NEW YORK — With just three weeks left in office, Mayor Eric Adams is filling slots on the city’s independent police watchdog board with members seen as being more supportive of cops — slotting in a retired NYPD inspector on Thursday after putting in a new interim chair earlier this week.

Together, the appointments to the Civilian ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Artificial intelligence systems designed to physically imitate natural brains can simulate human brain activity before being trained, according to new research from Johns Hopkins University.

“The work that we’re doing brings AI closer to human thinking,” said Mick Bonner, who teaches cognitive science at Hopkins. “What I ...Read more

The United States on Thursday unveiled a new round of sanctions aimed at tightening pressure on Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, targeting three nephews of First Lady Cilia Flores, a network of foreign business partners and a cluster of overseas shipping companies that U.S. officials say have helped move sanctioned Venezuelan oil through ...Read more

NEW YORK — The police officer overseeing the Pennsylvania arrest of Luigi Mangione testified that his officers did not need a warrant to search a backpack that allegedly ties him to the murder of a UnitedHealth Group Inc. executive.

Lt. William Hanelly of the Altoona Police Department said Thursday that officers properly arrested Mangione ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Street gangs from across Stockton will engage in truce talks Friday night in the wake of November’s deadly mass shooting, brokered by a group formed after the Uvalde, Texas, mass school shooting that left 19 children and two adults dead three years ago.

The Texas-based Youth Peace & Justice Foundation is gathering the ...Read more

LANSING, Mich. — Michigan House Republicans have unilaterally blocked about $8.3 million in spending aimed at helping residents of Flint deal with the long-term fallout of the drinking water crisis, as the GOP leader, Speaker Matt Hall, said the emergency in the city is over.

In 2024, state lawmakers continued to set aside money annually to ...Read more

DENVER — Pueblo County School District 70 has reinstated a substitute teacher after suspending him indefinitely in September over a Facebook post he made about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

District officials placed Chris Sutton on what’s called “inactive” status on Sept. 16 after receiving complaints about a social ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate has confirmed veteran federal prosecutor Jerome Gorgon to serve as U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Michigan, officially making him the top federal law enforcement official for Detroit.

Gorgon, a Detroit native and resident, has spent more than 15 years in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Detroit. His ...Read more

A coalition of Republican New Hampshire legislators joined the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance at the State House Thursday for a pair of press conferences highlighting what they called “the growing economic divide” between Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The campaign comes as Massachusetts has recently lost a handful of high-profile ...Read more

Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of killing two Black Lives Matter protesters during a 2020 demonstration, returned to social media this week to announce that he’s married.

Rittenhouse became a household name after shooting three people at a Kenosha, Wisc., protest following the killing of George Floyd. The then-17-year-old gunman was ...Read more

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — There were eight of them: hooded, merciless, armed men who burst into Micheline’s home, restrained her father at gunpoint and gang-raped her stepmother in front of them. They shot her father and torched their six-bedroom house. The gunmen then took her stepmother away.

The men blindfolded Micheline, then 14 years old...Read more

LOS ANGELES — In a year of incalculable loss wrought by fire, Pacific Palisades this week has yet another: Its local newspaper.

The Palisadian-Post published its final edition Thursday. The newspaper was 97 years old.

“Our reporters have chased their last stories. Our presses have printed their last copies. Our corner newsstands have ...Read more

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Sitting in a secluded courtyard in one of the Haitian capital’s many red zones controlled by armed gangs, the five women gathered in a circle and, during the course of an hour, recounted their stories of brutality.

Each had survived rape, some by multiple assailants at once, they told United Nations humanitarian ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Maryland has ordered the immediate release of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant at the center of political and legal battles as a symbol of President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis found that U.S. officials lacked legal grounds to keep Abrego ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Justice Department leadership has directed the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism” by the start of next year, and to establish a “cash reward system” that incentivizes individuals to report on their fellow Americans, according to a memo reviewed by the Los ...Read more

CHICAGO — In late May, Chicago Police officer Krystal Rivera ended an off-and-on romantic relationship with her partner, fellow officer Carlos Baker, according to her family and attorneys.

Just days later, Baker shot and killed her while the two tactical officers tried to arrest a weapons suspect on the South Side. Rivera, 36, was the first ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday rejected plans from Republicans and Democrats to ease soaring health care costs, making it more likely many people face health insurance premiums that could double shortly.

COVID-era credits for people with Obamacare-inspired health care policies will expire at the end of this month.

Senate Democrats ...Read more

CHICAGO — A month before his retrial on bribery charges, Illinois state Sen. Emil Jones III has agreed to enter into a deferred prosecution deal with prosecutors that will leave him with no conviction as long as he admits to certain illegal conduct and pays a fine.

The agreement was announced at a hearing Thursday before U.S. District Judge ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — The 24-year-old daughter of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said that troubling messages with “real-life consequences” have led her to temporarily unplug from social media out of concern for her family’s safety.

Hope Walz on Wednesday posted a video on TikTok in which she said she is taking a break from social media for the next ...Read more