BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Ulises Hernandez has had health coverage through Medicaid for as long as he can remember. But he had never waited as long for care as he did in September after a dental crown slipped down his throat during a procedure. He spent eight hours in an emergency room waiting for care and more than two days without food.

Sitting...Read more

Rising healthcare costs aren’t a problem just for those who buy their own health insurance. Increases hit employers and their workers this year, too, and more are expected for 2027 plans — adding to growing concerns about affordability heading into the midterm elections.

Polls show that healthcare costs— and affordability, in general — ...Read more

Days before it was to go into effect, the Trump administration pushed back a U.S. customs rule threatening the supply of vital prescription drugs imported by millions of Americans.

Under the rule, Customs and Border Protection and the FDA will require coding on packages that makes it easier to know what’s in them. It is aimed at collecting ...Read more

Along with the pumpkins and costumes, the candles and cobwebs, Halloween is all about storytelling. From tales of haunted houses to accounts of demonic possession, ghost stories are part of the holiday’s appeal.

As a professor at the University of Maine who specializes in ghost stories, I’ve thought a lot about what makes one ...Read more

SAO PAULO, Brazil — Brazilian markets cratered, with the currency and the benchmark stock index quickly racking up losses of more than 10%, as the surprise reelection of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva blew up the bullish wagers that investors had made on the country in recent weeks.

The speed and magnitude of the rout — ...Read more

FORT WORTH, Texas — A woman who smothered an 8-month-old boy with a pillow in an apartment in southwest Fort Worth pleaded guilty on Monday to murder.

Dulce Gomez was babysitting Fabian Arjon when she killed the baby in November 2024, law enforcement authorities have said.

In a plea negotiated by a prosecutor and Gomez’s defense attorneys,...Read more

A record number of women are running for state legislative seats this November, more than two-thirds of whom are Democrats.

Across the 46 states with legislative seats on the ballot, a total of 3,824 women are running — up from 2022’s previous record of 3,621 women candidates, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at ...Read more

Near-record or record-high sea levels are expected to bring multiple days of flooding along the Southern California coast this week, with the inundation beginning as soon as Monday when high tide rolls in.

Officials in Newport Beach and Long Beach have been scrambling to prepare as crews move sand to shore up beaches, install sandbags and ...Read more

NEW YORK — The Trump administration’s firing of veteran prosecutor Maurene Comey was unlawful and flew in the face of “nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent” and longstanding White House policy, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled Monday.

In a 55-page decision, Federal Court Judge Jesse Furman granted Comey’s request to find ...Read more

Serbia’s surprise rejection of veteran leader Aleksandar Vucic hands political power to an opaque protest movement with no track record.

The Student List, formed from backers of mass anti-government protests that gripped the nation for nearly two years, won an outright majority in a snap general election promising to stamp out corruption and ...Read more

BALTIIMORE — The FBI is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in a September mass shooting in East Baltimore that left a 3-year-old boy paralyzed and six other people wounded.

The FBI announced the reward Friday, revealing that the boy was paralyzed by injuries sustained in the Sept. 16 shooting near Douglass Homes. ...Read more

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron bet that a massive police presence could avoid a repeat of the violence that stunned the country on Oct. 17. He won that wager, but isn’t any closer to resolving underlying anger that’s fueled mass protests in France and shows few signs of abating.

Hundreds of thousands took part in the ...Read more

Brazilian markets suffered steep losses after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pulled off a stunning comeback to defeat Flávio Bolsonaro, the right-wing candidate that many investors preferred.

Brazil’s real slumped 11% in early Monday trading, while some longer-dated swap-rates contracts surged almost 300 basis points, after hitting ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Maryland officials still cannot say how much taxpayer money the state spends on private lawyers, three months after the Comptroller’s Office said it would try to add up those costs.

In July, the Comptroller’s Office said it would review financial records to produce what would’ve been the first statewide estimate. But ...Read more

On the evening of Oct. 11, just weeks before the 2026 midterm elections, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop airing taxpayer-funded television advertisements praising President Donald Trump.

Yet two of the ads continued running past the court’s deadline, including during broadcasts of “60 Minutes” and “ABC...Read more

It may not be as shocking as rogue AI agents hacking another system, but the current political resistance to data centers has taken a surprising turn: It’s bringing together strange bedfellows, from democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders to right-wing strategist Steve Bannon.

Organized opposition to new data centers, made up of a ...Read more

It’s easy to stereotype older adults as tech-averse or novice tech users. Yet a growing number of adults age 60 and older are embracing artificial intelligence, using it for entertainment, planning trips and even accessing health information.

I study how people interact with computers and technology – and specifically, how older ...Read more

Hurricane Belle was barreling toward New England in August 1976 when an editor from Foreign Affairs called. Physicist Amory Lovins took the call on a payphone in a shack in the Maine woods, where he spent summers as a camp guide.

“If it happened to hit that area, the wires would be down with trees on them for weeks, so we’d miss ...Read more

It turns out you can rent a Steinway piano and have it delivered pretty much anywhere – including the lecture hall of a major working hospital.

In October 2025, I had one delivered to UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh for the premiere of “One in Four, One in Eight,” a 60-minute piece I composed about infertility and ...Read more