NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expanding New York City’s most popular special education programs to preschool for the first time.

The $67.5-million plan will bring the programs — including Nest, Horizons, AIMS, Path and ACES for preschoolers with autism and other disabilities — to 14 school districts across all boroughs this fall. ...Read more

CHICAGO — Mayor Brandon Johnson faced another round of grief from the City Council Tuesday over his appointments to key public boards.

A special meeting in the council Housing Committee was quickly upended when Ald. Pat Dowell protested the direct introduction of three commissioners to the Chicago Housing Authority board. Dowell, Johnson’s ...Read more

DETROIT — Michigan health officials are urging consumers to take precautions to help ward off cyclosporiasis and limit its spread as thousands of state residents have been sickened by the parasitic illness.

Through Monday, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has received more than 2,600 reports of the illness since June 22.

...Read more

DETROIT — The number of cyclosporiasis cases in Michigan now tops 3,300, according to an update Tuesday morning by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Tuesday's case total of 3,309 is up from 2,640 as of Monday. A total of 44 people had been hospitalized as of July 9.

The illness, which causes diarrhea and cramping, is ...Read more

DENVER — Denver will no longer issue local childcare business licenses after the City Council eliminated the requirement — which officials say didn’t provide any additional safeguards — in an attempt to begin making the service cheaper in the city.

While the ordinance eliminated the local license, the state has a separate process that ...Read more

DENVER — More evacuations were lifted for the Aspen Acres fire burning in southern Colorado on Tuesday, allowing residents to return home after weeks of uncertainty.

The Aspen Acres fire is one of six active wildfires burning across Colorado that have together consumed nearly 208,000 acres, or 325 square miles, according to fire officials. ...Read more

NASA astronaut Anil Menon launched with a pair of cosmonauts on a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station on Tuesday.

Menon, a member of the 2021 class of astronauts, is making his first spaceflight. He’s flying with Roscosmos’ Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina. Kikina flew once before on the Crew-5 mission that launched from Florida...Read more

The interim peace between the U.S. and Iran effectively collapsed after American forces reimposed a naval blockade and launched another wave of airstrikes, while Tehran attacked more oil tankers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to restart a blockade of Iranian ports overnight came after hostilities ...Read more

MIAMI — Two former students at a K-8 school in Homestead are suing Miami-Dade County Public Schools, a teacher, an administrator and a school counselor over the school’s handling of sexual abuse they allegedly experienced when they were 12 and 13 years old.

The students, sisters filing suit in the Southern District of Florida under “Jane ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Todd Blanche faces his biggest public test Wednesday in his bid to serve as President Donald Trump’s fourth confirmed attorney general: a Senate Judiciary Committee with a pair of undecided Republicans.

The panel’s two-day hearing, which will feature Blanche on the first day and outside witnesses on the second, will likely ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A proposal to make daylight saving time the year-round default nationwide is once again coming before Congress.

And, as in the past in both California and nationally, proponents and opponents of the switch cite the potential effects (good or bad) on health, business and agriculture as reasons to support or oppose the plan.

The ...Read more

Ask people what they want at the end of their lives, and overwhelmingly the answers will revolve around comfort, dignity and time at home with loved ones.

Yet the U.S. healthcare system often thwarts these wishes.

Most Americans say they want to die at home, but only one-third do. What could be an intentional last chapter may ...Read more

Large language artificial intelligence models, such as ChatGPT, often misjudge what people outside the West might value as a moral priority, according to our new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In 2024 we asked OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, GPT-4 and GPT-4o models to estimate the moral norms – shared...Read more

The Trump administration has planned a series of commemorative events as part of its Freedom 250 initiative to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. These commemorations, according to Chief of Protocol Monica Crowley, were intended to “bring the country back together” through a renewed sense of patriotism, national unity and civic pride.<...Read more

When five police officers were shot in Houston in January 2019 while serving a drug-related arrest warrant, all of them were transported to the hospital after emergency medical services arrived. Two went by air and three by ground ambulance.

About seven months later, a gunman in Philadelphia shot six police officers during another ...Read more

The interim peace between the U.S. and Iran effectively collapsed after American forces reimposed a naval blockade and launched another wave of airstrikes, while Tehran attacked more oil tankers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to restart a blockade of Iranian ports overnight came after hostilities ...Read more

The Iran-backed Houthi group in Yemen fired ballistic missiles and drones on Saudi Arabia, the worst attack in several years that threatens to draw the rebels into the wider regional conflict between Tehran and Washington.

The Houthis claimed they targeted Abha Airport in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern region Monday and warned aviation ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — SpaceX tallied another Starlink mission early Tuesday on the Space Coast where it was business as usual, while in Texas the company continued to prep for the next launch of its powerful Starship and Super Heavy.

The Florida launch saw a Falcon 9 rocket lift off amid predawn night skies on the Starlink 10-45 mission with 29 ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The civilian commission overseeing the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department needs to ditch the county counsel because that office is stifling the commission's role as a watchdog, according to the Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury.

The Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, which is represented by the Office of the County ...Read more

Upcoming funding shifts in the federal food stamp program are poised to cost states billions of dollars, heightening fears that more Americans will lose access to the nation’s largest food assistance program.

Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act made major changes to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, including new ...Read more