Fire

It's strange how "scandal" gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the "scandal" of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status. Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years. The bottom line first: The IRS hasn't done nearly enough over the years to rein in the subversion of the tax law by political groups claiming a tax exemption that is not legally permitted for campaign activity.

Retired Marine Brig. Gen. Gordon Gayle, who received the Navy Cross for leadership and bravery during the assault on Peleliu, one of the bloodiest and most complex and controversial battles fought by Marines during World War II, has died. He was 95. Gayle died April 21 at an assisted-living facility in Farnham, Va., after suffering a stroke, according to the U.S. Marine Corps. As an officer with the 1st Marine Division, Gayle led troops in five key battles in World War II, starting with Guadalcanal in 1942, where Marines, after weeks of fierce jungle fighting, stopped the advance of Japanese troops toward Australia.

Vietnam veteran John Otte did his best to forget the war. He got married, raised two sons and made a career working at credit unions. But as Otte neared retirement, memories of combat flooded back. Starting in 2005, he filed a series of claims with Veterans Affairs for disability compensation, contending that many of his health problems stemmed from the war. The VA agreed, and now the 65-year-old with two Purple Hearts receives $1,900 a month for post-traumatic stress disorder and diabetes - and for having shrapnel scars on his arms.

After fatally shooting his unwanted houseguest in the head, Robert Charles Redd stuffed the man's body into a recycling bin and wheeled it into a room of his Pico Rivera home. When the stench of death grew too overpowering a couple of days later, Redd wheeled the bin out into the backyard and tipped Joseph Rubalcaba's corpse into a shallow grave that he topped with plants. Last month, a Norwalk jury convicted Redd, 53, of second-degree murder. But in an unusual move, a judge recently reduced Redd's conviction to voluntary manslaughter, finding that Redd feared for his life when he fired the fatal shot.

In 1986, lawmakers decided the problem of illegal immigration had to be dealt with. More than 3 million people were living in the United States after crossing the border illegally or overstaying their visas. A new law signed by President Ronald Reagan gave legal status and a path to citizenship to most of those unauthorized residents - helping many secure a slice of the American dream but also giving fuel to critics who sought to turn "amnesty" into a pejorative. Less than 30 years later, the number of immigrants living in the country illegally is thought to have nearly quadrupled, and the freighted baggage of amnesty looms over new efforts to reform the nation's immigration laws.

WASHINGTON - President Obama forced out the head of the IRS on Wednesday, seeking to restore the public's faith in the tax agency while asserting a measure of control over a rapidly growing political problem. Making a hastily scheduled statement at the White House, Obama denounced the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service as "inexcusable" and pledged to "do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. " "Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it," he said.

Actress Jane Fonda bought a home in Beverly Hills last year with a feature that might seem counterintuitive for a fitness guru: an elevator. The Holmby Hills house that pop icon Michael Jackson leased has one within its 17,200 square feet of living space. So does the nearby 56,500-square-foot mansion heiress Petra Ecclestone bought from socialite Candy Spelling two years ago for $85 million. But home elevators aren't just for the super-rich anymore. Baby boomers looking to age in place are installing them to ease the burden of bad knees and growing girth.

As detectives pieced together the 2008 slaying of a young Santa Monica woman, they came to a chilling conclusion: She had been calling police for help when the killer snatched the phone from her hands and hung up. Prosecutors unveiled the eerie account of the 911 call and other details from the March 2008 killing that has attracted national attention during secret grand jury proceedings against Kelly Soo Park, the woman arrested in June this year...

WASHINGTON -- In an answer to a question during Tuesday night's presidential debate about assault weapons, Mitt Romney said, “we of course don't want to have automatic weapons, and that's already illegal in this country to have automatic weapons.” Fully automatic weapons -- guns that fire continuously when the trigger is held down -- are legal to possess in the United States but are tightly regulated. The National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the Hughes Amendment in 1986 have all placed limits on how automatic guns can be bought and sold, but did not make it illegal to possess them entirely.

A month into investigating a fire that broke out on Boeing Co.'s grounded 787 Dreamliner passenger jets, the National Transportation Safety Board said it found a short-circuit in one of the aircraft's lithium ion batteries and even traced it to a specific cell, but still doesn't have a cause. Speaking to reporters Thursday from Washington, NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman said the agency hasn't reached a conclusion on the cause of the fire that occurred in Boston on Jan. 7. But investigators have been “working around the clock to learn about what happened and why.” The lithium-ion battery system on the 787 is a cluster of eight individual cells packaged together in one box. Hersman said that all mechanical damage to the cells and the battery case occurred after the short-circuiting in Cell No. 6. FULL COVERAGE: Boeing's troubled Dreamliner The battery then experienced “thermal runaway,” a chain reaction in which heat spreads rapidly from cell to cell.

