LOS ANGELES — He was seeking a $500,000 donation from Jeffrey Epstein to boost research into how sound — like lullabies or a mother’s voice — could reduce pain, stress and heart rates among premature babies hospitalized in neonatal intensive care.

Dr. Mark Tramo, an adjunct professor of neurology at the UCLA David Geffen School of ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Victims of last year's wildfires in Los Angeles County who were unable to get mortgage relief under a state law enacted last year would get another chance with a stronger bill introduced Wednesday.

The legislation, AB 1847, by Assemblymember John Harabedian, D-Pasadena, would triple to 36 months the 12 months of mortgage relief...Read more

United Launch Alliance suffered yet another fiery burn-through on one of its solid rocket boosters during a national security mission Thursday.

The Vulcan rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 at 4:22 a.m. on the USSF-87 mission for the Space Force, ULA’s first launch of the year and only its ...Read more

Border czar Tom Homan Thursday declared an end to President Donald Trump’s tumultuous Minneapolis immigration crackdown and claimed victory despite the killings of two U.S. citizens by immigration agents in recent weeks.

The tough-talking immigration boss called the unpopular operation a “great success” after arresting at least 4,000 ...Read more

NEW YORK — More than three dozen advocacy and nonprofit groups are calling on the Mamdani administration to expand discounted bus and subway rides through the Fair Fares program — and to make all rides free for the poorest New Yorkers.

The consortium of groups — headlined by the Community Service Society, the Permanent Citizen’s ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — The Trump administration will phase out all federal immigration agents in Minnesota, border czar Tom Homan said Thursday, Feb. 12, bringing an end in sight to what’s been described as the largest immigration enforcement deployment in U.S. history.

Homan said a significant drawdown of federal agents in Minnesota has already ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Last year, LAPD leaders quietly brought on a temporary consultant to advise on how to give the department's battered public image a spit shine.

In a proposal reviewed by The Times, the consultant wrote that the LAPD's standing as "one of the most prominent and visible law enforcement agencies in the world" was on the line.

The ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Two days after her surprise entry into the Los Angeles mayor's race, Nithya Raman staked out her position on public safety, saying she doesn't want the Police Department to lose more officers.

"We need to maintain the size of our police force and grapple with the fact that even the size of our existing police force is not enough...Read more

In mid-2023, around the time Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as X but before he discontinued free academic access to the platform’s data, my colleagues and I looked for signs of social bot accounts posting content generated by artificial intelligence. Social bots are AI software that produce content and interact with people on social media. We ...Read more

Love and hate seem like obvious opposites. Love, whether romantic or otherwise, involves a sense of warmth and affection for others. Hate involves feelings of disdain. Love builds up, whereas hate destroys.

However, this description of love and hate treats them as merely emotions. As a religious ethicist, I am interested in the role ...Read more

Addiction is one of the most common and consequential chronic medical conditions in the United States. Nationwide, more than 46 million people met the criteria for a substance abuse disorder as of 2021, the most recent data available.

Decades of evidence show that addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease of the brain. Nonetheless, ...Read more

Thousands of Indian farmers gathered across the country from Punjab to Tamil Nadu to demonstrate against a long-awaited trade deal with the United States, an agreement that protesters say could hurt domestic agriculture.

Thursday’s rallies — which went ahead even after the U.S. watered down its language around the deal — underscore the ...Read more

Keir Starmer’s net favorability rating picked up in the aftermath of his leadership crisis this week, logging its highest reading since August, YouGov said.

The data shows the British public still holds a negative view of the prime minister, with just 22% saying they held a favorable view of Starmer, against 69% who see him unfavorably. That ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Five days after federal immigration enforcement agents killed the second of his constituents, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey had a message for his peers: Speak out.

“Mayors, we do not back down to bullies. We stand up for democracy,” Frey said in a speech last month in Washington, D.C., at a gathering of hundreds of mayors from...Read more

CHICAGO — The last time Mariely Rivera’s daughter was in her house, she got in her mother’s bed, laid down next to her and hugged her.

“Mom, I have made my decision,” her daughter said. “I’m going to go back with him.”

Stephanie Gutiérrez was 20 — an adult — and all her mother could do was ask her to think about what she ...Read more

Rebekah Stewart, a nurse at the U.S. Public Health Service, got a call last April that brought her to tears. She had been selected for deployment to the Trump administration’s new immigration detention operation at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

This posting combined Donald Trump’s longtime passion to use the offshore base to move “some bad dudes...Read more

CHICAGO -- Inside an Irving Park bungalow, kids raced barefoot through the dining room, zooming past paper chains taped to the ceiling. Some slouched in couch chairs, trading stories in a game of Dungeons & Dragons. Others lay on the hardwood floor, flipping through picture books.

Teacher Claire Jakubiszyn knelt beside a 7-year-old boy, ...Read more

SEATTLE — As artificial intelligence chatbots become better at mimicking human conversations, the potential for damage has grown, particularly for people who turn to them for mental health advice and to discuss plans to harm themselves.

State lawmakers and Gov. Bob Ferguson are seeking to add mental health safeguards to AI chatbots through ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — New polling shows Minnesotans and people across the country widely disapprove of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the state, a shift that’s turned his deportation campaign from a political strength into a potential liability ahead of the midterm elections.

Negative marks on Operation Metro Surge from ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The head of the L.A. 2028 Olympics committee.

A director of Hollywood hits.

An NFL owner.

A celebrity chef.

They are among the boldface names from Los Angeles who have emerged in the latest dump from the Epstein files.

The 3 million pages recently released by the Department of Justice have sent shock waves across the globe. ...Read more