A year before Britain handed Hong Kong to China, then-President Jiang Zemin hailed the “one country, two systems” plan for the city as a model for the country to one day unify with Taiwan.

Taiwan would get “a high degree of autonomy” — the same pledge China used for Hong Kong — while keeping legislative and independent judicial ...Read more

Legislators left no doubt how they felt when they passed one of the first bills in the 2016 session.

Florida was failing to take care of its most treasured springs.

One part of the sweeping new law ordered the Department of Environmental Protection to create rules to stop local governments and big businesses from pumping too much freshwater ...Read more

They wasted no time. Just days after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down New York restrictions on carrying guns in public, gun rights supporters cited the high court’s decision in lawsuits over California’s assault weapons ban and a San Jose law requiring firearm owners to buy insurance, among others.

Though assault weapons and gun insurance...Read more

A new computer algorithm can now forecast crime in a big city near you — apparently.

The algorithm, which was formulated by social scientists at the University of Chicago and touts 90% accuracy, divides cities into 1,000-square-foot tiles, according to a study published in Nature Human Behavior. Researchers used historical data on violent ...Read more

Presidents of West Africa’s regional bloc agreed Sunday to lift economic and financial sanctions on Mali after the nation’s military leaders agreed to a return to democracy by 2024.

The Economic Community of West African States, or Ecowas, also said Burkina Faso has decided on a 24-month transition to civilian rule. The bloc urged Guinea to...Read more

R. Kelly was put on suicide watch to keep him safe, despite the disgraced R&B star’s insistence in a lawsuit the move was done “as a form of punishment,” federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said Sunday.

In court filings, the prosecutors said Kelly was placed on a temporary suicide watch following his 30-year sentence for sex trafficking at ...Read more

Local officials on Sunday recounted the fatal shooting that left three law enforcement officers dead on Thursday. It was called “the deadliest law enforcement death event in Kentucky” since 1923 by Ross Shurtleff, deputy chief of Prestonsburg police.

On Thursday at 6:30 p.m., Lance Storz, 49, of Allen, allegedly opened fire with a high-...Read more

Boris Johnson is under pressure to explain what he knew and when after a string of allegations surfaced over the weekend about the past sexual behavior of Chris Pincher, the Conservative MP who quit last week as one of the prime minister’s enforcers, citing his own drunken antics.

The U.K. prime minister late on Friday suspended Pincher from ...Read more

James Reingold doesn’t want to snuff out anyone’s flame, but after too many summers treating emergency department patients at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, he has a special Independence Day message: For the love of whatever you hold dear, don’t give your kids sparklers.

Fireworks injuries have gone up 25% over the last 15 ...Read more

The city of Akron, Ohio, was on edge Sunday after police released body-camera footage in the killing of a Black man as police officers fired dozens of times as he fled from them on foot, apparently unarmed.

Jayland Walker was shot and killed at the end of a car chase early on the morning of June 27. Eight officers fired at Walker in a parking ...Read more

A man died and nine others, including a 14-year-old boy, were injured in separate shootings in Baltimore this weekend, police said.

A man died in the hospital after he was shot in Fell’s Point on Saturday. Eastern District police responded about 3:34 a.m. to the 600 block of Broadway for a shooting.

Patrol officers found an unresponsive man ...Read more

Pennsylvania's fossil fuel power plants began having to comply with Gov. Tom Wolf's hallmark climate rule on Friday, one day after a U.S. Supreme Court decision restricted federal regulators' tools for cutting greenhouse gas pollution across the power sector nationwide.

Pennsylvania's coal and natural gas-fired power plants will pay for each ...Read more

Akron police shot unarmed 25-year-old Jayland Walker dozens of times after he fled from a traffic stop and led officers on a car, then foot chase, according to footage from police body cameras released Sunday.

Six days after Walker was gunned down early Monday morning, police released two videos of footage from the officers involved in the ...Read more

The biggest crowds of July 4 holiday travelers since the COVID-19 pandemic jostled their way through U.S. airports this weekend, keeping stress on an already beleaguered transportation system.

The Transportation Security Administration said it screened 4.65 million passengers on Friday and Saturday, about 2.7% more than in the pre-COVID-19 ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Authorities are investigating two separate officer-involved shootings that occurred Saturday and resulted in two fatalities, officials said.

The first occurred when a Huntington Park police officer shot a woman after she was allegedly chasing a man with a pair of scissors near the 6900 block of South Alameda Street about 3:20 ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s November ballot will be packed with policy questions, asking voters to make decisions on topics ranging from abortion to sports betting.

Several new measures qualified for the ballot last week in the lead-up to Thursday evening’s qualification deadline. The final result is a field of seven questions: ...Read more

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the U.S. Capitol might make a criminal referral against former President Donald Trump, the panel’s vice chair said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

Asked whether Trump should be prosecuted over his role in the attack, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., told ABC’s “This Week,” �...Read more

A Democratic House member on the Jan. 6 panel said Sunday she wants to know what federal prosecutors are doing with the bombshell revelations by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.

Department of Justice attorneys reportedly felt blindsided by Hutchinson’s testimony before the special House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 ...Read more