Elmo got his Covid-19 vaccine.

Sesame Street’s iconic, perpetually 3-year-old Muppet got his COVID-19 shot in a public service announcement released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday. The video comes just days after the vaccinations became available for children five years and younger. The U.S. Food and Drug ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, were aware the Capitol was a target of violence and that Trump supporters were armed with weapons when the president urged them to march to the building on Jan. 6, 2021, a former aide testified in a bombshell hearing Tuesday that also revealed Trump repeatedly ...Read more

President Joe Biden is under pressure from progressive Democrats to safeguard access to abortion in states where it’s at risk of being outlawed — including by allowing clinics on federal land and offering travel vouchers to people who want the procedure.

Yet Biden faces steep legal and political hurdles in meeting those demands as his ...Read more

SAN ANTONIO — The number of migrants who died after apparently being abandoned in a sweltering tractor-trailer in Texas rose to 50 on Tuesday in a suspected human-trafficking attempt now under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security.

Federal officials said agents had detained three people believed to be a part of the “smuggling...Read more

WASHINGTON — In testimony before a House panel Tuesday, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson outlined a stunning series of events surrounding the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, including an account that then-President Trump lunged at a Secret Service agent in a desperate bid to travel to the Capitol after his speech that day.

...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — There’s a new start date for the Kristin Smart murder trial, a Monterey County Superior Court spokeswoman announced Tuesday.

Opening statements will begin July 18, rescheduled from July 6.

The beginning of the trial against Paul and Ruben Flores was pushed back because of “a health concern among one of the trial ...Read more

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Final arguments in Scott Peterson’s attempt to overturn his murder conviction were postponed Tuesday after one of his lawyers contracted COVID-19 and Peterson was put on “loose quarantine” at San Quentin State prison after his pod was exposed.

The hearing in the notorious case that dates back two decades had been ...Read more

The Brazilian Amazon is home to 13 of the country’s 30 most violent cities as drug trafficking is adding to environmental crimes that have traditionally plagued the region.

The number of intentional violent deaths in those cities topped 100 per 100,000 inhabitants between 2019 and 2021, compared with the national average of 22.3, according a...Read more

COVID-19 shots from Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. should be updated to include components that target the highly transmissible omicron variant, the version of the virus that causes most of the world’s cases, U.S. regulatory advisers said.

Members of the panel that advises the Food and Drug Administration voted 19-2 Tuesday in favor of ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump complained Tuesday that a surprise Jan. 6 committee hearing lacked “cross-examination,” again putting a spotlight on the top House Republican who left him largely defenseless.

The select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol abruptly announced Tuesday’s hearing with ...Read more

The Cuban Coast Guard was recently involved in two shootouts at sea with speedboats coming from the United States to pick up Cuban migrants, resulting in the death of one of the smugglers, according to the island’s ministry of the interior.

The Cuban authorities said they have intercepted 13 speedboats and 23 people from the United States ...Read more

With one foot in the door on European Union membership, Ukraine’s leadership is feeling if anything even more bitter about NATO as the military alliance gathers in Spain for its annual summit.

Ukraine is told “you are not a member because we do not want you,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Deputy Chief of Staff Ihor Zhovkva, who is ...Read more

TAMPA, Fla. — Florida has recorded 17,000 unexpected or excess deaths from preventable health issues other than COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.

Some were likely because the pandemic led people to put off checkups, surgeries and other preventative health measures, according to a new study. Excess deaths are defined as those that ...Read more

Dozens of homeowners in Coral Gables and Miami awoke Tuesday to plastic bags filled with candy corn and pictures of Disney characters on their front lawns.

But the package wasn’t meant as a gift. It was a blatant antisemitic affront, with the candy serving as weights to hold down paper pictures of the characters — six Disney World ...Read more

BALTIMORE — This summer Maryland will impose new restrictions on crabbing in the Chesapeake Bay — including the first-ever limits on how many bushels of male blue crabs watermen can haul each day — in response to a troubling decline in the population of the beloved crustaceans.

Regulations issued this week, to be in effect starting in ...Read more

NEW YORK — Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced 20 years in prison Tuesday for enabling Jeffrey Epstein’s serial abuse of underage girls for a decade.

The former British socialite appeared in Manhattan federal court wearing a blue jail jumpsuit and shackles on her ankles.

The steep prison term all but ensures Maxwell, described at trial as ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The number of hate crimes in California rose for the third year in a row in 2021 and included a sizable uptick in the number of anti-Asian crimes, according to a report from the state attorney general.

The California Department of Justice released its annual report on hate crimes on Tuesday morning, noting 1,763 reported hate ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump knew that the crowd at his Jan. 6, 2021, rally had guns and other weapons but encouraged them to march to the Capitol anyway, White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified Tuesday at a hearing on the Capitol insurrection.

Hutchinson said Trump also physically grabbed the steering wheel of the ...Read more