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Italy's Ricco wins 9th stage of Tour de France AGNERES-DE-BIGORRE, France — Riccardo Ricco calls the mountains "my turf," and he knows how to protect it. The Italian showed his strength in the Pyrenees on Sunday by winning the ninth stage of the Tour de France while Luxembourg's Kim Kirchen kept the yellow jersey. This was Ricco's second stage victory in three mountain stages run so far in cycling's premier event. Nicknamed "The Cobra," Ricco started with a sore right knee from a crash Saturday. He struck when his rivals appeared vulnerable, bolting from the pack in the steepest part...

Mark Cavendish takes a second stage win while teammate Kim Kirchen retains the overall. Toulouse, France - You might call it greed or an addiction to victory. Team Columbia — simultaneously eager to protect Kim Kirchen's overall lead and set up sprinter Mark Cavendish for a stage win — controlled the peloton for most of Saturday's eighth stage of the Tour de France. The U.S.-based team kept an early break's lead to a manageable gap and then put the hammer down in the last 10k to reel it in and deliver its young British fast man to his second Tour...

Jefferson J. DeBlanc, seated in the cockpit of a F4F Wildcat fighter plane, found ways to beat death for three years. But on Thanksgiving Day, DeBlanc, a Marine pilot in World War II's Pacific Theater, passed away from complications related to pneumonia. He was 86. So many World War II veterans have died recently that we don't often pause to pay them the honor they're due. DeBlanc may provide a chance to make up for it. DeBlanc wore the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military honor. DeBlanc, born in Lockport, enlisted in the Marines five months before Pearl Harbor....

If you're already wondering what you might get your favorite gal for her birthday, perhaps you should turn your attention to one of the fastest growing recreational activities for women - shooting sports. Hunting and target shooting, often assumed to be the exclusive province of men, are growing in popularity with women. A new survey by the National Sporting Goods Association shows that women are participating in hunting and shooting in ever-greater numbers. According to the survey, 72 percent more women are hunting with firearms today than five years ago and 50 percent more are target shooting. Women are using...

On Saturday we rallied for the troops. Standing at the corner of McBean Parkway and Valencia Boulevard approximatly 60 people held up banners and urged passing cars to support the troops by supporting the important work they are doing for the cause of freedom. Here is a 4-minute video I produced last night which gives you an idea of how it went down.

CAMP PENDLETON -- He was only 20 and just a private when killed in battle in Iraq, but a general promised Friday that Lance Cpl. Christopher Adlesperger will live forever in the annals of Marine Corps valor. "He made us all braver," said Maj. Gen. John Paxton after Adlesperger's parents were presented with the Navy Cross, the second-highest honor a Marine can be awarded for combat action. Adlesperger was given the honor posthumously, having been killed in another battle three weeks after his heroics during a firefight in the insurgent-riddled city of Fallujah resulted in the citation. "He showed us...

U.S. Marine Corps Master Sgt. Mark Alexander Coates received a hero's greeting at Valencia Valley Elementary school on Thursday, as students waved flags and sang the Marine hymn in welcoming him home from Iraq. As a 26-year veteran of the Corps and member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, Coates served tours in Iraq in 2003, 2004 and 2006 before returning home in February with plans to retire. But it was during his most recent tour that Coates was adopted by Valencia Valley teacher Judi Hayward's fifth-grade class, which proceeded to send the Marine a collection of care packages, letters,...

For years, I have been covering the Castro regime’s imprisonment — often for very long sentences — of what Amnesty International accurately calls “prisoners of conscience.” Among them are independent journalists, labor organizers, women’s rights supporters, authors and independent librarians. The latter are brave Cubans and women’s-rights supporters who make available books that their neighbors and other Cubans are not allowed to read in the state-controlled library system. Whatever direction a post-Fidel government takes, this punishment of free thought will continue. From kangaroo-court records I have seen, when independent librarians are sent to the gulags, certain confiscated books — and...

Tom McClintock will discuss the Governor's budget and health care plans on KFI at 5:05. All politics aside, he always brings common sense to the subject of California economics. Broadcast from Los Angles at 640 on the AM dial. Streaming here.

Many years before Sept. 11, when the Twin Towers were not even a gleam in their builders' eyes, America experienced a "Day of Infamy" - the attack on Pearl Harbor. Bill Shaw of Newhall recalls where he was that day. "I remember very vividly the morning of Dec. 7," he said. "At the time I was a young student and working in a drugstore in Los Angeles. I had gone to work that morning and it came over the radio that Pearl Harbor was bombed. We were flabbergasted - it was the last thing anybody thought would happen." Shaw signed...

