A federal judge has ruled that California’s water systems threaten to push native salmon into extinction, but stopped short of ordering any immediate water cutbacks farmers said could cost millions in lost crops.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency strengthened regulations Thursday on five common pesticides and for the first time required farmers to set up sizable buffer zones around fields treated with the chemicals.

More than 4,800 dairy cows at risk of carrying tuberculosis are being slaughtered this week in central California, where nearly 16,000 cattle in the country’s largest milk-producing region have been quarantined, federal officials said.

California’s raging wildfires have created a smoky haze so stifling that some doctors in the state’s landlocked farm country say their waiting rooms have been crowding with patients struggling to breathe amid the soot-laden air.

California’s raging wildfires have created a smoky haze so stifling that doctors in the state’s landlocked farm country say their waiting rooms have been crowding with patients struggling to breathe amid the soot-laden air.

Rescue crews searched the central Sierra Nevada on Wednesday for nine teenagers and two adult hikers missing in a rugged area of the mountains.

Rescue crews are searching the central Sierra Nevada in California for nine teenagers and two adult hikers who are missing in a rugged area of the mountains.

John McCain distanced himself Monday from a top adviser who said another terrorist attack on the United States in this election year would benefit the Republican presidential candidate.

John McCain is hoping to solve the country’s energy crisis with cold hard cash. The presumed Republican nominee on Monday proposed a $300 million government prize to whoever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology. The bounty would equate to $1 for every man, woman and child in the country, “a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency,” McCain said at Fresno State University.