The Trump administration’s top wildlife official issued a directive last week that expands a recent rollback of endangered species protections much further than the feds had told the public.

Individuals and industries may kill endangered animals in the course of logging projects, developments and other activities, it said — so long as the ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — California serial killer Wesley Shermantine, who along with his childhood friend terrorized the Central Valley throughout the 1980s and '90s, has died in prison, authorities said.

Shermantine was one-half of the notorious "Speed Freak Killers." The moniker referred to the duo's methamphetamine-fueled killing rampages, which ...Read more

DENVER — The Aurora immigration detention center placed a housing unit on a brief quarantine earlier this month after detainees were told they’d been exposed to tuberculosis, according to interviews with advocates and two people housed in the pod.

Federal and facility officials did not provide comment on the reports, despite multiple ...Read more

BALTIMORE — A group of Baltimore residents accused top city officials of violating city and state laws and regulations by approving a $900 million Harborplace redevelopment plan, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.

Plaintiffs, mostly residents who live downtown near the Inner Harbor, said in the complaint that Mayor Brandon Scott and the ...Read more

Actor Hayden Panettiere died from the toxic effects of fentanyl and other drugs including a generic version of Xanax, according to a coroner's report in North Carolina where she died last month.

The Greenville County Coroner's report listed Panettiere's cause of death as toxic effects of fentanyl, 4-ANPP, Alprazolam — the generic version of ...Read more

Pollsters approach this year’s midterm elections dogged by high-profile misfires in recent elections while facing challenges from brash rivals intent on reshaping the landscape of political forecasts.

There are no guarantees that polling’s troubles – and persistent popular skepticism about the dependability of election polls –...Read more

President Donald Trump loves a good pardon. His generosity is so well known, in fact, that an industry of lobbyists, lawyers and other insiders has reportedly sprung up to facilitate clemency for wealthy criminals. Clemency, meaning mercy or leniency, lets the president reduce the punishment for, or even forgive, federal crimes.

For ...Read more

Taxi and ambulance drivers are less likely than workers in almost any other job to die of Alzheimer’s disease. That was the surprising result of a 2024 study examining the death certificates of nearly 9 million people in the U.S.

These findings stopped me in my tracks because those two jobs rely on the same thing as my own work: ...Read more

A growing number of states are making an equal split between parents the default child custody option in divorce cases.

Louisiana and Mississippi this year joined at least five other states that have adopted the so-called 50-50 standard — four of them since 2021, as more legislators rework divorce-related laws that remained mostly unchanged...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — For more than two decades, Omar Jamal has cultivated influence as a high-profile go-between — connecting politicians, regulators and law enforcement officials with members of Minnesota’s Somali community. Since 2020, he has also held a civilian job with the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office.

That public standing and private ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — With the deadline for mailing out millions of California ballots nearing, Los Angeles County's top election official welcomed the U.S. Postal Service's recent assurance that it will process those ballots as normal — not under the untested new vetting system backed by President Donald Trump and rejected as unworkable by the U.S....Read more

SEATTLE — Even as fewer Washington parents chose to have their kindergartners vaccinated last year, the overall percentage of K-12 students receiving required shots held steady.

According to recent data from the state Department of Health, about 90% of all students met vaccine requirements during the 2025-2026 year, less than 1% higher than ...Read more