San Bernardino County

Federal agents seized four F-14 Tomcat fighters in San Bernardino County on Tuesday -- three from airplane museums -- after investigators determined that the jets were not demilitarized and were improperly sold or transferred to private companies, including the producer of the TV show "JAG," authorities said.

Former Upland Mayor John Pomierski faces up to 10 years in federal prison after pleading guilty Thursday to bribery and admitting to accepting $5,000 to help a business obtain a permit. Pomierski, 58, became the third person to be convicted in the bribery scheme, in which he allegedly demanded about $70,000 in payments from the separate owners of a sports bar and a medical marijuana cooperative to help them obtain permits and eliminate other requirements beginning in 2007, according to federal prosecutors.

Deandre Perry drove by Moreno Valley High School on Monday night but could not bring himself to walk in. Out on the pavement, hundreds of students stood sobbing. Candles were lighted and a poster read: "God only takes the best." On Saturday, Ryan Villalpando, 32, the school's offensive-line football coach, was killed in a fiery freeway wreck along with his 29-year-old wife, Veronica, and their two children, 4-year-old Mateo and 7-month-old Bella Rose. "It's heartbreaking," said Perry, who graduated from the school in 2006.

One San Bernardino County supervisor's plan to require restaurants to inform customers whether the establishment does immigration background checks on its employees was overwhelmingly rebuffed Tuesday by fellow supervisors. Supervisor Neil Derry, the measure's sponsor, was the only one to vote for the plan, which would have color-coded the A, B and C grade cards that restaurants receive during annual health inspections. Restaurants are required to display the cards. Three supervisors voted against the measure and one abstained, officials said.

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%.

A suspicious fire gutted a mosque early Friday in the high desert city of Adelanto, the site of Southern California's only cemetery built exclusively for Muslims. San Bernardino County arson investigators who inspected the ruins of the United Islamic Youth Organization mosque believe that the blaze was possibly arson or a hate crime, authorities said.

The state attorney general's office will join an expanding probe of political corruption in San Bernardino County centered largely on the past activities of the assessor's office, officials said Monday. So far the investigation has led to the arrest of former Assessor Bill Postmus and four former employees in his office. Allegations include using the assessor's staff to do political work, forgery, grand theft, perjury and failure to report gifts from a developer. Postmus was arrested in January on drug charges.

San Bernardino County Assessor Bill Postmus, who said publicly that he had battled but overcome drug addiction, was arrested Thursday on charges that include felony possession of methamphetamine. About 50 agents from the county district attorney's office, armed with 10 search warrants, raided locations in San Bernardino, Highland, Apple Valley, Victorville and Rancho Santa Margarita in Orange County.

San Bernardino County public health officials have declared a state of emergency due to H1N1 flu, one in a series of federal, state and local declarations intended to position authorities to deal with people sickened by the new flu strain. President Obama's declaration of a national H1N1 emergency last month came eight months after California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide emergency. Local health officials say that by declaring emergencies at their level, they hope to lay claim to more vaccines and other resources, or be reimbursed by state and federal officials for mass vaccination clinics and other efforts.

San Bernardino County officials said Thursday that they are making changes at the Department of Behavioral Health after three county therapists failed to report a bloodied knife and pair of jeans to law enforcement officials at the site of a fatal stabbing. The therapists arrived on the afternoon of Jan. 8 to look for evidence of drug use at an independent living home for seven mentally ill felons in the 300 block of South Bixby Way in Upland, according to the San Bernardino County district attorney's office.

Reporting from Sacramento -- The San Bernardino County district attorney's office has filed criminal charges against a California lawmaker who attempted to take a loaded gun onto an airplane. Tim Donnelly, a self-described tea party Republican from San Bernardino, was charged with carrying a loaded firearm in public without a concealed weapons permit and possessing a gun in an airport. Both offenses are misdemeanors, punishable by up to 18 months in jail and $2,000 in fines. A vocal advocate for gun rights, Donnelly was detained by police at Ontario International Airport last month after security screeners discovered a loaded .45-caliber Colt Mark IV pistol and an ammunition magazine with an additional five rounds in his carry-on luggage.

