WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Deb Haaland suggested a sharply limited role for fossil fuel extraction on U.S. federal lands and waters in her most expansive comments yet on the administration’s overhaul of oil and gas leasing.

She said the review would seek to restore balance on uses of 245 million acres (99 million hectares) of ...Read more

NEW YORK — R&B superstar R. Kelly was an international sex symbol known for his playboy lifestyle, but his relationships were consensual and the women who lined up to testify that he sexually abused them are lying to get a payday, Kelly’s lawyer told a federal jury in New York on Thursday.

Pacing the floor of the Brooklyn federal courtroom ...Read more

DEL RIO, Texas — At the dusty Border Taxi parking lot Thursday, owner Juan Dehoyos wondered aloud when the nearby bridge to Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, would reopen.

The border bridge closed Sept. 17, after U.S. Customs and Border Protection was overwhelmed by the arrival of thousands of Haitian migrants. Each day, Dehoyos loses about $1,000.

He ...Read more

A weekend memorial for Gabby Petito, featuring the lighting of candles and the release of a single butterfly, was slated for Saturday in the Florida city where her boyfriend returned home alone after the couple’s their cross-country road trip.

Residents of North Port will gather outside City Hall near a tree that has served as the spot for ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and three other of former President Donald Trump’s advisers were subpoenaed Thursday by the select House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Along with Meadows, subpoenas were sent to former Trump political adviser Steve Bannon, former deputy chief ...Read more

DETROIT — More than 300,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines are on the verge of expiring in Michigan as demand for shots wane right as the state stares down what appears to be a fourth surge of cases.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services estimates that about 161,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and between 143,000 and 146...Read more

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Alaska’s unprecedented COVID-19 crisis escalated Thursday with the state reporting seven new deaths, a record 1,330 new cases and a near-record 209 hospitalizations.

It’s the third time in two weeks that the daily record has been broken: The previous highs were recorded Wednesday, with 1,251 cases, and Sept. 15, with 1...Read more

LEXINGTON, Ky. — The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19, the week-over-week volume of new cases, and the rate of Kentuckians testing positive for the virus appear to have plateaued, Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday.

"We are hoping that in the very least we are plateauing," the governor said during his twice-weekly update in Frankfort....Read more

Florida man Brian Laundrie, whose dead girlfriend’s body was found in a Wyoming park after he returned home alone from a cross-country road trip the two had taken, has been charged with bank-card fraud in that state.

A federal grand jury indictment alleges Laundrie, 23, withdrew or spent more than $1,000 using a Capitol One card after Gabby ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Democrats have plenty of time to use a partisan approach to raise the debt ceiling without Republican votes, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, challenging the argument of a senior House Democrat that the clock had likely run out on that option.

McConnell said on the Senate floor Thursday it would take Democrats “...Read more

A shooter killed one person and at least a dozen others were injured Thursday inside a grocery store in Tennessee, officials said.

The shooting happened at a Kroger grocery store in Collierville, a city about 25 miles east of Memphis, about 1:30 p.m., police said during a news conference broadcast by Fox 13. The shooter died from a self-...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A federal appeals court on Thursday unanimously overturned a judge’s decision that would have required Los Angeles to offer some form of shelter or housing to the entire homeless population of skid row by October.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — In a new court filing, the state Department of Public Safety disputes claims that Minnesota state troopers purged critical records to intentionally obscure the behavior of law enforcement's response to last summer's riots.

The state agency also plans to ask a judge to issue a protective order that would stop attorneys for ...Read more

MIAMI — Gentry Fry says that he’s suffered childhood post-traumatic stress disorder, all stemming from being molested by a neighbor in his Southwest Miami-Dade neighborhood in the late 1970s. He’s spent decades battling addiction to food and alcohol, he says, and has been sober for four years.

Now 49, he recently Googled that neighbor, ...Read more

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — For the first year and a half of the coronavirus pandemic in Florida, it was difficult to heed the advice of Florida’s top health official — Dr. Scott Rivkees — because he rarely publicly shared his views.

That won’t be a problem for Rivkees’ successor. On Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis replaced Rivkees with a new ...Read more

The chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee called Thursday for unruly airline passengers to be prosecuted for misbehavior, arguing that fines aren’t doing enough to prevent such incidents.

“We need more prosecutions when there are serious violent incidents on airplanes,” Oregon Democrat Peter A. DeFazio said.

His ...Read more

Public opinion of the Supreme Court dropped to its lowest point in two decades after the justices declined to block Texas' controversial abortion law, new polling shows, echoing poor marks for the other branches of government.

Two-fifths of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing — a sharp decline from July when 49% of people ...Read more

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has temporarily halted the use of a horse patrol unit along the Del Rio, Texas, border with Mexico amid public outrage over a photo of a mounted U.S. Custom and Border Protection agent chasing Haitian migrants.

The image showed the agent on a horse wielding what appeared to be ropes or reins while ...Read more