VATICAN CITY >> Pope Francis opened solemn Holy Week services with Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square, stressing humility and remembering the dead in the Germanwings crash. At the end of Mass outside St. Peter’s Basilica for some 70,000 faithful, Francis prayed for those who died in Tuesday’s crash in the French Alps, noting […]

LOS ANGELES >> A three-car Metro Expo Line train smashed into a car turning onto the tracks Saturday in front of the University of Southern California, seriously injuring the operator and leaving the driver of the car close to death. Nineteen passengers escaped with minor injuries. The eastbound train slammed into the car just before […]

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. >> Derryl Cousins, a major league umpire from 1979 to 2012 and an alumnus of El Segundo High School and El Camino College, was recently arrested for drunk driving here. According to the written police report, Cousins was pulled over by Scottsdale Police Officer Kevin Reynolds on March 18 at 2:22 a.m. He […]

UPLAND >> At least three people, including two pregnant women, were injured in a multi-vehicle crash involving a jack-knifed tractor trailer on the eastbound 10 Freeway at Mountain Avenue Wednesday morning, according to the California Highway Patrol. • Video: Big rig crash backs up traffic for miles The crash was reported just after 7:30 a.m. […]

WASHINGTON >> The Associated Press has learned that two Americans presumed to have died in the plane crash in the southern French Alps include a U.S. government contractor and her daughter. The mother was identified as Yvonne Selke of Nokesville, Virginia, a longtime and highly regarded employee of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. in Washington, and […]

HALTERN, Germany >> A stunned German town mourned 16 students who went down aboard Germanwings Flight 9525 on their way home Tuesday from a Spanish exchange, while the opera world grieved for two singers who were returning from performing in Barcelona — one of them with her baby. “This is surely the blackest day in […]

SANTA ANA >> Charges were filed Tuesday against four people accused in a dine-and-dash at an Anaheim-area restaurant that ended with a waitress getting run over in the parking lot as they drove off. Rowshaid Cordell Pellum, 24, of Cerritos, was charged with aggravated assault and hit-and-run with injury, both felonies, and a misdemeanor count […]

POMONA >> Two men were arrested for suspicion of possession of methamphetamine and felony evading Monday after leading police on a high-speed chase and crashing into a parked car in Pomona. David Delayo, 24, of Pomona and Joseph Delayo, 21, of Baldwin Park were behind bars tonight after being arrested in the area of Towne […]

My memory of lessons in school about the Great Depression goes something like this: “It began in 1929 when everyone lost their money in the stock market, the banks closed and everyone got food in bread lines until World War II.” Most of what I really learned as a youth about the Depression came from […]