Two men accused of stealing baby formula led law enforcement officers on a freeway chase from Rancho Cucamonga to Corona Saturday, June 22.

The chase, which began on Interstate 15 in San Bernardino County, ended on 6th Street in downtown Corona, where a California Highway Patrol car performed a pit maneuver and the Chevy Suburban flipped on its left side on a road median.

At least three times during the chase the fleeing suspects tried to ram pursuing officers’ cars, San Bernardino County sheriff’s Deputy Chris Henry said. No one was hurt and the two suspects surrendered without incident. The chase ended about 5:15 p.m.

“It worked out perfect,” Henry said of the pit maneuver, in which a police car taps the back of a vehicle it is pursuing, usually when a chase slows, in order to make the vehicle spin out. “Nobody got hurt and the two bad guys are going to jail.”

Henry said authorities received a call from private security guards at a Walmart on Foothill Boulevard in Rancho Cucamonga. The guards told sheriff’s deputies that the two men had taken “a large quantity” of baby formula out of the store.

Henry said he was not sure how much formula had been taken, but he believes it was worth several hundred dollars.

Security guards followed the men and sheriff’s deputies caught up with them on northbound Interstate 15 near the 210 freeway. The police chase then moved north to Sierra Avenue, where the Suburban got off the freeway and then got back on in the southbound lanes.

CHP officers took over the lead in the chase as it passed into Riverside County. At one point at least six cars were involved in the chase.

The Suburban got off the freeway and turned onto 6th Street near Highway 91 in Corona, where Corona police provided traffic control.

A video posted online by an animal rights group is sparking a modest barrage of concern and complaints over a “barnyard scramble” for children at last month’s Riverdale Rodeo.

In response to the complaints, and the possibility that a state law prohibiting such events might have been broken, rodeo officials will stop conducting scramble events, a Sheriff’s Office spokesman said.

The scramble is an event in which chickens, ducklings, rabbits, piglets and kid goats are set loose in an arena to be chased and captured by children, from toddlers to pre-teens. If a child catches a critter, it’s his or hers to keep.

Riverdale Rodeo Association president Darryl Mendes said the scramble has “been a tradition for as long as I can remember, ever since I was a kid.”

The 57th annual rodeo was held on the first weekend of May. It’s a slice of small-town life — a farm community festival with a parade, a rodeo queen and professional cowboys riding bulls, roping calves and busting broncos. In the town of 3,200 people, the Riverdale Rodeo Association is a booster, providing scholarships for students and money for local programs, including the volunteer fire department.

The barnyard scramble is part of the fun. But an animal-rights activist with a 20-year history of butting heads with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association over the treatment of rodeo livestock found the barnyard scramble particularly troubling.

Steve Hindi, president of Illinois-based SHARKonline.org — the acronym stands for SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness — and another member visited Riverdale with video cameras on May 5.

“We’ve seen these kinds of things before,” he said. “We certainly think they are bad for the animals, and it sends a really bad message to children about how to treat animals.”

The five-minute video shows rodeo organizers tossing animals out of trailers and containers onto the arena floor before children are turned loose to chase them. Segments show a young boy grabbing a baby duck by one wing before an adult takes the bird by the neck to return it to a box; a boy lugging a baby goat in a bear hug across the dirt; a rabbit frantically squirming in the arms of a little girl; and chickens and ducklings nearly being stepped on by eager children.

“Of course, none of the children intend harm but this is hardly the point,” Hindi wrote on SHARK’s blog. “This kind of event is basically telling children it’s OK to treat animals as if they are objects and prizes.”

Hindi said his group didn’t contact rodeo organizers with concerns, instead posting the video on YouTube in hopes of igniting grass-roots outrage.

“What we’re hoping is that people look at this video and they have a particularly negative response,” he said. “What we’d like is … that the rodeo association not have a barnyard scramble in the future. It was bad for all the animals. The ducklings were my biggest concern that they would get stepped on.”

Mendes, the rodeo association president, acknowledged that his organization received numerous complaints based on the video, but declined to discuss the scramble with a reporter.

“We heard about all this stuff a month ago,” he said. “I’m not going to comment anymore at this time.”

