BALTIMORE — On her first night at the Freestate Challenge Academy, a state-run program for at-risk teens, retired National Guard Staff Sergeant Tory Griffin said a staff member ordered teens off a bus and into a mile-long walk through pitch-black woods.

The teens — cadets, as the program called its 16- to 18-year-old participants — had ...Read more

DENVER — People treating mental health problems at Children’s Hospital Colorado don’t have to look at the calendar or the weather to know that April has arrived.

Kids and teens who previously felt fine are seeking outpatient help, existing outpatients need more support and the number of young people showing up in mental health crisis is ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — When the new hospital in Wadena, Minnesota, opened in March 2023, more than 1,200 people showed up to tour it.

After $80 million and two years of construction, the sleek, modern Astera Health building along Hwy. 10 replaced an aging facility with no space to grow. Within months, the nonprofit health care system announced plans ...Read more

Millions of people who apply for Medicaid in the coming years will have to prove they’ve been working, going to school, or volunteering for at least a month before they can gain or retain health insurance through the government program.

But Republican lawmakers in some states think the new rules — part of the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill ...Read more

Five years ago, a tragic and depressing environmental story unfolded when thousands of giant sequoia trees, an iconic California species that tower 300 feet high and can live for 3,000 years, were killed during multiple large wildfires that roared across the southern Sierra Nevada.

The fires in 2020 and 2021 at Sequoia National Park, Sequoia ...Read more

Iran on Saturday reimposed restrictions on vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and Israel attacked targets in Lebanon, undermining expectations of an imminent peace deal touted by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Islamic Republic broadcast to ships that the waterway was closed to maritime traffic, and one supertanker reported gunfire, ...Read more

NEW YORK — A brazen trio jumped on the hood of a marked New York Police Department vehicle, cracking its windshield after police responded to a massive car takeover early Saturday morning in Queens, officials said.

Cops rushed to the scene of a drag-racing street takeover after multiple 911 calls around 1:50 a.m. at Eliot Ave. and 69th St. in...Read more

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a vehement attack on opposition parties a day after his proposed amendments to expand Parliament and accelerate the reservation of at least a third of seats for women were struck down by rivals.

“The opposition has committed a grave mistake by opposing the women’s reservation bill and will be ...Read more

The defeat of Hungary’s Viktor Orban is a warning to conservative European leaders who may be tempted to align closely with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, according to the European Commission’s most senior Social Democrat official.

“It is the right time to think about a turning point,” Teresa Ribera said in an interview in Barcelona, ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — “Operation Bear Claw” was definitely a new kind of insurance fraud case.

The target: a Rolls-Royce and two Mercedes-Benzes.

The weapon: a bear suit and meat claws.

A Southern California woman and two men, who pleaded no contest this week in a scheme to rip off insurance companies by putting on a bear costume and staging ...Read more

BOSTON — Plymouth is the latest Massachusetts town to adopt a policy restricting local police cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, as a wave of legislation aimed at impeding the agency’s ability to conduct operations in the state comes out of Beacon Hill.

Town Meeting voters in Plymouth voted to adopt a citizen’s ...Read more

Russia said an overnight fire was extinguished at a port in the Vysotsk region on the Baltic Sea after Ukrainian drone attacks, while a Kremlin strike on Ukraine’s north left 380,000 users without power.

Russian air defenses destroyed 27 unmanned aerial vehicles over the Leningrad region, according to a Telegram post on Saturday by Gov. ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is set to join Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the club of commercial companies to ever launch, land and re-fly a rocket booster during a mission aiming for liftoff early Sunday.

It’s a club SpaceX has been the lone member of for more than nine years.

But only on its third flight ever, a New Glenn rocket ...Read more

Eduardo Zayas Bazán was one of the first members of Brigade 2506 to open fire when he landed on a southern Cuba beach on April 17, 1961. He was 25 and part of a group of determined Cuban exiles intent on liberating Cuba who left behind their lives, careers and families in the United States to take up arms in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Sixty-...Read more

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Trucks and trailers backed up to a growing pile of brush Saturday in Belton to add their contributions of fallen tree limbs knocked loose during the previous night’s storm.

Belton residents Donna Kappenman, 57 and Serena Kester, 64, wore gardening gloves as they pulled broken branches of a cedar tree from the bed of their...Read more

Ukraine’s Security Service said its Alpha special operations unit conducted a drone strike on the Crimean Peninsula, damaging military assets including three Russian naval ships.

The landing ships Yamal and Azov were hit along with a third warship of an unidentified type, as well as radar, communications equipment and fuel storage facilities...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Federal and state officials are investigating a father-daughter duo and others in connection with a raucous anti-ICE demonstration outside the Whipple Federal Building, where a conservative political commentator was twice shoved to the ground.

The clash on April 11 led to at least four people being arrested and Turning Point USA...Read more

DETROIT — Before widespread flooding threatened homes and businesses across northern Michigan this spring, lawmakers failed to act for five years on recommendations by a government task force that concluded the state's aging inventory of dams required "immediate attention."

Members of the Michigan Dam Safety Task Force, which released a final...Read more