San Juan Hills girls basketball coach Paul Edwards resigns after six seasons

• July 30, 2024

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San Juan Hills girls basketball coach Paul Edwards has resigned after six seasons for family reasons, he confirmed Monday.

Edwards led the Stallions to five league league championships and six playoff appearances. He will remain with the Stallions as an assistant coach but plans to spend time watching his daughter Amanda play for Weber State.

“It’s time,” the coach said. “It’s time to be around.”

San Juan Hills has named assistant Jay Williams as Edwards’ replacement. Williams joined Edwards’ varsity staff last season and has a daughter in the program.

In six seasons, Edwards helped San Juan Hills become one of the strongest public school teams in Orange County. The Stallions won at least 20 games four times and finished 118-51 under Edwards.

The team finished 19-11 this past season and shared the South Coast League crown with San Clemente. The Stallions lost in the second round of the CIF-SS Division 1playoffs to Santiago Corona.

In 2022-23, Edwards guided San Juan Hills (27-7) to the semifinals in CIF-SS Division 2-AA and Division II of the the SoCal regional.

The Stallions have won at least a share of the past three South Coast League titles.

San Juan Hills posted consecutive 8-17 seasons before Edwards took the helm.

“The girls have responded to our coaching,” he said. “They did it.”

San Juan Hills is set to return three starters this season, including county standout Anne Shreeve. The Stallions have added transfer 5-foot-11 post Piper Gentry from New York, Edwards said.

Please send girls basketball news to Dan Albano at [email protected] or @ocvarsity on X and Instagram 

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​ Orange County Register 

Newport Beach man found slain in residence, suspect arrested

• July 30, 2024

A 48-year-old man was found dead inside a Newport Beach apartment last week and police arrested a suspect — believed to be an acquaintance of the victim —  on suspicion of murder Monday, July 29, officials said.

On Friday, July 26, officers responded to a residence on the 1200 block of Park Newport for a wellness check. Police found the victim, Reginald Hidalgo Fils from Newport Beach, dead inside the apartment with physical signs of trauma, police said.

The investigation led to the arrest of 35-year-old Brandon Christian Chanman from Chino Hills, the Newport Beach Police Department said in a statement.

Police said Fils and Chanman were acquaintances. Additional details on their relationship and the death of Fils were not released.

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Rams notebook: Defense shines in first day of padded practice

• July 30, 2024

LOS ANGELES  – With the pads coming on for the first time on Monday, the Rams defense had a chance to make an opening statement for what it might look like now, without Aaron Donald, with Chris Shula guiding the ship.

The defense made that statement a good one, particularly in the run game. The defensive line and linebackers got into the backfield regularly, meeting running backs behind the line of scrimmage and generally disrupting any rhythm the Rams offense was trying to build.

“I feel like we had a really good day today,” safety Kamren Curl said. “I feel like this is a good foundation to build off of and we just gotta keep going forward.”

With Kobie Turner (groin) limited to individual drills, rookie defensive tackle Braden Fiske was at the center of that disruption. The second-round pick did a good job of getting off of blocks against the Rams’ first-team offensive line.

“I thought the energy from the defense was outstanding,” head coach Sean McVay said. “I really felt Braden Fiske today. He showed up in a big way. I think we had some things in that were in alignment that fit his skillset to allow him to really thrive and he took advantage of it.”

The defense had its moments in the passing game, too, with safety Russ Yeast diving in front of a pass to nearly intercept Stetson Bennett IV. The offense found a bit more rhythm during the red-zone portion of the practice, with Jimmy Garoppolo throwing the ball up to a leaping Hunter Long for a touchdown.

Still, the defense walked away encouraged, with an eye toward how the energy carried over to Tuesday.

“Usually, the second day of pads is when you learn something,” Curl said. “First day of pads, everybody’s geeked up, ready to go. So second day is really when you see who really wants to be physical, who wants to do it again.”

Eyes on Johnson

The Rams have a handful of players vying for the sixth receiver job on the active roster. Second-year undrafted free agent Xavier Smith and five-year veteran Tyler Johnson have each had moments in which they’ve made their cases for the job.

Johnson put together a strong day on Monday with several contested catches along the sideline during team drills.

“I think he’s been one of the bright spots as far as the overall improvement,” McVay said. “He’s got great aggressive hands at the contact point.”

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Day off

Quarterback Matthew Stafford was given a veteran rest day on Monday as part of the Rams’ plan to manage his throwing program.

“I think we have a much better grasp of just where he’s at in this part in his career,” McVay said. “You don’t ever want to have any of those elbow issues creep up again. He’s done a phenomenal job of really taking care of it but there is a certain amount of work we want to get in a time.”

Injury report

Left tackle Alaric Jackson was not present for the team portion of Monday’s practice. The veteran lineman tweaked his ankle in the early part of practice, McVay said, adding that the expectation is it won’t be a long-term issue for the starter.

