Roller coasters parked. Beaches empty. Scoreboards blank. A skyline disappeared. As the eerie haze settled in over the city, summer quieted to a standstill.

Local air quality hit hazardous levels Thursday in Chicago and various suburbs, prompting beach and pool closures as day camps and other summer activities moved indoors. Some organizers ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The trunk line that ruptured early Thursday, sending thousands of gallons of water rushing down Sunset Strip and surrounding communities, was installed 110 years ago and has emerged as the latest example of L.A.’s struggles to overhaul its aging water system.

The break was on a riveted steel pipe from 1916 that forms the major...Read more

A key figure in the Feeding Our Future fraud investigation who fled the country after his indictment nearly four years ago is now in custody back in Minnesota after his arrest in Somalia.

Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh, 42, of Burnsville, was booked Thursday into the Sherburne County jail one week after his arrest in Mogadishu on numerous federal ...Read more

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Minnesota set a record for poor air quality Thursday as large swaths of the state remained under a hazardous air quality warning triggered by smoke from wildfires in the northern part of the state and Canada.

“The smoke’s come back with a vengeance,” said Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Meteorologist Ryan Lueck on ...Read more

What’s the most remarkable thing about the not-food-in-your-food recall of frozen Pillsbury Bread Roll dough that might have glass: that it involved 735,840 rolls or that the public didn’t learn about the June recall until this week?

For your discussion and decision information, here’s more on the recall by Pillsbury parent company ...Read more

CHICAGO — Mayor Brandon Johnson’s budget team put city employee layoffs on the table Thursday to help close a budget deficit they said could reach $90 million through the end of this year.

While acknowledging the final shortfall wouldn’t firm up until next month, Budget Director Annette Guzman told aldermen at a Budget Committee meeting ...Read more

A San Ysidro, California, man was sentenced Thursday to more than five years in prison for impersonating a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent to defraud more than two dozen people, many of them undocumented immigrants seeking green cards and U.S. citizenship.

Davyd George Brand Jimenez, 55, pleaded guilty in April to 10 counts of ...Read more

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed immediate reforms to a state fund that paid as much as $1,700 weekly to people claiming that such common ailments as allergies, asthma and erectile dysfunction hampered their ability to work.

The new law tightens eligibility requirements for the Subsequent Injuries Benefits Trust Fund, which was ...Read more

Local elected officials and environmental organizations called on negotiators of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to include binding solutions to the Tijuana River sewage and pollution crisis in any extension or renewal of the trade pact during a news conference Thursday near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The event, held at the John J. ...Read more

As Canada grapples with hundreds of active wildfires, the rest of North America is feeling the impacts with air quality alerts.

In Philadelphia and elsewhere, the air quality score is considered unhealthy, particularly for the most sensitive people.

Whether you are planning to go out or stay home, here’s what three experts had to say about ...Read more

SpaceX tried to get its 13th suborbital test flight of its Starship and Super Heavy rocket off the ground from Texas on Thursday, but its engines had an automatic shutdown just as they were beginning to fire with the countdown clock hitting zero.

“We’re not going to be launching today. We got all the way down to startup, triggered a hold on...Read more

WASHINGTON — The House Budget Committee approved a fiscal 2027 budget resolution Thursday as the first step toward passing a filibuster-proof reconciliation bill to provide tens of billions of dollars for defense, farm aid and voting restrictions.

The panel advanced the GOP-backed budget resolution on a strictly party-line vote of 20-14 after...Read more

WASHINGTON — The landing pad under construction on the White House South Lawn will allow the new Lockheed Martin Corp. VH-92 helicopter designed to carry the president to meet a key unmet performance requirement — not damaging the grass, the U.S. Navy said.

The Navy in a Thursday statement stopped short of explicitly saying Lockheed failed ...Read more

Iran’s speedboats, missiles, drones and mines have shown they can still wreak havoc in the Strait of Hormuz, defying daily strikes from the most powerful navy in the world.

Five months into the war, the U.S. is confronting the limits of its military power against a determined adversary in a critical global chokepoint. As the flow of shipping ...Read more

One person has died and rescues are underway as catastrophic flooding overwhelms the Hill Country, a little more than a year after the July 4 floods killed more than 130 people in Central Texas.

Up to 25 inches of rain has fallen in three days in Central Texas, and the heavy rainfall continues. More than 46,000 people are under a flash flood ...Read more

SpaceX is set for the 13th suborbital test flight of its Starship and Super Heavy rocket from Texas on Thursday as it drives toward its goal of beginning operational missions from Florida.

The massive rocket looks to launch during a 90-minute window that opens at 6:45 p.m. from the company’s Starbase site on the southeast Texas coast. SpaceX ...Read more

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in plainclothes tried to detain a man at Harry Reid International Airport on Monday, but bystanders intervened, prompting the officers to abandon the arrest, according to authorities.

Phu Nguyen, 57, was later arrested at the Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday, according to an X post ...Read more

Days before hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the U.S. are set to lose deportation protections, the Trump administration on Thursday flew more than 100 Haitian nationals back to the Caribbean country, signaling the start of what Haiti officials and immigration advocates expect to be a surge in removals beginning next week.

More than 300,000 ...Read more