Free Republic

A true crime fan who runs an online account called Checkit TV said he found a laptop and other items belonging to 16-year-old Kiely Rodni in the California lake where her body was found submerged in her car last month. The sleuth, who does not make his name public, claims to have made the discovery while out rowing in the reservoir and dived down to retrieve the items, The Sun reported. The other objects included a duffel bag, hairbrush, charge cord, and gift box. Rodni, an honors student, went missing just after midnight on Aug. 6 after a rowdy end-of-school...

Search-and-rescue volunteers discovered the body of Rory Angelotta, 43, near a residential neighborhood and roughly 3 miles from the boundaries of the Northstar Ski Resort, the Placer County Sheriff's Office said in a statement Saturday. Over six days, more than 200 people searched for Angelotta using skis, snowmobiles and a helicopter before suspending the effort. During that period, a freak storm caused whiteout conditions, subfreezing temperatures and dumped over 7 feet of snow. The sheriff's office said because Angelotta had traveled a “considerable distance” from the resort, the area where his body was found near a residential area in the...

It wasn't immediately clear how many people were aboard the Bombardier CL 600. The Federal Aviation Administration said the aircraft crashed at 1:18 p.m. on Monday while the pilot was attempting to land at nearby Truckee-Tahoe Airport. The owner of the aircraft and the flight plan were not immediately made public, although authorities later said it might have come from either Coeur d’Alene, Idaho or Florida. The CL 600 is a multi-seat business jet with twin engines mounted on the rear fuselage and a distinctive T-shaped tail. The jet can hold as many as 14 passengers and two crew.

“I’m looking at California’s 4th District to run against Tom McClintock (R). I split my time between Truckee, Calif., and Bell Canyon and the Republicans have basically had a strong arm there in the 4th District.” McClintock won reelection last year with 56 percent of the vote against Democrat challenger Brynne Kennedy. “It’s going to take someone with, I think, name recognition and deep pockets to be able to run against McClintock, and so I’m considering it. I’m basically gathering information right now, speaking to different consultants, speaking to the community,” Milano said. “I would love to maybe consider flipping...

A California woman was struck and killed Wednesday by a freight train while wearing headphones as she jogged along busy tracks near a popular hiking trail. Janaki Rose Hayes, 27, of Truckee, was wearing headphones that fully covered her ears and did not hear the blaring horn as the steel beast bared down on her around 1.45 p.m., police said. Investigators believe she was jogging towards a trail for the bulk of her workout and that the death was an accident, sources told the Sacramento Bee. Hayes, who had recently moved from Oregon to the small town just north of...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CBS) ― A broken levee has caused a flooding which stranded as many as 4,000 residents in Truckee, Calif., a community on I-80 northwest of Lake Tahoe. Some of the people on the Nevada side of the state line were trying to evacuate, reports CBS affiliate KTVN-TV in Reno. The storm that pummeled California with gale-force winds and heavy rains was forecast to drop a thick blanket of snow on the Sierra Nevada on Saturday and keep thousands of people from their homes in mudslide-prone areas. A major highway crossing the Sierra Nevada between Nevada and Northern California...

SACRAMENTO--A small utility near Lake Tahoe's north shore thought it had the answer to providing long-term affordable energy coal. But after an outpouring of public criticism and political pressure, the Truckee Donner Public Utility District voted to reject a 50-year contract to obtain energy from a planned coal plant in Utah. The district's vote late Wednesday night was an illustration of a larger debate within California. Over the last month, several utilities have considered renewing or negotiating new contracts for cheap power from high-polluting sources before a new state law takes effect Jan. 1. Under that law, utilities in California...

Trucking through the Green Haze in Truckee The Pasadena Pundit Curiously omitted in California’s large newspapers covering the story of the City of Truckee's decision whether to renew its contract for coal-fired power from the Intermountain Power Plant (IPP) in Utah is that the proposed plant expansion will apparently meet all air quality standards (see SFGate.com http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/10/BAGJGMSTB01.DTL and see SacBee.com http://subscriber.sacbee.com/user_registration/login/?goto=http%3A//www.sacbee.com/324/story/89876.html). According to the State of Utah Department of Environmental Quality: "The IPP will meet all primary and secondary National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). The IPP will also meet Class I increments in the National Parks in southern Utah...

Snowing in Las Vegas....Antelope Valley....I-5 closed at Grapevine.