CALIFORNIA

An Obama administration program to help struggling homeowners modify their mortgages has more than one million active borrowers,

Toyota Motor Corp was hit by a planned lawsuit by California prosecutors on Friday over vehicle defects and by renewed political pressure to cooperate with investigators on cases of runaway cars.

As U.S. prospects for a national climate change bill fade, five U.S. states and Canadian provinces are on track to start a cap-and-trade market for carbon dioxide in 2012, say officials who see fading federal momentum boosting regional efforts.

Two studies published on Wednesday show it is possible to sequence the entire gene maps of families with inherited diseases and pinpoint the offending bit of DNA.

They build the skyscrapers and lay the highways, mind the city children, sew the clothes and tend the shops, but China's army of migrant laborers are still fundamentally aliens in the country's bustling urban centers.

U.S. mortgage foreclosure filings dropped for a second straight month in February, and notched the smallest annual increase in four years as housing-rescue efforts contained activity, a report released on Thursday showed.

An experimental approach that looks for the DNA leaking out from dead and dying cells may provide a route to a blood test for breast cancer.

U.S. safety regulators and Toyota dispatched teams on Tuesday to inspect a Prius that sped out of control on a California freeway a day earlier, as the automaker struggled to reassure consumers shaken by its recall crisis.

The $120 billion that New York state owes in debt, health and pension benefits for public workers puts it in the danger zone, and getting down to the safety zone requires a $20 billion cut, a study said Tuesday.

U.S. consumer, financial and technology companies slashed bonuses for their chief executives by more than half in 2009, a leading firm that tracks pay data said on Tuesday, as companies moved to more closely tie executive pay to performance.

U.S. researchers estimate that an 18 percent tax on pizza and soda can push down U.S. adults' calorie intake enough to lower their average weight by 5 pounds (2 kg) per year.

California's aggressive climate change policy is likely to lead to modest job losses in the near term due to higher energy costs and other factors, the state's independent budget watchdog said.

The Obama administration has more work to do to help struggling U.S. homeowners, despite signs of a stabilizing housing market, a senior Treasury official said on Monday.

A driver who was traveling on a highway outside the San Diego, California area said his Toyota Prius accelerator pedal stuck when he tried to pass a slower vehicle and speeded up to 94 mph, CNN reports.

The central California coast is known for its rugged beauty, but it is also home to a very rare animal.

A Web application that alerts wine grape farmers when their vines are thirsty has won first place in a competition to spur entrepreneurs in the investment-starved water sector, organizers said on Monday.

The famous Route 66 is a historic highway that ran from Chicago, Illinois and ended at the coastal city of Los Angeles, California.

Stocks were flat in early trading on Monday after a rally last week that saw the Nasdaq close at an 18-month high after encouraging jobs data.

Jobs data indicating that U.S. economic recovery might be picking up steam finally pushed crude oil futures decisively over the stubborn $80 a barrel threshold. Nymex's benchmark West Texas Intermediate settled Friday at $81.50 a barrel, a seven-week high, after topping $82 in intraday trading. An unchanged unemployment rate of 9.7% and a smaller-than-expected drop in payrolls propelled both stocks and commodities higher on Friday. Earlier in the week, industry job data also came out better than...

Hewlett-Packard Co said it has lowered its first-quarter results by 3 cents a share as a result of years-old litigation involving EDS, which the company bought in 2008.

Travel firm TripAdvisor has come up with a list of the top 10 famous movie hotels, according to its editors. This list is not endorsed by Reuters.