​ Orange County Register 

Woman fatally shot outside Santa Ana smoke shop

• July 30, 2024

A 20-year-old woman was fatally shot outside the entrance of a smoke shop in Santa Ana on Monday, July 29, officials said.

The shooting occurred around 4 a.m. at 626 South Harbor Boulevard. The woman, identified as Jennifer Ninel Rodriguez from Santa Ana, was found lying near the entrance of the business suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.

She was hospitalized and died from her injuries, police said.

There was a crowd of people in the area when the shooting happened and police were working to identify a suspect, Santa Ana Police Officer Natalie Garcia said. Details on the circumstances of the shooting were not available.

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LAFC prepares for a Whitecaps team missing its top player in Leagues Cup match

• July 30, 2024

The return of Leagues Cup offers Major League Soccer clubs chances to compete against opponents they know well and those they don’t.

Following a comfortable group stage victory over Club Tijuana, the Los Angeles Football Club turns its attention from a team they had not played before to the very familiar Vancouver Whitecaps.

Ahead of their eighth meeting since April of last year, LAFC has taken the lion’s share of results versus Vancouver, going 5-1-1 including series sweeps in CONCACAF Champions League and the MLS Cup playoffs.

Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini called LAFC the best team in CONCACAF last year, which came up just shy of being true due to the unsuccessful Champions League final against Liga MX’s Leon.

When LAFC dispatched the Whitecaps 3-0 in their first regular season meeting at BMO Stadium this spring, the effervescent Italian coach somehow turned up the volume on his praise after Denis Bouanga nabbed three assists, two to Cristian Olivera and another to Mateusz Bogusz.

“I thought it was probably our worst performance of the year,” Sartini said. “The idea is that we’ve been a little bit naive and maybe presumptuous in the game, trying to be the team that was having the ball more and trying to overplay some situations. And we know you cannot do it against them because they are probably the best team in transition in the league, for sure, but I want to say even in the world.”

LAFC was hyperbolically good while running behind Tijuana’s lines on Friday, unleashing Bouanga and Olivera on a man-marking foe who couldn’t cope with the Black & Gold’s pace or determination to score.

Sartini fully understands the price opponents pay when LAFC is on.

In order to depart L.A. with at least a point before wrapping up the group stage at home against Tijuana, Sartini said his side must limit space without concentrating on a particular attacker in their zone-marking scheme.

The Whitecaps will need to find a way to do that without their best player, All-Star midfielder Ryan Gauld, whose knee was injured during Vancouver’s last competitive match on July 20.

With 18 goal contributions in 24 regular season starts this year, Gauld’s ability to win balls and sniff out interceptions is an underappreciated aspect of how he influences games.

“He’s quite clever and quite good defensively, which for their offensive game is extremely important,” LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo said. “So it does take from them.”

When Gauld is on the field, “everything’s going through him,” LAFC defender Ryan Hollingshead said. “He’s someone finding the last pass. He has the quality to get their strikers in really good spots to score some goals. They’re going to be missing him but it also throws a wrinkle at us.

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“Now, you have a lot of questions about who’s going to be the guy that steps up to create those chances. How do you slow those guys down? What’s their system going to be? There’s a lot of questions unanswered now with him not being in the lineup, but there’s no question that they’re going to have a big hole to fill without him being there.”

Missing a key piece of the lineup is an “x-factor” that Cherundolo expects Sartini to try and spin to his advantage in a rare bit of pre-match mystery between the two: “I’m looking forward to seeing his solutions.”

VANCOUVER WHITECAPS FC AT LAFC

When: Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.

Where: BMO Stadium, Los Angeles

TV/Radio: Apple TV – MLS Season Pass/710 AM, 980 AM

​ Orange County Register 

Meet the dad who is riding his bicycle across the country to support Ronald McDonald House

• July 30, 2024

“I’m so proud of you,” whispered Hailey Bekos as she hugged her father before he left on a 4,600-mile, cross-country bike ride to honor her and celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ronald McDonald House Charities.

Jeff Bekos hopped on his endurance bike Monday morning, July 29, and left the parking lot of the Ronald McDonald House in Orange. Amid cheers from supporters, he turned north on Batavia Street and headed for Philadelphia.

He hopes to raise $5 million for the charity, which supports families with sick children, as he bikes from California to Pennsylvania.

“This will help approximately 254,000 families,” said Jeff Bekos.

Over the next 77 days, Bekos will stop at 26 Ronald McDonald houses spread among 15 states sharing his family’s story.

In July 2013, at the age of 13, Hailey Bekos woke up and, “within about 15 seconds stopped talking,” said Jeff Bekos. She had multiple seizures and fell into a four-month coma.

