Public Safety

Soaring prices. Precious few homes. Bidding wars. Sound like Southern California a few years back? Welcome to an unexpected bright spot in global housing: Baghdad. Attracted by news of decreased violence, thousands of displaced Iraqis returning to Baghdad's safer neighborhoods are fueling a bit of a real estate frenzy. Last year, home prices plummeted and rents dropped as Iraqis left town in search of more stability.

Seeking to improve public safety on the high seas, a state senator introduced a bill Friday that would require cruise ships sailing from California ports to have a peace officer on board. If the measure passes, California would have the most stringent state regulations on the $35.7-billion industry, which has come under congressional and public scrutiny after several high-profile cases of missing people, passengers overboard and sexual assault in recent years.

Broken fire alarms at nearly a dozen buildings at Santa Ana College went unrepaired for more than two years because of miscommunication and a can't-someone-else-do-it mentality, and because officials did not declare an emergency to fix the antiquated system, an investigation by a law firm found. "Everybody thought it was someone else's responsibility," said Eddie Hernandez, chancellor of the Rancho Santiago Community College District.

Just who do those deadly looking fins slicing the waters off Huntington Beach belong to? Rumors of great white shark sightings along the Southern California coast in recent weeks are the buzz of the beach, leaving a few surfers spooked. Tom Larkin is convinced that a shark jolted his surfboard and left what looks like a bite mark on the back end while he waited for a wave in the waters near Bolsa Chica State Beach earlier this month.

On the outskirts of this western city, in a field of bright yellow flowers, Wang Xi stood on a wrestling mat and eyed her opponent, a brawny man with short-cropped hair fresh from the army. After a quick bow, she lunged at his legs, flipped him over and, within seconds, pinned him to the ground. Yang Shengli, a career military man turned entrepreneur, watched from behind his sunglasses with satisfaction.

It's been three years since Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Deputy Ken Rushing watched 18-year-old Andrew Popp lean backward off the edge of Cold Spring Bridge and disappear into the fog-cloaked gorge below. The image pops into the veteran deputy's mind at odd moments, including when he was driving his children to Disneyland recently. "It got quiet in the car and I saw him again, right before he jumped," Rushing said. "He gave me a thousand-mile stare. He basically looked right through me.

Abu Hassan took deep breaths of joy as he crossed the double-decker bridge spanning the Tigris River. The water below may have stunk of sewage. The air may have been choked with traffic fumes. It didn't matter to Abu Hassan. He was free after nearly a year hidden inside his house, the only place he had felt safe from the gunmen and killers who had taken over his neighborhood in south Baghdad.

Colorado health officials ordered the Defense Department to speed up its destruction of mustard gas at a chemical weapons depot, saying the military had ignored requests to do so. Health department spokeswoman Jeannine Natterman said Wednesday's order affecting the Pueblo Chemical Weapons Depot was mandatory. About 2,600 tons of the gas are stored at the site.

A day after opening the summer swim season in the midst of a ferocious heat wave, the L.A. City Department of Recreation and Parks shut down one of the more troubled neighborhood pools in Watts after a band of young men took over the pool deck, attacked the manager and threw him, a lifeguard and a locker room attendant into the water. The 109th Street Swimming Pool is between two public housing projects, Nickerson Gardens and Jordan Downs, and two competing neighborhood gangs.