Federal officials have begun searching trees near an Air Force base in Northern California for a destructive Asian beetle officials believe arrived last month in a shipment of tiles from China. Two Asian longhorned beetles were found outside a privately-operated warehouse at the former McClellan Air Force Base outside Sacramento. A team of U. S. Forest Service smokejumpers, firefighters trained in parachuting into forest fires, have been searching for traces of the insects in trees near the site since Monday.

Authorities say a young marine, terrified of returning to Iraq, had his cousin shoot him in the leg, and then told police he was hit by random gang gunfire. According to police, the shooting was meant to keep 19-year-old Moises Hernandez from returning to the war-torn country. He was charged with filing a false police report, while his cousin, Juan, also 19, faces felony weapons charges.

The Three Stooges, Newburgh's three-headed ant who was on the auction site eBay on Monday, has died, according to the Times Herald-Record. Age and gender are unknown.

A researcher says that Native American tales describing a "Thunderbird" and a "Whale" point to "at least two massive quakes and tsunamis" that have hit the area in the last 1,100 years. Ruth Ludwin, a University of Washington researcher, has been working with seismologists, to look into the U. S. West Coast's "geomythology. "

Jeanette Passalaqua, 32, has filed a suit against Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Southern California Permanente Medical Group Inc. , in San Bernardino County state court. In June 2004, Passalaqua's husband, Steven Passalaqua, was asked by Kaiser staff to hold and steady his wife while an employee inserted an epidural needle into her back, court papers said.