FIGHT AT TULARE CO. CEMETERY LEAVES TEEN DEAD: DINUBA (AP) — Authorities are searching for a group of people involved in a fight at a Tulare County cemetery that resulted in the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old boy.
Sheriff's officials say Huber Barron was accompanying several friends to visit a grave site at Smith Mountain Cemetery on Sunday morning when they were approached by several people in a car. A fight broke out, and someone shot Barron in the upper torso.
Barron's friends called 911 and drove him to meet an ambulance in Visalia. He died hours later at the hospital.
Sheriff's Sgt. Floyd Hager said that the shooting appears to be gang-related, but Barron and his friends were not gang members. Hager says they did not know the shooter.
SENATE APPROVES TRIBAL CASINO IN SONOMA COUNTY: SACRAMENTO (AP) — The state Senate has approved an agreement with a Northern California Indian tribe that plans to build a casino about 50 miles north of San Francisco.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed a compact in March with the 1,300-member Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, which intends to build on 254 acres near Rohnert Park in Sonoma County. The Senate ratified it Monday on a 34-4 vote.
The compact allows for 3,000 slot machines and card games.
Up to 15 percent of the casino's net winnings would go to the city and county to offset the casino's effects. The tribe would pay the state $1.4 million a year for its costs of regulating gambling and assisting problem gamblers.
SAFEWAY AIMS FOR CRATE-FREE PORK SUPPLY: PLEASANTON (AP) — The nation's second-largest grocery chain says it will adopt purchasing policies that favor more humane treatment of pigs.
Safeway Inc. announced Monday that it's planning to stop buying from suppliers that use pig gestation crates.
Most pork currently comes from sows confined during their four-month pregnancies in narrow crates. Animal welfare activists have pushed for using open pens.
Other corporations such as McDonald's and Burger King also plan to buy pork from pigs not kept in crates.
HIGH-PERFORMING LA CHARTER MAY CLOSE: LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Los Angeles charter school with some of the highest test scores in the nation's second-largest school district could be shut down.
The Alliance Environmental Science and Technology School in the city's northeast Glassell Park area is three years into a five-year lease.
But a judge has invalidated the lease because of the school's arrangement with the Los Angeles Community College District.
The Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/JirRnu) says a coalition of community groups challenged the legality of the lease between the college district and Alliance College-Ready Public Schools.
The judge agreed that the college district's environmental impact report didn't assess the effect of the charter school on the surrounding area.
The site was initially planned as a college district satellite campus for adults and traffic problems weren't addressed.
CHP OFFICER SHOT FROM PASSING SUV NEAR BAKERSFIELD: BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (AP) — A California Highway Patrol officer who was shot in the hand and chest from a passing SUV while monitoring highway traffic north of Bakersfield is recovering from his non-life threatening injuries.
The officer, who has not been named, was using a speed-monitoring radar machine on Highway 178 in Kern County late Sunday night when the SUV passed him, made a U-turn and came back toward him with someone firing a 9mm handgun from inside the vehicle, authorities said Monday.
The injured officer opened fire in return, managing to shoot out one of the SUV's back windows. He tried to chase the vehicle as it sped toward Lake Isabella, but his own
