LOS ANGELES -- Threats. A torched Bentley. Gunshots in the Hollywood Hills.

A network of private, high-dollar poker games in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills has been roiled by shakedowns and violence perpetrated by alleged Israeli organized crime figures, according to a federal agent’s affidavit filed last week in federal court.

The document ...Read more

TAMPA, Fla. — Debbie Collins makes her living cooking and selling funnel cake, corn dogs and deep-fried Oreos at festivals around Tampa Bay and beyond.

It’s not a job that comes with health insurance.

Like many self-employed workers, Collins relies on the Affordable Care Act for medical coverage for herself and husband, Joe Collins, 59.

...Read more

DENVER — The Trump administration has disbanded its federal cultural property investigations team and reassigned the agents to immigration enforcement, delivering a blow to one of the world’s leaders in heritage protection and calling into question the future of America’s role in repatriating looted relics, according to multiple people ...Read more

Patients who followed an AI coach from an app on their phone cut their risk of developing diabetes as much as those visiting a human coach, a Johns Hopkins study showed.

“We were really surprised at how almost identical both of the groups were in all of the measures,” said lead researcher Dr. Nestoras Mathioudakis, an associate professor of...Read more

​WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s plan to revamp the entire Health and Human Services Department, which Congress has rejected, has nevertheless led to the gutting of a 33-year-old agency that had been leading the nation’s response to the drug and mental health response epidemic.

Since February, staffing at the Substance Abuse and...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Zoo has announced the birth of a baby boy Bornean orangutan, the first such primate baby at the zoo in almost 15 years.

The unnamed auburn-haired infant was born Oct. 10, making him nearly 1 month old. He and mom Kalim spent the first few weeks behind the scenes. But they recently made their public debut at the ...Read more

MIAMI — Argentine President Javier Milei defended capitalism earlier this week as “the only morally just system” and urged international business leaders to invest in Argentina during a speech at the America Business Forum held in Miami.

Introduced as “a social media star turned president of a divided nation,” Milei thanked Miami ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he would look to diversify critical minerals purchases during a meeting with five central Asian countries on Thursday, as the U.S. seeks to address China’s dominance in rare earths critical to advanced technology manufacturing.

“One of the key items on our agenda is critical minerals,” Trump said...Read more

Senate leaders plan to take up a stopgap funding measure in a rare Friday session to test whether a Democratic logjam could finally break to end the longest partial government shutdown in history.

But after a long day of closed-door talks, Democrats remained mostly tight-lipped about their intentions, with some suggesting they were prepared to ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Senators on both sides of the aisle on Thursday signed onto a call to keep advanced artificial intelligence chips from being sold to China.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., unveiled an as-yet unnumbered resolution focused on the importance of maintaining U.S. “primacy in artificial intelligence” and on restricting access to the ...Read more

A Commission on Judicial Conduct hearing officer has found that a Boston judge accused of helping an illegal immigrant defendant escape from court did not take part on the plan but should receive a public reprimand for impropriety.

Judge Shelley Joseph was charged by the CJC with five violations of the Rules of the Code of Judicial Conduct for ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Eli Lilly & Co. and Novo Nordisk A/S secured deals with the Trump administration to slash prices for their blockbuster weight-loss drugs like Zepbound and Wegovy in exchange for tariff relief and wider Medicare access.

The deals, announced Thursday at a White House event with President Donald Trump, will make some of the most ...Read more

SEATTLE — A King County jury on Thursday awarded $8 million to a former Seattle Public Schools student who was punched in the face by his middle school math teacher in 2018.

The verdict came after three days of deliberation and nearly a month of testimony last month in Superior Court in Seattle.

The jury found that Seattle Public Schools was...Read more

CHICAGO — U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino said federal agents’ operations had been “going very violent” the same day that his agents fired pepper balls at a moving vehicle in Gage Park and pointed rifles in Little Village as residents blew whistles, screamed at passing federal cars and followed their large convoy around Chicago's...Read more

WASHINGTON — A federal jury found a former Justice Department employee not guilty of misdemeanor assault over a viral incident in which he threw a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer.

The jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia reached a verdict Thursday after roughly seven hours of deliberation across two...Read more

LEXINGTON, Ky. — When Kim Davis, then the Rowan County clerk, repeatedly refused to sign her name to marriage licenses for unions of gay couples in her Eastern Kentucky county in the summer of 2015, she set off a firestorm that’s still smoldering today.

“For me, this would be an act of disobedience to God,” she told reporters in ...Read more

President Donald Trump on Thursday endorsed Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo’s re-election bid, calling him, “SMART, STRONG, AND TOUGH.”

Trump presented his endorsement in a post on his media company, Truth Social.

“Joe Lombardo is the strong and very popular Governor of Nevada, a very special place to me in that we had a BIG Presidential ...Read more