Cites

In America's debate over gun policy, one of the sharpest divides separates those who believe a gun at home makes them safer from those who believe that gun ownership would put them at risk. Increasingly, gun owners cite protection, rather than hunting or other recreational activities, as the main reason they own a gun, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. Nearly half of gun owners cited “protection” as their main reason for owning a gun, according to the survey.

Five giant mortgage firms are shelling out $25 billion to settle claims of "robo-signing" and other foreclosure abuses -- but putting anyone in jail is another matter. In one of only two robo-signing prosecutions nationwide, a judge last week threw out an entire case, including more than 100 felony counts each against Gary Trafford and Geraldine Sheppard of Orange County. The Californians had worked as title officers for Lender Processing Services, a giant Jacksonville, Fla., firm that helps banks and mortgage servicers generate legal documents.

Bakersfield fire dispatcher Tracey Halvorson pleaded with the woman on the other end of the line to start CPR on an elderly woman who was barely breathing. "It's a human being," Halvorson said, speaking quickly. "Is there anybody that's willing to help this lady and not let her die?" The woman paused. "Um, not at this time. " According to a 911 tape released by the Bakersfield Fire Department, the woman told Halvorson that she was a nurse at Glenwood Gardens, a senior living facility in Bakersfield.

Citing an immediate public health threat, the city of Los Angeles will ask the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to overturn a lower-court ruling preventing the random seizure and destruction of belongings that homeless people leave temporarily unattended on public sidewalks. If the court takes up the matter, the case could have broad implications for cities nationwide grappling with how to keep streets clean and safe while respecting the property rights of those who live there. Fresno faces more than 30 lawsuits arising from its efforts to clean up downtown homeless encampments.

WASHINGTON -- Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have released “several hundred” immigrants from deportation centers across the country, saying the move is an effort to cut costs ahead of budget cuts due to hit later this week.  Announcing the news Tuesday, ICE officials said that the immigrants were released under supervision and continue to face deportation. After reviewing hundreds of cases, those released were considered low-risk and “noncriminal,” officials said.

WASHINGTON - Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court's first Latina justice, slammed a Texas prosecutor Monday for citing race as grounds for convicting a defendant of a drug deal, saying the government attorney had tried to "substitute racial stereotype for evidence and racial prejudice for reason. " She filed a rare statement commenting on the court's refusal to hear an appeal, not to dissent from the decision but to "dispel any doubt" that the action "should be understood to signal our tolerance of a federal prosecutor's racially charged remark.

Miami has finally received its notice of allegations from the NCAA. A long-awaited document accuses the Hurricanes of a "lack of institutional control" within its athletic department. The allegations arrived on Tuesday. The institutional-control charge is typically one of the most severe the NCAA can bring after an investigation of rules violations. The governing body for college athletics declined to comment Tuesday, one day after revealing that it was erasing some elements of its case against Miami because the information was obtained in impermissible ways.

The NCAA has ousted its head of enforcement after an external review that confirmed serious misdeeds by investigators in the University of Miami case. The 52-page report represents yet another black eye for the collegiate governing body, which had already come under scrutiny for its handling of recent cases involving USC, UCLA and Penn State. "This is something that is an embarrassment to the association and our staff," President Mark Emmert said. "This is not a good situation at all. " The replacement of Julie Roe Lach as vice president of enforcement follows a string of reported resignations and firings among enforcement staff members.

Bulgarian officials ejected Hamas lawmakers from the country on Friday, saying they had reason to believe that the group of Palestinians threatened their nation's security. The Bulgarian State Agency for National Security said four Palestinians had entered the country Wednesday on a private invitation. While they were in Bulgaria, “information was received giving reason to believe that their presence poses a serious threat to national security,” the agency said in a statement Friday.

SACRAMENTO - The nutty notion that a citizen can be heavily enough armed to fight off the government went up in smoke near Big Bear Lake. This may sound crazy to most normal people, but there are some obsessed gun owners - although a minority, surely - who believe they need to arm themselves to perhaps combat government oppression. One reader wrote recently that he supported gun control "as long as I'm armed as well as the police," whom he didn't trust and felt he needed to be prepared to battle in a shootout.