturday draw topping $18.4 million.

The ticket sale rate on Saturday was nearly double Friday’s rate, Kelly Cripe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Lottery, said, and a jump of some 686 percent over last Saturday.

Many Americans were playing the “if I win” game ahead of Saturday’s drawing.

“If I win, I’m going to spend a lot of it on liquor, women and gambling,” said Austin lawyer Donald Dickson. “I’ll likely squander the rest of it.”

In New York City, talent acquisition agent Michelle Amici was more philanthropic. “Not sure that I’d buy anything,” she said. “Rather, I’d attempt to quench my wanderlust by traveling the world. I’d also donate a large portion to education reform.”

Lottery players such as Austin marketing professional Becky Arreaga were not discouraged by the long odds.

“As long as the odds are 1 in anything, I’m in,” said Arreaga, a partner at Mercury Mambo marketing firm. “I truly believe I could be the one.”

The $2 tickets allow players to pick five numbers from 1 to 59, and a Powerball number from 1 to 35.

“It’s only a couple bucks for a small daydream,” said Russell Williams, 35, a salesman in Austin, Texas.

(Reporting by Karen Brooks in Austin, Texas, and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Greg McCune, Doina Chiacu and Pravin Char)

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.

The Postal Service said there were 5,879 dog attacks on U.S. postal carriers in the United States that year.

In 2011, Los Angeles led the pack with 83 dog attacks on mail carriers, but the city has placed in the top 20 for many years, Postal Service spokeswoman Eva Jackson said on Thursday.

San Diego and Houston ranked second and third, respectively, in 2011, Jackson said.

The year-round fair weather of cities like Los Angeles and San Diego could be a factor, she suggested. “People are out more with their dogs, things like that.”

But towns such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Minneapolis and Buffalo, New York, all ranked in the top 20 this year as well.

No particular breeds of dogs were singled out in the report. And Jackson said the problem lies not so much with vicious dogs but as with absent-minded or careless pet owners.

“All dogs can bite, and it’s a dog’s natural instinct to protect its territory and protect its owner,” Jackson said. “So if you’re out front with your dog who is a very nice dog, and they’re not on a leash, and all of a sudden a letter carrier comes up … their natural instinct is to go get that guy. He’s on my territory.”

Jackson said homeowners should keep their dogs behind closed doors or in a backyard behind a fence when their mail is delivered, or when school children or other unfamiliar people are nearby.

She cited statistics showing that dog bites account for more than a third of all U.S. homeowners’ insurance liability claims.

The latest Postal Service rankings came about a week after a 63-year-old woman was mauled to death by four loose pit bulls while walking alone in the community of Littlerock, California, about 65 miles east of Los Angeles.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Richard Chang)

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.

The larger fire erupted at about 6:30 a.m. local time beside
the U.S. 101 freeway and consumed roughly 2,000 acres of dry,
dense chaparral near the communities of Camarillo and Newbury
Park, Ventura County fire department officials said.

Department spokesman Bill Nash said no injuries were
reported.

But live footage broadcast by Los Angeles television station
KTLA showed heavy smoke over the area and flames and engulfing
several recreational vehicles parked near the evacuation zone.

An entire residential subdivision called Dos Vientos,
encompassing hundreds of homes, was placed under mandatory
evacuation orders, Nash said.

Evacuations were also ordered for the California State
University at Channel Islands campus, according to a bulletin
posted on the fire department website.

More than 200 firefighters were dispatched to battle the
blaze, along with several helicopters and planes equipped to
drop water and fire retardant chemicals from the air.

A second, separate blaze east of Los Angeles in Riverside
County erupted on vegetation of a roadway center divider and
quickly swept across 5 acres of brush, destroying two nearby
homes before firefighters managed to halt the advancing flames.

Within three hours, the blaze was reported 50 percent
contained. In addition to the two homes lost, the fire destroyed
five outbuildings, 10 vehicles and a parked boat, Riverside
County fire spokesman Mark Annas said.

Two more homes were damaged and an elementary school and
gasoline service station were evacuated, but there were no known
injuries, he said.

The latest brush fires come at the start of what is expected
to be a potentially devastating fire season in Southern
California.

A red-flag warning, declaring what the National Weather
Service calls “extreme fire danger,” was posted for much of
Southern California on Wednesday as high winds swept the region,
accompanied by soaring temperatures and low humidity.

(Reporting and writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia
Johnston, Grant McCool and Tim Dobbyn)

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.

The farming town of Bakersfield, California, was rated No. 1
for particulates.

The greater Los Angeles area has ranked every year but one
since the association’s first report in 2000 as the city with
the worst levels for ozone, a key component of smog formed when
sunlight reacts with hydrocarbon and nitrous oxide emissions.

A major source of ozone pollutants is tailpipe emissions
from automobiles, which in turn account for Los Angeles’ No. 1
ranking this year as the nation’s most traffic-clogged city,
according to a separate annual study released on Wednesday.

