An Orange County man--who claimed Garden Grove Police Department (GGPD) cops committed excessive force against him and stole $500,000 in diamonds during an illegal, 2010 raid--received bad news this month when a federal judge formally killed his case before trial and ordered him to pay GGPD's litigation expenses.

Aleksandar Mackovski and his ex-wife Andrijana Mackovska sued GGPD and officer Ray Bex for allegedly violating their constitutional rights during the execution of a search warrant in Tustin, where the duo said cops unnecessarily destroyed property and stole the diamonds.

Aleksandar also claimed that cops ambushed him while he was holding a bag of groceries and a cell phone, tackled him to the ground, knocked him out and caused face, arm and chest injuries that needed medical attention.

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Daniel Anderson/UCI Communications

Water scientist James Famiglietti has a busy rest of 2014.

Today's cover subject has given briefings to the Pentagon about current and possible future regions of the planet prone to conflicts over water. To give an idea of how much in demand University of California Irvine/Jet Propulsion Laboratory water scientist James Famiglietti is, check out his looming itinerary.

READING ASSIGNMENT: An Inconvenient Thirst: Water scientist Jay Famiglietti pleas for smart use of our most precious resource before it's too late. Will we listen?

LEARN MORE: JayFamiglietti.com

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Circle of Blue "Action Figure" series

The reading assignment below? It's alright. But the truth is the subject of the story, UC Irvine and Jet Propulsion Laboratory water scientist Jay Famiglietti, has written far more eloquently about the global groundwater issues raised in this week's cover story. After the jump are but five examples ...

READING ASSIGNMENT: An Inconvenient Thirst: Water scientist Jay Famiglietti pleas for smart use of our most precious resource before it's too late. Will we listen?

LEARN MORE: JayFamiglietti.com

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Andre Casasola/Orange County Water District

A precious resource is ever more precious.

What follows is a picture of the groundwater challenges at home and abroad. I must concede that I became depressed while putting this together, but then remembered far more brilliant people are working on ways to manage our way out of this crisis. We just need more of these folks to make it a priority NOW, as UC Irvine/Jet Propulsion Laboratory water scientist Jay Famiglietti would tell you.

READING ASSIGNMENT: An Inconvenient Thirst: Water scientist Jay Famiglietti pleas for smart use of our most precious resource before it's too late. Will we listen?

LEARN MORE: JayFamiglietti.com

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American Museum of Natural History

From his JPL desk, Jay Famiglietti talks about dwindling drinking water in Australia.

Check out the following six (mostly brief) videos that have UC Irvine/Jet Propulsion Laboratory water scientist Jay Famiglietti and his team's research explaining the California and global groundwater crises.

READING ASSIGNMENT: An Inconvenient Thirst: Water scientist Jay Famiglietti pleas for smart use of our most precious resource before it's too late. Will we listen?

LEARN MORE: JayFamiglietti.com

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Riley Kern/OC Weekly

Jay Famiglietti

Looking out the large windows from Jay Famiglietti's corner office at UC Irvine on a sun-drenched late-spring day, you take in an inviting deep greenbelt and, just beyond that, the green, green grass of Aldrich Park.

Contrast that with the view from the UCI hydrologist's new office at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, where Famiglietti is a senior water scientist. It's also serene and lovely here, but the hills cradling the sprawling facility are brown and tinder-dry heading into the always-gusty fall season.

"When I go back to Orange County, it is like Disneyland--everything is super-wonderful," Famiglietti says from behind a small table at a JPL bustling because of a newly launched Mars mission. He has moved into a rental home in Sierra Madre while still holding onto his apartment above UCI.

"It's like the county is in a bubble," he says of OC. "I leave Los Angeles County, and everything is brown. Then I get back to Irvine, and everything is green and lush. There is a little disconnect."

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Meranda Carter/OC Weekly

Adios, Agran!

In June 2004, the Orange County Register published an article that was simultaneously preposterous yet prophetic. It was a profile of three mayors--Curt Pringle of Anaheim, Miguel Pulido of Santa Ana, and Irvine's Larry Agran--who had become what reporter Jeff Rowe called "the most unusual of political allies." The story hailed their partnership as a lesson for a county that had moved past suburbia and needed new ideas to govern the post-modern metropolis OC is today.

I remember reading the story in the Weekly world headquarters with my colleagues, Nick Schou and R. Scott Moxley, and howling in laughter. Agran, Pringle and Pulido--who called themselves the Tres Caballeros--were the most powerful mayors in Orange County history, bucking a politician's usual trajectory to Sacramento or Washington, D.C., to forge local machines that were reshaping their cities in their own image. The article dripped with their smugness and came with a photo of the three, all suited and proper and ready to conquer the county. Each mayor was a personal bugaboo of ours--Pringle for Nick, Agran for Scott, and Pulido for me--and now they were aligned together in OC's own Axis of Evil, ready for their comeuppance.

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An avant garde Khmer dancer, dumpster divers, avid Etsy craftmakers, and an intense form of body modification known as suspension--just some of the subjects from the movies of this year's inaugural Human Cinema Film Festival. Organized by the students from Cal State University Long Beach's visual anthropology branch of the college's anthropology department, HCFF culls together shorts from their peers at CSULB, USC, and UC Santa Cruz.

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Illustration: D. W. Frydendall, Design: Dustin Ames

He's No. 3!

Four high school cheerleaders injured in an Oct. 16 crash are already suing drunken driving suspect/former Murrieta Mayor/since reelected City Councilman/Anaheim Fire Department Battalion Chief Alan Long for alleged negligence.

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Dutton Adult

Rockin' those glasses!

According to a New York Times bestselling author speaking in Newport Beach tonight, miracles are real, he's tracked them and he can explain why they happen--although it is unclear if Eric Metaxas mingled with those seeking them in Grateful Dead concert parking lots. But his topic has prompted the godless OC Weekly to preview an event co-sponsored by Vanguard University and St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, which can mean only one thing: IT'S A SURPRISING AND WELCOME EVENT THAT IS NOT EXPLICABLE BY NATURAL OR SCIENTIFIC LAWS AND IS THEREFORE CONSIDERED TO BE THE WORK OF A DIVINE AGENCY!!!

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