LANCASTER - Local legislators say they'll watch carefully the congressional response to proposed tougher air-quality regulations that could affect the new Antelope Valley Air Pollution Control District.
Dec. 1
LANCASTER - Local legislators say they'll watch carefully the congressional response to proposed tougher air-quality regulations that could affect the new Antelope Valley Air Pollution Control District.
CALIFORNIA CITY - Municipal officials set aside $150,000 in the hope of spurring sales of homes in this bedroom community, particularly to those with low or moderate incomes.
Dec. 3
AGUA DULCE - Saying they're frustrated by antics of their elected representatives, some Agua Dulce residents serve three town council members with notices of intent to recall them from office.
One of possibly several people allegedly responsible for destruction of mailboxes and theft of mail throughout the Antelope Valley is arrested and jailed, authorities confirm.
Dec. 4
EDWARDS AFB - Dan R. Welch, Ph.D., a 1976 Desert High School graduate, now heads a research team that identified a gene that can stop the spread of the deadliest form of skin cancer.
Welch, assistant professor of pathology, and Jeong-Hyung Lee, Ph.D., a postdoctoral pathology fellow from Korea, identified the gene that isolated the cells of malignant melanomas in experiments. The news comes from Pennsylvania State College of Medicine's Jake Gittlen Cancer Institute.
PALMDALE - Mayor Jim Ledford's vision to make the city more attractive runs headlong into a legal buzz saw that could dismantle not only future plans, but beautification projects already completed.
The problem facing Ledford and other city officials comes with passage of Proposition 218 - the right to vote initiative.
Dec. 6
PALMDALE - As Boeing Co.'s acquisition of Rockwell International defense and aerospace divisions nears final approval, Antelope Valley leaders talk about how to welcome the region's newest aerospace neighbor.
"We want to make them a part of the Antelope Valley. We want to bring them into the fold. We want to welcome them to the community and work hard to make them feel welcome," says Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford.
LANCASTER - Students and parents of students attending El Dorado and Linda Verde elementary schools are asked to watch for two men who tried to abduct an 8year-old boy.
PALMDALE - Property owners in Palmdale won't have to pay a $12-a-year citywide landscape assessment next year, and they will have a chance in March to decide whether to maintain another assessment district.
The city council will absorb the citywide Zone 1 assessment district into the city's budget rather than ask voters to approve the separate tax.
Dec. 7
LANCASTER - Two environmental activists say the Antelope Valley is the only area left unprotected by strong local measures restricting the spreading of human sewage on farmlands.
With the exception of Los Angeles and Kern, other counties and cities within the jurisdiction of the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board have passed measures more restrictive than existing state regulations, activist Delores Reagan says.
EDWARDS AFB - A man wanted for the murder of a nightclub manager at Edwards is found dead in the desert near Yuma, Ariz.
Authorities considered Johnny Eugene Wyss, 26, the prime suspect in the Sept. 1 murder of James Elling, a night manager with Edwards' consolidated club system.
Dec. 8
LANCASTER - A 59yearold grandmother missing since Wednesday is found dead in the trunk of her car Friday.
LAKE LOS ANGELES - A pair of would-be bank robbers didn't count on so many people taking it personally.
When the two men left the Antelope Valley Bank branch emptyhanded, a crowd of people stopped them and held the bandits until authorities arrived.
Dec. 10
PALMDALE - John Wayne is arguably the Antelope Valley's most famous former resident. Now, the American screen icon is at the center of a dispute that has sent a fire station captain on stress leave due to alleged harassment by a superior.
The friction here over Wayne's likeness being displayed at a fire station is the second incident of its kind in three months.
LANCASTER - An annual industrywide ranking of hospitals places Lancaster Community Hospital among the 100 top performing general acute care hospitals in the United States - and in the top 20 for urban hospitals with 250 or fewer beds.
Dec. 11
LANCASTER - The city Planning Commission votes 2-1 to approve an ice- and roller-skating complex favored by kids and opposed by neighbors.
A public hearing on whether to grant a conditional use permit for the two-story, 85,148-square-foot complex draws a standingroomonly crowd that ranges from supportive preteens in hockey jerseys to opposing retirees in overcoats.
LOS ANGELES - Despite objections from the real estate industry that the plan is "seriously flawed," Los Angeles County Supervisors vote to send the Regional Planning Commission recommendations for curbing land fraud such as occurred in the Antelope Valley's High Vista area.
PALMDALE - An intensive search for a man accused of multiple murder in Baldwin Park in September closes some Palmdale streets for three hours.
LANCASTER - About 200 jobs will be created at Edwards Air Force Base if a prototype laser to be mounted in the nose of a Boeing 747 comes here for tests in 2001.
Dec. 12
PALMDALE - For the first time in more than two years, the monthly total of airline passenger traffic through Palmdale Regional Airport increased in October, the Los Angeles Department of Airports reports.
While the 3.2% increase from the same month a year earlier represented just 50 passengers, the jump did interrupt a downward trend.
Dec. 13
PALMDALE - The state's Intercity High Speed Rail Commission chooses an alignment that would take a planned high-speed rail line through the Antelope Valley and across the Tehachapi Mountains.
Antelope Valley leaders applaud the decision to route the line linking Southern and Northern California through the Valley. Such a high-speed rail line could benefit the Valley in numerous economic ways and finally make Palmdale Regional Airport a serious contender.
LANCASTER - A threeyearold controversy about whether BioGro Systems Inc. should be granted a permit allowing it to run a 67-acre composting operation in the Antelope Valley will continue for at least another seven weeks.
Despite nearly two hours of public testimony against the operation, plus 32 letters, 856 petition signatures and 1,220 newspaper clip-outs indicating opposition, the County Board of Supervisors postpones a decision until Tuesday, Jan. 28.
