Monthly hikes at Sedgwick Reserve to
continue despite fire
The beautiful
and rugged Santa Ynez Valley is the setting for a
series of monthly hikes and nature activities open to the public each fall and
spring on the 6,000-acre UCSB Sedgwick Reserve
The hikes
provide an opportunity to see and hike through this pristine property and view
the Little Pine Fault, wildflowers including the Yerba Mansa, Jewel Flower,
Wild Onion, Bush Lupine, California Poppies, and many more, depending on the
season, and all three Santa Barbara County Oaks -- the Valley Oak, the Blue Oak
and the Coast Live Oak.
The next hike
will be Nov. 10.
Hikers should
wear long pants and sturdy shoes, bring a hat, water, sunscreen, and hike
snacks. Registration begins at 8:30 a.m; the hikes start
promptly at 9 a.m. and finish about noon.
Although the recent fire has damaged part of the Reserve, it has not
affected the Public Hike Program.
Due to group
size limitations, reservations for the hikes are required. For reservations, email sedgwick@lifesci.ucsb.edu.
There is no charge for the hikes.
Man arrested for investigation of
arson in LA
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Police have arrested a man in Los
Angeles after witnesses say they saw him lighting a fire on a hillside.
Authorities
say 41-year-old Catalino Pineda was seen starting a
fire in the San Fernando Valley Oct. 24 and then walking away.
Witnesses
alerted authorities and followed the man to a nearby restaurant where police
arrested him.
Pineda was
booked for investigation of arson. Authorities say the Guatemala native is
currently on probation for making excessive false emergency reports to law
enforcement.
Police and
fire officials could not immediately say whether he might be connected to any
of the wildfires in Southern California.
A third of state’s avocado crop lost
to fire, more threatened
SAN DIEGO (AP) – If guacamole prices are higher when
the Super Bowl rolls around in February, blame the fires in Southern
California.
Emergency
officials say 20,000 acres of avocado trees in northern San Diego County have
been lost, at least a third of the state’s crop, with another 15,000 acres
threatened by flames.
In
California, about 62,000 acres are planted with avocados and the industry is
worth about $276,000 annually, said state agricultural officials.
“If they can
survive the fire, they can still harvest later,” said state Department of
Agriculture spokesman Jay Van Rein, but if the trees are lost, growers will
have to replant their orchards and wait years to harvest again.
Maria Shriver says she’s not returning
to NBC News
LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) – Maria Shriver said she won’t resume
her TV news career and the late Anna Nicole Smith is the reason why.
Shriver,
speaking at a conference on women Oct. 23, said the media circus surrounding
Smith’s accidental drug overdose death last February led to her decision.
“It was then
that I knew that the TV news business had changed and so had I,” Shriver said.
“I called NBC News and told them I’m not coming back.”
Shriver took
an extended leave from the network when husband Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for
California governor in 2003. After his victory, she made two appearances as an
anchor for “Dateline NBC.”
In 2004, she
announced she was leaving NBC News because she was unable to juggle her work as
a journalist with her duties as California’s first lady.
Shriver’s
remarks Tuesday came during the annual California Governor and First Lady’s
Conference on Women. Schwarzenegger, preoccupied by the wildfires sweeping
Southern California, made only a brief appearance via satellite at the
conference.
Disgraced fundraiser seeks to have
California fraud case dropped
By PAUL ELIAS
Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Disgraced political donor Norman Hsu
wasn’t hiding from anyone over the past few years, his lawyers say. If
California authorities really wanted to find him, they could have asked Hillary
Rodham Clinton or one of the other prominent Democrats he showered with
generous cash donations.
Now Hsu is
asking a judge to toss his 15-year-old felony fraud conviction, arguing his
right to a speedy trial was violated because authorities weren’t actively
pursuing him. They could easily have arrested Hsu, his lawyers argue, at one of
the swank fundraisers he hosted in California for prominent local politicians
like Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento.
“Mr. Hsu
lived an open and public life and the government made no apparent efforts to
arrest him,” attorney James Brosnahan wrote in court
papers filed last week. “He did not act like a fugitive. He did not evade the
authorities, but rather openly associated with highly public officials.”
State
prosecutors filed their own documents Tuesday arguing Hsu shouldn’t benefit
from his flight from justice, even if he was hiding in plain sight.
“To allow Hsu
to profit from his own misconduct would stand the criminal justice system on
its head,” deputy attorney general Ronald Smetana wrote.
Hsu’s
troubles began dogging big name Democrats, including Clinton, this summer when
news reports revealed he was a fugitive who fled the state before he was
sentenced for a 1992 fraud conviction. He turned himself in on Aug. 31 — then
fled again.
He was
recaptured last month after he tried to kill himself by overdosing on drugs
aboard an eastbound Amtrak train in Colorado. Hsu is being held without bail in
a Redwood City jail.
In recent
years, Hsu became a top political fundraiser, donating generously to Democratic
candidates and causes and raising much more from other contributors. Since his
fall from grace, many of those donations were given to charity or returned. The
Clinton campaign pledged to divest $850,000 raised by Hsu.
On Nov. 2,
Hsu’s attorneys will ask a San Mateo County Superior Court judge to dismiss the
fraud case, in which Hsu pleaded no contest to charges he bilked investors out
of $1 million. He faces up to three years in prison.
If Brosnahan fails get the case dismissed outright, he says he
will then ask that Hsu be allowed to withdraw his 1992 plea because the judge
who accepted it and was scheduled to sentence Hsu before he fled has since
retired. If Hsu succeeds in taking back his plea, his case goes back to square
one and could then go to trial.
“Mr. Hsu has
the right to have the same judge who accepted his plea impose sentence,” Brosnahan wrote in court papers.
Smetana says
investigators periodically checked Hsu’s former apartment, his wife’s home and
his son’s school in the years following his disappearance. But he concedes
investigators stopped looking for him after they became convinced he’d left the
country for Asia.
Still, the
arrest warrant remained active the entire time Hsu was a fugitive, Smetana
argues, and he refused a court clerk’s 1998 request to take it off the books.
Smetana also
said previous California cases have allowed another judge to sentence criminals
after the retirement of the judge who originally handled the case.
Even if Hsu
manages to succeed in getting out from under the California charges, he still
faces fresh federal felony charges in New York.
The U.S.
attorney’s office there has charged Hsu with operating two Ponzi
schemes, in California and New York, that defrauded
investors of a combined $60 million. He’s also accused of pressuring investors
to make campaign contributions, and giving others money to make donations.