Riverside County

Health officials have collected mosquitoes infected with West Nile virus in Hemet and Murrieta, and in the Lake Skinner and Nuevo areas -- the second time infected mosquitoes have been found this year in Riverside County, according to health officials. The mosquitoes were found during routine surveillance by the county Department of Environmental Health's vector-control staff. The California Department of Public Health confirmed the presence of the virus Friday. No cases of West Nile virus among humans have been reported in 2008.

Clarence Ayers was baffled. At 73, he was raising his great-granddaughter in rural Fresno County. He relied on $334 a month in public assistance to help cover the teenager's expenses: new shoes when she outgrew her old ones, transportation to the after-school activities she enjoyed. But last summer, county officials said they were slicing his CalWorks payment by 10% and for the most perplexing of reasons: Over the years, they had mistakenly sent $10,000 to the girl's mother and grandfather.

Riverside County officials have rejected Liberace's death certificate and ordered his body returned from Los Angeles for an autopsy to determine whether he died of AIDS. The action overshadowed Friday's memorial service attended by several hundred mourners at Our Lady of Solitude Roman Catholic Church near Liberace's home in Palm Springs. Among them were actor Kirk Douglas and Mrs. Bob Hope. During the service, Father William Erstad read a telegram from President and Mrs.

SAN DIEGO -- A body, possibly of a Marine wife missing since Friday, has been found in rural Riverside County near Lake Skinner, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department said Tuesday. Authorities also have arrested a 27-year-old woman on suspicion of homicide in connection with the disappearance of 22-year-old Brittany Dawn Killgore, Sheriff's Capt. Duncan Fraser said. The suspect, Jessica Lynn Lopez, was found Tuesday morning in a San Diego motel after an apparent suicide attempt and was taken to UC San Diego Medical Center, Fraser said.

The 68-year-old man accused of snatching 10-year-old Nichole Taylor Timmons from her bedroom Monday night waived extradition from Nevada on Wednesday and is expected to return here by week's end to face a battery of state charges. Riverside Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Soccio said suspect Glenn MacArthur Park was "answering questions well and cooperating with the investigation" being conducted by authorities in Reno.

After being pulled from the shelves for what some saw as racy content, Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary may have the last word in Menifee. A committee of parents, teachers and administrators decided Tuesday to return the dictionaries to the fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms at Oak Meadows Elementary School just days after they were removed over complaints about entries detailing references to various types of oral sex. "The dictionary...

Got wood? If you live around Lake Arrowhead, Big Bear Lake or anywhere in the San Bernardino Mountains, you've got more than you can shake a stick at. The devastating four-year drought and an infestation by a tiny pest called the bark beetle have forced crews to cut thousands of dead and dying trees to reduce the chance of a disastrous wildfire. This has created a glut of cheap firewood, mostly pine, sending prices plummeting by nearly 50%.

The Justice Department's civil rights division said Thursday it had found insufficient evidence to prosecute four white Riverside police officers involved in the 1998 shooting death of a 19-year-old black woman who passed out in her car with a gun in her lap. "Tyisha Miller's death was a terrible tragedy," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Gen. Gerald Boyd.

Los Angeles police on Monday rescued a hostage who had been shot in the stomach and held in a Riverside County home in a suspected kidnapping-for-ransom, authorities said. The hostage was "taken by force" from his home in Van Nuys on Wednesday and taken to a two-story residence in an area of Riverside County near Corona, said Lt. Anne Clark of the Los Angeles Police Department's Robbery-Homicide Division.

A body found near Lake Skinner in Riverside County has been identified as that of 22-year-old Brittany Dawn Killgore, a Marine wife missing since Friday, the San Diego County medical examiner's office announced Wednesday. Meanwhile, Marine Staff Sgt. Louis Ray Perez, 45, considered a person of interest in the case, pleaded not guilty Wednesday in San Diego County Superior Court in Vista to charges of receiving stolen property and possession of a stolen assault rifle. Bail was set at $500,000.

A body found near Lake Skinner in Riverside County has been identified as that of 22-year-old Brittany Dawn Killgore, a Marine wife missing since Friday, the San Diego County medical examiner's office announced Wednesday. Meanwhile, Marine Staff Sgt. Louis Ray Perez, 45, considered a person of interest in the case, pleaded not guilty Wednesday in San Diego County Superior Court in Vista to charges of receiving stolen property and possession of a stolen assault rifle. Bail was set at $500,000.

