A California hospital on Wednesday disclosed the birth of the world's smallest baby ever to survive, weighing a mere 245g - the same as a large apple - when she was born.
The world’s largest airplane made its first test flight on Saturday in California. Stratolaunch Systems Corporation, founded by Paul G. Allen, on Sunday successfully completed the first flight of the world’s largest all-composite aircraft, the Stratolaunch.
The number of United States citizens filing applications for unemployment benefits fell to more than a 49-year low last week, but the drop likely overstates the health of the labour market as claims for several states including California were estimated.
The number of people who remain missing in the wake of a pair of ferocious wildfires that have been blazing across both ends of California for more than a week spiked to more than 1,200 late Saturday.
Crews battling a deadly wildfire in northern California have managed to hold their containment lines, the state fire service says. They have contained 30% of the fire, stretching over 125,000 acres (50,500 ha), but do not expect to contain it fully until the end of the month.
Northern and southern counties of California are suffering from two huge wildfires that show no signs of dying down. With hot dry winds expected last until at least Tuesday, in the south there are fears for the wealthy beach town of Malibu, where a mandatory evacuation order has been issued for a quarter of a million people.
During the first round of Brazil's presidential election on 7 October, Facebook staff noticed something suspicious on the social network. A story posted to Facebook incorrectly claimed the election was delayed because of protests. The company's data scientists and operations team scrambled to pull down the misinformation before it went viral.
United States shale oil output is set to surge over the next five years as drillers recover rapidly from a three-year slump, the International Energy Agency said, sharply upgrading its previous growth forecasts. A landmark deal in 2017 between OPEC and other oil producers including Russia to curb output in order to battle a global glut materially improved the outlook for other producers as oil prices rose sharply throughout the year, the IEA said.
California's Department of Water Resources released a new NASA report showing land in the San Joaquin Valley is sinking faster than ever before, nearly 5 centimeters per month in some locations, as Californians continue pumping groundwater in response to a historic drought.
The great hype surrounding the advent of a shale gas bonanza in California may turn out to be just that: hype. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) – the statistical arm of the Department of Energy – has downgraded its estimate of the total amount of recoverable oil in the Monterey Shale by a whopping 96%. Its previous estimate pegged the recoverable resource in California’s shale formation at 13.7 billion barrels but it now only thinks that there are 600 million barrels available.