Private Jet

The cast members of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" insist they're not ladies who lunch. Ignore the fact that they're at Villa Blanca in Beverly Hills shortly before noon poking at platters topped with ahi tuna tartare, crispy rock shrimp, and smoked salmon pizza. "This is a rarity. Really, it is," said Lisa Vanderpump-Todd, one of the newest inductees to the "Housewives" franchise who also happens to own the restaurant. "We're really not women who lunch. I mean, look at these ladies.

State ethics officials launched an investigation Thursday into the private jet trips and other luxury travel that the embattled public pension fund allowed its top investment staff to accept, without public disclosure, from financial firms with whom they were doing business. The travel, first reported by The Times on Wednesday, was revealed in testimony for pretrial proceedings related to a corruption probe at the California Public Employees' Retirement System. A senior portfolio manager testified that for years, high-level investment officials jetted around the world on business trips at the expense of the financial firms.

The state's embattled public pension fund for years allowed its top investment staff to accept private jet trips around the world and other luxury travel from financial firms with whom they were doing business — without disclosing any of the trips publicly, according to the court testimony of a senior portfolio manager. The manager, Joncarlo Mark, was testifying as the designated representative of the California Public Employees' Retirement System in pretrial proceedings that are part of a corruption probe.

If you're a business traveler who has been flying coach to save your company money, you may need to sit down to read the following news. Chief executives of some of the nation's biggest firms have increased spending about 9% on the personal use of corporate jets over the last year, according to a new study of corporate expenses. The findings, published last week by the Corporate Library, an independent research firm, are based on data from nearly 340 major U.S. companies' expense reports for personal jet use in the last two fiscal years.

Months before financial markets collapsed in fall 2008, boutique proprietor Lee-Lee Sprenger noticed that her usually free-spending customers were flinching at $900 price tags on sweaters fresh from Italy. Sales at Melange on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica have been sinking ever since. "We're barely making it here on Montana," she said. "Most of the businesses have had a 60% drop in sales."

At the time of his famous father's unusually public death, Aaron Stewart was 10 years old, a fifth-grader. "I was in class and I got called into the principal's office," Payne Stewart's only son recalls of that nightmarish moment nearly a decade ago. "I thought I was in trouble." If only it had been so. Instead, he soon learned what millions of television viewers already knew: His father, one of golf's most recognizable figures and winner of three major championships, was gone. It was Oct.

In theory, pairing a roomful of works by Wallace Berman (1926-76) with a roomful of pieces by Richard Prince makes sense. Both bodies of work focus on women, often naked, posing provocatively or having sex. Both feature collages. And both turn away from the niceties of fine art for the grittiness of mass-produced imagery. But in person, "She: Wallace Berman and Richard Prince" fizzles. Few sparks fly between Berman's 38 hauntingly intimate pictures from the 1960s and 1970s and Prince's 16 coldhearted representations, all but two from 2007-08.

Embattled U.S. automakers added a new entry to their list of troubles Wednesday: executive jet travel. For a second straight day, the chief executives of Detroit's Big Three tried to convince a skeptical Congress that they deserved $25 billion in emergency loans. But that message was nearly drowned out by discussion of their corporate flying habits, and the Senate later scrapped plans for a vote on the loans today -- dimming hopes for a rescue plan this year. The executives from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler insisted that they had gotten serious about producing smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles.

If you're feeling steamed at the airlines for how they've been treating passengers, you might want to save some outrage for those who fly on private jets, two advocacy groups suggest. As most travelers endure long security lines, increasing flight delays and extra charges for checked baggage, they are helping subsidize far more elegant travel for a privileged few, according to a report to be released today by Washington-based organizations Essential Action and the Institute for Policy Studies.

Like many of the Californians he represents, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger now spends more than three hours commuting because he lives so far from the office. But his ride is a private jet. After flirting briefly with buying a Sacramento abode for his family, then living alone for a while in a 2,000-square-foot hotel penthouse across from the Capitol, the governor has decided to stay nearly every night at his Brentwood mansion. The commute costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, which aides say the governor pays for himself.