San Diego Area

Here's a deal for those who want to sample a high-end hotel and don't mind a little muss and fuss. Loews Coronado Bay Resort in Coronado, Calif., is offering guests 25% off best available room rates while it adds touches that include a two-story chandelier and a floating bar. The deal:  Renovation Rates start at $119 plus tax -- a low price for this San Diego-area waterfront hotel. Loews has spent $12 million in the last three years on updates that will continue through early June, according to a statement.

They were planning to spend nearly $500,000 on a home theater. What was an additional $35,000 to show first-run movies? When Ken and Carol Schultz began remodeling their 10,000-square-foot San Diego-area residence, they spared no expense on a screening room. The couple tricked it out with custom-built armchairs with heat and massage functions, and a Runco 3-D-capable projector with a price of about $100,000. But the most unusual feature of the theater is a $35,000 device that offers 24-hour rentals of first-run movies.

Police on Monday said a man suspected of killing a valet parking attendant in Koreatown may be in the San Diego area, possibly on his way to Mexico. Helio Azevedo, 26, who is wanted for the slaying of Guillermo Medina, "should be considered armed and dangerous," said Los Angeles Police Detective Dan Andrews. Medina, 46, was shot in the chest as he tried to grab a man believed to be Azevedo, who was stealing a customer's car from the parking lot of the Woo Lae Oak restaurant at 623 S.

Travelers who like to eat and drink their way through a weekend getaway should check out Fiestas del Mar, a south-of-the-border celebration of wine and seafood in Ensenada, Mexico . The event, April 20 at Ensenada's Hotel Coral and Marina , will focus on Baja's growing culinary marketplace. Events include a ceviche contest, wine and Champagne tastings, hot air balloon rides and live entertainment.  “We created Fiestas del Mar to celebrate Ensenada's unique culture and flavor,” said Lizette Sanchez, director of sales and public relations.

Continuing an expansion in the San Diego area, Irvine Apartment Communities Inc. said Tuesday it has purchased two sites where it will build luxury apartments. The real estate investment trust said its investment in the properties will total $75 million. IAC will build 232 units on 4.2 acres in University Town Center near La Jolla, and 336 units on a 13.5-acre site in Stonecrest Village, a small planned community overlooking Interstate 15 in the Kearny Mesa area.

Arrests of illegal aliens along the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego County reached near-record numbers in January, a development that one federal official here called "alarming" in view of the border-wide decline in arrests last year after passage of the new immigration law.

Embassy Suites Inc. has opened its first San Diego-area all-suites hotel at 4550 La Jolla Village Drive. The $30-million 12-story hotel is the company's 14th California location, with four other under construction. McDevitt & Street Co. of Charlotte, N. C., was general contractor, and San Diego-based Buss, Silvers and Hughes Associates was the architect.

Police on Monday said a man suspected of killing a valet parking attendant in Koreatown may be in the San Diego area, possibly on his way to Mexico. Helio Azevedo, 26, who is wanted for the slaying of Guillermo Medina, "should be considered armed and dangerous," said Los Angeles Police Detective Dan Andrews. Medina, 46, was shot in the chest as he tried to grab a man believed to be Azevedo, who was stealing a customer's car from the parking lot of the Woo Lae Oak restaurant at 623 S.

A state Court of Appeal suggested Thursday that paroled rapist Lawrence Singleton, who has been barred by court order from two Northern California counties, might be released in San Diego County, where he was tried eight years ago on a change of venue.

Sony, the Japanese consumer electronics giant, said Wednesday that it is expanding its already sizable television manufacturing operation in the San Diego-Tijuana area to accommodate the increasing shift of TV production here from Japan. The company said it is making the shift to take advantage of lower manufacturing costs resulting from the weaker dollar and peso against the yen. Sony Manufacturing of America, Sony's U.S.

The mother of five was in her car. The U.S. Border Patrol agent was walking down a tree-lined street. There was a confrontation and several shots rang out, puncturing the windshield. Valeria Tachiquin Alvarado, 32, died at the scene. Fatal confrontations involving border agents are not uncommon - at least 14 civilians have died since 2010 - but the incident last week in this heavily Latino San Diego suburb has fueled more than the usual amount of protest. About 150 people gathered for a candlelight vigil Monday at the corner where the shooting occurred, holding up signs bearing Tachiquin's image and demanding answers.

