National News

By JULIE WATSON and KRYSTA FAURIA, Associated Press FALLBROOK, Calif. (AP) — Firefighters in Southern California were on high alert for dangerous fire potential even before the first blazes broke out. But once flames met ferocious winds, fire crews were mostly powerless to stop infernos that destroyed more than 500 buildings, killed dozens of horses and…

By AMANDA LEE MYERS and JOHN ROGERS, Associated Press BONSALL, Calif. (AP) — A routine day at an elite training center for racehorses transformed into terror and chaos in minutes, with hundreds of thoroughbreds stampeding out of their stalls in a desperate attempt to flee a Southern California wildfire that set their barns ablaze. Turned loose…

By ELLIOT SPAGAT and ANDREW DALTON, Associated Press FALLBROOK, Calif. (AP) — Retirement communities built on golf courses, semi-rural race horse stables and other usually serene sites were engulfed by flames as the San Diego area became the latest front in California's wildfire fight. The fire broke out Thursday amid dry, hot, windy conditions across the…

By RUSSELL CONTRERAS, Associated Press AZTEC, N.M. (AP) — Students hid in their classrooms, some behind locked doors or in closets, as a gunman opened fire Thursday inside a New Mexico high school, killing two classmates before he ended up dead. Authorities and other officials in the small town of Aztec near the Colorado border have…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Al Franken has reluctantly announced he's resigning from Congress, succumbing to a torrent of sexual harassment allegations. But the Minnesota Democrat is firing a defiant parting shot at President Donald Trump and other Republicans. He is pointing out what he calls "some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a…