California

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.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- A wildfire starting Friday from a prescribed burn in Santa Cruz County, U.S. northern California, was 83 acres (about 0.33 square km) large and 25 percent contained, fire officials said on Saturday.

The Estrada fire, burning between Watsonville and Morgan Hill above Hazel Del Road near Santa Clara County, was "part of the" Estrada Ranch Prescribed Burn, according to Cecile Juliette, a spokesperson for the San Mateo and Santa Cruz Unit (CZU) of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).

LOS ANGELES (AP) — New York real estate heir Robert Durst, who days ago was sentenced in a two-decade-old murder case, has been hospitalized after contracting COVID-19, his lawyer said Saturday,

Defense Attorney Dick DeGuerin said he was notified that Durst was admitted after testing positive for the coronavirus. DeGuerin told multiple media outlets that Durst is on a ventilator. Additional details on his condition were not immediately made available.