Santa Barbara Ca

When a local dry-cleaner and his wife finally move into their new four-story home, they'll have a convenient downtown location, a drop-dead view, and plenty of room to breathe -- as long as they don't puff out their cheeks too much. Their entire spread will be built on a lot of 20 feet by 20 feet -- an area about the size of a deluxe room at the Four Seasons Biltmore just down the highway.

At 9 a.m. Thursday, three men met on the ridge and studied the mountainside above their homes. The worst looked to be over. White smoke rose in listless little spirals from blackened earth.

Contradicting statements he made to detectives, Ryan Hoyt took the stand Thursday and repeatedly denied he machine-gunned a 15-year-old West Hills boy to death last year.

A wind-driven brush fire Tuesday in the Santa Barbara foothills charred at least 420 acres, forced the evacuation of about 1,000 homes and renewed grim memories of the devastating fires that swept through the area last fall.

Just because you don't build it, that doesn't mean they won't come anyway. That's precisely the problem in this postcard-beautiful town on the Central Coast, where a lack of affordable housing has not stopped poor people from creating makeshift homes.

The 500 people lunching under the white tent on the Montecito lawn had waited two years for this moment. Now they had her. Oprah Winfrey was making her "coming out gig" on behalf of a local charity.