Los Angeles

PETA sues KFC for chicken treatment

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sued KFC Corp. Monday, claiming the fast food giant is misleading the public by denying it mistreats chickens headed for its restaurants.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, claims more than 700 million chickens slaughtered each year for KFC restaurants “often endure suffering, often intense, for most, or all, of their lives.”

The lawsuit is the culmination of a six-month campaign waged by PETA against KFC and its parent company, YUM! Brands, designed to force the fast food giant to adopt standards designed to improve the lives of the chickens and to slaughter them more humanely.

Rhode Island

New fire regulations for nightclubs signed

Gov. Don Carcieri signed tough new fire regulations Monday, including a ban on pyrotechnics in nightclubs like the one that went up in flames earlier this year in a disaster that killed 100 people.

The nightclub blaze, which was started by pyrotechnics during a show by the band Great White, prompted lawmakers to draft changes that they said would give Rhode Island the strictest fire safety rules in the nation.

“I think we’re going to set the stage for what happens nationwide, to make sure this never happens again,” Carcieri said at a Statehouse ceremony in Providence attended by fire-safety officials, lawmakers and relatives of those killed in the blaze.

The legislation requires sprinklers in more nightclubs and other businesses, bans pyrotechnics in all but the largest venues and increases the authority of fire inspectors.

Phoenix

Bishop pleads not guilty in hit-and-run case

Bishop Thomas O’Brien, the former head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, pleaded not guilty Monday to a felony charge in a fatal hit-and-run accident.

O’Brien is charged with leaving the scene of a fatal accident two days after pedestrian Jim Reed, 43, was found on a street near the bishop’s home.

O’Brien resigned as head of the diocese two days after his arrest. He told police he didn’t realize he struck a person.

Prosecutors have said that O’Brien was not impaired by alcohol at the time of the June 14 crash.

If he had stopped right after the collision, he likely would not have faced charges at all, County Atty. Rick Romley has said.

Instead, investigators used witness testimony to track the car involved in the fatal accident to the diocese and then to O’Brien.

Reed was crossing in the middle of a block after dark, and tests revealed he was drunk.

Arizona

High humidity helps in wildfire fight

A rise in humidity Monday calmed a wildfire burning a half-mile from an exclusive desert enclave near Tucson, greatly reducing the danger to dozens of houses, officials said.

The same blaze destroyed more than 300 houses last month in and around the vacation hamlet of Summerhaven, high on Mount Lemmon. As of Monday, the fire had burned at least 81,000 acres in the mountains north of Tucson.

Humidity between 30 percent and 50 percent extinguished flames in some areas above the homes in Ventana Canyon and cooled the fire in others, said Brad Smith, a fire behavior analyst with the team fighting the blaze.

Firefighters used aircraft to drop water and retardant along the fire’s leading edge, but because of the change in the fire’s behavior, they dropped plans to burn away vegetation uphill from the homes.