Bill Thompson’s wife had never seen him smile with confidence. For the first 20 years of their relationship, an infection in his mouth robbed him of teeth, one by one.

“I didn’t have any teeth to smile with,” the 53-year-old of Independence, Missouri, said.

Thompson said he dealt with throbbing toothaches and painful swelling in his ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — This month in her transitional kindergarten class at L.A. Unified, student Maria Arriaga will be timed to see how many uppercase and lowercase letters she can name in a minute. She'll be tested to see if she can sound out nonsense words like vot, pag and lem, and asked to read sight words like young, speak and known.

It's a test...Read more

At least two hours have gone by in the Pistol 101 class, and no student has fired a bullet or even picked up a gun.

This isn't a lesson for anyone eager to pull the trigger. Tom Nguyen's teaching style is patient, aimed at demystifying an object many of his students have spent their lives fearing, even hating.

Something of a leftist firearms ...Read more

LAS VEGAS — Once your tires vibrate passing over your first cattle guard out of the Las Vegas Valley, chances are you are about to stumble into what makes much of Nevada one of the last untouched Western frontiers — public land.

More than 80 percent of the Silver State belongs to a federal government agency, the highest percentage of any ...Read more

NEW YORK — Pro-Palestinian protesters occupied the lobby of the CUNY Graduate Center in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday night, about two weeks after big NYPD crackdowns at City College of New York and other campuses.

About two dozen students demonstrated inside the lobby on Fifth Ave. near E. 34th St., hanging banners and dubbing the Center’s ...Read more

Venezuela’s armed forces have moved “substantial quantities” of personnel and equipment near the disputed Essequibo region that’s controlled by Guyana, a Washington-based think tank reports, potentially escalating tensions ahead of presidential elections.

The report published Tuesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies...Read more

Russian President Vladimir Putin is heading to China for the first foreign visit of his new term, underlining the vital importance of the relationship as Beijing faces growing U.S. pressure to curtail support that’s helping Moscow continue its war in Ukraine.

Putin, 71, who extended his nearly quarter-century rule in tightly controlled March ...Read more

BOSTON — Three federal lawmakers from Massachusetts signed onto a letter urging a national probe into how ShotSpotter is being funded amid concerns that the technology Boston Police says is critical to saving lives is ineffective and racially biased.

In the Tuesday letter, U.S. Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Ayanna Pressley ...Read more

BIG SUR, Calif. — A section of Highway 1 near Big Sur that fell into the Pacific Ocean in late March is slated to reopen Friday – eight days ahead of schedule, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday.

A temporary 24/7 signal will provide unrestricted public access with one-way alternating traffic in both directions of the highway, the governor�...Read more

With just a few days left for the Minnesota Legislature to pass bills, it’s still unclear whether there will be action on some of the biggest items at the state Capitol.

There’s still no sign of success in persuading Uber and Lyft to stay in the state, and a deal still needs to be made on close to a billion dollars in infrastructure ...Read more

An extreme summer marked by deadly heat waves, explosive wildfires and record-warm ocean temperatures will go down as among the hottest in the last 2,000 years, new research has found.

The summer of 2023 saw the temperature in the Northern Hemisphere soar 3.72 degrees above the average from 1850 to 1900, when modern instrumental recordkeeping ...Read more

A Maryland woman pleaded guilty on Tuesday in a plot to attack the Baltimore power grid with a Florida neo-Nazi leader.

Sarah Beth Clendaniel, 36, and co-conspirator Brandon Russell, the founder of the group Atomwaffen Division, conspired to shoot up five electrical substations in the greater Baltimore area in order to “break down society,”...Read more

NEW YORK — Seventy-five illegal weed shops were shuttered in the first week of the Adams administration’s “Operation Padlock” crackdown on illicit marijuana sales in the city, officials announced Tuesday.

The first batch of closures marks a drop in the bucket as there are believed to be some 3,000 illegal pot shops operating in the Big ...Read more

A proposal that would require some 16- and 17-year-olds to be tried initially as adults in North Carolina’s courts took a step forward on Tuesday, despite concerns by some that it would roll back protections for youths.

Currently, juveniles under 18 are tried in the state’s juvenile court after a petition is filed.

If a 16- or 17-year-old ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Rebecca Grossman's new attorneys are seeking a new trial that would overturn her second-degree murder conviction in the killing of two young brothers in a Westlake Village crosswalk, arguing that prosecutors failed to prove she acted with implied malice and that erroneous evidence was admitted.

Attorneys James Spertus and Lara J...Read more

Venezuela’s armed forces have moved “substantial quantities” of personnel and equipment near the disputed Essequibo region that’s controlled by Guyana, a Washington-based think tank reports, potentially escalating tensions ahead of presidential elections.

The report published Tuesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies...Read more

Polish President Andrzej Duda said Russia would invade other countries if its forces are victorious in its war on Ukraine, as he predicted a fresh military push by the Kremlin in the coming weeks.

Though he said an assault on other neighbors isn’t imminent, the Polish leader warned at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday that NATO allies are ...Read more

The next Florida governor’s race is a long way off, but the noise has been persistent.

Two recent surveys depicted Florida first lady Casey DeSantis as a top choice among Republican voters in a hypothetical 2026 election.

But on Monday, Casey’s husband, Gov. Ron DeSantis, threw cold water on the speculation.

“If I had to characterize ...Read more