BEIJING - North Korea fired three short-range missiles off its east coast Saturday, following through on months of threats to conduct a missile launch. The South Korean Defense Ministry reported that it detected two launches in the morning and another in the afternoon. Its initial assessment was that the missiles were short-range surface-to-ship or surface-to-surface missiles capable of traveling up to 72 miles, rather than the new medium-range Musudan missile that analysts fear could threaten U.S. troops in Guam or Okinawa, Japan.

Marcel Melanson was a hero in Compton. The fire battalion chief led teams that raced to help victims of car crashes and street violence. Three years ago, he got national exposure as a star of a BET reality TV program that followed Compton firefighters on emergency calls. "We're constantly battling the perception of the city," he told the Los Angeles Times when the show premiered. "It's constantly thought of as this bad place. " On Friday, he was back in the public eye, but under very different circumstances.

A malfunctioning golf cart, a faulty electrical system or even arson could have led to the fire that triggered the deadly explosion of a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, but federal and state officials said Thursday that their $1-million investigation had yet to find the cause. Fourteen people died in the April 17 blast, including 12 first responders who arrived nine minutes after the fire was reported - and just eight minutes before the explosion shook the town, devastated two schools and shattered a nursing home.

When it comes to Southern California's increasingly perilous fire season, you can blame both the lack of rain and the little rain we did have. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at Chapman University said satellite data show the effects of a steady and largely forgettable rainfall during a roughly four-day period at the end of January. JPL scientist Son Nghiem said the rain came just as much of the vegetation throughout the region was awakening from a dormant stage.

Crews from the Los Angeles County Fire Department made quick work Sunday evening of a small brush fire near the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area, authorities said. Initial reports of structures being burned could not be confirmed by the fire department or police. Firefighters gained control of the three-acre blaze shortly after it began about 5 p.m. Authorities told City News Service that the fire apparently was started by a blown electrical transformer.  The blaze -- near La Cienega Boulevard and Stocker Street in Culver City -- was doused with the help of three water-dropping helicopters, authorities said.

POOLESVILLE, Md.  - On a curve of the Potomac River 37 miles northwest of Washington, the Dickerson power plant has stood sentry over small villages, crop fields and horse farms for more than half a century. Burning mostly coal and some natural gas, Dickerson emitted about 1.5 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2011, akin to the pollution of about 275,000 cars. How much longer Dickerson will run depends in no small measure on the steps President Obama takes to fulfill the pledge he made in his State of the Union address to tackle climate change.

The San Fernando Valley is 260 square miles of suburbia. Actually, make that suburbia on nutritional supplements. And antidepressants. With perhaps a little cosmetic surgery south of Ventura Boulevard, where the big money is. Or maybe - now that it's grown to more than 1.7 million people in nearly three dozen cities and neighborhoods rich and poor - the Valley isn't even a suburb anymore. It begins just 10 miles northwest of Los Angeles City Hall, sprawling west to the Simi Hills, north to the Santa Susana Mountains, and east to the Verdugo and San Gabriel mountains.

Alicia Keys is offering fans plenty of options with her latest single, “Girl on Fire,” by simultaneously releasing three versions of the song. Her "choose your favorite version" approach for the single -- the title track to her forthcoming album, due out Nov. 27 -- comes in the form of the original and a two-part suite: an “Inferno” remix featuring Nicki Minaj and a stripped-down “Blue Light” version. Keys' strength has largely been her ballads, especially the sweeping, dramatic numbers where she gives her powerful vocals the space to run amok over anthemic hooks.

HOUSTON - A paramedic who responded to the devastating fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, last month was arrested Friday after federal investigators said they discovered he had the makings of a pipe bomb. It was not clear whether the arrest was connected to the April 17 explosion, which killed 14 people and injured more than 160 others in the small McLennan County town about 70 miles south of Dallas. The explosion had been investigated as an industrial accident, but officials said Friday they had started a criminal investigation.

The San Mateo County coroner's office Tuesday released the names of five women killed on the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge when their limousine became engulfed in flames. They are: Neriza Fojas, 31, and Michelle Estrera, 35, of Fresno; Jennifer Balon, 39, of Dublin, Calif.; Anna Alcantara, 46, of San Lorenzo, Calif.; and Felomina Geronga, 43, of Alameda. Four others survived. Other than Geronga, the close-knit Filipina friends were all nurses who had met while working at Oakland's Fruitvale Healthcare Center, bonding like "sisters," one survivor told a local television station.