BOSTON — The Department of Justice is sending election monitors to two Massachusetts cities this year for the September primary, with the Bay State among five other states where federal monitors will be observing voter activity.

The directive was announced this week by Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division Harmeet ...Read more

Keir Starmer’s swan-song trip as Britain’s prime minister to the NATO summit this week sought to cement a shaky diplomatic legacy for a successor who’s untested in the international arena.

British diplomats spent the weeks leading up to the gathering in Ankara, Turkey, fretting that no leader would want to meet the outgoing premier, and ...Read more

The U.S. military attacked Iran for a second day and Tehran retaliated against American allies in the Persian Gulf, raising fears of a return to war after little progress in efforts to secure a diplomatic outcome.

U.S. Central Command said on X about 90 targets were hit overnight — after 80 the previous day — “to further degrade” Iran�...Read more

MIAMI — Palm Beach International Airport is now Donald J. Trump International Airport, after the formal name change took effect Thursday — but the airport will only see a partial makeover since Palm Beach County was left holding the bag to pay for the presidential tribute.

Late last year, county staff raised a slew of safety, financial and ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — A SpaceX Falcon 9 launch using a booster that has now flown three dozen times created a “space jellyfish” effect in the predawn skies over Florida on Thursday.

The rocket lifted off at 5:25 a.m. from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 on the Starlink 10-42 mission with 29 more of the company’s...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — The first week of July has typically been one of Philadelphia’s most violent, with recent Independence Day weekends marked by mass shootings, police officers shot, and bursts of violence that left a dozen dead.

But this year, amid a dramatic decline in violence and a flood of visitors to the city, the holiday weekend was ...Read more

President Donald Trump denied this week that he had instructed Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado not to return to her country after last month’s devastating earthquakes, distancing himself from reports that the administration had sought to block the opposition leader’s efforts to reenter the country.

“Oh, no, no, no, not ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The return of the wolf in California has been met with joy by conservationists, who delight in the improbable population rebound, and with fury by ranchers who bemoan the toll on their cattle.

Now, a new study on the diet of gray wolves suggests that the population regrowth is a result of the animals feasting on cattle, as their...Read more

The U.S. military struck Iran for a second day and Tehran retaliated against American allies in the Persian Gulf, raising fears of a return to war after little progress in efforts to secure a diplomatic outcome.

U.S. Central Command said on X it hit about 90 targets on Wednesday — after 80 the previous day — “to further degrade” the ...Read more

When the Pentagon cut roughly 180 faiths from its religious affiliation codes, shrinking the list from more than 200 categories to 31 in May 2026, it folded “Native American religion” into the broader category of “other religion” – one of many faiths the change pushes out of the military’s view.

As a scholar of Native ...Read more

In the annals of Supreme Court decisions, the public likely remembers what justices wrote for the court in famous cases, such as the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that outlawed racial segregation in public schools.

Or perhaps the public remembers great dissenting opinions that display foresight and speak across the ages. Justice ...Read more

The murder rate in 2025 was the lowest in modern American history.

Preliminary data shows the murder rate fell nearly 20% from 2024, likely making it the lowest rate since reliable national data began to be collected in 1960.

Why was the murder rate so low?

I’m a currentnews/newsheadlines/s-4248522">Read more

For decades, Californians have generally said that immigrants, who make up more than a quarter of the state’s population and a third of its labor force, are beneficial to the state and its economy. But budget instability and concerns about rising costs are spilling into a debate over the controversial and expensive policy of allowing low-...Read more

In the 1970s and 80s, dirt bikes buzzed around its fragile landscape, creating erosion and noise. In the early 1990s, a developer planned to build 217 luxury homes there.

Now, a scenic oceanfront property with public hiking trails, bobcats, foxes and sweeping views of California's San Mateo coast, Farallon Islands and the Marin Headlands could ...Read more

President Donald Trump has shown the immense power of the executive branch to stymie offshore wind development, as nearly all projects are in waters where federal agencies operate as the landlord.

Now, as the feds block new permits and dangle billion-dollar buyout offers to convince developers to walk away from their projects, state leaders are...Read more

By this point in a typical election year, federal intelligence officials would have briefed Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon and other election officials on emerging threats to the November election.

Simon would have joined federal agencies in rehearsing responses to worst-case scenarios, from foreign cyberattacks and bomb threats to ...Read more

COLUMBIA, S.C. — She’s a judge.

He’s a crook.

Not just any crook but South Carolina’s most notorious criminal, convicted of major financial crimes and facing a retrial in an infamous double-murder case.

She'll preside at that retrial.

But long before the name of Alex Murdaugh became a synonym for villainy, the paths of Judge Debra ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Mariana Yepez climbed the ranks of the Los Angeles street food scene before building her own taco empire.

A native of Sonora, Mexico, Yepez and her husband toiled at various food trucks and restaurants until 2018, when they launched a series of stands named after their daughter: Ricos Tacos Naomi.

Serving up heaps of fatty ...Read more

Jude Pare and his partner, Diane Tix, live in rural Minnesota until temperatures dip below freezing, when they take refuge in Arizona for the winter. While away, their mail is forwarded. But Pare, 77, said he didn’t receive any warning from his Medicare prescription drug plan that his $0 monthly premium was about to increase.

So he didn’t ...Read more