Palmdale Ca

Palmdale boosters say the city's main drag doesn't have a prostitution problem. But earlier this month, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies arrested 12 men in six hours on suspicion of soliciting prostitution on busy Palmdale Boulevard. Sheriff's officials say it was an average yield for one of their occasional stings on a stretch of the boulevard near City Hall. "There's a lot of [prostitutes] out here--we see 'em all the time," said Mary Agee, a clerk at the 7-Eleven across from City Hall.

In an effort to tap one of the high desert's most abundant resources, Palmdale is allowing large shopping centers and business parks to install small wind turbines in their parking lots to save on electricity costs. Civic leaders in the Antelope Valley have taken a variety of steps in recent years to harness and adapt to the region's vast supplies of sun and wind. In Lancaster, hundreds of acres of desert landscape will be used for a huge bed of solar-thermal panels. Both Palmdale and Lancaster have taken steps to ban new lawns to help conserve water.

It was a warm spring night, and families in the tidy subdivisions on the east side of Palmdale had gathered at the local ballpark to watch Pony League baseball under the lights. Then screams silenced the crowd in the stands. As witnesses watched helplessly Tuesday night, a 13-year-old player in the snack bar line allegedly grabbed an aluminum baseball bat from his equipment bag and clubbed a 15-year-old spectator in the head.

Glen Settle, 97, knew he had to act fast. The concrete marker on the grave of his sister Aileen, who died in 1918 at just 3 days old, was worn and faded. It needed to be replaced. So earlier this month, a friend helped Settle erect a new gray granite stone engraved with a baby angel at the plot in the Historic Palmdale Cemetery.

Palmdale water officials had hoped a giant wind turbine would be towering over this high desert city by now, its graceful, rotating blades churning out smog-free electricity in a moving testament to environmental foresight. It was supposed to be a novel and responsible way to power a water treatment plant. But winning over the neighbors has hardly been a breeze.

Most people don't need an atlas to locate Los Angeles. But they may require a map to pinpoint Palmdale and Ontario. With this in mind, Los Angeles' airport agency plans to link the city's world-famous moniker to airports that it operates in the Antelope Valley and Inland Empire. Officials hope that providing the facilities with a well-known geographic hook will draw travelers from outside the state and help take pressure off aging Los Angeles International Airport.

For three years, local politicians, labor unions and community activists have fought Wal-Mart's efforts to bring a supercenter store into Los Angeles County. But with little fanfare -- and few protests -- the county's first supercenter is scheduled to open today in Palmdale. The desert community 70 miles north of downtown L.A. has become the latest beachhead in Wal-Mart's campaign to bring to California as many as 40 supercenters, combination department stores and grocery markets.

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.

A sheriff's search-and-rescue team pulled a man's body from the California Aqueduct on Thursday and authorities said the death was being investigated as a possible homicide. The case began as a missing person call in Lancaster at 6 a.m., said Deputy Brian Lendman. The missing man's car had been found next to the aqueduct at 70th Avenue West and N Street. A sheriff's helicopter spotted the body in the water shortly afterward.

In an effort to tap one of the high desert's most abundant resources, Palmdale is allowing large shopping centers and business parks to install small wind turbines in their parking lots to save on electricity costs. Civic leaders in the Antelope Valley have taken a variety of steps in recent years to harness and adapt to the region's vast supplies of sun and wind. In Lancaster, hundreds of acres of desert landscape will be used for a huge bed of solar-thermal panels. Both Palmdale and Lancaster have taken steps to ban new lawns to help conserve water.

After buying 17,750 acres in Palmdale for an intercontinental jetport that has not gotten off the ground, Los Angeles airport officials say they might finally have a use for much of the property: a solar power facility capable of generating up to 100 megawatts of clean energy.

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.

Reacting to the cancellation of passenger service this month at Palmdale Regional Airport, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday demanded that Los Angeles World Airports disclose its plans for the 17,000 acres it purchased in the high desert city but never developed into an international airport. The action is the latest in an ongoing effort by Supervisor Michael D.

A farmworker found her body this week wrapped in a rug in a ditch beside an onion field east of Palmdale. Stevona Campbell, 13, had been missing since Sunday night. Known to her family as "Teeny" for her small size at birth, she had attended a large Mother's Day party at her family's apartment in east Palmdale. But she darted out of the apartment about 7 p.m. -- disobeying her mother's orders to stay home -- and never returned, family members said.

The Bush administration's plan to slow the mortgage meltdown gave a lift to Wall Street. But on Hoss Ghitkammanee's street, the signs of hope are harder to find. When he steps out the front door of his Palmdale home, Ghitkammanee sees a four-bedroom house much like his own. Instead of festive holiday reindeer on the lawn, however, the place across the street is decorated with a big, red sign spiked into the dead grass, declaring that the property can be bought at an upcoming foreclosure auction.

A white security guard involved in a scuffle with three black students at Palmdale's Knight High School acted appropriately and used acceptable restraint, Sheriff's Department officials who investigated the incident said Friday. "It is plainly obvious to us that there was no criminal conduct on the security's part," said Capt.

A scuffle involving three black students and a white security guard at Knight High School in Palmdale has provoked simmering racial tensions and forced local authorities to try and find ways to defuse them. The incident has generated such intense feelings that some residents and activists plan a protest today and a rally next month. For some parents and students, the Sept. 18 fracas marked a continuation of what they consider a pattern of unfair punishment of black students at Knight.

The new Palmdale Courthouse opened for business Monday, enabling many Antelope Valley residents to have their civil cases heard much closer to home. Civil jury trials originating in the Antelope Valley currently are held in Los Angeles because of the overcrowded conditions at Antelope Superior Court in Lancaster, said Judge Frank Y. Jackson, supervising judge of the North District, which includes the Palmdale and Lancaster courthouses.

Los Angeles County prosecutors should not pursue charges against three black students at Knight High School in Palmdale who were involved in a scuffle with a white security guard or against a mother who also faces charges related to the incident, activists said Thursday. About 50 demonstrators, including local and national community activists, parents of area high school students, and nearby residents, gathered at the Michael D. Antonovich Antelope Valley Courthouse.

A scuffle involving three black students and a white security guard at Knight High School in Palmdale has provoked simmering racial tensions and forced local authorities to try and find ways to defuse them. The incident has generated such intense feelings that some residents and activists plan a protest today and a rally next month. For some parents and students, the Sept. 18 fracas marked a continuation of what they consider a pattern of unfair punishment of black students at Knight.