Fire crews took advantage of improved conditions as the high winds and hot, dry air of recent days were replaced by the normal Pacific air, significantly reducing fire activity.

The 44-square-mile blaze at the western end of the Santa Monica Mountains was 60 percent surrounded.

Full containment was expected Monday, according to Ventura County fire officials.

The progress led authorities to lift all remaining evacuation orders.

"We've really transitioned from a fire attack to a mop-up patrol," Nick Schuler, battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told the Ventura County Star.

One firefighter was injured in the Newbury Park area while battling the blaze and was taken to a hospital, the newspaper said.

The National Weather Service said an approaching low pressure system would bring a 20 percent chance of showers Sunday afternoon, with the likelihood increasing into the night and on Monday.

Nearly 2,000 firefighters using engines, bulldozers and aircraft worked to corral the blaze.

Firefighting efforts were focused on the fire's east side, rugged canyons that are a mix of public and private lands.

The change in the weather was also expected to bring gusty winds to some parts of Southern California, but well away from the fire area.

Despite its size and speed of growth, the fire that broke out Thursday and quickly moved through neighborhoods of Camarillo Springs and Thousand Oaks has caused damage to just 15 homes, though it has threatened thousands.

The fire also swept through Point Mugu State Park, a hiking and camping area that sprawls between those communities and the ocean. Park district Superintendent Craig Sap said two old, unused ranch-style homes in the backcountry burned. Restrooms and campgrounds also were damaged. Sap estimated repairs would cost $225,000.

Grateful residents hung signs thanking firefighters for saving their homes.

The blaze is one of more than 680 wildfires in the state so far this year about 200 more than average.

East of Los Angeles in Riverside County, a new fire that broke out Saturday afternoon burned 650 acres of wilderness south of Banning. It was 75 percent contained Sunday. Banning has been flanked by a nearly 5-square-mile fire to the north which destroyed one home shortly after it broke out Wednesday. That fire was fully contained late Saturday.

In Northern California, a fire that has blackened 11 square miles of wilderness in Tehama County was a threat to a pair of commercial properties near the community of Butte Meadows, according to Cal Fire.

Thunderstorms were expected to bring erratic winds but little rain to the area about 200 miles north of San Francisco.

Nearly 1,300 firefighters were on the lines and the blaze, which started Wednesday, was 40 percent contained.

[More from BGR: ]

BGRand found it to be a gorgeous smartphone that was being held back by the Windows Phone app ecosystem, or lack thereof. It has been more than six months since the handset launched and sadly things dont seem to have gotten any better. The , while it is a bit thick and heavy, is a beautiful device that can surely hold its own with the iPhone and top Android smartphones on the design level. It is Windows Phones app selection that still ultimately falls short, however.

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Ive spent the last two weeks toying around with the Lumia 920 and the Windows Phone 8 platform. Microsofts Metro user interface is very refreshing and an interesting approach compared with those taken by Android and iOS. The continuously updating Live Tiles notified me when I was mentioned on Twitter or if a friend replied to me on Facebook. Notifications are simple enough,althoughI found myself yearning for a pull down menu and quick settings similar to Android and iOS.

Windows Phone 8 is responsive, even outperforming my aging Galaxy Nexus with day-to-day tasks, and the Lumia 920s PureView camera is to die for. To be honest, I was relatively happy with the platform until it came time to use the device in a more social setting.

One of my friends was excited when he saw that I had a new phone, asking what it was and what it could do. He loved the feel of the device and thought the Live Tiles were really interesting. The trouble came, however, when he asked about apps.

Does it have Instagram, he asked. What about SnapChat or HBO Go?

I told him about some alternative apps but his interest was waning, and it got me questioning about how I felt about Windows Phone. I have this incredible camera but no way of sharing images with friends on Instagram, no way to watch my favorite movies and TV shows on HBO and to share silly pictures onSnapChat.

