SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that the commercial Dungeness crab fishery south of the Mendocino-Sonoma county line will officially open early next month.

Fishing Zones 3, 4, 5 and 6, which stretch to the U.S.-Mexico border, will open Jan. 5 at 12:01 a.m., with pre-soak beginning Jan. 2 at 8:01 a...Read more

NEW YORK — Mega Millions players dreaming of a green Christmas could be in luck this year.

Lottery officials on Saturday said no tickets matched all six numbers pulled Friday night, which means the pot has swelled from $825 million to nearly $1 billion. It marked the 29th consecutive drawing without a big winner, stretching all the way back ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — An Arcadia City Council member is the fiancée of a man charged by federal prosecutors this week with acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government by attempting to influence local politicians, according to court records and interviews.

The personal relationship between Eileen Wang, elected two years ago to the council ...Read more

CHICAGO — The Illinois State Board of Education has been awarded nearly $20 million to begin transitioning to zero-emission buses.

ISBE will begin by distributing $19.9 million to nine school districts, replacing 70 combustion-engine buses with zero-emission electric buses and charging stations. The grant will also fund training to support ...Read more

ATLANTA — The U.S. Senate gave final approval this week to legislation honoring former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn by renaming the tiny post office in their hometown of Plains.

The measure by the Georgia delegation just needs a signature from President Joe Biden, which is expected soon. Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff ...Read more

Germany is reeling after an attacker drove a car into a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg, killing five people, in an incident that’s likely to inflame debate over public safety ahead of federal elections in February.

The Friday evening assault recalled a similar attack in Berlin in 2016, when a driver plowed a truck into a ...Read more

It seems simple: Require hospitals and insurers to post their negotiated prices for most health care services and — bingo — competition follows, yielding lower costs for consumers.

But nearly four years after the first Trump administration’s regulations forced hospitals to post massive amounts of pricing information online, the effect on ...Read more

A recent immigration surge brought newcomers to every state this year, helping to offset a continued drop in U.S. births while contributing to a national upswing of about 3.3 million new residents, according to new U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Texas and Florida continued to dominate state population growth, together adding more than 1 million ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — A sliver of pavement under an I-4 overpass is the place a half dozen unsheltered men call home.

They sleep in a group to look out for each other’s safety and ensure their few belongings aren’t stolen. Each night they arrive at sunset, and they usually are unbothered by law enforcement until about 5:45 a.m., when police ...Read more

NEW DELHI, India — At the outset of 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was riding a wave of international acclaim and anticipating an election campaign that looked like such a formality he talked of a thousand-year legacy.

Now, he’s looking back at a year of setbacks — at the ballot box, on the economy, in relations with foreign partners ...Read more

MIAMI — In Cuba the population is fighting shortages of food, fuel and medicine while a collapsing electrical grid that resulted in three nationwide blackouts this year continues to leave many people in the dark.

In Venezuela, strongman Nicolás Maduro is driving the hemisphere’s worst migration crisis — nearly 6 million people have fled ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Washington is full of people who obsess about the daily news cycle and who is “winning” it. But looking back on her 24 years in the Senate and nearly half a century in politics, Sen. Debbie Stabenow said it doesn’t have to be that way.

“It’s not about making sure the other side loses, and that’s just too much of what ...Read more