Here's a deal for those who want to sample a high-end hotel and don't mind a little muss and fuss. Loews Coronado Bay Resort in Coronado, Calif., is offering guests 25% off best available room rates while it adds touches that include a two-story chandelier and a floating bar. The deal:  Renovation Rates start at $119 plus tax -- a low price for this San Diego-area waterfront hotel. Loews has spent $12 million in the last three years on updates that will continue through early June, according to a statement.

Reporting from San Diego -- An attorney who once was prominent in adoption circles was sentenced Friday to five months in federal custody and nine months of home confinement for her guilty plea in what prosecutors called an international "baby-selling" ring. Theresa Erickson, whose law firm was in Poway, had pleaded guilty to wire fraud for her role in a scheme that involved hiring surrogates to carry embryos to term and then arranging for the infants to be adopted. The "intended parents" often paid more than $100,000, according to the plea bargain signed by Erickson.

Reporting from San Diego -- A former schoolteacher who sold suicide kits that she once touted as leaving people "eternally sleepy" pleaded guilty Friday to a tax evasion charge and agreed to stop encouraging people to commit suicide. Sharlotte Hydorn mailed more than 1,300 of the so-called helium hood suicide kits to people around the world, concealing the true nature of the product by describing the boxes as "orchid humidifiers" or "beauty bonnets" or "plastic rain hoods" on U.S. customs forms, according to federal prosecutors.

Reporting from San Diego -- An illegal immigrant was found dead inside a smuggling boat that came ashore at San Diego's Pacific Beach and another died in a failed attempt to swim around a border fence in separate maritime incidents since Tuesday, according to federal authorities. Early Wednesday morning, U.S. Border Patrol agents inspecting a 16-foot panga boat near Law Street at Pacific Beach discovered a dead Mexican man and another unidentified person. Following footprints along the beach, the agents found 13 additional illegal immigrants hiding in a residential area.

Reporting from San Diego -- A federal appeals court Tuesday rejected the claim of a San Diego-area mathematics teacher that his 1st Amendment rights were violated when the school's principal ordered him to take down classroom banners that referred to God. A panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the principal and school board had the same authority as any employer to set limits on the speech of employees. Bradley Johnson, a mathematics teacher in the Poway Unified School District, had displayed banners in his classrooms for two decades that he saw as celebrating the religious heritage of America, including "In God We Trust," "God Bless America," and "God Shed His Grace on Thee.

Amid signs that the superheated housing market of earlier this year has cooled off, average prices of existing houses in metropolitan San Diego continued to level off in August from previous months, according to sales statistics released by the San Diego Board of Realtors. Although prices stabilized, a record number of transactions closed.

Industrial leasing activity in the San Diego area is proceeding at a record-breaking pace, according to a third-quarter study by Grubb & Ellis Commercial Brokerage Services. The total of 3.9 million square feet leased so far is ahead of the record set last year, with the final quarter still to be tabulated.

Modern life has been tough on the southwestern pond turtles that once were populous in the coastal part of San Diego County. Development ravaged the turtle's natural habitat. Then came the rise of invasive species that challenged the pond turtles for food or, in some cases, liked to dine on them. The African clawed frog, red-eared slider and crayfish have been particularly damaging to the turtles, which live in pools within natural streams and sloughs. In 2003 the U.S. Geological Survey's Western Ecological Research Center could find only 120 pond turtles in five locations in the San Diego region.

Nearly 300 people in Encinitas on Tuesday afternoon welcomed home Derek Thomas, a 19-year-old who was given a 1% chance to live after he was badly burned in a car crash a year ago. More than 85% of his body was burned in the multi-vehicle crash near Bishop, Calif., that killed four people, including his girlfriend, and injured 15 others. The crowd of friends from high school, church and the local YMCA where he used to work lined the driveway at Scripps Rehabilitation Services, where Derek is expected to continue physical therapy for at least a few more weeks.