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DEKLE BEACH, Fla. >> Tropical Storm Hermine was intensifying Saturday as it moved slowly up the Atlantic Coast with heavy rains, wind and storm surges making a mess of the holiday. Hermine (her-MEEN) already caused 2 deaths, damaged homes and businesses and left hundreds of thousands without electricity from Florida to Virginia. “This is not a beach weekend for anyone in the Mid-Atlantic to the northeast,” said Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. At 2 p.m. Saturday, Hermine was centered 90 miles east of Duck, North Carolina, with top sustained winds of 70 mph (110 kph), moving east at 10 mph (17 kph). Tropical Storm Waings were in effect as fa...

Thousands of Califoia’s foster care kids may be overdrugged with psychotropic medications, often without medical follow-up or a legally required approval from a judge or parent, according to a stinging report by the Califoia State Auditor. “The state and counties have failed to adequately oversee the prescribing of these medications,” wrote auditor Elaine M. Howle. The long-awaited report, released in August by State Auditor Elaine Howle, mirrors many findings of Bay Area News Group’s investigative series “Drugging Our Kids.” Those stories, which appeared in Southe Califoia News Group publications, including this one, highlighted how only 10 percent of the state’s 1,280 highest prescribers w...

Rishi Sharma is hoping local veterans will help him with his mission to interview combat veterans of World War II. The 18-year-old Aguora Hills resident has completed more than 100 interviews and is shifting his attention to the Inland Empire. The recent high school graduate has decided to defer his college education so that he can conduct daily interviews. “When I first started, I was an armchair historian about WWII. I knew more than the average person, but delving into this, there’s an amazing amount of raw information,” he said. “After each interview, the picture becomes slightly more clearer of what they faced.” Through his nonprofit, Heroes of the Second World War, Sharma is conductin...

The “Beach Pantry,” stocked with caed beans, soups, grape juice and other goods, is a new resource at Cal State Long Beach for students who find themselves unable to cover the combined costs of study and meals. The pantry has been open since the Aug. 22 begiing of the campus’ fall term. Cal State Long Beach’s student govement, with help from a Lakewood charity called Food Finders, created the stash of nonperishable foods for students enduring short- or long-term difficulties. Food insecurity is actually a fairly widespread problem on Cal State University campuses; university officials reported in February that some 23 percent of students within the Cal State system experience food insecurity...

SANTA ANA >> Angels star outfielder Mike Trout was not injured in a car accident on the 55 Freeway Wednesday night. The Orange County Fire Authority responded to a pair of separate but related crashes each involving two vehicles at 8:50 p.m. in the southbound lane of the 55 Freeway at McFadden Avenue, Capt. Larry Kurtz said. Emergency persoel had to cut one person from a vehicle using the Jaws of Life, Kurtz said. Two people were injured. One victim went to Hoag Hospital and the other was transported to Orange County Global Medical Center, Kurtz said. Photos from the scene showed a white Chevy Sonic and a black Mercedes sedan with damage. Information about their medical conditions was...

TARZANA >> Los Angeles police responded to Chris Brown’s residence in Tarzana Tuesday and later served a search warrant on the home as the singer took to social media to deny any wrongdoing and to condemn police. At a news conference Tuesday afteoon, LAPD Lt. Chris Ramirez said police were serving a search warrant on the home, and an unknown number of people were exiting the residence. The house is located in a posh, hillside neighborhood of one-and two-story homes that are nearly all protected by locked iron gates. A call initially came at 3:11 a.m. from the 5000 block of Corbin Avenue, police said earlier. “It came out as a female requesting help,” Officer Drake Madison of LAPD’s Me...

A man in his 40s was shot to death early Tuesday moing in Long Beach’s Zaferia neighborhood, according to authorities. Officers responded to the 1600 block of Hile Avenue around 4:45 a.m. when they got a call about a shooting that had just happened and ended with someone lying in the street, police said. When they arrived, officers found a man with a gunshot wound to the upper torso, Long Beach police spokesman Sgt. Brad Johnson said. The man was unresponsive, according to police. A Long Beach Fire Department crew determined the man was dead, Johnson said. Police said the shooting is still under investigation, and it’s unclear at this point if it was gang-related. No arrests have been made....

