LOS ANGELES — Neighbors described a horrifying scene as a man who police say catfished a teenage girl arrived at her family’s home in Riverside on Friday, killing three relatives, and then leaving with her and the home on fire.

Neighbors said Monday that they saw the suspect’s vehicle parked a few doors from the house and heard arguing ...Read more

BOSTON — Police are now saying they found four dead babies in the South Boston house that drew a huge police presence and accompanying cascade of rumors earlier this month.

Police wrote in an update Monday night — in the sort of brief yet unsettling missive that’s become a hallmark of this case — that the state Office of the Medical ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A Senate bill protecting same-sex marriage cleared another procedural hurdle on Monday night, with passage of the legislation expected on Tuesday.

The 61-35 vote allows the Senate to move ahead with an amendment to the measure that ensures it doesn’t infringe on religious rights and protections.

The Respect for Marriage Act ...Read more

DEARBORN, Mich. — Police have identified one of the women involved in a Sunday shootout with police on the Detroit-Dearborn border and the human remains found in the back of the car, which has been linked to a Tennessee mother who was reported missing 10 days ago.

Eleni Kassa, a 31-year-old woman missing from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was ...Read more

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s iconic Great Barrier Reef is once again at risk of being categorized as endangered, after the United Nations reported ongoing threats to the natural wonder including pollution and climate-fueled bleaching.

A monitoring mission sent to Queensland in March to study the dangers to the Great Barrier Reef found ...Read more

Elon Musk has tweeted that Donald Trump will be reinstated on Twitter, but the former president isn’t backing down in his legal fight against the social media platform, according to his lawyer.

Without an agreement on terms to end the court dispute, Trump has no plan to withdraw his appeal of a May ruling that dismissed his challenge to the ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Supreme Court official said he sees no indication Justice Samuel Alito violated ethics rules after a New York Times story said a 2014 dinner party at the justice’s home allegedly produced a leak about the outcome of a major case over religious rights and contraceptives.

In a letter to two Democratic lawmakers, Supreme ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump can’t claim presidential immunity to avoid a lawsuit that accuses him of civil rights violations in his efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 election, a federal judge ruled Monday.

Trump had argued that he was “absolutely immune” from damages for actions within the “outer perimeter” of his official...Read more

BALTIMORE — After saying it would not oppose the release of a report detailing decades of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Maryland, the Archdiocese of Baltimore is helping to pay lawyers for an anonymous group that’s asked a city judge to keep secret arguments over whether to make the document public.

A spokesperson for the ...Read more

Four schools in the University of California system have repeatedly failed to return sacred Native American artifacts to tribes in a timely manner, according to a new state audit.

UC system campuses in Riverside, Berkeley, Santa Barbara and San Diego have historically struggled to inventory and repatriate massive Native American collections, ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Harvey Weinstein will not testify in his own defense at his Los Angeles rape trial, and his attorneys are expected to wrap their case Wednesday, meaning the disgraced mogul's fate could be in the hands of jurors by the end of the week.

Attorney Mark Werksman said he plans to call only six witnesses, four of whom completed their ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A Senate bill protecting same-sex marriage cleared another procedural hurdle on Monday night, with passage of the legislation expected as soon as this week.

The 61-35 vote allows the Senate to move ahead with an amendment to the measure that ensures it doesn’t infringe on religious rights and protections.

The Respect for ...Read more

DENVER — The mother of the person suspected of a mass shooting inside a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub was detained the day after the shooting, court records filed Monday show.

Colorado Springs police detained and ticketed Laura Voepel, 45, on Nov. 20 on suspicion of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct for unreasonable noise, online ...Read more

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — It’s that time of year again: White sharks, just like snowbirds, have started heading south for the weather. They’re turning toward Florida’s waters after spending the summer off Cape Cod and Nova Scotia, hunting seals and tuna.

Several sharks have begun pinging off South Florida, as part of a tagging study by ...Read more

FORT WORTH, Texas — At recent hearings about the killing of Atatiana Jefferson, her neighbor James Smith has frequently been seen outside the courthouse with a banner reading, “We want justice!”

Smith has said he keeps reliving the morning of Oct. 12, 2019, when he called Fort Worth police to ask that they check on his neighbor’s home ...Read more

Houston’s citywide water outage stemmed from the failure of two electrical transformers at a key treatment complex that prevented officials from turning on backup generators.

The outage that shuttered schools, delayed surgeries and forced some restaurants and other businesses to close their doors in the fourth-largest U.S. city on Monday may...Read more

ATLANTA — A Fulton County Superior Court judge on Monday threw out a grand jury indictment against six current and former detention officers who were charged with murder in connection with the 2018 death of a Fulton County Jail detainee.

The jailers were also charged with aggravated assault, battery and violation of oath of office after ...Read more

NEW YORK — Trump Organization lawyers rested their case Monday as a Manhattan judge chewed them out for throwing “anything and everything” at a jury as they heard remaining evidence in the tax fraud case.

The last witness on the stand for the former president’s company was Donald Bender, a partner at Mazars USA LLP, who testified about ...Read more

DENVER — Colorado Springs police on Monday revised the number of victims of the Club Q mass shooting to include an additional four people who were injured.

The mass shooting unfolded late Nov. 19 at the LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs. Five people were killed in the attack. Another 17 people were shot and survived, and five more people were ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a state education licensing board inappropriately denied a teaching license "for immoral character or conduct" to the ex-police officer who killed Philando Castile during a 2016 traffic stop.

In its 21-page decision, the appeals court ruled that the Minnesota Professional Educator...Read more