FBI arrests campaign treasurer for Democratic politicians

The Orange County Register is reporting that federal authorities have arrested a Burbank-based campaign treasurer for a number of Democratic politicians, including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Garden Grove.

The story reported that Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, said Kinde Durkee of Durkee and Associates was arrested Friday by the FBI on a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento. The Register article said the treasurer was arrested on suspicion of mail fraud. Other local Democrats whom Durkee worked for include state Sen. Louis Correa and Assemblyman Jose Solorio, both of Santa Ana.

ALSO:

Shock over allegations that professor led motorcycle gang

Spreckels mansion death was a suicide, investigators conclude

San Diego lifeguards to watch for sharks over Labor Day weekend

-- Monte Morin

Star monkey spotted on flight from LAX

Spotting celebrities and their handlers on flights from LAX is a local pastime in Los Angeles, but some sightings are rarer than others.

Take the case of Crystal, the primate star of "Night at the Museum" and "The Hangover Part II." The furry thespian and her traveling companion, Tom Gunderson, caught the attention of passengers aboard American Airlines Flight 114 to Newark, N.J., on Saturday.

The 17-year-old capuchin monkey smiled for her fans and posed for camera phone stills as she and Gunderson strolled the aisle.

When asked if Crystal had to show a photo ID to board the flight, Gunderson said no. All she needs for her domestic and international trips ("Hangover Part II" was shot in Bangkok) is her CITES -- certificate of international trade of endangered species. However, Gunderson said capuchin monkeys were not endangered.

ALSO:

Shock over allegations that professor led motorcycle gang

Spreckels mansion death was a suicide, investigators conclude

San Diego lifeguards to watch for sharks over Labor Day weekend

-- Nancie Clare

Photo: Crystal. Credit: Nancie Clare / Los Angeles Times

Rug store owner showed porn to teenage intern, police say

The owner of Sirous and Sons Rug Gallery, 222 Ocean Ave. in Laguna Beach, was arrested Thursday for allegedly showing pornographic images to an underage intern.

The 17-year-old girl told police that Saied B. Maralan, 53, had shown her the images on his computer, Laguna Beach Police Lt. Jason Kravetz told OC Now.

According to police, the incidents happened in late February and early March. On March 4, police seized two computers that were analyzed for evidence.

Maralan is being held on $1-million bail at Orange County Jail.

ALSO:

Shock over allegations that professor led motorcycle gang

Spreckels mansion death was a suicide, investigators conclude

San Diego lifeguards to watch for sharks over Labor Day weekend

--Joanna Clay, Times Community News

Off-duty LAPD detective dies in motorcycle accident

A Los Angeles Police Department detective died after being struck by a truck while riding his personal motorcycle on the 110 Freeway near the 101 Freeway overpass, an LAPD spokeswoman said.

The 48-year-old detective, whose name was not released, worked in the Foothill Division, said Officer Norma Eisenman. He was off duty when the accident occurred Friday, she said.

The detective died at a hospital after the 11 a.m. incident.

Eisenman had no further details on the accident.

ALSO:

Shock over allegations that professor led motorcycle gang

Spreckels mansion death was a suicide, investigators conclude

San Diego lifeguards to watch for sharks over Labor Day weekend

-- Lisa Girion

Reader photos: Southern California Moments, Day 246

Light speed: "ConnerCoughenour" captures the streaking of city lights while cruising down Sunset Boulevard on Aug. 28.

Every day of 2011, we're featuring reader-submitted photos of Southern California Moments. Follow us on Twitter and visit the Southern California Moments homepage for more on this series.

Cajon Pass blaze started in freeway median, authorities say

A 1,200-acre brush fire that has destroyed several structures and forced the evacuation of 1,500 residents in the Cajon Pass started in the center median of Interstate 15 and quickly spread south into the area's dry vegetation, a San Bernardino County fire official said Saturday.

Tracey Martinez, San Bernardino County Fire Department spokeswoman, said it was still not clear whether the fire was started by a cigarette, an overheated car or other possible causes.

She said 900 firefighters deployed to the scene on Saturday had saved hundreds of homes and stopped the blaze from spreading, but hot spots remained. By early Saturday afternoon, the fire, which was first reported at 12:40 p.m. Friday, was 30% contained, officials said.

Two homes and several sheds and storage containers were destroyed, and two other homes were damaged, according to Bob Poole of the U.S. Forest Service. Two firefighters were recovering from injuries; one suffered from heat exhaustion, but second's injury was not fire-related, Poole said.

Officials were hoping to lift a mandatory evacuation order by 2 p.m. Saturday, Martinez said.

