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When she was a 10-year-old foster child, Withelma “T” Ortiz often rode a public bus around the San Francisco Bay area, alone.

She’d frequent a bus stop by a barber shop. Little by little, the barber, who was...Read more

JACUMBA HOT SPRINGS, Calif. — For the last three months, residents in this remote border community in southeastern San Diego County have seen their population nearly double, climbing from 600 to 1,200 as migrants from around the globe cross over from Mexico.

They cross into the punishing desert terrain at a point where the 30-foot steel ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Six months after Bradley Earl Reger was arrested in Susanville amid allegations he may have molested children worldwide, more than a dozen men who say they are victims have filed suit against him, school and church organizations and others accused of failing to protect them.

The 64-page lawsuit, filed in Sacramento ...Read more

Anti-abortion groups are firing off a warning shot for 2024: We’re not going anywhere.

Their leaders say they’re undeterred by recent election setbacks and plan to plow ahead on what they’ve done for years, including working through state legislatures, federal agencies, and federal courts to outlaw abortion. And at least one prominent ...Read more

Hamas has turned over 12 more hostages — 10 Israelis and two Thai citizens — to the Red Cross, according to the Israeli prime minister’s office, despite earlier competing claims of violations of the deal that brought their war to a temporary pause.

Red Cross representatives transferred the 12 freed hostages to Egypt, and they were later ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Congressional negotiators on Tuesday were poised to abandon plans to use the annual defense policy bill to tighten controls on U.S. investment in Chinese technology, according to people familiar with the discussions.

House Financial Services Chairman Patrick McHenry is effectively blocking a measure that would require firms to ...Read more

A former corrections officer at an Otay Mesa prison pleaded guilty Tuesday to accepting bribes from a prisoner and his brothers as part of a scheme to smuggle into the prison a gold and diamond "grill" for the man's teeth.

Benito Jamar Hugie, 49, pleaded guilty to a charge involving a bribery conspiracy, as did the prisoner, Shawn Brown, and ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — The University of Pennsylvania plans to continue offering CAR-T therapy, a cancer treatment pioneered at Penn, after the Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday an investigation into whether the treatment may cause cancer in rare cases.

Chimeric antigen receptor T cell, CAR-T, therapy has been hailed as a breakthrough ...Read more

Utah Republican Celeste Maloy, a former House aide who was elected last week in a special election to fill former Rep. Chris Stewart’s seat, was sworn in Tuesday night, bringing the chamber up to its full 435-member capacity for the first time since June.

Maloy is the only woman in Utah’s congressional delegation and the fifth in the state�...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — Orange County may be on the hook to pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars in state funds if it inherits property from the soon-to-be dissolved onePulse Foundation, county commissioners were told Tuesday in the latest messy revelation from the struggling effort to memorialize the Pulse nightclub tragedy.

The organization is...Read more

France is banning smoking at beaches, public parks, forests and certain other public spaces, notably those in close to schools, the country’s Health Minister Aurélien Rousseau unveiled Tuesday.

The goal of the measures is to usher in a “tobacco-free generation by 2032” and to curb the staggering toll of 75,000 tobacco-related deaths ...Read more

DENVER — Nathan Woodyard, one of three police officers indicted in connection with the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, returned to work at the Aurora Police Department and will receive more than $212,546 in back pay after he was acquitted earlier this month of all charges.

Woodyard asked to be reintegrated into the police department, which is ...Read more

Rupert Murdoch, the former chairman of Fox and News Corp., is set to be deposed Tuesday and Wednesday in connection with the $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed by voting technology company Smartmatic.

The suit alleges that Fox News and its parent company were responsible for amplifying damaging lies about the 2020 U.S. presidential election,...Read more

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden’s campaign seized on Donald Trump’s call to overturn Obamacare, using it to cast the Republican as a threat to Americans’ health benefits ahead of a likely rematch with the president.

“The former president reminded us that he is hellbent on destroying the Affordable Care Act,” former House Speaker Nancy ...Read more

BOISE, Idaho — Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador has asked a court to allow the state to enforce its ban on out-of-state travel for abortions while a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality proceeds.

In a Tuesday court filing, Labrador’s office asked the U.S. District Court of Idaho to allow him to enforce the state’s law after a ...Read more

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Amid the anger and rage directed at Alex Murdaugh in a Beaufort County courtroom Tuesday, some victims spoke of forgiveness.

Of the five victims who delivered impact statements to Judge Clifton Newman in the Beaufort County Courthouse, three said they had forgiven Murdaugh for pocketing money stolen from legal settlements and...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The parents of a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy have filed a claim signaling they plan to sue the county, alleging that their son was forced to work so much overtime that he was too fatigued to stay alert and avoid threats such as the mentally ill 29-year-old who gunned him down outside the Palmdale station in September.

...Read more

DETROIT — Paul Whelan, a Michigan resident who is currently serving a 16-year sentence in a Russian prison, was attacked Tuesday afternoon by a fellow prisoner, Whelan's brother David told supporters in an email.

Whelan has been detained in Russia for five years on an espionage conviction, which he and U.S. officials say was trumped up and ...Read more

BOISE, Idaho — A group of environmental organizations has submitted a petition to the federal government to ban wolf killing by shooting from helicopters, calling the practice “barbaric.”

The Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project and International Wildlife Coexistence Network in Tuesday news releases said they were ...Read more