Gov. Schwarzenegger Friday ordered an additional 200 California National Guard soldiers to the fire lines. They'll supplement more than 19,000 firefighters battling 350 fires.

A flight instructor and student were killed in a helicopter crash near Interstate Highway 680 on the Sunol grade Friday morning.

Cooler weather is in store for much of Northern California on Friday but poor air quality persists.

Many residents in Tracy say they discovered parts of their city were sprayed for West Nile Virus days after it happened.

Joining a growing list of cities concerned with statewide drought predictions, Folsom city leaders asked residents Thursday to cut back on how much water they use.

The case of an accused cop killer is stalled so an outside state appointed judge can review claims of bias against the Yolo bench.

AP - Former Sen. Jesse Helms, who built a career along the fault lines of racial politics and battled liberals, Communists and the occasional fellow Republican during 30 conservative years in Congress, died on the Fourth of July. He was 86.

AP - Some quotes of Jesse Helms, who died on the Fourth of July at age 86:

AP - At least one gunman fired into a crowd of more than 100 people partying in the street early Friday, killing four of them, police said.

AP - Joey Chestnut reclaimed the top spot at the annual hot dog eating contest in Coney Island on Friday after first tying with archrival Takeru Kobayashi in a 10-minute chow-down and then beating him in a five-dog eat-off.

AP - Independence Day is normally a booming time for tourism here, with visitors settling into cliffside vacation homes or trekking out to campgrounds nestled among the redwoods. But this year, the only out-of-towners in Big Sur are firefighters working around the clock to save the storied community from flames.

AP - More than a dozen people, some wearing orange protective gear, pulled rakes and shovels from a dingy shopping cart and started working on a parched patch of land along a busy off-ramp of the Hollywood Freeway.

AP - The Fourth of July weekend has always been one of the most exciting times of the year for Coney Island: Crowds line the boardwalk to watch the hot-dog eating contest, visitors take terrifying roller coaster rides, and beachgoers frolic in the sand and surf.

AP - Back on U.S. soil, three American hostages rescued from Colombia rebels are now in the process of reintegrating into a society they've been absent from for more than five years.

AP - A combative cat named Lewis who frightened the neighbors and got his owner into legal trouble two years ago has done so well under house arrest that the case has now been scratched.

AP - Larry Harmon wasn't the original Bozo the Clown, but he was the real one. Harmon, who portrayed the wing-haired clown for more than half a century, died Thursday of congestive heart failure, said his publicist, Jerry Digney. He was 83.

AP - Wish "Yankee Doodle" a happy 250th birthday. Maybe.

AP - Arlan Ettinger will never forget the response he got when he took one of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks' hats to a meeting at the Apollo Theater in New York.

AP - A Vermont man whose 12-year-old niece was found dead near his home carefully orchestrated events and e-mails to make it appear she had gone to see someone she met online, prosecutors said Thursday as they charged him with kidnapping.