Garage Door

Neighbors use hoses to contain fire until firefighters arrive; owner and her dog escape uninjured.A fire in the engine of an SUV may be to blame for a blaze that torched the garage of a Corona del Mar house late Tuesday, fire officials said. The owner of the house, Newport Beach Realtor Diane Coltrane, escaped safely with her dog. The fire singed the eves of a neighboring house, but no one was injured, officials said. Coltrane was upstairs watching a basketball game on TV when the power went out. She grabbed her Yorkshire Terrier and went outside to investigate.

Apparently saying that someone needed money wasn't a good enough excuse for one Newport Beach man who chased down a burglary suspect he found allegedly rummaging through his friend's car early Wednesday. Police hope the arrest of Robert Schweickert, 20, of Newport Beach, can close a few theft cases for detectives after he was arrested in his neighborhood for allegedly searching cars in the middle of the night. He was caught by Ben Swift, 20, and his friend Charlie. The two happened upon Schweickert in the middle of the night as they came home from a friend's house.

Editor's note: This corrects who designed the house in the caption. NEWPORT BEACH — For Newport Harbor High Class of '84 alumnus Mike Bless, Lifeguard Tower 62 was a symbol of a youth spent on the sand and in the waves. The tower on 62nd Street and Coast Highway was torn down in the mid-'80s, but a new Lifeguard Tower 62 has become a landmark for Bless' newest stage in his life: a new home for him and his family. Bless and his wife, Cristina, bought a one-story property two blocks from the beach in Newport Shores on 62nd Street in 2009.

Approved in April and made official in May, a new ordinance aimed at reducing unwanted solicitation at residential homes is receiving mixed reviews in Newport Beach. The city requires that registered commercial solicitors, such as door-to-door salesmen, take a look at list of residents who registered requests not to be solicited and pay attention to "Do Not Solicit" signs dotting many local lawns. California requires solicitors to leave alone those who post a sign asking not to be solicited, according to Newport Beach's reading of First Amendment case law. However, some residents feel solicitors are turning a blind eye to their signs and a lack of enforcement makes the ordinance more of a recommendation than a citywide rule.

COSTA MESA — In the world of the future, robots play football. That day will be one field goal closer Saturday. The Orange Coast College Engineering Club, along with robotic mascot Pete the Pirate, will host the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Invention Challenge in which 30 high school and junior high school teams from Southern California will enter their robotic creations at 9 a.m. in front of the college's library. The robots must be less than 2 meters tall and able to kick a regulation football over a 2-meter obstacle and into a trash can, according to the rules posted on JPL's website . "[The students]

FRED ALLEN HOWSER November 6, 1936 - September 11, 2011   Fred passed away peacefully last Sunday, September 11, 2011 due to a complexity of medical issues.  He was born November 6, 1936 in Long Beach, CA as the only child of Fred N. Howser and Helen Howser.  He grew up in Long Beach and Arcadia and attended Webb High School.  He graduated from USC Law School and began a 30+ year career as an attorney in Newport Beach at Howser, Gertner &...

It's deja vu all over again. This is the day, my brothers. There's no way around it. It has to be done. Get them out, untangle them, climb that ladder and start tacking or stapling, your choice. Due to a deluge of requests -- assuming you consider three a deluge -- we herein reprise "The Official Peter Buffa Guide to Hanging Christmas Lights." Read it. Absorb it. Memorize it. But most of all, don't climb the ladder without it. Stretch and hang. Stretch and hang.

We live on a very eclectic street. The houses run the gamut of size and style. There are modern, New England, California ranch, French, big, small and everything in between. We moved into our house 11 years ago and our mailbox was located in the front corner of our yard, just like many others on our street. Quite frankly, the location didn't strike me as important at all. Some people have mailboxes in the corner of their lots. These lone rangers dutifully guard the property line.

Tell me you didn’t forget. Valentine’s Day falls on Feb. 14 this year, which is to say, today. If you did forget, you better hope you’re reading early enough to can get to a florist before she wakes up. You should probably unhook the garage door and raise it by hand. That thing would wake the dead, which, if you recall, is where Valentine’s Day comes from – dead Romans, and the ancient Roman holiday of Lupercalia, the annual February fertility fest where the girl-Romans at the party put their names in a bowl and the boy-Romans drew the names.

At the age of 8, my family moved from Chicago to Los Angeles. My mother would not fly to save her life, so my brother and I took the train with her while our fearless father flew. The move from Chicago was traumatic. Yanked from my good pals in Hyde Park, including super best friend Roy Redlich, I cried for a full day and night as the Super Chief sped from the Windy City to the City of the Angels. But nothing would prepare me for the moving nightmare I would experience over and over again as our family moved about 12 times in 15 years.