GANG HUMOR?: Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan...

GANG HUMOR?: Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan was in Newport Beach Friday to speak to local business people about his city’s woes (B6). “Your problems are ours, and our problems are yours,” Riordan said. “We have started a new program where we are giving bus tokens to gang members so that they can come to Orange County.” . . . That line might not have gone over with every group, but they gave the mayor a good laugh.

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JUST DUCKY: Sure, you can buy all the Mighty Ducks T-shirts and hats you want at any Disney store. But you have to wade through all those Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck knickknacks. Now there’s a store that’s strictly Mighty Ducks. . . . It opened in the Brea Mall this week, the only such store outside Anaheim Arena. Says a spokesman: “Business is great. Shoppers loves us.” What’s he pushing? An authentic Mighty Ducks Jersey, autographed by all the players: $1,200. Same jersey, no autographs: $800.

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UNDER FIRE: Westminster weekly newspaper editor Yen Do discusses in American Journalism Review the perils of publishing a Vietnamese language newspaper in a sometimes volatile exile community. Since 1976, numerous Vietnamese-American journalists have been attacked and five killed, including an editor in Little Saigon who died when his newspaper office was torched. . . . Do is undaunted, telling reporters at his Nguoi Viet not to publicize threats from extremists: “If we accept them as censors, we are lost forever.”

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FIRE SALE: An arson fire nine months ago gutted Orient Handel, a Corona del Mar outlet for pricey imported rugs . . . some 3,000 specimens were burned. About one-third are gone forever, but the slightly singed survivors of the blaze will be on sale for 10% of their original price when the store reopens today at 10 a.m., along with new merchandise. “When you are out of commission, and then things start to work, of course you get excited,” says owner Hashem Kermani.