In addition to concerns over whether the scramble is cruel to animals, there may be legal questions over the practice as well. The California Penal Code makes it a misdemeanor to sell or give away “any live chicks, rabbits, ducklings, or other fowl as a prize for, or as an inducement to enter, any contest, game or other competition or as an inducement to enter a place of amusement or place of business.” Misdemeanors are typically punishable by fines and jail time.

Hindi said SHARK provided the video to the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office and believed it had been forwarded to the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office. He added that he has not been notified whether an investigation is being conducted.

Sheriff’s spokesman Chris Curtice said the scramble was investigated. “When our detectives contacted Riverdale Rodeo officials about it, they had no idea they were doing anything wrong and agreed to discontinue the event,” Curtice said in an email Friday. “Also, charges are misdemeanors and we cannot cite an entity, (Riverdale Rodeo Association). Right now it appears that educating them worked.”

Hindi’s group also contacted the Central California SPCA, which has the authority to investigate allegations of animal cruelty or mistreatment in Fresno County. He expressed disappointment that the agency didn’t consider the activity to be either illegal or cruel.

SPCA spokeswoman Beth Caffrey said she was aware of complaints over the Riverdale scramble, but added that “we haven’t been provided with any evidence of anything inhumane or illegal with that situation.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has disappointed some of her liberal base with her defense of the Obama administration’s classified surveillance of U.S. residents’ phone and Internet records.

Some of the activists attending the annual Netroots Nation political conference Saturday booed and interrupted the San Francisco Democrat when she commented on the surveillance programs carried out by the National Security Agency and revealed by a former contactor, Edward Snowden, The San Jose Mercury News reports.

The boos came when Pelosi said that Snowden had violated the law and that the government needed to strike a balance between security and privacy.

As she was attempting to argue that Obama’s approach to citizen surveillance was an improvement over the policies under President George W. Bush, an activist, identified by the Mercury News as Mac Perkel of Gilroy, stood up and tried loudly to question her, prompting security guards to escort him out of the convention hall.

“Leave him alone!” audience members shouted. Others yelled “Secrets and lies!,” ”No secret courts!” and “Protect the First Amendment!,” according to the Mercury News.

Perkel told the newspaper that he thinks Pelosi does not fully understand what the NSA is up to.

Several others in the audience walked out in support of Perkel.

“We’re listening to our progressive leaders who are supposed to be on our side of the team saying it’s OK for us to get targeted” for online surveillance, said Jana Thrift of Eugene, Ore. “It’s crazy. I don’t know who Nancy Pelosi really is.”

Netroots Nation is an organizing and training convention for progressive political leaders. Pelosi was Saturday’s keynote speaker at the event, which opened Thursday at the San Jose Convention Center and was scheduled to conclude Sunday.

Her remarks criticizing the Republican majority in the House and encouraging powerful women brought applause, cheers and laughs.

A group of sightseers off the coast of Orange County captured a rare moment with thousands of dolphins “stampeding” through the water.

The video from Captain Dave’s Dolphin and Whale Safari on Monday has already gone viral.

The crew was in the Pacific Ocean off Dana Point when they were surrounded by an enormous dolphin pod.

Cameras captured the moment when the giant pod suddenly burst out swimming simultaneously.

“It was amazing,” Owner Captain Dave Anderson said.

In the decades since Anderson has been taking people on his ocean excursions, dolphin stampedes are an extremely rare occurrence, he said.

“They were porpoising through the water. We call it a stampede, ” Anderson said.

“It’s remarkable because there are moments when it looks like all of them are jumping in the air.”

Anderson estimated that the pod was made up of around 2,000 common dolphins.

Those who experienced the event said it was like being surrounded by a herd of wild horses, except the mammals were galloping through waves, swimming at speeds faster than 25 mph.

Although Anderson has seen large dolphin stampedes before and is an expert on marine life, he is not sure why dolphins do it.

“The first time I saw it, I was like, ‘what the heck is going on?!,’” he said.

“It often happens after they have eaten. Maybe they are all saying to each other, ‘Come on, let’s move, let’s go somewhere.’”

Captain Dave’s Dolphin and Whale Safari offers daily trips out on the ocean.

As the danger of the Carstens Fire begins to subside in Mariposa County, new video shows that the fire could be observed in the southern portion of Tuolumne County. This was shot between Lake Don Pedro and Lake McClure.

When San Bernardino police detectives would raid houses to search for drugs the past few years, they couldn’t believe what they kept finding.

