Desert Sun

Indio, the pig has landed. Roger Waters' two-story inflatable prop pig that floated off into the night sky between his festival-closing sets Sunday at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival plopped down Tuesday over two properties in nearby La Quinta, festival officials said Wednesday. Festival spokeswoman Marcee Rondan said Coachella officials had not confirmed the names of the lighter-than-air pig wranglers, but the Desert Sun newspaper in Palm Springs identified them as Susan and Steve Solts and Judy and Patrick Rimmer.

The Los Angeles Times was named one of the top 10 papers in daily sections, Sunday sections and special sections in the Associated Press Sports Editors annual judging. Times columnist Bill Plaschke was a triple finalist in writing divisions. Plaschke was nominated with Steve Springer, Lisa Dillman and Mike Hiserman for investigative reporting. Lisa Dillman and Lonnie White, and Ross Newhan and Sallie Hoffmeister of the Times were nominated for separate news stories.

Tonight the Palm Springs City Council will get a visit from Nacho Libro, a popular character who reads to Coachella Valley children. Nacho Libro will be there to support Latino Books y Mas, a bookstore under threat. Latino Books y Mas , known as the last independent bookstore in Palm Springs, is current on its lease, which runs through March 2015. But owner Luciano Ramirez received a notice Aug. 16 that his lease was being terminated 2½ years early and he would have to move out by Sept.

Catch a floating pig, if you can. The reward? Ten thousand dollars and four tickets for life to the Coachella Music & Arts Festival. A two-story, tethered, inflatable white pig -- the size of a school bus -- was part of musician Roger Waters' performance, which closed the festival Sunday night. About 9:30 p.m., "the pig broke loose," said Marcee Rondan, a spokeswoman for Goldenvoice, the company that produces the Coachella event. "It escaped and floated into the desert sky." According to the Desert Sun newspaper, the pig displayed the words "Don't be led to the slaughter" and a cartoon of Uncle Sam with two bloody cleavers.

Gene Barry, the ruggedly handsome actor who made a career of playing dapper and debonair lead characters on television beginning with the western series "Bat Masterson" in the late 1950s and later on "Burke's Law" and "The Name of the Game," has died. He was 90. Barry, a versatile performer who delivered a Tony-nominated performance in the hit 1980s Broadway musical "La Cage aux Folles," died Wednesday of congestive heart failure at Sunrise Assisted Living in Woodland Hills, said his son Michael.

Victorville hoped to strike it rich with a new hybrid gas and solar power plant near the old George Air Force Base, buying up homesteads for the site amid the High Desert's real estate boom. The city shelled out $375,000 alone to Chris Massey and his family in 2007 to buy a tiny house plopped on five desolate acres of scrub and Joshua trees - 10 times the property's assessed value. Today, the old Massey home sits abandoned, half-demolished by vandals, thieves and the merciless desert sun. The 500-megawatt power plant?

Goldenvoice, the promoter behind the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, is aiming to secure a home for its desert festival through 2030. The promoter's current contract with the city of Indio, Calif.,  expires after the 2013 event, but Goldenvoice's ambitions extend well beyond obtaining a long-term contract for Coachella. The city of Indio has released documents that offer a glimpse into the promoter's festival plans, which, if approved, would add up to two music events to the calendar year.

Tripped up by his own telephone number, an aide to Assemblyman Jim Battin (R-Palm Desert) was caught this week using a false name in attacking a Battin political rival in a local newspaper. Blaming "youth and inexperience rather than maliciousness," Battin suspended Chris Brown, who heads the assemblyman's district office, for two weeks without pay for a letter to the editor Brown wrote and signed "Jorge Rosa." The letter appeared in the Desert Sun of Palm Springs on Dec.