National: A team of 19 wildland firefighters from Prescott, Ariz. was overrun and killed Sunday when the fire they were working suddenly changed direction. The firefighters, a specially trained attack team known as the Granite Mountain Hotshots, had deployed their foil fire shelters in a last ditch attempt to survive.  A 20^th member of the team was in a different location and was not hurt. All the dead were members of the Prescott fire department. This is believed to be the biggest loss of wildland firefighters since 1933 when 29 firefighters died in Griffith Park in Los Angeles.

• A performer in the Cirque du Soleil show “Ka” came loose from her harness Saturday night and fell to her death in front of the audience. Paris-born Sarah Guyard-Guillot, 31, the mother of two children, dropped at least 50 feet to a pit near the stage. The show at the MGM Grand has been closed while the accident is investigated.
• A sightseeing helicopter made a forced landing in the Hudson River at 79^th St. after losing power. Four tourists and the pilot got out safely. In 2009 nine people died when a tourist helicopter collided with a small plane and in 2011 one person died when a tour helicopter crashed in the river.

Extremes: The severe heat wave is lingering over Southern California and Nevada. Triple digits will continue. The high yesterday was 128 in Death Valley. Thunderstorms have the East Coast on flash flood watch from Maine all the way to South Carolina.

Weekend Box: A couple of cartoon characters beat both Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. “Monsters University” was number one for the second week. Bullock and Melissa McCarthy in the cop comedy “The Heat” earned just $40 million. Eye candy Channing Tatum and “White House Down” came in at just $25.7 million.

• Sixty-six year old actor James Woods brought his 20-year-old girlfriend to the NY premiere of “White House Down”. He’s dating a 20-year-old because he broke up with a 26-year-old after seven years together.

No Soup for You!: Shark fin soup is off the menu in California as of today. It is now illegal to own or sell shark fins, which were selling for as much as $2,000 a pound. The largely tasteless Asian soup was served as a symbol of power to Ming Dynasty emperors, but became a middle class status symbol. The ban was enacted to ease the slaughter of sharks, 70 million of which are killed every year. They are often thrown back into the ocean alive, minus their fins.

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