LOS ANGELES — Southern California coastal communities are bracing for more flooding Thursday and Friday as El Niño conditions keep water levels very high.

Unusually high tides that have brought flooding to low-lying areas in Southern California including Newport Beach and Long Beach may linger longer than initially predicted.

The National ...Read more

PAGE, Ariz. — Doug Herrera still lives in the house his father built, though his dad died some time ago from cancer. Herrera wonders if that illness could have been linked to pollutants from nearby uranium mining. Now, he worries that a possible new neighbor — a proposed $10 billion mega data center— could imperil his health.

“I’m a ...Read more

DENVER — Two college students who vanished in Colorado’s mountains over the weekend were found dead on Wednesday, sheriff’s officials said.

The bodies of Colorado Mountain College students Kaden Matsuda, 19, and Jackson Donlon, 20, were recovered from a basin of West Apostle Mountain at about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, the Chaffee County ...Read more

DENVER — The man who killed one woman and injured more than a dozen others in a firebombing on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall last year pleaded guilty to federal crimes Thursday.

Mohamed Soliman, 46, is already serving a life prison sentence after pleading guilty to more than 100 state crimes in connection with the June 1, 2025, attack. He ...Read more

CREVE COEUR, Mo. — Reneé Luckfield tries not to knock like a cop.

In fact, the 29-year-old spends a lot of time thinking about how to make strangers comfortable when she shows up at their door to talk about transgender healthcare. A syncopated “tap — tap-tap-tap” sounds friendly even when she knocks loudly. In each encounter, she masks...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge barred immigration agents in Southern California from stopping people simply because they are Latino or appear to be and are working class, finding evidence of an unwritten, “officially sanctioned” policy of racial profiling.

In her order granting a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to appear Friday in St. Cloud to hold a news conference related to the White House’s fraud task force.

The White House said Vance “will be making an announcement on the administration’s war on Fraud.”

Vance last visited Minnesota in the aftermath of the school shooting at ...Read more

MERIDIAN, Idaho — It didn’t take long for doctors to see that something was amiss with Rebecca Crozier’s pregnancy.

At her eight-week ultrasound in 2025, they mentioned a possible neural tube defect, she said, but after some research, she thought it was something that could be managed or treated.

“If it was a fixable problem, I was ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The chief executive of the state's high-speed rail authority abruptly resigned late Wednesday ahead of a critical board vote over a key portion of the route.

Ian Choudri took over in 2024 as scrutiny over the project intensified. Under Choudri, the project lost billions of dollars in federal funding. And recently, the authority'...Read more

LOS ANGELES — As a teen in Sri Lanka, Ray Jayawardhana wrote to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory asking about its Voyager and Viking missions. In response, he received a booklet with pictures of Jupiter and Saturn.

On Thursday, the astrophysicist who studies distant planets and writes about alien life will be installed as the California ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Staving off a battle over control of homeless services, Los Angeles County has agreed in principle to let the city of Los Angeles control who gets placed in city shelters and housing.

The agreement, approved by the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday after City Council approval Friday, settled a long-standing complaint from ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — California voters are souring on a Nov. 3 ballot measure to impose a one-time tax on billionaires to help fund healthcare programs, a proposal that has triggered one of the most expensive political battles in state history.

Half of likely voters plan to vote against Proposition 40, the proposed wealth tax on billionaires' assets...Read more

WASHINGTON — A California federal judge denied the Justice Department’s effort to have California set aside about 20,000 ballots of alleged noncitizen voters Wednesday, finding that the Trump administration sought to take over the state’s election process.

The ruling from Judge David O. Carter of the U.S. District Court for the District ...Read more

Israel’s election monitor called for an investigation into possible meddling by foreign entities, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some far-right allies decried the high turnout among Arab citizens.

The head of the Central Elections Committee wrote to Shin Bet — Israel’s domestic intelligence agency — asking it to look into ...Read more

A half-dozen states enacted laws this year changing voting rules for people with felony convictions, including when their rights can be restored and how they can register to vote — affecting voters in next week’s elections.

A couple other states advanced measures that will affect such voters in future elections. And Virginia voters will ...Read more

NEW YORK — New York City’s education panel said in a resolution passed unanimously Wednesday night that it will not rubber-stamp any more extensions of “outdated” school bus contracts as they called on Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his schools chief to commit to a “full-scale overhaul” of the system.

Mamdani and Chancellor Kamar Samuels ...Read more

Russia said its air defenses intercepted more than 1,200 Ukrainian drones overnight, the highest reported total to date, while President Vladimir Putin holds a summit with leaders from Africa.

Russian forces downed 1,214 drones over 19 regions, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said Thursday in a Telegram statement. It said drones were intercepted...Read more

Israel’s election deadlock has set the stage for weeks or months of political horse-trading, with every path to a government likely to demand difficult compromises and broken campaign promises.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing religious allies are projected to secure 53 seats in Israel’s 120-member parliament, ahead of ...Read more

Antonio Hidalgo was on the sixth car of a commuter train bound for Seville on Wednesday morning, when about 118 kilometers (73 miles) south of Madrid, it collided with another train stopped on the track.

The high-speed collision and subsequent derailment resulted in at least 68 deaths – Spain’s deadliest rail crash in over a decade and ...Read more

MIAMI — In recent decades, Florida has slashed its forests and converted them to condos and crops more than nearly every other state in the nation, a new report published Thursday found.

Florida was fourth on the list for the most forest lost in the 28-year period scientists analyzed as part of a Clark University study — with 658,000 acres ...Read more