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By Paul Elias The Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO » A Califor- nia state senator who was lauded for his efforts to make government more transpar- ent was arrested Wednesday along with a onetime gang leader known as "Shrimp Boy" during a series of raids by the FBI in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area, authorities said. FBI spokesman Peter Lee confirmed the arrests of State Sen. Leland Yee and Raymond Chow, but declined to discuss the charges, citing an ongoing investigation. Yee was scheduled to be ar - raigned in federal court in San Francisco later Wednes- day. The agency was execut- ing numerous arrests and search warrants in the Bay Area, FBI Special Agent Mi- chael Gimbel said outside the offices of Ghee Kung Tong, a fraternal organization in San Francisco's Chinatown that Chow reportedly headed. It was among the sites searched. Firefighters were seen going inside with a cir - cular saw and later said they had cracked a safe. Yee is the third Dem- ocratic senator to face charges this year. Sen. Rod Wright was convicted of per- jury and voter fraud for ly- ing about his legal residence in Los Angeles County, and Sen. Ron Calderon has been indicted on federal corrup - tion charges. Wright and Calderon are taking a voluntary leave of absence, with pay, although Republicans have called for them to be suspended or ex - pelled from the Legislature. Mark Hedlund, spokes- man for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, conf irmed that the FBI searched Yee's office in the state capitol on Wednesday, but he said he had no infor - mation about the arrest. "We're hoping for more as we go through the day," he said. Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said he had no comment and did not know anything about the investigation. Officers from the Califor - nia Highway Patrol and Sen- ate sergeant-at-arms details were standing guard outside Yee's office, where a morn- ing newspaper remained un- touched. Yee, 65, represents west- ern San Francisco and much of San Mateo County. A spokesman for the senator, Dan Lieberman, said he had no comment, but the sena - tor's office would release a statement in the afternoon. He is best known pub - l icly for h is ef for ts t o strengthen open records, government transparency and whistleblower protec - tion laws, including legis- lation to close a loophole in state public records laws after the CSU Stanislaus Foundation refused to re - lease its $75,000 speak- ing contract with former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2010. Chow ran a Chinese crim - inal organization with ties to Hong Kong and was con- victed of gun charges. But he had recently been held up as an example of successful re - habilitation and was praised for his work in the commu- nity. Yee's arrest came as a shock to Chinese-Americans who see the senator as a pi - oneering leader in the com- munity and a mainstay of San Francisco politics, said David Lee, director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee. "People are waiting to see what happens, and they are hoping for the best, that the charges turn out not to be true," said Lee, whose orga - nization just held a get-out- the-vote event with Yee and other Chinese-American elected officials last week. For his efforts to uphold the California Public Re - cords Act, Yee was honored last week by the Northern California chapter of the So- ciety of Professional Jour- nalists, which awarded him its public official citation for his efforts last year to main- tain the requirements of the California Public Records Act. Yee has at times clashed with fellow Democrats for casting votes of conscience, refusing to support the Dem - ocratic budget proposal in 2011 because of its deep cuts to education, social services and education. He also opposed legisla - tion by a fellow Democrat, Assemblyman Paul Fong of Cupertino, that banned the sale of shark fins used for Chinese shark fin soup, say - ing that it unfairly targeted the Chinese-American com- munity. Yee is among three Dem- ocrats running this year for secretary of state, the office that oversees elections and campaign finance reporting. He lost a bid for mayor of San Francisco in 2011. A man was charged last year for threatening Yee over legislation that he pro - posed to limit rapid reload- ing of assault weapons. Chow acknowledged in an unpublished autobiogra- phy that he ran prostitution rings in the 1980s, smuggled drugs and extorted thou- sands from business owners as a Chinatown gang mem- ber, KGO-TV