Gunman John Hinckley thought he’d wind up with Jodie Foster even after shooting President Ronald Reagan and being arrested. He now realizes that wasn’t meant to be and wishes the Academy Award winner well.

The 71-year-old attempted assassin was institutionalized until 2016 at St. Elizabeths Hospital after shooting the 40th president outside...Read more

Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday announced she is stepping down as White House press secretary, citing the demands on her time posed by being a mother of two.

Leavitt, 28, who is one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers, said she would leave the post at the end of the month. She recently returned from maternity leave after giving birth ...Read more

CHICAGO — Parts of Cook and Will counties were hit by another round of dangerous weather Wednesday, just a day after two tornadoes tore through Chicago’s southern suburbs.

The back-to-back storms this week are the latest in an unusually volatile year that has already brought a record-breaking number of tornadoes to Illinois. And with ...Read more

NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani laid the blame Wednesday on former Eric Adams Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro for his own step back from a highly controversial plan to shut down Lower Manhattan’s Elizabeth Street Garden to build affordable housing on the site.

During last year’s mayoral campaign, despite growing opposition, Mamdani backed ...Read more

MIAMI — A naturalized Cuban American woman in Miami is expected to lose her U.S. citizenship after a federal jury found she lied on an application form about her criminal history defrauding the nation’s healthcare system for the elderly.

Tania Rosa Rodriguez, 57, was found guilty last week of fraudulently obtaining her citizenship in 2018 ...Read more

NEW YORK — The gunman accused of spraying a Brooklyn Fourth of July cookout with gunfire isn’t just an alleged mass shooter — he’s also a puppy killer, prosecutors say.

Robert Smith, 44, fired a fatal bullet into the head of a 6-year-old boy’s beloved 10-week-old pup, Sky, when he opened fire on a crowd of about 50 people celebrating ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Prosecutors unsealed a murder indictment Wednesday against Nick Reiner in the fatal stabbing of his parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, inside the family’s Brentwood home last December.

Reiner, 32, made a brief appearance on the 13th floor of downtown Los Angeles’ criminal courts building on the newly released indictment, which...Read more

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina’s vaccine requirements won’t change ahead of the 2026-27 school year, state officials say, despite a new executive order from President Donald Trump that calls for looser childhood vaccine recommendations.

Trump’s order calls for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines — typically administered at the ...Read more

Tropical Storm Cristobal formed in the Atlantic on Wednesday as no threat to land, but the National Hurricane Center continued to track two other systems headed toward the Caribbean with a chance to develop into the season’s next tropical depression or storm.

As of 11 a.m. EDT, the center of Cristobal was located 880 miles west of the Azores ...Read more

DEARBORN, Mich. — One of the men who was videotaped assaulting an anti-Muslim activist during an Aug. 2 religious celebration is a convicted murderer and a "criminal alien from Iraq" who is in federal custody awaiting a deportation hearing, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Wednesday.

The incident happened during ...Read more

DENVER — Former University of Colorado Boulder professor Ward Churchill, a controversial symbol of academic freedom and free speech who was fired after comparing 9/11 victims to a notorious Nazi, has died, his former attorney confirmed. He was 78.

Ward died Tuesday in Atlanta of complications from a stroke, longtime friend and former attorney...Read more

GENEVA, Ohio, and JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. — Unburdened by a Congress on summer break, President Donald Trump on Tuesday watched his Patriot Games finale like a stoic Roman emperor.

But he was soon reminded that congressional business looms, and acknowledged the 80th Congress built a legal wall that could spell a dead end for his third-term ...Read more

MIAMI — A Miami-Dade judge is accusing her challenger of conspiring with politically connected individuals to send out text messages that attack her partiality as a judge — and falsely state she was a communist who hates the United States, according to a recently filed lawsuit.

Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Mavel Ruiz alleges in the ...Read more

The Trump administration again on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene — and fast — to save President Donald Trump’s plan for the U.S. Postal Service to place new nationwide limits on mail voting ahead of the November midterms.

It did so after a lower court judge blocked the Postal Service plan from moving forward for a ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Nick Reiner has been indicted in the killings of his parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, who were fatally stabbed inside the family’s Brentwood home last December.

Reiner, 32, made a brief appearance Wednesday on the 13th floor of downtown Los Angeles’ criminal courts building on the newly released indictment, which replaces ...Read more

Iran has reorganized its military to be more aggressive abroad as talks on ending the war with the U.S. remain mired in stalemate, a sign that Tehran is preparing for a protracted era of regional conflict.

A raft of top military appointments by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei marks a shift to an “offensive doctrine,” Mohammad Reza Naqdi, a ...Read more

The death toll from the powerful magnitude 7.4 earthquake that devastated western Colombia has risen to at least 254, according to the latest local and aggregated reports, as rescuers raced against time Wednesday to find people still alive beneath collapsed buildings.

More than 48 hours have passed since the earthquake struck Monday morning, ...Read more

CHICAGO — An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on Wednesday pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of battery for throwing a protester to the ground while he filmed the agent on his phone.

Adam Saracco, 41, entered the plea during a court appearance in Maywood and was sentenced to one year of supervision.

Saracco is thought to be the ...Read more

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could soon be equipped with gloves that deliver electric shocks to subdue suspected undocumented immigrants or protesters as they carry out President Donald Trump’s controversial mass deportation campaign.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to buy thousands of the gloves capable of zapping ...Read more

CHICAGO — A politically connected nonprofit at the center of a dispute with Mayor Brandon Johnson’s health department appealed to the mayor while competitively bidding for millions in city anti-violence funding, records show.

Acclivus Inc. CEO LeVon Stone sent then-Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Olusimbo Ige a “...Read more