Facing reductions in state funding, public universities from Michigan to Arizona to North Carolina have slashed budgets and hiked tuition. The most extreme case is California where University of California regents voted this week to increase tuition a whopping 32% to more than $10,000 annually — a three-fold increase in a decade. The move was greeted by student demonstrations. During two days of protests at UCLA, where the UC regents met to vote on the fee increase, about 2,000 students from the 10-campus system confronted riot ...

Whatever Leon Panetta lacked in formal intel experience he would make up for with his political smarts. That was one of the chief points made in his favor when the Obama Administration named the former California congressman and Clinton White House chief of staff as its first CIA Director. So many CIA veterans were particularly not happy over the summer when they felt that Panetta had failed to protect the Agency from the political backlash over its Bush-era detention ...

A search was on Thursday night for nine people left missing after a Coast Guard plane collided with a Marine helicopter over the Pacific Ocean near Southern California, officials said.

California police investigating the alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl have arrested five people, a police spokesman said Wednesday.Charles Ramsey, a member of the Richmond school board, said the school district bears some responsibility for the attack. School administrators and police apparently weren't watching the area as they should have, Ramsey said. The school said it would hold a safety meeting for parents and students Wednesday evening to address the alleged assault. The victim was found unconscious under a bench ...

The shutdown of a major artery linking the California cities of San Francisco and Oakland sent area officials scrambling overnight to develop plans to ease congestion for Wednesday morning's rush hour.

A piece of steel and cable fell from the San Francisco Bay Bridge onto the roadway Tuesday, causing an apparently minor two-car accident but backing up traffic for miles, the California Highway Patrol said.

A California high school student who police said was gang raped in a two-and-a-half-hour assault outside a homecoming dance remained hospitalized in stable condition Monday, three days after she was flown from the attack scene in critical condition."We have checked Facebook and YouTube to try to find any revealing evidence," Gagan said. "We're looking in particular to see if anyone posted any video of the incident." Five other individuals were detained at the scene but not arrested, Simon said. The ...

The United States has formally asked Switzerland to extradite film director Roman Polanski, Swiss authorities said Friday. The Academy Award-winning director was arrested in Switzerland last month on a U.S. arrest warrant stemming from a 1977 sex case involving a 13-year-old girl. He is fighting extradition. The U.S. Embassy in Berne submitted the formal extradition request to Switzerland's Federal Office of Justice on Thursday night, Swiss justice officials said. Swiss justice officials said they will now forward the extradition request ...

A Northwest Airlines flight from San Diego, California, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, overshot the Minneapolis airport by about 150 miles Wednesday evening, and federal investigators are looking into whether the pilots had become distracted, as they claimed, or perhaps fallen asleep. Air traffic controllers lost radio communication with the Airbus A320, carrying 147 passengers and an unknown number of crew, when it was flying at 37,000 feet, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. There was no communication with Flight 188 ...

A Northwest Airlines flight from San Diego, California, overshot the Minneapolis, Minnesota, airport by about 150 miles Wednesday evening, and federal investigators are looking into whether the pilots had become distracted, as they claimed, or perhaps fell asleep. Air traffic controllers lost radio communication with the Airbus A320, carrying 147 passengers and an unknown number of crew, when it was flying at 37,000 feet, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. There was no communication with the airplane for more ...