Thousands of residents in the western U.S. and Canada have fled their homes as wildfires barreled across the baking landscape, destroying property.

More than 8,000 firefighters across the West battled dozens of wildfires Thursday that forced thousands of local residents to pack up families, pets and personal treasures to flee the advancing blazes.

Two local judges have made the unconventional move of denying Dr. Derek Duke, a Las Vegas neurosurgeon who earns about $1 million annually by serving second opinions in lawsuits, the chance to testify as an expert witness in two cases.

A series of wildfires is blazing across the Southwest as the chance of rain remains low amid a deadly heatwave. Eighteen large fires are burning in the region, including six in Arizona, three in Utah, three in California, three in New Mexico, two in Nevada and a large one in Oregon.

Clark County firefighters and Metro police responded to an early morning townhouse fire in east Las Vegas on Wednesday. Authorities said an oxygen tank exploded at the residence and caused flames to spread quickly thereafter.

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.

Honda Motor Co Ltd (7267.T) said on Wednesday a driver of a 2002 Accord was seriously injured after a faulty Takata air bag inflator ruptured during a March 3 crash in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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 fire official says it could be a couple of weeks before investigators know what sparked a blaze that caused more than $400,000 in damage to the roof of a retail annex at the Bellagio resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

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.

It may not come as a surprise that bruises and open wounds are the most common injuries in every state across America — with the one exception of Colorado, where you’re more likely to have be injured by a ‘fall’. But did you know that ‘over-exertion’ is disproportionately common in North Dakota, and a ‘near-drowning’ experience six-times more likely in Hawaii?