Over the past month, the daily number of COVID-19 cases in Cuba has tripled to 9,323, a record since the start of the pandemic. Deaths from the virus, which had averaged around 10 per day between April and June, spiked to 20 in early July and steadily rose to 68 on Thursday.

The record was set the same day that Cuba announced it had vaccinated ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Acknowledging the risk of rolling blackouts as California's hot summer drags on, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a state-funded cash-incentive program Friday to encourage big industrial customers to curtail electricity consumption during crunch times.

The governor signed an emergency proclamation that directs the state to ...Read more

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The final number of dead in the Surfside condo collapse was devastating: 98 lives lost. But at one point it seemed the number could go much higher.

On June 29, five days after the collapse, the number of missing was pegged at more than 150 people. It appeared likely that most would be found dead in the rubble.

A ...Read more

RALEIGH, N.C. — Hundreds of emails released by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill on Friday shed more light on the behind-the-scenes battle over a tenure package for acclaimed journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who ultimately decided to go elsewhere.

The emails show the efforts of megadonor Walter Hussman to dissuade UNC-CH trustees ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — More than two weeks after a flood of raw sewage inundated the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant and triggered a massive discharge into Santa Monica Bay, the damaged facility has continued to release millions of gallons of partially treated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, in violation of its environmental permit, the Los Angeles...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Ruth Pearl, the mother of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl who turned the profound and lasting agony of losing a son into a life of activism, outreach and bridging cultural divides, has died at her home in Los Angeles.

Pearl, who died July 20, had been suffering from pulmonary difficulties. She was 85.

After ...Read more

ATLANTA — Georgia Republican lawmakers took a key step Friday in a long and untested process that could trigger an extraordinary takeover of the elections system of one of the state’s biggest Democratic strongholds.

State Rep. Jan Jones and four other House Republican legislators sent a letter Friday demanding a review of Fulton County’s ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department told the Treasury Department on Friday that it must turn over former President Donald Trump’s tax returns and information to the House Ways and Means Committee — although a legal fight could remain.

The opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel reverses course from the DOJ’s 2019 opinion, during the ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Friday firmly blamed recent setbacks in preventing the spread of the delta variant of the coronavirus squarely on unvaccinated Americans who have defied federal guidance to continue wearing masks.

With the highly contagious delta variant of ...Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif. — In Fort Bragg on the Mendocino Coast, city leaders are rushing to install an emergency desalination system. In Healdsburg, lawn watering is banned with fines of up to $1,000. In Hornbrook, a small town in Siskiyou County, faucets have gone completely dry, and the chairman of the water district is driving 15 miles each way to...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Before he testified in federal court about Ed Buck injecting him with methamphetamine, one man's anxiety sent him to the hospital.

Others who had planned to testify against Buck, who was convicted this week in the overdose deaths of two Black men in his apartment, couldn't bring themselves to do it. Some wept on the witness ...Read more

FORT WORTH, Texas — The people who stoned a man to death as he opened fired on them are unlikely to face charges, according to legal experts, because their actions appear to fit within all the legal parameters of self-defense.

Partygoers chased a gunman and hurled landscaping bricks at him after he shot at least one person at a party Monday ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday publicly asked President Joe Biden to ensure California can continue to access the Pentagon’s sensitive military satellite information as part of a program to help spot and track wildfires.

The 2-year-old program, called FireGuard, relies on access to the military’s infrared satellites that ...Read more

CHICAGO — A top defense lawyer for Jussie Smollett will be allowed to stay on the actor’s defense team but cannot cross-examine two key witnesses against him, a Cook County judge has ruled.

In a written order, Judge James Linn said the evidence “clearly and convincingly” shows that attorney Nenye Uche had spoken with those witnesses ...Read more

The Dixie fire continues its destructive tear through Northern California and now claims the rank of the state’s 11th largest wildfire in recorded history after growing roughly 20,000 acres.

The fire jumped from the No. 13 spot overnight Thursday.

Now burning into its third week, the massive wildfire has seared 240,595 acres across a quartet...Read more

The U.S. agency leading the fight against COVID-19 gave up a crucial surveillance tool tracking the effectiveness of vaccines just as a troublesome new variant of the virus was emerging.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped comprehensively tracking what are known as vaccine breakthrough cases in May, the consequences of...Read more

President Joe Biden will announce further sanctions on Cuban organizations and officials responsible for the violent crackdown on anti-government protesters and more details on U.S. efforts to provide internet to Cubans ahead of a meeting Friday afternoon with Cuban Americans at the White House.

The administration will use the Global Magnitsky ...Read more

WASHINGTON — California Gov. Gavin Newsom pleaded with President Joe Biden for more federal support in combating forest fires Friday during a virtual White House meeting with Western governors.

Following the governors of Montana and Washington, Newsom offered some of the most pointed criticism of the federal government’s handling of the ...Read more

More than 44 individuals have been arrested in the ongoing investigation into who killed Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, Haiti National Police said Friday.

Among those taken into custody were a dozen police officers, including four who accompanied Colombian commandos say accompanied them as they entered Moïse’s hilltop home in the middle ...Read more