California

More than half of 17.5 million users who responded to a Twitter poll created by billionaire Elon Musk over whether he should step down as head of the company had voted yes by the time the poll closed Monday.

There was no immediate announcement from Twitter, or Musk, about whether that would happen, though Musk said that he would abide by the results. Musk attended the World Cup final on Sunday and may be midflight on his way back to the U.S. early Monday.

A U.S.-French satellite that will map almost all of the world’s oceans, lakes and rivers rocketed into orbit Friday.

The predawn launch aboard a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California capped a highly successful year for NASA.

Nicknamed SWOT — short for Surface Water and Ocean Topography — the satellite is needed more than ever as climate change worsens droughts, flooding and coastal erosion, according to scientists.

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- More than 25,000 people were hospitalized due to flu in the United States in the week ending Dec. 3, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Seasonal influenza activity remains high across the country, said the CDC.

There have been at least 13 million illnesses, 120,000 hospitalizations, and 7,300 deaths from flu so far this season in the United States, according to the CDC.

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- California, the most populous state of the United States, is among the states that have been hit hardest with "very high" flu levels, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said.

This is against the backdrop of a nationwide spike in influenza-related hospital admissions, which are nearly doubled from the week before, said the CDC in its latest report.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration said Monday that it would expand temporary legal status for Haitians already living in the United States, determining conditions in the Caribbean nation were too dangerous for their forced return.

The Homeland Security Department said Haitians who were in the United States Nov. 6 could apply for Temporary Protected Status and those who were granted it last year could stay an additional 18 months until Aug. 3, 2024.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The unabashedly liberal city of San Francisco became the unlikely proponent of weaponized police robots last week after supervisors approved limited use of the remote-controlled devices, addressing head-on an evolving technology that has become more widely available even if it is rarely deployed to confront suspects.

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States, have surged to highest levels since summer wave, local media reported on Thursday, citing official data.

COVID-19 case and hospitalization rates have risen dramatically through the last half of November in Los Angeles County, reported the Los Angeles Times, the biggest newspaper on U.S. West Coast.

The former warden of an abuse-plagued federal women’s prison known as the “rape club” goes on trial Monday, accused of molesting inmates and forcing them to pose naked in their cells.

Ray J. Garcia, who retired after the FBI found nude photos of inmates on his government-issued phone last year, is among five workers charged with abusing inmates at the federal correctional institution in Dublin, California, and the first to go to trial.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Elon Musk reinstated Donald Trump’s account on Twitter on Saturday, reversing a ban that has kept the former president off the social media site since a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was poised to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Moderate to severe drought extended from the U.S. West Coast to the Rocky Mountains with large areas of extreme and pockets of exceptional drought, the latest monthly drought report from the National Centers for Environmental Information said, while many residents in the West got much more nervous than those cold words.