BAKERSFIELD — Authorities say a gunman in California on Wednesday killed five people, including his wife, before turning the gun on himself as a sheriff’s deputy closed in. Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said the shootings began shortly before 5:30 p.m. and occurred at a business and a home in Bakersfield, about 90 miles north…

Orange Coast College President Dennis Harkins has announced his retirement effective at the end of the fall semester, ending a nine-year stint leading the campus. Harkins made the announcement in a note to the OCC community: “When I first arrived at Coast, the College was recovering from two significant setbacks — the Great Recession and…

Nearly one in five Californians still lives in poverty despite the state’s vigorous recovery from the Great Recession and its low unemployment rate. The latest numbers, a reflection of the state’s high housing costs and low wages, show 19 percent are poor, some 7.5 million people. The calculation, released Wednesday by the U.S. Census, represents a 1.4 percent…

Charmaine Lawson will never forget the late-night phone call that her son was dead. Her son, David Josiah Lawson, 19, was fatally stabbed at a party on April 15, 2017, in Arcata, a rural town near Humboldt State University, as he was wrapping up his sophomore year. Almost a year-and-a-half later, the murder is still…

The new school year at Savannah College of Art and Design just started this week. Monday would have been the first day of Kevin Riley Hogate’s junior year. The Mater Dei High graduate and Eagle Scout from Troop 241 out of Orange had spent two years at the Savannah, Georgia, campus. He was 2,400 miles…