MIAMI — Adam Arenas’ Doral neighborhood was calm and quiet just a few days go. All it took was one flash of lightning to change that.

Suddenly, Miami seemed to be on fire.

One brush fire from the summer storm then split into two, and the raging flames sent plumes of black smoke upward, darkening the skies for miles and fouling the air.

It...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — President Donald Trump’s administration sued Philadelphia and some of its top officials Thursday over a new ordinance that bars law enforcement officers from concealing their identities and effectively bans federal immigration agents from wearing masks.

The law, part of City Council’s recently adopted “ICE Out” package ...Read more

The Trump administration is dropping near-term plans to dismantle a $386 million federal ocean-observing system after encountering resistance from scientists and Congress.

The National Science Foundation said Thursday it will pause efforts to decommission most of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a network of sensors in the Atlantic and ...Read more

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Missouri judge on Thursday cleared a path for residents to access medication abortion, a key decision more than 18 months after voters legalized abortion access.

The 20-page ruling from Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Jerri Zhang marks a major win for abortion rights supporters. But the order comes as voters are ...Read more

BOSTON — Off-sides!

Gov. Maura Healey has apologized for the confusion she sparked when she signed an executive order making haggis legal in Massachusetts, which she said was entirely a “joke.”

Haggis has been illegal to import or produce in the U.S. since 1971, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture classified the sheep’s lung as an ...Read more

NEW YORK — Lawyers for Luigi Mangione on Thursday withdrew a notice regarding an affirmative psychiatric defense in his state homicide case, a day after a Manhattan judge ordered them to share his mental health records with the prosecution.

In a brief letter to the court, Mangione’s lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo said his team was ...Read more

The Department of Homeland Security is backing away from a controversial plan to turn empty warehouses into immigration detention centers and will keep relying largely on existing jails run by private contractors and state and local partners.

The decision marks a sharp retreat from one of former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s ...Read more

U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., are urging U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to provide emergency funding to the state to combat the threat of the glassy-winged sharpshooter. The invasive pest was recently found on grapevines sold at Costco stores in Sacramento County and other counties throughout the ...Read more

RALEIGH, N.C. — As Duke Life Flight crews worked to save lives this April, someone on the ground below worked to distract them.

Just before 10 p.m. April 14, the Johnston County Sheriff’s Office got a call from the Federal Aviation Administration. Lasers were being pointed at Duke Life Flight helicopters for several nights in a row, federal...Read more

Actor Timothy Busfield’s defense team is asking a New Mexico court to throw out the indictment against its client that was handed down in February.

The Emmy Award winner is charged with four counts of criminal sexual contact with a child under the age of 13. He denies any wrongdoing.

His attorneys now claim the case should be dropped ...Read more

DENVER — A Canada-bound flight aborted takeoff at Denver International Airport on Thursday afternoon after the flight crew declared an emergency following an “incident” and evacuated passengers onto the runway, airline officials said.

WestJet officials confirmed there was an issue involving a flight headed to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A Yolo County judge on Thursday denied bail to one defendant charged in the deadly Esparto fireworks explosion and ruled one of his seven co-defendants must hire his own attorney after determining he inherited more than $1 million in property.

Jack Lee, the longtime operations manager for Devastating Pyrotechnics, the ...Read more

NEW YORK — The NYPD is investigating the Central Park carriage horse crash that killed an 18-year-old tourist, officials confirmed Thursday.

Cops from the Central Park Precinct are looking into the crash and have interviewed the carriage horse driver, who had stepped away from the carriage to take a photo of victim Romanch Mahajan and his ...Read more

Florida could soon ban undocumented students from enrolling in state universities and colleges, moves that would make it the fourth state and by far the largest to shut these immigrants out of at least some publicly financed higher education options.

The Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the state’s 12 universities, wants to amend ...Read more

The largest wind energy project in U.S. history is now online, delivering power from a massive array in New Mexico to Arizona and California — and signaling a new era for sending clean electricity across the West.

Nearly two decades in the making, the estimated $11-billion SunZia project from Pattern Energy is now fully operational, company ...Read more

CHICAGO — A man accused of conspiring to torch his father’s grocery became the latest defendant to allege serious grand jury misconduct by the federal prosecutor who led the “Broadview Six” case that collapsed in spectacular fashion last month.

Lawyers for Alla Ishkirat said in a court filing Thursday that grand jury transcripts ...Read more

WASHINGTON — As lawmakers on Capitol Hill grapple with President Donald Trump’s deal to end the war in Iran, the New Jersey Democrat who spent years weighing national security issues in the Middle East described the agreement as a “mind-boggling” move that will have damaging reverberations across the globe.

“It’s like setting your ...Read more