I slowly began to notice that even more of my favorite apps were missing, such as Dropboxand Seamless, and it became clear to me that the Windows Phone ecosystem has not improved. What does Windows Phone offer that Android or iOS dont? The answer is not much. Sure, the Lumia 920 has an incredible camera but with no apps it becomes impossible to share pictures on a widely used photo platform.

Dont get me wrong, Windows Phone isnt all bad when it comes to apps. Nokias HERE City Lens was extremely helpful when I moved into my new apartment and was looking for nearby business, and HERE Maps is a nice alternative to the Google Maps I have come to know and love. Windows Phone still has potential but until Microsoft gets more developers onboard, the platform is not a viable alternative to Android or the iPhone.

This article was

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Herbal supplements aimed at improving men's sexual abilities often contain the active ingredients in erectile dysfunction pills such as Viagra, according to a new study.

Additionally, researchers found that some of these over-the-counter herbal remedies contained more of the ingredient than is allowed in prescription-only pharmaceuticals.

"It's pretty scary stuff," said Neil Campbell, the lead author of the study and a researcher at Pfizer, which sells Viagra. "These products are not herbal at all, they're adulterated."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is in charge of regulating herbal supplements, posted 11 warnings to consumers in 2013 alerting them of unlabeled pharmaceuticals being found in these products.

Campbell and his colleagues analyzed 91 samples from 58 products.

They sent undercover consumers into convenience stores and gas stations in the Atlanta and Baltimore areas, and bought products such as Rize 2 The Occasion, Stiff 4 Hours, and Man King.

Although 57 of the products claimed to be "all natural," 81 percent of them contained the tadalafil or sildenafil (marketed as Cialis and Viagra, respectively) or similar ingredients that are not approved by the FDA.

The products also had labeling problems, indicating poor quality production, according to the authors. In some cases, expiration dates or lot numbers were missing, manufacturers could not be identified, or samples of the same product had different appearances.

"There's so little effort to do something the right way to produce a legitimate product," Campbell told Reuters Health. "This is an all time low."

None of 10 supplement companies contacted by Reuters Health responded to a request for comment, nor did the FDA.

Campbell said given the potential side effects and health risks associated with prescription erectile dysfunction drugs, men are "risking their lives" taking herbal sex enhancement drugs.

"Almost one patient a day says they've tried Mojo or one of these over-the-counter products," said Dr. Gregory Lowe, an assistant professor of urology at Ohio State University who was not part of this study.

"One of the big concerns is that we don't know what the patient's getting," he added.

Seven samples that Campbell's group analyzed contained only unknown substances.

"Commonly, I hear patients say, 'it worked one time and it didn't work other times.' And that fits in well with what they found here" that quality control is lacking, he added.

It's unclear where the ingredients are coming from.

Lowe advises men who are interested in taking these pills to talk to their doctors first.

He says patients often turn to these products because they are cheap - costing between $2.99 and $17.99, according to Campbell's study, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

But they are taking a health risk in doing so.

Erectile dysfunction medicines can be unsafe for men taking nitrates for chest pain, but only 14 of the samples in the study included a warning against combining the drugs.

"Unfortunately, to an unwitting patient they think they're taking an herbal product," said Campbell. "It really poses a really scary threat for patient health and safety."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/17KGjiu Journal of Sexual Medicine, online May 1, 2013.

So far, scientists have deployed about 25 of these GPS-equipped javelins in , and another four on the , said Hilmar Gudmundsson, a researcher at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). The javelins will automatically record and relay their positions for two to three years, allowing researchers to figure out how quickly the glacier is flowing into the ocean. Preliminary measurements show that the Pine Island Glacier's march to the sea is speeding up, Gudmundsson told OurAmazingPlanet.

Thefaster than any other glacier in Antarctica, and it's important to find out why and exactly how fast, Gudmundsson said. By some estimates, this glacier alone could be responsible for about 5 percent of global , although that is a rough calculation and varies by year, he added.

