Before Hurricane Helene, had you stopped by one of the many breweries, art galleries, or award-winning restaurants in Asheville, North Carolina, and spoken with anyone who lives in these parts — including me — most would have told you they felt pretty safe from climate disasters.

The mountains of western North Carolina have been known to ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — This year, Gov. Gavin Newsom affirmed abortion access, calling California “a proud reproductive freedom state” and criticizing Republicans across the country for trying to take away families’ rights.

He signed legislation mandating that insurance companies cover in vitro fertilization. He supported restricting ...Read more

CHICAGO — By any objective measure, it was the single most impactful police shooting in Chicago in more than 40 years, and perhaps ever.

Ten years ago, on Oct. 20, 2014, a Chicago police officer fired 16 bullets into 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Chicago has not been the same since.

It was those 16 shots that forced an overt acknowledgment of...Read more

ATLANTA — Since 2022, children have been placed in foster care in Georgia more than 1,800 times at least in part because of homelessness, records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show.

While homelessness isn’t one of the top reasons why children are removed from their parents — the most cited causes are neglect and being in a ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A judge ordered bank accounts of Viet America Society and its affiliates be frozen following a hearing Friday in Orange County’s civil lawsuit against the nonprofit alleging millions in COVID relief funding was embezzled for personal benefit.

Ahead of the hearing, the group’s attorney, Mark Rosen, argued the county’s civil...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — The murder trial of accused suitcase killer Sarah Boone got underway in earnest Friday — after 41/2 years of delays and four days spent picking a jury — with Boone under significant pressure to take the stand in her own defense.

That may be the only way Boone can use the “battered spouse syndrome” defense her attorney ...Read more

SEATTLE — Navy search crews along with law enforcement agencies and others Friday evening reached the remote site east of Mount Rainier where a Navy Growler that had two aviators aboard crashed Tuesday.

Crews included about 30 members of the Army’s 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord. The methodical search, ...Read more

U.S. prosecutors accused an Indian government employee of directing a foiled plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist with U.S. citizenship in New York, in a case that has disrupted U.S.-India relations and mirrors a 2023 killing in Canada.

Vikash Yadav, 39, was added to the criminal case against Nikhil Gupta, 53. Gupta was charged last year with ...Read more

SpaceX knocked out its 99th operational flight of the year with a Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Friday night.

A Falcon 9 with 20 Starlink satellites lifted off from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 7:31 p.m. Eastern time.

This was the 17th flight of the first-stage booster that made a recovery landing downrange in ...Read more

The entire island of Cuba suffered an electrical blackout that began late Friday morning and went into the night due to the failure of one of the few energy plants that were still working, amid what the government a few hours before called an “energy emergency.”

The outage at 11 a.m. at the Antonio Guiteras power plant in the western ...Read more

As Cuba’s electrical grid shut down Friday, leaving millions of Cubans without power nationwide hours after the government declared an “energy emergency,” authorities have not said when the lights will be back on.

What led to an entire island of 11 million people being left without electricity?

Here is a look at why the Caribbean island ...Read more

NEW YORK — A New York Police Department precinct commander is the subject of an Internal Affairs investigation into claims he ordered his executive officer and other subordinates to peel the tint off the windows of a cop’s personal vehicle in the station house parking lot, The New York Daily News has learned.

On Oct. 4, Deputy Inspector ...Read more

Tesla's controversial "Full Self-Driving" mode is being investigated by U.S. authorities following a series of crashes, including one accident that killed a pedestrian.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened its latest probe into the leading maker of electric vehicles after receiving reports of four collisions that occurred ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A judge sentenced a woman to 10 years in prison for a deadly drunken driving crash in El Dorado County in which she failed to tell authorities about her boyfriend, a passenger ejected from the vehicle and found dead by a passerby the following afternoon along the highway.

Erica Lynn Chambers, 37, of Placerville, on Aug. ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Facing a dangerous weekend of dry, gusty winds across California, firefighters in Oakland are battling a brush fire that has damaged several homes and threatening others.

The fire broke out in the Oakland Hills near Mountain Boulevard and Keller Avenue Friday afternoon, where much of the region was under a red flag warning ...Read more

CHICAGO – A “supermajority” of young Americans across the political spectrum feel distressed about human-made climate change and want bolder action from the government and corporations, a new study has found. Experiencing the worsening effects of a rapidly changing climate throughout their youth and into adulthood, this crisis has become ...Read more

Gov. Gavin Newsom had a dire warning for California this week: “Big oil companies are in cahoots with Donald Trump pushing prices even higher during election season.”

But gasoline prices have been stable in recent weeks in the state and nationwide. In fact, prices at the pump are well below levels of a year ago. And there’s no evidence ...Read more

CVS Health Corp.’s elevation of veteran David Joyner to chief executive officer failed to appease activists who want to see a bigger shift in direction at the health-care company.

Joyner, 60, took over as CEO Thursday from Karen Lynch, according to a Friday release, ending her tumultuous three-year tenure. The change came after CVS repeatedly...Read more

BOSTON — The new prosecutor in the Karen Read case appears to have been quite excited by a television special aired last year in which the accused murderer’s family was interviewed — and thinks it may bear even more fruit.

Special prosecutor Hank Brennan on Friday requested two pieces of material he says could be beneficial in his ...Read more