Channel 9 weathercaster Evelyn Taft tweeted her 5,000-plus Twitter followers a personal note this afternoon from Palm Springs. Included was a pic of her reclining on a hotel room bed.

Both LA basketball teams are on the brink of elimination, but Staples Center is warning of major traffic and parking issues around Sunday's noon-start Kings game.

Instead of the Saturday graduation party they thought they were attending, invited guests at Mark Zuckerberg's home in Palo Alto saw the Facebook founder and his longtime girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, get married.

The stringed instruments that define so much Hawaiian music all came from somewhere else — and not so very long ago. In the case of the ukulele, that was from Portugal's Madeira Islands. Hawaii's King David Kalakaua embraced the four-stringed instrument after it arrived about 1879, and the rest kind of is history, as Los Angeles writer Swati Pandey explores at the Daily.

The LAPD says robbery was the motive for the April 11 killings of Ming Qu and Ying Wu as they sat in a car about a mile from the USC campus. Two men were arrested Friday, possibly based on cellphone signals and forensic evidence tying the gun to other recent crimes.

The Daily Meal did a web exercise of deciding the 25 most expensive restaurants in the United States. Urasawa in Beverly Hills came in at number two, after Masa in New York City. The average bill at Urasawa is said to be $1,111. But there are alternatives.

Mayor Villaraigosa's budget calls for adding 50 more part-time parking officers to walk foot beats in crowded areas such as Downtown, Hollywood and North Hollywood. There already were 100 of these part-timers hired last year. It's all about bringing in more fines.

LAFD response times, DA's race, U.S.S. Iowa, the mayor gets somewhere on time, the US catches up to California demograhics, more attempted robberies around UCLA and the parents of those slain USC students sue the university.

The MTA board held a hearing today to listen to concerns from Beverly Hills about the agency's desire to tunnel under Beverly Hills High School and locate the Purple Line station inside Century City at Constellation Avenue. For various reasons some in Beverly Hills would like the station to be on Santa Monica Boulevard and the tunnel re-routed from beneath the school.

The Kings lead their playoff series 3-0 (again.) The Clippers trail theirs 0-2.

Journalist Chip Jacobs' newest book, "The Ascension Of Jerry: Murder, Hitmen and the Making of L.A. Muckraker Jerry Schneiderman," spins out the tale of a truly interesting Los Angeles figure and a bunch of intriguing episodes. It's a murder mystery and more, but nonfiction (despite the interviewer calling it a novel.)

Stan Lee was supposed to be the center of attention on the final day of the Hero Complex Film Festival this weekend in Downtown. But his people say the 89-year-old comic book icon is clearing his schedule. The festival will now end a day earlier, on Sunday. Read more

Tucked in among the purple and yellow and white Kings jerseys filling Staples Center tonight, there will also be small cardboard likenesses of a smiling fan. Tannerheads, the fans call them. Here's the backstory, via Toronto. [Update: Kings win]

District Attorney candidate Carmen Trutanich had asked the Attorney General to look into "suspicious political activity," citing the DA's inability to produce his old personnel file. Today, AG Kamala Harris says there will be no investigation.

This tweaks the model for how to pay for big-city newspaper journalism. The Los Angeles Times, still one of the biggest newspapers in the country and by far the most potent in California, has accepted a $1 million grant to hire new reporters on selected beats. The money comes no strings attached, says the memo from editor Davan Maharaj. Read the memo

Sports talker Jim Rome's CBS Sports TV show depicts him in front of a window that appears to look down on Staples Center and across at the Los Angeles downtown skyline. As if he were in the Marriott or one of the other buildings at LA Live. Well, he's not. Daily News sports columnist Tom Hoffarth is concerned enough about this to do some checking.

Surveillance video spotted four suspects, two males and two females, fleeing the scene. "Three fled north on the Promenade and the fourth ran south."

The singer known for her disco era hits such as "Love to Love You Baby," "Last Dance" and "On The Radio" has died of lung cancer.

DA Cooley's media rounds regarding John Noguez, Hollywood for Jackie Lacey, a further note on Rep. Brad Sherman's mom and Photoshop, NPR in the red, local columnist treated for cancer and another bear in Glendale — plus Pacquiao apologizes even though he didn't say what they said he said.

