Archive: Inland Empire

There will be a ceremony on Thursday at Cal State San Bernardino.

The new owners are meeting the staff in a town hall session this morning. More than 70 were laid off yesterday.

The LAT flooded the zone, broke news online and had 29 different contributors on shootings stories in the print paper this morning.

"One trait of journalists is that we accumulate a lot of paper."

Reports are that Ontario will reimburse LA for its investment at the airport and settle a lawsuit alleging poor management.

It's going to be more chilly than usual for folks staying out overnight in Pasadena for the Rose Parade. Kind of ironic for a parade that has functioned throughout its history as a promotional piece for balmy Southern California cities to sell their mid-winter allure to frigid Easterners and Midwesterners.

New publisher who took over for Aaron Kushner says 'the business is not profitable' and announces about 100 layoffs, none in the newsrooms in OC or Riverside.

The cougar kittens that were extracted from under a car in Burbank in 2011 — saved from curious residents who were poking at them with broomsticks — now live at a sanctuary in Riverside. An update.

Every summer day at dusk, thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats blast out from under a bridge beside an orange grove in Riverside County.

Neighbors were shocked to learn that the absentee owner of the decrepit shack on Eucalyptus Avenue was the mayor of Los Angeles.

No decision has been made about giving Limbaugh a column, but subscribers were asked if they would stick around.

The guy with no shirt on who asked out reporter Courtney Friel while both were live on the KTLA air last week is a new Inland Empire celebrity. Meet the ex-Marine behind the skin.

A takeout by the Desert Sun in Palm Springs finds that since 2007, 33 Marines have died in crashes on roads near the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms. The death toll is higher than that incurred by Twentynine Palms Marines in the Middle East, the paper says.

Inland Valley Bulletin columnist David Allen spotted the faded Sunkist logo that reappeared during demolition of a century-old packing house in Upland. "This sign was like an apparition, the Ghost of Citrus Past."

A second round of layoffs at the Riverside Press-Enterprise since the purchase last fall by Freedom Communications includes back-office, newsroom, information technology and production workers. But new reporter hires will mean no net loss of newsroom head count. Plus an update on the LA Register.

Most of the jobs lost are in sales, finance and circulation departments that duplicate functions also provided at the Orange County Register. No “frontline journalists” would be affected, Aaron Kushner says obliquely.

Freedom Communications, the parent company of the Orange County Register, today completed its purchase of the Riverside Press-Enterprise for $27.25 million.

A.H. Belo Corp. announced today that its deal to sell the Riverside Press-Enterprise to Aaron Kushner's Freedom Communications did not close Friday as scheduled. Belo is looking at its options, while Kushner says the deal will go through.

The Wheel Inn truck stop beside Interstate 10 has abruptly closed. The giant dinosaurs remain, though their future might be uncertain.

Sarah Horn, a voice teacher in Riverside, just happened to be sitting near the front of the Hollywood Bowl. She knew the words to the song from "Wicked," and now her video is sweeping YouTube.

Brush conditions around Camarillo are like October, fire officials say — and it's only May. More than 6,500 acres have scorched, forcing evacuations, but no homes have been destroyed. Burned agricultural buildings in the strawberry fields near Cal State Channel Islands have raised concerns about toxic smoke.

The Riverside Press-Enterprise is the latest California newspaper to decide that it no longer needs the cost and hassle of its own building. Riverside County has agreed to buy it for about $30 million.

Abel Rodriguez would drive from his home in Fontana to chase balls for free at Madrid's summer practices at UCLA. On a lark he flew to Spain last month and sat in the snow beside the team's training complex for hours — until his luck changed. "Amigo! What are you doing here?" the coach asked.

MacKay died Tuesday of wounds incurred during the firefight with fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner outside a cabin in the 7 Oaks area of the San Bernardino Mountains. He lived in Redlands and was assigned to the Yucaipa station. MacKay is survived by his wife, 7-year-old daughter and four-month-old son.

Associated Press reported that a California driver's license with the name Christopher Dorner and other personal items were found in the basement of the burned-out cabin next to the remains. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says the episode appears to be over, but that tests are needed to be certain so that LAPD targets and families can relax.

Several reports say that Christopher Dorner is the gunman who died in a vacation cabin in the 7 Oaks area off highway 38, about 10 miles down the hill from Big Bear. But both the San Bernardino County sheriff's spokeswoman and the LAPD insisted that Dorner's death has not been confirmed and that no body has been recovered. A San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy was killed in the shootout and another was wounded.

The video is from the Sports Chalet in Torrance on Feb .1, two days before the first two of the murders that authorities attribute to rogue ex-cop Christopher Dorner. It shows a man who is apparently Dorner getting two scuba tanks re-filled with air and purchasing a third tank.

Crain, an 11-year veteran of the Riverside Police Department, was the officer killed the morning of Feb. 7 when allegedly ambushed by rogue ex-LAPD cop Christopher Dorner. He was an 11-year veteran of the Riverside PD, a Marine veteran of Kuwait, and leaves a wife and two children.

