VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The Virginia Beach Police Department is investigating a shooting involving a police officer and two civilians Thursday afternoon in the parking lot of a shopping center on Newtown Road.

The shooting was reported around 3:30 p.m. in the 600 block of Newtown Road, where several shopping centers are located.

Deputy Chief ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Choosing his words carefully with attorneys present, House Ways and Means Chairman Richard E. Neal briefed reporters late Thursday on the path ahead for former President Donald Trump’s tax returns now that the Supreme Court has ordered their release.

The short answer, Neal said, is there’s not a whole lot he can say — even ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A three-judge panel ruled Wednesday that a special master should not have been appointed to review materials the FBI recovered from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

The decision allows the Justice Department to resume using those materials as part of its investigation into whether Trump mishandled classified records...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Senate passed a resolution Thursday that would put in place the rail labor agreement reached by the White House, railroads and labor unions in September, but rejected a separate measure to provide an additional seven days of sick leave to workers.

The rejection of the sick leave resolution serves a blow to rail union workers ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Californians should brace for another year of brown lawns, tight water restrictions and increased calls for conservation as state water managers Thursday warned that severely reduced allocations are once again likely in 2023.

The Department of Water Resources announced an initial allocation of just 5% of requested supplies from ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said he would talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine if the Russian leader is serious about ending his invasion, after previously saying only Ukraine’s leaders can decide when to hold peace talks.

“I’m prepared to speak with Mr. Putin, if in fact there is an interest in him ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A three-judge panel ruled Wednesday that a special master should not have been appointed to review materials the FBI recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

The decision allows the Justice Department to resume using those materials as part of its investigation into whether Trump mishandled classified ...Read more

Immigration advocates and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday called on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to re-designate Temporary Protected Status for Haiti.

The re-designation and an extension would open up the immigration protection to tens of thousands of Haitians who arrived in the United States after July 29, 2021, ...Read more

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Dion Martin remembers walking home one night in the mid-1980s when Roger Golubski, a Kansas City, Kansas, police officer, pulled up, handcuffed him and placed him in his squad car.

Martin, who believes he was 14 or 15, said Golubski told him they were going for a ride. Golubski made him lay down in the back seat, so he ...Read more

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Alex Murdaugh’s attorneys have filed a motion asking the court not to shackle the accused double murderer during upcoming court proceedings.

The motion, filed this week in Colleton County court, asks that Murdaugh not be shackled during any court proceedings where news media are present with video cameras.

Citing cases ...Read more

A judge recently offered to reduce felony wage theft and fraud charges against 54 California Highway Patrol officers to misdemeanors, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

Fifty of the officers accepted the deal and will pay restitution, while a preliminary hearing will be scheduled for the remaining four in February, according to the ...Read more

KYIV, Ukraine — In a black-walled theater at the heart of a darkened capital, the audience sits rapt as the plot unspools on a stark stage: A murderous dictator's calculated cruelty spirals out of control, and his madness grows in tandem with plots against him.

A venerable Kyiv drama company's staging of "Caligula," the absurdist play by ...Read more

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, Calif. — In a victory for a San Jose church who openly flouted COVID rules at the height of the pandemic, the California Supreme Court on Wednesday denied a petition by Santa Clara County asking that Calvary Chapel pay more than a quarter million dollars in court fees.

“We feel really relieved,” said Mariah Gondeiro, ...Read more

TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa police Chief Mary O’Connor identified herself as chief, pulled out her badge and asked a Pinellas sheriff’s deputy to “just let us go” after she and her husband were pulled over in a golf cart last month, a video shared by the Tampa Police Department on Thursday showed.

In the video, which was recorded by the ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Some of the most prolific online lenders in the federal Paycheck Protection Program had remarkably lax fraud protection controls even as they approved billions of dollars worth of loans in the COVID-19 small business relief program.

What’s more, executives tied to these online lenders obtained millions in PPP loans themselves ...Read more

Great white sharks typically gather along the North Carolina coast in the winter but researchers aren’t sure why it happens.

Sara Mirabilio, a fisheries specialist at the North Carolina Sea Grant Extension Program, a state and federally-funded program that “provides research, education and outreach opportunities relating to current issues ...Read more

MEXICO CITY — For most of the last century, elections in Mexico were a farce.

The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party controlled ballot boxes, voter rolls and even tallied votes. Unsurprisingly, the party won every time.

It became known as “the perfect dictatorship,” an authoritarian regime that rarely resorted to brute force ...Read more

WASHINGTON — House Democrats continued Thursday to set their leadership team for the next Congress, approving outgoing House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn as assistant Democratic leader and picking four members to run the caucus’ messaging arm, among other posts.

The caucus elected a new top trio of leaders Wednesday: New York Rep. Hakeem...Read more

Two men were shot and killed by corrections officers during a fight with another inmate Tuesday at a state prison in Northern California, according to prison officials.

The men attacked 68-year-old Anthony Aguilera with prison-made weapons, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement Wednesday. Frank Nanez, ...Read more

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The widow of a popular Kansas City-area musician has filed a lawsuit accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci and the National Institutes of Health of indirectly causing her husband’s death from COVID-19 by funding coronavirus experimentation at a lab in China.

Leann Dykes, whose husband Jimmy Dykes died in November 2020, bases her ...Read more