An estimated 75,000 students will retu to classes in Long Beach Unified today, and police are urging motorists and pedestrians to be safe out on the road. Drivers, police say: Yield the right of way to pedestrians in crosswalks, do not pass cars that are stopped for pedestrians, obey speed limits, stop for school buses with red lights flashing and don’t drive distracted. Pedestrians: Yield to vehicles if you are outside the crosswalk, and do not cross between intersections controlled by traffic signals. And finally, parents: Do not double park in front of school, follow school drop-off procedures, and teach your child to always cross the street at a crosswalk. It is equally important for pe...

ONTARIO >> The once-vacant and quiet Meredith property between Vineyard and Archibald avenues began bustling with commercial activity Monday as officials dedicated QVC’s first West Coast distribution center with an opening ceremony. The 1-million-square-foot QVC warehouse was filled with a sea of empty shelving racks Monday, but trucks bringing inventory had arrived and officials expected to begin shipping product out from Ontario this week. They expect to ramp up the operation by the holiday shopping season. The new facility should shrink delivery times up to four days, Jim Reid, vice president of customer logistics, said. “We want to speed that process up for our West Coast customer...

A Labor Day tradition, this year’s Conquer the Bridge Race over the Vincent Thomas Bridge will get a cadenced sound track this year as hundreds of sailors in town for LA Fleet Week join the challenge. “They’ll run as part of teams and formations, they’re supposed to be in cadence,” said Michael-Patrick Hogue, producer of the aual Labor Day race now in its eighth year. Also participating Monday along with the Navy will be members of the Coast Guard and Marine Corps. Online registration ($50 entry fee) remains open until Thursday night at www.active.com and, after that, will be available through Road Ruer Sports, 25359 Crenshaw Blvd. (across from Mimi’s Cafe) Torrance, (310-326-8530, Ext. 2) a...

LONG BEACH (CNS) - One of two men charged in the shooting death of a 19- year-old man in Long Beach appeared in court Monday but did not enter a plea. Edgar Miguel Espinoza, 18, of Downey, was arrested in San Diego Thursday in coection with the killing of Nick Cubas. Cubas, also of Downey, was found dead about 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 4 in the area of Willow Street and the San Gabriel River, according to the Long Beach Police Department, which has not released additional details. Espinoza appeared in a Long Beach courtroom Monday where a judge ordered him held without bail. His arraignment was postponed to Sept. 14. Espinoza and co-defendant Rueben Alexander Ortega, 19, of Lakewood, are both charg...

LOS ANGELES — Attoeys for a coalition of seven Los Angeles County cities will try again Tuesday to file a request for an accelerated hearing on a lawsuit filed last week on behalf of taxpayers conceing the ballot language for Measure M, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s proposed half-cent county sales tax ballot action. The Los Angeles Superior Court petition filed by the cities of Carson, Commerce, Norwalk, Torrance, Santa Fe Springs, Ranchos Palos Verdes and Signal Hill alleges that the ballot label for Measure M is misleading and does not include the actual 1 percent total rate of the tax to be imposed. Lawyers for the petitioners arrived too late to Judge Mary H. Strobel’s cour...

May 2014: The Teachers Association of Long Beach distributed surveys to its members to determine how many classrooms in Long Beach Unified experience stifling heat. TALB received 200 responses from teachers with mixed results. September 2014: The district asked schools to curtail physical activity and canceled all nonleague and league competition for two days. Additionally, Long Beach Unified communicated with parents about “hot weather precautions, including the need to stay hydrated.” Parents, meanwhile, attend a school board meeting, pleading with the district to do something about the lack of air conditioning in older buildings across the district, which they say creates an unhealthy lea...

