The Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan remains on hold, after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request from the federal government to temporarily reverse a lower court order that blocked rollout of the plan.

A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based appeals court on Wednesday rejected the request in a brief ...Read more

SEATTLE — Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer’s call last year to an emergency dispatcher saying a Black newspaper carrier was threatening to kill him — a claim a Tacoma police report said he walked back upon questioning — provoked widespread criticism and calls for his resignation.

It led Troyer to be placed on a prosecutor’s list of ...Read more

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday said they’ve discovered “substantial” evidence against the man accused of attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in October.

During a roughly 10 minute status hearing at the San Francisco federal courthouse, the government’s attorney Laura Horn said prosecutors would be producing additional ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron will dine on lobster, caviar and an Oregon cheese named the best in the world while listening to Grammy-winner Jon Batiste at the U.S. president’s first state dinner on Thursday.

Batiste, one of the nation’s most award-winning musicians, will perform with his father, Michael Batiste, according ...Read more

Hollywood stars Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, convicted in the Varsity Blues college admission fraud case, were hardly the biggest offenders at the federal prison in Dublin, Calif.

Federal officials allege that its warden abused his position to run the place like his own personal harem.

“According to Victim 2, GARCIA would tell her at ...Read more

MONTREAL — Quebec Premier Francois Legault, concerned about the decline of the French language in the Canadian province, has set a new goal for immigrants: They should all speak French.

Legault’s nationalist Coalition Avenir Quebec party was reelected with a huge majority in October, partly on a platform of protecting French as the dominant...Read more

A member of the Mongols motorcycle gang who killed a Pomona police SWAT officer serving a search warrant more than eight years ago pleaded no contest Wednesday to voluntary manslaughter after twice being acquitted of murder.

David Martinez, 44, had been found not guilty of first-degree murder and second-degree murder in two separate trials over...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The 28-year-old Virginia cop who killed three family members of a Riverside teenager had posed online as a teen to “groom” the 15-year-old girl, the Riverside Police Department said Wednesday.

Austin Lee Edwards portrayed himself as a 17-year-old while communicating online with the girl, using “grooming” methods, which ...Read more

Elon Musk’s Neuralink Corp. aims to start putting its coin-sized computing brain implant into human patients within six months, the company announced at an event at its Fremont, Calif. headquarters on Wednesday evening.

Neuralink has been refining the product, which consists of a tiny device and electrode-laced wires, along with a robot that ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Abuse survivors who were featured in “The Keepers,” a widely viewed 2017 Netflix documentary about clergy sexual misconduct at a Baltimore Catholic girls’ school in the 1960s and ’70s, have filed a court motion calling for the full release of a report by the Maryland attorney general on sexual abuse by clergy and other ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A late clergyman who served the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento for four decades has been accused for the first time of sexually assaulting a child, joining dozens of Sacramento clergy previously implicated in the Catholic Church’s decades-old abuse scandal.

In a lawsuit filed in Alameda County Superior Court, a 60...Read more

An advisory panel established by South Africa’s parliament found there are grounds for lawmakers to investigate President Cyril Ramaphosa in connection with a scandal over a robbery at his game farm, a finding that could ultimately cost him his job.

“In light of all the information placed before the panel, we conclude that this information ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A U.S. House committee can now get a look at six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns, a week after the Supreme Court cleared the way for their release.

A Treasury spokesperson on Wednesday said the department complied with the court’s decision and made the documents available to the Ways and Means Committee, though wouldn’t...Read more

MOSCOW, Idaho — Many students are back on campus this week following the slayings of four University of Idaho students in Moscow.

U of I Dean of Students Blaine Eckles told the Idaho Statesman in an interview Wednesday that he’s glad to see students return to finish the semester but is concerned for their safety.

“I’m pleasantly ...Read more

CHICAGO — Five people were found dead Wednesday in a Buffalo Grove home, officials of the suburban village said.

Police had been dispatched to a single-family residence at 11:12 a.m. to conduct a well-being check on a woman and forced their way inside after being unable to make contact. Officers found five bodies inside the home, a news ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Despite a barrage of criticism for a proposal to revamp civilian oversight of the Minneapolis Police Department, a City Council committee narrowly approved the ordinance Wednesday with several modifications.

The current oversight structure "wasn't good enough," said Council Vice President Linea Palmisano at a public hearing in ...Read more

HARTFORD, Conn. — Michelle Troconis’ defense attorney, Jon Schoenhorn, and prosecutors argued again this week over their efforts to disqualify each other from her murder conspiracy case in a dispute over the handling of a contested letter.

The lawyers met privately in Superior Court in Stamford and appeared in court briefly on Wednesday. ...Read more

CHICAGO — TV pitchman Kevin Trudeau was warned years ago by a federal judge that a 10-year prison sentence for contempt wasn’t going to magically erase the whopping $37.6 million civil penalty he still owes for lying about his controversial weight-loss book.

“He told me he was broke when he had hundreds of millions of dollars going ...Read more