TOMERONG, Australia — The wildfire was behaving erratically last week, and Doug Schutz and his team needed to make a quick decision. So they moved a bulldozer from another job and used it to widen a firebreak. That likely helped prevent hundreds of homes from going up in flames. If...
Sacramento’s Latest Reckless Law Will Give Lighter Sentences to 10,000 Repeat Felons
Jerry Dewayne Williams, if popular folklore is to be believed, should be coming up for parole soon. This spring marks the silver anniversary since Williams, better known as the “pizza thief,” received 25-years-to-life for shoplifting a slice of pizza at the Redondo Beach pier. Ever since, he’s been “the patron saint of...
California Deputy Fatally Shot; Ride-Along Passenger Injured
SOMERSET — A Northern California sheriff’s deputy was shot to death Wednesday while responding to a call in the rural Sierra Nevada foothills, officials said. The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office said Deputy Brian Ishmael was fatally shot in the community of Somerset and that a ride-along passenger with him...
Scientists: Wind, Drought Worsen Fires, Not Bad Management
WASHINGTON — Both nature and humans share blame for California's devastating wildfires, but forest management did not play a major role, despite President Donald Trump's claims, fire scientists say. Nature provides the dangerous winds that have whipped the fires, and human-caused climate change over the long haul is killing and...
‘Extremely Dangerous’ Hurricane Willa Aims for Mexico’s West
MEXICO CITY — Hurricane Willa has grown rapidly into an "extremely dangerous" near-Category 5 storm in the eastern Pacific, on a path to smash into Mexico's western coast between Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta by Wednesday. The governments of Sinaloa and Nayarit states ordered coastal region schools to close on Monday...
China Says Camps for Muslims Lead Them to ‘Modern Life’
BEIJING — China on Tuesday characterized its mass internment of Muslims as a push to bring into the "modern, civilized" world a destitute people who are easily led astray — a depiction that analysts said bore troubling colonial overtones. The report is the ruling Communist Party's latest effort to defend...