California

LOS ANGELES, Jan 30 (NNN-AGENCIES) —Some 200 US citizens are due to be quarantined in California after arriving from Wuhan, China amid the coronavirus oubreak.

The passengers, mostly diplomats, were evacuated via a chartered flight that landed on US soil on Wednesday.

They will be quarantined for at least 72 hours, but could be kept isolated for up to two weeks if they have any symptoms, officials said.

The flight landed at a US air base near Riverside, California.

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- Vanessa Bryant broke silence Wednesday after her husband, 41-year-old American basketball legend Kobe Bryant, died in a helicopter crash with their daughter Gianna this Sunday.

"There aren't enough words to describe our pain right now," she wrote in an Instagram post accompanied by a picture of her entire family. "I take comfort in knowing that Kobe and Gigi both knew that they were so deeply loved."

SAN DIEGO (AP) — U.S. authorities on Wednesday announced the discovery of the longest smuggling tunnel ever found on the Southwest border, stretching more than three-quarters of a mile from an industrial site in Tijuana, Mexico, to the San Diego area.

The tunnel featured an extensive rail cart system, forced air ventilation, high voltage electrical cables and panels, an elevator at the tunnel entrance and a drainage system.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The helicopter carrying Kobe Bryant didn’t have a recommended warning system to alert the pilot he was too close to land but it’s not clear it would have averted the crash that killed nine because the pilot may have lost control as the aircraft plunged into a fog-shrouded mountain, federal investigators said Tuesday.

Pilot Ara Zobayan had been climbing out of the clouds when the aircraft banked left and began a sudden and terrifying 1,200-foot (366-meter) descent that lasted nearly a minute.

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) -- San Francisco Mayor London Breed slammed the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday for issuing an order allowing the federal government to implement a policy that threatens to deny immigrants permanent residency in the country.

The court ruled in a 5-4 decision that President Donald Trump's administration could temporarily implement the so-called "public charge" rule that would ban immigrants from using public benefits, including food stamps, Medicaid, housing or permanent residency, also known as a "green card."

WOODLAND, Calif. (AP) — A California father about to be freed from prison has been taken into custody in connection with the decades-old killings of five of his infant children in a case a sheriff said has haunted his agency for years.

Paul Perez, 57, a convicted sex offender with a 20-year criminal history, was charged in the deaths of the children born between 1992 and 2001, authorities announced Monday, the same day he was supposed to be released from a state prison in Delano on unrelated charges.

CALABASAS, Calif. (AP) — A veteran pilot who plunged into a Los Angeles-area hillside, killing Kobe Bryant and eight others, had tried to avoid fog so heavy that it had grounded police choppers, authorities said.

But even experienced pilots may have only seconds to act when they are blinded by weather, an expert said as investigators began scouring the wreckage for clues to Sunday morning’s crash.

The NBA postponed the Los Angeles Lakers’ next game against the Clippers on Tuesday night after the deaths of the retired superstar and the other victims.

CALABASAS, Calif. (AP) — NBA legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others were killed Sunday when their helicopter plunged into a steep hillside in dense morning fog in Southern California, his sudden death at age 41 touching off an outpouring of grief for a star whose celebrity transcended basketball.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The Iowa caucuses are more than a week away, but millions of Americans are already free to vote.

Early voting in the crush of Super Tuesday states that hold primaries on March 3 amounts to a parallel campaign for the Democratic nomination. While much of the focus is on who will come out on top in the traditional first four voting states, early voting will allow a much broader swath of voters to play a key role in picking the nominee.

SAN FRANCISCO/CAIRO (Reuters) - Two UN officials will report on Wednesday that there is enough evidence suggesting that Saudi Arabia had hacked Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos’ phone and both the kingdom and the United States should investigate, a person familiar with the matter said.