It appears that fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner abandoned his Nissan truck on a fire road above Big Bear Lake due to a broken axle. Of course, that doesn't explain why he lit the truck on fire before heading into the forest, but it suggests that abandoning the truck and setting out on foot just before a snowstorm hit the area may not have been his first choice.

The Riverside County death certificate for Huell Howser says that the television host and producer died early on the morning of January 7 from metastatic prostate cancer. Howser was cremated and his remains scattered off the coast of Los Angeles County on Jan. 9.

Citrus growers in the Inland Empire fired up seldom-used smudge pots, ran water in the orchards and tried to create wind between the trees in desperate moves on Saturday night and this morning to protect the fruit from freezing temperatures. Smoke could be seen rising this morning from burners in citrus areas such as Redlands and Mentone.

Board of Public Works president Andrea Alarcon's future as an LA political figure got a little more clouded today, at least temporarily.

The New York Times says it got questions to Nakoula Basseley Nakoula in federal custody and, with his comments plus interviews with "church and law enforcement officials and more than a dozen people who worked on the movie," can conclude that "the making of the film is a bizarre tale of fake personas and wholesale deception."

At least one high-spending SuperPAC achieved its goal in the November election. That SuperPAC belongs to Michael Bloomberg, the media mogul and billionaire mayor of New York City. It spent $3 million to defeat Rep.Joe Baca.

AP has tracked down Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Coptic Christian near Los Angeles who says he was involved in the film but who denies he is the missing "Sam Bacile." AP says he pleaded no contest in 2010 to federal bank fraud charges in California, was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and ordered not to use computers or the Internet without approval from his probation officer.

Filmmaker Sam Bacile, who talked to Associated Press Tuesday by phone "from an undisclosed location," admits provocation was the intent. "Islam is a cancer," he told the Wall Street Journal. "The movie is a political movie. It's not a religious movie."

Southern California's air quality agency has spoken: the rotten egg smell that wafted over much of the region starting Sunday has been traced to the distant desert lake.

Late in the day, the South Coast Air Quality Management District posted an update in which it acknowledged the possibility that dead fish at the Salton Sea are the source of the rotten-egg smell reported all day Monday. The update noted, however, that "it is highly unusual for odors to remain strong up to 150 miles from their source."

So many residents across the inland parts of the Los Angeles Basin began complaining about a bad, sulfur-like smell this morning — even clogging 911 phone lines — that officials were forced to look into it. Read the memo from an AQMD scientist briefing his board members.

Today's usual afternoon thundershowers over the San Gabriels and the high desert smushed down into the basin this time, drenching places like Altadena and Studio City in some pretty heavy rain. Then it lifted and many rainbows were had, including one over Dodger Stadium. Fun diversion for many, judging by social media, unless you were caught in the places where summer t-storms turn into flash floods.

Frisco was led to safety by his owners when a fire burned close to the family home. But he might have suffered stress and smoke inhalation.

Rodney King had PCP, cocaine and marijuana in his system and was probably in a drug- and alcohol-induced delirium when he fell into his swimming pool and drowned in June, the San Bernardino County coroner's report said Thursday.

The city council of San Bernardino voted today to seek bankruptcy protection after being told the city faces a $45 million deficit and might not be able to make payroll next month.

U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter gave the commencement speech last month at Pomona College and hinted that he may know a thing or two about a long ago prank at Claremont's Bridges Auditorium.

Banfield, a television presence in Los Angeles for 43 years, had cancer. Also: Cindy Frazier, city editor.

Last night's meeting dragged on into this morning, but the Pomona City Council found a way to keep the city's lone public library open for another year.

The Inland Empire-area papers of the Los Angeles News Group are leaving their relatively new printing plant and will now be run off the presses at the Orange County Register. Plus: the San Bernardino Sun will actually move a newsroom back into the city's center.

It was after the bars closed Sunday morning in Redlands. An argument broke out, then mini-skirted women began throwing punches and kicking. Somebody pasted the whole thing on YouTube, bare asses and all.

The payoff for all that excitement and disruption involved in moving a 340-ton hunk of rock from Riverside County to Wilshire Boulevard comes June 24. That's the day the Levitated Mass exhibit will debut at a dedication ceremony on the back lawn of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Free admission if the rock passed through your Zip code.

The dateline is San Bernardino, where followers of Arellano's taco chronicles know is the home of Mitla Cafe, the Route 66 roadhouse where Taco Bell reportedly got its original taco recipe.

Its earliest-known mention in American letters came in an 1899 Los Angeles Times story about life in Mexico City, says Gustavo Arellano. His new book is "Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America."

The 340-ton boulder that's headed for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is attracting crowds of fans — and potential new visitors to the museum — as it rolls...

