ATLANTA — Some lawmakers who voted in favor of banning cellphones in Georgia public schools for students in grades K-8 said they felt like the legislation would make schools safer.

“This is indeed … the first and only school safety bill, true school safety bill, that we’ve heard this year,” said Sen. Jason Esteves, D-Atlanta, before ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Some records from the investigation into the deaths of Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, can be released to the public as long as they do not clearly show the couple’s bodies after they were discovered in their Santa Fe home in February, a New Mexico judge ruled Monday.

Redacted videos of the couple’s mummified ...Read more

DENVER — Psychedelic-assisted therapy is one step closer to becoming legally available in Colorado, with the state’s first healing center obtaining a license to offer the service this week.

On Monday, the state’s Natural Medicine Division issued an operational license to The Center Origin, a wellness center located at 1440 Blake St., ...Read more

ATLANTA — A federal judge has dismissed an epic court case challenging Georgia’s touchscreen voting system, ending the seven-year lawsuit that uncovered election security vulnerabilities and a breach in Coffee County.

U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg closed the case Monday but cited “substantial concerns” about Georgia’s voting ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A Riverside County man, charged with multiple felony counts of domestic violence, was at the center of a courthouse brawl that culminated in three sheriff's deputies being sent to the emergency room, according to authorities.

Ryan James Chalfant, 31, attempted to flee the Riverside County Hall of Justice after refusing to be ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — After weeks of criticism from political allies, Gov. Gavin Newsom explained why he shared his belief that it's unfair for transgender athletes to compete in women's sports.

Newsom, in a recent interview with The Times, said that although he had been deliberating over the issue for years, he didn't set up the interview with ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles County jury has awarded a former LAPD sergeant $4.5 million after finding that department officials retaliated against him when he reported another officer for billing Metro Transit for overtime work that was never performed.

The lawsuit by Randy Rangel, who spent 32 years with the department before retiring in ...Read more

Twenty staffers at a Pennsylvania charter school have been charged in connection with the physical abuse of more than two dozen children, some of them as young as 5 years old, prosecutors announced.

All 26 alleged victims, ranging from kindergarteners to fifth graders, were enrolled in a behavioral and emotional support program at Chester ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Ring camera footage captured the moment a masked vandal threw a rock at the windshield and slashed the tires of a Cybertruck in Novato, one of the latest in a string of nationwide attacks on Tesla vehicles and the second such incident in the small Bay Area city.

The vandal struck around 4:22 a.m. Saturday, appearing to case the ...Read more

Sen. Cory Booker Tuesday gave an all-night speech at the Capitol denouncing President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk.

The New Jersey lawmaker took the floor of the Senate at 7 p.m. Monday and continued almost uninterrupted until 9 a.m. and counting with a wide-ranging denunciation of Trump’s first 10 weeks in office, which he called a...Read more

France’s far-right National Rally conceded the extent of the damage caused by a court ruling barring its leader, Marine Le Pen, from running for election. But the party insists that the fight isn’t over and that it will try to use the controversy to its advantage.

“This indignation, this wound, must be used as an engine of indignation and...Read more

BOSTON — The white hot Karen Read retrial is officially underway in Norfolk Superior Court with the start of jury selection this morning.

The Read trial has been anything but quiet since Judge Beverly J. Cannone declared a mistrial last summer. The Herald has guides on what to know and who to know before this second trial gets underway.

...Read more

Ukraine’s top diplomat said officials are pressing ahead with the U.S. toward an “acceptable” economic accord hours after President Donald Trump accused Kyiv of trying to renegotiate the deal.

Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukrainian officials were poring over the latest draft of an infrastructure and natural resources deal sent by ...Read more

WASHINGTON — In a private meeting at a global summit in Buenos Aires in 2018, China's president, Xi Jinping, turned to President Donald Trump and said it was a shame he couldn't stay in power beyond the two-term limit set by the U.S. Constitution. Trump agreed.

It was just one of several instances in which Trump mused over the prospects of an...Read more

Ever since the United States government’s unfulfilled promise of giving every newly freed Black American “40 acres and a mule” after the Civil War, descendants of the enslaved have repeatedly proposed the idea of redistributing land to redress the nation’s legacies of slavery.

Land-based reparations are also a form of redress ...Read more