Hailey Bekos, now 24, was diagnosed with Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, an autoimmune disease where the body creates antibodies against the NMDA receptors in the brain. She said she needed to relearn to walk and talk.

“Basically, my brain shut down entirely,” said Hailey Bekos.

Jeff Bekos said he has a mission of giving back.

“We lived at the Ronald McDonald house for 254 nights when Hailey was fighting for her life, and what a better way to give back,” he said.

He plans to arrive in Philadelphia, the birthplace of Ronald McDonald House, on Oct. 14, a few days shy of the nonprofit’s 50th anniversary celebration.

Follow his progress or donate at onedadsmission.org

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Crowds take to Venezuelan streets to protest what they say is president’s attempt to steal election

• July 30, 2024

By JOSHUA GOODMAN and REGINA GARCIA CANO

CARACAS, Venezuela — Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Venezuela on Monday to protest what they said was an attempt by President Nicolás Maduro to steal the country’s disputed election a day after the political opposition and the entrenched incumbent both claimed victory.

Shortly after the National Electoral Council, which is loyal to Maduro’s ruling party, announced that he had won a third six-year term, angry protesters began marching through the capital, Caracas, and cities across Venezuela.

WASHINGTON MONITORING: Blinken says US has serious concerns on Venezuela vote results

In the capital, the protests were mostly peaceful, but when dozens of riot gear-clad national police officers blocked the caravan, a brawl broke. Police used tear gas to disperse the protesters, some of whom threw stones and other objects at officers who had stationed themselves on a main avenue of an upper-class district.

The demonstrations followed an election that was among the most peaceful in recent memory, reflecting hopes that Venezuela could avoid bloodshed and end 25 years of single-party rule. The winner was to take control of an economy recovering from collapse and a population desperate for change.

“We have never been moved by hatred. On the contrary, we have always been victims of the powerful,” Maduro said in a nationally televised ceremony. “An attempt is being made to impose a coup d’état in Venezuela again of a fascist and counterrevolutionary nature.”

“We already know this movie, and this time, there will be no kind of weakness,” he added, saying that Venezuela’s “law will be respected.”

There was no immediate comment from the opposition, which had vowed to defend its votes. Opposition leaders planned to hold a news conference later in the day.

In the capital’s impoverished Petare neighborhood, people started walking and shouting against Maduro, and some masked young people tore down campaign posters of him hung on lampposts. Heavily armed security forces were standing just a few blocks away from the protest.

“It’s going to fall. It’s going to fall. This government is going fall!” some of the protesters shouted as they walked.

“He has to go. One way or another,” said María Arráez, a 27-year-old hairdresser, as she joined in the demonstration.

As the crowd marched through a different neighborhood, it was cheered on by retirees and office workers who banged on pots and recorded the protest in a show of support. There were some shouts of “freedom” and expletives directed at Maduro.

Elsewhere, some protesters attempted to block freeways, including one that connects the capital with a port city where the country’s main international airport is.

Officials delayed the release of detailed vote tallies from Sunday’s election after proclaiming Maduro the winner with 51% of the vote, compared with 44% for retired diplomat Edmundo González. The competing claims set up a high-stakes standoff.

“Venezuelans and the entire world know what happened,” González said. But he and his allies asked supporters to remain calm and called on the government to avoid stoking conflict.

Several foreign governments, including the U.S. and the European Union, held off recognizing the election results.

After failing to oust Maduro during three rounds of demonstrations since 2014, the opposition put its faith in the ballot box.

The country sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves and once boasted Latin America’s most advanced economy. But after Maduro took the helm, it tumbled into a free fall marked by plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages of basic goods and hyperinflation of 130,000%.

U.S. oil sanctions sought to force Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection, which dozens of countries condemned as illegitimate. But the sanctions only accelerated the exodus of some 7.7 million Venezuelans who have fled their crisis-stricken nation.

Voters lined up as early as Saturday evening to cast ballots, boosting the opposition’s hopes it was about to break Maduro’s grip on power. The official results came as a shock to many who had celebrated, online and outside a few voting centers, what they believed was a landslide victory for González.

Gabriel Boric, the leftist leader of Chile, called the results “difficult to believe,” while U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had “serious concerns” that the announced tally did not reflect the actual votes or the will of the people.

In response to criticism from other governments, Maduro’s foreign affairs ministry announced it would recall its diplomatic personnel from seven countries in the Americas, including Panama, Argentina and Chile. Foreign Minister Yvan Gil asked the governments of those countries to do the same with their personnel in Venezuela.

He did not explain what would happen to the staff members of opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, including her campaign manager, who have sheltered for months in the Argentinian embassy in Caracas after authorities issued arrest warrants against them.

Machado said the margin of González’s victory was “overwhelming,” based on tallies the campaign received from representatives stationed at about 40% of ballot boxes.

