California

SAN JOSE, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Daniel Ortega easily secured a fourth consecutive term as Nicaragua's president, early results showed on Monday, after the former guerrilla fighter suppressed political rivals in a vote critics said was rigged but which won Russian recognition.

Nicaragua's Supreme Electoral Council said that with roughly half the ballots counted, a preliminary tally gave Ortega's Sandinista alliance about 75% of votes.

The European Union rejected the results, saying the elections "complete the conversion of Nicaragua into an autocratic regime."

LOS ANGELES, Nov 2 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Climate change caused overwhelmingly by human activity is the primary source of the unprecedented forest fires regularly ravaging the western United States, according to a study.

  Fires destroyed an average of 13,500 square kilometers per year in the American west between 2001 and 2018 — twice as much as between 1984-2000.

  “It’s happened so much faster than we previously anticipated,” Rong Fu, who led the study published by the US National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), told the Los Angeles Times.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kobe Bryant’s widow won’t have to undergo psychiatric testing for her lawsuit over graphic photos of the 2020 helicopter crash that killed the basketball star, her 13-year-old daughter and others, a federal judge ruled Monday.

Los Angeles County sought to compel psychiatric evaluations for Vanessa Bryant and others to determine if they truly suffered emotional distress over photos of the crash scene and bodies that her lawsuit said were taken and shared by county sheriff’s deputies and firefighters.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department is in talks to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to each child and parent who was separated under a Trump-era practice of splitting families at the border, a person familiar with discussions to settle lawsuits said Thursday.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A powerful storm barreled toward Southern California after flooding highways, toppling trees and causing mud flows in areas burned bare by recent fires across the northern part of the state.

Drenching showers and strong winds accompanied the weekend’s arrival of an atmospheric river — a long and wide plume of moisture pulled in from the Pacific Ocean. The National Weather Service’s Sacramento office warned of “potentially historic rain.”

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A camera operator told authorities that Alec Baldwin had been careful with weapons on the set of the film “Rust” before the actor shot and killed a cinematographer with a gun he’d been told was safe to use, court records released Sunday show.

Cameraman Reid Russell told a detective that Baldwin was rehearsing a scene Thursday in which he was set to draw his gun while sitting in a church pew and point it at the camera. Russell said he was unsure whether the weapon was checked before it was handed to Baldwin.

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) — The Coast Guard received multiple reports of a possible fuel spill off the Southern California coast earlier than previously disclosed and asked local authorities to investigate about 15 hours before its own personnel confirmed a large oil slick, which came from a leaking undersea pipeline, records show.

SAN JOSE, Oct 21 (NNN-TELESUR) — Costa Rica’s National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC) and the Canadian Forest Fire Interagency Center (CIFFC) signed a plan to strengthen their partnership in forest fire management.

“It is of the utmost importance for Costa Rica to have established this agreement with Canada, which is a world leader in prevention and control of forest fires,” the SINAC Director Rafael Gutierrez stated. 

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) — A group of environmental organizations demanded Wednesday that the Biden administration suspend and cancel oil and gas leases in federal waters off the California coast after a recent crude oil spill.

(AP) --- Investigators believe a 1,200-foot (366-meter) cargo ship dragging anchor in rough seas caught an underwater oil pipeline and pulled it across the seafloor, months before a leak from the line fouled the Southern California coastline with crude.

A team of federal investigators trying to chase down the cause of the spill boarded the Panama-registered MSC DANIT just hours after the massive ship arrived this weekend off the Port of Long Beach, the same area where the leak was discovered in early October.