Ruben

A former Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent pleaded no contest Thursday to unlawfully displaying a badge while allegedly trying to pull a woman over in Pomona. Ruben Zacarias, 81, waved a school district police badge at a woman driving on the 57 Freeway last July and said he was a cop, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. Zacarias, who was superintendent for 2 1/2 years before being bought out of his contract by the school board in late 1999, was fined $250 and must pay a $100 restitution fee. Superior Court Judge David Brougham also ordered that the badge -- which was seized by the California Highway Patrol -- be returned to the school district, according to Deputy Dist.

When President Obama told students in Mexico that without the support of U.S. Latinos he would not be president, he wasn't talking about the GOP's Ruben Barrales. But Barrales gets the message. He is the son of immigrants, and San Mateo County's first Latino supervisor. Mexico gave him its Ohtli medal, for his work on behalf of Mexican Americans. Once a Democrat, he went to work in the George W. Bush White House and ran San Diego's regional chamber of commerce. His principal task now, as head of GROW Elect , is cultivating Latino Republican elected officials in California, not exactly fertile soil for the GOP of late.

Sheila Marie Ornedo, heavy with child, is due to give birth in February. The Los Angeles nurse is alone this Christmas, preparing for her baby girl's arrival without Ruben, her husband, by her side. Ruben is the one who should be massaging her aching back, as he used to; picking her up from work at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and taking her out to dinner, as he used to. He should be helping to fix up the nursery, as he was going to.

LAS VEGAS - The Mayweathers are back, and for this fight they have company. More than eight months have passed since Floyd Mayweather Jr. walked out of a Las Vegas jail after serving nearly 90 days for his role in a domestic violence case involving the mother of his three children. Mayweather (43-0, 26 knockouts) returns to the ring Saturday night to defend his World Boxing Council title against Robert Guerrero. Both boxers are trained by their fathers - Floyd Mayweather Sr. and Ruben Guerrero.

"I was a good mother. . . ." We want to believe her, especially when this claim is poignantly declared by Marina Gonzalez Palmier. There is nothing obsessive, or calculating, or cruel in the way this actress expresses love for a son. Even the son wants to believe she was a good mother. His ambivalence and confusion is obvious at Theatre/Theater during "Madre," particularly because playwright Rene Solivan portrays the tormented Ruben with subtle ambiguity.

There are slivers of wit embedded in the broad shtick of "Let My People Go!," a home-for-the-holidays romantic comedy for which home is a noisy Parisian clan, the holiday is Passover and the prodigal son is a gay 30ish mailman whose usual state of mind is the tizzies. The road to the inevitable slapsticky Seder is paved with more sweetness than bite, a good deal of frantic foolishness and progressively thinner laughs, all wrapped in a message of acceptance and inclusiveness. Scripted by first-time director Mikael Buch and art-house auteur Christophe Honoré, the farce is by turns fresh and fusty.

How does it feel? Everybody wants to know. How does it feel? When I saw the photograph of the 9-year-old Dutch boy, Ruben van Assouw, who was the sole survivor of a horrific airplane crash in Libya last week that killed his mother, father and brother and 100 others, it felt familiar. He looked a lot like I did after surviving an airplane crash as a boy — the same black-and-blue eyes, belying our calm, matter-of-fact expressions. I was 11 when a Cessna carrying my father, his girlfriend, the pilot and me crashed into an 8,600-foot peak during a blizzard.

The sharp cracks echoing from the East Bakersfield street were loud enough to jolt Ruben Ceballos from a midnight slumber. Then he heard screams. The 19-year-old jumped from his living room sofa and hurried to the kitchen door, which offered a view of the violent scene outside - Kern County sheriff's deputies repeatedly striking a man in the head with batons as he lay on the pavement. "I saw two sheriff's deputies on top of this guy, just beating him," Ceballos said in an interview Monday.

Few markets crashed harder than Compton when California's real estate bubble burst. The city's northwest side saw the median home price plummet to $94,000 in 2009, down from $385,000 at the peak. Foreclosures dotted the streets. Families fled, leaving trash and old furniture behind. "There were a lot of empty houses. It was a big mess," said real estate broker Ruben Magdaleno of Re/Max VIP. These days, the working-class community has a new identity: comeback kid. Northwest Compton has posted the most dramatic price jump of any area in Southern California.

Elias Lopez never had a chance. He got sucked into something so much stronger than he was, something with a history so powerful, that there seemed no choice but to submit. He was 17, a nice, quietly handsome young man with jet-black hair and a plan. He was going to be a cop, a narcotics investigator. Sure, there were street gangs in his neighborhood, but he did not want to join one. All Elias wanted to do was look like a gang member.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but this one has inspired many more, because it has become a departure point for how Europeans became acquainted with Asia. When the Getty acquired an 17th century drawing by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, "Man in Korean Costume," at a 1983 auction, it was already well known among the cognoscenti. Then six years ago Getty curator Stephanie Schrader learned that it had inspired two books in Korea - a bestselling novel in 1993 and a nonfiction volume by a Jesuit historian in 2004.

