CHARLOTTE, N.C. — North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein criticized FEMA’s denial Thursday of the state’s request to extend 100% federal reimbursement of Hurricane Helene debris removal costs.

North Carolina taxpayers will be on the hook for “potentially hundreds of millions of dollars” to clean up Western North Carolina, Stein, a Democrat, ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Keith Puckett says he was heading to the gym to help prepare his son for basketball tryouts at El Segundo High School when a police officer passing in the opposite direction flipped a U-turn and stopped him.

Puckett, 47, a senior security program manager at Microsoft, was driving a weathered pickup truck he'd borrowed from a ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The man just had his immigration case dismissed and his wife and 8-year-old son were trailing behind him when agents surrounded, then handcuffed him outside the downtown Los Angeles courtroom.

Erick Eduardo Fonseca Solorzano stood speechless. His wife trembled in panic. The federal agents explained in Spanish that he would be ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — In November 2022, two men connected to a Metro safety program beat up another man on a station platform. Video footage, which The Times obtained last week, shows one of the workers squaring off before striking the man while the worker's colleague wearing a black shirt that says "security" jumps into the fray throwing fists. The ...Read more

Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine’s capital, firing drones and missiles overnight after a seven-hour barrage of Kyiv on Saturday that was one of the most sustained in the four-year war.

The airstrikes, which spilled over into early Sunday, followed the second stage of a major prisoner of war swap. Another 307 prisoners on each side ...Read more

WARSAW — Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, who narrowly won the first round of Poland’s presidential election, is pushing back against the far right ahead of his runoff with opposition candidate Karol Nawrocki on June 1.

Trzaskowski, a party ally of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, faced off over Ukraine in a YouTube debate on Saturday with far-...Read more

SEATTLE — In signing Washington's new $78 billion two-year operating budget this week, Gov. Bob Ferguson praised what he called a "balanced" approach to solving a multibillion-dollar shortfall.

The budget, signed by the new governor with minimal changes, mixes major business tax increases with some cuts to agencies, funding pay raises for ...Read more

LAS VEGAS — Lawmakers in the Nevada Legislature are staring down a busy final week of the 120-day session.

Friday was the last major deadline for the Silver State’s part-time legislature. But the work is far from over for hundreds of exempt bills, many of which have the biggest potential impacts on Nevadans — and looming uncertainty ...Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Rep. Sam Liccardo, D-San Jose, lashed out at President Donald Trump’s cuts to programs combating climate change on Friday in Pacifica, where local officials and residents have been left scrambling to protect critical infrastructure after a long-anticipated $50 million federal grant to address severe coastal erosion along ...Read more

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has drafted plans to remove limits on greenhouse gases from fossil fuel-fired power plants in the U.S., the New York Times reported, citing internal agency documents.

The draft was sent to the White House for review on May 2 and could be changed before its release, according to the report.

“We are ...Read more

MIAMI — One by one they spoke of their pain, their nightmares and shame, and the suicidal thoughts.

Amid pleas for psychological help and justice, they described how the American founder of their Port-au-Prince orphanage lured them in with promise of an education and a better life. But Michael Karl Geilenfeld, who operated several orphanages ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Across Los Angeles, the Inland Empire and the Coachella Valley, one community health center is extending its services to immigrant patients in their homes after realizing that people were skipping critical medical appointments because they've become too afraid to venture out.

St. John's Community Health, one of the largest ...Read more

The troubled, $20 billion U.S. residential solar market’s future rests on whether Senate Republicans will challenge their brethren in the House of Representatives and change provisions of the massive tax and spending bill that executives and analysts say would devastate the industry.

The bill passed by the House this week would strip away tax...Read more

MIAMI — A propane gas explosion in a Florida City bakery on Saturday morning injured 10 and damaged multiple businesses, according to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and witnesses who spoke to the Miami Herald.

The blast, which erupted around 8:50 a.m. in a strip mall in the 900 block of West Palm Drive, sparked a fire and sent people running as more ...Read more

Fresh off his unexpectedly strong election win, Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa, sworn in Saturday, is seeking to cement his authority with a crime bill that would give his government emergency powers of the kind used in El Salvador.

The law is intended to rein in the drug and extortion gangs that have overrun the country, and would allow ...Read more

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In a divided vote, the Republican-majority North Carolina Supreme Court late Friday denied Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s request to block new appointments to the State Board of Elections while Stein’s lawsuit challenging the legality of the appointments proceeds.

The ruling means that appointments to the board by State ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Water began flowing from a pipe onto hundreds of acres of dry, sunbaked lake bed as California officials filled a complex of shallow ponds near the south shore of the Salton Sea in an effort to create wetlands that will provide habitat for fish and birds, and help control lung-damaging dust around the shrinking lake.

The project...Read more

NEW YORK — “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed has been released from prison after spending more than a year behind bars for the fatal on-set shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Prison records show Gutierrez-Reed was freed from the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility on Friday morning, having served about 13 months of her ...Read more

VATICAN CITY — When 15-year-old Maria Izworska from Poland hears the word Chicago, the first thing that comes to mind is “O Block,” the notoriously high-crime strip of South King Drive that’s been immortalized in rap songs and social media.

“I also think about food,” said the teen, who was sitting on the steps of St. Peter’s ...Read more