“The question started coming up, ‘Why are we seeing so much laundry detergent in so many dope houses?’” Sgt. Travis Walker said.

Strange as it may seem, detergent — specifically liquid Tide and Tide Pods — has become a currency on the black market nationwide. It is traded for drugs or sold far below retail prices at open swap meets and clandestine meetings, law enforcement and retail officials say.

Several factors have combined to turn the product into what some are calling “liquid gold”: The Tide brand is the most popular, even though it is the highest priced; detergent is relatively easy to steal and, unlike electronic items with serial numbers, is difficult to trace; and shoplifting is a relatively low-risk operation compared to other crimes to make a quick buck.

Why is Tide so popular with thieves?

“People refer to it comically like, ‘They’re stealing laundry detergent?’” said Richard Mellor, vice president of loss prevention for the National Retail Federation.

But merchants aren’t laughing.

Walker said one Inland supermarket chain, which he declined to identify, reported each store suffering four to six thefts of Tide per week, with each loss valued at $100 to $400.

The Tide thefts are part of what merchants have told the National Retail Federation is an increase in organized groups stealing for resale many products that people use every day: razors, beauty supplies, allergy medicine.

The Inland Empire Organized Retail Crime Association was created by local retailers, police and prosecutors in 2011 to share information on crime trends and suspect descriptions.

The National Retail Federation lists laundry detergent only behind baby formula as the most-stolen product.

“It’s a hot commodity on the streets,” Riverside police Lt. Dan Hoxmeier said.

And no, the ingredients are not broken down to make drugs, as with some cold medicines that are frequently stolen. People actually buy the stolen Tide to wash clothes.

“Everyone uses laundry detergent,” Mellor said.

A 2009 survey listed Procter & Gamble’s Tide, along with Kraft and Coca-Cola, as the three brands that consumers would never give up no matter how badly the economy tanked.

That loyalty comes at a cost: In a recent check at a Stater Bros. market in Riverside, a 150-ounce bottle of Tide was priced at $17.97, $3 more than the same amount of Gain and $7.20 more than a 150-ounce bottle of All.

Those Tide bottles can be exchanged for $5 cash or $10 worth of marijuana or crack cocaine, according to New York Magazine’s “Suds for Drugs” article, which said the product has received the nickname “liquid gold.”

Sundar Raman, the marketing director of P&G’s North American fabric-care division, told the magazine, “It’s unfortunate that people are stealing Tide, and I don’t think it’s appropriate at all, but the one thing it reminds me of is that the value of the brand has stayed consistent.”

Procter & Gamble officials did not return two phone messages seeking comment.

The scope of the problem is far beyond a single person slipping a bottle or bag of Tide under his arm and sneaking out of a supermarket, big-box store or pharmacy, and it is not limited to Tide.

Rings of thieves cost businesses $30 billion annually, the National Retail Federation estimates.

“This is not shoplifting we’re talking about,” Mellor said in a phone interview from Washington, D.C. “It’s a criminal enterprise to make a significant profit.”

Hoxmeier said a crew will often have three people: a target, lookout and mule. The target identifies the product to be stolen. The lookout makes sure no one is watching and loads the cart, with Tetris-like precision, with detergent, baby formula, razor blades, energy drinks, allergy medicine and beauty products. Sometimes they’ll conceal the bounty with blankets and even children, Hoxmeier said.

The mule will then push the cart right out of the store.

Once obtained, the products often go to middlemen who might have furnished the thieves with shopping lists.

Riverside police Detective Dave Riedeman said some people sell the stolen items out of their homes to neighbors who learn of their availability through word of mouth.

Riedeman’s partner, Detective Lori Blaszak, said stolen women’s beauty products, expensive in stores, are particularly popular on the black market.

Retailers are fighting back, short of putting Tide under lock and key.

Mellor said some merchants shrink-wrap excess inventory on shelves or otherwise make the bottles difficult to reach. Others attach electronic devices that will activate an alarm if they are not removed at the checkout stand.

Merchants, fierce competitors for the customer dollar, also have found success by working together. They compare notes and surveillance photos on who has been stealing and when and where, and forward the information to police.

“There is a collaboration like I’ve never seen before. It’s very refreshing,” Mellor said.

Organized retail crime was a hot topic at a National Retail Federation loss-prevention conference in San Diego this month that Mellor organized. He said he was heartened to see 20 law enforcement agencies represented, including some federal agencies and police from as far away as Florida.

