A homeless man died just steps away from a Mojave Desert jail early Wednesday, after being released by sheriff's deputies who reportedly decided "he was able to care for himself."

A woman allegedly went on a naked, bloody rampage and destroyed her home after her boyfriend refused to have sex with her.

A winter storm dumped 13.5 billion gallons of water in Lake Tahoe over the weekend, along with 36 inches of snow at one Sierra Nevada ski resort and more than 10 inches of rain in some parts of the Bay Area. But is the drought over? No.

It seems like every other day some dumb Starbucks or other is opening up on every block, but slightly rarer is an actual Dumb Starbucks. That's the name behind a new coffee shop in the Los Feliz neighborhood of L.A. that opened this weekend.

Clint Eastwood saved the life of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament's CEO on Wednesday night, the Carmel Pine Cone reports today. "Clint came up behind me, and he knew exactly what to do," said CEO Steve John. "He did the Heimlich maneuver, and he lifted me right off the ground. He's strong! The cheese popped out, and I was fine."

When people talk about "childish delight," this is what they're referring to.

Women's rights activist and Rush Limbaugh straw-woman Sandra Fluke announced today that she will not be running for Rep. Henry Waxman's open congressional seat—because she's decided to run for the California State Senate.

Sandra Fluke, 32, whom you would never have heard of if the right wing hadn't blasted her as a slut for wanting some birth control, is seeking the California Democratic Party's blessing to run for the congressional seat of retiring Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills).

There's more bad news for California: Water deliveries from state and federal reservoirs to the Central Valley—where much of the nation's food is grown—have been cut to zero. The reservoirs are going dry and there's no water to deliver.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), an outspoken liberal voice in the House whose district included Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and parts of Malibu, announced he will retire from Congress after this year. Waxman, 74, called the job "frustrating" of late: "Nothing seems to be happening."

A new weekly magazine called California Sunday was announced this morning, and reaction was immediate and joyous. The very creative business idea is to put the print mag inside the state's biggest Sunday papers, while having all the websites and apps that are exciting to new-media people but can't charge Sunday paper ad rates.

Officials say 17 towns in California could run out of water in the next 2-4 months, thanks to endless drought. Does it seem like the weather's been kind of... I don't know... extreme lately? Maybe it's just our imaginations.

In a definitive work of media criticism, the California Supreme Court unanimously today ruled that Stephen Glass, notorious for fabricating stories for the New Republic and other magazines as a young writer in the '90s, is unfit for admission to the state bar. The court's 33-page decision is a comprehensive and pitiless accounting of not only Glass's initial misdeeds, but of the dozen years of obfuscation and evasion that followed, as he tried to work his way from journalistic disgrace to lawyerly respectability.

First the tragic wine spill in Canada and now this: On Saturday, a truck carrying 76,000 pounds of beef ribs caught fire on a highway in southern California, snarling traffic in the area for more than two hours.

When the statute of limitations for sexual abuse came up before one California woman could work up the courage to report her abuser, she took the matter into her own hands. A California woman identifying herself as Jamie, claiming that a teacher had molested her, said she recently found the teacher's phone number and confronted her. Jamie taped the whole conversation.

America sent its manufacturing to China, but the pollution is "coming back to haunt us," according to a new study. The jobs and economic growth remain on the other side of the Pacific. This seems like a pretty bad deal, overall.

A man fishing on the beach alone at Point Reyes National Seashore was swept out to sea and killed on Monday. Witnesses said the fisherman was trying to retrieve his ice chest, which was pulled off the beach by the surf.

That California drought emergency we told you about yesterday is official now. Governor Jerry Brown officially declared it this morning in San Francisco. "We ought to be ready for a long, continued, persistent effort to restrain our water use," says Brown. If it's yellow, let it mellow, etc.

Here's some terrible news to mark the beginning of permanent fire season in California: It's going to stay like this, hot and dry, until May. The Climate Prediction Center says winter will come and go without the usual winter storms that provide the snowpack that provides all the water people use. Fire conditions will be awful until summer, when they will continue being awful until next winter, if winter ever shows up again.

[A wildfire burns in the hills just north of the San Gabriel Valley community of Glendora, Calif., on Thursday. Southern California authorities have ordered the evacuation of homes at the edge of a fast-moving wildfire burning in the dangerously dry foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Image via Nick Ut/AP.]