The javelins are designed to only partially embed into the ice, so that they are still able to communicate with satellites. To that end the devices are equipped with small parachutes and "ice brake" fins to keep them from disappearing beneath the ice sheet when they crash land, Gudmundsson said.

Like many glaciers in polar regions, the Pine Island Glacier's expanse of ice doesn't stop when it reaches the ocean. Instead, the ice flows into the sea, where it floats atop the water, forming a platform of ice called an ice shelf. Measurements have shown that the Antarctic Ocean is warmer than it used to be, and is melting the bottom of this ice shelf. That produces less resistance for the glacier on land, which, as a result, slides toward the ocean faster than before, Gudmundsson said.

And behind the Pine Island Glacier is an even larger section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, one of the largest in the world. The glacier acts like a plug in a leaky dam, and if it collapses, it could have devastating consequences for global sea levels, he added.

The javelins Gudmundsson and his team have deployed allow researchers to measure areas, like this one, that are difficult to access over land. "This opens up new possibilities. We can instrument areas that were previously out of reach," he said. "These data will give us a clear picture of what's going on but will also give us a valuable data set to test our [computer] models."

Email or follow him . Follow us, or . Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Human Rights Watch senior researcher Tania Lokshina, one of nine activists who met with Kerry at the end of his two-day visit to Moscow, said he told them he had been up until 2:30 a.m. discussing the legal pressure on NGOs with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Their discussions earlier in the day had focused on the civil war in Syria.

Russia is pushing to enforce a new law that requires all NGOs funded from abroad that engage in vaguely defined political activities to register as "foreign agents," a term that recalls Soviet-era propaganda casting suspicion on foreigners. The measure is seen as aimed at restricting Kremlin critics and undermining their credibility.

"Foreign agents in Russia has only one single interpretation: It reads like foreign spies," Lokshina said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has long been suspicious of NGOs, especially those with American funding, which he has accused of being fronts for the U.S. government to meddle in Russia's political affairs.

Prosecutors have raided hundreds of groups since Putin gave a speech in February demanding that the law passed last year be fully enforced, and 36 groups have had legal action brought against them, according to AGORA, an NGO that provides legal assistance to other nongovernmental organizations and is itself one of the 36.

Golos, an election monitoring group, was the first to be punished under the law when it was fined 300,000 rubles (about $10,000) last month for failing to register as a foreign agent. Golos appealed the court decision on Wednesday.

Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika told the upper house of Russia's parliament last month that civil society groups should "mind their own business" rather than question the legal system, and promised to apologize to any groups searched unduly.

The risk for NGOs has been made sharper by recent revisions to the law on state treason, which now includes providing help or advice to a foreign state or giving information to an international or foreign organization in any way that damages Russia's security.

Giving Kerry information about human rights and civil society in Russia "could formally fall under the law, it's just a question of interpretation," said AGORA head Pavel Chikov, who also attended the meeting. "From the point of view of the Russian government, it's definitely harmful."

Since the law on foreign agents essentially regards any advocacy as political activity, prosecutors can go after any NGO, Lokshina said.

Other groups that have faced legal pressure include prominent Moscow-based watchdog organizations, like the local branch of Transparency International and the human rights group Memorial. But the law also has been used against organizations that would appear to have little to do with politics, like a crane sanctuary in the remote Far East, which came to prosecutors' attention because it receives foreign funding and participates in international conservation projects.

Amazon, which opened its Kindle e-book store in China in December, launched its Android app store over the weekend for China users to download both free and paid apps, Amazon China spokesman Billy Huang said on Monday.

Google's official app store only offers free apps in China. Google China declined to comment for this story. Android is Google's open source mobile operating system.

Amazon's app store must compete with hundreds of local rivals offering paid and free apps, some of them pirated, and users often worry about malware when downloading from these sites.

Amazon is the first Western technology company to offer a platform for paid Android apps in China and Huang said the company was working with software developers to increase the number of apps on offer.

Amazon China cornered less than three percent of China's booming 169 billion yuan ($27 billion) business-to-consumer e-commerce market in the fourth quarter last year.

