(September 26)–Rialto Unified School District Nutrition Services Director Rausat Rahman-Davies has entered into an agreement to resign from that post effective as of May of next year while the school breakfast and lunch program she headed is dogged by yet-to-be-fully-proven allegations of financial misfeasance and malfeasance.
On Wednesday, September 24, in the absence of two members of the school board, Edgar Montes and Evelyn Dominguez, who formerly appeared inclined to give Rahman-Davies the benefit of the doubt as indications mounted that the district had defrauded the state and federal government to obtain school lunch program subsidies it was not entitled to through the submission of inaccurate documentation, the three other members of the school board accepted Rahman-Davies resignation and voted to approve her departure contract.
That contract will allow her to continue to collect her current total yearly compensation of $293,589.41, consisting of her present annual $221,977.41 salary and $71,612. benefits until January 1, whereupon her annual salary rate will increase to $228,636.73. Upon retirement, she will be eligible for a $141,754.77 pension at age 60 in 2028 ,and the district will continue to provide her and her spouse with medical coverage until she reaches the age of 65 in 2033. Continue reading →

Justin Wayne Halstenberg, who was convicted in May of having set the Line Fire in Highland on September 5, 2024, after which charred 43,978-acre acres in its infernal progression north and eastward up into the San Bernardino Mountains wreaking more than $100 million in destruction and damage for more than a month, was sentenced to 16 years to life in state prison on Wednesday, October 1.
Using self-styled incendiary devices, Halstenberg made three attempts at starting fires in the area of east Highland on September 5, 2025, according to prosecutors. Two of those fires failed to take hold, one when it burned out after burning less than ten square feet of vegetation that was not dry enough to fully ignite because it was irrigated regularly and another because a passerby good Samaritan stomped it out before it could spread. The last of the fires that arson investigators testified Halstenberg lit, however, grew into a major conflagration.
Almost miraculously, despite wending a fiery path through 68.71 square miles including within and very near to populated areas, no lives were lost and a mere six structures and a water conveyance pipeline destroyed, in large measure due to the massive response of firefighters to the periphery of the blaze. Six of those firefighters were injured during operations. Continue reading →

By Mark Gutglueck
In one of the more muddled criminal cases pursued by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office over the last several decades, prosecutors are on the brink of throwing the case against a deputy accused of frolicking with an outlaw motorcycle out in total or large part in an effort to avoid the deputy’s defense attorney’s demands that the evidence implicating the defendant be produced.
An apparent major issue for the prosecution is the sheriff’s department’s unwillingness to compromise certain means and methodologies employed by the department’s command echelon and the detectives attached to it in surveilling, monitoring and investigation the department’s employees.
Deputy Christopher Bingham last year was charged with 13 felony counts, each of which carries a sentencing enhancement with it, based on what the district attorney’s office maintains is Bingham’s association with the Mongols motorcycle gang. Under the prosecution’s theory, the Mongols are a criminal organization, and Bingham as a law enforcement officer should not be involved with it.
Bingham, who enlisted in the U.S. Marines at the age of 19 in 1998, served as a rifleman during two separate overseas assignments, returning to the United States where he was last with the 1st Battalion 7th Marines stationed at the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base before being honorably discharged in 2002. After attending the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Academy, he hired on with the sheriff’s department in 2005, where among other assignments, he worked motorcycle patrol. In 2015, while he was yet employed with the department, Bingham registered O’Three Tactical, a limited liability company in which he was the sole owner, with California Secretary of State. Located at 73749 29 Palms Highway in Twentynine Palms, O’Three Tactical was a gun shop east of Adobe Road in the downtown section of Twentynine Palms on Highway 62, also known at that point as 29 Palms Highway. O’Three Tactical dealt in standard firearm sales as well as obtaining for its customers specialized equipment and hardware prized by gun aficionados, particularly ones looking to replicate the actuality or mystique of military firepower. It became known for the ability to track down and deliver specialized firearms, as well as for providing servicing and augmenting equipment to those products, along with, as the shop’s name implied, all order of tactical gear, including knives, bulletproof wear and helmets, ammunition, magazines, cartridges, powders, primers, sights and scopes and all order of other accessories. Continue reading →

The musicians of the Ontario Chaffey Community Show Band and Gabe & Susan Petrocelli are proud to present a show titled Latin, Latin, Latin on Monday, October 20, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.
The concert will be held in historic Gardiner W. Spring Auditorium on the campus of Chaffey High School located at 1245 N. Euclid Avenue in Ontario. The Woodwind Celebration Ensemble will present a pre-concert recital at 7:00 p.m. The performance is free to the public.
The concert will begin with one of the Show Band favorites titled Mexican Folk Song Suite! a medley of songs, including La Paloma, La Cucaracha, Cielito Lindo, and the Mexican Hat Dance, featuring Show Band clarinetist and vocalist Jocelyn Washington. The band will play Antonio Jobim’s ballad called Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars that features Show Band saxophonist Francisco Mowatt.
The concert will also feature Josleyn Washington and Pat Arnold singing a vocal duet of the famous bossa nova Quando, Quando, Quando, arranged by former Show Band Director Dr. Gabe Petrocelli. The Show Band will also feature musician/dancer Kathy Soderlund dancing to Amparito Roca and the Don’t Cry For Me Argentina.
One of the featured guest artists for the concert will be vocalist Dr. George Matamala, Chaffey Adult School Principal, who will sing Volver, Volver and Lo Pasado Pasado. Continue reading →

When Apple Valley Town Manager Doug Robertson retires in December, he will have spent 7 years and 11 months as the town’s top staff member. That duration as city manager one year, four months and a week shorter than the average town administrators in the 75,040 population, 77.08-square mile jurisdiction, which in 1988 incorporated as what was then San Bernardino County’s 21st municipality, the fourth to last of the county’s current 24 cities and towns to do so.
Robertson’s tenure as city manager began after that of Frank Robinson. In 2009, Robinson had succeeded in Jim Cox, who was brought in as town manager in 2007 to succeed Bruce Williams who had been Apple Valley’s original town manager, remaining in that post for the town’s first 19 years.
Of some note is that both Cox and Robertson had made their respective marks on the world as city managers in Victorville before they signed on to oversee Apple Valley.
Marginally smaller geographically than Apple Valley at 74.16 square miles, Victorville is of substantially greater population density, with 141,689 residents currently. Moreover, it is host to Southern California Logistics Airport, a major aerodrome that was converted to civilian use from the former George Air Force Base. Victorville, traditionally and currently, has had a budget that dwarfs that of Apple Valley, as exemplified by the city’s current expenditures of $377 million in 2025-26 in comparison to the town’s $140 million. While Victorville is adjacent to Apple Valley, the pace of life is slower and the intensity of activity far less demanding in Apple Valley than in Victorville. Continue reading →

Controversy has erupted over the perception that Ontario officials late last month opted to name the minor league baseball team that will play out of a soon-to-be built municipal baseball stadium on the south side of the city in a way that is intended to enhance revenue by appealing to marijuana smokers and beer drinkers in an effort to get them to attend ball games.
Alcohol sales are to take place at the stadium and there is word, undenied by city officials, that the city is willing to allow marijuana use in the stands and bleachers as well within the stadium’s luxury boxes.
The City of Ontario scored a coup by convincing the Los Angeles Dodgers to allow it to host a newly created Class A farm club within the city. The team is to play at what is to succeed Jay Littleton Field, destroyed in a 2024 fire, as the city’s landmark ballpark, now under construction at its proposed Ontario Sports empire, a 200-acre facility for training and competition billed as being the “largest sports complex of its kind west of the Rocky Mountains.” Continue reading →

In Norway