WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance departed Friday for Islamabad, Pakistan, to open the first direct negotiations aimed at ending the war between the United States and Iran.

Together with a delegation of deeply mistrusting negotiators from Tehran, Vance is tasked with striking a lasting peace between rival nations that have failed to keep ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump ramped up pressure on Iran as Vice President JD Vance traveled to Pakistan for talks to end the war, with Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon and the Strait of Hormuz’s effective closure looming over diplomatic efforts.

Trump posted on social media Friday that Tehran’s only leverage is “short term extortion...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democratic front-runner in the hotly contested California governor’s race, was accused of sexual assault by a former staff member in a report published on Friday.

The woman said she and the Northern California congressman had a consensual relationship at times, but that he sexually assaulted her ...Read more

NEW YORK — Former Mayor Eric Adams, who has made no secret of his love for international travel, has been granted Albanian citizenship by the country’s president.

The special decree making it official was signed by Albanian President Bajram Begaj on Friday.

“Granting Albanian citizenship, upon his request, to the citizen: Eric L. Leroy ...Read more

A Chicago man was arrested after threatening to shoot President Donald Trump and decapitate his youngest son.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois said Michael Kovco sent several electronic messages to the official White House website last month expressing his intentions to harm the president, Barron Trump...Read more

NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani marked his 100th day in office with a video about how citywide scaffolding has become an acceptable eyesore and what he plans to do to change that reality.

The five-minute-and-29-second public service announcement narrated by the Mayor and shot by HBO documentarian John Wilson includes interviews with everyday ...Read more

BALTIMORE — A federal funding lapse has forced the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial to close just weeks before hundreds of families are expected to gather to honor loved ones who died in the line of duty.

The memorial, located on the campus of the National Emergency Training Center, is closed to the public because of the funding ...Read more

MIAMI — The city of Miami will pay out $150,000 to cover the legal fees for Emilio González, a candidate for mayor who sued the city last year after it attempted to postpone the election from 2025 to 2026.

In June, the city passed an ordinance moving the city from odd- to even-year elections. The change postponed the November 2025 election ...Read more

WOODLAND, Calif. — Yolo County prosecutors on Friday unveiled sweeping grand jury indictments charging seven men and one woman in connection with a July 1, 2025, warehouse explosion near Esparto that killed seven people and was tied to an alleged “massive” illegal fireworks importation, manufacturing and sales operation.

Five of the men ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — An attorney for U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, a leading Democratic candidate for California governor, on Thursday sent a cease and desist letter to an unknown individual demanding that they stop accusing the congressman of sexual assault.

Swalwell's attorney Elias Dabaie of the law firm Dabaie Kelley, in Los Angeles, confirmed...Read more

Marina Lacerda, who said she was sexually trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein for years, starting at age 14, was among the late pedophile’s survivors to denounce Melania Trump’s surprise White House statement Thursday, in which the first lady denied she ever had a personal relationship with him and claims to care about his victims while saying ...Read more

MIAMI — The six Colombians commandos stood in front of a pickup truck in the brightly lit courtyard of the sprawling home in the hills above Port-au-Prince.

James Solages, a Haitian-American handyman who had been portraying himself as an Iraqi war veteran and paid employee for multiple U.S. government agencies, stepped forward and began ...Read more

NEW YORK — The city is probing an episode involving New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new Department of Probation commissioner after a former agency employee claimed she was fired in retaliation for blowing the whistle on a prior romantic relationship between the commissioner and a top aide.

The employee, Ebony Huntley, filed the claims ...Read more

NEW YORK — An immigration appeals board has issued a final removal order against Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, taking the Palestinian activist one step closer to possibly being deported.

Khalil’s legal team had expected the unfavorable ruling from the Board of Immigration Appeals, an administrative body operated by the ...Read more

DETROIT — The Lenawee County man whose wife disappeared at sea last weekend while in the Bahamas fell off a police boat transporting him to his vessel, his attorney said.

Terrel Butler, the attorney for Brian Hooker, said her client shared "a harrowing account" of the incident, which happened the night officers with the Royal Bahamas Police ...Read more

President Donald Trump is trashing right-wing media critics of the war with Iran as ‘low IQ” and worse in a sign of widening divisions within his MAGA base of support.

Even as Trump seeks to find an exit ramp from the Middle East war, he’s taking angry pot shots at erstwhile allies like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly who have broken with ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The worker who burned down a warehouse full of Kimberly-Clark paper products in Ontario this week railed against corporations and compared himself to Luigi Mangione in messages to co-workers after starting the fire, authorities said at a news conference Friday.

Chamel Abdulkarim, 29, is facing both state and federal charges in ...Read more

WASHINGTON — House appropriators have pushed back plans to mark up a fiscal 2027 Defense spending bill by about a month because of uncertainty over how to finance a massive surge in Pentagon funding sought by the Trump administration, according to sources familiar with the planning.

A tentative schedule last month called for a subcommittee ...Read more

BOSTON — A federal judge has dismissed a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit that was seeking Bay State voter rolls, as the Trump administration seeks to rid federal elections of voter fraud.

U.S. District Court Judge Leo Sorokin — nominated by former President Barack Obama in 2013 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2014 — tossed out the ...Read more