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An elderly woman was arrested in Palo Alto early Sunday morning after surveillance video captured her allegedly breaking into a church. Palo Alto police took into custody 70-year-old Ethel Jean Hays an hour after officers say she burglarized Trinity Lutheran Church on Middlefield Road, which officers later discovered Hays had broken into once before on Feb. 9. She was booked on two counts of burglary. That's when, police say, she allegedly stole cash donated by parishioners, which was being stored in the church office. Police found Hays walking on Lytton Avenue and saw that she matched a description of the...

Mark Zuckerberg likes his privacy, but he’s in an increasingly public battle with a would-be neighbor in Palo Alto, Calif., that threatens to expose details of his personal life and conduct. New court documents were filed on Wednesday in a continuing lawsuit against Mr. Zuckerberg, the Facebook co-founder and chief executive, revealing a dispute that touches on various hot buttons of boom-time Silicon Valley: privacy, networking, precious real estate, and the pairing of youth and affluence. In one sworn document, a real estate broker for the man suing Mr. Zuckerberg testified that Mr. Zuckerberg’s own real estate broker referred to...

Archaeology shows that these fierce women also smoked pot, got tattoos, killed—and loved—men. The Amazons got a bum rap in antiquity. They wore trousers. They smoked pot, covered their skin with tattoos, rode horses, and fought as hard as the guys. Legends sprang up like weeds. They cut off their breasts to fire their bows better! They mutilated or killed their boy children! Modern (mostly male) scholars continued the confabulations. The Amazons were hard-core feminists. Man haters. Delinquent mothers. Lesbians. Drawing on a wealth of textual, artistic, and archaeological evidence, Adrienne Mayor, author of The Amazons, dispels these myths and...

This year, Facebook purchased the mobile-messaging application WhatsApp for $19 billion, or about $350 million per employee and $40 per user, only some of whom even pay the $1 annual fee for the advertisement-free platform. But what was perhaps most remarkable about Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp was that the start-up was making any money in the first place. In recent years, Facebook has shelled out 10-figure sums for Instagram and the virtual-reality headset maker Oculus V.R., both of which had scant or no revenue. Ditto for the safe-sexting-enabler Snapchat, which reportedly turned down a $3 billion offer from Mark Zuckerberg....

Anywhere from several hundred to several thousand bicyclists are expected to ride through Palo Alto tonight, potentially causing significant traffic delays, police said. Organized as the "San Jose Bike Party," the cyclists are scheduled between 8 p.m. and midnight to pedal through Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Palo Alto before turning around at Stanford University, police said.

We need more parking in Palo Alto. But residents also want less traffic. This challenge has been with us for a decade. And to solve it, urban planners have tilted toward the less-is-better "new urbanism" philosophy, claiming that if cities provide less parking, the public will find other ways to go shopping, i.e., using public transit. And voila -- fewer cars! Except the problem isn't solved, and there certainly isn't enough public transit to get us from our homes to the stores.

Despite lingering controversy, a busy stretch of Arastradero Road in Palo Alto will remain three lanes of traffic indefinitely, the city council decided Monday night.

Purse flies into vehicle after altercation in downtown Palo AltoA woman who was struck with a milkshake and angrily threw her purse at a vehicle full of teenagers lost $2,000 after the handbag flew into the open vehicle window, Palo Alto police said Monday. The incident started Sunday, June 24, just before midnight, Sgt. Brian Philip said. The woman was walking east on University Avenue near Rudy's Pub when a white Range Rover full of male teenagers driving recklessly southbound on High Street approached. One of the occupants allegedly threw a vanilla milkshake and struck the woman as she approached...

A winery owner, a tech executive and venture capitalists are among the Texas governor's local backersWant to meet Rick Perry? The Republican governor from Texas will be at the Four Seasons in East Palo Alto for a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser on Friday during his first trip to the Bay Area since declaring his candidacy for president. Perry's campaign says the GOP candidate has no public appearances scheduled for the region. He has a packed schedule, with three fundraisers on Thursday (in San Diego, Orange County and Los Angeles) and three more on Friday (in Bakersfield, Fresno and East Palo Alto). But...

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Former Credit Suisse First Boston star banker Frank Quattrone surrendered to federal authorities Wednesday morning and will face criminal charges, prosecutors said. James Comey, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, will unveil the charges at a 1 p.m. ET press conference. Quattrone, a former star banker for CSFB, allegedly advised his colleagues in late 2000 to destroy documents while regulators were investigating the ways Wall Street investment banks were doling out shares of lucrative initial public offerings. The former banker is charged in a three-count criminal complaint with obstruction of justice, document destruction...

