Brian Melley

Lynn Darst and her husband were camped out in their motor home on the edge of their seats for four days wondering if their house would survive yet another wildfire menacing Sonoma County. “We were comfortable, but fearful of what the consequences could be,” Darst said Thursday, the day after finding her home had been spared once again. Darst was...

Firefighters are battling the Easy Fire in Simi Valley, California. The blaze began early Wednesday morning.

An aggressive wildfire in Southern California seared its way through dry vegetation Friday and spread quickly, destroying more than a dozen homes as tens of thousands of residents were ordered to get out of its way, authorities said. The blaze broke out Thursday evening in the San Fernando Valley and spread westward, burning its way into hilly subdivisions on the...

Dozens of people trapped on a scuba diving boat that caught fire off the Southern California coast appear to have died from smoke inhalation, not burns, authorities said Friday. The 34 people who died were sleeping in a cramped bunkroom below the main deck of the Conception when the fire broke out before dawn Monday and quickly engulfed the boat....

The tactic is considered one of the best ways to prevent the kind of catastrophic destruction that has become common from wildfires, but its use falls woefully short of goals in the U.S. West.

A Navy admiral dismissed charges Thursday against an officer accused of covering up war crimes by a Navy SEAL later acquitted of murder, and ordered a review of the service’s justice system. The action by the chief of naval operations in the case of Lt. Jacob Portier is the latest blow to military prosecutors and comes a month after a...

The testimony rattled the prosecutor who called his own witness a liar, according to NBC 7’s Artie Ojeda who was in the courtroom.

Opening statements and witness testimony began Tuesday. NBC 7’s Bridget Naso has the latest.

A jury has been selected to decide the fate of a decorated Navy SEAL charged with killing a teenage Islamic State prisoner in Iraq.

California officially gave its blessing to coffee Monday, declaring the beverage does not pose a “significant” cancer risk.

The nation’s most productive agricultural state moved Wednesday to ban a controversial pesticide widely used to control a range of insects but blamed for harming brain development in babies.

Emotional statements from their children, some recalling years of abuse and imprisonment, were read in court Friday before a Riverside County couple was sentenced to life in prison for child-torture and other crimes.

A federal appeals court put a judge’s order on hold Friday shortly before it would have stopped the Trump administration from forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases move through U.S. courts. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked the lower court ruling from taking effect. The three-judge panel set a Tuesday deadline for civil...

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says the National Enquirer tried to blackmail him by threatening to publish personal photos. He outed the tabloid in an explosive online post.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Thursday he was the target of “extortion and blackmail” by the publisher of the National Enquirer, which he said threatened to publish revealing personal photos of him unless he stopped investigating how the tabloid obtained his private exchanges with his mistress. Bezos, who is also owner of The Washington Post, detailed his interactions with American...

Tens of thousands of Los Angeles teachers returned to work Wednesday after voting to ratify a contract deal between their union and school officials, ending a six-day strike for the nation’s second-largest district.

Lawyers for President Donald Trump asked a court Monday for nearly $800,000 in lawyers’ fees and penalties from porn actress Stormy Daniels for a failed defamation lawsuit against him. Attorney Charles Harder defended ringing up a nearly $390,000 legal bill for the president and asked for an equal amount in sanctions as a deterrent against a “repeat filer of frivolous...

Brad Weldon lost his home to fire when he was a kid, so when a deadly wildland blaze came roaring toward his ranch house in the pines where he lives with his 89-year-old blind mother, he wasn’t going to let disaster strike twice.

The search for remains of victims of the devastating Northern California wildfire has taken on new urgency as rain in the forecast could complicate those efforts while also bringing relief to firefighters on the front lines.

Firefighters hoped a narrow window of calm on Saturday would give them a chance to block Southern California wildfires that have marched on an inexorable path of destruction toward the sea. Winds that drove the flames through bone-dry hills and canyons north and west of downtown Los Angeles were expected to die down until Sunday, when they would build again...