California

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Investigators completed a two-week examination of the charred wreckage of a scuba diving boat and could not determine what ignited the fire that killed 34 people off the Southern California coast, a law enforcement official said Friday.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A U.S. judge on Friday blocked new Trump administration rules that would enable the government to keep immigrant children in detention facilities with their parents indefinitely.

U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles said the rules conflict with a 1997 settlement agreement that requires the government to release immigrant children caught on the border as quickly as possible to relatives in the U.S. and says they can only be held in facilities licensed by a state.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A third man has been arrested and charged with drug offenses in connection with rapper Mac Miller’s overdose death last year.

Court documents show Stephen Walter is suspected of selling counterfeit oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl that Miller possessed before he died last September of an accidental overdose of cocaine, alcohol and fentanyl, a powerful opioid contributing to an epidemic that’s claimed thousands of lives in the U.S.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An Arizona man has become the second person arrested on drug charges as authorities investigate the overdose death of rapper Mac Miller.

Police gave no details on the connection between him and 26-year-old Miller, who died a year ago in his Los Angeles home of an accidental overdose of cocaine, alcohol and fentanyl, a powerful opioid that’s contributed to a deadly epidemic in the U.S. and claimed other musicians, like Prince.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California’s largest utility cut power to 24,000 northern customers Monday evening as fall brings back dangerous weather conditions and the company tries to head off wildfires sparked by electrical equipment.

The utility shut down power to areas of Butte, Nevada and Yuba counties in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

The power will remain off until conditions are safer, and PG&E warned that it might expand the precautionary outages on Tuesday to El Dorado, Placer, Sutter, Lake, Napa and Sonoma counties if gusty winds and hot, dry weather continue.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It had all the makings of a massacre. Six guns, including a Colt AR-15 rifle. About 1,000 rounds of ammunition. A bulletproof vest. And an angry Southern California man who threated to kill his co-workers at a hotel and its guests.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s efforts to keep his tax returns private played out on both coasts Thursday, with a California judge handing him an initial victory and his lawyers in New York City arguing that federal prosecutors there are trying “to harass” him by seeking the documents.    

SAN DIEGO (AP) — President Donald Trump signed his name Wednesday on a newly constructed section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, calling it a “world-class security system” that will be virtually impenetrable.

Trump toured a section of the border wall in San Diego’s Otay Mesa area. It was a return trip for the president, who traveled there in March 2018 to see border wall prototypes that authorities later destroyed to make way for 14 miles (22.4 kilometers) of steel, concrete-filled bollards currently under construction.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — President Donald Trump remains on a war footing. With California.

Trump’s primary mission during his two-day visit to the state was to raise millions from wealthy Republicans. But he also made a point of deriding the state’s handling of its homeless crisis, and on Wednesday, he issued a long-expected challenge to California’s authority to reduce car emissions.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal investigators identified a violation of Coast Guard regulations that could trigger criminal charges in the California dive boat disaster that killed 34 people.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that all crew members on the boat Conception were asleep when the pre-dawn fire broke out Sept. 2 off the coast of Santa Barbara. The boat was required to have a crew member on lookout duty, according to Coast Guard rules.