"The fire is not spreading currently," she said. “But the winds are erratic, and the potential for it to spread or flare up is still there."

Both northbound and southbound lanes were open on Interstate 15, which was closed by the fire for parts of Friday, but traffic was heavy, a typical Labor Day weekend condition in the Cajon Pass, the gateway to Las Vegas and the Colorado River.

Poole said more freeway closures were not expected.

ALSO:

Shock over allegations that professor led motorcycle gang

Spreckels mansion death was a suicide, investigators conclude

San Diego lifeguards to watch for sharks over Labor Day weekend

-- Teresa Watanabe

Photo: Smoke billows above a neighborhood in Oak Hills on Friday. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Once praised, sailor is ousted from Navy after romance

 
When Navy Petty Officer Joshua Hendershot thought the punishment meted out to him by his ship's captain was too severe, he appealed.

He knew he was going to be punished for having a fling with an ensign but he thought the captain, Cmdr. Christopher Alexander, was going too far.

In rejecting his appeal, Rear Adm. Thomas Rowden noted that "commanders imposing non-judicial punishment have wide discretion in evaluating evidence and determining facts."

Now Hendershot, 25, is out of the Navy, ousted by Alexander, who had praised his work just months earlier.

His discharge will keep him from qualifying for the GI Bill to pay for college. He's appealing.

-- Tony Perry in San Diego

Photo: Joshua Hendershot on the day he was ousted from the Navy. Credit: Tony Perry / Los Angeles Times

Beetle devours San Diego County oaks -- rest of state may be next

 
A hungry pest called the goldspotted oak borer is devouring enormous numbers of oak trees in San Diego County, and its devastation could spread to trees throughout California, according to researchers at UC Riverside.

More than 80,000 oak trees in the county have been killed in the past decade. Unless the march of the half-inch-long beetle is stopped, it could threaten 10 million acres of red oak woodlands in the state, researchers said.

"This may be the biggest oak mortality event since the Pleistocene (12,000 years ago)," UC Riverside natural resource specialist Tom Scott said in a report issued this week.

The goldspotted oak borer is native to Arizona but may have immigrated to California in a load of infested firewood, Scott said. Dead trees have been found from the backcountry communities of Descanso and Guatay to the seaside neighborhood of La Jolla.

So many trees have died in the Burnt Rancheria campground in the Cleveland National Forest that the U.S. Forest Service has erected shade structures for campers in lieu of what was once a canopy of coast live oaks.

The live oaks, black oaks and canyon live oaks seem defenseless against the goldspotted oak borer, and the beetle has no natural enemies to keep it in check.

The females lay eggs in the trees and the larvae burrow into the interrior. Adults bore through the bark. The trees turn brown and die.

The UC Riverside researchers, the UC Cooperative Extension, UC Agricultural and Natural Resources, the Forest Service and other agencies are working with woodcutters, arborists and consumers to discourage the transportation of infected wood from San Diego County to other locations.

Firewood production is one of the least regulated industries in California, said the researchers, who have received $635,000 of a $1.5-million federal grant to study the sudden oak death.

ALSO:

Shock over allegations that professor led motorcycle gang

Spreckels mansion death was a suicide, investigators conclude

San Diego lifeguards to watch for sharks over Labor Day weekend

-- Tony Perry in San Diego

Photo: A goldspotted oak borer. Credit: UC Riverside

Suspected bank robber found on bus bench -- a block away from bank

When a bank is robbed, local law enforcement and the FBI scour a large portion of the region for suspects. Sometimes that's not necessary.

A bank robbery suspect was arrested this week in San Diego -- sitting on a bus bench a block away from one of the banks he is suspected of robbing a day earlier.

Thomas Roy Amado, 49, was arrested on suspicion of robbing a Chase Bank branch and a Comerica Bank branch in a 15-minute spree on Wednesday. He was sitting a block away from the Comerica branch when he was arrested Thursday.

Police say an officer on the beat spotted him and noticed he fit the robbery suspect's description: bushy white hair, about 50 years old, wearing black pants and a black polo shirt with a red logo on the pocket, and carrying a white plastic bag.

ALSO:

Shock over allegations that professor led motorcycle gang

Spreckels mansion death was a suicide, investigators conclude

San Diego lifeguards to watch for sharks over Labor Day weekend

-- Tony Perry in San Diego

Bear looking for food roams La Cañada Flintridge neighborhood

Residents on Forest Green Drive in La Cañada Flintridge received an unexpected visitor anticipating trash day Thursday — an adult black bear in search of an easy meal.

