LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles City Council signed off on a $14-billion spending plan for 2025-26 on Thursday, scaling back Mayor Karen Bass’ public safety initiatives as they attempted to spare 1,000 city workers from layoffs.

Faced with a nearly $1-billion budget shortfall, the council voted 12 to 3 for a plan that would cut funding for ...Read more

SPRINGFIELD — Illinois lawmakers advanced a measure that would eliminate mandatory road testing for drivers under 87 and allow people to report close relatives they believe are no longer capable of driving safely.

The bill, championed by Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, sailed through the Senate on Thursday by a 57-0 vote after passing ...Read more

CHICAGO — Eight months after a Cook County judge found Trump Tower repeatedly violated clean water laws, the president’s business operators agreed Thursday to pay $4.8 million to settle lawsuits alleging the skyscraper’s cooling system killed untold numbers of fish in the Chicago River.

The glass-and-steel tower, emblazoned with a sign ...Read more

SAN DIEGO — A small plane crashed in dense fog in a Murphy Canyon neighborhood early Thursday morning, presumably killing all six people onboard, injuring eight people on the ground and burning several cars and homes in military housing.

The plane, a Cessna 550, crashed east of Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport around 3:45 a.m., according to...Read more

Beijing and Washington continued high-level contact with a Thursday call between senior officials, a sign that the two sides are maintaining active communications following their trade truce earlier this month.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and China’s Executive Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu discussed a wide range of ...Read more

South Korea said there have been no discussions with the U.S. over a possible pullback of American troops stationed in the country, after a media report said Washington is reviewing a proposal to withdraw some of its forces.

The proposal could result in the removal of about 4,500 American troops based in South Korea, the Wall Street Journal ...Read more

LANSING, Mich. — The Republican-controlled Michigan House voted Thursday to hold Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson in contempt of the chamber and authorize litigation against her office after Benson failed to comply fully with a subpoena seeking election training materials for training clerks.

Benson has argued over the past ...Read more

A Norco man has been convicted of purposefully igniting the Line fire that scorched some 44,000 acres of the San Bernardino Mountains and injured six firefighters, authorities said.

On Thursday, 35-year-old Justin Halstenberg was found guilty of seven counts related to the Line fire and two counts related to a subsequent blaze, according to the...Read more

A former Yale student detained recently by immigration agents in Hartford’s federal courthouse received medical attention after being hit seven times with Tasers by immigration agents who then rebuked a judge who tried to intervene, according to information presented in court Thursday.

New details of the May 9 detention of Afghan refugee and ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld, for now, President Donald Trump's decision to fire two agency officials who had fixed terms that were set by Congress.

By a 6-3 vote, the justices set aside rulings that would have reinstated Gwynne Wilcox to the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris to the Merit Systems Protection ...Read more

Illinois lawmakers on Thursday advanced legislation requiring increased police training on sexual assault cases that would include practices “meant to minimize traumatization of the victim.”

The training required by the legislation, now heading to Gov. JB Pritzker’s desk, would also focus on identifying and addressing conflicts of ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will attend the Group of Seven summit in June, the White House said, as tensions over trade and his efforts to halt Russia’s war in Ukraine cloud U.S. ties with some of its closest allies.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump would attend the gathering from June 15 to 17. ...Read more

The U.S. and European leaders are placing their hopes in the Vatican to engage Russia and Ukraine in peace talks, after President Donald Trump said Pope Leo XIV had expressed interest in the idea. The Kremlin isn’t so keen.

Russian officials have no plans for leader Vladimir Putin to travel to the Vatican or anywhere else for talks now, and ...Read more

A Chicago man who railed on social media against the ongoing bombing of Gaza fatally shot two Israeli Embassy employees near the Jewish museum in Washington on Wednesday before allegedly admitting to a police officer he “did it for Palestine,” according to federal charges unsealed Thursday afternoon.

Elias Rodriguez, 31, of the 4700 block ...Read more

CHICAGO — The morning after the fatal shooting of two Israeli Embassy employees in Washington on Wednesday night, university protests in Chicago against the Israel-Hamas war continued.

Wednesday’s attack was a marked display of antisemitism as Israel ramps up its offensive in the Gaza Strip. Federal authorities told police that the suspect,...Read more

WASHINGTON — Top holders of Donald Trump’s memecoin and other guests were greeted by protesters as they arrived for a dinner with the president at his golf club outside Washington on Thursday, a day that saw Bitcoin extend its record high amid optimism about U.S. government support for the crypto industry.

Chinese crypto entrepreneur ...Read more

The differences between Massachusetts and its neighbor to the north grew beyond their divergent takes on sales and income tax after Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed a ban on “sanctuary cities” into law.

According to the former U.S. Senator, the law she signed Thursday is just another example on a long list of things that make the Granite State ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A Chicago man made his first court appearance to face murder charges in the shooting of two Israeli embassy staff members outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, in what officials have called an antisemitic hate crime.

Elias Rodriguez, 31, appeared in Washington federal court Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Matthew ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to fire without cause members of the national labor boards for federal employees and workers, despite lower court judges finding that the terminations likely violated federal law.

The unsigned, two-page decision addressed a tangle of lower court orders on the firings of Cathy ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Earlier this month, Gov. Josh Stein made an impassioned plea to North Carolina’s congressional delegation.

“Reject this budget proposal so that North Carolina families don’t go hungry,” Stein wrote in a statement released May 8.

Stein was reacting to proposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that ...Read more