Los Angeles is trading the trees for the stars -- and not everybody's happy about it.

A sport utility vehicle that may have been carrying a family back from the Labor Day holiday weekend crashed Tuesday on the Grapevine section of Interstate 5 north of Los Angeles, causing a chain-reaction pileup that killed a woman and a young girl and injured nine others, officials said.

A California Highway Patrol officer and a suspect are both hospitalized in serious condition Tuesday after they were wounded during a morning rush hour shootout on Interstate 680 near Walnut Creek, officials said.

The California State University faculty has overwhelmingly approved a new four-year labor contract, ending more than two years of contentious bargaining with the administration, the union said Tuesday.

Mitt Romney delivered a good acceptance speech that will help him in the polls. But it won’t fundamentally change the contours of his campaign, which now depends on compensating for his deficits with women and Hispanics by maximizing the white working-class male vote.

Oakland police say protesters upset that the city's gay pride festival charged admission went on a weekend vandalism spree, smashing windows at a Bank of America and spray-painting a police vehicle.

Santa Barbara County sheriff's officials say a man was shot and killed, a woman critically injured and a suspect believed to be their son is in custody.

The Orange County, Calif., sheriff's department says the boyfriend of a Santa Barbara woman who was found stabbed to death in Laguna Hills has been arrested in Arizona.

Police in San Jose say two 17-year-old boys have been arrested on suspicion of the armed robbery of a medical marijuana dispensary.

Authorities say a 20-year-old college student has died from an explosion as he helped prepare a fireworks show before the minor league game of a San Diego Padres farm team.

The Dumbarton Bridge is open again after the California Department of Transportation finished some Labor Day weekend work early.

Thirty-five years after leaving Earth, Voyager 1 is reaching for the stars.

A Northern California couple has been arrested on suspicion of beating and stabbing a woman who tried to help them settle an argument.

A youth soccer coach in Ventura County has been arrested on suspicion of punching a 16-year-old player during a fight after a game.

Authorities say a 75-year-old man shot and killed his stepson during a fight over damage to a car.

Police say they have found swastikas and other hate graffiti on buildings in El Cajon's Kennedy Park,

Authorities may take over a private water company that's supplying contaminated water to Riverside County homes.

It wasn't as surreal as Burning Man itself, but the courtroom banter was a bit unorthodox.

Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Ben Feller of the Associated Press asked President Barack Obama a good question recently. If Obama wins re-election, Feller said, Republicans are still likely to have a majority in the House. “How is that any different from what we have now? Why wouldn’t a voter look at that and say that’s a recipe for stalemate? How would you do anything differently?”

An allegedly senior lieutenant in a Mexican drug cartel made his initial court appearance in San Diego, nearly four years after he was arrested by Mexican authorities in a shootout.

A former worker for California's employment agency has been sentenced to more than six years in prison for accepting more than $40,000 in bribes in return for wrongly issuing more than $500,000 in unemployment checks.

The federal government's long-awaited plan for managing the health of the largest forest of giant sequoias on earth limits logging and emphasizes fire as the primary means to restore the forest's health.

The San Diego Stock Exchange Index closed higher Tuesday at 118.11, up 1.16 percent from Friday. Declining issues beat advancers 54 to 28, and 58 issues were unchanged.