Ever since Larry Wilkewitz retired more than 20 years ago from a wood products company, he’s had a commercial Medicare Advantage plan from the insurer Humana.

But two years ago, he heard about Peak Health, a new Advantage plan started by the West Virginia University Health System, where his doctors practice. It was cheaper and offered more ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump's promises on affordability in 2024 helped propel him to a second term in the White House.

Since then, Trump says, the problem has been solved: He now calls affordability a hoax perpetrated by Democrats. Yet the high cost of living, especially housing, continues to weigh heavily on voters, and has dragged down the ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The tenants of this 43-unit apartment building in downtown Los Angeles have typical complaints about their landlord Nela Petrusan.

They claim she has not fixed plumbing issues; that she has turned off their hot water; that she allowed a roach infestation to fester and that she has failed to make repairs in an expedient manner.

...Read more

CHICAGO — Shortly after her arrival last fall, Amelia Gray met Hudson, and the pair hit it off immediately. They touched their noses together in greeting and chuffed — a soft, breathy, snorting sound that signals affection or reassurance. Amelia Gray rolled on her back, gently pawing at her counterpart. Later that same day, they played in ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The patchwork efforts to identify and safely remove contamination left by the 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires has been akin to the Wild West.

Experts have given conflicting guidance on best practices. Shortly after the fires, the federal government suddenly refused to adhere to California’s decades-old post-fire soil-testing ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Drawing on decades of experience after having dealt with the beating of Rodney King, the killing of George Floyd and more, American law enforcement leaders, civil rights advocates and other legal experts have honed best practices for officers making street arrests, conducting crowd control and maintaining public safety amid mass ...Read more

NYPD officers too often stop Black and Hispanic drivers without justification, a lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges.

The suit, filed in Manhattan Federal Court by the New York Civil Liberties Union and Bronx Defender Services, comes after a city law went into effect at the start of 2022 requiring officers to document every vehicle stop — as well...Read more

Republican supermajorities in the Kansas Legislature passed a bill late Wednesday barring people from using restrooms in government buildings that don’t align with their sex assigned at birth.

The legislation targeting transgender Kansans was adopted after a series of remarkable procedural maneuvers that circumvented all public input on key ...Read more

LAS VEGAS — Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford asked a federal judge Wednesday to dismiss a Trump administration lawsuit that is trying to force Nevada to release an unredacted voter roll list to the federal government.

The administration targeted the state’s top elections official, Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, in a Dec. 11 lawsuit ...Read more

COLUMBIA, S.C. — With less than a year left in his term, Gov. Henry McMaster sought to look at what the state would be like after he leaves office.

McMaster, South Carolina’s longest serving governor, delivered his ninth and final State of the State address Wednesday. Because of term limits, he cannot run for reelection this year.

In his ...Read more

Hundreds of students across the Bay Area walked out of their classes Wednesday to protest the recent killings of two people in Minneapolis by federal agents and President Donald Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown.

The local walkouts — which included a march through the streets of downtown San Jose, along with other walkouts near San ...Read more

OTTAWA, Canada — Mark Carney’s Liberal Party is enjoying a surge in polls after the Canadian prime minister earned praise from other world leaders for his Davos speech urging smaller countries to resist coercion by superpowers.

A new survey released by Leger Marketing finds Carney’s Liberals with a nine-point lead over the Conservative ...Read more

A 5-year-old Minnesota child detained with his father at a Texas immigration facility appeared lethargic during a visit Jan. 28 by members of Congress, who demanded the family’s immediate release and an end to the use of family detention.

Liam Conejo Ramos, a Columbia Heights preschooler, was taken by federal agents Jan. 20 along with his ...Read more

A lawsuit from the state of Minnesota that aims to hold the oil industry accountable for allegedly misleading the public about climate change can move forward, a state appeals court ruled Monday. The ruling inches the case closer to trial after nearly six years of legal challenges.

The decision affirms a lower court’s ruling, denying a motion...Read more

SAN DIEGO — The San Diego County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved $8.75 million Wednesday to address the ongoing Tijuana River pollution crisis through health studies, infrastructure improvements and an expanded air purifier program.

The funding package includes $4.75 million for epidemiological studies and a temporary infrastructure...Read more

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem already had weathered missteps in the past year pressing the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policy and changes to federal disaster relief — and then came her response to immigration agents fatally shooting two Minnesotans.

The former South Dakota governor ...Read more

DENVER — At least one of Colorado’s collared wolves roamed widely across southwestern Colorado in the last month, a new map of wolf locations released Wednesday by Colorado Parks and Wildlife shows.

One of the state’s 19 collared wolves traveled quickly through a number of watersheds in that region, including near tribal land, according ...Read more

NEW YORK — State prosecutors in Manhattan on Wednesday pushed to try Luigi Mangione for the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in July, before his federal case gets underway.

In a letter to Justice Gregory Carro, Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann said state prosecutors should get to present their case before President ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Key Republicans in the Trump administration are retreating from their blanket defense of Border Patrol agents who fatally shot a U.S. citizen Saturday on a Minneapolis street, part of a larger effort by the White House to turn down the temperature after the killing provoked widespread outrage.

But it remains unclear whether the...Read more