Kirk Siegler

Los Angeles has the largest population of chronically homeless people in the country. The city is wrestling with how to deal with a growing homeless population that is spreading far beyond Skid Row.

The two states in the news over the past week with high-profile mass shootings have taken big steps in recent years to tighten gun laws. Is a focus on open carry or mental health the best way forward?

NPR remembers the three people killed in last Friday's shooting at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs.

The shooting massacre at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs on Friday is just the latest example of how polarized the city has gotten politically over issues such as gun control.

Ecuador's economy is faltering thanks to a year of record low oil prices and fears of a "godzilla" El Niño forming in the Pacific Ocean. The situation is drawing bizarre parallels to ...

Inspired by the events at Mizzou, students at Occidental College in Los Angeles recently got administrators to agree to a list of demands and are pledging to hold them accountable.

After four years of brutal drought, early season storms are bringing record snow to California's Sierra Nevada. The storms are hardly drought busters, but that's not stopping people from celebrating.

When cacao farmers like Emilio Rivera first heard of a government-backed initiative that would help them prune branches and leaves from their trees, they were skeptical.

After all, a lush cacao tree with more, not fewer, branches meant more profits, the farmers said. That's been the traditional way of ...

From the rim of Ecuador's Pululahua Geobotanical Reserve, it's at least a 45-minute drive (no, more like plunge) down a winding, bone-crushing dirt road to the floor of the crater. But it's well worth it. After all, how often do you get to say you've traveled to what's billed as ...

In parched California, water managers and emergency management officials are preparing to move from one extreme to another with predictions of a "too big to fail" El Niño winter ahead.

The Valley Fire leveled hundreds of homes and businesses in the small community of Middletown, Calif. School is helping students and educators alike make it through the recovery process together.

Emergency management officials in Tulare County in California's Central Valley field dozens of calls from residents reporting their wells have run dry. Getting help to them has proven challenging.

NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The Two-Way. The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the#NPRreads hashtag. On Fridays, we highlight some of the best stories.

This week, we bring you three items.

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Even as fall has arrived, the number of homes and businesses destroyed by wildfires keeps going up in the drought-stricken West.

In northern New Mexico, many rural communities are worried about the possible loss of Amtrak's Southwest Chief. One historic railroad town has been trying to attract tourists with the train.

It has been a record year for wildfires in California, and officials are warning that the end is not yet in sight. NPR checks in on the fires burning in Northern California and the Sierra Nevada.

While California's Rough Fire is not threatening as many homes or businesses as other fires, it has attracted a lot of fire-fighting resources. The fire is burning near a grove of giant sequoias.

The Valley fire is just one of more than a dozen currently burning in California. The largest, the Rough Fire, is burning near a grove of ancient Sequoias. It is currently 40 percent contained.