California

WEED, Calif. (AP) — A wind-swept wildfire in rural Northern California tore through a neighborhood and destroyed about 100 homes and other buildings, fire officials said Saturday after at least two people were injured and thousands were forced from their homes.

The Mill Fire started shortly before 1 p.m. Friday just north of Weed, a city of about 2,600 people 250 miles (402 kilometers) north of San Francisco. The flames raced into the Lincoln Heights neighborhood where a significant number of homes burned and residents had to flee for their lives.

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) endorsed on Thursday the first updated COVID-19 booster shots that target Omicron subvariants.

The decision came after advisers to the CDC voted to recommend reformulated versions of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized the updated booster shots from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech.

New York, Sep 2 (PTI) Seventeen Indian citizens were among a group of 100 migrants apprehended while illegally climbing over a fence into the US at a border post in California, authorities said.

The San Diego Sector Border Patrol agents from the Imperial Beach Station apprehended around 2 am on Tuesday morning the group of 100 migrants, consisting of citizens from Africa, Asia, and South America.

31 August 2022; MEMO: A manager with Google in the US has resigned due to what she described as retaliation, a hostile environment and illegal measures by the company following her support for a letter from Google and Amazon employees protesting against the companies' $1.2 billion collaboration with the Israeli military on a programme called Project Nimbus. The project facilitates surveillance of Palestinians and helps to expand Israeli settlements, all of which are illegal under inter

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California plans to require all new cars, trucks and SUVs to run on electricity or hydrogen by 2035 under a policy approved Thursday by regulators that seeks a dramatic cut in carbon emissions and an eventual end to gasoline-powered vehicles.

The decision by the California Air Resources Board came two years after Gov. Gavin Newsom first directed regulators to consider such a policy. If the goal is reached, California would cut emissions from cars in half by 2040.

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Top U.S. health officials have known for years that the country's Strategic National Stockpile did not have enough doses of a smallpox vaccine that is now key to the monkeypox fight, according to a report of Politico.

The United States never had the money to purchase the millions of doses that experts felt were necessary, said the report, citing three former senior officials and a current official working on the monkeypox response.

(AP) --- A former head of security at Twitter alleged that the company misled regulators about its cybersecurity defenses, privacy protections and its ability to detect and root out fake accounts, according to a whistleblower complaint filed with U.S. officials.

The revelation could create serious legal and financial problems for the social media platform, which is currently attempting to force Tesla CEO Elon Musk to consummate his $44 billion offer to buy the company.

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- Despite a growing supply of the monkeypox vaccine in the United States, there is still no evidence that protection is reaching those most at risk, CNN reported earlier this week.

About three months into the ongoing monkeypox outbreak in the country, there are more than 12,000 cases and counting, said the report.

"But despite a growing supply of the Jynneos vaccine -- and a new strategy that could stretch the current supply five times further -- there is still no evidence that protection is reaching those most at risk," said the report.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — As wildfires rage across California each year, exhausted firefighters call for reinforcements from wherever they can get them — even as far as Australia.

Yet one homegrown resource is rarely used: thousands of experienced firefighters who earned their chops in prison. Two state programs designed to get more former inmate firefighters hired professionally have barely made a dent, according to an Associated Press review, with one $30 million effort netting jobs for just over 100 firefighters, little more than one-third of the inmates enrolled.

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- NASA announced Friday that it has selected 13 possible regions at the South Pole of the Moon as potential future landing sites for its Artemis III mission, a project aiming to send astronauts back to the Moon in 2025.

"Selecting these regions means we are one giant leap closer to returning humans to the Moon for the first time since Apollo," said Mark Kirasich, deputy associate administrator for the Artemis Campaign Development Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.