The launch of the app store and the Kindle e-book store in China paves the way for Amazon to offer a range of devices including the standard Kindle e-reader and the Kindle Fire.

Huang declined to comment on the Kindle's release date in China. ($1 = 6.1556 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Melanie Lee; editing by Miral Fahmy)

The latest study to document social learning in animals, published today (April 25) in the journal Science, has found thatlearned a new feeding technique from other humpbacks, a trait that stuck around and spread throughout the population.

In 1980, a whale in the Gulf of Maine (off the coast of New England) was first seen slapping its tail on the surface of the ocean before feeding on a type of fish called sand lance. This behavior soon spread and was passed down over several generations. It's now a commonplace behavior in humpbacks throughout the region, said Jenny Allen, a study co-author and researcher at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

27 years of data

It is difficult, of course, to prove that a certain , especially when it comes to marine animals. But the researchers behind the study developed a powerful computer model that allowed them to compare the likelihood that this behavior arose via social interaction versus individual learning.

Drawing upon a database of 27 years of observations of whale foraging, the model returned a result that, at a bare minimum, the humpbacks were 1 million times more likely to have learned the feeding technique from peers than to have each learned it individually.

"It was so big my supervisor made me run it again because he thought I might have messed it up somehow," Allen told LiveScience. "It was so startling to have that strong a result."

The whales perform this behavior, slapping their mammoth tales on the surface one to four times, just before diving and , which helps to organize them into schools upon which the whales can more easily feed, Allen said. The purpose of the technique, called lobtail feeding, is unclear, but it's possible it helps organize the fish into tighter formations before mealtime, she added.

Learning from peers

Whales learn the technique from other whales that they tend to spend a lot of time with, the study found. Importantly, the humpback whales didn't appear to learn the technique from their mothers, said Jooke Robbins, a senior scientist at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Mass., who wasn't involved in the study. That makes it easier to conclude that the behavior is socially learned, as opposed to genetically preprogrammed.

Humpbacks have somewhat loose social structures compared to other whales; youngsters separate from their mothers after two years and don't usually interact with them much after that, Allen said. "They have associations that are kind of weak and flexible but even in that situation you can have information that's transmitted in a social context," Robbins said.

This is the first quantitative proof that whales can socially learn a new feeding behavior, Allen said. But it's hardly the first evidence of cultural transmission in whales: Humpbacks have been shown to learn songs from one another, and spermthat can be described as traditions, Allen said. []

These whales, in other words, have multiple traditions. And they likely have other socially learned behaviors and cultural quirks. "The reason we were able to identify this is because its a 50-foot whale waving its tail at you. But there are probably many other subtle behaviors that aren't as obvious and easy to record," that are also culturally transmitted, Allen said.

Scientists have also found abundant evidence for social learning and cultural transmission in a variety of primates. Another study published today in Science found that wild vervet , learning to eat what "local" monkeys in new areas are eating.

Email or follow him . Follow us , or . Article originally on LiveScience.com.

Following his acclaimed debut last year, the pressure has been stacked on the Belgian designer to deliver again in what is only his second ready-to-wear show in one of the most influential jobs in fashion. And Friday saw Simons live up to expectations.

He confidently evolved the angular portions of previous seasons' work into softer, more saleable silhouettes. The new Bar jacket, looser and in trendy wool denim, seemed to point to a man who's finally settled in to his role.

This season was the supplest fusion so far of his minimalism and the house's ultra-femininity and curves.

Fall-winter 2013-14 saw a parade of "memory dresses," some 48 looks that delved into the iconic houndstooth, peplums, and Monsieur Dior's original '40s designs. They hit the catwalk outside Paris' Hotel des Invalides, reimagined, alongside enormous mirror ball decor.

Like thought bubbles, the reflective spheres set the tone for the musing, which included an embroidered tulle bustier A-line dress, an archive piece called "Miss Dior 1949" reworked in hip embroidered black leather. Elsewhere, blown-up houndstooth had a surreal quality, in vertical slices down column silhouettes. It was a great re-working of the classic pattern first used by the house in the late '50s.