Honolulu dropped from first to second place in traffic
congestion, followed by San Francisco at No. 3, the traffic-data
company Inrix, based in Seattle, reported.

Inrix also found road and highway congestion in the Los
Angeles area was back on the rise in early 2013 after two
straight years of decline, a likely reflection of an improved
economy.

Los Angeles has roughly 10 times more roads than Honolulu,
but the Inrix study provides a comparative gauge of travel time
it calls the “gridlock index,” which measures the intensity of
traffic congestion to local drivers as it occurs.

According to Inrix, the average Los Angeles motorist wasted
59 hours last year in jammed traffic, compared with 50 hours for
the average Honolulu driver.

In terms of air quality, California as a whole dominated the
list of the most polluted U.S. cities, accounting for seven of
the top 10 for ozone and eight of the top 10 for annual levels
of particulate pollution, the American Lung Association said.

Nearly 90 percent of Californians, or 33.5 million people,
live in areas plagued by unhealthy air, especially in Los
Angeles, the so-called Inland Empire region east of the city,
the state capital of Sacramento, and the agricultural heartland
of the San Joaquin Valley, the group’s study found.

Those residents are at greater risk for asthma attacks,
heart attacks and premature death, the association said.

However, many California cities have shown steady progress
on improving air quality, particularly the Los Angeles region,
whose ozone levels have fallen by 36 percent since the
organization’s first State of the Air report card in 2000.

The region’s annual particle pollution has dropped by 43
percent in that time and is now close to meeting the federal
year-round standard for particulates.

The U.S. cities ranked as having the cleanest air in the
latest report were Ames, Iowa, for ozone and Cheyenne, Wyoming,
for annual particulate pollution.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Additional reporting by Dana
Feldman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Beech)

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.

The girl was abducted from her home in the middle of the night, driven to various locations in two vehicles and raped before being dropped off near a hospital, according to police.

A passerby who saw her wandering barefoot with cuts and bruises outside a coffee shop watched over her until police were summoned.

Authorities did not provide details of the location and circumstances of Summers’ capture, but FBI spokeswoman Lourdes Arocho in Los Angeles confirmed he had been taken into custody in Baja California by Mexican national police.

At an afternoon news conference, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck credited a $50,000 reward that was “highly publicized south of the border” with leading to a telephone tip that helped authorities pinpoint Summers’ whereabouts.

The fugitive’s identity was initially confirmed by his tattoos, which the FBI said included the Superman logo on his upper chest, police said.

FBI special agent Tim Delaney, who oversees the criminal division of the FBI field office in Los Angeles, said Summers was returned to Los Angeles after his arrest. Beck said he would be held in lieu of $19 million bond.

Police and the FBI declined to comment on media reports that the suspect was found at a Mexican drug rehabilitation center south of Tijuana. Beck had said about three weeks ago that Summers was seen in surveillance video images crossing a foot bridge into Mexico.

Summers, 32, was indicted earlier this month on one count each of kidnapping a minor, kidnapping to commit another crime and first-degree burglary, plus 34 counts of various sex offenses. He faces multiple life prison terms if convicted, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

His accused accomplice, 29-year-old Daniel Martinez, who was charged with one count each of kidnapping and burglary, was arrested on March 31.

Police have said Summers has a lengthy criminal history and had served prison terms for robbery, kidnapping, explosives possession and theft. He was most recently released from state custody in July 2012 under a program designed to ease prison overcrowding in California.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Eric Walsh and Cynthia Osterman)

(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.

Police said he was quickly subdued by an off-duty security guard and two police officers and was placed in custody within five minutes of the shooting, which erupted shortly before 2 p.m. local time.

One of the victims was airlifted and the second was taken by ambulance to area hospitals, police said, adding that no information was immediately available about the nature of their injuries or their condition.

The attack sparked pandemonium inside the New River Valley Mall in Christiansburg, a town on the fringe of the Blue Ridge Mountains about 30 miles (48 miles) southwest or Roanoke.

An eyewitness told Roanoke television station WSL Channel 10 that he saw the suspect pointing what appeared to be a shotgun at one woman in a lobby of the college adjacent to the mall, and heard her cry, “No, no, please.”

“Everybody took off, tables were flipping,” the witness, who was not identified, recounted in an interview posted on the station’s website. “It went into complete chaos.”

Police converging on the scene immediately cleared the mall of shoppers and employees and searched the entire complex to ensure there were no further victims or possible suspects.

Investigators believe the gunman acted alone, Christiansburg Police Chief Mark Sisson told an evening news conference, although he added that no motive had been established.

He said investigators were trying to determine whether any relationship existed between the suspected gunman and his victims.

One of the women shot was a part-time employee of the college, but the other’s links to the school, if any, had yet to be determined, Sisson said.

He said the women’s identities were being withheld for the sake of protecting their privacy.

