Oil spills pose a multifaceted threat in the Great Lakes, where oil transit pathways overlap and concentrate in major waterways such as the Straits of Mackinac and St. Clair River, a group of researchers found in a new study led by Lake Superior State University.

Although major oil spills such as the Enbridge Line 6b rupture into a Kalamazoo ...Read more

NEW YORK — The union representing the roughly 200 owners and drivers in the city’s embattled Central Park carriage horse industry threatened Wednesday to sue should the City Council vote to end the industry, as is expected, on Thursday.

The legislation — which would immediately end the issuance of carriage horse licenses and outlaw ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — More people are contracting mosquito-borne West Nile virus and dying in Los Angeles and Orange counties than anywhere else in California, pushing state levels to a five-year high.

The two counties combined account for at least 63% of the 378 human infections reported this year by the California Department of Public Health, ...Read more

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Republican Party of Florida on Wednesday withdrew its lawsuit asking a court to ban TV stations from running an ad by the Florida Democratic Party that targets Attorney General James Uthmeier and his involvement in the Hope Florida scandal.

The lawsuit filed late Friday in a court in rural Highlands County court said ...Read more

DENVER — Two midair near-collisions and dozens of safety incidents on Centennial Airport’s parallel runways in the last two years raised red flags, prompting federal officials to restrict certain flights, a new safety report shows.

Federal Aviation Administration investigators reviewed more than 35,500 “parallel departures” at ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — The Justice Department is asking to disqualify two federal judges in Minnesota from presiding over a pair of cases regarding citizenship and illegal voting, challenging their impartiality in the matters.

In the filings, associate attorney general Stanley Woodward Jr. demanded that U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz and U.S. ...Read more

South Jersey Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew on Wednesday announced a congressional subpoena of New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration, demanding it produce records he requested three months ago that may explain how 6,600 noncitizens were added to the voter rolls in violation of federal law.

Sherrill, a first-term Democrat, revealed in...Read more

With a stroke of a pen, President Donald Trump has officially created the United States’ 64th national park.

Chiricahua, in southeastern Arizona, was established as a national monument in April 1924 to protect its towering rhyolite hoodoos – tall spires of rock – and diversity of wildlife. The mountainous landscape is commonly ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — The National Hurricane Center on Wednesday continued to keep an eye on a system off the U.S. East Coast with the potential to develop into a more dangerous storm as well as beginning to track a second Atlantic system.

As of the NHC’s 2 p.m. Eastern time tropical outlook, a storm-force, nontropical area of low pressure, ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s latest embrace of Russian leader Vladimir Putin is deepening alarm in Washington and among America’s allies that the White House pressure campaign could leave Ukraine vulnerable as Moscow advances.

Trump’s push to end the war, which has raged since 2022, comes on the cusp of a midterm election that...Read more

BALTIMORE — A federal judge is preparing to rule on the May lawsuit filed by 17 Maryland sheriffs after the state banned law enforcement from formally cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in most cases, thus eliminating local 287(g) agreements.

U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Maddox heard arguments Wednesday from the ...Read more

BOSTON — The ringleader of an alleged sham marriage ring busted by the feds advertised Massachusetts as a “sanctuary” for illegal immigrants looking to easily grab welfare benefits.

The scheme netted the half-dozen defendants over $6 million in profits over more than 10 years, according to U.S. Attorney Leah Foley and charging documents, ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Two teenage girls have been arrested on suspicion of plotting a mass shooting at a Riverside County high school after investigators allegedly found months of discussions planning the attack, according to authorities.

On Oct. 6, the FBI alerted the Corona Police Department about online social media conversations about a threat to...Read more

NORFOLK, Va. — A member of the Old Dominion University community died on campus Wednesday morning.

ODU Police Chief Garrett Shelton said first responders were called to a scene outside the Batten College of Arts & Letters at about 8:40 a.m. He said at the time students were nearby, walking to class on their normal routines.

“It was ...Read more

The Trump administration praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “humanitarian” for releasing a detained U.S. citizen, the latest White House move to curry favor with Russia in its efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

The release also came with a new willingness by Putin to resume trilateral negotiations with the United States and ...Read more

President Vladimir Putin said Russia is ready to resume trilateral negotiations with the United States and Ukraine on a potential peace deal, according to the Kremlin.

Putin made the offer during more than three hours of talks in St. Petersburg with U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, on Wednesday, Kremlin foreign policy aide ...Read more

RALEIGH, N.C. — Democratic Gov. Josh Stein has urged North Carolina voters to cast their ballots in-person, arguing that a last-minute rule change is causing a surge in rejections of mail-in ballots.

In a social media post Tuesday, Stein said the new policies, approved last month in a party-line vote by the Republican-majority State Board of ...Read more

MIAMI — An American missionary who spent nearly three decades caring for orphaned and abandoned children in Haiti faces federal charges in Miami accusing him of sexually abusing one boy and attempting to sexually abuse another, following an FBI investigation into allegations of misconduct spanning years at children’s homes he operated.

...Read more

Top Democrats in Congress have joined a California immigrant and the Nevada State Democratic Party in suing the Trump administration over its unprecedented voter fraud probes in both states and broader efforts to meddle in state-run elections nationwide — alleging they are a “pretext to seize control over elections.”

The lawsuit, filed in...Read more