CHICAGO — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that former Illinois state Rep. Edward Acevedo must testify in the corruption trial of ex-House Speaker Michael Madigan, who is accused of inducing utility giants ComEd and AT&T Illinois to pay Acevedo nearly $150,000 on consulting contracts for little or no work.

Acevedo, 61, a Chicago Democrat who ...Read more

BOSTON — A longtime Boston City Hall worker who made more than $130,000 a year in the Mayor Michelle Wu administration has been sentenced in connection to a prison money laundering charge.

The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office earlier this year offered a plea deal to Freda Brasfield, who had been Wu’s director of administration and ...Read more

It’s a big day for insects.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday that it is proposing the monarch butterfly for threatened species status under the Endangered Species Act, a big step forward in a process set in motion in 2014 with a petition from conservationists.

After a 90-day public comment period, the agency will make a ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A new lawsuit alleges that courts across California routinely deny people due process by failing to maintain transcripts of many types of proceedings.

The suit, filed last week by two San Francisco Bay Area legal advocacy groups against the superior courts of Contra Costa, Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Clara counties, ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — An extra $420-million tax break for Hollywood film studios. Twenty-five million dollars to wage legal battles against President-elect Donald Trump. Unanticipated costs for providing healthcare to seniors and undocumented immigrants.

As analysts warn about the need for California to restrain spending, Gov. Gavin Newsom's wish ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Former state Sen. Steven Bradford steps out into the bright and blazing Westlake sun. Wearing a dark gray suit and armed with a roll of tape, he affixes a poster to the side of a streetlight. It reads: Jahnay Bryan, 23, missing from Los Angeles since Oct. 16.

The longtime politician shakes his head. Two months is far too long ...Read more

A notebook recovered when accused killer Luigi Mangione was nabbed details his plan to kill UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson at the company’s investors’ meeting, which is described as a “bean counter” conference, two police sources told the Daily News.

“He felt shooting a CEO was better than trying to set off a bomb because he didn...Read more

Modern medicine has enabled citizens of wealthy, industrialized nations to forget that children once routinely died in shocking numbers. Teaching 19th-century English literature, I regularly encounter gutting depictions of losing a child, and I am reminded that not knowing the emotional cost of widespread child mortality is a luxury.

...Read more

A material that’s been around since people built shelters – wood – is increasingly being proposed for low- and mid-rise buildings.

Companies behind these “mass timber” projects say that wood is a lower-carbon alternative to steel or concrete and brings other benefits, such as faster construction time and lower cost than ...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump often said during the 2024 presidential campaign that he plans to launch the nation’s largest-ever mass deportation operation in his second term.

Trump has pledged to carry out this work by using an obscure 18th-century law called the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

The act empowers presidents to ...Read more

A major U.S. Supreme Court decision this summer was hailed as a conservative court’s broadside against a Democratic administration, giving red states more backing to delay or overturn policies they don’t like, such as transgender protections and clean energy goals.

But the ruling in the Loper Bright case, which granted courts more power to ...Read more

WASHINGTON — As he closes out his last term in Congress, Indiana Republican Rep. Larry Bucshon says he’s taking the long view.

“Congress has always had its ups and downs, since the first one up until the 118th,” says the former heart surgeon, one of multiple members of the GOP Doctors Caucus who decided not to run for reelection.

“...Read more

It's a brisk day in Johannesburg, a tiny mining town tucked among the Rand Mountains in the Mojave Desert.

The landscape is vast and rugged, a mish-mash of rock, dirt and creosote bushes, swaths of gray and brown under a deep blue sky. The terrain appears completely untouched by man, but a closer look reveals dozens of cavities pocked across ...Read more