California record-setting heat starting to ease

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A fall heat wave is starting to ease after setting record highs throughout California.

Monday's 94 in downtown Los Angeles tied an 1898 record for the date and the 93 at Long Beach Airport was 3 degrees above a 1976 high.

Downtown Oakland had 84, seven degrees higher than the previous record of 1976. San Francisco Airport's 79 beat a 1993 record by a degree.

El Cajon's 95 broke the 2006 record of 91.

Records also were set in Santa Rosa, Redwood City, San Jose and the Central Valley.

National Weather Service meteorologist Todd Hall says a high-pressure ridge is weakening and moving east so temperatures will cool through the week, with showers possible beginning Thursday night.

However, he says hot spells could continue on and off through January.

Man convicted in 1980 deaths of UC Davis students

SACRAMENTO  (AP) — A California man has been convicted of the slashing deaths of two UC Davis freshmen in 1980.

Sacramento jurors deliberated less than a day before finding 63-year-old Richard Joseph Hirschfield guilty on Monday of the first-degree murders of Sabrina Gonsalves and John Riggins, both 18.

The Davis Enterprise says the jury found it true that Hirschfield committed the killings in the commission of a kidnapping and oral copulation, and that he performed multiple murders.

Those special circumstances now send the trial into a penalty phase to decide if Hirschfield should be put to death or life in prison without parole.

Hirschfield was in a Washington state prison for child rape eight years ago when the cold case investigators matched his DNA with a semen sample found inside Riggins' van.