4 DOGS ATTACK ELDERLY COUPLE IN THEIR MODESTO HOME: MODESTO (AP) — Two people are in critical condition after being mauled by four pit bulls at a home in central California.
Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson says deputies who arrived at the house Tuesday night found the four dogs attacking an elderly man in the front yard.
Ddeputies found an elderly woman inside the house who was critically injured from dog bites.
Christianson says deputies shot at the dogs, killing two and driving two into another yard.
Investigators are working to determine what happened and who owned the dogs. Christianson says the animals didn’t belong to the victims, whom he didn’t identify.
He says the owner or owners could be civilly and criminally liable for the dogs’ actions.
X-LA COUNCILMAN GETS JAIL TERM FOR FLYING ABOUT WHERE HE LIVED: LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former Los Angeles city councilman was sentenced Tuesday to four months in jail for voting fraud and perjury after a judge denied his motion for a new trial.
Richard Alarcon and his wife, Flora, were convicted in July of living outside the district he was elected to represent.
Alarcon, who is also a former Democratic state legislator, drew a 120-day jail sentence and was ordered to do 600 hours of community service and five years of probation. His wife was given five years of probation and 400 hours of community service.
Alarcon’s case was similar to that of state Sen. Rod Wright, who resigned his office last month after being convicted in Los Angeles of lying about where he lived in order to run for office.
Wright’s case was the first of three unrelated cases against Democratic lawmakers that cast a shadow over the Legislature and cost the party a supermajority in the state Senate.
A jury found Alarcon, 60, guilty of four felony counts but acquitted him of a dozen other charges. His wife, Flora Alarcon, 49, was convicted of three charges and acquitted of two others.
Alarcon served on the council from 1993 to 1998 and again from 2007 to 2013. He also served as a state senator and state assemblyman.
He represented the 7th Council District, including portions of the northeastern San Fernando Valley that has some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
Prosecutors said the couple falsely claimed to live in Panorama City so that Richard Alarcon could represent the district, when in fact they were living at his wife’s home in Sun Valley, about 5 miles away in another district.
PROGRESSIVE BAY GUARDIAN SHUTS DOWN AFTER 48 YEARS: SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The San Francisco Bay Guardian weekly newspaper is shutting down after being a leading progressive publication in the Northern California city for 48 years.
San Francisco Media Co., which has published the paper since 2012, says in a brief statement published on the weekly’s website that the last issue will be published Wednesday.
By Tuesday night the weekly’s Facebook page had been shut down and only the publisher’s statement remained on its website.
The statement didn’t say what prompted the closure but publisher Glenn Zuehls tells the San Francisco Chronicle the weekly is closing because of financial problems.
The Bay Guardian had been publishing stories about progressive San Francisco since 1966, when Bruce Brugmann and his wife, Jean Dibble, founded the paper.