There are slivers of wit embedded in the broad shtick of "Let My People Go!," a home-for-the-holidays romantic comedy for which home is a noisy Parisian clan, the holiday is Passover and the prodigal son is a gay 30ish mailman whose usual state of mind is the tizzies. The road to the inevitable slapsticky Seder is paved with more sweetness than bite, a good deal of frantic foolishness and progressively thinner laughs, all wrapped in a message of acceptance and inclusiveness. Scripted by first-time director Mikael Buch and art-house auteur Christophe Honoré, the farce is by turns fresh and fusty.

For more than 40 years, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has stubbornly fought off requests to turn over its records on the death of Mexican American journalist Ruben Salazar. The department's arguments against making the files public have amounted to little more than: it's too expensive, too time-consuming, or might compromise the privacy of some individuals. Last year the department was forced to rethink its position. In response to a California Public Records Act filed by The Times' Robert J. Lopez, the sheriff agreed to allow some journalists and academics to view the records.

The gig: Ruben Guerra, 44, is the chairman and chief executive of the Latin Business Assn. He also founded and runs Municipal Energy Solutions Inc. of Los Angeles, which supplies LED light fixtures and equipment to corporations and cities in California and Mexico. The light bulb goes off: Guerra has always had a knack for business. Starting when Guerra was 10, his stepfather would take him and his seven siblings to the fields in Bakersfield every day in the summer and on weekends during the school year to pick fruits and vegetables.

Desert America Boom and Bust in the New "New West" Rubén Martínez Metropolitan Books: 337 pp., $28 In his new book "Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New 'New West,'" Los Angeles writer Rubén Martínez leaves the city behind for the beauty and desolation of the dry, sparsely populated corners of what he calls the "inner West. " He alights in northern New Mexico, a land of pueblos and piñon trees, of sweeping vistas and old adobes. Many an adventurer and seeker has come to this land before him: Spanish conquistadors, American artists, New Age spiritualists, clipboard-toting Realtors.

The Getty Foundation is helping to fund the conservation of a 17th century masterpiece by Dutch artist Peter Paul Rubens. "Triumph of the Eucharist" is a series of panels that resides at the Prado Museum in Madrid. The Getty said it has awarded close to $390,000 to the museum for the conservation of the piece. Money for the project is coming from the Getty's Panel Paintings Initiative, which has also helped to fund the conservation of Albrecht Dürer's "Adam and Eve," also located at the Prado.

The mood was electric that crisp, clear February day as couples lined up at San Francisco City Hall to be among the first to get licenses for same-sex marriages in California. Nine tortuous years followed: The state high court halted and invalidated the San Francisco licenses, then later ruled gays and lesbians could marry. Some 18,000 couples rushed to do so before voters put a stop to the ceremonies by passing Proposition 8 in 2008. Then a federal judge and an appeals court threw that ballot initiative out. On Tuesday, the two sides rested.

When mobster Mickey Cohen ruled Los Angeles in the late 1940s, his favorite hangout was the legendary Slapsy Maxie's nightclub on Wilshire Boulevard. It's long gone now of course, so to re-create it for the new film "Gangster Squad" the filmmakers had to be creative. Production designer Maher Ahmad found the right spot for Slapsy Maxie's almost by accident, while driving around with the film's first location manager. They had been looking for a vintage house in a suburban neighborhood when they passed an Art Deco-inspired block of empty businesses in Bellflower.

Former state Sen. Ruben S. Ayala, a scrappy Democrat from Chino who fought for a controversial water project and helped create the California Conservation Corps during a legislative career that ran for 24 years until term limits forced him out, died of natural causes Wednesday in Ontario. He was 89. His death was confirmed by his son Maurice. After two decades in local government, Ayala was elected to the Senate in 1974, representing a district that encompassed the western San Bernardino County cities of Ontario, Fontana, Rialto, Colton and Chino in addition to Pomona in Los Angeles County.

The loft-like offices at 5514 Wilshire Blvd. are largely the domain of the young, who work in jeans and T-shirts at flat-panel screens. They are Web branders, search engine optimizers, e-tailers of underground clothing lines. They do the virtual jobs that became jobs only recently. Ruben Pardo works in the building, too, in a job that dates to the late 19 t h century. Pardo operates one of the last manual elevators in Los Angeles. The young people are not easily impressed - but something about Pardo awes them.