Some dude outside my supermarket just asked me to sign a petition to legalize marijuana. Apparently he was so high that he forgot he's in California, where pot is already more legal than budget-balancing. Last year I was granted a medical-marijuana license, even though I'm healthy and I don't smoke weed. I went to a doctor's office that consisted of a desk, a TV, two cans of air freshener and a man wearing a Hawaiian T-shirt. I told Dr. ...

A mushroom cloud of thick dark smoke hovered over the Puerto Rican capital after a blast ripped through a fuel storage complex near San Juan early Friday and caused a massive fire. At least one injury occurred and at least 350 people have been evacuated as around 100 firefighters worked through the night to fight the blaze, Gov. Luis Fortuno said. Firefighters said it would take a few days to control the inferno. Eleven tanks are ablaze, and firefighters are ...

Six people were sentenced to death for murder and other crimes in riots that killed about 200 people in western China, state media reported Monday. The southern California artist rode the waves in Indonesia, India and Morocco, and on dry land, his curiosity piqued about the religion practiced there. He visited mosques and eventually, acquired a translated copy of the Quran, Islam's holy book. Then came the chilling attacks of September 11, 2001, and Birk realized that Americans knew very ...