Los Angeles County's elected tax assessor, John Noguez, should resign, District Attorney Steve Cooley told a gaggle of reporters today. It goes further than his pretty harsh comments yesterday about the investigation into the assessor's alleged dealings with campaign donors and clients of consultants who sell their ability to get property tax bills lowered. "I don't think he should be there,'' Cooley is reported saying. "In my view, he should resign in light of everything that's come out publicly and because it's interfering with the discharge of that important office's critical functions."

Some Valley voters are getting campaign mail that shows Rep. Brad Sherman with his wife and three young children. The lucky ones also get his mother, apparently photo-shopped in to the same scene.

The plan cooked up by politically connected investors to deliver water from a remote corner of the Mojave to thirsty Southern California cities refuses to die after more than two decades. How the LA Times can do a new story on Cadiz without mentioning Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or Arnold Schwarzenegger (and barely mentioning their pal who is at the center of things, Keith Brackpool) is a mystery. Note: No time for the Morning Buzz today.

The latest cartoon by Steve Greenberg. His LA Sketchbook archive...

District Attorney Steve Cooley made his first public comments about his unit's investigation into possible corruption in the operation of county Assessor John Noguez. If anything, it sounds as if the investigation is white hot.

OK, right about now the hockey fans of North America have to be getting a little itchy. Confused. Not sure they understand what they're feeling, but maybe just because they have never seen it before. Post-game video

Residents of Grand View Drive in Laurel Canyon are mad as hell about a "scofflaw" builder who has already mansionized one lot on the street and started work on two other parcels. They have banded together to make an effective and informative video — and have a little piece of local rock and roll history in their film.

The novelist, called in the New York Times obituary "Mexico’s elegant public intellectual and grand man of letters," died today in Mexico City. Fuentes was "one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world, a catalyst, along with Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortazar, of the explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and ’70s known as 'El Boom.'"

Admittedly, many Los Angeles Times print subscribers didn't know the Times still printed a magazine every month. Even some high-income Zip codes didn't receive it with any regularity. But now the magazine is gone again. Here's the memo from LAT president Kathy Thomson.

He's making a fuss about his old DA employment file being missing. But his people knew in 2008 that it couldn't be found, the LA Weekly says.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has begun the initial phase of work to restore the 1896 Southern Pacific Railroad depot from the San Fernando valley farming town of Lankershim, now known as North Hollywood. The decaying wooden structure sits at the corner of Lankershim and Chandler boulevards. Local historians took up the cause of saving the depot more than a decade ago.

Friend and artist J. Michael Walker recounts in a piece for the LA Times op-ed page ow the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida overwhelmed artist Willie Middlebrook in the hospital last month.

Building trades endorse Sherman, Zev vs. Parks at Coliseum vote, LA's violent jail deputies, bogus LAFD response time stats, a media type joins Gavin Newsom's staff, Eli Broad on the radio and more.

Carroll Shelby, the auto racing legend who died last week in Dallas at age 89, apparently divided his time recently between Texas and Beverly Hills. The Southern California chapters of his career, though, are a pretty important part of the story.

The Coliseum Commission voted 8-1 Monday to give up day-to-day control of the historic facility to neighboring USC. Commissioner Bernard Parks, the City Council member who has been skirmishing with the commission for years, voted no.

The Thunder led by as many as 35 points and finished up by 29, winning 119-90 on Monday night in the opening game of the NBA Western Conference semifinals. Also: The Dodgers put Matt Kemp on the disabled list with a hamstring injury and the Angels excused outfielder Torii Hunter for an undisclosed amount of time after the arrest of his son in Texas.

Politico gives Brad Sherman the edge, unions claim Villaraigosa warring against women, a commentary against LA's proposed paper bag ban, Gregory Rodriguez on immigration and being an Angeleno, California's demographics are alright and SI profiles Kobe Bryant with a look at his father and mother. Plus much more for a catch-up Monday.

The latest atrocity in the Mexico drug wars is the remains of at least 43 men and six women found in plastic garbage bags near the town of Cadereyta Jimenez, on the side of a highway that runs between Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo on the U.S. border. Most of the victims had been decapitated and their hands and feet cut off.

After the Lakers and Clippers won their game sevens to advance in the playoffs, the Kings skated to a win in Arizona tonight to begin round three of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Kings captain Dustin Brown scored the game-winner in the third period. An empty-net goal in the final minute put the game away, 4-2.

Not a good day on the newspaper editorial pages for City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, who wants to be seen as the frontrunner in the district attorney race. "Trutanich is not the disaster portrayed by many of his critics," the Times says, adding the inevitable but.