Three people discloses were killed oregon university spells out and a fourth person was critically injured in a single-car crash early Wednesday in Palm Springs. Authorities said the victims left a nightclub, and apparently had been drinking, shortly before their 1995 Mercury Cougar slammed into a palm tree. The car is believed to have been traveling at a high speed around a curve when the crash occurred about 2:15 a. m. in the 200 block of East Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs police said. The dead were identified as Lizabeth Gordon, 26, of Palm Springs; Richard Reyes Loredo, 23, of La Quinta; and Robert Sanchez, 22, of Indio. The driver, whose name was not released, was taken to Desert Regional Medical Center. . Five years after his indictment by a federal grand jury, an alleged drug lord in Mexico was returned to Los Angeles on Wednesday to face charges that he was part of a vast cartel that supplied hundreds of pounds of cocaine each year to California, Alaska and other states. Francisco "Pancho" Aviles-Perez was turned over to the FBI almost a year after he was arrested by Mexican authorities near his home in Sinaloa on information provided by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, officials saidAviles-Perez, 61, had been held in a Mexican detention facility until his extradition Wednesday. In 2002, a two-year federal investigation led to the indictment of more than 130 people in half a dozen cities including Los Angeles, New York, and Anchorage. In Los Angeles, Aviles-Perez was the lead defendant among 16 people who authorities described as some of the most significant players in the drug cartel. In Los Angeles alone, more than $3 million worth of cocaine was seized during the arrests. At the time of the indictment, Aviles-Perez was already in Mexico, having been deported after serving a 10-year prison sentence in the U. S for heroin trafficking. In Mexico, authorities allege, Aviles-Perez was responsible for coordinating the shipments of cocaine into the U. S.

for distribution throughout the country. Authorities say he managed to evade arrest for several years after the indictment until his whereabouts were discovered by the DEA. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. greg Oregon Ducks Autzen Stadium - goducks . krikorian . POINT ARENA, Calif oregon football . — From a lonely outlook in the coastal mountains of Mendocino County, Chris Kelly takes stock of the dark green ridges of redwood and fir stacked against a light-blue skyline oregon ducks . It's there that he plans to log roughly two dozen square miles of forestland in the coming months and years. Kelly works for the new owner of this stretch of working forest in the Garcia River watershed, a haven for endangered Coho salmon and threatened northern spotted owls oregon state . But his employer is not one of the timber titans that have pulled lumber from California's Redwood Empire for more than a century. He manages the land for the Conservation Fund, a 21-year-old Arlington, Va. -based organization that strives to balance natural resource protection with economic goals. And timber sales here will be used to pay for forest and watershed restoration. "People will say, 'A conservation group doing logging?' " said Kelly, who manages its California operations "This is all new to me. I am learning as I go. "The group says it is the first nonprofit to own and run a major timber operation in the state.

And the second- and third-growth redwood forests it has chosen are in a region where intensive logging has left a legacy of environmental problems and relatively young trees. More than 95% of the ancient redwoods along the North Coast have been felled, according to the Save-the-Redwoods League in San Francisco . The heaviest logging came during the rebuilding of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and during the post-World War II housing boom, when companies such as Georgia-Pacific, Louisiana-Pacific and Masonite operated here . "There now is much less ancient redwood forest in Mendocino County than in any other part of the range," said Ruskin Hartley, conservation director of Save-the-Redwoods League oregon ducks autzen. "You have an opportunity to do restoration on those lands Oregon Ducks Autzen Stadium . "The Conservation Fund is banking on transforming the sustainable production and sale of timber that has grown back on previously logged land into dollars that can be used to permanently shield the property from development while improving wildlife habitat and providing jobs. After buying 24,000 acres along the Garcia for $18 million in 2004, the Conservation Fund is purchasing an additional 16,000 acres in two nearby watersheds for $48. 5 million -- mostly with state financing oregon duck football . Oregon Ducks Autzen Stadium tickets And the group hopes to buy 165,000 acres more, which would make it one of the biggest timber concerns on the North Coast. Private forest ownership here is concentrated, with hundreds of thousands of acres held by half a dozen companies and families univ of oregon . But the industry is struggling, and with land values rising, there is increasing pressure to sell off the least productive parcels -- a trend that forestry officials say results in thousands of acres being developed statewide each year. "We're not talking about conversions of forests to subdivisions," said Bill Stewart, assistant deputy director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection "We are talking about very low density Oregon Ducks Autzen Stadium - goducks . . . But it does alter the forest ecosystem.