The West Ranch Beacon – News & Commentary for the Santa Clarita Valley

As the New Year approaches, the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station would like to remind all residents to celebrate responsibly.  Successful New Year’s Eve celebrations begin with careful (more…)

The song, “Auld Lang Syne,” is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the New Year. At least partially written by Robert Burns in the 1700’s, it was first published in 1796 (more…)

Although in the first centuries AD the Romans continued celebrating the New Year, the early Catholic Church condemned the festivities as paganism. But as Christianity became more widespread, the early church began having (more…)

Todd Church’s face lights up when he recalls the August day he gave presidential candidate Barack Obama a tour of the VerSun ethanol plant near Charles City, a town of 7,800 people in north-eastern (more…)

The National Weather Service is predicting weather conditions which will constitute a “Red Flag Warning” in areas of the Santa Clarita Valley and Los Angeles County from 12:00 p.m. today through 6:00 p.m. New Year’s Day, (more…)

California Highway Patrol officers will join thousands of merrymakers on county roads and highways this holiday weekend, hoping to nab anyone foolish enough to get behind the wheel after drinking alcohol (more…)

The Cincinnati Post said goodbye with its final edition Monday — its presses stilled after 126 years. “_30_”, a symbol traditionally used to signal the end of a dispatch, was the front-page headline in the last Cincinnati edition, (more…)

The West Ranch Town Council will hold its regular monthly meeting of 2008 on Wednesday January 2nd, at 6:30 PM in the Newhall Room at the Tournament Players Club (TPC) located at 26550 Heritage View Lane in Westridge. The meeting will include the regular updates from the Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway (more…)

A few weeks ago we wrote about a little plan being hatched by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority: They’d like to begin charging motorists to use carpool lanes on stretches of three freeways in Los Angeles (more…)

Sales of previously owned homes inched up in November but that did not change the overall bleak picture for a housing industry that has been suffering through a painful slump. The National Association of Realtors reported on (more…)

Kenya was plunged into a media blackout on Monday as the government banned all live broadcasts and the death toll climbed in violence sparked by president Mwai Kibaki’s disputed (more…)

Wall Street is set to end 2007 with modest gains this week and kick off the new year with all eyes trained on jobs data for signs of recession that could make 2008 a hostile environment for stocks reports Reuters. (more…)

Political turmoil in Pakistan deepened on Sunday as Benazir Bhutto’s son Bilawal, a 19-year-old student at Oxford, was surprisingly chosen to succeed the slain opposition leader as chairman of (more…)

Buoyed by the still unsettled field, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is growing increasingly enchanted with the idea of launching an independent presidential bid, and his aides are aggressively laying the groundwork for him to run (more…)

The National Weather Service reports a wind advisory remains in effect from midnight to 8:00 PM Monday. High winds are predicted from Monday evening through Tuesday morning. (more…)

In the San Juan National Forest here, an iron rod gate is the last barrier to the Weminuche Wilderness, a mountain redoubt above 10,000 feet where wheels are not allowed. But the gate has been knocked down repeatedly, shot at and generally disregarded. Miles beyond it, a two-track trail has been punched into the wilderness by errant (more…)

On December 28, General David Petraeus, commander of Multi-National Force Iraq, sent the following letter to his troops reports the Weekly Standard. (more…)

The business of marketing the Bible and the Koran says a lot about the state of modern Christianity and Islam. Christians and Muslims have one striking thing in common: they are both “people of the book”. And they both have (more…)

When any of the 5,300 inmates at Pleasant Valley State Prison begin coughing and running a fever, doctors do not think flu, bronchitis or even the common cold. They think valley fever; and, more often than they would like, they (more…)

Economic growth in the Santa Clarita Valley will slow in 2008, the trickle-down from the slumping housing industry coupled with the unprecedented mortgage lending (more…)