Bell

The wait for tables is getting longer at Buck's, a popular breakfast spot for the tech elite and a weather vane for the Silicon Valley economy. Here, like everywhere else, Facebook is the talk of the town. "Charles Schwab was in the restaurant the other day, and I asked him to hook me up with some Facebook shares," said Jamis MacNiven, owner of Buck's, in the wealthy suburban enclave of Woodside. "He told me even he can't get Facebook shares. " The new tech boom officially gets underway Friday when Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rings Nasdaq's opening bell remotely from the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, launching the largest initial public offering of stock in Silicon Valley history.

BEIJING - On a warm summer night in 1989, a 21-year-old Chinese student waded into the South China Sea from a deserted beach. Still wearing his clothes and Nike sneakers, he swam to a speedboat waiting 200 yards offshore. Wuer Kaixi's role as a student leader in the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests had landed him the No. 2 spot on the Chinese government's list of 21 most-wanted organizers. His plan was to escape with the help of activists in Hong Kong, who had arranged for the speedboat, and return to China when things calmed down.

The rain poured steadily and the sky was gray. But that didn't stop thousands of visitors from hiking up the steps of the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple in Hacienda Heights to welcome the lunar new year. "Prosperity flows with water," said Liang Zhu of El Monte, quoting a Chinese proverb. "It's so rare that it rains on the first of the new year. It's lucky. " Zhu, along with his wife, brother and sister-in-law, pushed up against a stone railing in a sculpture garden where people cheerfully threw coins over the edge, trying to hit a small bell.

So what would Beethoven drive? I'm not sure that putting anyone that headstrong behind the wheel would be a great idea. He'd likely scream at his publisher on his cellphone while driving, impatiently tailgate, cut people off. He'd speed for sure and never, ever signal. But Orange County is car country and Thursday night at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Joshua Bell handed over the keys of his new Porsche to the composer for a high-octane spin of his "Coriolan" Overture, Violin Concerto and Fourth Symphony.

Five police officers were honored by Bell City Council Monday for their part in an investigation of a major drug network. Sgt. James Edwards, and detectives Jerry Guzzetta, Charles Hannon, Thomas McReynolds and Dennis Tavernelli of the Bell-Cudahy Police Department were awarded certificates of appreciation for their role in a case involving 35 arrests, 21 felony charges and the seizure of 60 pounds of cocaine, $300,000 in cash, $100,000 in jewelry and 19 automobiles.

Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo has announced his resignation from his $787,637 a year job, as have police Chief Randy Adams ($457,000) and Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia ($376,288), and we wish all three a not-so-fond farewell. Even if they performed their work brilliantly, and even if they believed in their hearts that no one earning less could properly serve their problem-wracked city, their pay was shocking, and so utterly out of step with their counterparts in neighboring municipalities and their own struggling residents as to be inherently exploitive.

Here are some of the loans made by the city of Bell to employees and elected officials: Former City Manager Robert Rizzo: $160,000 Former Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia: $230,000 Administrative Services Manager Lourdes Garcia: $100,000 Councilman Oscar Hernandez: $20,000 Councilman Luis Artiga: $20,000 Former Councilman George Bass: $20,000 Source: City of Bell ...

It took outrage and a new era of civic involvement among a previously apathetic electorate to throw out the greedy leaders of Bell who enriched themselves while bleeding the town of money. What Bell is finding out now is that it takes a lot more than rancor and attendance at council meetings to rebuild a ravaged city. Former City Administrator Robert Rizzo, who quietly collected close to $1.5 million a year in pay and other compensation, faces numerous criminal corruption charges, as do most of the former City Council members, whose incomes reached about $100,000 a year through hefty payments for serving on commissions that met for a minute or two. But even with Rizzo gone and an entirely new council in place, the level of distrust in Bell remains high.

After weeks of revelations by Times reporters about the disturbing doings of Bell municipal leaders, it's gratifying to see county and state officials aggressively seeking moral and monetary payback for the city's aggrieved residents. On Tuesday, criminal charges of misappropriating public funds were filed against former City Manager Robert Rizzo as well as the mayor and three council members. Several other former city leaders also were arrested and charged. The arrests came a week after state Atty.

In his Aug. 11 Times Op-Ed article, "City of Bell salaries: Robert Rizzo is only a symptom," Ben Boychuk confronts the wrong end of the beast. He tips us off to his bias by repeatedly flogging the crusty cliche "unelected bureaucrats," on whom he blames the current crisis in state and local government. He then twists logic into a knot by using these specious assertions as a pretext for removing regulations to solve the problem. Huh? Bell's scandal over high salaries for its top officials did not arise because too many regulations and statutes exist.

