Man sets himself on fire inside Long Beach City Hall

LONG BEACH — A man walked into City Hall and set himself on fire Thursday and was then hospitalized in serious condition, authorities said.

City Hall was evacuated because of a suspicious package discovered after the incident, officials said.

The 40-year-old man, whose name was not released, walked into the building around 4 p.m., said Sgt. Dina Zapalski, police spokeswoman. She didn’t know how he set the fire.

The man was taken to a hospital in serious condition, she said.

She said a bomb squad was en route to inspect the package.

“There’s a package that no one has claimed and we’re treating it as a possible threat,” she said.

Fire Department officials did not immediately return calls for comment.

Long Beach is a major port city 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles./AP

Man charged with making hoax threat to campus

SAN DIEGO — A 32-year-old Web designer was charged Thursday with making a hoax threat to San Diego State University claiming the campus would be targeted for violence similar to Virginia Tech’s bloodshed.

Cristobal Fernando Gonzalez faces one felony count of making a threatening communication via the Internet.

He was ordered held in federal custody in lieu of $30,000 bond during a brief hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara L. Major.

According to court documents, Gonzalez told FBI investigators he posted the hoax message anonymously to his own Web page and then alerted a local television station in an attempt to generate publicity for the site.

School officials received notice at 10:55 p.m. Tuesday that a message on the Internet threatened to kill 50 SDSU students on Thursday morning, according to court documents.

FBI investigators traced Gonzalez via his posting to a Web design company in Bonita, a city sandwiched between San Diego and the U.S.-Mexico border. He was interviewed around 8:10 a.m. Wednesday and arrested at his San Diego home later that evening./AP

Hunger strike called over Stanford wage policy

PALO ALTO — A group of Stanford University students and employees participated in the eighth day of a hunger strike Thursday to protest what they claim is the unfair treatment of janitors and other low-wage workers.

The Stanford Labor Action Coalition wants the university to apply the “living wage” it has for employees hired through contractors — $11.15 to $12.59 per hour — to everyone who works on campus.

Instead, the university has used loopholes in the wage policies to pay less to some contract workers, according to Matt Seriff-Cullick, a student organizer.

“We will end the fast when we feel the university has begun to discuss these issues in good faith and we feel we can come to agreement on some of the key issues,” Seriff-Cullick said./AP

Ten people — seven students, one alumnus, a janitor and a groundskeeper — were fasting at an encampment the hunger strikers set up on campus. Five have gone without food since April 12, Seriff-Cullick said.

Alan Acosta, a Stanford spokesman, said administrators were sympathetic to the group’s demands and met with its members throughout the week. Another meeting was planned for Friday, according to Acosta.

Changing the university’s personnel and contracting rules to have the hourly minimum wage cover workers employed through private companies is complicated because many of them, including the janitors, are represented by outside labor unions, he said.

The living wage policy also does not apply to short-term contracts worth less than $100,000 or apply to employees who work less than 30 hours per week, but the university is considering eliminating those restrictions as part of its discussions with the strikers, Acosta said.

“We believe in the letter of the policy and the spirit of the policy,” he said.