A California appellate court has upheld a Santa Barbara judge’s order saying the Boy Scouts of America must surrender decades of confidential files detailing alleged child sex abuse.

A Scouts spokesman told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday that the organization will appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court.

A lawsuit alleges that a local Scouts official tried to keep a boy’s mother from reporting his 2007 abuse by a volunteer leader to police. The youth group denies the allegations.

In January, a Santa Barbara judge ordered all files since 1991 be turned over to the boy’s lawyers, but not the public.

The order involves different files than those made public in October by order of the Oregon Supreme Court. Those files ranged from 1959 to 1985.

New forecasting methods are helping Nebraska officials anticipate when they are at risk of a water shortage in the Republican River basin.

Regulators with the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources say the techniques they’ve used have evolved since 2007, when a state law was passed to require closer scrutiny of river flows and water storage in reservoirs.

The computer models are crucial to helping Nebraska stay in compliance with the Republican River Compact, a legally binding water-sharing agreement with Colorado and Kansas.

Nebraska Department of Natural Resources deputy director Jim Schneider says that, without the model, state regulators would have to be overly conservative with water usage in years when water is more abundant.

The forecast is predicting that Nebraska will face a water shortage next year.

Denver police say four people were set on fire during an attack at a home in the northwest part of the city.

Police spokesman Sonny Jackson says two men showed up at the front door at about 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Some words were exchanged, and a woman who answered the door was sprayed with a flammable liquid from a pump bug sprayer and set afire. Three other adults in the home also were sprayed with flammable liquid and set afire.

The woman suffered serious injuries and was transported to a hospital, while the other three suffered minor injuries.

Jackson says the matter is under investigation and a motive had not yet been determined.

The Denver Post reports the suspects were still at large.

The U.S. Geological Survey says a large earthquake has struck in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California and Mexico.

The quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6.4, was recorded at 2:36 a.m. (1036 GMT) Friday, 163 miles (262 kilometers) south southwest of the California city of Avalon and 167 miles west southwest of Rosarito, Mexico.

It was at the relatively shallow depth of 6.3 miles (10.1 kilometers).

No tsunami warning has been issued.

Anti-virus software founder John McAfee is holed up in Miami after weeks of evading Belizean authorities who want to question him in a homicide.

Shortly after McAfee arrived Wednesday evening on a flight from Guatemala, he announced on his website that he had alighted at a hotel in the city’s swank South Beach neighborhood.

McAfee was deported from the Central American country after sneaking in illegally. He crossed the border from Belize, where police want to question him in connection with the death of a U.S. expatriate who lived near him on an island off Belize’s coast.

McAfee says he did not kill the neighbor and feared his own life would be in danger if he turned himself in to Belizean authorities. He has not been charged with a crime.

A 6-year-old Texas boy whose father has been accused of carving a pentagram on the child’s back has been released from a hospital.

Richland Hills police Sgt. Nathan Stringer says officers planned to speak with the boy Thursday about the attack a day earlier. Police say the child’s father called 911 and said he inscribed a pentagram on his son because it was “a holy day.”

It is not clear which faith he was referring to. Wednesday’s date was 12-12-12, a once-in-a-century event.

Brent Troy Bartel was being held in jail on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Police say they plan to seek a mental evaluation.

Stringer says the child was discharged Wednesday night from a Fort Worth hospital. Details on his treatment weren’t immediately available.

Police have arrested a Lincoln woman they say beat her 14-year-old daughter after the girl tried to take her mother’s alcohol.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports that the 31-year-old woman faces a child abuse charge.

Police say the girl returned home after school on Monday to find her mother drinking and tried to take the alcohol. Officers say the mother hit her daughter 30 times in the face, neck and chest. Arresting officers say the woman’s blood alcohol level was more than three times the legal driving limit of .08.

The woman’s daughter and a 6-year-old child were taken into temporary protective custody.

Court documents say the mother has a history of alcoholism and leaving her children with others and not returning to pick them up.

The world’s most popular online mapping system returned late Wednesday with the release of the Google Maps’ iPhone app. The release comes nearly three months after Apple Inc. replaced Google Maps as the device’s built-in navigation system and inserted its own maps into the latest version of its mobile operating system.

Apple’s maps proved to be far inferior to Google’s. The product’s shoddiness prompted Apple CEO Tim Cook to issue a rare public apology and recommend that iPhone owners consider using Google maps through a mobile Web browser or seek other alternatives until his company could fix the problems.

Google Inc. says its new map app is better than the one that used to be on the iPhone.

A team of experts in suburban Chicago makes it a mission to get fragile items from online retailers to customers during the holidays and all year long.

Their lab looks like a torture chamber for cardboard and bubble wrap. It’s the UPS Package Design and Testing Lab in Addison where engineers test new packaging designs by dropping, shaking and smashing boxes with brutal-looking equipment.

A typical test takes four hours. Boxes get a 900-pound hug from the compression table. They crash 17 times from the drop tester. They endure the cruelty of the bridge impact tester. They shake for two hours on the vibration table, which mimics a bumpy truck ride

The point is to see what type of packaging can withstand the trip, protecting the products inside.

At least five newborns have come into the world with a little once-a-century good luck.

They arrived at 12:12 on 12-12-12.

Ohio’s WTTE-TV says Tiffaney and Joshua Diles of Chillicothe welcomed son, Austin Matthew, at 12:12 a.m. Wednesday.

Three girls and a boy clocked in 12 hours later.

Noelle Joy Klinker was born in Boston to parents Colleen and Joe Klinker.

In Fremont, Neb., Robin Heaton gave birth to daughter, Zoey.

The New York Post reports, an as yet unnamed baby girl was born to Michael and Olivia Patterson of Manhattan.

And the (Newark) Star-Ledger says Debbie and Joe Turner of Brick, N.J., who survived Superstorm Sandy, have their own little reminder — son Carson Hurricane Turner.