For the first time in 20 years, a Republican running for Congress in Riverside needs help. John Tavaglione huddled with supporters in the mirrored back room of a local Coco's on a recent rainy evening, laying out a ground game for his first crack at federal office. As a Republican and political heir of a powerful Riverside family, the longtime county supervisor would have breezed into Washington, D.C., in past elections. The Inland Empire was heralded as California's new conservative frontier — the "new Orange County" — just 10 years ago. But political districts have been remade.

The Riverside County city of Norco is best known for being "Horsetown USA," a city with more miles of riding trails than paved roads and a hitching post at the downtown McDonald's. Truth be told, Norco is also on the receiving end of 65 tons of manure produced each day by its population of at least 17,000 horses. So now the city is taking a hard look at a proposal to cash in on all that waste by building a manure-to-energy conversion plant. Designed by Chevron Energy Solutions, the plant would end $17.25-per-ton shipments of manure-filled barrels and dumpsters from Norco homes, stables and horse clubs to leased drying fields about 10 miles away.

The fastest-growing county in California rejected a massive, mountaintop rock quarry Thursday that supporters called an essential source of the ingredients that fed the region's economic ascent. In the end, however, neighborhood objections to increased traffic, possible health hazards and environmental destruction won out, a rare outcome in the pro-development frontier of the Inland Empire. Fierce opposition in Temecula, a city known for its vineyard-covered valley and rock-ribbed conservative politics, persuaded the Riverside County Board of Supervisors to vote down the proposed rock mine by a 3-2 vote, despite the promise of hundreds of new blue-collar jobs to the recession-flattened region.

Two solar industry trade groups are going to court to try to squash a development fee - which they've dubbed the “sun tax” -- for alternative energy projects in Riverside County. The Independent Energy Producers Assn. and the Large-Scale Solar Assn. claim in a lawsuit filed in Riverside County Superior Court that the $450-per-acre annual charge is illegal and will “chill solar development in the best location in the state.” Riverside County officials say the payment, which would be imposed on major solar installations in the country, helps the region recover from the effects of green development.

A giant rock quarry proposed in the hills above Temecula had politicians from one of the most conservative corners of the Inland Empire railing Monday against corporate arrogance and environmental devastation, while union workers pushed the project as a job creator. The political twists are intensifying as the five-year-long controversy over the Liberty Quarry barrels toward a vote before the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, which on Monday held the first of two days of public hearings in a packed convention center ballroom.

The fastest-growing county in California rejected a massive, mountaintop rock quarry Thursday that supporters called an essential source of the ingredients that fed the region's economic ascent. In the end, however, neighborhood objections to increased traffic, possible health hazards and environmental destruction won out, a rare outcome in the pro-development frontier of the Inland Empire. Fierce opposition in Temecula, a city known for its vineyard-covered valley and rock-ribbed conservative politics, persuaded the Riverside County Board of Supervisors to vote down the proposed rock mine by a 3-2 vote, despite the promise of hundreds of new blue-collar jobs to the recession-flattened region.

CORONA: Vista del Este, Woodcrest Development, 9 of 43 single-family homes, 4-5 bedrooms, 2 1/2-3 baths, 2,278-2,580 square feet; $219,950-$255,950; June/July occupancy; furnished models open daily, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., at 1406 Canyon Crest Drive; exit Riverside (91) Freeway at Green River Drive, east on Green River, right on Canyon Crest.

An outbreak of a deadly virus has horse trainers and owners in Riverside and Orange counties fearful for the health of their animals. On Tuesday, a horse at the Empire Polo Club in Indio was euthanized because of complications from equine herpes virus-1. At Rancho Sierra Vista in San Juan Capistrano, 16 cases of the disease have been identified since Jan. 11 and one horse had to be euthanized. Both sites have been placed under quarantine by state veterinarians. No horses are allowed to leave or enter, and caretakers must take sanitary precautions.

A Palm Springs man is accusing the Riverside County Sheriff's Department of discriminating against gay jail inmates because of a policy that, in effect, bans homosexuals from a successful drug rehabilitation program. Michael Lamar Salomonson, 46, a chronic methamphetamine user, was arrested and charged with burglarizing a Palm Springs home in December. His attorney said that, during plea negotiations, the Riverside County district attorney's office agreed to send Salomonson to the 180-day Residential Substance Abuse Program at the detention center in Banning in lieu of a two-year jail sentence.