The son of an Arab monarch took the King of Pop to court Monday, charging that Michael Jackson took $7 million as an advance on an album and an autobiography that he never produced.

Lawyers for Sheikh Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa say their client fronted money for Jackson’s expenses as an advance payment for a book and joint recording project with the sheikh, who is an amateur musician. Jackson maintains that the money was a gift from a friend.

Attorneys for Al Khalifa said the royal prince spoke to Jackson, 50, by phone when the singer was standing trial in California as a result of his 2003 arrest on child molestation charges. Attorney Bankim Thanki said that Al Khalifa wanted to collaborate with Jackson and help to rebuild his career. Jackson’s finances were diminished after his arrest and he was desperately in need of cash.

The sheikh allegedly paid $35,000 for the utility bills for Jackson’s ranch home and amusement park, Neverland. Following Jackson’s acquittal, Al Khalifa paid an additional $2.2 million for Jackson’s legal bills.

In addition, Jackson and associates lived in Al Khalifa’s palace in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts, expenses, and vacations. During the time the two became close, however their relationship was strained after Jackson reportedly failed to deliver on a business arrangement.

Voters have decided to ban alcohol consumption on the city’s stretches of beaches, making the temporary ban that was imposed after a massive beach brawl last year permanent.

Proposition D received 53 percent of votes with all precincts reporting Wednesday morning.

San Diego has had a back-and-forth debate about removing booze on its beaches for decades but efforts to prohibit alcohol consumption remained stagnant until now.

In a 2002 attempt, voters rejected a trial ban on some beaches that tend to attract large crowds. The City Council had approved the measure but a referendum forced it to the ballot.

A similar effort to ban alcohol on the beaches was rejected in 1991.

After a Labor Day incident the City Council passed a temporary booze ban last November after a drunken brawl in the city’s Pacific Beach neighborhood. 70 police officers, including some in riot gear, were needed to break up the melee.

The temporary ban was scheduled to run out on Jan. 14, 2009.

Advocates said they wanted to make beaches safer for families and tourists.

Opponents refuted the ban as an overreaction because most incidents are limited to big holiday weekends and to select beaches. They argued that the ban would hurt businesses in beach communities, which are magnet for tourists.

The ban applies to all city beaches and Mission Bay Park.

After plea agreements and sentencings were settled for co-defendants in the “Bird Rock Bandit” murder case, the trial for Seth Cravens began yesterday with a graphic depiction of the scuffle that killed a La Jolla professional surfer.

Jennifer Grosso, the girlfriend of surfer Emery Kauanui Jr., wept in court during her testimony yesterday. Kauanui died in May 2007 after an altercation outside his mother’s La Jolla condominium. “I heard his skull crack when it hit the pavement,” Grosso remembered. Defendant Seth Cravens and defense attorney Mary Ellen Attridge listened to court proceedings yesterday. Cravens, 22, is charged with murder as well as other felony counts.

Wiping away tears, the girlfriend of Kauanui described the horror of watching him fall after Cravens punched him once in the face.

“I heard his skull crack when it hit the pavement,” Jenny Grosso testified in San Diego Superior Court. “It sounded like something just pinged off the sidewalk, and then immediately there was a pool of blood coming from the back of his head. I thought he was dead right there.”

Kauanui, 24, lived for four more days in a hospital after a fight outside his mother’s La Jolla condominium at about 1:30 a.m. on May 24, 2007.

Cravens was arrested in connection with what Deputy District Attorney Sophia Roach said were a series of violent actions over many years in La Jolla.

The Kauanui case drew international attention after prosecutors said Cravens and four other La Jolla High School graduates involved in the fight were members of the gang, the Bird Rock Bandits. Prosecutors said the group was at the center of many alcohol-driven fights in the area. Previous court hearings were packed. But Cravens’ trial began yesterday with only a handful of spectators, including his parents.

Because of the attention, “This case became not a prosecution but a runaway train,” Cravens’ attorney, Mary Ellen Attridge, said yesterday.

Cravens’ four co-defendants accepted guilty plea deals in June to lesser charges. Two of the four – Henri “Hank” Hendricks and Matthew Yanke – will be called to testify in Cravens’ defense, Attridge said outside the courtroom.

Grosso recounted that Kauanui had been losing a fight with one of Cravens’ friends when Cravens “just walked up to Emery and gave him one extremely hard punch.” The punch knocked Kauanui to the ground “like the lights went out,” Grosso said.

Attridge told the jury that Cravens punched Kauanui in self-defense.

“What happened to Emery Kauanui was a tragedy . . . but it was not a murder,” Attridge said. She said Cravens struck Kauanui when Kauanui got “5 inches away from Seth Cravens’ face” in a threatening posture.

Yanke, 22, Eric House, 21, and Orlando Osuna, 23, all pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter as a result of the fight that led to Kauanui’s death. Yanke and House were sentenced to 210 days in jail. Osuna was sentenced to 349 days. Hendricks, 22, pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact and was sentenced to 90 days in jail.

A man who was fatally injured during a motorcycle accident in Tecate Sunday afternoon has been identified by authorities as Vanty Khao, 27, a Cambodian resident of San Diego.

Khao was fatally injured during after a crash on state Route 94, west of state Route 188, according to the county medical examiner. He was treated on the scene by emergency crews and then taken by ambulance to a nearby cafe to wait for a helicopter. He was then pronounced dead at the scene.

Khao had been driving west on Route 94 on his 2003 Honda motorcycle, with a group of other motorcyclists, when he lost control of the bike for unknown reasons and collided with a guard rail. The force of the crash threw Khao onto the road and he was hit by another motorcycle. Medical crews attempted to revive Khao, but he was pronounced dead on the scene.

