LOS ANGELES — A federal judge has blocked the FBI from confiscating some of the valuables it seized from safe deposit boxes at a Beverly Hills business, saying the government appeared to be violating the owners' rights.

The temporary restraining order issued Tuesday by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner marked a setback for the FBI in its ...Read more

A civil rights lawsuit brought against the St. Charles County Regional SWAT team by three Al Jazeera America journalists who were tear-gassed during the Ferguson protests of 2014 has settled for $280,000.

The international outlet was preparing a live broadcast related to the protests centered on Michael Brown's shooting death by St. Louis ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — More than a year after he murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes in the street, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin will face sentencing Friday for the crime that shocked the world and hastened discussions about racial equity and police reform.

Chauvin's sentencing in Hennepin County...Read more

The president of Haiti's highest court has died, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse confirmed in a tweet Wednesday.

Supreme Court Judge René Sylvestre, who had tested positive for COVID-19, died Wednesday at the University Hospital of Mirebalais.

"The news of the death deeply saddens me, all members of the judiciary," Moïse said.

He described...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Republicans' push for voter ID and a provisional ballot system appears to have failed at the Minnesota Capitol, and Democrats' hopes to expand voter access and felon voting rights have fallen by the wayside, too.

A deal on the bill that helps fund elections — among many other aspects of state government — leaves out ...Read more

More than 1 million adults in the U.S. identify as nonbinary, according to a groundbreaking new study published Tuesday by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, the nation’s leading research center on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy.

Analyzing data on characteristics and demographics of LGBTQ adults in the...Read more

WASHINGTON — Senators negotiating a bipartisan infrastructure plan with the White House will meet Thursday with President Joe Biden to present an outline for a roughly $579 billion compromise package of spending on roads, bridges and other projects.

“We have a framework,” Republican Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, one of the 10 senators ...Read more

MIAMI — A public corruption investigation that took root in a single Miami-Dade legislative race has roped in prominent players across Florida over the last several months, including a GOP-linked research firm in Gainesville, a top not-for-profit Miami hospital network and a veteran Republican operative who leads a Tallahassee-based political ...Read more

CHICAGO — Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband, said in Chicago Wednesday that as he’s traveled the country in recent months to talk up vaccination efforts he hasn’t once heard people talk about getting inoculated in political terms.

The 56-year-old former entertainment attorney’s stop in Chicago is ...Read more

John McAfee, the creator of the eponymous antivirus software, was found dead Wednesday in prison outside Barcelona, according to the Associated Press. He was 75.

In recent years, McAfee became a prominent booster of cryptocurrencies, ran unsuccessfully for U.S. president, had numerous run-ins with the law and traded in extreme conspiracy ...Read more

WASHINGTON — U.S. negotiators are prepared to return to a seventh round of indirect talks with Iran on re-entering on 2015 nuclear deal once the leadership in Tehran is ready, a senior administration official said.

President Joe Biden’s negotiating team, led by Iran envoy Robert Malley, could return to talks in Vienna as early as next week,...Read more

NEW YORK — A Chicago banker tried to land a cushy Trump administration job by offering $16.5 million in loans to ex-Donald Trump campaign manager and ‘fixer’ Paul Manafort, a Manhattan federal prosecutor told jurors Wednesday.

The banker, Stephen Calk, aspired to a Cabinet post or ambassadorship, the feds say. But he blew his job ...Read more

The Madison Schools parents who sued the district over armed staff are relieved the Ohio Supreme Court ruled extensive peace officer training is required, a decision that encompasses every school district statewide.

A group of parents sued Madison Schools in September 2018 seeking an injunction blocking the district from allowing teachers and ...Read more

WASHINGTON — John Warner embodied the Senate’s most patrician principles: compromise in the face of intransigence, conviction in the face of political consequence, and a sense of comity and duty to his fellow countrymen.

Washington’s old guard eulogized Warner at the National Cathedral on Wednesday and with him, perhaps, the institutional...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Police Department has launched an internal investigation into its officers’ communications with the Amazon-owned security company Ring, after a Los Angeles Times report revealed the camera maker provided at least 100 officers free devices or discounts and encouraged them to promote the products to colleagues and...Read more

WASHINGTON — Get rid of the filibuster, insists Sen. Alex Padilla. His California colleague, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, isn’t so sure.

“Alex Padilla would have given up the filibuster to move forward on voting rights, climate change, immigration reform and more,” he told The Sacramento Bee this week.

Feinstein, a senator since 1992, was ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A member of the Oath Keepers agreed to cooperate with U.S. prosecutors investigating an alleged plot by the far-right group to storm the Capitol, on the same day that a 49-year-old grandmother who spent 10 minutes in the building avoided a prison term.

Graydon Young, of Englewood, Florida, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The top uniformed officer hit back at allegations that the U.S. military is being indoctrinated with so-called critical race theory and seminars about white anger after two Florida Republicans argued that anti-extremism and anti-racist teachings could be detrimental to the troops.

“I personally find it offensive that we are ...Read more

LAUDERHILL, Fla. — The day after two girls’ bodies were discovered in a canal, police canvassed the Lauderhill neighborhood across the water asking for information about a woman whose behavior was so alarming, she was detained by officers and sent away in an ambulance.

The woman appears to be at the center of the investigation Wednesday. ...Read more