reported two years ago. In 1992, Chow was among more than two-dozen peo - ple indicted on racketeering charges for their alleged in- volvement in crimes ranging from teenage prostitution to an international drug trade mostly involving heroin. He was later convicted of gun charges and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He spent 11 years in prison and was released in 2003 af - ter he cut a deal with the gov- ernment to testify against another high-ranking asso- ciate, Peter Chong. Chong was later convicted of rack- eteering. But Chow told KGO-TV in a 2012 interview that he had changed and was working with at-risk children in San Francisco. U.S. Sen. Dianne Fein - stein of California issued a statement in 2012 recog- nizing Chow as a former of- fender who had become an asset to his community, the Sacramento Bee reported. LAwmAkER BuStEd FBI: California Sen. Leland Yee arrested AssociAted Press An FBi agent wheels out cases of material from the office of sen. Leland Yee, d-san Francisco, at the state capitol Wednesday in sacramento. By Alicia Chang The Associated Press LOS ANGELES » Peering into the far reaches of the solar system, astronomers have spied a pink frozen world 7½ billion miles from the sun. It's the second such object to be discovered in a region of space beyond Pluto long considered a celestial waste - land. Until now, the lone known resident in this part of the solar system was an oddball dwarf planet spot - ted in 2003 named Sedna after the mythological Inuit goddess who created the sea creatures of the Arctic. The latest discover y shows "Sedna is not a freak. We can have confidence that there is a new population to explore," Yale University se - nior research scientist David Rabinowitz said in an email. He was one of Sedna's dis- coverers, but had no role in the find detailed in today's issue of the journal Nature. For years, astronomers hunted in vain for other Sednas in the little-studied fringes of the solar system. The new object, 2012 VP113, was tracked using a new camera on a ground tele - scope in Chile by Scott Shep- pard of the Carnegie Institu- tion for Science in Washing- ton, D.C., and Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii. Trujillo was part of the team that found Sedna. Like Sedna, VP is also a dwarf planet. It's jokingly nicknamed "Biden" after Vi ce Pr es iden t Jo e Bi de n be - cause of the object's initials. It measures about 280 miles across, or half the diameter of Sedna. It's bone-chilling cold with a temperature of around minus 430 degrees Fahrenheit. SPACE Newfound pink world lurks at solar system fringes By Scott Smith The Associated Press FRESNO » The snowpack atop mountain peaks in Cal- ifornia and Colorado has a new set of eyes watching from high above to better gauge the amount of water that will rumble down rivers and streams each spring as runoff. In a new mission, NASA fixed a lumbering twin-en - gine plane with high-tech equipment to make regu- lar snow surveys, starting last weekend in drought- stricken California before the weather front expected to bring snow to the Sierra this week. At an altitude of up to 20,000 feet, the so- called Airborne Snow Ob - servatory measures snow- pack's depth and water con- tent with precision. Improving on the old method of taking snow sam- ples from the ground, sci- entists said that from the lofty heights they can calcu- late snow depth to within 4 inches and water content to within 5 percent. The figures will answer a list of questions about moun - tain snowpack, said Tom Painter, NASA's lead inves- tigator for the mission. "About 75 to 80 percent of our water comes from the snowmelt," Painter said. "Understanding the snow - pack is really, really impor- tant." For decades, snowpack's water content was based on estimates and fraught with errors. Each month, sur - veyors hiked out to sparse locations, typically at low and medium elevations. By hand, they plunged a long tube down into the snow - pack, pulling up a core sam- ple to be measured. Yet much of the snowpack is higher up in the mountain ranges and out of reach of surveyors. So NASA is tak - ing a different approach. The first flight of the year for a de Havilland Twin Ot- ter plane took off recently from Mammoth Yosemite Airport in the heart of the Sierra Nevada. Lasers first scan the snow to find out its depth, indi - cating how much water is locked inside. An image is next taken to measure the amount of sunlight reflected and absorbed by the snow to gauge how quickly it will melt into runoff. Scientists will combine these two pieces of infor - mation and track