LOS ANGELES — A wrinkled Northern elephant seal named Violet slid out of a crate and onto San Pedro’s Cabrillo Beach on a muggy morning in late August.

The pinniped pup looked around quizzically with large, black eyes before lumbering into the surf with abandon — as only the young can.

Violet, named for the color of identifying crayon ...Read more

Three states this year have enacted laws that require or allow schools to use mobile, wearable, wireless or silent panic alarms to quickly summon emergency responders.

The new laws in Illinois, Virginia and West Virginia bring the number of states with such laws to 13, with 10 of them acting since 2023. Another dozen states have legislation ...Read more

On a rural stretch of land in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, an open meadow filled with bright wildflowers, a memorial grove of trees and a giant boulder marks the spot where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001.

States Newsroom’s Pennsylvania Capital-Star Editor-in-Chief Tim Lambert recently revisited the national memorial on ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Erik and Lyle Menendez have been granted an early parole hearing after their denial last year.

The brothers, who are serving prison sentences for the 1989 shotgun killings of their parents in Beverly Hills, are to appear before the California Board of Parole in March 2027, about a year earlier than anticipated. Both men were ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is hiring private contractors to track down deported migrants who it claims owe the U.S. government hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid penalties, a move that will test how far its immigration crackdown can reach across borders.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it is trying to recover about $...Read more

The Sept. 11 hero dubbed the “Man in the Red Bandana” was honored Tuesday with a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Donald Trump at a White House ceremony ahead of the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks.

Welles Crowther, a volunteer firefighter and financial trader from Nyack, saved an estimated 18 strangers trapped ...Read more

NEW YORK — Long-sought pivotal documents about the toxins swirling around ground zero after 9/11 were released to the general public Tuesday, showing NYC officials knew within weeks of the towers’ collapse that the air quality in lower Manhattan was hazardous to those living there and who responded to the terror attacks 25 years ago.

“...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Caif. — Dana Williamson, California Gov. Gavin Newsom's onetime chief of staff, is seeking to delay her criminal sentencing date for political corruption because of health issues, according to documents filed last week in federal court.

Williamson's attorney McGregor Scott, asked the court to delay her Sept. 17 sentencing and seal...Read more

Brent oil approached $100 a barrel, before paring some of its gains, after Saudi Arabia said operations at several energy facilities in the kingdom’s south were halted by attacks.

The global benchmark was near $99, after rallying last week on a flare-up in Middle East hostilities and a pick-up in buying by China, the world’s largest ...Read more

Canada imposed tariffs of 15% to 50% on hundreds of products from the U.S. on Tuesday, as Prime Minister Mark Carney bets that standing up to President Donald Trump will eventually help Ottawa’s negotiating position with its biggest trading partner.

Carney’s government increased the import tax on many U.S. steel items to 50% from 25%, and ...Read more

MIAMI — The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday identified the five people who died when an Amazon cargo plane crashed through a runway at Miami International Airport two days earlier.

The jet operated by 21 Air overshot a runway at MIA and crashed into a passenger van carrying seven people working for a cleaning company at the airport...Read more

MIAMI — Dozens of flights out of Miami International Airport are delayed or canceled on Tuesday as two of four runways remain closed. Investigators have descended on the scene after the crash of an Amazon cargo plane killed five people over the weekend.

As of 8:30 a.m., 42 flights are canceled at MIA and 62 delayed, according to the tracker ...Read more

Lindsay Clancy’s tireless attorney is appealing today to President Donald Trump to pardon his client.

“I would hope that you would consider this young lady – the type of person she is and what she’s been through – and consider a pardon,” Kevin Reddington said on-camera this morning on Good Morning America.

Yet, Trump said after ...Read more

LEXINGTON, Ky. — An analysis by a Kentucky policy center shows the number of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in the commonwealth continues to grow as the number of local agencies helping ICE has exploded over the past year.

The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, using data from the Deportation Data Project, showed the ...Read more

If you grew up in the United States in the 1980s or ’90s, chances are you remember The Oregon Trail. For many like me, it was our first computer game and our first introduction to wilderness survival. We hunted buffalo, forded rivers, broke wagon wheels and, of course, learned about dysentery years before Google even existed, all while ...Read more

For at least two decades, thousands of Americans have been going to Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil to look for ayahuasca, a psychoactive brew traditionally used in sacred ceremonies in South America. Ayahuasca contains the psychedelic compound DMT, N-Dimethyltryptamine, and researchers are studying its effects on several conditions, ...Read more