California

GARDEN GROVE, Calif., July 20 (Reuters) - Jason Lilley was a special operations forces Marine Raider who fought in multiple battles in Iraq and Afghanistan during America's longest war.

As Lilley, 41, reflects on President Joe Biden's decision to end America's military mission in Afghanistan on Aug. 31, he expresses love for his country, but disgust at its politicians and dismay at the blood and money squandered. Comrades were killed and maimed in wars he says were unwinnable, making him rethink his country and his life.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Pacific Gas & Electric reported to California utility regulators that its equipment may have been involved in the start of a fire burning in the Sierra Nevada that is threatening hundreds of homes.

PG&E said in a report Sunday to the California Public Utilities Commission that a repairman responding to a circuit outage on July 13 spotted blown fuses in a conductor atop a pole, a tree leaning into the conductor and fire at the base of the tree.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A rapidly growing wildfire south of Lake Tahoe jumped a highway, prompting more evacuation orders and the cancellation of an extreme bike ride through the Sierra Nevada on Saturday as critically dangerous wildfire weather loomed in the coming days.

LOS ANGELES, July 16 (NNN-Xinhua) — A riot in a Los Angeles prison left possibly 30 prisoners and two prison personnel injured Thursday afternoon, local media reported.

Castaic’s Pitchess Detention Center, commonly referred to as the Wayside jail, is located in Santa Clarita city 63 km northeast of Los Angeles downtown and operated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. It was designed to house approximately 8,600 male inmates in its four separate facilities.

PULGA, Calif. (AP) — A blaze that erupted near the flashpoint of the deadliest wildfire in recent U.S. history was heading away from homes on Thursday but survivors of the 2018 blaze in the town of Paradise worried that history could repeat itself.

The Dixie Fire had burned a couple of square miles of brush and timber near the Feather River Canyon area of Butte County and moved into national forest land in neighboring Plumas County.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Wildfires that torched homes and forced thousands to evacuate burned across 10 parched Western states on Tuesday, and the largest, in Oregon, threatened California’s power supply.

Nearly 60 wildfires tore through bone-dry timber and brush from Alaska to Wyoming, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Arizona, Idaho and Montana accounted for more than half of the large active fires.

(AP) --- Firefighters working in searing heat struggled to contain the largest wildfire in California this year while state power operators urged people to conserve energy after a huge wildfire in neighboring Oregon disrupted the flow of electricity from three major transmission lines.

(AP) --- In the runup to Tesla Inc.’s 2016 acquisition of a company called SolarCity, Elon Musk hailed the deal as a “no brainer” — a purchase that would combine the leading maker of electric vehicles with a manufacturer of solar panels that can recharge EVs.

It didn’t exactly work out that way.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Firefighters struggled to contain an exploding Northern California wildfire under blazing temperatures as another heat wave blanketed the West, prompting an excessive heat warning for inland and desert areas.

Death Valley in southeastern California’s Mojave Desert reached 128 degrees Fahrenheit (53 Celsius) on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service’s reading at Furnace Creek. The shockingly high temperature was actually lower than the previous day, when the location reached 130 F (54 C).

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California denied 21 oil drilling permits this week in the latest move toward ending fracking in a state that makes millions from the petroleum industry but is seeing widespread drought and more dangerous fire seasons linked to climate change.

State Oil and Gas Supervisor Uduak-Joe Ntuk sent letters Thursday to Aera Energy denying permits to drill using hydraulic fracturing in two Kern County oil fields to “protect “public health and safety and environmental quality, including (the) reduction and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.”