California | featured news

Regulators on Friday shut down four more banks, boosting the number of failures this year to 29 -- more bank closures than in all of last year.

The latest banks seized were American Southern Bank in Georgia, Michigan Heritage Bank, First Bank of Idaho, and First Bank of Beverly Hills in California.

TV talk show host Jay Leno fell ill and checked himself into a Los Angeles, California, hospital Thursday, his representative said.

Brad Ramos, the police chief of Indio, Calif., population 79,000, does everything he can to contain his town's foreclosure epidemic. In a town where on the worst streets, 75% of homes are in foreclosure, Ramos hopes that if he can keep the neighborhoods looking presentable, he might be able to hold out long enough for when buyers return.

Long Beach, UCLA and LAX records are also broken by unseasonably warm weather that meteorologists attribute to Santa Ana winds blowing in from the desert. Monday may be even hotter.

The Sunday school teacher charged with killing 8-year-old Sandra Cantu of Tracy, Calif., and stuffing her body in a suitcase was a good mom to her 5-year-old daughter – and didn't seem capable of hurting anyone, Melissa Huckaby's ex-husband told Good Morning America on Friday.

California's unemployment rate hit 11.2% with the loss of 62,100 jobs last month, reaching its highest level since the government began keeping systematic records in 1976, the state reported today.

Sandra Cantu was remembered Thursday as "Tracy's precious angel," but she may well have been everybody's little girl.

Police are searching for any other alleged victims of a Sunday school teacher accused of raping and killing an 8-year-old girl from Tracy, California. While conceding "there has been no indication this has happened," Tracy Police Sgt. Tony Sheneman said the concern is that the suspect, Melissa Huckaby, is a Sunday school teacher and did have contact with children.

Six people were killed — including four children — after a shooting at a home in an upscale California neighborhood, police said on Monday.

More than 100 years ago, J.A. Loring had his eyes on the California sky and his hand on a pen.