western news

Teachers and textbook techies, take note. The state is reviewing digital versions of textbooks that could be used in high-school math and science classes next year.
It's the first step in a transition from the 5-pound texts loaded into school kids' backpacks to computer-based books and learning materials, and California is the first state to try it.

On hot California summer days, it makes all the sense in the world: Harness the power of the sun to cool your home, run your refrigerator and charge your gizmos.
After three years in his Placerville home, Brian Veerkamp decided to join the energy revolution. He had a 6 kilowatt solar array mounted on his roof.

On a foggy day in Sausalito, Calif., young patients in a new hospital were quietly resting, building up strength to return home.
Any moment, a fish lunch was due. The youngsters, who all had been separated from their mothers at an early age, seemed excited over the prospect of food.

Nearly a million Californians, perhaps hundreds of thousands more, cross the border to Mexico every year because they cannot afford the rising cost of health care in the United States, according to researchers.

The next same-sex marriage battle in California will be fought over a referendum aimed at the November 2010 ballot that is likely to include door-to-door campaigning in Bible-belt areas of the state that backed Proposition 8.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget proposals to shorten the school year and increase class sizes will force California teacher unions to make the same tough decisions that other employee groups have faced recently:
Cut salaries to maintain workers' jobs, or maintain salaries and lose workers.

On a dazzlingly clear day last week under the high-noon sun, Bob Franklin and Dennis Vied taxied their Cessna Turbo 206 down the runway at Livermore Municipal Airport, east of Oakland, Calif., and took to the sky in search of a public-health menace.

On the first night he slept indoors in more than 15 years, Jeff Latchaw tossed and turned and fretted.
It was much too quiet. The mattress was too soft. Latchaw got in and out of bed, over and over.

California voters soundly rejected a package of ballot measures that would have reduced the state's projected budget deficit of $21.3 billion to something slightly less overwhelming: $15.4 billion.

In the wildly diverse worlds of bodybuilding, movies and politics, Arnold Schwarzenegger has consistently marshaled one critical skill -- an uncanny knack for salesmanship -- to catapult him to the top of his class.