YUROK RESERVATION, Calif.—The young mother had behaved erratically for months, hitchhiking and wandering naked through two Native American reservations and a small town clustered along Northern California’s rugged Lost Coast. But things escalated when Emmilee Risling was charged with arson for igniting a fire in a cemetery. Her family hoped the case would force her…

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif.—Investigators searching for the cause of an oil pipeline break off the Southern California coast have pointed to the possibility that a ship anchor dragged the line across the seabed and cracked it, but two videos released so far provide only tantalizing clues about what might have happened 100 feet below the ocean…

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.—Scientists, researchers and environmentalists have long grappled with how best to analyze the occurrence of vessel strikes that kill or injure endangered whales and other marine mammals along the feeding ground waterways of the California coast. In Huntington Beach, a 63-foot fin whale washed onto California shores May 19, after it was struck…