Crescent Hotel

In the 1800s, tourists came for the magic cures in the natural springs. In the 1960s, flower children flocked to communes on the edge of town, looking for harmony. These days, three investigators of the paranormal give ghost tours at the landmark Crescent Hotel. Self-described victims of alien abduction gather each summer. Most shops stock miniature Buddhas, crystals and incense burners. Every street corner carries ads for massage therapists.

For much of her 66 years, Caroline Rose Hunt, one of the nation's wealthiest women, focused her attention on doing good works and raising five children. More often than not, she shunned the spotlight that was hers for the asking, merely by virtue of being one of the Hunt dynasty of Dallas.

Noe, Boe, Cinch, Lot 1224, Table 8, O-Bar. No, it's not some secret code or a passage from Lewis Carroll. It's just a list of some of the hottest new restaurants in town. For years now, restaurant names have been getting stranger and more mysterious. It's that whole obscurity thing -- the hipper the place, the less obvious is has to be. You know, no sign and all of that.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait last month has put on hold efforts by the Resolution Trust Corp. to sell the Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale to a branch of the Kuwait government. For months the RTC, the federal agency established to oversee the sale of failed savings and loan associations, had been negotiating with the Kuwait Investment Office in London on the sale of the $260-million Phoenician resort.

The roughly 22,000 investors who bought $200 million in bonds issued by the parent of Lincoln Savings & Loan Assn. are unlikely to recover their money unless regulators turn loose Lincoln's assets, the parent's chairman said Monday. The fate of the bondholders, many of them elderly investors who sunk their life savings into the securities, "totally depends on whether or not we get back some of the operable assets" of Lincoln, said American Continental Corp.'s Charles H. Keating Jr. in an interview.

The roughly 22,000 investors who bought $200 million in bonds issued by the parent of Lincoln Savings & Loan Assn. are unlikely to recover their money unless regulators turn loose Lincoln's assets, the parent's chairman said Monday. The fate of the bondholders, many of them elderly investors who sunk their life savings into the securities, "totally depends on whether or not we get back some of the operable assets" of Lincoln, said American Continental Corp.'s Charles H. Keating Jr. in an interview.

Small investors in American Continental Corp. plan to sue Charles H. Keating Jr. to freeze what they say is more than $100 million that he has put into foreign investments and bank accounts--money gleaned through transactions involving Irvine-based Lincoln Savings & Loan. The immediate aim of the class-action suit is to gain access to Keating-controlled money in Switzerland, the Bahamas and Panama, said Joseph W. Cotchett Jr. of Burlingame, one of the lawyers for the investors.

Former congressman John H. Rousselot, who is leading a bid to buy Lincoln Savings & Loan, was elected chairman and chief executive of the Irvine thrift on Tuesday. At the same time, Rousselot said he has renegotiated his purchase agreement with the S&L's parent firm. The new deal reduces the purchase price by $88 million to $200 million; removes four employees of Lincoln and its parent, American Continental Corp., from the investor group, and turns the deal more favorably toward Rousselot and Lincoln.

Former Rep. John H. Rousselot, who is leading a bid to buy Lincoln Savings & Loan, was elected chairman and chief executive of the Irvine thrift Tuesday. At the same time, Rousselot said he has renegotiated his purchase agreement with the S&L's parent firm. The new deal reduces the purchase price by $88 million, to $200 million; removes four employees of Lincoln and its parent, American Continental Corp., from the investor group, and turns the deal more favorably toward Lincoln and Rousselot, who was a Republican congressman from Arcadia.

The owner of Lincoln Savings & Loan agreed Tuesday to sell the Irvine savings institution to a Southern California investment group in a preferred stock transaction valued at $288.75 million. The sale of the S&L by American Continental Corp. in Phoenix would be likely to end three years of sometimes-bitter confrontations between company executives and federal regulators over the S&L's non-traditional business strategy.