Ventura County Star State News

RIALTO — A Metrolink commuter train sideswiped a freight train Thursday, causing no serious injuries but bringing back still-vivid memories of a deadly train wreck in the region just two months ag

The California Department of Fish and Game will stop adding millions of hatchery-raised trout to many of the state's mountain rivers and lakes, according to a deal announced Thursday.

MALIBU (AP) — Regional water regulators took a step toward banning septic tanks in the heart of Malibu after a prolonged battle over bacterial pollution leaching into the ocean at some of the state's most popular and famous beaches.

SAN FRANCISCO — Guards took the stand Thursday in the landmark trial over crowding inside California's prisons and described numerous examples of negligent healthcare, including inmates using communal showers with open wounds and suicidal prisoners kept for hours inside cages the size of telephone booths.

BERKELEY — Thousands of students may be turned away from state universities unless a solution is found to California's financial crisis, higher education leaders warned Wednesday.

SAN FRANCISCO — California's prisons are so large that they are virtually unmanageable, officials who have led corrections systems in Pennsylvania, Maine and Washington state said Wednesday.

The Southern California steelhead, which not many decades ago populated the Ventura River in such numbers that the waters roiled when they spawned, is one tough fish.

SAN FRANCISCO — California's highest court agreed Wednesday to hear several legal challenges to the state's new ban on same-sex marriage but refused to allow gay couples to resume marrying before it rules.

The California Supreme Court accepted three lawsuits seeking to nullify Proposition 8, a voter-approved constitutional amendment that overruled the court's decision in May legalizing gay marriage.

All three cases claim the measure abridges the civil rights of a vulnerable minority group. They argue voters alone did not have the authority to enact such a significant constitutional change.

MALIBU — "Sewer" has always been a dirty word in this celebrity-studded coastal community, which grew up believing that building an underground maze of plumbing would invite the sprawl that covers much of the rest of Southern California.

The Department of Defense reaffirmed its decision Wednesday not to award the Medal of Honor to a San Diego Marine who witnesses say threw himself on a grenade to save his colleagues in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004.

A bonfire built by college students and never fully extinguished was responsible for the Tea fire in Montecito that destroyed 210 homes, authorities said Tuesday. An anonymous tipster told police that 10 students gathered the evening of Nov. 12 at an abandoned property known locally as the Tea Garden, next to an abandoned home in the hills of Montecito, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said. They built a bonfire during the night and stayed until 3 or 5 a.m. the next day.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opened his international climate change summit Tuesday by upstaging himself with an even bigger political star — President-elect Barack Obama.

On the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown tragedy, organizers of an annual memorial service displayed the first panels of a 36-foot-long stone wall inscribed with the names and ages of more than 900 victims of the Guyana violence, including Rep. Leo Ryan and three newsmen.

The Southern California wildfires are burning a bigger hole in California's budget, adding to the state's $11.2 billion deficit, the governor's finance spokesman said Tuesday. The state has spent $305 million on emergency firefighting since the start of the fiscal year on July 1, $236 million more than lawmakers had allocated in their 2008-09 spending plan.

On Tuesday, the monks met with their insurance agent. Like thousands of other residents of Southern California, the seven Benedictine Anglican monks who lived at Mount Calvary Monastery and Retreat House, on a ridge 1,250 feet above the Pacific in Montecito, were coming to terms with what they had lost in the fires that have swept across Southern California since Thursday.

The Border Patrol on Tuesday finished installing a razor-sharp, curled wire atop a fence on the Mexican border, saying the tactic has contributed to a sharp drop in attacks on its agents by assailants hurling rocks, bricks and sometimes even exploding bottles of gas.

A man was convicted of second-degree murder Tuesday for killing a professional surfer with a single punch to the head during a scuffle.

Jury selection began Tuesday in the case against a Missouri mother accused of taking part in a MySpace hoax that allegedly led to a 13-year-old girl's suicide.

The Central California crab season isn't looking good this year, and some fishermen are already heading home.

Local schools Superintendent David Gomez flew to Sacramento last week to try to convince state officials that cutting $2.2 billion from public education halfway through the school year would be disastrous for kids.

Under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to reduce a growing state deficit, Gomez's Santa Paula Union High School District would have to slash $460,000 in the second semester, and he doesn't know where that money would come from.

"Everything is on the table right now," said Gomez, part of a contingent of California educators who met with legislators and members of the governor's staff last week.

"I knew it would be horrible, but I didn't think it would be this bad," he said, vowing to fight the cuts as he headed home.