MacInnis, a resident of Christiansburg who was enrolled in the New River college, also had completed a Christiansburg Police Department Citizen Academy program in 2012, Sisson said.

Jailed without bond following his arrest, he was charged with two counts of malicious wounding and two counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony, the chief said.

Area schools were briefly placed on a security lockdown as a precaution after the shooting, but Sisson said children in those schools were never in danger, he said. The shopping center was to remain closed until noon on Saturday, the mall’s management told police.

The incident marked the second shooting scare at a U.S. college on Friday.

Earlier in the day, North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro was locked down for several hours in response to reports of a gunman spotted near a classroom building. That lockdown was later lifted with no shots fired.

(Additional reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Scott Malone, David Gregorio and Bob Burgdorfer)

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.

Rescuers were reported to have been drawn by Jack’s cries for help to the spot where the California State University student was found shortly before noon local time. Her condition was not immediately made clear.

She was then hoisted into a helicopter for a flight to the University of California, Irvine, Medical Center. The reserve sheriff’s deputy who was hurt was also hospitalized.

Orange County Fire Authority Captain John Muir told reporters that Jack’s relatives were elated by news that she was found alive.

“They cried, they hugged us, thanked us immensely, and it was worth it,” Muir said. “This is a good outcome.”

Jack’s friend, Nicholas Cendoya, 19, was found on Wednesday evening, conscious but “highly disoriented,” by hikers who then alerted authorities to his location, and he too was flown out of the canyon by helicopter.

The pair had each ended up less than a mile from where they had parked their car on Sunday in the Trabuco Canyon area of the Cleveland National Forest, about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles, Park said.

They set out for a hike through the Holy Jim Canyon, an area characterized by rugged terrain, dense brush and waterfalls, but called authorities on a cellphone after dark to say they were lost, sheriff’s spokeswoman Gail Krause told Reuters.

The cellphone’s batteries went dead before authorities could get an accurate fix on its signal to pinpoint the pair’s precise location, Krause said. It was not clear how Cendoya and Jack had become separated.

The Los Angeles Times quoted Jack’s father, Russ Jack, as saying that Cendoya had told authorities that his companion apparently had twisted her ankle and “could not keep up with Nicholas trying to get out of the brush.”

Dr Michael Ritter of Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, California, said Cendoya, who attends school at Orange Coast College, was in “very serious condition” when he was admitted Wednesday night but was recovering on Thursday.

“Nick said the thing that kept him going was praying,” Ritter said, adding that Cendoya had tried to keep warm overnight by covering himself with brush.

Both Cendoya and Jack were said to be athletic and in good health but were inexperienced as hikers in Southern California’s backcountry, Krause said.

The search for Jack resumed in earnest on Thursday morning, with about 40 rescue workers, some on horseback, concentrating in the vicinity of where Cendoya was found, Krause said.

Mild weather conditions, with overnight lows dipping into the low-50s Fahrenheit (about 10 Celsius), and relatively cool daytime temperatures, boded well for their survival, she added.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Eric Beech and Cynthia Johnston)

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.

“The first priority was getting him medical attention because he was severely dehydrated, and then investigators were going to interview him,” the spokeswoman, Gail Krause, told Reuters.

Both Cendoya and Jack, who family and friends described as friends, were said to be athletic and in good health but were inexperienced as hikers in Southern California’s backcountry, Krause said.

The pair set out on Sunday for a hike through the Holy Jim Canyon, an area characterized by rugged terrain, dense brush and waterfalls, but they called authorities on a cellphone after dark to say they were lost, she said.

The cellphone’s batteries went dead before authorities could get an accurate fix on its signal to pinpoint the pair’s precise location, Krause said.

Hikers found Cendoya, a student at Orange Coast College, lying in a ravine and alerted authorities, and it took about an hour to extricate him from the canyon via helicopter.

It was not clear how Cendoya and Jack, enrolled at California State University at Fullerton, had become separated.

The Los Angeles Times quoted Jack’s father, Russ Jack, as saying that Cendoya had told authorities that his companion apparently had twisted her ankle and “could not keep up with Nicholas trying to get out of the brush.”

Russ Jack also told the Times that Cendoya had said he had not seen Kyndall for a day and believed she already had been rescued.

Krause said she could not comment on remarks by family members or on any statements Cendoya made after he was found.

She said investigators were not treating the circumstances under which the pair went missing as suspicious and do not consider Cendoya a suspect in the disappearance of his companion “at this time.”

Search operations for Jack resumed in earnest at about 7 a.m. on Thursday, with about 40 rescue workers, some on horseback, concentrating in the vicinity of where Cendoya was found, Krause said. She said helicopters would rejoin in the search once low clouds over the area dissipated.

Mild weather conditions, with overnight lows dipping into the low-50s Fahrenheit (about 10 Celsius), and relatively cool daytime temperatures, bode well for survival in the area, she added.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Eric Beech)