PHILADELPHIA — Pope Leo XIV is significantly more popular among Pennsylvania Democrats than Republicans in the state, according to an Inquirer/New York Times/Siena University poll released this week.

While 75% of Democrats expressed a favorable opinion of Leo, only 40% of Republicans did. Meanwhile, 37% of Republicans viewed the pope ...Read more

SEATTLE — A recall effort against Mayor Katie Wilson was dismissed Thursday at the behest of the people who started it.

Melinda Jacobson, who spoke for her and her husband Dale Osterud, who she filed recall “charges” with, told a King County Superior Court judge she wanted to withdraw the charges after a back-and-forth during which the ...Read more

DETROIT — A group seeking to require proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote has asked the Michigan Supreme Court to overrule a state panel that found it was short the required signatures to appear on the November ballot.

Americans for Citizen Voting argued in a filing Thursday, Aug. 27, that the Board of State Canvassers’ signature ...Read more

CHICAGO — A federal judge on Thursday denied Tommy Schaefer’s long-shot bid for release pending trial on charges he helped his then-girlfriend Heather Mack bludgeon her mother to death at a vacation resort in Bali in 2014.

Schaefer’s attorneys had asked U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly to release him on home confinement with his ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — The city of Minneapolis will pay The Minnesota Star Tribune $31,500 to settle two lawsuits over officials’ failure to turn over public records about a homicide victim and police misconduct complaints against former police Chief Brian O’Hara.

The City Council approved the settlements without comment on Thursday. City ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Eight months have passed since Rob and Michele Reiner were killed and their youngest son was arrested and charged with murder, but the couple's eldest son still feels he "will never understand why this happened."

The children of film director Rob Reiner and photographer Michele Reiner mostly have kept mum despite extensive ...Read more

After an outcry from immigrant and civil rights advocates over plans to equip immigration officers with gloves capable of delivering electric shocks, California lawmakers on Thursday unveiled a bill that would ban the use of shock gloves by any law enforcement agent in the state.

The gloves deliver can an electrical shock strong enough to drop ...Read more

As soon as news broke about the death of beloved songwriter Dolly Parton, I began receiving condolence messages from across the country, and around the world.

They came from friends, family and colleagues who knew I’d been working on a biography of the country legend – everyone from a conservative Catholic monk to advocates for ...Read more

BOSTON — The jurors in the Lindsay Clancy triple murder trial have been sent home after deliberating this afternoon for the first time after weeks of testimony and closing arguments.

Clancy killed her children on January 24, 2022, then tried to kill herself, leaving her paralyzed from a fall out of her second-story bedroom window.

She isn’...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced he was moving to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America, escalating his clash with Canada after trade negotiations between the two nations collapsed.

Trump on Thursday signed a directive changing the name of the lake and said the move would take place “effective immediately.” The president ...Read more

Nevada lawmakers will consider a bill in 2027 that would end the state’s tax breaks for AI data centers and issue a statewide pause on building or expanding facilities.

Members of the state’s interim standing committee on revenue agreed to draft the bill at a meeting Wednesday in a 6-2 vote, setting the stage for a fight over big tech in ...Read more

BOISE, Idaho — A federal judge’s recent ruling that expanded access to abortion in Idaho will now apply to just one doctor — the maternal-fetal medicine specialist who filed the lawsuit — after the Idaho Attorney General’s Office appealed the decision and filed an emergency motion to limit its scope.

Idaho District Court Judge B. Lynn...Read more

MIAMI — The federal government says it will cost $4.5 billion to elevate and floodproof more than 3,000 homes and buildings in Miami-Dade, part of a massive plan to help protect the region from the stronger hurricanes and higher sea levels of the future.

A newly issued plan from the Army Corps of Engineers, the construction arm of the federal...Read more

LAS VEGAS — The defense rested Thursday in the trial over the slaying of Tupac Shakur in 1996.

A defense attorney for Duane Davis, 63, and prosecutors will make their final pitch to the jury in closing arguments Monday.

Davis is the only person to be prosecuted in connection with the slaying of Shakur, who died Sept. 13, 1996, days after the...Read more

The National Hurricane Center on Thursday said Tropical Storm Dolly formed in the Atlantic after becoming more organized overnight.

In the NHC’s 5 p.m. EDT advisory, the center of Dolly was located about 1,425 miles east of the Caribbean’s Leeward Islands moving west at 24 mph with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph.

Tropical-storm-force ...Read more

A bipartisan package of bills aimed at punishing unethical attorneys and hedge funds that have flourished within California’s legal industry is headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

The two bills would bar lawyers from prioritizing the desires of private investors who fund lawsuits, and ramp up penalties for lawyers who scout for clients at ...Read more

LAS VEGAS — Music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight talked to an investigator in 2024 and shared his thoughts about the night of the shooting that killed rapper Tupac Shakur, a source familiar with the interview told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The source spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ...Read more

For Jake Reiner, time has become kind of irrelevant amid the “living nightmare” aftermath of his parents’ murders eight months ago, allegedly at the hands of his younger brother, Nick.

“It’s been eight months,” the eldest son of filmmaker Rob Reiner and photographer Michele Reiner told KABC-TV’s Marc Cota-Robles in his first on-...Read more