Rescues

A California gray whale found tangled in a fishing net off the Orange County coast swam free after a lengthy rescue over the weekend. Whale-watching boats spotted the young cetacean stranded outside Dana Point Harbor with about 50 feet of netting and rope wrapped around its flukes, or tail. With permission from the National Marine Fisheries Services, Dave Anderson of Capt. Dave's Dolphin and Whale Safari attached a buoy to the animal to monitor it overnight as a team of whale-watch crew members, wildlife rehabilitation staffers and boaters with specialized training and gear assembled for a weekend rescue attempt the next morning.

SACRAMENTO - Efforts to ease California's foreclosure woes, among the worst in the nation, are running into roadblocks at the state Capitol. A rare legislative conference committee called to rescue a pair of stalled foreclosure-prevention bills is bogged down in marathon sessions. Meanwhile, Gov. Jerry Brown is pushing to use some of California's share of the $25-billion national mortgage settlement to plug holes in the state's budget, dismaying housing activists. Since the start of the real estate bust, foreclosures have been a persistent drag on the state's homeowners and economy.

The Amtrak Sunset Limited from Los Angeles to Miami with 206 people aboard hurtled off an aging trestle early Wednesday and plunged like a steel stone into a foggy Alabama bayou, killing 44 and leaving at least three others trapped in wreckage that sank into an ink-black swamp crawling with snakes and alligators. A locomotive erupted into flames, burning its crew. Fire spread to the wood-and-steel trestle. One of the coach cars hung over the edge of the 84-year-old structure but did not fall.

EUROPE Presentation Susan Hickman, Distant Lands' rail agent, will help you plan your itinerary, from purchasing a ticket and boarding your train to exiting at your destination. When, where : 7:30 p.m. Monday at Distant Lands, 20 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. Admission, info: Free. RSVP to (626) 449-3220. ROCK CLIMBING Workshop Rock-climbing instructors will teach assisted-rescue skills no climber should be without. When, where: 6 p.m. Tuesday at the REI store in Manhattan Beach, 1800 Rosecrans Ave., Suite E. Admission, info: $60; (310)

As 150 rescue workers rushed to free a trapped construction worker, they struggled against one overwhelming irony: Art Garcia risked killing himself with every breath he took. Buried to his neck at the bottom of a 15-foot hole as a result of a construction accident Wednesday, Garcia was not seriously hurt in the initial collapse of earth that surrounded him.

Philippine troops Wednesday rescued a kidnapped American businessman who had been chained by his neck and feet for 22 days, Philippine and U.S. officials said. Alastair Joseph Onglingswan, 35, was rescued in a house in Bacoor, south of Manila, by a government anti-kidnapping force and military intelligence agents, officials said. A suspect was arrested and was being interrogated, officials said.

A fisherman from the Riverside County community of Pedley and his Mexican guide, who had been missing for nearly two weeks after disappearing aboard a skiff in the Sea of Cortez, were found alive early Tuesday morning on the same deserted island whose shores they had been fishing. The body of a third fisherman also was discovered.

Fishermen and coast guard crews rushed to rescue 101 people aboard a ferry sinking in rough weather near Vancouver Island early Wednesday. Authorities said all were believed to have escaped safely and injuries were minor. The 409-foot Queen of the North hit a rock about 12:30 a.m. off the Queen Charlotte Islands, about 85 miles south of Prince Rupert, a British Columbia mainland town near the southern tip of Alaska.

A Dutch survivor of an ice avalanche that killed nine climbers atop the world's second-tallest mountain over the weekend described a desperate scramble for self-preservation, with panicked mountaineers abandoning one another in the search for a way down the steep rock face. Some of the victims were swept away by a column of ice that snapped near the summit of K2 -- widely regarded as the world's most treacherous peak -- in northern Pakistan near the Chinese border.

A tourist clung to a well-placed rock in the middle of pounding rapids near the brink of Niagara Falls as rescuers teetered across a fallen tree to reach him. John Dwyer, 30, of Newport, R.I., would have been swept over the Horseshoe Falls in less than a minute had he lost his grip, New York State Park Police said Friday, a day after the rescue. "He was hanging on. I don't know how long he was there," Chief Vincent Iacovitti said. "He indicated to the officers he was there a long time."

Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for. Memorial Day - Memorial Day has become an opportunity for criminals to target veterans as well as active duty military and their families, the Better Business Bureau said in a recent bulletin. Older veterans are often targeted by scammers this time of year, the BBB said. "The unique lifestyle of our service members makes them prime targets for scammers," noted Brenda Linnington, director of the BBB's military division.  "It's imperative that we educate our service members and ensure that the support we give to them equals the effort they make every day on behalf of us. " Some scams target service personnel and their families directly, while others go after people attempting to contribute to military charities.

In 1944, as head of the Office of Strategic Services in Bari, Italy, George Vujnovich guided a team of agents who worked with Yugoslav guerrilla leader Draza Mihailovich to airlift more than 500 airmen from a makeshift runway carved on a mountaintop in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. The World War II air rescue mission, "Operation Halyard," was relatively obscure until the 2007 release of "The Forgotten 500," a book by Gregory Freeman. "We didn't lose a single man. It's an interesting history.

In Washington, another scandal has broken over excessive spending during a business conference. But travel experts predict the effect this time around will be limited. Four years ago, it was insurance giant American International Group Inc.that was slammed for holding a lavish executive retreat at a Dana Point resort after taking billions of dollars in government bailout money. In the face of harsh criticism of excessive spending amid a recession, corporations dramatically cut back on business travel, dealing a blow to hotels and airlines across the country.

Emergency medical helicopters are certainly dramatic (especially on TV shows like “ER” and “Grey's Anatomy”), but are they really so much better than ambulances that they're worth the extra cost? A new study says the answer is yes. Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine culled data from the National Trauma Data Bank on 61,909 patients who were transported to a hospital via helicopter between 2007 and 2009 and compared them with 161,566 patients who were taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

SAN FRANCISCO — The winds gusted above 25 knots and the swells topped 12 feet. In short, sailors participating in this year's race around the craggy Farallon Islands, 27 miles west of the Golden Gate, faced typically grueling conditions. Then something went terribly wrong. A rogue wave pummeled the 38-foot Low Speed Chase as it rounded the islands Saturday, knocking five crew members overboard. As the captain sought to rescue them from the 50-degree water, the boat capsized and was hurled onto the rocks.

Some people underestimate Alan Mulally when they first meet him. Ford Motor Co.'s 66-year-old chief executive, who grew up in Kansas and once aspired to be an astronaut, looks and sometimes acts like an overgrown Boy Scout. He laces his speech with words such as "neat," "cool" and "absolutely. " But the farm-boy exterior conceals one of business' toughest, most ruthless managers. When a desperate Bill Ford recruited Mulally from Boeing in 2006, Ford was heading for a $12.7-billion loss and on the verge of losing its No. 2 sales spot in the U.S. to Toyota because of poor management and an uninspiring vehicle lineup.

Actor Mark Harmon rescued two teenage boys Wednesday from a burning car that had crashed near his Brentwood home, a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman said. "Mr. Harmon broke out the car windows and pulled the boys to safety," said Brian Humphrey, a Fire Department spokesman. "The youths owe their lives to the action of Mr. Harmon," he said. One youth suffered severe burns over 30% of his body and was taken to UCLA Medical Center, Humphrey said.

Israeli experts arrived in Nairobi on Saturday, nearly 30 hours after the bombing, bringing sophisticated equipment and techniques to help locate survivors. Penetrating the Rubble Rescuers use a variety of listening devices and cameras to search for survivors. * Cameras and microphones. Monitor is carried in a frontal pack. Image is transmitted from hand-held SearchCam, a long boom with camera and acoustic microphone on one end. SearchCam can be lowered into cracks and voids.

"Lockout" is about a troubled prison in space, starring Guy Pearce as an ex-secret agent all muscled up and throwing as many one-liners as punches. The mission is improbable, the film's logic loosey-goosey, and there are many explosive shortcuts - as in, if it doesn't make sense, just blow it up big time and maybe the audience won't notice. Ah, but they will. The film is based on an idea from espionage/action specialist Luc Besson, whose interest in the genre seems to know no bounds - writing, directing, producing, sometimes merely thinking.

With a trio of sharp, literate films that mapped the emotional landscape of the young, American and upscale, Whit Stillman emerged from the '90s independent film scene as one of the decade's most distinct voices. His 1990 debut, "Metropolitan," earned him an Oscar nomination for screenwriting, and his follow-up examinations of the lives of the "urban haute bourgeoisie," as the characters of his movies were dubbed, "Barcelona" and "The Last Days of Disco," only cemented Stillman's reputation.