LOS ANGELES — Crime is trending down in Los Angeles, with homicides alone on track to fall 15% compared to last year, but newly sworn-in LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell is concerned that statistics aren’t telling the full story.

Speaking ahead of the ceremony Thursday to mark his arrival as the city’s 59th chief of police, McDonnell voiced ...Read more

Inquiring minds really want to know: What did the celebrities know and when did they know it?

We’re of course talking about the high profile guests who were invited to Sean “Diddy” Combs infamously hedonistic parties.

The fallen rapper, behind bars on sex trafficking charges, is accused of throwing wild, alcohol and drug fueled ...Read more

A federal judge on Thursday granted a Kansas man’s motion to continue his Capitol riot trial until after President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras said going ahead with William Pope’s trial, which is scheduled to start Dec. 2, would waste time and resources on a case that could be tossed out if ...Read more

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The federal conviction and sentence of Alex Murdaugh’s alleged fraud accomplice and banker Russell Laffitte have been reversed by the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The 37-page unanimous ruling overturning the verdict in Laffitte’s three-week trial in Charleston in November 2022 was handed down by a three-judge panel ...Read more

CHICAGO — Jurors in the corruption trial of former House Speaker Michael Madigan on Thursday heard a series of never-before-played wiretapped calls showing how the speaker helped find a job for the wife of state Rep. Jaime Andrade.

The episode is being held up by prosecutors as more evidence of the power and influence wielded by Madigan and, ...Read more

Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, a woman hurled death threats at a federal judge, Democratic congresswoman and the LGBTQ+ community, saying they would be in danger if now-President-elect Donald Trump did not win on Nov. 5, according to federal officials.

Abigail J. Shry, who lives in Alvin, Texas, has now pleaded guilty to transmission ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A growing chorus of voices are calling for the release of a much-hyped House Ethics report on Rep. Matt Gaetz, who resigned Wednesday shortly after earning President-elect Donald Trump’s nod for attorney general.

House Ethics had been investigating the Florida Republican for sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, among other ...Read more

The entity behind the satirical news site The Onion, along with families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, are on tap to purchase right-wing provocateur Alex Jones’ Infowars website.

A joint bid by Global Tetrahedron LLC and some of the families was chosen as the successful bid for the Infowars intellectual property, ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — The National Hurricane Center said Tropical Storm Sara formed in the Caribbean on Thursday and long-term forecast models show it could enter the Gulf of Mexico and turn toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.

As of the NHC’s 1 p.m. EST advisory, Sara was located about 205 miles east of Isla Guanaja, Honduras and 50 miles northeast of...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and senior White House aides have pivoted from their dire warnings about fascism, talking up the same “norms” and “institutions” they warned would be destroyed if Donald Trump returned to power.

Seated in beige chairs Wednesday in the Oval Office — a fire raging behind them and portraits of former ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — The National Hurricane Center said Tropical Storm Sara formed in the Caribbean on Thursday, and long-term forecast models show it could enter the Gulf of Mexico and turn toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.

As of the NHC’s 10 a.m. advisory, Sara was located about 205 miles east of Isla Guanaja, Honduras and 50 miles northeast of ...Read more

NEW YORK — Ex-Rep. Matt Gaetz faced rising skepticism on Thursday about his nomination to be President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general as a congressional ethics report reportedly was set to accuse him of drug use and sexual misconduct.

Republican lawmakers suggested Gaetz, who abruptly resigned from his House seat Wednesday, would ...Read more

ATLANTA — Fulton County is violating the civil rights of the people housed at the county jail by allowing “abhorrent, unconstitutional” conditions at the Rice Street facility in Atlanta, according to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation.

Federal officials who spent the last 16 months studying the conditions there said authorities ...Read more

Evidence of as many as 20 human skulls was located in New Mexico property after a witness gave a ride to had an “unsettling encounter” with a man he offered a ride.

Lea County Sheriff’s Office said while the witness drove Cecil Villanueva to his destination last week, the man “made alarming statements and discarded objects” that ...Read more

NEW YORK — Two Bronx gang members busted in a takedown last year now face federal charges for carjacking a man at gun and knifepoint — and they may be responsible for a string of similar robberies, federal prosecutors allege.

Abdoul Azika, 20, and Jaquell Blackwell, 19, both members of the “5zzly Crew,” an offshoot of the Blood Hound ...Read more

Haiti was in the throes of political chaos. Opponents of President Jovenel Moïse were marching through the streets of Port-au-Prince demanding his removal from office. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who had been railing against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro at a Coral Gables conference, was asked about the deepening crisis.

The United States, he ...Read more

A group of allegedly powerful men implicated in a Greater Boston and in the DC suburbs of Virginia sex-trade case lost their appeal to the state’s highest court to keep their names secret.

The Supreme Judicial Court rejected the johns’ latest appeal to keep the proceedings and records at Cambridge District Court under wraps in a decision ...Read more