LOS ANGELES — In their opening statement, prosecutors told a federal jury on Wednesday that Jonathan Rinderknecht, driven by a desire for revenge against society, used a lighter to intentionally set what would eventually become the most destructive wildfire in Los Angeles history.

Rinderknecht's defense attorney countered that his client, a ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Ten months after his parents were assassinated, Colin Hortman met privately with members of the Minnesota House to deliver a message that some lawmakers needed to hear again.

Hortman hoped his visit to the chamber where his mother once presided would help slow the growth of vitriolic political rhetoric. Legislators who had vowed...Read more

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is testifying before the U.S. House oversight committee Wednesday, as part of a broader investigation into the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The committee requested a closed-door interview with Gates in March, months after millions of documents retrieved from Epstein's estate revealed correspondence ...Read more

DETROIT — Federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment Wednesday against eight people linked to the University of Michigan accused of orchestrating plans to threaten university leaders, police and businesses with a wave of crimes designed to force the university to sever ties with Israel.

The 63-page indictment accuses the defendants of using ...Read more

MIAMI — Robert Brutto was working as a Miami-Dade Police Department marine patrol officer during the early evening of Sept. 4, 2022, when he and his colleagues received the call that there was a horrific boat accident near Elliott Key in Biscayne Bay.

Brutto, now retired from what is now the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, left from the ...Read more

Nearly 200 residents at the St. Joseph’s Center nursing home in the affluent Connecticut suburb of Trumbull were evacuated last year after Legionella bacteria was found in the facility’s water system. Two months later, they were evacuated again over critical failures in the building’s fire safety systems.

Three years earlier, residents at...Read more

NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani reiterated his support for a ban on carriage horses in Central Park on Wednesday, just hours after a horse collapsed and died in the park at West 72nd Street and West Drive on Tuesday evening — and as a bill on the controversial issue heads back to the City Council.

“I know that many New Yorkers were ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — And so it begins. The National Hurricane Center posted in its tropical outlook Wednesday the first system with a chance to form into the season’s initial tropical depression or storm in the Atlantic basin.

The NHC’s 8 a.m. forecast notes a broad area of low pressure could form over the Bay of Campeche late this week.

“...Read more

DETROIT — Federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment Wednesday against eight people linked to the University of Michigan accused of orchestrating plans to threaten university leaders, police, and businesses with a wave of crimes designed to force the university to sever ties with Israel.

The 63-page indictment accuses the defendants of using ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Minneapolis officials say the Trump administration’s federal immigration crackdown cost the city, residents and businesses nearly $700 million, according to their latest estimates.

That’s up from mid-February, when city officials estimated Operation Metro Surge caused more than $203 million in damage to Minneapolis in the ...Read more

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump said Iran would “pay the price” for delaying negotiations for an interim peace deal, after renewed attacks overnight put further strain on a fragile two-month truce.

“They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price,” Trump ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — It might whir like an e-bike and look like an e-bike, but that electric cycle sitting in the garage might not technically be an e-bike, or even be street legal, in California.

E-bikes have zoomed into popularity across the country, especially among kids and teens, and that surge has been met with a wide array of models with ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — Just after 7 a.m. nearly 10 years ago, Orlando police recounted to the public the first details of the horror that unfolded overnight while much of the city slept, reporting that 20 people had been killed at Pulse nightclub.

Mayor Buddy Dyer, recounting his earliest memories of Orlando’s darkest day, said authorities knew at...Read more

Most people think they are open-minded and would like others to perceive them as such. But for the things that matter most – religious beliefs, for example, or the meaning of life – few of us are genuinely willing to consider that we might be wrong, let alone do the hard work of revising beliefs. At a fundamental level, we humans are ...Read more

For many dads, talking with their teenager about sex and relationships can feel like a minefield.

Popular culture doesn’t provide many good examples of how to have these conversations, and many fathers didn’t have these conversations at all with their own fathers.

For instance, in a 2021 study from Australia, 65% of ...Read more

When Americans think about campaign finance, they usually picture wealthy donors, political action committees and super PACs pouring money into elections.

But some of the most revealing money moves happen inside Congress itself.

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives routinely give campaign money to fellow members of ...Read more