The state’s highest court rejected a lawsuit filed by San Diego and two other counties challenging California’s medical marijuana law on Thursday, but will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a county counsel.

San Diego, Merced and San Bernardino counties sued the state in February 2006. The suit claimed federal laws forbidding marijuana use and possession supercedes a state measure approved by voters in 1996 that allows dispensaries to sell the drug to people who can provide a doctor’s prescription.

The counties’ first attempt was rejected in 2006 by the San Diego Superior Court and then again by the District Court of Appeals in July. Now the California Supreme Court chose not to review the decision.

According to Senior Deputy County Counsel Thomas Bunton, San Diego County will appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court in the next 90 days.

According to his lawyers and officials, former baseball star Jose Canseco was detained by immigration officials at a San Diego border crossing as he tried to bring a fertility drug from Mexico.

Instead of being arrested, Canseco was issued a notice to appear in federal court “relative to a smuggling violation,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lauren Mack explained.

“It’s a discretion we have, to issue a notice to appear rather than make an arrest when a smaller volume of items are being smuggled,” Mack said.

Mack said no charges have been filed against Canseco, who was given the notice to appear and released Thursday night. She declined to elaborate further on the allegation.

His LA attorney told the press that Canseco, a former major league All-Star, was held for nearly 10 hours at the San Ysidro border crossing. It has been reported that immigration agents said they searched Canseco’s car and found human chorionic gonadotropin, which is illegal to possess without a prescription.

Emerson declined to say if Canseco was in fact in possession of the drug, which is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency for use in men. The drug helps restore testosterone production that is lost in steroid users.

Emerson went on to say that officials released Canseco after he agreed to allow ICE agents to search his Los Angeles-area home. ICE agents searched the home in the attorney’s presence yesterday as Canseco was returning from San Diego.

“They found nothing. They took nothing,” Emerson said.

Modern-day fingerprint analysis technology and a San Diego police intern helped solve a 37-year-old murder. Gerald Metcalf, 60, was arrested yesterday in Texas on suspicion of killing Gerald Jackson, 27, in Pacific Beach.

According to San Diego police, Jackson, a U.S. Postal Service carrier and part-time doorman at the Barbary Coast was found dead by his friends in his apartment after he hadn’t turned up to work for a number of days.

Officers determined Jackson had been stabbed to death sometime after Dec. 28 and his house had been tossed. According to homicide officer Lt. Terry McManus, Jackson’s Ford Torino was found days later in Mexicali, Mexico, and some of his property had been pawned by someone assuming his identification.

The case went unsolved until this past January. An intern assigned to the homicide unit’s cold case team examined the evidence, and investigators, using current fingerprint analysis technology, matched a print from the crime scene to Metcalf. McManus said the case was reopened with assistance from the San Diego and Henderson County, Texas, District Attorney’s Offices.

Texas Department of Public Safety officers arrested Metcalf before noon and he is currently being held in Henderson County Jail awaiting extradition to San Diego, McManus said.

Former San Diego Chargers defensive lineman Chris Mims, 38 was found deceased in his apartment Wednesday, according to a Los Angeles police report. Police said there didn’t appear to be any evidence of foul play in the death.

Mims recorded 42 sacks in 104 career games over seven seasons with San Diego and one with the Washington Redskins. He was a member of San Diego’s only Super Bowl team in 1995 against the San Francisco 49′ers.

The six-foot-five, 290-pound lineman retired after failing to be signed on with a team in 2000.

He is the second former Charger to die in just over three months. Former safety Terrence Kiel, 27, also passed away in a car accident in July.

According to base officials on Wednesday morning, the Juliet fire that raged across Camp Pendleton and consumed almost 4,000 acres is now 75 percent contained. The Juliet and Shockey fires burned within yards of homes in the North and East counties overnight, but air and ground initiatives saved structures.

“Had we not had the Superscooper and other assets, we would have lost a lot of homes of Marines and sailors,” said Col. James Seaton, base commander at Camp Pendleton. There is no estimate as to when the blaze will be 100 percent contained, but firefighters are making strong progress and weather conditions are accommodating, said Staff Sgt. Jesse Lora, a spokesman for the Marine base north of Oceanside.

Some residents who live in the San Luis Rey housing area, near where the fire burned, are still not able to go back into their homes this morning, but they may be able to return later in the day, Lora said.

Approximately 679 firefighters are contesting the blaze and three helicopters are still flying overhead dropping water. One firefighter suffered minor injuries say Cal Fire officials. Temperatures are expected to be in the 90s on the base, with relative humidity at 15 percent and winds at only 5 mph, Cal Fire officials confirmed Wednesday.

The red-flag warning issued by the National Weather Service is still in effect and has been extended until 10 p.m Wednesday night.

Temperatures around San Diego County are expected to remain high throughout the week, with highs in the inland valley predicted to be in the 90s and mid-80s along the coast. Cooler marine air should bring temperatures back to normal over the weekend.

Authorities report that a major interstate that cuts through Camp Pendleton has reopened after smoke from a wildfire on the Marine base forced the closure of the main traffic artery between Orange and San Diego counties.

According to the California Highway Patrol, Interstate 5 was reopened after a new, minor brush fire started Tuesday on the base. They report that the interstate was closed for less than two hours because of heavy smoke.

Marine Cpl. Priscilla Vitale says it is yet unsure how the 5-acre fire started, but says the fire has been contained. It is the third fire to start on the base in two days.