CHICAGO — Illinois’ high school graduation rate has hit a 15-year high, as students continue to show academic growth above pre-pandemic levels, state officials announced Thursday with the release of the 2025 Illinois Report Card.

The state’s four-year graduation rate reached 89%, up 6.2% from 2024. Students recorded progress in other key ...Read more

The U.S. military has destroyed another vessel it claims was smuggling narcotics in the Pacific Ocean, killing four people aboard, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said late Wednesday.

In a post on X, Hegseth said U.S. intelligence agencies had identified the boat as “traveling a known drug-trafficking route and carrying narcotics.” He added ...Read more

BALTIMORE – The Wicomico County Sheriff’s Office says its new artificial intelligence (AI) program will boost efficiency, a claim echoed by legal experts who believe it could speed up operations. The ACLU and other opponents are less enthusiastic, raising concerns that programs like this could overlook key facts or details.

This AI service,...Read more

Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed to extend a tariff truce, roll back export controls and reduce other trade barriers in a landmark summit on Thursday, potentially stabilizing relations between the world’s biggest economies after months of turmoil.

In the first sitdown between the leaders since Trump’s return to the White House, the pair ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A wave of the highly contagious respiratory syncytial virus is beginning to wash over the United States — sending greater numbers of babies and toddlers to the hospital, recent data show.

The onset of RSV comes as the country heads into the wider fall-and-winter respiratory virus season, also typically marked by increased ...Read more

The devastation from Hurricane Melissa came into focus after the record-setting storm moved past Jamaica, Haiti and Cuba with at least 33 deaths and almost $8 billion of damage in its wake.

Across the Caribbean, the storm’s powerful winds have torn apart homes and buildings, blocked roads, trapped people on roofs and knocked out electricity. ...Read more

At the center of the sprawling legal battle over President Donald Trump's domestic military deployments is a single word: rebellion.

To justify sending the National Guard to Los Angeles and other cities over the outcry of local leaders, the Trump administration has cited an obscure and little-used law empowering presidents to federalize ...Read more

TAYBEH, West Bank — The three military vehicles growled to a stop in front of Zaher Ibrahim's elegant two-story home in this village in the occupied West Bank.

It was 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 16, and the Israeli soldiers — two dozen of them, family members said — ran up and hammered at the door. When Ibrahim opened, they asked for his youngest ...Read more

There’s no way his local government can fill the void created by a disruption in the federal food stamp program, but local official Gregg Wright says his Minnesota county had to do something.

“This is pretty much a crisis for families,” said Wright, a member of the Olmsted County Board of Commissioners.

Last week, the board unanimously ...Read more

Recent cyberattacks on public defenders’ offices in multiple Western U.S. states have spotlighted the technological vulnerabilities of an often overlooked but critical part of the U.S. judicial system.

Public defenders, who represent clients unable to pay for their own lawyers in cases as serious as murder, are a staple of American justice. ...Read more

It isn’t easy to promote moderation and financial discipline from the bowels of a casino.

But that’s what Massachusetts state workers try to do every day, amid the clanging bells and flashing lights of the slot machines.

At the MGM Springfield in western Massachusetts, workers wearing green polos stand outside their small office, right off...Read more

The strange political bedfellows created by efforts to save spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest just got even stranger.

Already Republican members of Congress were allied with animal rights activists.

They don’t want trained shooters to kill up to 450,000 barred owls, which are outcompeting northern spotted owls, under a U.S. Fish and ...Read more

In U.S. cities big and small, mayors are finding their tenures shaped by housing shortages, and efforts to build more homes, so that people of any income can afford a place to live.

In a series of conversations, mayors of big cities such as Atlanta and Seattle, as well as of midsize Midwest cities like Columbus, Ohio, and Madison, Wisconsin, ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Over the summer, Texas Republicans, at the urging of President Donald Trump, redrew their state’s congressional map to boost the GOP’s odds of winning five additional House seats.

That move sparked a rush of mid-decade redistricting efforts in multiple states as both parties seek an advantage in the closely divided House, ...Read more

DENVER — Staffers at a youth mental health treatment facility in southern Colorado were too quick to restrain kids — pinning bodies down, holding arms back — rather than deescalate problems before patients put themselves or others in danger, a disability rights group found.

In the first five months of 2024, employees of Southern Peaks ...Read more

Hurricane Melissa pulled away from Cuba on Wednesday morning, leaving a trail of devastation that stretched through Cuba’s second most populous region and Jamaica, where it was the strongest storm to ever strike the island nation. Now, it continues its devastating path through the Bahamas.

The storm has a confirmed death toll of at least 27, ...Read more