Orange County

The coyote perched atop the cinder-block wall 25 feet across the lawn from Candy Julian's screen door, dangling its paws and eyeing her family's two miniature schnauzers. "We started screaming. My son grabbed a shovel," the 45-year-old fitness instructor said of her run-in with a coyote one evening late last month in her Yorba Linda backyard. "I was screaming 'The dogs! The dogs!' " Her family chased off the coyote. But some neighbors haven't been so lucky, losing cats and small dogs and fearing for their children's safety.

An Irvine lawyer convicted last year of conspiracy and securities fraud in a scheme that bilked investors out of tens of millions of dollars pleaded not guilty Monday to new charges of credit card fraud and forgery. Jeanne M. Rowzee is accused of fraudulently applying for credit cards in her children's names and adding herself to the accounts as a second cardholder.

DNA technology has helped link a Washington state man to the slaying of his estranged wife 25 years ago in Orange County, prosecutors said Thursday. William Gregory Mordick, 62, of Spokane is scheduled to be arraigned today on a count of murder with the special circumstance of murder for financial gain. If convicted, he faces life without the possibility of parole. Mordick is accused of driving to the Anaheim Hills home of his estranged wife, Katherine, on Jan. 22, 1983, and slashing her throat.

A magnitude 3.1 earthquake was recorded near Newport Beach on Thursday evening. The temblor struck at 9:28 p.m. at an underground depth of 4.7 miles. The earthquake's force was recorded as far away as the Los Angeles Civic Center, 36 miles away. -- -- David Pierson

When Reed Royalty endorsed Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen's reelection campaign last month, he praised her for seeking to reduce pension benefits for sheriff's deputies "that may be unconstitutional." It was a logical comment for Royalty, an advocate of low taxes and limited government who is president of the Orange County Taxpayers Assn.

While an Orange County facility that cares for abused and neglected children provides spacious cottage-like facilities and roughly four staffers per child, conditions at county juvenile hall are far more bleak, with a shortage of beds and waiting lists for basic programs, according to a grand jury report released Tuesday. "It's almost like you are comparing an area of barracks to Beverly Hills," said grand jury foreman Jim Perez.

Five people were killed Tuesday morning when a sport utility vehicle skidded off Interstate 5, rolled down an embankment and burst into flames, authorities said. Witnesses to the Mission Viejo crash said they ran down the embankment to try to help, but the blaze forced them back. The Orange County coroner's office said the victims were a 37-year-old man, a 33-year-old woman and three other females whose ages were not released. The accident happened about 10:25 a.m.

A long-standing proposal to build a high-speed maglev train from Las Vegas to Anaheim will finally receive $45 million in federal funds that were approved several years ago to pay for the project's final planning and environmental analysis, the Nevada governor's office announced Wednesday. Gov. Jim Gibbons said the Federal Railroad Administration will administer the money that was earmarked by Congress for the first phase of the system, which would extend from Las Vegas to Primm on the Nevada-California state line.

It is possible, of course, for friendships to be eternal. Who can say whether it's chemistry or karma or some magic combination of the two, but when you have one, you know it. Doesn't have to be defined or explained, it's just something belonging to you and someone else that can't be sold or traded away. Allen Murray is talking about one of the best kinds, because it started in his boyhood.

The Orange County district attorney's office has nearly quadrupled its DNA database over the last nine months, to about 15,000 individual profiles, and officials say they hope to start using it to identify criminal suspects by early next year. The agency's effort to build a database exempt from the rules that govern state and national DNA repositories has made Orange County unique among local governments in California. Much of the rapid growth has come from cases in which prosecutors drop charges against low-level offenders who agree to submit DNA samples.