ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — To deliver the message, he drove from his home in East Tampa, over the Howard Frankland Bridge and down Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street.

The corner where Maress Scott stopped was unusually quiet that May afternoon. It’s known for blaring music and smoke spewing from the grill charring the “best food in town.”

...Read more

President Joe Biden’s failure to name someone to lead the Food and Drug Administration, more than 10 months after the election, has flummoxed public health experts who say it’s baffling for the agency to be without a permanent leader during a national health crisis.

The pandemic has taxed the FDA, an 18,000-person agency whose chiefs have ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A group of centrist House Democrats is united in ensuring their chamber won’t vote on a reconciliation package unless it can pass the Senate. But they have individual policy priorities that could divide them on the final product.

Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader, for example, is reluctant to support a package that’s even half the ...Read more

Melissa Barrera hopes her movie “All the World Is Sleeping” serves as a wake-up call about substance abuse.

The “In the Heights” actress explores the depths of addiction in the new drama, starring as a young mother whose daily struggle with drugs jeopardizes her health and custody of her daughter.

Barrera’s character, Chama, is based...Read more

CHICAGO — Many parents and children are eagerly awaiting news from vaccine manufacturers and the Food and Drug Administration on progress toward authorizing vaccines for children younger than 12.

Though children are generally less affected by COVID-19, they can still be vectors to transmit the virus in the community. They are key for ...Read more

Months after Kyle Dixon died, his old house in Lanse, Pennsylvania, is full of reminders of a life cut short.

His tent and hiking boots sit on the porch where he last put them. The grass he used to mow has grown tall in his absence. And on the kitchen counter, there are still bottles of the over-the-counter cough medicine he took to try to ease...Read more

As voting wound down last week during the California recall election, Natalie Adona, the assistant registrar of voters in Nevada County, got an irate phone call.

A voter, driven by disinformation that Republican politicians had pushed for weeks, berated Adona over the state’s lack of a photo ID law, saying election officials exposed the ...Read more

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recall victory aside, Democrats have had a difficult few weeks and now find themselves in an increasingly tricky political position.

No, I’m not referring to President Joe Biden’s job approval in national polls, which has dropped noticeably over the past few weeks. Those survey data reflect the impact of the...Read more

NEW YORK — Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s attorney has launched a new attack against the credibility of the state attorney general and some of the women whose sexual harassment allegations led to his resignation.

Cuomo lawyer Rita Glavin sent the broadside in a Sept. 13 letter to state Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Lavine, the ...Read more

Hong Kong has quietly broadened the language it uses to describe national security violations, a shift lawyers said could expand the reach of a government crackdown on dissent in the Asian financial hub.

City authorities have begun using the phrase “contrary to the interests of national security” in recent weeks to define new red lines in ...Read more

The Taliban nominated Mohammad Suhail Shaheen to be Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United Nations and requested that their foreign minister be allowed to address the U.N. General Assembly taking place this week in New York.

But the request may run up against some diplomatic hurdles.

In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, ...Read more

LEXINGTON, Ky. — A bomb threat that prompted the evacuation of four Lexington high schools Tuesday came with a demand for a $500,000 payment to a Bitcoin account, school officials said in a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

Shortly after noon Tuesday, Fayette County Public School officials received an anonymous message through the district�...Read more

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Parents in the Park Hill School District are demanding accountability for the student or students behind a racist petition last week that they say was a call to bring back slavery.

The school district has shared few specific details about the incident, which originated at Park Hill South High School in Riverside, Missouri, ...Read more

GEORGETOWN, Texas — The fence in front of the Ponderosa Pet Resort has been adorned with photographs of dogs, their toys, flowers, and signs and cards offering condolences to the owners.

Community members and pet owners were mourning the loss of at least 75 dogs who died in a fire at the Georgetown pet resort Saturday night. The cause of the ...Read more

The first two lawsuits filed in the wake of a Texas bill that allows private citizens to sue doctors who perform abortions in all but the earliest weeks of pregnancy may have trouble gaining traction.

That’s because the lawsuits against Alan Braid, a San Antonio doctor who wrote a newspaper column in which he admitted to violating rules that...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Members of the Los Angeles City Council largely stood back last year as protesters angry over mask mandates and police budgets regularly held noisy demonstrations outside politicians’ homes.

On Tuesday, members of the City Council sent a message of their own: They’ve had enough.

The City Council gave final approval to a law...Read more

Chicagoan Nicolas Benitez was fed up with the asphalt speed bump outside his garage in the alley behind his Brighton Park neighborhood home, which he said damaged his cars’ suspensions and trapped ice and snow in the winter.

So after complaining to his alderman’s office, Benitez got a pickax and set about tearing out the speed bump.

“I ...Read more

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Tropical Storm Peter deteriorated into a tropical depression by Tuesday afternoon while storm-shredding, upper-level winds left Tropical Storm Rose barely clinging to its tropical storm status.

By midday, Peter’s maximum sustained winds fell to 35 mph. Rose remained at top winds of 40 mph, just 1 mph above the ...Read more

Fox News staffers who claimed sexual harassment then faced a harassment campaign from their own employer, a previously undisclosed investigation by the city concluded.

The conservative network spied on the text messages and deleted computer data of employees who complained about harassing behavior by colleagues and supervisors, according to a ...Read more

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A federal judge in Miami on Tuesday blocked Florida from enforcing a ban on so-called sanctuary cities, declaring portions of a law unconstitutional and tinged with “discriminatory motives.”

The judge’s ruling struck down a key portion of the 2019 law that prohibits local and state officials from adopting “...Read more