The more muted palette of black, white, pale pink and navy was further proof of his evolution. After all, while at Jil Sander, it was Simons who started the bright color trend.

There was plenty of imagination, like prints and embroideries of surreal eyes and tears that resembled ants, reminiscent of Salvador Dali. However, the show could have done without motifs by Andy Warhol, like a sparking stiletto print, which sometimes jarred as overly adolescent, and a tad tacky.

Overall, the show was a success; one step further on in Dior's mission statement for the designer, to "propel its iconic style into the 21st century."

___

Thomas Adamson can be followed at http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamsonAP

The U.S. Department of Interior's Office of Inspector General said in a report released Tuesday that it found no discernible process followed by then-Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk to recognize the Tejon Indian Tribe in 2011 over at least one other group that had submitted a similar application.

The tribe's headquarters are near Bakersfield. Tribal chairwoman Kathy Morgan initially said she had not yet seen the report. She did not immediately respond to a subsequent message seeking comment.

The Office of Inspector General forwarded its findings to the Interior secretary for "any action deemed appropriate."

According to the report, Echo Hawk told the Office of Inspector General that the tribe previously had been recognized by the U.S. government, but did not appear on a list of federally recognized tribes because of an administrative error.

Echo Hawk said he had the legal authority to reaffirm the tribe and was not required to go through the official administrative process for recognition.

"When asked about the process he followed or criteria he considered in making the Tejon decision, Echo Hawk said he did not get deeply involved in the details of the decision," the report said.

His chief of staff, Paul Tsosie, however, said officials had reviewed documents and determined there had been a negotiated treaty that established a federal relationship with the tribe, the report said.

Echo Hawk said he was aware of one other tribe with a request similar to Tejon's and chose Tejon because the tribe had "pressed their issue forward."

According to the report, Tsosie made similar comments, acknowledging he had been influenced by the number of telephone calls he received from members of the tribe and saying: "This was one of the tribes that was calling me off the hook. So I was, like, saying: 'Just give them an answer.'"

The roughly 400-member Tejon tribe had applied for reaffirmation with help from Cannery Row Casino resorts of Las Vegas, which provided money the tribe used to hire a legal representative to assist with the process, according to the report.The federal government's list of recognized tribes stands at more than 550 tribes.

The report also accused Echo Hawk of failing to consult with other federal officials, leaving Indian groups with historical, genealogical, and ancestral claims to the original Tejon Indians out of the process and creating budgeting difficulties in meeting the required services for the Tejon.

Echo Hawk resigned from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs last year.

A spokeswoman for the agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

One person's lost iPhone is another man's income.

A story in thefollows Eliel Santos on his hunt for cash, jewelry and technologyall dropped and probably assumed gone forever down the subway grates.

Santos has been snagging subway loot for the past eight years. He uses dental floss, mousetrap glueand a sharp eye. And what he finds, he pawns. He's good at it, too: The Puerto Rican native, who lives in the Bronx, checks grates from 23rd street to 47th street, making about $150 a day.

If you drop it, Im going to pick it upso be careful, the 38-year-old told the Post.

But Santos also provides a pro bono service: He helps the frantic find items theyve dropped, once finding a mans keys and another mans wedding ring. Hes rewarded by their thanks and, usually, some cash.

Times Square, he said, is a particularly good place for dropped cash and iPhones: When people text while they are standing on a grate, their phones fall in, he said.

His biggest one-day haul: a diamond-and-gold bracelet he pawned for $1,800. Another day he found three dropped iPhones. I have a lot of patience and optimism, he said.

If I want something," Santos added, "Im going to get it.

Subway grates are notorious for swallowing treasured items. But sometimes, there are happy endings. Last year, when a New York City woman lost her ring, she called the nonemergency 311 line and a Con Ed employee searched undergroundand actually .