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

For the 24 hour period of Wednesday, May 30^th, Santa Clarita Valley Personnel issued approximately 76 citations and warnings for traffic, parking and other related traffic offenses including misdemeanors and infractions. Deputies responded to 8 traffic collisions or related incidents.

Station personnel arrested and booked, or field released, 15 adults and detained 4 juveniles on 10 felony and 9 misdemeanor primary charges as summarized below:

Wednesday – May 30, 2007 – 10:50 a.m. – Newhall: Probation compliance search results in arrest (more…)

It was 2 a.m. when masked gunmen raided Al Wafa Net in the Khan Yunis camp in Gaza where 17 young men were surfing the Internet. “The gunmen tied their hands, then forced them to stand at the stairs while they broke all the screens, and then the server and the television and the photocopier,” said the owner, Hamad, of the attack a few months ago. “Then they burned all 36 computers,” according to a New York Times.

Read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/world/middleeast/31palestinians.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin    

The West Ranch Town Council will hold its regular monthly meeting on Wednesday, June 6th at 6:30 PM at the Southern Oaks Community Center located on Southern Oaks Drive in West Ranch neighborhood of Southern Oaks.

The meeting will include the regular monthly updates from the Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway Patrol, Parks and Recreation and the County. Also, this month’s special Guest is Paul Brotzman, Director of Community Developement for the City of Santa Clarita. (more…)

Castaic Town Council approved minutes from the April, 2007 meeting in Castaic. (more…)

When the Bush administration decided to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq, the strategy rested on an unspoken trade-off: U.S. troops would risk greater casualties to tamp down violence and buy the Baghdad government time to make the political compromises needed to reconcile the country’s warring factions.

 

But a resurgence of sectarian violence and attacks on U.S. troops, coupled with little to no progress on crucial Iraqi political goals, is already spurring discussion about whether the current strategy can succeed reports the Wall Street Journal.

Read it here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118056694765119209.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

A state-of-the-art recycling center stalled by lawsuits from occupying a planned Newhall business park is now envisioned for a site between Newhall and Canyon Country reports Judy O’Rourke in the Daily News. Opposition lodged by environmental groups spurred the company to seek the rugged 62-acre plot sandwiched between Sierra Highway and the Antelope Valley Freeway.

Read it here: http://www.dailynews.com/santaclarita/ci_6024864

The correction in the US housing market will “probably persist longer than previously anticipated”, Federal Reserve policymakers judged at their last meeting, according to minutes released on Wednesday reports the Financial Times. The minutes show that Fed officials meeting on May 9 were concerned by the decline in new home sales and the rise in the inventory of unsold homes relative to the rate of turnover.

 

Read it here: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c1586a86-0ee5-11dc-b444-000b5df10621,dwp_uuid=5aedc804-2f7b-11da-8b51-00000e2511c8.html

World financial markets largely shrugged off a sharp tumble in the red-hot Chinese stock market on Wednesday, with the US S&P 500 index ending the day at an all-time high. Chinese shares swung wildly Wednesday, with the Shanghai Composite Index sinking almost 5 per cent and ultimately ending the day up 1.4 per cent at 4,109.654 reports the Financial Times.

 

Read it here: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d3301c60-0e5c-11dc-8219-000b5df10621.html

For the 24 hour period of Tuesday, May 29^th, Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff Personnel issued approximately 77 citations and warnings for traffic, parking and other related traffic offenses including misdemeanors and infractions. Deputies responded to 10 traffic collisions or related incidents.

Station personnel arrested and booked, or field released, 7 adults and detained 2 juveniles on 1 felony and 8 misdemeanor primary charges as summarized below:

Tuesday – May 29, 2007 – 12:21 a.m. – Newhall: Deputy Schalkx arrested a Newhall man on suspicion of Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol/Drugs after he stopped him near (more…)

There’s a bill, known as the Healthy Pets Act, wending its way through the state Assembly’s committee process right now, that would require that all dogs and cats in California to be spayed or neutered by the time they’re 4 months old. The idea behind this bill, AB1634, is that the large number of animals being put to sleep in shelters would be reduced if fewer puppies and kittens were born reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Read it here: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2007/05/29/petscol.DTL

Until about a year ago, I was beginning to think that bringing up the subject of abortion was a faux pas equivalent to singing the Star Spangled Banner like Rosanne Barr.

