Lake

The cracks of a frozen lake in Switzerland produce noises that sound like singing.

Federal prosecutors say FBI agents arrested 65-year-old Maria Bassi Lauro at her Davenport home Wednesday on charges of mailing threatening communications and transmitting false information and hoaxes.

Pete Buttigieg stunned the Democratic presidential field with a nearly $25 million second-quarter fundraising haul. Now he needs to figure out how to use that money to build a campaign that can go the distance against nearly two dozen rivals — many of them better known — and ensure that enthusiasm from donors is matched by support from voters. That...

Sparks from a hammer driving a metal stake into the ground ignited a 2018 blaze in Northern California that killed a firefighter and became the largest wildland fire in state history, officials said Thursday. The blaze started July 17, 2018, in Mendocino County and quickly spread, aided by dry vegetation, strong winds and hot temperatures. It spread to Colusa, Glenn...

Light rain falling Wednesday in some areas of Northern California could aid crews fighting a deadly wildfire while raising the risk of flash floods and complicating efforts to recover the remains of those killed. Heavier rain was expected later in the day in the Paradise burn area, where a monstrous wildfire has killed at least 81 people and destroyed more...

Charges have been filed against the captain of a tourist boat that sank and killed 17 people, including nine people from an Indiana family, in a southwest Missouri lake over the summer, federal prosecutors said Thursday. A federal indictment shows 51-year-old Kenneth Scott McKee is facing 17 counts of misconduct, negligence or inattention to duty by a ship’s officer resulting...

A massive wildfire in Northern California has torched more than 1,000 homes in and around the city of Redding, authorities said Wednesday as some evacuees were allowed to return home and new blazes exploded in what has become an endless summer of flame in the Golden State.

Firefighters reported progress Tuesday in their battle against the wildfires that have ravaged some of Northern California’s most scenic areas, including twin blazes that were tearing through vineyards and brush-covered hills and threatening some 10,000 homes.

The owners and operators of a tourist boat that sank this month in Missouri, killing 17 people, put profits over people’s safety when they decided to put the Ride the Ducks boat on a lake despite design problems and warnings of severe weather, a lawsuit alleges. The lawsuit filed Sunday in U.S. District Court in Kansas City seeks $100 million...

The country-and-western tourist town of Branson, Missouri, mourned Friday for more than a dozen sightseers who were killed when a duck boat capsized and sank in stormy weather in the deadliest such accident in almost two decades.

An eighth-grade boy who was fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy in northern Wisconsin called 911 to report a man with a knife, but then gave emergency dispatchers a description of himself, investigators said Saturday. An Ashland County sheriff’s deputy shot 14-year-old Jason Pero outside the boy’s home on Wednesday after the teenager approached the deputy with a large butcher...

A Wisconsin eighth-grader fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy on a Native American reservation came home from school with the flu the morning of the shooting but it’s unclear why he left the home, his grandparents said Friday....
An Ashland County sheriff’s deputy shot 14-year-old Jason Pero just before noon on Wednesday outside his home on the Bad River Band of...

Family members of a 14-year-old boy fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy on a northern Wisconsin reservation questioned on Thursday why the teen, who they describe as loving and kind, was gunned down. Holly Gauthier said authorities have provided few details about the death of her son, 14-year-old Jason Pero, an 8th grader who died on the Bad River Band...

Ohio’s opioid crisis is stretching the state’s foster care system as more and more children are removed from the homes of their drug-addicted parents, leading to ballot requests Tuesday for more funding. Not only do more children require foster care, they increasingly have mental health problems because of trauma they’ve experienced living in chaotic, drug-filled households, children service leaders say....

Wine country wildfires already well on their way to becoming the deadliest and most destructive in California history could gain momentum Thursday and erase even the modest gains firefighters have made.

Firefighters in Northern California struggled to contain over a dozen fast-moving wildfires scorching the state’s world-famous wine country as officials warned that strong winds Wednesday could further threaten the fight against the blazes.

The deadly wildfires in Northern California continued their assault on the state’s wine country early Tuesday, destroying hundreds of structures and sending tens of thousands of people fleeing their homes as chaos amid the fast-spreading blazes prompted at least 200 missing persons reports. Cal Fire officials said the string of 17 fires ignited since Sunday have burned more than 115,000...

A generator on a marijuana farm is to blame for a fire last year that destroyed a dozen homes south of San Francisco, investigators said Thursday.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on Tuesday said local governments that passed bear ordinances requiring trash to be secure from bears would be eligible for the funds.