News Report

Even as Irvine police were trying to confirm the identities of a young couple found shot to death in an Irvine parking garage early this month, the department's on-duty watch commander received a late-night call from former LAPD Capt. Randal Quan. According to an Irvine detective's search warrant affidavit released Monday, Quan had seen an early news report of the double homicide at the condo complex at 2100 Scholarship. Quan, the document states, was worried that his daughter, Monica, 28, who lived there, might be a victim.

WASHINGTON - The FBI obtained a sealed search warrant to read a Fox News reporter's personal emails from two days in 2010 after arguing there was probable cause he had violated espionage laws by soliciting classified information from a government official, court papers show. In an affidavit, an FBI agent told a federal magistrate that the reporter had committed a crime when he asked a State Department security contractor, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, to share secret material about North Korea in June 2009.

Airlines using Burbank Airport will increase security staffing for about 30 minutes a night in response to a television news report that charged a loophole in security procedures could be used by a plane hijacker. In a report Monday night, KNBC-TV maintained that there was a dangerous security lapse because the screening stations, where metal detectors scan passengers for weapons, have not been staffed after the last outgoing flight departed about 9:40 each night.

Even as Irvine police were trying to confirm the identities of a young couple found shot to death in an Irvine parking garage early this month, the department's on-duty watch commander received a late-night call from former LAPD Capt. Randal Quan. According to an Irvine detective's search warrant affidavit released Monday, Quan had seen an early news report of the double homicide at the condo complex at 2100 Scholarship. Quan, the document states, was worried that his daughter, Monica, 28, who lived there, might be a victim.

A former PairGain Technologies Inc. employee who drove up the company's stock by posting a phony news report on the Internet was sentenced Monday to five months of home detention and five years' probation. Gary Dale Hoke, 26, also was ordered to pay $93,000 in restitution to investors who purchased PairGain stock and sold at a loss after the telecommunications equipment company denied the bogus report that it was about to be purchased by an Israeli company.

Cuban track star Ana Quirot, a bronze-medal winner in the 1992 Olympics in the 800 meters, was recovering in Havana from severe burns, while her prematurely delivered baby daughter developed severe neurological problems during the weekend, a news report said. Quirot, seven months pregnant, was hospitalized Jan. 22 because of third-degree burns suffered in what news reports from Cuba said was a household accident.

A bus collided with a truck and burst into flames Saturday, killing 30 people and critically injuring 25 others in a southern Indian town, a news report said. Firefighters took more than three hours to put out the blaze after the vehicles collided on a narrow bridge near Sulur, 1,500 miles south of the capital, New Delhi, United News of India said.

A group of 44 men, women and children -- most or all of them North Koreans -- used ladders to scramble over a spiked fence around the Canadian Embassy in Beijing in an apparent bid for asylum, Canadian officials said. One man was stopped by police. A South Korean news report said all 44 were North Koreans. In Ottawa, however, a Canadian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman said that most of those who gained access to the embassy were North Koreans.

Reporter Run Down: KTTV Channel 11 news reporter Christina Gonzalez was recuperating at home Thursday after being hit by the news van of a competing station while covering a fatal house fire. Gonzalez was sitting on a street curb writing a news report about the fire Wednesday night when she was struck by the KCOP Channel 13 van, which was backing up, said police Officer Michelle Bertsch. Gonzalez was treated at Olive View Medical Center for minor injuries.

The task force investigating the slayings of seven people at a fast-food restaurant arrested one man Friday but refused to say if he was connected to the massacre. Rashaad S. Brooks was being held on warrants for a Dec. 29 suburban robbery and failure to appear on a charge of aggravated assault, investigators said. "It is certainly obvious that Mr.

BEIRUT - A powerful car bomb ripped through central Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Thursday, killing dozens and dramatizing the wide gulf between the persistent violence and fledgling efforts to jump-start peace talks in the country's almost 2-year-old war. State news media said at least 53 people were killed and 235 injured in a devastating midmorning attack that yielded disturbing images of smoldering vehicles and charred and dismembered bodies...

You remember Karl Rove: He's the Republican strategist and Fox News contributor who made television history last month when he refused to accept that President Obama had won the state of Ohio and effectively clinched the entire election, leading to a showdown between Megyn Kelly and the behind-the-scenes statisticians on the network's “Decision Desk.” If a report out Wednesday from Gabriel Sherman at New York magazine is to be believed,...

Buoyed by the strength of its cable television businesses and an asset sale, media conglomerate News Corp. reported fiscal first quarter profits more than three times higher than a year ago. For the period ended Sept. 30, the New York-based media company produced net income of $2.23 billion, or 94 cents a share, compared with $738 million, or 28 cents a share in the year earlier period.  Revenue for the global media giant increased 2% to $8.14 billion. Operating profit declined slightly.

MOSCOW - At least 105 people died when torrential rains tore through southern Russia, flooding tens of thousands of homes and catching sleeping people by surprise, authorities said Saturday. "They ran out in the night with only with the clothes on their backs. My [parents] were able to save themselves and their passports," Anna Kovalevskaya, whose parents live in Krymsk, tweeted from Moscow. "The city is in panic. " Gov. Alexander Tkachev tweeted as he flew over the devastated area that "something unimaginable" had occurred in Krymsk, a city of 57,000 in the Krasnodar region about 750 miles south of Moscow.

WASHINGTON - Two key financial regulators told senators Tuesday that they learned of the huge trading loss at JPMorgan Chase & Co., through media reports and that the public wouldn't be protected from the fallout from future incidents until new rules are finalized to allow better monitoring of such trades. In the first of several congressional hearings to look at the loss, the heads of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission gave some details about their investigations into the incident.

A New York federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that opponents contend could subject them to indefinite military detention for political activism, news reporting or other 1st Amendment activities. U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan ruled Wednesday in favor of a group of writers and activists who sued President Obama, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and the Defense Department. Obama signed the bill into law Dec. 31. The complaint was filed Jan. 13 by a group including former New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges.

RJR Unveils Rules Affecting Minors: R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. announced stringent new rules governing its brand-switching programs after learning some minors had obtained cigarettes at automobile races. The company learned from a televised news report that two minors working for the show had obtained cigarettes at races in North Wilkesboro, Charlotte and Rockingham, N.C.

The Asia-Pacific region has the most automated teller machines in the world, a news report said Monday. The Asia-Pacific region had 275,007 ATMs as of 1998, 34.4% of the world's total, the Straits Times newspaper said. Western Europe was second with 218,394, or 27.2%, the newspaper said, while North America was third with 214,832, or 26.8%. The paper quoted statistics from Retail Banking Research in Britain. Japan had the world's highest concentration of ATMs, with 1,079.

Berkeley's police chief apologized Saturday for sending a sergeant to a reporter's house in the middle of the night to request changes to a story. Chief Michael Meehan sent the sergeant to Bay Area News Group reporter Doug Oakley's Berkeley home about 1 a.m. Friday to ask for changes to a story about a community meeting. The meeting had been called so that Meehan could address growing outrage over the department's response to an incident that ended with the beating death of a 67-year-old man. "It was just a big error on my part," Meehan said.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said recent news articles about the central bank's emergency lending contain "egregious errors. " "The articles recycle information that has been disclosed to the Congress and the American people in various forms for some time," Bernanke said in letters to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) and the three other senior lawmakers who oversee the Fed. The Fed posted the letters and an accompanying four-page staff memo on its website Tuesday.