Strong winds swept up and down the California coast Thursday, stoking fires in San Francisco and Ventura and leaving overturned trucks, uprooted trees and damaged gas lines in their wake. Just weeks after record winds shredded the San Gabriel Valley, the National Weather Service again issued high wind warnings with gusts in Southern California's mountain regions reaching up to 72 mph. In Ventura County, a 45-acre fire broke out in a rural area Thursday afternoon. Six agencies deployed a combined 100 firefighters and two helicopters to battle the blaze.

San Bernardino County sheriff's investigators are investigating whether a Los Angeles police sergeant arrested on suspicion of committing a burglary last weekend in a foothills community is responsible for other break-ins nearby. Sgt. Lucien "Lou" Daigle, 44, was arrested Sunday after a homeowner reportedly confronted him inside her large Mentone home and doused him with a potent form of pepper spray typically used to ward off bears. Daigle, an 18-year LAPD veteran, fled but crashed his car a few miles away, apparently overcome by the repellent, said San Bernardino County Sheriff's Sgt. Paul Morrison.

Jim Lytle gunned his silver BMW past the boarded-up model homes and the faded red flags of an abandoned sales office, then steered into a grid of empty streets and yellowed grass. Millions of dollars were spent to turn farmland into housing tracts. Lots were graded, roads were paved, sewers installed. The houses? They will come, Lytle promises, right here on these acres and acres of weed-strewn fields. "This is a broken subdivision, which is obvious by looking at the ground," said Lytle, whose real estate investment firm has been snapping up land in Winchester and throughout Riverside County.

FBI and IRS agents executed nine federal search warrants Thursday that appeared to be related to an ongoing public corruption investigation of a Rancho Cucamonga development and its handling by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors. Among the offices searched were those of Jeffrey Burum, a managing partner at Colonies Partners of Rancho Cucamonga, and of O'Reilly Public Relations in Riverside. One of the properties is associated with GOP operative and former state Sen. James L. Brulte.

Significantly more properties entered the foreclosure process during August in the nation's hardest-hit markets, including battered parts of inland California and other areas in the West, as Bank of America Corp. stepped up its activity in states where a court order is not needed to take back a home. Among the states with the highest foreclosure rates, California led the pack in new foreclosure proceedings with an increase of 55% over July, according to data from Irvine-based RealtyTrac.

Former San Bernardino County Supervisor Bill Postmus and the county's former assistant assessor were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of accepting bribes to push for a $102-million settlement between the county and a developer, state and county prosecutors said. It was the second time that Postmus and James Erwin had been arrested in connection with a political corruption probe in the county that has uncovered evidence of bribery, extortion, theft, forgery and use of the assessor's staff to do political work.

Three wildfires burned across dry vegetation Monday in the Inland Empire, forcing mandatory evacuations near Perris and snarling traffic on heavily traveled Interstate 15 in the Cajon Pass. In Riverside County, welders are believed to have sparked a blaze that had burned 100 acres of light-and-medium vegetation by late Monday and prompted about 50 homes to be evacuated in the unincorporated community of Good Hope northwest of Perris, fire officials said. In San Bernardino County, two blazes caused officials to shut down most lanes of Interstate 15, an artery that links Las Vegas and the high desert.

When deputies raided a suspected drug house in San Bernardino County this week, much of what they found was typical: guns, pipes and meth. It's what they found in the backyard that shocked them: about two dozen custom granite tombstones scattered haphazardly across the yard. "It is a bizarre scenario," said San Bernardino County Sheriff's Deputy Mike Walker, who was at the scene. "It's not something we come across very often, [or] at all, really. " Authorities believe the residents of the home, who were allegedly selling methamphetamine, dug at least some of the tombstones out from a cemetery in the city of Colton about two miles away.