In Long Beach, school isn’t cool. That’s generally speaking. It’s cool at about 40 percent of the 87 school buildings in the Long Beach Unified School District that are lucky, or mode, enough to have air-conditioned classrooms. It’s no sweat for students at, say, Chavez Elementary School, built in 2002, or Powell K-8 School, built in 2000, or Signal Hill’s Nelson Middle School built four years ago, or McBride High School, built in 2013. But when students retu to class Wednesday at schools built during the two biggest boom eras in Long Beach history — 27 schools were constructed in the two years following the 1933 Long Beach Earthquake, and 25 opened between 1950 and 1959 to serve the then-ne...

Long Beach’s Plaing Commission will decide Thursday whether to allow plans and permitting for the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center to move forward. If all the approvals are granted, the $103 million project would move on to the City Council, then the state Coastal Commission. The center is designed to replace the Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool, which was to down after engineers determined the natatorium was in danger of collapse in the event of an earthquake. The proposed replacement, designed by architect Michael Rotondi, includes two Olympic-sized pools (one inside a structure, the other outside), an indoor diving well, a recreational pool and other amenities. If approved, a transparent oval ...

ISTANBUL >> One Turkish soldier was killed and eight others wounded in two separate blasts Sunday in the country’s Kurdish-dominated southeast, and Kurdish militants launched a rocket-propelled grenade at a civilian airport, officials and the state-run news agency said. The Anadolu Agency said one soldier was killed and three were wounded after a roadside bomb was triggered remotely by rebels linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in the Hakkari province. In another attack, five civilian village guards were wounded in Siirt province after their van hit an improvised explosive device on a road, the news agency said, blaming PKK for the blast. Earlier Sunday, Kurdish rebels, ap...

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. >> Tourist John Gleason crept through the grass, four small children close behind, inching toward a bull elk with antlers like small trees at the edge of a meadow in Yellowstone National Park. “They’re going to give me a heart attack,” said Gleason’s mother-in-law, Barbara Henry, as the group came within about a dozen yards of the massive animal. The elk’s ears then pricked up, and it eyed the children and Washington state man before leaping up a hillside. Other tourists — likewise ignoring rules to keep 25 yards from wildlife — picked up the pursuit, snapping pictures as they pressed forward and forced the animal into headlong retreat. Record visitor n...

Hamstrung by strict limits on political contributions, Califoia lawmakers have found a way to continue to extract large sums from some of Sacramento’s most powerful special interests. Increasingly, they’re using “ballot measure committees,” little-known and barely regulated accounts that are supposed to promote or oppose state and local initiatives but in practice are paying for consultants and polling firms, new suits and trips to Mexico. And the money for the politicians’ perks comes in the form of five-figure donations from the same special interests that state rules were intended to curtail. An analysis by Digital First Media, which includes this news organization, shows that the number...

EXPOSITION PARK >> The 13th aual FYF Fest got started this year under cool temperatures as thousands of music fans came to Exposition Park to see more than 30 bands perform on several stages during day one of the festival. Saturday’s headliner was Long Beach native Kendrick Lamar who was joined on the eclectic bill by fellow hip hop artist Vince Staples and the psychedelic Australian band Tame Impala. • Photos: Inside day one of FYF Fest 2016 The festival, which started in 2004 as a cluster of punk-rock-oriented shows at various venues in Echo Park, has grown into one of the most popular area music events and the Saturday crowd seemed to be into the mix of well-known acts and up-and-co...

PIGEON PASS >> Want to know what it cost to buy more than two-dozen acres for the DonkeyLand wild-burro rescue operation in Reche Canyon? It’s no trick question. Just ask Bob Barker. The former “Price is Right” host donated $400,000 from his DJ&T Foundation to help the small animal-rescue operation run by Amber Levoe and her father, Phil Saavedra, acquire land of its own. The two work tirelessly on behalf of DonkeyLand, an organization they and others founded about five years ago on rented land, in a secluded area north of Moreno Valley, with no identifying sign. When orphaned baby burros are brought to them, and Saavedra, 67, stays up all night, feeding them a special milk-replac...