LOS ANGELES -- The city of Beverly Hills is expected to approve what officials say is the most stringent tobacco ban in the country, eliminating the sale of virtually all recreational nicotine products -- with one very Beverly Hills exception.

For an elite group of aficionados, hundreds of whom swamped committee meetings and wrote the city in ...Read more

DETROIT -- The first of 500 U.S. Ford Motor Co. salaried employees are expected to be notified in meetings Tuesday that they're being let go.

Ford's operations in Dearborn were quiet Tuesday morning ahead of the last round of white-collar job cuts, with parking lots filling and employees filing in as usual.

CEO Jim Hackett notified employees ...Read more

ATLANTA -- A lawsuit attempting to require paper ballots in Georgia elections can move ahead, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg rejected a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which alleges that the state's current electronic voting machines are unsafe and should be replaced with hand-marked paper ballots.

Georgia's 17...Read more

BOGOTA, Colombia -- As the death toll and hardships for fleeing Venezuelans continue to mount, the United Nations on Tuesday asked the region -- once again -- to treat the migrants as refugees and refrain from deporting them.

In a statement, the U.N. Refugee Agency said that at least 3.7 million people have left the country in recent years and ...Read more

RALEIGH, N.C. -- A North Carolina day care is closing months after 2- and 3-year-olds wandered onto a highway.

The children left the child care center at Pinedale Christian Church, and five of them were found along a Winston-Salem road that had a 55 mph speed limit, WGHP-TV reported at the time.

Drivers and a police officer stopped to help the...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- California's high-speed rail agency announced Tuesday it is suing the federal government over the Trump administration's decision to terminate a $929 million grant for the state's beleaguered bullet train.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Sacramento, further escalates the conflict between California and the Trump ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration held off on blacklisting Huawei Technologies Co. out of concern the move could disrupt trade negotiations with China and only took action after the last round of talks hit an impasse, according to people familiar with the matter.

Plans to target the Chinese telecommunications equipment maker over security ...Read more

LONDON -- Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday urged lawmakers to seize "one last chance" to approve a deal for Britain to leave the European Union, after they rejected her Brexit deal three times.

But senior lawmakers in her own Conservatives and opposition parties rejected May's offer and said they planned to vote against the deal.

"The ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler is preparing a committee vote to hold former White House counsel Don McGahn in contempt of Congress, the second Trump official to get such treatment for defying one of Nadler's subpoenas to testify about the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

"Let ...Read more

CHICAGO -- Cook County authorities said Monday they will explore whether child welfare reporting laws were violated after the woman accused of killing Marlen Ochoa-Lopez and cutting her baby from her womb showed up at a hospital last month claiming the child was hers.

Clarisa Figueroa, 46, and her daughter, Desiree, 24, were both charged last ...Read more

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Just in time for Memorial Day, one North Carolina city has filed a lawsuit to force an RV store to pull down a 40-foot by 80-foot U.S. flag because it's too large, reports WBTV and other news outlets.

To put the 3,200-square-foot size in perspective, that's about 1,000 square feet bigger than the average Starbucks.

...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- A year after the Trump administration moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti waded into the still simmering political controversy, drawing criticism from L.A. religious groups.

"I support the embassy being here," Garcetti told The Times during his trip to Israel last week with the U.S. ...Read more

MIAMI -- Hurricane season doesn't start until June 1, but there's already a named storm churning in the Atlantic.

Don't worry. South Florida is in the clear.

In fact, so is the rest of the U.S.

On Monday evening, hurricane forecasters gave it a name: Subtropical Storm Andrea. The disturbance, about 300 miles southwest of Bermuda, is the first...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Since the release of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's report last month, some Democrats have reiterated, or joined, the calls for impeaching President Donald Trump, on the grounds that he obstructed Mueller's probe.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, said on May 7 that the only mechanism to hold the president...Read more

WASHINGTON -- House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler is preparing a committee vote to hold former White House counsel Don McGahn in contempt of Congress, the second Trump official to get such treatment for defying one of Nadler's subpoenas to testify about the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

"Let ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- In 2016, a New York City real estate developer who inherited hundreds of millions of dollars managed to win the presidency after convincing thousands of Rust Belt voters that the daughter of a textile salesman was an untrustworthy elitist because she gave a few paid speeches to a Wall Street investment bank. Four years later, some ...Read more

They keep piling up, sometimes trillions of dollars at a time.

The competition among 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls to be bold in confronting vexing social and economic challenges has created a mountain of policy promises. The rising price tag has implications the contenders prefer to sidestep.

Candidates' breezy assurances that ...Read more

BENGALURU, India -- The world's largest election has become something of a test case in how technology giants handle fake news after years of scandal. It's not working out so well.

India has as many as 900 million voters in an election that culminates this week, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling coalition headed for apparent victory. ...Read more