them over time to monitor changes, providing an accurate pic- ture of the runoff, Painter said. Power-plant managers, water districts, farmers and state officials who oper - ate reservoirs and keep alert for the possibility of flooding will have access to the real- time data measuring snow - pack. "How fast does it melt? Where does it melt? How is it accumulated?" Painter said. "Until this project, we really have not had spatially com - plete information." The plane will fly weekly over California's Tuolumne River Basin of the Sierra Nevada, including the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, which supplies water for 2.6 million people in the San Francisco Bay Area. Monthly flights over Colorado's Uncompah - gre River Basin will measure the watershed that supplies much of the western United States. NASA is making flights to the end of the snowmelt season. The mission is a collabo - ration between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and the Califor- nia Department of Water Resources. "We can add up how much water there is in the moun - tain snowpack in the entire basin," said Painter, adding that his team's work is rev- olutionizing the way snow- pack is measured. SuRvEy NASA measures snowpack in two states AssociAted Press in this frame grab from video, scientists from NAsA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory fly over the tuolumne river Basin of california's sierra Nevada mountain range in a de Havilland twin otter plane to measure the snowpack on sunday. the new Airborne snow observatory measures the snowpack's depth and water content with precision amid california's drought. The Associated Press SACRAmENtO » The se- vere drought in Califor- nia is prompting state and federal wildlife officials to mount an unusual rescue operation involving millions of 6-month-old salmon that are at risk of dying in de - pleted rivers and streams. The first phase of what is unexpected to be a 10- week effort got underway on Tuesday, when about 450,000 hatchlings were loaded on tanker trucks at a government hatchery in Northern California and re - leased 160 miles south into the Sacramento River. T he you n g s a l mon , known as smolts, are still perfecting their swimming skills and normally rely on currents to help them get downstream and eventu - ally out to sea. Officials are giving them a lift this year because the lack of rain has led to reduced flows, increased water tempera - tures and greater threats from predators. Those conditions have already claimed the lives of hun - dreds of smolts this winter in an overheated river near Watsonville. "This is a Herculean ef - fort to try to stave off a fish- ery disaster," California De- partment of Fish and Wild- life fisheries branch chief Stafford Lehr told the Con- tra Costa Times. "We want to jump-start these young fish past the trouble spots and give them a better chance to survive." Every juvenile salmon born at five Central Valley hatcheries last fall — more than 30 million of them — will be similarly ferried south in coming weeks. Scientists also are keeping an eye on wild fish runs on several rivers closely to de - cide if government should intervene and start rear- ing them in hatcheries, Na- tional Marine Fisheries bi- ologist Howard Brown said. FI Sh R ES Cu E Young salmon trucked downstream due to drought The Associated Press y O S E m I t E N A t I O N A L PARk » Authorities say a Southern California teen drowned at Yosemite Na- tional Park while helping his family members who were struggling to swim in the Merced River. The Fresno Bee cited a coroner's official who said 17-year-old Walter Gonza - lez of Simi Valley died Sun- day. Kari Cobb, a Yosem- ite spokesperson, says the family members were swimming in an area of the river known as Devil's Elbow when the teen at - tempted to help them. Cobb says Gonza lez was pulled out of the wa- ter by bystanders and pro- nounced dead at the scene. She says at this time of year the water is cold. tEEN dIES 17-year-old drowns at Yosemite C & C PROPERTIES An Independently owned and operated Member of Coldwell Banker Residential Affiliates. 741 Main Street, Suite #2 Red Bluff, CA 96080 1-800-287-2187 (530) 527-2187 www.redbluffcoldwellbanker.com LOTS & LAND ~ REDUCED! 20 Acres of Level Vina Acerage!..........................$100,000 ~ View Parcel in Mineral.................................................................$9,750 ~ 3 /4 + Acre Building Lot in Mountains...........................................$55,000 ~ No Space Rent! Lot ready for Mfg. 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