Extra, Extra: Brought To You By The Number 9

Untitled by discarted via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr

• To update our avalanche story from yesterday, 3 have now been confirmed dead after the snowy storm struck near the town of Wrightwood in the San Gabriel Mountains. One missing person was located Saturday, after apparently walking out of the snow encrusted mountain. Another missing person was located Friday, but died on Saturday morning.
• Remember when Fred Thompson was running for president and NBC stopped showing re-runs of Law & Order featuring the ex-Senator because of fair election laws? Well, one blogger thinks that USA should stop running episodes of Walker Texas Ranger because of the exposure it gives to Mike Huckabee lover supporter Chuck Norris. He "has gone way beyond what other celebrities like Oprah, Sylvester Stallone or Jon Voight have done."
• Bert Parks never saw this coming, but the format of the Miss America pageant has been changed to reflect the sentiments of a younger generation used to shows like America's Next Top Model and American Idol. Miss America will now basically be a reality show in which organizers hope infuse some much needed life into the boring traditional pageant.
• There is nothing more terrible than losing a son. But finding out through the press that your son is dead, as Heath Ledger's dad did, must have stung like something awful.
• We already know that 9 USC students were arrested on suspicion of public drunkenness this morning, but you might not have heard that 9 men and women were arrested in Pomona today for allegedly advertising sex on the Internet. They were nabbed at a motel by undercover cops. God, when did illicit, dirty, immoral, solicited sex become illegal?
• Though rains pounded the southland into a wet submission the last couple of days, the five inches are just a drop in the bucket as far as our drought is concerned. Or, so says the state agency in charge of water, who fears that people will stop conserving water in the wake of the storm that is supposed to continue off and on through Monday.
• Even though 7 percent of you don't seem to care, 53 percent said Yes on Props 94-97, while 41 percent said No. A harbinger of things to come or an aberration? Ten days to find out.