Orange County, CA | featured news

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department is investigating a courthouse fight that broke out Wednesday between a District Attorney’s investigator and a defense attorney who triumphed over prosecutors in a recent case involving jailhouse informants....

At 96, Kenneth Collins, a Laguna Woods man accused of molesting two girls, is one of the oldest inmates ever held in an Orange County jail.
Family members said Wednesday the case is a sad mistake.
They described Collins as a frail World War II...

LAKE FOREST – A woman in her 50s was struck and killed Thursday morning by a driver who then crashed on East Santiago Canyon Road, closing lanes for several hours, officials said.
The unidentified woman was walking at 5:18 a.m. on East Santiago...

The first thing that Joseph Rodriguez heard as he existed the car on his first day of basic training with Young Marines was a drill sergeant shouting, “Get out of the car, private!” “It was a wake-up call,” the 17 year-old El Monte...

WESTMINSTER – Imagine what that finger might do.
Point? Duh. Scratch? If something itches, this finger could scratch it. Prod? Poke? Tickle? Yes, yes, yes.
It’s small as fingers go, about right for a kid in third grade. And it’s fire engine...

It’s close to 10 a.m., checkout time at the Motel 6 in Santa Ana where Jeffrey Riley and his family just spent two nights in a room shared with three other people.
All are homeless and on their way back to the streets.
The Rileys are headed to...

LAKE FOREST – Councilman Jim Gardner is proposing an alternative to the city continuing its animal services contract with Orange County, whose dilapidated shelter and high kill rate have come under fire.
His plan doesn’t require the city to build...

IRVINE – As a child, Clare Zhu was fascinated by Rubik’s cubes.
She hasn’t given that up, but solving a more complicated puzzle recently earned her a spot as a finalist in the nation’s most prestigious pre-college science competition, the...

I just got back from a family funeral, which wasn’t nearly as much fun as it sounds.
Funerals inhabit those touchy areas that people rarely talk about, but which consume a lot of psychic space within a family and can even eat it from the inside,...

ANAHEIM – Charter schools have a small presence in Orange County, but concern over their future growth drew some 900 educators, parents and students to a film screening of a new documentary highly critical of school charter groups with alleged ties...