Now massive wildfires rage from California to as far north as Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula near the Canadian border and all the way across to the Northern Rockies. Smoke and haze fill the air, darkening what would usually be crystal clear skies.

As of Aug. 24 the National Interagency Fire Center reports there are 72 large fires in the United States consuming 1,641,777 acres. There are currently 27,000 people working around the clock to stop the fires. Close to a thousand of them are soldiers. MORE

Startled residents of Gardner, Louisiana, alerted the sheriff last weekend over a black-and-white ‘welcome home’ sign in Hebrew that they thought bore a menacing Islamist message.

The Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office and local news station KALB “were contacted by several residents who were concerned about the signs and that they might have been terror messages written in Arabic,” KALB reported Friday. MORE

Though the West Coast almost never gets hurricanes, an earthquake- or storm-induced flood could still do serious damage one of the state’s populated regions.

Only problem is, WIRED got the wrong one. Nick Stockton trumpeted the impending doom of Northern California’s Sacramento/San Joaquin River Delta. But, measured in terms of possible loss of life and property, the risks surrounding the city of Sacramento are what are most alarming. MORE

Jerusalem (AFP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday he was willing to engage in immediate and direct peace talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, without preconditions.

“I am ready now to go to Ramallah or any other place in order to meet and hold direct negotiations,” Netanyahu told members of Women Wage Peace, established following last summer’s war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. MORE

Catholic priest Edward Belczak pleaded guilty Tuesday to mail fraud in connection with stealing $573,000 from St. Thomas More church in Troy, the prosperous parish he led as pastor for nearly 30 years.

Belczak agreed to forfeit a plush Florida condo he bought with parish money and pay $573,000 in restitution. His sentencing will be Dec. 1; the sentencing guidelines call for him spending 33 to 41 months in prison. MORE

Water births are certainly not uncommon. Many women feel it is a much more relaxing environment in which for them to give birth.

Typically, a water birth involves a bath tub and a midwife — a human midwife. There is apparently an entire group of women, however, who think dolphins have the qualifications to deliver their baby. MORE

SEATTLE (AP) — Minutes before a Washington state high school freshman fatally shot four friends and then himself, he sent a group text message to his family outlining his funeral wishes and apologizing to the parents of the teenagers he was about to kill.

“I love you family. I really do. More than anything,” Jaylen Fryberg said two minutes before opening fire in the cafeteria of Marysville-Pilchuck High School. “I needed to do this tho… I wasn’t happy. And I need my crew with me too. I’m sorry. I love you.” MORE

Typhoid has broken out among residents of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, the United Nations said on Wednesday, warning of further disease outbreaks unless aid reached the camp because of the appalling conditions there.

Eleven cases of typhoid were confirmed by the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which gained access to residents from the Yarmouk camp for the first time since June in nearby Yalda, where it carried out more than 200 medical consultations. MORE

It’s mostly politics instead of the good of the Nation

WASHINGTON (AP) — Experts in government secrecy law see almost no possibility of criminal action against Hillary Clinton or her top aides in connection with now-classified information sent over unsecure email while she was secretary of state, based on the public evidence thus far. MORE

A confrontation at a fast food restaurant ended with a worker being pulled by her hair through the drive-thru window, according to video that was just posted online. MORE

Vatican City (AFP) – Pope Francis on Tuesday called on priests to pardon women who have abortions, and the doctors who perform them, during the upcoming Jubilee year — overruling hardline traditionalists within the Catholic Church.

“I have decided, notwithstanding anything to the contrary, to concede to all priests for the Jubilee Year the discretion to absolve of the sin of abortion those who have procured it and who, with contrite heart, seek forgiveness for it,” he said MORE

As speculation mounts that a Nazi train laden with gold has been found, it emerges Russia may try to claim treasure, sparking row with Poland.

Polish authorities have hit back at an apparent Russian attempt to claim to preemptively the contents of a buried Nazi train, reasserting the nation’s ownership of any World War Two treasures. MORE