Wildfires this summer are expected to be most severe in southwestern U.S. states, Florida, Georgia and in some parts of California and Nevada, forecasters said Monday.

The Tybee Island Fire Department is investigating a fire that consumed a home on the island and sent mile-high plumes of white smoke through the air Wednesday afternoon.

The claim costs and other metrics of 18 state workers’ compensation systems are analyzed in depth in a new series of studies, CompScope™ Benchmarks, 17th Edition, released by the Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI).

Leading travel insurance trends aren’t just focused on hurricanes and illness anymore. A considerable number of traveler inquiries are now seeking to make certain that they are protected against losses from terrorism, too.

A 5-year-old boy died after being crushed Friday in a rotating restaurant atop a downtown Atlanta tower, with the child getting caught between a table and a wall as the floor moved, police said.

Forecasters expect severe thunderstorms to move across the Southeast on Wednesday, bringing a threat of tornadoes and large hail.

A strong line of storms moved through metro Atlanta and north Georgia Monday morning, spawning apparent tornadoes in north Georgia. Several areas saw major damage from the storms, including Carroll and Spalding counties.

All lanes of eastbound I-20 in Carroll County near exit 19 were closed at midday Friday after an early-morning crash involving three tractor-trailers, according to the Georgia State Patrol.

A private plane crashed into a residence in an Atlanta suburb Friday night, but the people inside the home got out safely, authorities said. A Cessna Citation I aircraft went down about three miles northeast of Cobb County International Airport-McCollum Field, north of Atlanta, around 7:20 p.m. ET, the FAA said.

Cleanup efforts are underway, thousands are without power and some schools are pushing back start times after deadly storms ripped through North Georgia overnight. About 33,250 of the 174,000 Georgia Power customers affected by Tuesday’s damaging winds, lightning, hail and heavy downpours are without power.

On Friday, the meteorology community was riding a major high as stunningly high-definition images came in from the nation’s newest and much-anticipated earth observation satellite. The high came crashing down that evening, though, as the first hints of significant cuts to the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began to emerge.

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a million times: You don’t want your vehicle to catch on fire. For that reason, Mercedes-Benz is recalling more than 354,000 vehicles.

An annual state-by-state analysis of auto insurance reveals rates continue to increase after filing just a single claim. According to a fourth annual study by insuranceQuotes, drivers now pay an average of 44 percent more for car insurance after making a single claim of $2,000 or more.

People sparked most US wildfires in recent decades, causing longer fire seasons and increasing the amount of scorched earth, according to a new study published Monday. Researchers found that humans caused 84 percent -- or four out of five -- of the total 1.5 million wildfires studied between 1992 and 2012.



In addition, human actions tripled the length of the fire season during those two decades and were responsible for 44 percent of the total acreage burned, researchers reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

United Technologies Corp’s (UTX.N) Carrier unit expanded a recall of some air conditioners and heat pumps as their power cord plugs can overheat, posing a fire risk, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Thursday.