LOS ANGELES — Sepideh Razipour and her husband never thought they could afford to be homeowners, but when their Rolling Hills Estates rental went up for sale, they scrambled to make the townhouse their own, pulling together savings and borrowing from extended family.

But before they made their first mortgage payment, a massive landslide ...Read more

CHICAGO — Keinymar Avila, a tiny 7-year-old with microcephaly who has never been separated from her mother, curled up in the arms of a woman she’d recently met.

Her mother, Yamile Perez, glanced over at her daughter to make sure all was well as she attended a virtual meeting with Chicago Public Schools officials who were evaluating Keinymar...Read more

LIMONADE, Haiti — At first sight, the nearly four acres of farmland in this rural hamlet in northeast Haiti resembles more of a desert than a thriving agricultural experiment. The soil is brown and barren, battered by a lack of water and neglect.

But walk further inland and the seemingly lifeless terrain soon turns green: Cabbages and ...Read more

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — Leaves rustled as Mike Cirone reached into a tree and gently picked an apple. The orchard was filled with a profusion of ripe fruit in shades from golden-green to pinkish red.

But unlike other crops that guzzle water from canals and wells, this bounty of apples grew on its own without irrigation.

Cirone specializes...Read more

BOISE, Idaho — Garden Valley’s public school violated state or federal laws by frequently restraining and secluding an autistic girl and failing to properly provide learning opportunities to two students with disabilities, offering one little to no class time, state investigations found.

After receiving the two complaints in September, the ...Read more

The two men in blue jeans and T-shirts were strangers but entered the governor’s gym in the Venezuelan city of Maturín looking as if they owned the place. They asked the front-desk attendant if the governor was in. He was.

A guard, spotting their weapons, grabbed his two-way radio and blurted: “Armed men just walked in.”

They were his ...Read more

In the days after she lost her daughter to fentanyl in June 2021, Jamie Fisher began calling Independence police to find out what the department was doing to investigate her death.

When she died, Samantha “Sami” Fisher, 23, had one photo on her new cellphone — which she had taken that day — of three pills that her family said she ...Read more

About 30% of Utah residents who were cut from Medicaid this year say they became uninsured, according to state officials who conducted a first-of-its-kind survey of people disenrolled from the program.

Utah has dropped more than 130,000 out of about 500,000 Medicaid beneficiaries since April, after the federal government lifted a pandemic-era ...Read more

After two years of record-breaking heat that brought a surge of deaths and health emergencies, several states have enacted or are considering measures designed to protect residents — with a new focus on younger people whose vulnerability is rising with the temperatures.

Nationally, heat-related deaths rose from about 1,000 in 2018 to 1,722 in...Read more

NEW YORK — Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered Wednesday night outside the News Corp. Building two blocks from Rockefeller Center, where a separate crowd had gathered for the annual tree lighting ceremony.

Several protesters were arrested at the demonstration. They chanted “free, free Palestine” as they waved Palestinian ...Read more

DENVER — The man shot and killed by Denver police on Nov. 20 after chasing people in Commons Park with an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle and shooting at officers had more than 400 rounds of ammunition on him, Denver Police Department officials said Wednesday.

Investigators have not determined if 42-year-old Joshua Mitchell had a plan when he ...Read more

NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday called on New York City Mayor Eric Adams and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to join him in fighting the state law that allowed women to sue all three leaders for long-ago alleged sexual assaults.

Trump called New York's Adult Survivors Act “totally unfair and unconstitutional” ...Read more

NEW YORK — An Indian national was hit with murder-for-hire and conspiracy charges in Manhattan on Wednesday for his alleged role in a $100,000 plot to kill a New York City-based leader of the Sikh separatist movement.

Nikhil “Nick” Gupta, who the feds say is involved in drugs and weapons trafficking, is accused of working to carry out the...Read more

WASHINGTON — Ultra-conservatives in the U.S. House on Wednesday softened their demands for deep spending cuts to domestic programs, heightening the odds the two parties can reach a spending agreement and avert a Jan. 20 partial government shutdown.

The shift came after the House has failed to pass bills at the lower spending levels demanded ...Read more

Israel and Hamas exchanged more captives late Wednesday, as hopes grew that negotiators from Qatar and the U.S. could persuade the two sides to again extend a truce agreement set to expire within a few hours.

The 10 hostages released by Hamas — five children and five women, including dual nationals of the U.S., Germany and the Netherlands —...Read more

NYPD air superiority is fighting subway surfing — and the top transit cop says its drone program has nabbed four surfers, including a 12-year-old.

Drones are being deployed to spot people who climb on top of subway trains on elevated lines, said NYPD transit chief Michael Kemper.

“Over the last several weeks the NYPD has been piloting a ...Read more

CHICAGO — President Joe Biden’s administration is moving to require utilities to replace every toxic lead pipe connecting homes to water mains during the next decade, though Chicago and several other cities likely will get more time to finish the job.

Ingesting tiny concentrations of lead can permanently damage the developing brains of ...Read more

Henry A. Kissinger, the architect of U.S. foreign policy at the apex of the Cold War and a towering intellectual force in world affairs for more than half a century, has died at his Connecticut home.

Kissinger died Wednesday, according to his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates. He was 100.

As national security adviser and secretary of State...Read more

BALTIMORE — Without any fanfare or warning Wednesday, four Confederate-linked monuments were loaded into two trucks that left Baltimore for Los Angeles, where they will eventually be shown in an art exhibit put on by nonprofit visual art space LAXART and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

But the exhibit that will mix Confederate ...Read more