Lake County Record-Bee

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Two people died, and another was missing, after a medical helicopter crashed near Avalon, California, on Wednesday night, Sept. 30., authorities said. Two other victims were pulled from the sea off Catalina Island and later hospitalized on the mainland. Identities of the victims, and what led to the crash, were not immediately available early Thursday.

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By H. Alix Gallagher When California makes a major public investment intended to improve opportunities and outcomes for young children, we should know whether it is achieving its goals — and what we can learn to make it work even better. The case of universal transitional kindergarten (UTK) in California today provides an opportunity to ask whether a major investment is working.

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By YURI KAGEYAMA and MICHELLE CHAPMAN, AP Business Writers U.S. futures are mixed to start October as Brent crude creeps back above $100 a barrel and bond yields soar. Futures for the S&P 500 gained 0.2% on Thursday. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 0.2%. Nasdaq futures rose 0.6%. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 2.1% to $100.10 a barrel.

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By Mary Ellen McIntire and Daniela Altimari, CQ-Roll Call WASHINGTON — With less than five weeks to go until the midterm elections, Republicans face historical headwinds as the party in power and must also contend with high gas prices amid the ongoing Iran war.

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By MELANIE LIDMAN, SAMY MAGDY and CARA ANNA JERUSALEM (AP) — Investigators worked Thursday to determine why an Omani pilot stabbed the captain of a flight to Israel, causing the plane to plummet dangerously before others on board landed it in Saudi Arabia.

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By Daniela Altimari and Mary Ellen McIntire, CQ-Roll Call WASHINGTON — The once unlikely prospect of Democrats scoring a net gain of four seats to win the Senate majority now looks more plausible less than five weeks out from the midterm elections. Still, that would require the party to win in red states that haven’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in years.

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of people applying for U.S. unemployment benefits dipped last week to the lowest level since mid-July as layoffs remain low and most American workers enjoy job security. The Labor Department said Thursday that initial jobless claims ticked down to 197,000 from a revised 198,000 the week before.

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times On a tarmac in Texas, federal agents repeatedly ordered a group of shackled immigrants off a bus and onto an airplane that they had heard was destined for Africa. Many complied, but some men refused. They had sought protection in the U.S. after fleeing repressive governments and asked to speak to lawyers before being deported to a faraway continent.

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By GIOVANNA DELL’ORTO WOODBURY, Minn. (AP) — “Forecast: God reigns and the Son shines.” In mid-September, the large electronic sign of a Lutheran church flashed this message by a throughfare between growing subdivisions and cornfields in a Twin Cities suburb. The messages on Resurrection Lutheran Church’s sign range from witty to practical to profound.

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By MATTHEW LEE, AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered Iran’s foreign minister and his delegation to the U.N. General Assembly to leave New York earlier than they had planned, two U.S. officials said Wednesday.