A state appeals court Tuesday put the brakes on part of the criminal case against two top Bell officials in a dispute over whether the Los Angeles County district attorney should be allowed to prosecute the case. What exactly the decision from the 2nd District Court of Appeal means, though, was disputed by attorneys for the defense and the prosecution. A star player in this drama is Randy Adams, Bell's highly paid former police chief, who has not been charged. Among the allegations faced by Robert Rizzo, Bell's former chief administrative officer, and Angela Spaccia, Rizzo's second in command, is that they hid Adams' $457,000 annual paycheck by dividing it into two contracts.

Is it the Doritos Difference? A breakfast-based boost? The days of slumping sales seem to be over for tortured Taco Bell, which helped owner Yum Brands Inc. haul in a 73% income increase in the first quarter. The Mexican-style fast-food chain appears to have emerged from a miserable 2011, during which a controversy over its seasoned beef filling caused it to freely shed customers. Executives quickly rolled out initiative after initiative: Brand new breakfast offerings. Doritos Locos Tacos.

A self-driving car being developed by Google Inc. took a blind man for a ride this week, driving him to a Taco Bell and then to a dry cleaner in San Jose. On Thursday, Google posted a video of a modified Toyota Prius driving Steve Mahan, who is legally blind, saying it shows one of the possibilities and benefits that could come from the technology. "Where this would change my life is to give me the independence and the flexibility to go to the places I both want to go and need to go when I need to do those things," Mahan says in the video.

Baylor women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey has been diagnosed with Bell's palsy, a form of facial paralysis. Baylor is in the women's Final Four and will play Stanford on Sunday. Mulkey told the Boston Globe that before practice Wednesday, she noticed only the left side of her mouth was working when she smiled, her right eye was drooping and she couldn't hear properly out of her right ear. "When I smile it's crooked and when I talk, and talk loud, the hollowness in my hearing is weird," Mulkey told the Associated Press.

David Novak calls himself a “pretty informal guy.” He used to hand out employee recognition awards in the form of rubber chickens. He loves to teach. He's also the multimillionaire chief executive of Yum Brands Inc., the fast food company with the most stores in the world. This week, Novak, 59, swung through Los Angeles and briefly talked about leadership lessons, international expansion for brands such as KFC and Pizza Hut and why he thinks struggling Taco Bell will “go down in history” this year.  Novak's new book dropped in January, its bright red back cover plastered with praise from the likes of Alan Mulally (chief executive of Ford Motor Co.)

More than five years have passed since New York police officers rained 50 bullets upon Sean Bell and two friends the day before Bell's wedding, killing the would-be bridegroom. On Friday, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly fired Det. Gescard Isnora and fellow detectives Marc Cooper and Michael Oliver, and Lt. Gary Napoli will resign, after a department administrative trial that found they acted improperly that night in November 2006, the Associated Press reported . NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said: “There was nothing in the record to warrant overturning the decision.” The detectives and lieutenant were widely condemned and brought up on criminal charges after the shooting outside the club in Queens, but they were acquitted on all counts after a trial in 2008.

T he people of Bell can hardly be blamed for wanting to throw the bums out. By bums, of course, they mean the city leaders who have enriched themselves at the taxpayers' expense. At first, the nearly $800,000 salary of former City Manager Robert Rizzo was as puzzling as it was outrageous. Perhaps there was an explanation? Maybe the veteran public employee was pulling off some sort of magic — such as maintaining extraordinary fiscal soundness for the city in the midst of bad times — that could have made him worth such a sum?

Baylor women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey has been diagnosed with Bell's palsy, a form of facial paralysis. Baylor is in the women's Final Four and will play Stanford on Sunday. Mulkey told the Boston Globe that before practice Wednesday, she noticed only the left side of her mouth was working when she smiled, her right eye was drooping and she couldn't hear properly out of her right ear. "When I smile it's crooked and when I talk, and talk loud, the hollowness in my hearing is weird," Mulkey told the Associated Press.

For generations of industry research executives, AT&T's Bell Telephone Laboratories served as an inspiration: a warren of youthful scientists and engineers assigned to go where their intellects took them, not especially concerned about serving the corporate bottom line, picking up cartloads of Nobel Prizes along the way. Bell Labs was the model for, among others, Xerox Corp.'s legendary Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, which spun out the personal computer,...