Here I am writing about abortion again, for the fifth time within over a year in a Southern Californian public forum.  For decades, it seemed that this abortion subject was the one thing no one was supposed to touch in any serious way, that you were simply supposed to say you were “pro-choice” or “pro life” like you were talking about rain or sunshine.  We had come to believe that abortion was simply there, like the weather. (more…)

The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it harder for many workers to sue their employers for discrimination in pay, insisting in a 5-to-4 decision on a tight time frame to file such cases. The dissenters said the ruling ignored workplace realities reports the New York Times. Read it here: Supreme Court

 

Assemblyman Cameron Smyth, R-Santa Clarita, has been named to three more important Select Committees of the Assembly.  He has been named to the following:

· Select Committee on Rail Transportation (named Vice Chair)

· Select Committee on the Preservation of California’s Entertainment Industry

· Select Committee on Growth Management
 

“I am very excited to be named to these select committees which can have a potentially vital impact on the 38th district,” Smyth said.  “I look forward to using my position to help advance the interests of our community.”

Select committees do not hear legislation but work to bring attention and awareness to issues relating to their particular subjects. Assemblyman Smyth is also a member of the Select Committee on Wine.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a new emergency room and tuberculosis unit for Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, announced Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich.

In November 2006, the Board of Supervisors authorized the Director of Department of Public Works to select general contractors and adopt preliminary plans for a $49 million Emergency Room Replacement and new Tuberculosis Unit for the Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar. (more…)

Health authorities have begun notifying hundreds of people who may have been exposed to a Georgia man infected with a form of tuberculosis resistant to almost all drugs, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday reports the Los Angeles Times. The man traveled on two transatlantic flights in May and health officials are most worried about the airline crews and the passengers sitting around him, said CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding.

 

Read it here: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-tb30may30,0,2765140.story?coll=la-home-center

Barack Obama joined his Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Clinton and John Edwards on Tuesday in offering a plan to provide all Americans with “affordable, universal healthcare”. Speaking in Iowa, which holds the first presidential caucus next January, Mr. Obama laid out a five-point plan that he said would lower average family health-insurance costs by $2,500 and would bring the 45m uninsured Americans into full coverage.

 

Read it here: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a61ce6a6-0e14-11dc-8219-000b5df10621,dwp_uuid=5aedc804-2f7b-11da-8b51-00000e2511c8.html

China’s benchmark stock index plunged 6.5 per cent on Wednesday, after Beijing took its most decisive step yet in its efforts to deflate the soar-away mainland stock market by tripling the stamp duty tax on share transactions reports the Financial Times.

 

Tony Tassell, deputy markets editor, on the limited fallout from the sharp drop on the Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 index. The measure had an immediate impact on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets. The Shanghai Composite Index dropped as much as 7.4 per cent before ending down 6.5 per cent at 4,053.01, its lowest since May 21. The Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 index, which covers both bourses, dived 6.8 per cent to 3,859.9. Trading was heavy, with the combined turnover on the two exchanges reaching a record $53bn.

 

Read it here: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d3301c60-0e5c-11dc-8219-000b5df10621.html

To reduce Off-Highway Vehicle offenses and code violations throughout the Santa Clarita and Antelope Valleys, the Board of Supervisors approved a $150,000 grant from the California Department of Parks and Recreation for the Sheriff’s Department Off-Highway Vehicle Enforcement Teams, announced Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich.

 

“This grant will provide the Sheriff with the tools necessary to reduce Off-Highway Vehicle offenses and protect our County’s natural resources,” said Supervisor Antonovich.