The pause on Paramount Skydance Corp.’s $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. has been extended two weeks to Aug. 17 by the federal judge in California overseeing multiple challenges to the deal.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued the extension Thursday. She’s still scheduled to hold a hearing Aug. 3 on ...Read more

For months, mystery swirled around a 37-year-old Carlsbad woman found dead in the backcountry of Big Sur with a cut on her forehead and markings around her neck.

Hikers came across Joanna Ruth Shields' body in a pool of water near Sykes Hot Springs on April 9, and rescue teams recovered her from the remote area of the Los Padres National Forest...Read more

SAN DIEGO — With three water-dropping helicopters and 300 firefighters assigned for Thursday, crews were making steady progress against the Creelman fire in Ramona, and by mid-morning the more than 1,500 people who had evacuated a day before were allowed to return home.

Fire officials reported that forward progress of the fire was halted ...Read more

Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration is significantly reducing staffing at a long-troubled downstate center for people with mental health issues and developmental disabilities, state and union officials said Thursday.

A statement from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, which represents employees at the ...Read more

U.S. President Donald Trump assured Philippine leader Ferdinand Marcos Jr. that he would take up Manila’s concerns when he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Southeast Asian nation said.

Trump gave the assurance during a phone call with Marcos on Thursday evening, where they discussed the current global, economic and security ...Read more

Tropical Storm Bertha made its second landfall in two days after skirting Louisiana’s Gulf Coast and coming ashore near the border with Texas on Thursday, then weakened to a tropical depression, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The system made its first landfall Wednesday at 3 p.m. EDT with 45 mph sustained winds in St. Bernard ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump threatened to step up strikes on Iran and said he’d hold the country responsible for any further attacks by the Yemen-based Houthis on Red Sea ships, as the widening Middle East war puts new strain on global energy supplies.

Trump told Axios in an interview that he’s considering a “massive attack” ...Read more

NEW YORK — An armed man screaming “Allahu Akbar” wounded two strangers, one a Jewish man, in a wild stabbing spree on Manhattan’s Upper West Side before cops arrested him at a nearby building Thursday, police said.

Cops were trying to determine why the suspect, identified as 51-year-old Raul Morales, targeted his two victims and if the ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The U.S. will collect duties of between 10% and 12.5% on imports from most major trading partners, its biggest move yet to reconstruct President Donald Trump’s tariff wall that was pierced by the Supreme Court.

The new levies follow an investigation into the alleged failure of around 60 economies to prevent forced labor in ...Read more

Two Nevada congressmen have introduced legislation to make prediction market contracts that resemble sports wagers illegal.

A bipartisan effort by Reps. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., and Mark Amodei, R-Nev., would stop federally regulated trading platforms from offering sports betting and casino-style gambling under the guise of financial products. ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Vance Boelter sat like a statue as his victims exposed the raw wounds with which he left them after he carried out the most shocking act of political violence in Minnesota history.

In a federal courtroom, before Boelter was sentenced to two consecutive life prison sentences plus 40 years for killing Rep. Melissa and Mark Hortman...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Political assassin Vance Boelter will spend the rest of his life in federal prison for the targeted shootings of two DFL state lawmakers at their homes a year ago, crimes the prosecution said Thursday at his sentencing “are among the most serious ever committed in the state of Minnesota and the country.”

Boelter’s murder ...Read more

The former top federal prosecutor in Tacoma, who was fired by President Donald Trump within only an hour of assuming the vacant job, is alleging his removal is unconstitutional and suing the Trump administration, court records show.

Roger Rogoff, a former King County Superior Court judge and prosecutor, filed the federal lawsuit in the Western ...Read more

MIAMI — Miami-Dade has resumed control of the former Alligator Alcatraz immigration detention camp, returning to the county a remote airfield previously used as a small airport for training landings and take-offs, the county’s Aviation Department confirmed on Thursday.

The news comes roughly a year after Gov. Ron DeSantis seized the Dade-...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in Santa Clarita has issued a warning on Facebook that the latest nationwide TikTok social media challenge has begun to hit close to home.

According to the agency, the latest TikTok challenge involves teenagers recording themselves attempting to “kick in the front doors of homes ...Read more

Haiti remains mired in a lawless miasma even as the U.S. is threatening to force hundreds of thousands of people who fled the Caribbean nation back home, after the Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump can terminate their special immigration status.

Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said this week that “wannabe ...Read more

Six contenders vying to be the next United Nations secretary-general argued their case to lead the world body at a time when conflicts in Iran, Gaza and Ukraine, as well as divisions among global powers, have deepened concerns about its effectiveness.

“I would like to see a UN that is back at the table on the scenarios of conflict,” Rebeca ...Read more

More than one-third of American households rely on natural gas stoves to prepare their meals.

Burning natural gas generates carbon dioxide, which is the main driver of climate change. But cooking on gas stoves is also an under-recognized and important source of indoor air pollution. Combustion of natural gas creates nitrogen dioxide ...Read more

It’s been four years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the federal constitutional right to abortion.

In the immediate aftermath of the decision, national attention centered on implementation of state bans and a rapidly shifting legal landscape.

...Read more