press-news

MONTEREY PARK >> A memorial service for Mexican music superstar Juan Gabriel is scheduled for Tuesday at a Catholic Church in Monterey Park. The service is set for 5 to 9 p.m. at St. Stephen Martyr Catholic Church, 320 W. Garvey Ave. Gabriel, 66, whose inteational popularity spaed multiple generations, died of a heart attack Aug. 27 at his home in Santa Monica. He was known for his powerful ballads and a commanding stage presence punctuated by often-flamboyant costumes. His death came less than three days after he performed a two-hour set at the Los Angeles Forum as part of his sold-out “MeXXico Es Todo Tour.” Gabriel, whose real name was Alberto Aquilera Valadez, wrote more than 1,50...

The sound of applause has scarcely died down in the Capitol after last week’s vote to significantly expand Califoia’s requirements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Proponents who steered the groundbreaking legislation are still basking in the afterglow of an effort that—after seeming on the brink of defeat—deftly mustered unexpected support and reaffirmed the state’s inteational leadership on climate change. But such is the unsentimentality of politics: Someone has to pop the pretty balloons and sweep up the confetti. For all that was achieved by the passage of SB 32—extending the original 2006 law and setting a new target of reducing statewide emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels b...

STINSON BEACH >> The sleek, flapping salmon that fishermen hauled aboard the rolling Salty Lady charter boat near the Golden Gate Bridge were the survivors of the survivors. After five years of drought, the native Chinook salmon that the men were reeling in this past week were there only because state and federal agencies have stepped in to do much of the salmon-raising that Califoia’s overtapped rivers once did. Most of the fish were bo at the agencies’ hatcheries and carried in trucks for release downstream. As the men watched and waited for one of their fishing poles to dip sharply, Victor Gonella, president of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, remembered his childhood in the 195...

A “felony stop” in front of a Los Angeles Inteational Airport terminal Sunday netted three auto theft suspects and forced the evacuation of an entire terminal as a security precaution, authorities said. People either ran or were escorted out of the terminal onto a tarmac at Terminal 3, said airport spokeswoman Mary Grady. “Some people got over-conceed and went onto the tarmac,” Grady said. She was not sure if police had directed people to the tarmac. “The situation was and is quite dynamic, and we are still putting together exact details,” she said. “The bottom line is that we evacuated the entire terminal.” Officer Rob Pedregon of the Los Angeles Airport Police Department said the incident...

LOS ANGELES >> The music manager who helped introduce N.W.A to the masses has died. Jerry Heller was 75 years old. Heller’s cousin, Gary Ballen, says Heller died Friday night at a hospital in Thousand Oaks after suffering a heart attack while driving earlier in the day. Heller co-founded Ruthless Records with Eazy-E, which released N.W.A’s seminal album “Straight Outta Compton” in 1988, launching the West Coast gangsta rap movement. Ruthless was also behind such artists as J.J. Fad, Michel’le and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Actor Paul Giamatti played the veteran music manager in last year’s hit film “Straight Outta Compton.” Heller sued the film’s producers for defamation after its release,...

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...

A group of students at Rim of the World High School in Lake Arrowhead have created a stir for displaying Confederate flags, staked into the beds of their pickup trucks, in the school parking lot. On Friday, two Ford pickups, parked side-by-side, sat parked in the school parking lot, one Confederate flag and one American flag displayed in the bed of each truck. The black pickup also sported stickers from Patriot Alliance, an online retailer of clothing, National Rifle Association, and Donald Trump campaign signs. Also on Friday, Ruing Springs resident Jeifer Celise-Reyes, whose daughter began her freshman year at the high school last month, said she sent emails to school board president Cind...

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...

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...

The mother of Syed Rizwan Farook has denied in a court document that she had any knowledge and did not participate in the San Beardino Dec. 2 terrorist attack by Farook and wife Tashfeen Malik that killed 14 people and wounded 22. Neither Rafia Farook nor her daughter Saira Khan took took part “in any way with the tragic attack,” the court document said. The statement was included in a claim of interest filed Wednesday in federal court for the $280,756.17 in life insurance benefits left behind by Syed Farook, who died with Malik in a shootout with law enforcement a few hours after the deadly, Islamic State-inspired attack. The disputed money has not been paid out. It is in the custody of th...

EVERETT, Wash. >> In a surprise move, Donald Trump will travel to Mexico on Wednesday to meet with President Enrique Pena Nieto, just hours before the Republican delivers a highly anticipated speech on immigration. Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday night to say he looks “very much forward” to meeting with the Mexican leader. Pena Nieto’s office confirmed the meeting with its own tweet, saying the two men would meet privately. The unexpected trip comes as Trump seeks to clarify his stand on illegal immigration, a contentious issue that has been a centerpiece of his Republican presidential campaign. Trump has long called for deporting people currently living in the U.S. illegally and buil...

Suspended USC linebacker Osa Masina is under investigation by the Cottonwood Heights police department in Utah for an alleged sexual assault, a spokesman confirmed Tuesday. The investigation was first reported by a Fox affiliate television station in Salt Lake City. The alleged incident occurred in Salt Lake County in July. USC coach Clay Helton aounced on Monday that Masina would not travel with the Trojans for their season opener on Saturday against top-ranked Alabama in Arlington, Texas, due to an unspecified violation of team rules. Investigators from the Los Angeles police department were on campus last week and confirmed they are working with Cottonwood Heights police and on their own...

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...

LOS ANGELES >> Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein visited the Black Lives Matter encampment outside Los Angeles City Hall today where she said she agreed with the group’s demand that Mayor Eric Garcetti fire police Chief Charlie Beck. Stein pointed to the firing of police chiefs in other cities and said she came to Los Angeles City Hall today to “support the community that’s demanding justice by asking the police chief to step down.” “We need him to be replaced by someone who doesn’t simply dismiss death after death as being within police policy and refusing to even file charges,” Stein said. Beck in January did recommend that District Attoey Jackie Lacey file criminal char...

Seven southe Los Angeles County cities are suing Metro over its proposed half-cent sales tax increase on the Nov. 8 ballot, arguing the language is misleading and the agency didn’t specify most of the transportation projects it would fund. The ballot description takes a kitchen-sink approach, saying Measure M is needed “to improve freeway traffic flow/safety; repair potholes/sidewalks; repave local streets; earthquake retrofit bridges; synchronize signals; keep senior/disabled/student fares affordable; expand rail/subway/bus systems/ improve jobs/school/airport coections; and create jobs ...” But it doesn’t mention that the vast majority of transportation improvements won’t touch the southe...

SAN FRANCISCO >> Califoia’s $64 billion high-speed rail plan lacks reliable funding sources and is in danger of ending up with only one line that doesn’t coect to San Francisco or Los Angeles, members of a Congressional panel said Monday during a hearing. Proceeds from a state environment program that is supposed to help fund the project were far below expectations and private funding for the train has yet to materialize, Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Califoia Republican, said. “Where is the money going to come from,” LaMalfa asked Dan Richard, chairman of the rail authority’s board. Richard said private firms have expressed interest in the system but want to see the first leg up and ruing. Th...

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...

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 ...

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...

Between 1999 and 2013, Califoia’s Academic Performance Index boiled everything about the state’s K-12 public schools down to a single number between 200 and 1000. That’s going away in a new, more nuanced system that’s now under construction. In the old model, the desirability of neighborhoods or even whole communities in large part hinged on their API score. Careers were made or lost based on how far a school or district was from the magic 800 target number. And under the federal No Child Left Behind law, failure to steadily increase an API score — even an already high one — could mean dire trouble for a school or district. But the API was only based on the results of standardized tests tak...