Law enforcement also is gaining awareness of the scope of the problem and is committing more resources, Mellor added.

CVS recently approached Riverside police about its theft problem, Riedeman said.

The result was an operation June 4-5 in which 28 Riverside and San Bernardino officers fanned out to 16 locations and made 38 theft arrests, including 13 for felonies.

Riedeman said the most audacious attempted theft was by a woman who loaded up her cart with car batteries and tried to wheel them out the door.

The undercover plan involved 44 retail employees at CVS, Food 4 Less, Ralphs, Rite Aid, Sam’s Club, Stater Bros., Target, Toys R Us and Walmart stores. A Stater Bros. spokesman declined to discuss thefts from the markets. CVS did not return a call seeking comment.

This was the first such operation for Riverside police, Blaszak said.

“Usually we’re just coming in from behind. Part of the goal is to be proactive,” she said.

The big prize was not the thieves themselves, but the identity of those, known as fences, who would have received the stolen goods, Riedeman said.

“We’re going to continue to do operations like this,” Riedeman added. “Hopefully the same way the word got out that you can go out and steal whatever you want, we want to make it so you’re not so comfortable that you can go out and steal.”

Video shows Justin Bieber running into a photographer with his white Ferrari in Hollywood, but police say there was no crime and the injuries aren’t life-threatening.

Lt. Craig Valenzuela says Bieber’s car collided with the person at 11:45 p.m. Monday on Sunset Boulevard.

Valenzuela says nobody was cited or arrested and officers determined no crime was committed. He says investigators are trying to determine whether the pedestrian was in the roadway.

A video posted by TMZ.com shows Bieber getting into a Ferrari. He’s surrounded by paparazzi and as the car drives off, one falls to the ground and grips his knee.

A request for comment from Bieber’s publicist, Melissa Victor, was not immediately returned.

Scores of additional homes have been evacuated, as firefighters continue to battle a wildfire near the main route into Yosemite National Park in the Sierra foothills.

State fire spokesman Daniel Berlant on Tuesday morning estimated the number of additional homes evacuated the previous evening at a couple of hundred although he said he did not have an exact number. That’s in addition to 150 homes evacuated since the fire began on Sunday.

Berlant said hundreds of additional firefighters were called in overnight to help with the blaze, which has burned 2 and ½ square miles and remains 15 percent contained.

No structures have been damaged or destroyed. One firefighter suffered a minor injury.

Highway 140 into Yosemite National Park remains open.

Miss Utah Marissa Powell is the latest beauty queen to trip on national television, not over her gown, but during the interview segment.

Asked about income inequality at the Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas Sunday night, the 21-year-old Salt Lake City resident gave a rambling, awkwardly-worded answer that included several long pauses and the phrase “create education better.”

The cringe-inducing response was getting lots of buzz Monday. As a video of the episode racked up hundreds of thousands of views, pageant co-owner Donald Trump scolded the haters on Twitter, saying anyone can lose their train of thought.

The question was a bit of a head scratcher itself.

“A recent report shows that in 40 percent of American families with children, women are the primary earners, yet they continue to earn less than men. What does this say about society?” asked NeNe Leakes of the reality series “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.”

Undaunted by the three-in-one prompt, Powell started off strong:

“I think we can relate this back to education, and how we are continuing to try to strive … to …,” she said, before appearing to lose her way.

She picked up after a long pause: “… figure out how to create jobs right now. That is the biggest problem. And I think, especially the men are … seen as the leaders of this, and so we need to see how to . create education better. So that we can solve this problem. Thank you.”

Despite the stammering answer, she came in third runner-up.

Miss Utah, who was trending on Twitter a day after her flub, was keeping quiet amid the fallout.

But she did have this to say on her Miss USA page, “It’s not all about winning. It’s about examining yourself, improving and striving to showcase your individuality.”

Dubbed the Carstens Fire, a wildfire is burning less than 40 miles from Yosemite National Park.

Cal Fire says 150 homes in the area, off Carstens Road, have been evacuated. Several roads nearby are also closed off.

Video of the blaze can be seen above.

As of 2 p.m. Monday, the fire had burned 900 acres and was only 15 percent contained just 24 hours after it started.

In all, more than 700 firefighters are at the scene.

Mariposa County declared a state of local emergency Monday afternoon.