Authorities postponed releasing the results from each of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide, promising only to do so in the “coming hours.” The delay hampered attempts to verify the results.

González was the unlikeliest of opposition standard bearers. The 74-year-old was unknown until he was tapped in April as a last-minute stand-in for opposition powerhouse Machado, who was blocked by the Maduro-controlled supreme court from running for any office for 15 years.

Authorities set Sunday’s election to coincide with what would have been the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chávez, the revered leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013, leaving his Bolivarian revolution in the hands of Maduro. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, which controls all branches of government, are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for crushingly low wages that spurred hunger, crippled the oil industry and separated families due to migration.

The president’s pitch this election was one of economic security, which he tried to sell with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable currency exchange and lower inflation rates. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the economy will grow 4% this year — one of the fastest in Latin America — after shrinking 71% from 2012 to 2020.

But most Venezuelans have not seen any improvement in their quality of life. Many earn under $200 a month, which means families struggle to afford essential items. Some work second and third jobs. A basket of food staples to feed a family of four for a month costs an estimated $385.

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The opposition managed to line up behind a single candidate after years of intraparty divisions and election boycotts that torpedoed their ambitions to topple the ruling party.

A former lawmaker, Machado swept the opposition’s October primary with over 90% of the vote. After she was blocked from joining the presidential race, she chose a college professor as her substitute on the ballot, but the National Electoral Council also barred her from registering. That’s when González, a political newcomer, was chosen.

González and Machado focused much of their campaigning on Venezuela’s vast hinterland, where the kind of economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years never materialized. They promised a government that would create sufficient jobs to attract Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.

Associated Press Writer Fabiola Sánchez contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

Rep. Lou Correa joins task force to investigate assassination attempt of former President Trump

• July 30, 2024

Rep. Lou Correa was appointed to a bipartisan task force entrusted with investigating the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump.

The members of the task force — seven Republicans and six Democrats — were announced by House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries on Monday, July 29, following a unanimous vote by the House last week to establish the group.

Correa, the only California member on the task force, prioritizes national security in Congress. The Anaheim Democrat serves on the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees and also sits on the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement and Intelligence.

He was part of a delegation of lawmakers last week who visited Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the attempted assassination.

Trump was struck with a bullet in the ear at a July 13 rally in Butler, according to the FBI. One of the bullets killed 50-year-old Corey Comperatore, a firefighter who was sitting on the bleachers behind Trump, and two other attendees were seriously hurt. The 20-year-old gunman was killed by a Secret Service counter sniper.

“It appears there were a number of security lapses — and it appears that this may not have been the first major security lapse for a national political candidate,” Correa said. “Some of the witnesses I spoke to insinuated that the lines of command were not clear between the campaign and the Secret Service.”

Calling the incident “unacceptable,” Correa said he’s committed to working with his colleagues to “develop policy solutions to ensure we never face a close call like that again.”

“I’m not looking to point the finger at the Secret Service. I want to know how procedurally decisions are handled,” he said.

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was grilled by Republican and Democratic lawmakers at a congressional hearing on July 22 about the Secret Service’s failure to protect the former president. She resigned the following day.

According to a press release, the goal of the task force is “to understand what went wrong on the day of the attempted assassination, to ensure accountability and to prevent such an agency failure from happening again.”

Correa stressed that the task force and its duties are “not about any one political party.” His goal is to come up with a system that will better protect all candidates across the country, especially those at the national level, Correa said.

“This is not political, this is real,” he said. “Our success will make our democracy stronger. We will not leave any stone unturned as we think about how to make political candidates safe.”

While not the target of an assassination attempt, Correa said he felt his life was threatened on Jan. 6, 2021, when the Capitol was attacked by rioters following Trump’s election loss. That attack left a “clear imprint” on his psyche, Correa said, and he doesn’t want that to be the experience of aspiring elected officials.

“I feel like Jason Bourne whenever I’m at an event. I make a note of where the exits are, what my plan A is, what my plan B is,” said Correa. “That’s the sad part of the situation we have. We’re a democratic country, we’re a democracy, and to have people intimidated to run (for office) — that’s just sad.”

The 12 other members appointed to the task force are Republican Reps. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania who will serve as chairman; Mark Green of Tennessee; David Joyce of Ohio; Laurel Lee of Florida; Michael Waltz of Florida; Clay Higgins of Louisiana; Pat Fallon of Texas; and Democratic Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado; Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania; Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania; Glenn Ivey of Maryland; and Jared Moskowitz of Florida.

The task force is required to submit a report on its findings to the House by Dec. 13, “including any recommendations for legislative reforms necessary to prevent future security lapses,” according to the resolution voted on by the House.

It’s not yet clear when the task force will first meet, and how often it will meet. Correa said he and his staff are working out the details of the schedule and next steps.

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