Winter

“Downton Abbey" is going to look quite different when it returns for a fourth season. On Friday Siobhan Finneran -- better known to fans as O'Brien, Lady Grantham's constantly scheming, severely coiffed maid -- confirmed that she is leaving the beloved costume drama. Finneran follows co-stars Dan Stevens and Jessica Brown Findlay out the door, though it seems likely her character will do so under less tragic circumstances than theirs: In the Season 3 finale, O'Brien was jockeying hard for a new job that would allow her to see more of the world.

The Southern California wildfire season got off to an ominous start Thursday with a massive brush fire in Ventura County that officials fear is just a preview of dangerous months ahead. The fire showed in dramatic fashion how the region's record dry conditions and lack of rainfall can quickly combine with fierce Santa Ana winds to produce widespread havoc. Firefighters said the dry winter and spring left the brush much more combustible than they've ever seen it at this time of year.

He had just made the final out in a city where his name is booed, his jersey is reviled, and his team had been swept. His power had disappeared, his swing was spotty, and his season was a wreck. Matt Kemp would have been excused for quickly disappearing through the dugout at San Francisco's AT&T Park on Sunday night and forgetting all about an earlier promise to third base coach Tim Wallach. “But that was the neat deal about it,” Wallach said. “He was standing there waiting for me.” PHOTOS: Greatest moments in Dodger Stadium history Kemp was waiting to cross the diamond to sign an autograph for a terminally ill Dodgers fan, waiting to summon the passion necessary to pass along the hope that he now found so precious.

On the fourth floor of a vacant wing of St. Vincent Medical Center near downtown Los Angeles, some 150 crew members crowded the hallways, joining actors Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson as they prepared to film a scene for "Captain America: The Winter Soldier. " The hospital wing is often used for filming television crime dramas such as "CSI" and "Private Practice," but Tuesday's shoot was among the largest St. Vincent has accommodated in 20 years of renting out its facilities to Hollywood.

Veteran "KTLA 5 Morning News" anchor Michaela Pereira will be leaving the station at the end of May to join CNN's new morning show in New York. Pereira will be the news anchor for the show, which will be hosted by Chris Cuomo and Kate Bolduan. The announcement was made jointly by KTLA and President of CNN Worldwide Jeff Zucker, who is aggressively shaking up the struggling network's lineup and personalities. "I've been looking forward to this announcement since I first joined CNN," Zucker said in a statement.

If you don't believe in horoscopes, you're in step with science. But that's not the same as saying the season of your birth cannot affect your fate. Hundreds of studies, published in peer-reviewed journals, have suggested that the month a person is born in is associated with characteristics such as temperament, longevity and susceptibility to certain diseases. Scientists say that even though some of these findings are probably spurious - if you dig around in data, you will eventually find correlations just by chance - other effects are very likely real, triggered not by the alignment of the planets but by exposures during prenatal and early postnatal lives.

If you were born in California, you may appreciate my fondness for winter--just about the only thing we don't get enough of in our golden state. For me, our endless summer becomes more like a siege by this time of year. When the weatherman says that it's going to be another great weekend, I groan, wishing for the contrast of rain or cold before spring and sunshine are upon us. But the weather does its best not to cooperate with my wishes.

If, as has been said, Montana is a small town with really long streets, that's never more true than in the remote but stunning area known as the Hi-Line. Originally created by the tracks of the Great Northern Railway, this region close to the Canadian border features venerable hamlets such as Cut Bank, Shelby and Rudyard ("596 Nice People, One Sorehead") strung out along U.S. 2 like links in a long and stubborn chain. "When you drive Highway 2," says Chaske Spencer, shaking his head, "you really go back in time.

Recent storms dropped 2 inches of rain on Yosemite National Park , bringing snow to elevations above 8,000 feet and reviving one of the park's best-loved features: its waterfalls. Yosemite and Bridal Veil falls , which thunder in spring when swelled with runoff from winter snow pack, dried up in mid-October. It has been one of the driest years on record for Yosemite and the driest winter since 2007, according to a news release. "After such a dry period, seeing the waterfalls flowing again is spectacular," Park Superintendent Don Neubacher said in a statement.

