California

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Just last week, managers overseeing the fight against the massive wildfire scorching California’s Lake Tahoe region thought they could have it contained by the start of this week.

Instead, the Caldor Fire crested the Sierra Nevada on Monday, forcing the unprecedented evacuation of all 22,000 residents of South Lake Tahoe and tens of thousands of tourists who would otherwise be winding down their summers by the alpine lake straddling the California-Nevada state line.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Federal officials closed a portion of trails at a national forest in Northern California where a family and their dog mysteriously died last month, citing pending toxicology reports on nearby water.

There was no clear cause of death, prompting authorities to treat the area as a hazmat scene.

Investigators are considering whether toxic algae blooms or other hazards may have contributed to the deaths and are awaiting the results of water tests taken from the area where the family was found.

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. Navy helicopter crashed Tuesday afternoon off the coast of San Diego, California, prompting search and rescue operations by sea and air, according to the U.S. Navy's 3rd Fleet.

"An MH-60S helicopter embarked aboard USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) crashed into the sea while conducting routine flight operations approximately 60 nautical miles off the coast of San Diego at 4:30 p.m. PST, Aug. 31," the fleet's commander said in a statement.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP) — Flames raced across treetops and through drought-stricken vegetation as firefighters scrambled Wednesday to keep a growing California wildfire from reaching a resort city at the southern tip of Lake Tahoe after evacuation orders were expanded to neighboring Nevada.

Thick smoke from the Caldor Fire enveloped the city of South Lake Tahoe, which was all but deserted during a summer week usually bustling with tourists.

SITES, Calif. (AP) — In 2014, in the middle of a severe drought that would test California’s complex water storage system like never before, voters told the state to borrow $7.5 billion and use part of it to build projects to stockpile more water.

Seven years later, that drought has come and gone, replaced by an even hotter and drier one that is draining the state’s reservoirs at an alarming rate. But none of the more than half-dozen water storage projects scheduled to receive that money have been built.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP) — A ferocious wildfire swept toward Lake Tahoe on Tuesday just hours after roads were clogged with fleeing cars when the entire California resort city of South Lake Tahoe was ordered to evacuate and communities just across the state line in Nevada were warned to get ready to leave.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP) — Fire officials ordered more evacuations around the Tahoe Basin as a two-week old blaze encroached on the threatened mountain towns surrounding glimmering Lake Tahoe.

By nightfall, all residents on the California side of the Lake Tahoe Basin were warned to evacuate the region, after fire officials had stressed for days that protecting the area was their top firefighting priority.

TASS, 28 August: The US launch of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle with the Dragon spacecraft, has been cancelled due to weather conditions, the American company SpaceX twitted on Saturday.

The Dragon was supposed to deliver cargo for the International Space Station (ISS) crew.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Amazon is teaming with payments company Affirm to offer online shoppers a buy-now-pay-later option that does not involve credit cards.

San Francisco-based Affirm Holdings Inc. announced Friday that its flexible payment service will soon be available on Amazon.com.

The news sent Affirm’s stock up more than 35% in after-hours trading.

With the service, Amazon customers can split the total cost of purchases of $50 or more into monthly payments, and are told the total cost of the transaction up front. Affirm said there are no late fees.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP) — Firefighters battling a stubborn California wildfire Friday near the Lake Tahoe resort region faced gusty winds and dry conditions that made vegetation ready to burn.

The Caldor Fire has proved so difficult to fight that fire managers this week pushed back the projected date for full containment from early next week to Sept. 8. But even that estimate was tenuous.

“I think that’s going to be assessed on a day-by-day basis,” said Keith Wade, a spokesman for the incident management team.