Voters in two red states agreed to increase their minimum wage in steps to $15 an hour and to require employers to give workers paid sick time, and a third red state also approved sick leave.

But a proposed $18-an-hour base wage in California failed, as did initiatives in two states to change the hourly rate for workers who earn tips.

The ...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump's victory should bring some clarity to Americans with student loans, but probably not in the way they'd hoped.

A flurry of Biden administration initiatives and court rulings against them have left millions of borrowers uncertain about their future payments. Many federal student loans, in fact, are stuck in a period ...Read more

When Ken Griffin decamped from Chicago, the billionaire financier left behind $94 million in ritzy condos and penthouses that once shattered price records and trumpeted his status as the richest man in town.

The homes are now emblematic of something else. Real estate bargain hunters are descending on Chicago, after an exodus of a wealthy elite ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s selection to serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s top health official is prompting questions from policy watchers over how the pick will handle the range of key health policies that would fall under his purview.

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and leading vaccine skeptic, has been vocal on his ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Kids missing school is a longstanding problem in Baltimore. But new data obtained by The Baltimore Sun and FOX45 shows absenteeism in city schools is more dire than previously known — with thousands of students missing a third, half, or majority of the school year.

Data shows around 11% of Baltimore City school students — more...Read more

Voters in several states this month delivered a stinging rebuke to ranked choice voting, clouding the future of an idea that had seen strong momentum in recent years.

Ranked choice voting, which allows voters to rank political candidates by preference, is used statewide in Alaska and Maine and in major U.S. localities such as New York City and ...Read more

SEATTLE — When Gabriel Foster saw the election night results lurch toward former President Donald Trump, he broke down in tears.

"My big-picture reaction is horror and heartbreak," said Foster, a Black queer trans activist based in the Seattle area who is the executive director of the national philanthropic organization Trans Justice Funding ...Read more

Donald Trump’s resounding election to a second term as U.S. president sealed the deal on a new world disorder.

The liberal, rules-based order that had shaped the rules of the game since World War II was already on its heels. It had proved wholly unable to prevent, punish or halt Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, a violent war in Sudan ...Read more

Feeling stuffy and ready to reach for NyQuil, Benadryl, or Sudafed PE?

Not so fast.

The Food and Drug Administration has proposed ending the use of oral phenylephrine, a common ingredient found in many cold and allergy medicines — and some pharmacies already are yanking the popular products off shelves.

Florida researchers have been ...Read more

Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof’s government avoided collapse after a secretary resigned in protest over alleged racist comments made during Cabinet meetings.

Schoof and leaders of the four-party governing coalition held an emergency meeting that ran late into Friday night, the latest fallout from antisemitic attacks on Israeli football fans...Read more

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department failed for the seventh straight year to score a clean financial audit, highlighting the challenge of tracking the finances of a sprawling organization that has $3.8 trillion in assets and $4 trillion in liabilities.

Auditors overseen by the Pentagon Inspector General once again declared the department�...Read more

As H5N1 bird flu spreads among California dairy herds and southward-migrating birds, health officials announced Friday six more human cases of infection: five in California and one in Oregon — the state’s first.

A seventh presumptive California case is awaiting confirmation from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

All of ...Read more

The last time Donald Trump was U.S. president it spelled disaster for Iran — he walked away from a landmark nuclear deal, derailed the country’s economy with sanctions and killed its most revered general.

This time around, the signals from the Trump camp are more mixed. The president-elect has suggested he wants to stabilize the ...Read more

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Samuel Woodward, who admitted to killing former high school classmate Blaze Bernstein and burying his body at the edge of a Lake Forest park in what a jury agreed was a hate-crime murder, was sentenced on Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Woodward, now 27, was convicted in July of first-degree ...Read more

WASHINGTON — With state lawmakers set to question officials overseeing recovery efforts after hurricanes Florence and Matthew, North Carolina’s federal representatives are also calling for accountability.

At the beginning of November, eight Republican members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation — all except for Rep. Patrick ...Read more

MIAMI — The mystery of the human head found on a Key Biscayne beach has been solved. It belonged to a teen who went missing after getting caught in a rip current off Miami Beach last Saturday, police said Friday.

Victor Enrique Castaneda Jr., 19, disappeared into the ocean after going for a swim with his younger sister off South Pointe Beach ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Erik and Lyle Menendez – brothers who have spent 34 years behind bars for killing their parents in 1989 at their Beverly Hills mansion, a made-for-TV case that drew worldwide attention – got hopeful news late last month when Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said he would ask a judge to reconsider their life...Read more

U.S. President Joe Biden told the leaders of Japan and South Korea that their coordinated efforts were essential to “countering North Korea’s dangerous and destabilizing cooperation with Russia” as they met Friday on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in Lima, Peru.

“I truly believe cooperation of our countries will be a foundation to ...Read more

A Norwegian fishing crew was surprised this week by the day’s big, rare catch — a U.S. submarine longer than a football field.

Harald Engen was delivering halibut to a village on Norway’s west coast when he got a message that a U.S. submarine had gotten entangled in his 32-foot boat’s trawl nets while sailing near the surface and were ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In the latest development in a salacious Sacramento legal saga, a California state senator this week filed a countercomplaint against her former chief of staff — who alleged she sexually harassed him while he worked for her — claiming that he was involved in the 2001 murder and disappearance of Washington intern ...Read more