In the gray light of each cold dawn, the parents of 10-month-old Shoaib hold their own breath as they listen for the rasp of his, waiting to see whether their coughing, feverish little boy has survived another night. Winter's chill has settled over the Afghan capital, and with it, privation is sharpening, especially among the city's poor. Nighttime temperatures regularly fall into the teens, or even lower. The season's first snow is on the ground, the open sewage ditches are crusted over with ice, and in shantytowns such as the one where Shoaib's family lives, survival turns on a series of cruelly simple calculations.

A brush fire forced the evacuation of about 200 homes in Monrovia on Saturday as firefighters worked to keep flames from spreading into the San Gabriel Mountains. The wildfire had charred 170 acres of brush and grass on the edge of residential areas in northwest Monrovia, sending up clouds of smoke visible across a wide area of the Southland. By Saturday night its growth had slowed, although fire officials were on the watch for downwinds that can develop in the area. The blaze was 10% contained.

The Bruins and the Red Sox, Boston-based professional sports teams with home games that had been scheduled for Friday, postponed competition as authorities searched for and apprehended a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. Regional rail and bus systems were closed part of the day after Gov. Deval Patrick urged residents of Boston and nearby areas to avoid going out in public. Many fans use mass transit to attend hockey games at TD Garden and watch the Red Sox at Fenway Park.

Sochi officials have announced that they hope to make their city safer and more appealing by killing more than 2,000 stray cats and dogs before the 2014 Winter Olympics, according to the RBC Daily newspaper. "It's obvious that there should be no animals on the streets," Sergei Krivonosov, a government official, told the paper. "We have responsibilities to the international community. Killing [strays] is just a faster way to solve this task. " Russian press has reported public protests in response to the announcement.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is beefing up its staffing in anticipation of a fire season officials worry could be affected by an "extremely" dry winter, the agency announced. CalFire has hired and trained seasonal firefighters that will help staff seasonal stations and some helicopters "around the clock," according to a department statement. The agency announced Monday it had begun "transitioning into fire season" in San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Re "Comic had ark of characters," Obituary, April 13 I first met Jonathan Winters in 1967 in Vietnam. Not many Hollywood people did USO visits to our remote location. We never hosted the Bob Hope-type entertainers. Winters was brilliant. Before the "show," some of us engaged him in what we would call just a conversation. Everything that was said turned into a joke or something original and funny. In some ways it was hard to determine just who Winters really was; the continuous on-stage personality or someone masquerading as a regular person.

There are many reasons to love living in California, but ranking high among them are the avocados. Sure, you can find avocados everywhere these days. But only here can you find any variety. For the most part, when you're talking about commercial avocados, you're talking about Hass. And truth be told, it really is about as good as anything out there. But sometimes you want to try something a little different. In Southern California farmers markets right now, you can also find Fuertes, Bacons and Pinkertons.

The family drama " Dolphin Tale ," which opened last week, features Winter, a bottlenose dolphin that (ATTENTION: spoiler alert!) receives a prosthetic tail after being seriously injured when caught in fishing lines at the age of 3 months. It's a heartwarming, against-all-odds story that might inspire families to want to see the real Winter. The Sheraton Sand Key Resort in Clearwater, Fla., has fashioned a package that comes with two tickets to the aquarium where Winter lives, plus a $50 resort credit with prices starting at $199 a night.

The National Weather Service warned that the recent string of warm winters may be at an end. "Americans must be careful this winter and prepare for a little bit of everything," weather service director Jack Kelly said. "We've probably forgotten over the last three years what a normal winter is like," said D. James Baker, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Comic great Jonathan Winters was struggling to make a name for himself in the early 1950s when a man at the nightclub where he was performing offered some life-changing advice. Winters had a talent for channeling the voices of celebrities like Gary Cooper and Boris Karloff but, the man observed, "All you're doing is shining their shoes. You'd best think up your own characters. " That, Winters told TV Guide many years later, was "the best hunk of criticism I ever got. " With his rubbery, moon-shaped face and pitch-perfect ear for speech patterns, Winters began to unleash a cavalcade of charmingly twisted characters, including a redneck ballplayer, a lisping child and a prissy schoolmarm.

The large child known as Jonathan Winters died Friday at age 87. Accompanying him into the now-noisier hereafter were the multitudes he contained, a cast of men, women, children of every race and nationality, rich and poor, city and country. Some were characters with names to whom the comedian would return - Maude Frickert, the go-go granny - but more of them existed for a minute or less, brought into focus, played with and then sent on their way, as another appeared in their place.