LOS ANGELES — It is a practice as old as time.

Way back in the Babylonian exile era, the Hebrew Bible told the story of Delilah, bribed by the rulers of the Philistines to entrap Samson to discover the source of his strength.

Delilah offers an ancient archetype of the “honey trap,” the deceptive practice of using romantic or sexual ...Read more

LOWER LAKE, Calif. — Two years after The Times found that cannabis sold at California dispensaries contained alarming levels of pesticides, the safety of the state’s legal weed remains a crapshoot, as government regulators fail to keep up with an ever-evolving slate of hazardous chemicals or crack down on the growers using them.

A new ...Read more

Massport says it hopes operations are back to normal at Boston Logan Airport by Monday following the nationwide ground stop, a situation a leading federal aviation expert called “very avoidable.”

Friday’s massive disruption rippled into Saturday, with over 200 flights canceled and more than 100 delayed at Logan as airlines rushed to get ...Read more

Following an 18-hour evacuation prompted by a credible bomb threat near a Peoria ethanol plant, thousands of displaced residents were allowed to return to their homes, authorities said Saturday afternoon.

Peoria police lifted the evacuation order that impacted about 2,000 people at 1 p.m.

Street barricades were removed and all the roads in a ...Read more

Mayor Brandon Johnson defended his budget proposal Saturday after the sudden resignation of his newly appointed CFO, Ashlee Gabrysch, calling his plan “fair and balanced.”

Johnson largely avoided adding on to his administration’s public criticism of Gabrysch as his mayoral campaign launched a new West Side hub. Instead, he tried to steer ...Read more

Hundreds of flights and even more passengers suffered continued delays and cancellations at airports across the Bay Area through Saturday evening following Friday’s nationwide ground stop that stranded passengers for hours.

At San Francisco International Airport, 283 flights were delayed and 253 others cancelled through Saturday afternoon as...Read more

A tiny sea turtle emerged from its sandy nursery around 7:15 p.m. on Friday and made history.

Less than two inches long and weighing about as much as a large strawberry, the olive ridley was California's first native-born sea turtle.

For two hours, the lone hatchling waited atop a pile of sand and eggs in a styrofoam cooler, the makeshift ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Tall waves pummeled the California coast on Saturday, causing beach and pier closures and endangering coastal homes and infrastructure from San Diego to Malibu and beyond.

Further north, waves towering above 50 feet were recorded in specific coastal communities in San Mateo County, just south of San Francisco.

The city of ...Read more

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., suggested he may reevaluate his role in the Democratic Party if Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., were elected majority leader, citing his colleague’s criticism of Israel.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Fetterman said Saturday in a Fox News interview when asked about any red line that would make him “walk away” from his ...Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif. — An excessive force case from the 2020 George Floyd demonstrations in downtown San Jose continues nearly two years after a jury awarded more than $1 million to an injured protester, now that a federal appeals court has granted a police officer qualified immunity even though it agreed he used unreasonable force when ...Read more

NEW YORK — The eight people killed in the tragic building collapse on a busy Brooklyn street corner on Wednesday all had one thing in common: they were all immigrants who had come to this country chasing a dream that ended in a tragic instant.

Some were undocumented. Some had been here for a few years. But they all had come to the U.S. to ...Read more

DENVER — Federal officials are looking into the circumstances surrounding one of Colorado’s reintroduced gray wolves that died in Utah last week, Colorado Parks and Wildlife said Friday.

State wildlife officials received a mortality alert for wolf 2516, a female, on Nov. 7, the agency said in a news release. The cause of death is unknown.

...Read more

PITTSBURGH — The United States has lost measles elimination status, per multiple reports, a status it has held since 2000.

Losing measles elimination status means the highly contagious virus is now considered endemic in the country, representing continuous transmission. Epidemiologists consider it a major setback for public health progress, ...Read more

Jared Kushner, the U.S. president’s son-in-law who has been serving as a negotiator with Russia and Ukraine, said the Trump administration wants to see direct talks between Moscow and U.S. allies in Europe.

Russia has recently begun demanding a discussion with Europe over security arrangements on the continent, which has divided members of ...Read more

NEW YORK — The high-stakes admissions test for New York City’s specialized high schools faced technical difficulties on Saturday, sending thousands of test-takers home from sites across the city.

The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, known as the SHSAT, is the sole determinant for admissions to eight of the city’s nine specialized...Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Weather authorities had a stern warning for Bay Area locals as towering waves hit the coast Saturday: “Stay away from the coast.”

That was the message of the National Weather Service, San Francisco Fire Department and other authorities. The weather service had issued a high surf warning, with “life-threatening waves�...Read more

SpaceX successfully caught its Starship rocket as it returned to the Texas launch site from orbit, a novel engineering feat and major step toward Elon Musk’s goal of developing a fully reusable system.

Starship descended from the sky over SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas after 3 p.m. local time on Saturday, lowering itself belly ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Transportation was working Saturday to determine whether Friday’s air traffic control system meltdown resulted from human error or equipment failure as travelers across the nation continued to grapple with a cascade of flight delays and cancellations.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the crisis ...Read more

MIAMI — Florida Gov.-elect Byron Donalds’ new policy chair is a lobbyist who has claimed credit for ensuring Obamacare subsidy extensions died in Congress last year.

Donalds named Tarren Bragdon as the policy chair of his transition team this week. He’s the founder and CEO of the Naples-based conservative think tank Foundation for ...Read more