In brief: Surfboard crashes through windshield on Hawaii freeway

Honolulu – A man was driving along a Honolulu freeway over the weekend when a surfboard crashed through the windshield just inches from his face, leaving him with only scratches on his face and arms.

Jerrin Ching was driving on the H-1 freeway Sunday morning when the red surfboard came out of nowhere and pierced through the glass, he told KHON- TV.

Witnesses told police the surfboard fell off an overpass and bounced off a school bus. Ching said he was in the far left lane, driving east near the Punahou Street overpass, on his way to pick up a friend at the University of Hawaii, when “all of a sudden I see this red thing come out of nowhere and turns out it was a surfboard. And it just crashed through my windshield.”

Police were seeking information about who the surfboard belonged to or where it came from.

Evacuation orders lifted for several communities

Yosemite National Park, Calif. – Evacuation orders and advisories were lifted Tuesday for several Sierra Nevada communities once threatened by a raging wildfire in and around Yosemite National Park.

Officials said they still are investigating the cause of the blaze, which started 18 days ago in an isolated area of the Stanislaus National Forest and has burned nearly 370 square miles – the fourth biggest recorded wildfire in California.

With higher humidity and lower temperatures, the fire reached 80 percent containment, prompting the sheriff’s offices in Tuolumne and Mariposa counties to lift evacuation advisories for communities with several thousand structures in the fire’s path.

Officials said 111 structures, including 11 homes, have been destroyed.

Convicted Army psychiatrist forcibly shaved in prison

Fort Leavenworth, Kan. – The Army psychiatrist sentenced to death for the Fort Hood shooting rampage has been forcibly shaved, an Army spokesman said Tuesday.

Maj. Nidal Hasan began growing a beard in the years after the November 2009 shooting that left 13 dead and 30 wounded. The beard prompted delays to his court-martial because it violated Army grooming regulations. He was convicted of all charges last month at his court-martial at the Central Texas Army post and sentenced to death.

Now, Hasan is an inmate at the U.S. Detention Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Officials there previously had said Hasan would be subject to Army regulations.