In today’s volatile world, where wars can be fought over territory, commerce can be abruptly subjected to tariffs, and friendly nations can turn hostile after a single election, political leadership is more consequential than ever. So, one must ask, what makes a leader effective, and how should we choose who should lead?

Classics ...Read more

Alcohol, whether consumed regularly or only on special occasions, takes a toll on your body. From your brain and heart, to your lungs and muscles, to your gastrointestinal and immune systems, alcohol has broad harmful effects on your health – including causing cancer.

Alcohol is the third-leading preventable cause of cancer in the U...Read more

The animal tranquilizers xylazine and medetomidine are in approximately one-third of the illegal opioids available in the U.S., including fentanyl, heroin and oxycodone. Animal tranquilizers enhance the user’s euphoric high from opioids, particularly in those who have developed a tolerance to the opioid. But adding the tranquilizers to ...Read more

Research estimates that one-third or more of the unhoused population in the U.S. is age 50 or older.

Unhoused people of all ages face high rates of chronic and serious illness. They also die at younger ages compared with people who are not unhoused.

Yet, there are few options for palliative and end-of-life care for unhoused ...Read more

When American soldiers liberated the Mauthausen Nazi concentration camp in Austria 80 years ago this May, Spanish prisoners welcomed them with a message of antifascist solidarity.

The Spaniards hung a banner made from stolen bed sheets over one of Mauthausen’s gates. In English, Spanish and Russian, it read: “The Spanish ...Read more

Science is essential as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency carries out its mission to protect human health and the environment.

In fact, laws passed by Congress require the EPA to use the “best available science” in many decisions about regulations, permits, cleaning up contaminated sites and responding to emergencies.

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Iran has sent a “generous and wise” proposal for indirect talks with the U.S. about its nuclear program that could involve Oman as a mediator, officials said.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said he wants direct discussions with the Islamic Republic over a new nuclear deal to replace the one that he abandoned during his first term. Iran ...Read more

SpaceX took the biggest piece of the pie, but United Launch Alliance and newcomer Blue Origin will divvy up nearly $13.7 billion in national security launches to be assigned over the next five years, the Space Force announced Friday.

The National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 2 announcements made by the Space Force’s Space Systems...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Confusion and concern ratcheted up at California colleges over the weekend as campus officials indicated they were caught unaware by the Trump administration's cancellation of the visas of dozens of international students.

On Sunday, UCLA confirmed that federal authorities last week revoked the visas of 12 community members: six...Read more

Dr. David Fleming spent last week learning of the scope of the cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, not through meetings with department officials or emails, but by text messages and news stories. As far as he knows, he said, there is still no official public list of the cuts.

“This is unprecedented, both in the scale and ...Read more

On March 30, maritime law enforcement officials patrolling the ocean southwest of San Diego spotted and approached a suspicious vessel whose occupants were waving white flags to signal distress. The boat had suffered an engine failure and was taking on water, officials said.

On board they found 18 people, including 17 Mexican nationals, two of ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- Michael Newman, head of the civil rights enforcement section in California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office, was exhausted.

Newman and his legal team had just worked all weekend, straight through that Monday and overnight into Tuesday on a growing pile of legal challenges to the Trump administration, and were overdue for ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park made her way through an auditorium filled with Pacific Palisades residents who had lost homes, schools and churches.

The charity event in mid-January was the first time many neighbors had seen each other since fleeing the monstrous blaze. They talked in anxious voices about toxic dirt ...Read more

Tina Ewing-Wilson remembers the last time major Medicaid cuts slashed her budget.

In the late 2000s, during the Great Recession, the pot of money she and other Medi-Cal recipients depend on to keep them out of costly residential care homes shrank.

The only way she could afford help was to offer room and board to a series of live-in caregivers ...Read more

Margaret Mitchell was born in 1900, a quarter century after the beginning and subsequently abrupt end of Reconstruction.

She was a privileged daughter in a wealthy and politically prominent Atlanta family at the height of The Lost Cause myth, which argued that the South’s involvement in the Civil War was about states’ rights and heroism, ...Read more

Gov. Gavin Newsom sent an urgent appeal to the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Saturday, imploring the department to reverse the abrupt cancellation of a Biden-era program that feeds millions of California families and has served as a lifeline for hundreds of small farmers since its inception in 2021.

"The irrational and malicious slashing of...Read more

Minnesota must conduct a preapproval lottery for cannabis business licenses that it abandoned late last year, a Ramsey County judge ruled Friday, saying social equity applicants who qualified for the drawing suffered a “public wrong” because of its cancellation.

“Canceling the lottery effectively casts aside the significant time and ...Read more

China’s objections to new U.S. tariffs stalled a deal to sell off TikTok and keep it operating in the U.S., President Donald Trump said Sunday.

“We had a deal pretty much for TikTok — not a deal but pretty close — and then China changed the deal because of tariffs,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he returned to Washington ...Read more