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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The return of fans to NFL games this season has come as a welcome boost to a nation reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed thousands of lives and forced changes to almost every facet of American life. Fans were largely shut out of stadiums last season to stem the spread of the virus but have returned in force, donning jerseys in Dallas, face paint in Seattle, and blocks of cheese on their heads in Green Bay. "It was hard watching cardboard cutouts in the stands and piped in fan noise last season," Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana told Reuters. "It's great that people are back in the seats. It means a lot to everybody in this country. Everybody says baseball is America's sport, but I beg to differ. I think football is." Prior to the season, 93% of all season ticket holders renewed their tickets, a five-year high, and nearly two million fans have attended regular season games so far this year, slightly ahead of 2019, the NFL said. …

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Mount Shasta has long symbolized the grandeur of California’s far north, its muscular flanks and thick cover of snow an enduring expression of nature’s bounty. But this summer, the north state’s tallest peak is looking a little frail. Its slopes are drab and dusty, and most of the snow has melted away. Locals say they haven’t seen the mountain so barren in years, if not decades. The 14,163-foot volcano near the Oregon border, climate experts say, has become a casualty of California’s intense heat and drought, as well as a glaring illustration of what the extremes of climate change can mean for Western landscapes. “It’s pretty much just an ugly brown, not the picture we think of with Mount Shasta,” said David Rizzardo, a hydrology manager for the California Department of Water Resources, who has family in the area. “Maybe we thought Mount Shasta was immune (to climate change). But now it’s clearly showing the stress from extreme conditions.” The hard times for the mountain come …

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In mid-September, the National Park Service finalized a General Management Plan Amendment (GMPA) for the Point Reyes National Seashore , changing a rule to allow livestock production to continue for 20 years in this national park in the San Francisco Bay area of California. This rule change, and the ranching it enables, poses an immediate threat to the local environment, the global climate and the people of San Francisco, especially its underserved communities. It also sets an alarming precedent for degrading national parks throughout the country. Northern California is facing some of the most dangerous climate impacts in the United States . This region leads the nation in terms of drought, wildfires, smoke and ocean degradation. Our summers are gone, and each year is worse than the last. Livestock production in Point Reyes directly fuels these climate impacts by emitting thousands of tons of methane gas from cattle, which goes on to trap heat in the atmosphere. According to …

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — More than a year after protesters toppled a statue of a Spanish missionary on the grounds of the California Capitol, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law on Friday to replace it with a memorial for the state's Native Americans. A statue of Father Junipero Serra had stood in Capitol Park since 1967. He was a Roman Catholic pries who established a string of missions from San Diego to San Francisco in the late1700s and used them as centers to convert members of nearby tribes to Christianity. But many natives were forced to live and work at the missions and subjected to beatings and other abuse. Thousands died. Serra was given sainthood by Pope Francis in 2015, a controversial decision that brought sharp criticism from those who see Serra as a colonialist who destroyed Native American tribes and their cultures. Last summer, the murder of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer prompted nationwide protests over racial injustice. On July 4, 2020, …

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The mathematician Federico Ardila-Mantilla grew up in Colombia, an indifferent student but gifted in math. He was failing most of his classes at his high school in Bogotá when someone suggested he apply to MIT. He had not heard of the school. To his surprise, he got in, and he went on scholarship. Mathematically, he did well. One of his professors—an acid-tongued theoretician known to compare his audience to a herd of cows—routinely tucked “open” math problems into homework assignments, without telling the students. These had never been solved by anyone. Ardila solved one. He went on to receive his bachelor’s and Ph.D. in math from MIT. But his academic experience was also one of isolation. Part of it had to do with his own introversion. (An outgoing mathematician, the joke goes, is someone who looks at your shoes when talking to you instead of their own.) Part of it was cultural. As a Latino, he was very much in the minority in the department, and he did not feel comfortable in …

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[Read more on NYC school closings due to Covid-19 ] New York City has more students in classrooms — about 300,000 — than virtually any city in the country. Transmission of the virus in schools has been strikingly low . And one of the city’s top health officials has declared that the public schools are among the safest public places around. Yet for all those hopeful signs, Mayor Bill de Blasio is on the brink of shutting down all classrooms across the school system, by far the nation’s largest, as New York confronts a second wave of the virus after months when the city’s success at curbing the outbreak made it the envy of the country. The closure could happen by Thanksgiving, if not sooner. The move — which is now regarded by some City Hall officials as a question of when, not if — would be perhaps the most significant setback yet for the city’s recovery since the bleak days of spring, when it was a global center of the pandemic and all the schools were shuttered. …

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Elementary students returned to classrooms in Long Beach, Calif., on Monday and campuses from Los Angeles to Boston prepared for significant expansions of in-person instruction as a majority of the nation’s districts have now begun to reopen school buildings, many of which have been closed for more than a year. On Monday, Burbio, which monitors some 1,200 districts including the largest 200 in the country, reported that 53.1 percent of students were in schools offering daily, in-person classes, and that for the first time, the proportion of students attending school virtually or in hybrid classes had dropped. The change, Burbio officials said, appeared to be driven by the return in elementary and middle schools to in-person classes, and by the new rules from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention permitting schools to allow three feet of social distance instead of six feet in elementary schools. But a number of roadblocks to reopening remain. On the West Coast, …

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Good morning. As virus cases and hospitalizations drop and increasing attention turns to the state’s vaccine rollout, California officials are attempting a fine balancing act between speeding up the process and ensuring that vulnerable populations aren’t shut out. On Tuesday, Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s secretary of health and human services, said in a news conference that the two goals were not mutually exclusive. “This notion that we have to make a choice between speed and equity — it’s a false choice,” he said. “We can do both.” [ Track coronavirus cases , deaths and hospitalizations in California.] But in a state where officials have repeatedly said that equity was a top priority, and that transparency would be built into the effort, information about who’s getting vaccinated and in what order has been difficult to come by. So far, more than 3.5 million doses of vaccine have been administered in California, Dr. Ghaly said. The rate of vaccinations …

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close Video Fox News Flash top headlines for September 25 Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. A California man suspected of hitting and killing NFL assistant coach Gregg Knapp with a car in July avoided charges after prosecutors failed to find sufficient evidence to prove criminal negligence. Knapp, 58, was struck and killed while riding his bicycle July 17 and died five days later. The driver of the car, a 22-year-old Danville man, remained at the accident site with police, and authorities said at the time that the driver did not appear to be intoxicated. CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM Contra Costa County prosecutors made the decision Friday that they would not be filing criminal charges against the driver. "The Office of the District Attorney has determined that there is insufficient evidence to satisfy the requisite standard of criminal negligence on …

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These are 20 photos of the tallest buildings in the world, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat in September 2021. Giant skyscrapers are classified officially in two distinct categories: "supertall" 300 meters (984 feet) or taller, and a "megatall," which stand at least 600-meters tall (1,968 feet). As of today, there are 173 supertalls and only three megatalls right now. Take a look at those three and the 17 other tallest buildings in the world. 1. Burj Khalifa (Completed 2010) Height: 828 m/ 2,717 ft Floors: 163 The Burj Khalifa is the world's tallest building, stretching half a mile into the Dubai sky. Construction began in September 2004, with the exterior of the structure completed in October 2009. The building officially opened in January 2010 and is part of a development called "Downtown Dubai" near the city's main business district. Chicago-based engineering company Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill played a major part in its design …

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