Arizona lawmakers Wednesday voted to repeal an unpopular near-total abortion ban that was enacted in 1864.

The Republican-controlled state house voted 32-28 to approve repealing the draconian, 160-year-old law after a handful of GOP lawmakers defected to join Democrats.

The bill now moves on to the state Senate. The GOP also narrowly controls ...Read more

Since the age of the Romans, a lot has changed.

Aqueducts have been replaced with sewer systems and indoor plumbing. Gladiator battles have been replaced by the National Football League. Even the earliest medical tools, like scalpels and forceps have, thankfully, been updated in the past few millennia.

What hasn’t changed is the desire to ...Read more

NEW YORK — A Bronx man charged with eight random punching attacks on women since February, ranted to cops that he sometimes had to “check” women in order to keep them in line, officials say.

“It’s different with men,” Daquan Armstead, 31, told a detective after he was arrested and charged with assaulting random women in Manhattan, a...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California labor unions are once again fighting to secure unemployment pay for striking workers after Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed their effort last year.

But there is a looming question hanging over Senate Bill 1116 from Burbank Sen. Anthony Portantino: How will the state cover additional workers as its unemployment ...Read more

LANSING, Michigan — Michigan prosecutors consider former President Donald Trump and some of his top aides co-conspirators in the plot to submit a certificate falsely claiming he won Michigan's 2020 election, an investigator for Attorney General Dana Nessel's office testified Wednesday in court.

Howard Shock, a special agent for Nessel, said ...Read more

ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill Wednesday criminalizing property squatting after a surge of reports about the practice in Atlanta and Georgia.

The governor’s approval comes amid an increase in national stories about trespassers seizing control of vacant homes, violently clashing with realtors and landlords, trashing properties, and ...Read more

National security advisers and senior officials from around the world are set to meet in Doha, Qatar, this weekend to discuss plans for a summit on Ukraine’s conditions for a settlement with Russia, according to people familiar with the matter.

The meeting of officials from the Group of Seven and the so-called Global South is part of a round ...Read more

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Three fishermen are facing federal charges after being accused of illegally transporting more than 7,000 pounds of crab harvested in Southeast Alaska to Seattle in hopes of getting better prices there.

Instead, federal prosecutors say, much of the haul was wasted upon arrival in Washington state because the crab had either...Read more

WASHINGTON — Rep. Donald M. Payne Jr., a former Newark, New Jersey, city council president who followed his trailblazing father to Congress, has died at age 65, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced Wednesday.

“With his signature bowtie, big heart and tenacious spirit, Donald embodied the very best of public service,” Murphy said in a ...Read more

MIAMI — The National Hurricane Center is already watching something in the Atlantic, and it’s only April.

The low-pressure area in question is a thousand miles away from inhabited land and expected to dissolve in the next few days, but it’s also a reminder that the upcoming hurricane season is poised to be an active one.

The season ...Read more

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that he's sending California Highway Patrol officers to Bakersfield, an expansion of a law enforcement campaign launched earlier this year with an effort to tamp down crime in hard-hit California cities.

Kern County, home to Bakersfield, has higher rates of violent and property crime and more arrests ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A passenger on a Universal Studios tram car that crashed into a guardrail on Saturday estimates the ride reached speeds up to 20 to 25 mph after the driver apparently lost control of the tram, which is much faster than the usual slow pace of the attraction, according to the man's attorney.

Fifteen passengers aboard the tram ...Read more

A review board at the National Institutes of Health is conducting an internal investigation of a study about Havana Syndrome that did not find brain damage in patients, following complaints from participants and questions from Congress about newly reported information suggesting Russia might be behind directed energy attacks against U.S. ...Read more

After a violent clash with campus and local police Monday night, students at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt have taken over a campus administration building and barricaded themselves inside, demanding that the university sever ties with Israel and any companies that support “the Zionist entity.”

Cal Poly Humboldt joins ...Read more

DETROIT — Three members of the Almighty Vice Lord Nation were convicted of federal racketeering charges Wednesday, the latest in a years-long prosecution of a violent street gangs blamed for murder, drugs and other crimes in Detroit.

The jury verdicts followed a seven-week trial in federal court in Detroit almost three years after federal ...Read more

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams’ latest city budget proposal would pump more than $62 million into hiring new NYPD officers — but keep in place a similarly sized spending cut to New York’s public library systems that their leaders say could deal an existential blow to their branches’ ability to operate.

The executive budget for the 2025 ...Read more

Police in Horry County, South Carolina, have arrested 10 individuals, including the police chief of the town of Atlantic Beach, in an undercover prostitution operation, authorities said Wednesday.

The arrests followed a multi-agency sting at a hotel in the Myrtle Beach section of Horry County late on Tuesday.

Myrtle Beach, a resort city on ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices voiced doubt Wednesday about a strict Idaho law that would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion even for a woman who arrives at a hospital suffering from a serious, but not life-threatening, medical emergency.

Solicitor Gen. Elizabeth B. Prelogar, representing the Biden administration, ...Read more

WARREN, Mich. — Warren police and the Macomb County prosecutor on Wednesday implored gun owners to secure their firearms after announcing charges against the father of an 8-year-old who shot himself in the head in Warren last week, the first time a parent in the county has been charged under Michigan's new safe storage law.

Prosecutor Peter ...Read more

MADRID, Spain — Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced that he may resign over right-wing attacks against him and his wife, a move that would push Spain into unchartered political territory and raise the possibility of a new general election.

Sanchez, 52, canceled his public appearances through the weekend and said he’d reflect on the ...Read more