Dec. 14
VAN NUYS - A woman is convicted for participating in an arson insurance scam at her Littlerock home that went awry and ended in the death of her policeman husband. The woman is eligible for the death penalty.
Joy Hooker, 52, was convicted of murder and arson charges after a Superior Court jury deliberated two days. Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 17.
LANCASTER - Claiming its hands are tied, the Lancaster City Council votes to allow a low-income apartment complex to be built in a neighborhood homeowners say is riddled with crime, traffic and school overcrowding.
LANCASTER - A woman loses nearly $500 worth of Christmas presents and cash when she becomes the victim of the fourth home-invasion robbery in a month in the Antelope Valley.
Dec. 15
LANCASTER - Los Angeles City Council member Ruth Galanter says the Los Angeles International Airport master plan must consider using the county's other facilities, such as Palmdale.
LANCASTER - About 80 Northrop Grumman employees and their families spend most of Saturday helping to make Desert Oasis a better place for families forced to seek refuge there.
A playground area closed by city code enforcers for more than a year is now ready for inspection.
Dec. 17
SEATTLE - Creating the world's largest aerospace company, Boeing will acquire its longtime rival McDonnell Douglas in a $13.3 billion stock deal.
LANCASTER - The regional board that oversees water quality in the Antelope Valley apparently failed to comply with state law when it approved a September 1995 general order allowing sewage sludge to be spread on local farmland.
Dec. 18
EDWARDS AFB - Wherever you look at Edwards there's work going on. There's street work beginning, housing under construction, new facilities opening.
It's the first time since the 1950s and '60s that housing has been built and major infrastructure installed or rebuilt.
LANCASTER - If adopted, a staff recommendation to the state Water Resources Control Board would void all permits issued for spreading sewage sludge in the Antelope Valley.
Dec. 19
LLANO - Authorities are searching for a gang member suspected of beating to death the 3year-old daughter of his live-in girlfriend.
EDWARDS AFB - Government and industry leaders have agreed on a preliminary site at Edwards to build the launch facility for the X-33, the prototype for the next-generation space shuttle.
The site pending approval in an environmental statement, is expected to be located east of Phillips Laboratories at an area near Haystack Butte.
CALIFORNIA CITY - Kern County's top health official tells the City Council his department "descended like a hawk" on the outbreak of Hepatitis A in their jurisdiction.
But a resident whose daughter contracted the disease says the department's response was more like that of a desert tortoise.
Dec. 20
PALMDALE - Radar-evading stealth bombers with "smart" munitions will be certified to fly missions beginning Jan. 1.
LANCASTER - It may be Christmastime, but members of the Antelope Valley High School Antelope Brigade Marching Band and Auxiliary are already looking forward to the Fourth of July, when they're scheduled to march in the National Independence Day Parade in Washington, D.C.
The Avenue J-8 location of the Antelope Valley YMCA will soon be the site of a Desert Christian Schools expansion high school.
Dec. 21
LANCASTER - Authorities arrest two teenagers on suspicion they caused more than $5,300 damage to Park View Intermediate School when it was vandalized last weekend for the second time in six weeks.
Dec. 22
LANCASTER - One of the first acts of a newly reorganized board of Antelope Valley Health Care District is to direct administrators to explore alternatives and costs of establishing a treatment facility for the Palmdale area.
PALMDALE - Theresa Pitts, mother of five daughters, is stabbed to death early Saturday, and a 37-year-old Palmdale man is arrested within hours of the stabbing death.
Dec. 24
The Antelope Valley's first set of quadruplets will celebrate half a birthday tonight when they turn 6 months old.
The quads were born June 24 at Antelope Valley Hospital, making medical history, the children of Diane and Robert Rowe of Lancaster. Their father is a U-2 test pilot for Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. Their mother is an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force Reserves.
LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors votes to instruct officials to prepare a bid package for child and adult legal representation in Lancaster's Dependency Court.
Dec. 25
CHRISTMAS EVE MASS - Cardinal Roger Mahony, top, celebrates Mass at the Challenger Youth Center in Lancaster.
Dec. 26
LANCASTER - Instead of spreading Christmas cheer, vandals cause thousands of dollars of damage to the Jewish Congregation Temple Beth Knesset Bamidbar's classroom windows and parking lot lamps.
If it was an isolated incident, congregation members might not be upset as they are now that they have seen their temple scarred for the fourth time this year, says Ann Aldrich, congregation president.
Dec. 27
TULSA, Okla. - Officials rule that the Sept. 24 death of Lancaster resident Robert Mark D'Errico was a homicide.
D'Errico, a father of four and a popular aerospace worker in the Antelope Valley, was 33 years old when he died while being pinned to the floor of a nightclub by several bouncers.
LANCASTER - A group of investors purchases the Desert Inn, ending both the Fischer family's half-century proprietorship of the venerable hotel and the bankruptcy that propelled it into new hands.
The new owners say they will spend $500,000 or more to refurbish the 144-room hotel and "truly make it the first choice" among Antelope Valley hotels, said John Farrar, the hotel's director of marketing.
Dec. 28
LANCASTER - A permanent magnetic resonance imaging center will be constructed at Antelope Valley Hospital to replace a temporary unit that has been used for three years.
Physicians use magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, to peer inside the bodies of patients to diagnose illnesses and problems without resorting to exploratory surgery.
PALMDALE - Voters demanding a say in taxation of any kind, including landscape-maintenance assessments, will have a chance to vote next year on those assessments in two areas of the city.
Dec. 29
Palmdale - A body with multiple gunshot wounds found Christmas Eve has been identified as missing Palmdale man Martin Armenta, who was last seen alive Dec. 17, Los Angeles Sheriff's Department deputies confirm.