Real Audio webcast. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17TH AMERICA ALONE Tonight, we examine the future of Western Civilization in an age of terrorism with noted newspaper columnist and political commentator MARK STEYN, author of the new book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. WGN WebCast - Milt Rosenberg

The former coach has never seen a war movie. When you've seen the real thing, why would you want to? He doesn't need to sit in a darkened movie theater to be reminded of the buddies he lost in World War II and Korea, Jack McCaffrey says. Guys who never got to raise a family, have a career, retire and go fishing. Guys who never got the chance to grow old. No, when you've seen the real thing, you don't need to see a war movie. "But I'm thinking about going to see this one," the 83-year-old Woodland Hills resident...

Iraqi police and soldiers lead a mocking parade, escorting a man on a horse wearing a Saddam Hussein mask through the streets Friday April 28, 2006 in Baghdad, Iraq. Former leader Saddam Hussein, who is being tried in Iraq on charges of crimes against humanity, turned 69 Friday. U.S. officials declined to say what Saddam had done on his third consecutive birthday in captivity in Iraq. (AP Photo Alaa al-Marjani) Vegetable stalls set out their produce Saturday April 29, 2006, in Baghdad, Iraq. The U.S. military said Thursday that sectarian attacks in the Baghdad area had fallen by 60 percent...

He was called the best stick-and-rudder pilot alive by legendary World War II Gen. Jimmy Doolittle. And legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager said Bob Hoover's the best pure pilot he ever met. But that's not what people want to talk to Hoover about when they meet him. They want to hear the story of how he stole that Fochwolf 190 fighter plane from the German airfield at the end of World War II after escaping from the Stalag Luft 1 POW camp, flying to freedom in Holland after 16 months in captivity. It's the stuff legends are made of, and...

SACRAMENTO — It appears all but inevitable that California will raise its government-mandated minimum wage at some point this year. Either the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will get together on the issue or voters will be presented with a ballot initiative that is almost certain to pass. The minimum of $6.75 per hour likely will be raised to $7.75. The only question is whether the change will come with a built-in escalator that will increase the wage annually to keep pace with a cost-of-living index. The increase, when it comes, will give solace to many low-wage earners and those...

CAMP PENDLETON ---- Sgt. Maj. William Skiles, 44, was awarded a Bronze Star with a "V" for Valor Friday for his actions during combat in Fallujah in April 2004. Skiles, a 26-year-veteran, was the senior noncommissioned officer for Echo Company of the Pendleton-based 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment during a battle with insurgents on April 26 of that year. On Friday, he was commended for showing leadership that "strengthened the resolve" of the Marines even though they were pinned down and outnumbered by insurgents. Skiles braved enemy fire to deliver additional ammunition to the Marines and to evacuate wounded Marines...

POINT MUGU - Supporters of Naval Base Ventura County said Friday a new assessment of how many military jobs will be transferred from the Point Mugu base to China Lake shows losses in the hundreds rather than the thousands. Review of the final Base Realignment and Closure law indicates that 416 positions, rather than the 2,250 feared last year, will be reassigned from Point Mugu to China Lake, said Jack Dodd, the retired former vice commander of the Naval Air Warfare Center at Point Mugu. The announcement was made by members of the Regional Defense Partnership for the 21st Century,...

"... an envelope ... caught his eye... The return address read, "Upton Sinclair..." "... I am here trying to make plain my own part in the story." "The story was "Boston," Sinclair's ... condemnation of the trial and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, Italian immigrants accused of killing two men in the robbery of a Massachusetts shoe factory..." "... Sinclair met with ... the men's attorney..." "..."I begged him to tell me the full truth," Sinclair wrote. " … He then told me that the men were guilty, and he told me in every detail how he had framed a...

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a motion Tuesday to direct the county librarian to do whatever she can to block access to pornography on computers in the county’s public libraries. The motion, originally submitted by Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich on Sept. 20, was to order Librarian Margaret Donnellan Todd, in conjunction with county counsel, “to employ all measures necessary to block access to pornographic Web sites on computers in county public libraries.” Antonovich read the motion at the supervisors’ weekly meeting in downtown Los Angeles, directing Todd to “adopt privacy technology as it becomes available” and...

It was almost dawn. Patrick Hartman had not slept well. Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans, but that's not what disturbed him. He had slept only fitfully since a traumatic shooting three years earlier — and so little these days that his mother feared he was clinically depressed. Weary and sleep-deprived, Hartman got up, ready to get to work. He was a New Orleans police officer. His regular shift wouldn't begin until 4 p.m., but he planned to leave around noon. He had been told that he would be part of a hurricane cleanup crew that evening, after...