Lancaster Ca

Determined to prevent the Mongols motorcycle club from using a Lancaster motel to host its annual meeting this weekend, the city's mayor has taken steps to shut down the establishment. Mayor R. Rex Parris said the members of the Mongols, which law enforcement agencies consider a violent biker gang, are not welcome in Lancaster because they "are engaged in domestic terrorism . . . and they kill our children."

The hundreds of glass mirrors break the dusty field in Lancaster, a sea of silver in a landscape of brown. When switched on for the first time today at an opening gala with investors, local politicians and others, they'll make up the first operational solar tower energy facility in the United States. They reflect the sun into a tower in the middle of the field, boiling water into steam that travels through pipes to power a turbine and create electricity.

The mother of an 18-month-old girl found dead near a San Fernando Valley freeway has recanted her story about the toddler being abducted during an attack and now says she panicked after her daughter died in an accident and dumped the body herself, a sheriff's official said Thursday. Stacy Barker initially told detectives that she was knocked unconscious by an attacker at a Lancaster park as she was buckling her daughter, Emma Leigh Barker, into her car seat.

Crediting aggressive crime-fighting strategies and partnerships with local cities, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca announced Wednesday that Lancaster and Palmdale and surrounding desert communities had seen a 10% reduction in overall crime last year. That makes for the lowest crime rate in the Antelope Valley since 2001, Baca said. Gang-related violent crimes dropped by 33% last year throughout the 1,370-square-mile region.

Fearful that their area might be getting more criminals from throughout Los Angeles County, some residents of the Antelope Valley voiced concerns Saturday over a proposal to expand Lancaster's Mira Loma Detention Center complex. "We're tired of being a dumping ground, and that's what we're being used for," Fred Sellas, a 15-year resident of Palmdale, said at a town hall meeting inside Palmdale's City Council Chambers. "Just because we got a lot of space, a lot of dirt up here . . .

As a stream of walkers trickled through Lancaster's main park one recent morning, Marie Ann Nicholson fell into step beside Mayor R. Rex Parris. There was a boarded-up house on the street where her daughter lives in a "nice neighborhood," Nicholson told Parris. The property was vacant. The front lawn had dried up. "It's a total eyesore," said Nicholson, 71, a lifelong resident of Lancaster.

The first sign of trouble came almost immediately after Kurt and Michelle Dahlin moved into Lancaster's new Westview Estates in March 2007. The water slowed to a trickle midway through showering. The toilet tank took two hours to refill. The family often was forced to bathe at 4 a.m. -- before the neighbors awoke and the water flow became a dribble. Some days, there was no water at all. Things only got worse as more homeowners moved into the gated community on the outskirts of Lancaster.

Southern California's illegal drag racing culture took another bloody turn early Sunday in Lancaster, when a passing driver veered into a crowd of spectators, leaving two men dead and three men hospitalized. Some onlookers then jumped into their cars, chased down the driver and held him for deputies, authorities said. The driver was booked on suspicion of felony hit and run. "It was a pretty horrendous scene," Sgt.

The family of an American citizen who disappeared after apparently being mistakenly deported to Tijuana a month ago has filed suit asking the U.S. government to help find him. Pedro Guzman, 29, a Lancaster construction worker, is developmentally disabled and penniless, and he hasn't been heard from since May 11, said his family at a news conference in Los Angeles on Monday.

It must have been a "poler" bear. A bear climbed 100 feet up a Lancaster power pole in the sweltering high desert Friday and brought traffic to a halt as motorists stopped to gawk and take pictures. "Not a whole lot we could do except keep the people out of the area and let him decide he needs to come down and continue his way on to the mountains, and with the assistance of the Highway Patrol that's what we did," Game Warden Martin Wall told a local TV news station.