LOS ANGELES — The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department announced the capture and extradition of a Southern California man Wednesday, more than two months after he was accused of beating an elderly woman with a bat and fleeing the state.

Erik Navarro, 26, was taken into custody in Oklahoma on unrelated traffic charges. Detectives from ...Read more

RALEIGH, N.C. — Five detention officers at a North Carolina jail have been indicted on misdemeanor charges after allegedly allowing and facilitating a fight between two female inmates, according to court documents and interviews.

The five officers face the class-one misdemeanor charge of willfully failing to discharge duties by arranging a ...Read more

MIAMI — The Florida Department of Education reported a hack into the state’s student financial aid portal Thursday, potentially compromising millions of Floridians’ personal information such as Social Security numbers.

The department wrote in a release that the website FloridaStudentFinancialAidSG.org was the subject of the hack, referred...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The chief executive of the California's High Speed Rail Authority abruptly resigned late Wednesday amid intensifying scrutiny over cost overruns, project delays and wasteful expenses.

In a letter to authority executives Ian Choudri cited "personal and family priorities" for his decision to step down. Board chair Steve Kawa ...Read more

MIAMI — A man who gunned down a Colorado tourist inside a South Beach restaurant in front of his wife and baby will spend decades in a Florida prison, a judge said Thursday.

After hearing three days of testimony and argument, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Laura Stuzin sentenced Tamarius Blair Davis, 27, to 50 years in prison followed by 20 years ...Read more

The final stages of a decadeslong battle over contaminated drinking water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune are taking shape this week in a North Carolina federal court, where the first trial has begun and a mass settlement plan is in the works.

It’s been four years since Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed into law legislation ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Southern California coastal communities are bracing for more flooding Thursday and Friday as El Niño conditions keep water levels very high.

Unusually high tides that have brought flooding to low-lying areas in Southern California including Newport Beach and Long Beach may linger longer than initially predicted.

The National ...Read more

PAGE, Ariz. — Doug Herrera still lives in the house his father built, though his dad died some time ago from cancer. Herrera wonders if that illness could have been linked to pollutants from nearby uranium mining. Now, he worries that a possible new neighbor — a proposed $10 billion mega data center— could imperil his health.

“I’m a ...Read more

DENVER — Two college students who vanished in Colorado’s mountains over the weekend were found dead on Wednesday, sheriff’s officials said.

The bodies of Colorado Mountain College students Kaden Matsuda, 19, and Jackson Donlon, 20, were recovered from a basin of West Apostle Mountain at about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, the Chaffee County ...Read more

DENVER — The man who killed one woman and injured more than a dozen others in a firebombing on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall last year pleaded guilty to federal crimes Thursday.

Mohamed Soliman, 46, is already serving a life prison sentence after pleading guilty to more than 100 state crimes in connection with the June 1, 2025, attack. He ...Read more

CREVE COEUR, Mo. — Reneé Luckfield tries not to knock like a cop.

In fact, the 29-year-old spends a lot of time thinking about how to make strangers comfortable when she shows up at their door to talk about transgender healthcare. A syncopated “tap — tap-tap-tap” sounds friendly even when she knocks loudly. In each encounter, she masks...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge barred immigration agents in Southern California from stopping people simply because they are Latino or appear to be and are working class, finding evidence of an unwritten, “officially sanctioned” policy of racial profiling.

In her order granting a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to appear Friday in St. Cloud to hold a news conference related to the White House’s fraud task force.

The White House said Vance “will be making an announcement on the administration’s war on Fraud.”

Vance last visited Minnesota in the aftermath of the school shooting at ...Read more

MERIDIAN, Idaho — It didn’t take long for doctors to see that something was amiss with Rebecca Crozier’s pregnancy.

At her eight-week ultrasound in 2025, they mentioned a possible neural tube defect, she said, but after some research, she thought it was something that could be managed or treated.

“If it was a fixable problem, I was ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The chief executive of the state's high-speed rail authority abruptly resigned late Wednesday ahead of a critical board vote over a key portion of the route.

Ian Choudri took over in 2024 as scrutiny over the project intensified. Under Choudri, the project lost billions of dollars in federal funding. And recently, the authority'...Read more

LOS ANGELES — As a teen in Sri Lanka, Ray Jayawardhana wrote to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory asking about its Voyager and Viking missions. In response, he received a booklet with pictures of Jupiter and Saturn.

On Thursday, the astrophysicist who studies distant planets and writes about alien life will be installed as the California ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Staving off a battle over control of homeless services, Los Angeles County has agreed in principle to let the city of Los Angeles control who gets placed in city shelters and housing.

The agreement, approved by the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday after City Council approval Friday, settled a long-standing complaint from ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — California voters are souring on a Nov. 3 ballot measure to impose a one-time tax on billionaires to help fund healthcare programs, a proposal that has triggered one of the most expensive political battles in state history.

Half of likely voters plan to vote against Proposition 40, the proposed wealth tax on billionaires' assets...Read more

WASHINGTON — A California federal judge denied the Justice Department’s effort to have California set aside about 20,000 ballots of alleged noncitizen voters Wednesday, finding that the Trump administration sought to take over the state’s election process.

The ruling from Judge David O. Carter of the U.S. District Court for the District ...Read more

Israel’s election monitor called for an investigation into possible meddling by foreign entities, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some far-right allies decried the high turnout among Arab citizens.

The head of the Central Elections Committee wrote to Shin Bet — Israel’s domestic intelligence agency — asking it to look into ...Read more