MINNEAPOLIS — Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to appear Friday in St. Cloud to hold a news conference related to the White House’s fraud task force.

The White House said Vance “will be making an announcement on the administration’s war on Fraud.”

Vance last visited Minnesota in the aftermath of the school shooting at ...Read more

MERIDIAN, Idaho — It didn’t take long for doctors to see that something was amiss with Rebecca Crozier’s pregnancy.

At her eight-week ultrasound in 2025, they mentioned a possible neural tube defect, she said, but after some research, she thought it was something that could be managed or treated.

“If it was a fixable problem, I was ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The chief executive of the state's high-speed rail authority abruptly resigned late Wednesday ahead of a critical board vote over a key portion of the route.

Ian Choudri took over in 2024 as scrutiny over the project intensified. Under Choudri, the project lost billions of dollars in federal funding. And recently, the authority'...Read more

LOS ANGELES — As a teen in Sri Lanka, Ray Jayawardhana wrote to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory asking about its Voyager and Viking missions. In response, he received a booklet with pictures of Jupiter and Saturn.

On Thursday, the astrophysicist who studies distant planets and writes about alien life will be installed as the California ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Staving off a battle over control of homeless services, Los Angeles County has agreed in principle to let the city of Los Angeles control who gets placed in city shelters and housing.

The agreement, approved by the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday after City Council approval Friday, settled a long-standing complaint from ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — California voters are souring on a Nov. 3 ballot measure to impose a one-time tax on billionaires to help fund healthcare programs, a proposal that has triggered one of the most expensive political battles in state history.

Half of likely voters plan to vote against Proposition 40, the proposed wealth tax on billionaires' assets...Read more

WASHINGTON — A California federal judge denied the Justice Department’s effort to have California set aside about 20,000 ballots of alleged noncitizen voters Wednesday, finding that the Trump administration sought to take over the state’s election process.

The ruling from Judge David O. Carter of the U.S. District Court for the District ...Read more

Israel’s election monitor called for an investigation into possible meddling by foreign entities, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some far-right allies decried the high turnout among Arab citizens.

The head of the Central Elections Committee wrote to Shin Bet — Israel’s domestic intelligence agency — asking it to look into ...Read more

A half-dozen states enacted laws this year changing voting rules for people with felony convictions, including when their rights can be restored and how they can register to vote — affecting voters in next week’s elections.

A couple other states advanced measures that will affect such voters in future elections. And Virginia voters will ...Read more

NEW YORK — New York City’s education panel said in a resolution passed unanimously Wednesday night that it will not rubber-stamp any more extensions of “outdated” school bus contracts as they called on Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his schools chief to commit to a “full-scale overhaul” of the system.

Mamdani and Chancellor Kamar Samuels ...Read more

Russia said its air defenses intercepted more than 1,200 Ukrainian drones overnight, the highest reported total to date, while President Vladimir Putin holds a summit with leaders from Africa.

Russian forces downed 1,214 drones over 19 regions, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said Thursday in a Telegram statement. It said drones were intercepted...Read more

Israel’s election deadlock has set the stage for weeks or months of political horse-trading, with every path to a government likely to demand difficult compromises and broken campaign promises.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing religious allies are projected to secure 53 seats in Israel’s 120-member parliament, ahead of ...Read more

Antonio Hidalgo was on the sixth car of a commuter train bound for Seville on Wednesday morning, when about 118 kilometers (73 miles) south of Madrid, it collided with another train stopped on the track.

The high-speed collision and subsequent derailment resulted in at least 68 deaths – Spain’s deadliest rail crash in over a decade and ...Read more

MIAMI — In recent decades, Florida has slashed its forests and converted them to condos and crops more than nearly every other state in the nation, a new report published Thursday found.

Florida was fourth on the list for the most forest lost in the 28-year period scientists analyzed as part of a Clark University study — with 658,000 acres ...Read more

Federal regulators are cracking down on the nonprofits responsible for coordinating organ donations, aiming to begin shutting down substandard groups by early next year.

New criteria will score the organizations on donation and transplantation rates and will decertify the bottom tier, meaning their contracts with the federal government will be ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Neighbors of the Hollywood sign say crowds have made life a misery and a danger — and it's the city's fault in part because, some 15 years ago, a councilman decided to clear some brush to create a viewing spot.

Cynthia Cobb is one of those neighbors. She said when she and her husband moved to Lake Hollywood in 2017, they were ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Arlo Meighan-Thiel is 16, and he's ready to vote.

Not in two years, when he becomes a legal adult. No, the Culver City High School junior believes he is mature and well-informed enough to cast a ballot now.

In Culver City, a local ballot measure before voters — adult voters, that is — in the Nov. 3 election could ...Read more

MIAMI — Early into his tenure this summer, Florida Education Commissioner Henry Mack took to social media to talk about the limits of artificial intelligence.

His office had just rolled out a sweeping set of regulations meant to safeguard against the possible harms of AI in schools, including the outsourcing of critical thinking and work to ...Read more

The Israeli election of Oct. 27, 2026, was among the most highly anticipated votes in the country’s history. It was consequential, if not yet conclusive.

With nearly all the votes counted, it is still unclear who will lead the country following the first national ballot since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack, and the devastating ...Read more

Officials in South Carolina announced Wednesday that an investigation found Hayden Panettiere's Aug. 16 death to be accidental and the case is now closed.

"Based on the Medical Examiner's determination and the findings of the investigation, Hayden Panettiere's death has been ruled accidental," officials in Greenville, S.C., said.

Paramedics ...Read more