Tuesday morning headlines

Stocks dip:After several sluggish sessions, this could be the day for a noticeable pullback. Dow is down almost 100 points.

Oil prices drop: New worries about China's economy has NY crude trading at about $107, down a buck or so. From the WSJ:

Oil prices also have been under pressure after Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, said Monday it will work to ensure adequate global crude supplies, market stability and fair prices, analysts said. "Saudi Arabia is the central bank of oil markets," and its moves in preparation for the European Union embargo against Iran, another major oil producer, have significant influence on oil prices, said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB Commodity Research.

Little change in gas prices: An average gallon of regular in the L.A. is $4.385, virtually unchanged from Monday and down about a penny from a week ago, according to the Auto Club.

Dodger update: The Stanley Gold investment group is back in the mix of bidders after a mediator overturned Major League Baseball's rejection of Gold. That leaves five parties in contention to buy the team. (LAT)

OWN restructures: Oprah Winfrey's struggling cable channel laid off about 30 people (20 percent of the staff) and rejiggered its operations in L.A. and NY. Discovery Communications, which is a major investor, is expected to take a more active role in the channel. (Bloomberg)

Small pickup in Latino population: Other parts of the country saw declines in 2010, but L.A. grew by 1.5 percent. NY was up 2.4 percent. From the LAT:

The reason is that many Latinos who had left the big metropolitan areas to find jobs and cheaper housing in smaller cities earlier in the decade returned to those big cities during the tough economic times, [said William Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer]. Those gateway cities are "the anchors for new minorities, places where friends and relatives are ready to take in kids, provide social and financial support when times are bad," he said. He said it was unclear whether the broad distribution of Latinos across the country that occurred through much of the last decade would resume in coming years.

Appealing court cuts: California's chief justice warned of dangerous delays in the administration of justice if planned budget cuts take effect. More than $650 million in spending reductions have led to closed courtrooms, staff layoffs, and reduced hours. From AP:

In what she termed a "cruel irony," [Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye] said the same economic forces that have led to cuts at nearly all levels of state government are the same ones helping drive an increase in court activity. Those include cases for evictions, debt collections and child support modifications. The cutbacks have compounded problems in the courts, which she said already needed to add judicial positions in some fast-growing areas of the state such as the Central Valley.

Cal State plans enrollment freeze: University officials will not accept new admissions in the spring of 2013 (with a few exceptions), and pending next November's proposed tax initiative, the 2013 fall class has been put on hold. From the SF Chronicle:

Failure of the tax measure would trigger an automatic funding cut of $200 million for CSU under a scenario proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown. That loss would come on top of a $750 million budget hit that CSU already took this year. The uncertainty has university planners guessing how many students they can afford to admit, and how many employees they can afford to pay.

Subway stop stays near Bev Hills High: The Century City station is not what school officials had in mind (they were proposing Santa Monica Blvd.) From Patch:

The decision routes the subway under Beverly Hills High School, an alignment opposed by the Beverly Hills Unified School District, which argues that subway tunneling would interfere with major renovations planned for the high school. BHUSD contends Metro's seismic studies on the three Century City station options are flawed and that the decision was made in the interest of politics--not safety.

Fading interest in law school?: The numbers of admission tests fell 16 percent this year, the largest decline in more than a decade. From the NYT:

The decline reflects a spreading view that the legal market in the United States is in terrible shape and will have a hard time absorbing the roughly 45,000 students who are expected to graduate from law school in each of the next three years. And the problem may be deep and systemic. Many lawyers and law professors have argued in recent years that the legal market will either stagnate or shrink as technology allows more low-end legal work to be handled overseas, and as corporations demand more cost-efficient fee arrangements from their firms.

Changes to NYT paywall: Effective April 1, non-subscribers will only be able to read 10 free articles instead of 20. (All Things Digital)

L.A. bankruptcies keep dropping: Individual and business filings were down 10.6 percent in February compared with a year earlier. (OC Register)