WOMAN ARRESTED, ALLEGEDLY LEFT SON WITH TRANSIENTS: SAN BERNARDINO (AP) — A Southern California woman has been arrested for allegedly leaving her 10-year-old son with two homeless friends so she could party on New Year's Eve.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department says 36-year-old Summer Collras was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of child endangerment and later released. She couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Authorities say the San Bernardino woman went out about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and left the boy with two transients she knows. She called authorities after returning home at 2 a.m. and finding the boy and her friends gone.
The boy was found unharmed 14 hours later after a search aided by bloodhounds and a helicopter.
Authorities said he'd stayed overnight with a friend and was walking home.
He was placed with county welfare officials.
MISSISSIPPI FLAG CAUSES FLAP IN S. CALIFORNIA: SANTA ANA (AP) — Some Southern California attorneys want the Mississippi state flag, the last in the nation to include a Confederate symbol, removed from a display at Santa Ana's civic center.
The Orange County Bar Association said the emblem symbolizes hatred and racism. The association recently passed a resolution seeking the flag's removal from a display of flags from all 50 states at the civic center.
Mississippi's flag is the last in the nation to include the star-studded crossed bars of the Confederate battle flag. Georgia removed it about a decade ago.
The association's efforts may be moot. City and county officials have been discussing ideas for renovating the plaza where the flags are, including the possibility of getting rid of the display.
PROPOSAL WOULD RESTORE CROSS TO LA COUNTY SEAL: LOS ANGELES (AP) — Two Los Angeles County supervisors are proposing reintroducing the image of a cross in the county's official seal.
The Los Angeles Times reports (http://lat.ms/1kbtTtE) Thursday that Supervisors Michael Antonovich and Don Knabe (kuh-NAH'-bee) filed a motion Tuesday to add a cross to the depiction of historic San Gabriel Mission on the emblem that appears on county property.
The seal once featured a tiny gold cross above an image of the Hollywood Bowl. The cross was justified as a historic reference to the area's settlement by Spanish missionaries in the 1700s.
Under threat of legal action by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, supervisors in 2004 voted 3-2 to remove the cross.
The mission was added that year, among other changes to the original 1950s-era seal.
MAN'S BODY FOUND OFF NEWPORT BEACH COAST: NEWPORT BEACH (AP) — Orange County authorities are asking for public help to identify a man whose body was found floating a mile off of Newport Beach.
The Sheriff's Department says a commercial fisherman discovered the body on Christmas Eve near Crystal Cove.
City News Service says the body was too badly decomposed to determine the man's race or age. But he had dark hair, stood 5-foot-9 and weighed about 165 pounds. He was wearing dark-colored nylon sweatpants, black running shoes and a black watch.
SENATE HIRES ATTORNEY IN WAKE OF CORRUPTION PROBE: SACRAMENTO (AP) — A state Senate ethics panel is hiring an independent lawyer as it considers what steps it might take during an ongoing federal corruption investigation.
Democratic Sen. Richard Roth of Riverside said Thursday that the Senate Committee on Legislative Ethics retained attorney Charles Stevens of San Francisco. Stevens previously was the U.S. attorney based in Sacramento, and before that was an assistant federal prosecutor in Los Angeles investigating public corruption cases.
The move comes as the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles investigates whether Sen. Ron Calderon accepted nearly $90,000 to influence legislation. No charges have been filed and Calderon, a Democrat from Montebello, denies wrongdoing.
A spokesman for Roth says Stevens will advise the ethics committee on when it can open its own investigation without disrupting the federal probe.
