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First day back from the holiday...
Gay marriage is a wash in California for Obama, the USC Dornsife/LA Times Poll found. "Twenty percent of California voters said they would only vote for a candidate who shared their views on same-sex marriage. Among these voters for whom gay marriage is a decisive issue, neither side appears to benefit: 21 percent of same-sex marriage supporters and 21 percent of voters who oppose same-sex marriage or who support civil unions said they would only vote for a candidate who shared their views on the issue." Overall, seven out of 10 voters, including 40 percent of Republicans, said they favored full legal rights for gay and lesbian couples. Via release
In the Berman-Sherman showdown in the Valley, Sherry Bebitch Jeffe writes that "who defines the race, wins the seat." Prop Zero
More than 12,000 absentee ballots have already been returned in the Berman-Sherman district, says Rick Orlov. Plus: Antonovich vs Lucy Jones and the Pat Brown Institute prepares to honor Jaime Regalado. Tipoff/DN
Jim Newton column: "It's still very, very early in the campaign to become the next mayor of Los Angeles, but right now, it's City Controller Wendy Greuel who's playing the hot hand." LAT op-ed
USC safety expert Najmedin Meshkati continues to assert that three crossings along the 7.9-mile Expo Line route are "woefully inadequate." LAT
Santa Monica councilman Bobby Shriver writes that every time President's Obama helicopter lands on the Veterans Affairs grounds in West Los Angeles, "he is setting down at the center of his policy failure" on homeless vets. LAT op-ed
Three newspapers in Canada — the Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal — will no longer publish on Sundays, and the National Post will stop printing on Mondays through the summer. Romenesko
Cameron Woods, the frequently filmed neighborhood on Orion Avenue in Van Nuys, could be facing changes because a house has been vacant for a couple of years. LAT
Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain will join CNN as the host of a new weekend show to highlight the network's food and travel coverage [and] "cover trends from the rise of celebrity chefs to the rise of fast food chains to the popularity of vegetarianism and veganism." The Wrap
Junot Díaz has a short story in this week's fiction issue of The New Yorker: “Monstro” imagines an "overheated, economically stratified future Caribbean where a mysterious skin infection known as La Negrura (“The Darkness”) has begun to attack the population of Haiti." Also sidebar pieces by Ray Bradbury and Ursula K. Le Guin.
Authors and journalists suggest some summer reading for Zócalo Public Square.
Ben Welsh, a database producer at the LA Times, also runs PastPages, site that archives hourly snapshots of the home pages of selected news websites. Fishbowl LA
Antelope Valley residents of all races face higher mortality rates than in the rest of Los Angeles County, but the rates for black residents are even more pronounced. LAT
Retired LAPD deputy chief Michael Hillmann will serve as director of security for the Dodgers for the remainder of the 2012 season. The team announced that current senior director Rich Wemmer will retire May 31.
Dodgers outfielder Andre Ethier will serve food at the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. today.
A new Sunset Strip certified farmers market will debut Thursday, June 14, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the former Tower Records parking lot.
