California, Apr 23 : A loud boom sounded over much of Northern California early Sunday, as an apparent result of a meteor shower.

National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist in Sacramento, California, Stefanie Henry said the meteor was streaking across the sky when it broke up above the Earth, sending the sound reverberating across the area.

According to NWS reports, the meteor was seen in California from Sacramento to Orange County, hundreds of miles to the south, Henry told Los Angeles Times.

California, Mar 27 : Researchers have reportedly developed a new model that uses data from micro blogging site Twitter to help predict the traded volume and value of a stock the following day.

Vagelis Hristidis, an associate professor at the University of California, with one of his graduate students and three researchers at Yahoo, studied how activity in Twitter is correlated to stock prices and traded volume.

They obtained the daily closing price and the number of trades from Yahoo Finance for 150 randomly selected companies in the S&P 500 Index for the first half of 2010.

California (US), Dec 20 : California Tea Party activist Jules Manson has unleashed a racist Facebook screed against President Obama and the First Family.

According to the New York Post, the rabid Tea Party wannabe politician called for the assassination of President Obama and his "monkey children" in a recent Facebook rant - and then defended his right to do so on Monday.

Manson said Obama''s support of a revised military authorization bill last week was an act of "treason" that "eroded" constitutional protections.

Washington, Dec 4 - Tens of thousands of US houses were witnessing blackout Saturday morning even as most of them affected by the strong winds that blew out southern California Wednesday night had regained power supply.

According to the Department of Water and Power, 24,000 of its 1.4 million customers were still without power as of 6 a. m. Saturday, Xinhua reported.

The department said that their crews were working round the clock to restore power and over 189,000 customers regained power supply.

San Bruno , Dec 2 : YouTube, the world's most popular video-sharing website, has unveiled the biggest change in its history.

According to the Daily Express, the website's new design will direct visitors to `channels' of content instead of individual clips.

"We are trying hard to marry the best of TV with the best of online - so you get regular programming and come back often," product development chief Shishir Mehrotra said.

"The new homepage ensures you can take channels you care about and interact with them in ways you couldn't do on TV," he added.

Berkeley (California), Oct 19 : Pakistan and the United States must iron out their differences to bring their terms back to normal, Pakistan’s Ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, has said.

Speaking at the University of California, Haqqani said that mending bilateral ties was vital to both ‘war on terror’ allies.

“These time-tested ties should not succumb to any fleeting estrangements,” Geo News quoted Haqqani, as saying.

Stressing the need for better understanding, the Pakistan envoy pointed out that conflicting statements coming out of both countries are the biggest challenge at hand.

Palo Alto, July 28 : Facebook has responded to the privacy outcry over its new facial recognition system, by running advertisements that show users how to turn it off.

Facebook had quietly opted users into the “Tag Suggestions” feature earlier this year.

The feature uses facial recognition technology to identify people in photographs posted on Facebook, and then suggests to their friends that they should “tag” them so they are easier to find.

Southern California (US), July 13 : At first glance it looks like any other three dimensional map, but zoom in a little closer, and you will see cars moving and people walking around - all in real-time.

This is the world of ‘geo-immersion’ that blends the real and virtual worlds together to give the user the most interactive maps in the world.

Now, you can get real-time updates of your friends'' locations, and real-time movements of public transportation, thanks to software developed by University of Southern California researchers.

California, June 28: The United States Supreme Court has struck down a Californian law banning the sale or renting of violent video games to minors.

The Court voted 7-2 to uphold an appeal court ruling that declared the law contrary to free speech rights enshrined in the US Constitution.

California, June 3: US kidnap victim Jaycee Lee Dugard has said that her life was stolen when she was abducted by Phillip and Nancy Garrido at the age of 11 in June 1991, and she hated every second of her
18 years in captivity.

Now 31, she made her first public statement, read in El Dorado County Superior Court by her mother, as Phillip and Nancy were sentenced for kidnapping and rape.

Philip was sentenced to 431 years, while his wife received 36 years to life.

Dugard was kept with her two daughters, now aged 13 and 16, in the backyard of the Garrido home in California in a compound of tents and sheds.

Culver City (California, US), Apr. 23 : U. S. President Barack Obama has blamed the soaring prices of gasoline for the dip in his approval ratings.

Speaking at a fundraiser dinner in Culver City, California, Obama said: "My poll numbers go up and down depending on the latest crisis, and right now gas prices are weighing heavily on people."

Fuel currently costs four dollars a gallon nationwide, the New York Daily News reports.

A recent Gallup poll shows just one in four (41 percent) of Americans approve of Obama''s performance, which ties his all time low from the fall of 2010.

Sacramento, April 14 - The Sikh American community celebrated the first ever American Sikh Day in California on the steps of the California State Capitol with dozens of California elected officials.

The event Wednesday highlighted the history and contributions of Sikh Americans in California and the challenges the community faces, according to the Sikh American Legal Defence and Education Fund (SALDEF), a community civil rights group.

At the event, organized by Sacramento Sikh Temple and Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg Steinberg, officials and interfaith and advocacy groups expressed their solidarity with the Sikh American community following recent attacks against them in California.

Los Angeles, March 21 - A small aircraft crashed Sunday in the US state of California, but there was no report of casualties, authorities said.

The plane was believed to be a Cessna 210, which crashed at about 12.40 p. m. local time (1940 GMT) near Barstow city, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

The airplane, which can carry up to six people, was fully engulfed in flames. (IANS)

California (US), Mar. 2 : A lawyer representing Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, has said that his client plans to present new evidence at a parole board hearing suggesting that he did not act alone, was potentially brain washed and cannot remember anything about the 43-year-old shooting.

"There is no question he was hypno-programmed. He was set up. He was used. He was manipulated," lawyer William F. Pepper told ABCNews. com.

Sirhan will appear before a California parole board on Wednesday for the 14th time since his May 1969 sentencing. It is the first time he will be represented by Pepper.

Reno (California, US), Feb. 1 : A key aide of former Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin has confirmed that the latter did use two controversial phrases – “Don’t retreat, reload” and “Don’t retreat, stand tall” – during a recent speech here.