Extreme heat this year has triggered wildfires, drought and melting glaciers. Less expectedly, it’s also revealed some weird and dark things about our past — shipwrecks, corpses, ghost villages, ornamental gardens and ancient cities. Here’s a look at some of those discoveries.

Roman remains

Italy’s drought has revealed artifacts from ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Mark Webber and Doug Brown rose before dawn to make the trip from Agoura Hills, California, arriving around 6 a.m. at the Leimert Park clinic in the hopes of getting vaccinated against monkeypox.

"We came out in the '80s. We remember when HIV blew through," said Webber, 54, a Maryland resident who has been in Southern California...Read more

TALLAHASSEE — With Renatha Francis joining the Florida Supreme Court, Gov. Ron DeSantis will cement a majority of his own appointees in line with his legal philosophy and thus more likely to rule in his favor on lawsuits challenging the many controversial laws he has signed.

Her appointment is the latest example of how DeSantis has exerted ...Read more

ATLANTA — The Southern Baptist Convention revealed on Friday that is under investigation by federal officials over the mishandling and cover-up of sex abuse complaints that go back decades.

The SBC said in a statement that the investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice will include several entities, each of which have committed to full ...Read more

NEW YORK — The polio virus has been detected in New York City, health authorities said Friday, a jarring discovery arriving three weeks after the long-defeated virus reemerged in Rockland County north of the city. The potentially deadly virus was detected in sewage samples collected in the city.

Before the Rockland County case, the U.S. had ...Read more

One wanted to be a neurosurgeon and was a Real Madrid soccer fan. Another one loved to play basketball. A third one liked to pose for selfies to show off his tattoos.

One by one, the faces of young Cubans who likely died while combating a fire that started last week at an oil storage facility in the port of Matanzas have been popping up on ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — Nine people were wounded in shootings on Friday in Philadelphia, including four people in one incident in the city’s Frankford section and a 6-year-old boy grazed by a stray bullet, police said.

Just before 7:30 p.m., at least four people were shot on the 5300 block of Charles Street in Frankford, police said. Three victims ...Read more

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York recorded a major uptick in the use of the state’s red flag law following the deadly Buffalo mass shooting this spring.

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Friday that more applications for Extreme Risk Protection Orders, meant to keep guns away from people deemed a danger to themselves or others, were filed in the last three...Read more

BOISE, Idaho — Idaho residents will no longer be able to seek abortions in state after the Idaho Supreme Court earlier this week let the state implement its near-total abortion ban.

The decision came a little more than a week after a hearing addressed two lawsuits filed by Planned Parenthood in recent months. The first challenged an Idaho law...Read more

Kansas election officials plan to conduct a statewide recount of the vote rejecting an amendment to remove abortion rights from the state constitution after a citizen posted a $200,000 bond for the recount, the state Secretary of State’s Office said.

Separately, Kansas state Sen. Caryn Tyson asked for a recount in 55 counties in the ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The city of Sacramento on Friday announced it had agreed to pay Stephon Clark’s parents $1.7 million, which settles the final remaining portion of a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by his family after police shot to death the unarmed Black man in March 2018.

In a 2019 settlement, the city agreed to pay $2.4 million ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — In a potential mutiny against strict party rules imposed last year following allegations of frat house sexual assaults, University of Southern California officials said some fraternities are weighing whether to disaffiliate from the university — prompting warnings of “serious ramifications” from campus administrators.

USC ...Read more

When Indiana’s near-total abortion ban goes into effect on Sept. 15, the Planned Parenthood clinic in Merrillville — and its 10 other facilities in Indiana — will remain open to provide “critical health care services outside of abortion,” but patients seeking abortion care will likely have to go out of state.

“We provide a whole ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Anne Heche, the Emmy- and Tony-nominated actor whose work in “Six Days Seven Nights,” “Another World” and dozens of other projects dovetailed with a groundbreaking romance with Ellen DeGeneres that challenged homophobia in Hollywood, has died. She was 53.

Her son Homer confirmed her death in a statement to the Los ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Legislation to decriminalize certain psychedelic drugs such as “magic mushrooms,” MDMA, ketamine and LSD was gutted by the California Legislature on Thursday, though the lawmaker who sponsored the bill vowed to reintroduce the measure next year.

Senate Bill 519 would have allowed for the possession and personal use of...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia School District staff and students must mask for the first 10 days of the 2022-23 school year, but masks will then be optional — but “strongly recommended” — as long as case counts do not spike.

“We are committed to keeping students in school for in-person learning,” Kendra McDow, a pediatrician and ...Read more

After Salman Rushdie was attacked as he began a lecture Friday in western New York, it was a potent reminder that an Islamic leader had issued a high-profile edict calling for the writer’s death in reaction to his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses.”

That death sentence — a fatwa — had immediate effects on Rushdie’s life, spurring him ...Read more

Agents with the FBI had a warrant to search any rooms at Mar-a-Lago used by the club’s owner, former president Donald Trump, or his staff, according to court documents unsealed Friday afternoon.

While the layout of Trump’s home is a mystery to most, building plans and interviews by the Miami Herald have helped sketch out the likely ...Read more