California | featured news

A sonic boom heard in California last week had an out-of-this world origin as ”a large meteoric event” according to NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. Scientists now estimate the blast measured in near 5 kilotons or roughly 1/3 the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan during World War II. Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, estimates the object was about the size of a minivan, weighed in at around 154,300 pounds.

Daniel Chong, a San Diego student left in a Drug Enforcement Administration holding cell for nearly five days after he was allegedly forgotten about, has filed a claim for $20 million.

Two farms have been quarantined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as the agency continues to investigate last month's discovery of mad cow disease at a California dairy farm.

A 25-year-old laboratory researcher has died after becoming infected with meningitis bacteria at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, health officials said Wednesday.

A San Diego college student who federal drug agents forgot and left in a holding cell for five days without food, water or access to a toilet said Tuesday that he drank his own urine to survive.

A yacht racing off the coasts of California and Mexico apparently collided at night with a much larger vessel, leaving three crew members dead and one missing, a sailing organization said early Sunday. It was the state's second ocean racing tragedy this month....

Three days of violence accomplished what years of protests could not against the pockets of intoxication and crime. Some lots remain vacant and others have been reborn as businesses, but problems linger.

The announcement that mad cow disease was spotted in a California cow drew a rapid response this week from the beleaguered American beef industry, which has been enduring one crisis after another for more than a year....

Heartbroken customers lined up for meal at a closing San Francisco institution — a 100-year-old Chinese restaurant once known for having "the world's rudest waiter."

Global Tel Link, which supplies state lockups with pay phones, will install technology to disable cellphones, which have been used by inmates to run criminal enterprises, intimidate witnesses and organize attacks on guards. A private company has agreed to pay millions to install technology in California prisons to block Web searches, text messages and phone calls by inmates using smuggled phones.