LOS ANGELES — A prominent civil rights attorney who represented the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Trayvon Martin announced he’s gathering evidence for a possible federal discrimination lawsuit against Los Angeles County over its response to the Eaton fire.

Attorney Ben Crump has joined the growing ranks of officials and ...Read more

Companies competing for workers to build data centers are finding that a motel room with sluggish Wi-Fi isn’t much of a draw. Try free steaks and golf simulators.

As data-center development has exploded with the rise of artificial intelligence, competition for water and power supplies is pushing construction further into rural areas that ...Read more

Venezuela needs more than money to revive its battered oil industry.

It needs a sprawling diaspora of oil workers who fled the Caribbean country under President Nicolás Maduro to return. Even with the former strongman now sitting in a U.S. jail, that’s a hard sell.

Twenty years of repression and economic collapse forced many geologists, ...Read more

ST. PETER, Minn. — Mercedes checked her phone again, waiting for her husband to call from the detention center.

Forty-one days earlier, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents had detained Paco as he walked to his car. Mercedes said she had watched from the window of their mobile home as agents handcuffed him.

Paco was undocumented...Read more

LEXINGTON, Ky. — A 34-year-old Kentuckian is among the six American service members who died in a plane crash in Iraq on Thursday.

Air Force Tech. Sgt. Ashley B. Pruitt was assigned to the 6th Air Refueling Wing out of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., according to a Saturday news release from the Department of Defense.

Pruitt is the ...Read more

CHICAGO — Joe Hakimian gestures toward the glittering rings sitting inside glass cases at his downtown jewelry shop, Hakimian Imports. There’s the rare-colored gems he picked up at estate sales, and a sparkling 8-carat diamond that covers the finger. He even had an 18k gold brooch shaped like a tennis racket for sale this week.

But perhaps...Read more

DENVER — More than 30,000 homes and businesses lost power on Saturday as high winds blew across Colorado, according to several of the state’s energy utilities.

Roughly 18,000 of those outages were Xcel Energy customers in Colorado’s foothills, who lost power when the utility’s preemptive safety shutoffs started at 2 p.m. Saturday, ...Read more

MIAMI — Zoo Miami abruptly closed Saturday afternoon after a bomb threat for the second day in a row, according to a social media post from the zoo.

More than 100 cars were stuck in traffic on the road leading out of the attraction.

The zoo also had a bomb threat on Friday afternoon. The zoo closed after “an anonymous phone call reporting ...Read more

CHICAGO — Downtown Chicago looked like a sea of green, or more precisely a river of green, on Saturday as crowds gathered for the city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day weekend festivities.

Just before 10 a.m., boats from Shoreline Sightseeing carrying members of the Chicago Journeymen Plumbers Local Union 130 sprayed bright green dye into the ...Read more

MIAMI — Bishop Leo Frade, the retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida, wasn’t surprised when Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel announced Friday that Cuba and the United States were talking and moving away from confrontation.

With President Donald Trump urging Cuba to make a “deal” with the United States after he moved...Read more

North Korea fired more than 10 ballistic missiles toward the waters off its eastern coast, days after testing cruise missiles from a new warship and adding to global geopolitical risks that were already mounting after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran.

State media KCNA, in a report dated March 15, said leader Kim Jong Un presided over a drill ...Read more

News of black rain falling on Tehran felt all too familiar to Nejat Rahmanian as he scrolled through alerts on social media feeds and tried to contact relatives on March 8.

Israeli drone strikes hit giant oil depots and refineries on the outskirts of the Iranian capital a few hours earlier, setting fuel on fire and releasing columns of black ...Read more

TAMPA, Fla. — It first flew in 1956, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. It carries 200,000 pounds of fuel, siphoned away midair through a metal tube. And it doesn’t have parachutes, trapping crews during a crash.

The KC-135 Stratotanker plane, effectively a flying gas tank, is at the core of the U.S. military’s ability to fight wars...Read more

MIAMI — Days before they were set to vote on granting a two-year extension to Police Chief Wayne Jones last month, elected officials in Miami Beach received packets at their homes containing copies of inappropriate emails sent more than a decade ago by Jones and other officers.

The documents, sent anonymously, show officers sending and ...Read more

CHICAGO — DeKalb County reported its first measles case of the year this week, as the disease — once eradicated in the U.S. — continues to spread in several states.

Health officials are investigating the case and contacting people who may have been exposed, the DeKalb County Health Department said in a release Thursday, while keeping ...Read more

Switzerland closed its airspace for U.S. military flights directly linked to the Iran war, citing its tradition of neutrality in armed conflicts.

Two requests for U.S. reconnaissance planes to cross over Switzerland on Sunday were rejected, the federal government in Bern said in a statement Saturday. Three other flights, including two transport...Read more

The head of Tibet’s government-in-exile said his administration is closely monitoring whether the escalating war in Iran may give China room to deepen its interests on the Himalayan plateau and other regional flash points.

​Penpa Tsering, the elected leader of the Central Tibetan Administration, said observers are gauging whether the ...Read more

MIAMI — Sarahjane Ternier, the long-time partner of former North Miami mayor Philippe Bien-Aime and mother of three of his children, has been detained by federal immigration officials amid an ongoing effort to strip the Haiti-born politician of his U.S. citizenship.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman confirmed Friday to the ...Read more

NEW YORK — Staffers at the federal World Trade Center Health Program — which has already seen more than a 25% drop in personnel — have been reassigned to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Indian Health Service, advocates for the 9/11 community said.

They are demanding a hearing with U.S. Department of Health and Human ...Read more

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — With only 60 days to pass a full plate of bills and a balanced budget, the Florida Legislature’s grand plans to add property tax cuts to their crowded calendar never had a chance.

Lawmakers did not even get a budget out before the close of business Friday, the end of the regular session, much less a complicated ballot ...Read more