The 340-ton boulder that is destined to sit on the lawn behind the Los Angeles County Museum of Art began its long-delayed trek last night, after suitable festivities at the Stone Valley Materials quarry in Riverside County.

Dreier, the chairman of the House Rules committee, is another congressional veteran to see his career altered, and possibly ended, by redistricting.

Photographer Gary Leonard is really looking forward to the move of that 340-ton boulder to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

With politicians in Riverside and San Bernardino counties clamoring for an explanation, the local Caltrans chief has re-assigned the engineer on the Interstate 10 repaving project that closed several lanes of the freeway at the height of Sunday's westbound rush.

Sunday's Caltrans-induced traffic jam on Interstate 10 coming back in from Palm Springs was so bad that at least one group of music industry types headed to the Grammy Awards flew into Santa Monica Airport.

Caltrans work narrowed the westbound lanes of Interstate 10 in Banning Pass on Sunday afternoon and evening, creating a monster backup.

Jerry Lewis, the dean of the California Republicans in Congress, confirmed today what's been around for a few days now

December is The Glam Issue for Inland Empire magazine.

After some delays, the 340-ton boulder destined to be part of an exhibit at LACMA is now scheduled to leave the Riverside area quarry on Oct. 25. Wait until you see the route map.

A new study from the Center for Health Reporting at USC says flatly that when the Big One hits Southern California, "hospitals won't be ready."

Prosecutors today charged two Rialto fathers, Louie Sanchez, 29, and Marvin Norwood, 30, with felony mayhem, assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury and battery with serious bodily injury in connection with the opening day attack on Giants fan Bryan Stow at Dodger Stadium.

Riverside County sheriff's picked up Rodney King this afternoon while he was driving in Moreno Valley.

How do you bring a 340-ton rock to Wilshire Boulevard? First you need a transporter with 208 wheels, and about fifteen men.

Caitlin Barron, a Riverside County Animal Services officer who rescued an injured red-tail hawk from the 60 Freeway in May, released the healed bird a couple of days ago on Jack Rabbit Trail in the Badlands west of Beaumont.

Pomona had apparently gotten used to being the fifth most populous city in Los Angeles County. Falling behind Palmdale and Lancaster hurts.

Inland empire columnist David Allen got to Monday night's Dodgers game in the second inning and left in the eighth, but he can say he successfully took MetroLink and the Union Station shuttle.

U.S. District Court Judge Virginia A. Phillips in Riverside ruled tonight that the military’s ban on openly gay service members violates the 1st Amendment rights of lesbians and gay men.

Bennet Kessler, the dean of Eastern Sierra journalists, has covered more than her share of crashes on U.S. highway 395. "A horrible scene of death, fire and suffering," she wrote in today's story.

Pakistan now says the American it arrested recently is not Adam Gadahn, the Al Qaeda spokesman from Orange County, but Abu Yahya Mujahideen Adam of Pennsylvania....

AP is reporting that the Southern Californa-bred spokesman for Al Qaeda has been arrested in recent days by Pakistani intelligence officers in Karachi.

A Channel 7 viewer sent the station this clip of a tornado funnel touching down near Riverside

Henck was known in the San Bernardino Mountains as the builder and manager of the Santa's Village amusement park in Skyforest, and as a keeper of the mountain communities' past.

Dennis Cozzalio, the cinemaphile and baseball obsessive who blogs at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, is sponsoring a group outing to the Mission Tiki Drive-in in Montclair. (The...

Chuck Mindenhall bids adieu as editor-in-chief of the Inland Empire Weekly: "It's just that me and the IE are fed up with each other." Roberto Hernandez comes to bat next....

Bob Ashburn rescued his neighbor Tom from a trailer engulfed in flames at the Diamond Valley RV Park in San Jacinto. From Watershed News: "At first I couldn't see anybody,"...

It took alpine-trained volunteers and a helicopter to do it, but Andrew Hillery, 24, and Chris Cannizzaro, 23, both of Playa Del Rey, were collected today from the deep snow...

Here we go again -- more hot and windy weather on the way. Guy McCarthy at Watershed News gathers the details: Just a few days after a cold front contributed...

I just received email saying the axe is being swung this afternoon at the Press-Enterprise....

Our columnist Bill Boyarsky has been on the national campaign trail this year for Truthdig, and as he used do to for the Times as a columnist and political reporter,...

Los Angeles-based Washington Post reporter William Booth filed a good piece last week about Moe, the chimpanzee missing near Devore, but I'm guessing he got burned by the copy desk....

That's coming from Paul Oberjuerge, who lost his job as a sports columnist in the recent putsch so may not be the most objective observer. But he also worked for...

Wes Hughes, a former editor at various levels of the Los Angeles Times, was a city editor and columnist at the San Bernardino Sun until last week's layoffs. In the...

Paul Oberjuerge was writing his column for the San Bernardino Sun when he got the call. They were "eliminating the position of sports columnist for the Inland group.� These days,...