SAN DIEGO — More than 230 firefighters were battling the 1,000-acre McCain fire in eastern San Diego County on Tuesday, trying to make progress before winds picked up in the afternoon.

The fire was sparked shortly before 4 p.m. Monday when a car involved in a solo-vehicle crash on Interstate 8 near McCain Valley Road near Boulevard ignited ...Read more

NEW YORK — Four Columbia University administrators dismissed concerns about campus antisemitism in an explosive series of texts during a recent alumni event, according to transcripts released Tuesday by the U.S. House Education and the Workforce Committee.

Three of the officials have been placed on leave pending an investigation since a ...Read more

It will soon cost more to mail a letter as the U.S. Postal Service plans another price hike on postage.

The first-class mail Forever stamp will see a 5-cent increase, jumping from 68 cents to 73 cents starting July 14, according to USPS.

It matches the largest increase in the Postal Service’s history and follows steady price hikes in recent ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — An ecologically sensitive portion of Joshua Tree National Park will be closed this week due to extreme wildfire risk as a heat wave is set to broil the region over the Fourth of July holiday.

The Covington Flats area, home to some of the park’s largest Joshua trees, junipers and pinyon pines, will be shut to the public ...Read more

BALTIMORE — For people who are the most susceptible to the damaging effects of the coronavirus, regular booster doses of a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine can help them fight the virus, according to a new Johns Hopkins Medicine study.

In the study, published Tuesday in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, Hopkins researchers worked with 76 ...Read more

Sen. Bob Menendez’s family had a history of storing cash at home that stretched back to their Cuban roots, his older sister testified Monday, as the defense sought to offer jurors an explanation for the large amount of cash found at his New Jersey residence.

Menendez started presenting witnesses Monday in his trial in Manhattan on 16 criminal...Read more

ATLANTA — A federal judge has ordered the early release from prison of a Georgia attorney convicted of a felony during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot.

William McCall Calhoun, an attorney in Americus, was sentenced in August to 18 months in prison following his conviction on felony obstruction of an official proceeding and four ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Concerns about President Joe Biden’s erratic debate performance are spilling from newspaper editorial pages and the donor class to members of Congress as fears grow among Democrats that more than the White House could be at stake.

On Tuesday, Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first Democratic member of the House to ...Read more

ATLANTA — Two days after Christmas in 2020, President Donald Trump met with the top two officials at the U.S. Department of Justice. Angry about his loss to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump allegedly told them, “just say that the election is corrupt, and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”

The statement was included in Fulton ...Read more

BALTIMORE — A ballot question that would establish a fund to issue payments to parents of newborn children in Baltimore City, in hopes of fighting child poverty, has been approved to appear on ballots this fall.

The Maryland Child Alliance, a coalition of teachers and advocates that collected more than 13,000 signatures in support of the ...Read more

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s sentencing for his hush money case has been pushed back to September following an indication Trump’s lawyers will ask to set aside the former president’s conviction in light of Monday’s stunning Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.

The sentencing, previously scheduled for July 11, will be delayed ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a Second Amendment challenge to state laws in Illinois that prohibited the sale of rapid-fire assault weapons.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented.

Had the court granted the appeals, it would have threatened California's long-standing ban of most rapid-fire assault ...Read more

The U.S. Parole Commission has denied release for Leonard Peltier, a 79-year-old member of the American Indian Movement convicted of murdering two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

Peltier, who has maintained his innocence during his 47 years in prison, appeared for a parole hearing last month at the ...Read more

LEXINGTON, Ky. — For the third year in a row, homicide rates in Kentucky have dropped statewide, according to a new crime data report from Kentucky State Police.

Released Monday, the 2023 Crime in Kentucky Report details crimes in Kentucky, the occurrence by county, and the rate compared to previous years’ reports.

For the last three years...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — SpaceX is rolling a booster that was part of a scrubbed launch attempt last month back to the launch pad for an early morning mission on the Space Coast.

A Falcon 9 rocket on the Starliner 8-9 mission carrying 20 Starlink satellites including 13 with direct-to-cell capabilities aims for liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force ...Read more

Rudolph Giuliani is barred from practicing law in New York for his efforts to interfere with the 2020 election results, a state appellate court ruled on Tuesday.

The court found that Giuliani communicated “demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers, and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President ...Read more

ATLANTA — The judge presiding over Young Thug’s lengthy gang and racketeering trial on Monday released the transcript of a secret meeting he held in chambers last month with Fulton County prosecutors and a key state’s witness.

Prosecutors told witness Kenneth Copeland in the June 10 meeting that if he refused to testify, he could be ...Read more

A Pennsylvania woman was shot in the back by a 3-year-old after a man, who became “tired” of holding his loaded handgun, left it unattended near a group of toddlers, police said.

The accidental shooting occurred in Northampton County on Monday at a home in Wilson, on the 2200 block of Forest Street, according to a press release from the ...Read more

MIAMI — On the islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique — ground zero for Hurricane Beryl’s 150-mph eye — the toll is catastrophic: an estimated 95% of the homes are heavily damaged and likely uninhabitable.

A day after the monster hurricane ripped through the Southern Caribbean, residents and governments started to come to grips with...Read more