Starting to fill in nicely
Steve Harvey's latest column of quirky bitsA year later in the Gulf, Bell's whistleblower, Villaraigosa's budget, when Obama moved to Indonesia and Grete Waitz.
Today is the one-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. LAT
Amid the LAT Pulitzer accolades, "it's worth taking a moment to recognize someone without whom the scandal would not have been uncovered: the courageous and (allegedly) corrupt councilman, Victor Bello. As California Watch detailed last fall, it was Bello's letters to the District Attorney's office in 2009 that sparked the investigation." LA Weekly
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is poised today to unveil a $6.2 billion city budget that would restore library hours and retain LAPD's manpower while cutting spending in most other municipal departments. LANG
When President Barack Obama visits Facebook on Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg might want to dust off his voter registration card. Bay Citizen
In 1967, Obama's mother moved them to Indonesia. "She didn’t know just how much it would change their lives," says the teaser for this weekend's New York Times Magazine story on Stanley Ann Dunham by Janny Scott. "To describe Dunham as a white woman from Kansas turns out to be about as illuminating as describing her son as a politician who likes golf. Intentionally or not, the label obscures an extraordinary story." NYT
The Los Angeles Police Department on Tuesday continued to defend its use of the controversial and costly red-light traffic camera program, but with time running out on the contract, the Police Commission punted the issue to the City Council. DN
It may seem hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the California Legislature was a showcase among state political bodies, says political consultant Larry Levine. LAT op-ed
"California State of Mind - The Legacy of Pat Brown" will premiere April 30 at the Newport Beach Film Festival.
Ann Marie Lipinski, the former editor of the Chicago Tribune, was named to succeed Bob Giles as curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Romenesko
What's legal to do with your phone in the car, and what's not —s it's confusing. Using your phone as a GPS device may not be, if you hold it. San Jose Mercury
Thousands of sardines, anchovies and other fish died in Ventura Harbor, the second major die-off recently in a SoCal harbor. Ventura County Star, LAT
MOCA's exhibit on graffiti art has led to an explosion of tagging around the museum's neighborhood. LAT
How to explain, much less minimize, the relative obscurity of L.A.'s landscape architects? Christopher Hawthorne
Grete Waitz, the Norwegian runner who won the silver medal in the women's marathon at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, died of cancer in Oslo at age 57. She was "perhaps the pre-eminent female distance runner in history." NYT