Anjun Khan said that at around 10:30 p.m. Thursday, she and her neighbors by the La Cañada Flintridge Country Club had placed their trash cans out for collection. That’s when the bear arrived.

“When my husband went out to put our last bag of trash in our big trash bin, he saw the bear and he came running back inside,” Khan told the Valley Sun.

Khan said the bear had knocked over her neighbor’s trash can in search of a meal.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Deborah Herman said that the bear was a full-grown adult, and that despite deputies' efforts it didn’t move on until it was done eating.

Shock over allegations that professor led motorcycle gang

Spreckels mansion death was a suicide, investigators conclude

San Diego lifeguards to watch for sharks over Labor Day weekend

--Daniel Siegal, Times Community News

Photo: A bear makes its way back toward Angeles National Forest after dining on chickens in the backyard of a home on Bonita Vista Drive in La Cañada Flintridge. Credit: John Peterson

Saggy pants get Green Day singer kicked off Southwest plane

Green Day lead vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong was pulled off a Burbank-bound jet for wearing his pants too low, prompting an apology from Southwest Airlines.

The incident occurred Thursday night on a Southwest flight at the Oakland airport.

A producer for KGO-TV Channel 7 was on the flight and witnessed the incident. Cindy Qiu told the station that before takeoff, a flight attendant asked Armstrong to pull up his pants.

Armstrong, she said, responded, "Don't you have better things to do than worry about that?" When the flight attendant repeated the request and threatened to have Armstrong removed from the plane, Armstrong replied, "I'm just trying to get to my ... seat."

Firefighters try to contain Cajon Pass fire; I-15 open

Firefighters on Saturday were trying to contain a 1,200-acre brush fire in the Cajon Pass.

Traffic on Interstate 15, which was closed for parts of Friday due to the fire, was flowing Saturday morning, but officials said more closures are possible depending on smoke and fire conditions. By Friday night, officials said, weather conditions for battling the so-called Hill fire were becoming more favorable, with easing winds and increasing humidity.

Two firefighters were injured battling the blaze, one apparently suffering from heat exhaustion and the other from smoke inhalation, said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Fred Pena.

The fire was reported about 12:40 p.m. Friday at the kickoff of the Labor Day holiday, when Southern California's freeways are typically jammed, in particular Interstate 15 as it climbs the Cajon Pass -- the gateway to Las Vegas and the Colorado River. The cause of the blaze is under investigation.

Photos: Fire in Cajon Pass

The southbound lanes of the 15 were closed for hours, and traffic in the northbound lanes was snarled.

Omar Corona, 21, and David Valdez, 45, stopped on the shoulder of the northbound lanes, desperately checking the GPS device in their Chevy Malibu for a shortcut to Hesperia, where they were supposed to pick up a trailer to haul a car before returning to Los Angeles.

"Oh, man, it's taken us four hours. It feels like we'll never get back," Corona said, shortly before he and Valdez hopped back into their car.

Joe Bell, 29, a graduate student in chemical engineering at Brigham Young University, said he left Provo, Utah, with his wife, Heather, 22, their newborn baby, his mother-in-law and his sister-in-law at 6:30 a.m. for his cousin's wedding in Newport Beach. But when their Dodge Durango hit Hesperia, it ground to a halt in the bumper-to-bumper traffic.

"We got off in Hesperia, and there were no detour signs. People were going in two different directions, so we just took one of them," Bell said.

ALSO:

Shock over allegations that professor led motorcycle gang

Spreckels mansion death was a suicide, investigators conclude

San Diego lifeguards to watch for sharks over Labor Day weekend

-- Phil Willon and Hector Becerra

Photo: An ambulance travels on Ranchero Road as a wildfire rages near homes in the Cajon Pass community of Oak Hills on Friday. Credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times

Helping apartment dwellers recycle

Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield (D-Woodland Hills) has sponsored a bill requiring owners of buildings with five or more units to provide recycling services.

He recently joined with representatives of organizations supporting the bill in a news conference at the Bella Vista Apartments in Woodland Hills -- which Blumenfield said “demonstrated it can be done and done efficiently” -- to urge Gov. Jerry Brown to sign the legislation. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed an earlier version of the bill.

The Times' Mary MacVean has more details on the bill at the Home blog.

ALSO:

BPA ban passes California state Senate

Mountain lion killed in attempt to cross 405 Freeway

Sierra magazine ranks UC Irvine among top 10 green schools

Photo: The news conference on the proposed recycling law are, from left, Ryan Minniear, executive director, California Apartment Assn., Los Angeles; Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield; Douglas Corcoran of Waste Management; and Mike Young, political and development associate, California League of Conservation Voters (Assembly Democrats).