Obama left a $30,400-a-plate fundraiser in a wealthy neighborhood in the San Francisco area on Thursday and walked across the street to greet a bunch of kids who were standing on the edge of the curb holding a sign that told the president how much they love him.

Palo Alto's new elementary school math curriculum gets mixed reviews from parents, according to results of a recent survey. A survey of teachers also found disagreement as to the new program's effectiveness and ease of use. Fifty-five percent of teachers responding to the survey agreed with the statement, "I have found the Everyday Math materials to be an improvement to our elementary math program," while 45 percent disagreed. A greater number of parents (52 percent) are regularly helping their children with math homework than a year ago (46 percent), according to the 472 parents who responded to the 2010 Elementary...

EAST PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) -- The three people killed on board a small plane that went down in a Northern California neighborhood were all employees of Tesla Motors Inc. The twin-engine Cessna 310 crashed in a residential area of East Palo Alto on Wednesday morning after hitting some power lines. It had just taken off from Palo Alto Airport in heavy fog.

EAST PALO ALTO, Calif. -- A controversy was brewing in East Palo Alto Tuesday night after a police detective made apparently joking comments through his Facebook account saying “open carry” advocates who visibly carry guns in public should be shot. Now East Palo Alto has become a reluctant testing ground for a battle of constitutional amendments: one police officer's 'freedom of speech' versus a group’s 'right to bear arms.' Area resident Adnan Shahab is an “open carry” advocate who frequently goes out in public displaying an unloaded gun on his belt. Such activity is legal in California with certain restrictions,...

It appears Victor Frost isn't the only Palo Alto panhandler willing to fight to defend his turf. On Monday, police said, one female beggar drew a knife and threatened to stab another who had taken her favorite spot, in front of Starbucks on University Avenue. Terry Barber, 51, was arrested and booked into jail on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, police Sgt. Wayne Benitez said. Authorities were called to the scene at about 3:30 p.m. by the victim, a wheelchair-bound woman who said she had been threatened with what looked like a butcher knife, Benitez said. She said...

Tesla Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy on Thursday finalized a landmark $465 million loan agreement that will allow the electric car maker to build a power train manufacturing plant in Palo Alto. The agreement also paves the way for Tesla Motors to build a facility in Southern California where it will manufacture its upcoming all-electric Model S sedan. It is only the second loan agreement the Department of Energy has signed with an "advanced technology vehicle manufacturer" under a program created in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The federal agency first reached a $5.9 billion...

EAST PALO ALTO -- Alberto Alvarez should be put to death for murdering an East Palo Alto police officer nearly four years ago, a San Mateo County jury decided Tuesday. The same jury of six men and six women convicted Alvarez, 26, last month of first-degree murder with the special circumstance of murdering a police officer. On Tuesday, the jury chose death for the East Palo Alto resident rather than life in prison without parole. A judge will officially sentence Alvarez on Feb. 2. "It was the verdict we were seeking because of the aggravating factors in the case -...

Palo Alto, CA – The City of Palo Alto and Tesla Motors announced today that Tesla will develop and manufacture electric vehicle components in a renovated building in the Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto. Tesla, the only automaker that is already producing and selling highway-capable electric vehicles, will lease an approximately 350,000-square-foot building on a 23-acre parcel at 3500 Deer Creek Road. The facility will supply all-electric powertrain solutions to Tesla Motors vehicles and other automakers, greatly accelerating the availability of mass-market EVs. The world's premier EV manufacturer will also move its corporate headquarters from San Carlos to the...

Two days after a Gunn High School student killed herself on the Caltrain tracks in Palo Alto, another student tried to the same Thursday night at the same tracks, but his mother stopped him just in time. This morning, Palo Alto Police Agent Dan Ryan confirmed the boy attends Gunn High School and was believed to still be in a hospital today recovering from his suicide attempt — two other Gunn High students killed themselves on the same Caltrain tracks within the last month. At about 7:45 p.m. on Thursday — at the same time members of the Palo Alto...

Palo Alto Police Chief Lynne Johnson has again defended her department against charges of racial profiling, saying there's no conclusive evidence of it in the demographic data it collects about traffic stops.