BILL TO BAN LEAD AMMO ADVANCES IN CALIF. SENATE: SACRAMENTO (AP) — California is one step closer to becoming the first state in the nation to ban lead ammunition for hunting.
The state Senate's Natural Resources Committee voted 7-1 on Tuesday in favor of a bill banning the ammunition.
The bill — first introduced in the state Assembly by Lakewood Democrat Anthony Rendon — is intended to protect wildlife and human health.
It contains amendments requested by the Department of Fish and Wildlife that would give the state until 2018 to implement the ban instead of 2016.
Supporters say that spent shot is the largest unregulated source of lead pollution in the U.S. They say the bill would save humans and wildlife from poisoning.
Opponents say non-lead ammo is more expensive and can be banned federally because it is technically armor piercing.
MAN CONVICTED OF SOCAL THROAT-SLASHING: TORRANCE (AP) — A man charged with robbing a Southern California cigar store, handcuffing the clerk and slashing his throat from ear to ear has been convicted of attempted murder and other crimes.
Tyler Lee Rodgers, 19, of Los Angeles was found guilty on Monday and could face life in prison. He also was convicted of breaking into a Torrance house.
Police say Rodgers confessed to robbing a Manhattan Beach cigar shop at gunpoint last year. Prosecutors say he handcuffed the clerk in a back room, stabbed him in the face while demanding money, and then cut his throat to eliminate him as a witness. Surveillance cameras recorded part of the holdup.
The clerk survived and testified against him.
GUNMAN KILLS 1, WOUNDS 1 IN SANTA MONICA ALLEY: SANTA MONICA (AP) — Santa Monica police say one man was fatally shot and another wounded in an alley not far from the college where a gunman was killed last week after a deadly rampage.
Sgt. Richard Lewis says one victim died and the other is in surgery. He also says the shooting was not connected to last week's violence.
Lewis says the victims were in an alley about 8:15 a.m. Tuesday when a man walked up, shot each several times, then ran to a car and fled.
The alley is a quarter-mile from Santa Monica College, where police killed John Zawahri after he fatally shot five people on Friday.
SMOKEJUMPER, 28, KILLED BY TREE IN CALIF. FOREST: ALTURAS (AP) — The U.S. Forest Service says a 28-year-old smokejumper has been killed while fighting a lightning-sparked fire in northeast California.
Fire Information Officer Stanton Florea said Luke Sheehy, of Susanville, was fatally injured by part of a falling tree in Modoc National Forest on Monday afternoon.
He was pronounced dead at a hospital about 15 miles away, in Alturas.
Sheehy was a member of the Redding-based California Smokejumpers, firefighters who parachute into remote areas from airplanes.
The Modoc fire was one of more than 60 fires that have broken out in the Sierra foothills and the north coast since Sunday as waves of dry lightning passed over the areas.
FEDS CONTINUE POT SHOP CRACKDOWN IN LA COUNTY: LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal prosecutors have sent dozens of letters warning medical marijuana shops in Los Angeles and Long Beach to shut down or risk potential criminal or civil action.
Authorities say more than 100 pot clinics across Los Angeles County received the letters Tuesday. Lawsuits also were filed against two property owners in Long Beach, telling them it's illegal to allow pot sales in buildings they own.
California's federal prosecutors launched a coordinated crackdown on the state's medical marijuana industry in 2011 by threatening landlords with property forfeiture. Since then, many of the 625 pot shops targeted in the seven-county Central District of California have closed.
California was the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use when voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996, but it remains illegal under federal law.
COLLEGE STUDENT HELD IN ALLEGED MURDER PLOT: RIVERSIDE (AP) — A University of California, Riverside, student has pleaded not guilty to soliciting an ex-boyfriend's beating and murder by another boyfriend, who secretly recorded the alleged plot.
Barbara Wu, 21, entered pleas May 31 to charges of soliciting murder, making terrorist threats, vandalism, stalking and other crimes. She remained jailed Tuesday.
Dennis Lin wrote in a request for a restraining order that Wu asked him on May 22 to kill an ex-boyfriend.
"She made me promise that I would go through with it," wrote Lin, 21, who made the request a day after Wu's May 23 arrest.
"She wanted me to tie him up, use a bat to break his legs, kill him, then discard the body," he wrote. "She wanted us to leave the country after we did all of this to him."
Lin said he told a university official who contacted university police, who in turn asked Lin to secretly record Wu discussing the plot.
"Since I'm now an ex-boyfriend who told police about her, I fear for my life," Lin wrote in his court request.
Lin wrote that Wu actually had talked about killing "at least two" of her ex-boyfriends. He did not identify them.
He also wrote that his relationship with Wu was marked by several blowups, and described her as "vindictive and impulsive."
Lin said that on April 30, Wu tried to barricade herself in his bedroom. As the two pushed and pulled on the door, Wu's knee smashed through it, he wrote
SAN DIEGO UTILITY REVIVES PLANS FOR ELECTRIC PLANT: SAN DIEGO (AP) — San Diego's electric utility is reviving plans to build a large gas-fired plant after news that the San Onofre nuclear plant is closing.
San Diego Gas & Electric Co. said Tuesday that it will ask regulators next week to approve a 300-megawatt plant near the Mexican border. The California Public Utilities Commission rejected it in March, a victory for critics who deemed it unnecessary.
SDG&E's president, Michael Niggli, says circumstances have changed. The San Diego utility has historically gotten about 20 percent of its electricity from San Onofre.
Public Utilities Commissioner J.K. Sandoval acknowledged that earlier rejection of the Pio Pico plant didn't take into account San Onofre's closing. She appeared at a news conference with officials who said San Diego should have enough power for peak demand this summer.
