
How Watch Duty became an essential app during the Los Angeles wildfires
CBSN
Since the Palisades Fire broke out on the morning of Jan. 7, several more wildfires have ravaged the Los Angeles area. At least 27 people have died and more than 12,000 structures have been destroyed.
In the middle of all of this, a false evacuation alert sent to all of L.A. County's approximately 10 million residents on Jan. 9 added to the chaos, as many Angelenos were left unsure what to believe.
"While the city alerts are definitely alarming, we just aren't able to take any city push alerts at face value after [a] couple rounds of mistakes," Sharvari Akre-Bhide, a clinical researcher living in L.A., told CBS News.

The threat of tornadoes moved east into the Mississippi Valley and Deep South on Saturday, a day after a massive storm system moving across the country unleashed winds that damaged buildings, whipped up dust storms that caused deadly crashes and fanned more than 100 wildfires in several central states. Fatalities were reported in Missouri and Texas.

A Canadian woman who had appeared in an "American Pie" movie was detained for several days by U.S. immigration officials while attempting to cross the border from Mexico to the U.S. to renew her work visa, according to her mother. The woman's father expects his daughter to be able to return to Canada as early as Friday.

When the Environmental Protection Agency was formed in 1970, its mission was to protect the environment and human health. Since then, scientists, health experts and advocates have worked to implement regulations aimed at protecting and cleaning the air we breathe and the water we drink. Many of these regulations, which were aimed at cleaning up the air, also helped reduce carbon emissions, which can contribute to climate change – so it was a win for our bodies and the planet.