BOSTON — Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s financial chief urged the City Council to stick to an $8-9 million budget amendment package proposed by the Council’s Ways and Means chair, warning that further changes would lead to city layoffs.

Chief Financial Officer Ashley Groffenberger said amendments proposed by councilors other than Ways and ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Since its creation more than a century ago, the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting has been in the lamppost business and little else.

But in recent months, the little-known city agency has found itself pulled into a fierce debate over L.A.'s relationship with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company that has been ...Read more

MIAMI — The Miami Police Department is investigating threats against City Commissioner Miguel Angel Gabela that appeared in the comment section of a recent video posted to Instagram by filmmaker Billy Corben.

The investigation lands amid ongoing tensions between Gabela and Corben, who has posted several videos to Instagram in recent weeks ...Read more

NEW YORK — When the games are on, the bars will be open.

With the FIFA World Cup just around the corner, Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday signed a bill allowing bars across New York to stay open until 4 a.m. for the duration of the tournament. The competition runs from June 11 through July 20 and will feature more than 100 matches across the ...Read more

Wildland firefighters are exposed to a mix of harmful chemicals in the smoke they breathe and the ash and soot that gets on their clothing. Over long assignments fighting fires that can last for days to weeks, those chemicals can be absorbed by their skin.

Some of those chemicals are carcinogens. A 2025 study found that firefighters ...Read more

Early summer is a valuable time for parents and young people to prepare for the transition to college in the fall.

As first-year college students arrive on campus every fall, a predictable pattern unfolds. Rates of heavy drinking spike, social pressures intensify, and the risk of sexual assault, injury and other harms increases.

...Read more

While visiting family in St. Petersburg, Florida, in November 2024, I found myself walking down a quiet residential street in Shore Acres, a low-lying, bayfront neighborhood not far from where I grew up.

Two months earlier, Hurricane Helene had sent several feet of water into homes here, even though the center of the storm had stayed ...Read more

Summer is here – the perfect time to take a walk on a beach. But doing so is not always as simple as it might sound.

In Wisconsin, for instance, a legal case has stretched for months over whether Paul Florsheim may keep walking on a Lake Michigan beach he has walked for over 50 years.

In July 2025, Florsheim, a retired ...Read more

As wildfire researchers warn that some communities do not have enough roads to evacuate safely, they are also raising a fraught question: Should fire-risk neighborhoods have designated refuge areas for people who cannot get out?

A new study that found wildfire deaths in California and across the U.S. between 2008 and 2024 were concentrated in ...Read more

Congress is looking to roll back state animal welfare laws as it wrangles over reauthorization of the federal farm bill.

The farm bill, which Congress generally reworks every five years, includes money and federal rules for food assistance programs, farm subsidies, and other ag-related programs.

A pending version of the legislation includes ...Read more

TAMPA, Fla. — Arshia Esmaeilian had dreamed of coming to America as long as he could remember.

Esmaeilian and his brother were born in Iran but raised in Dubai, their parents believing the move could pave a more direct path to higher education in the West.

And it did. Esmaeilian graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry last month ...Read more

SOCIAL CIRCLE, Ga. — Until recently, this rural city about 45 minutes east of Atlanta was best known for its Blue Willow Inn cookbooks featuring recipes for Southern dishes such as baked pineapple casserole and kudzu blossom jelly.

Lately, however, the community has been trying to stave off a new identity of "prison town" as it fights the ...Read more

The Charlotte City Council voted unanimously Monday to implement a 150-day moratorium on data centers after months of debate over how to handle the increasingly controversial projects.

Council members say the plan will give them time to learn more about the facilities and consider how to approach future data center developments within the ...Read more

President Xi Jinping vowed to expand China’s trade, agriculture and technology cooperation with North Korea, while avoiding public mentions of its neighbor’s nuclear program in a meeting with Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang.

In comments made Monday in the North Korean capital, Xi pledged “unwavering support” for Kim, saying China is ready to �...Read more

DENVER — Geo Group, the private prison company that operates Colorado’s sole immigrant detention center, filed a lawsuit Monday challenging a just-signed state law that requires more regular inspections of detention facilities in Colorado.

The suit, filed in federal court in Denver, seeks to invalidate House Bill 1276, which Gov. Jared ...Read more