KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Starting Thursday, May 1, Missouri workers will have more flexibility if they get sick. Proposition A’s earned sick leave provision is taking effect, after surviving repeated challenges in the courts and the statehouse.

Most Missouri workers will be able to earn paid sick time under the new law, which also raises the ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sacramento has proposed layoffs for the first time since 2013 and rate increases at parking meters for a second straight year to address its multi-million budget deficit.

The $1.65 billion budget, unveiled Wednesday by Interim City Manager Leyne Milstein, is the first fully developed plan to tackle the $44 million ...Read more

BOSTON — Gov. Kelly Ayotte is taking another swipe at the Bay State as New Hampshire State Police will be allowed to question, arrest and hold aliens based solely on immigration status while Massachusetts limits its cooperation with ICE.

“New Hampshire will not go the way of Massachusetts, where sanctuary policies have enabled violent crime...Read more

Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar reiterated that “perpetrators, backers and planners” of an attack that killed dozens of people in Indian-controlled Kashmir must be brought to justice, hours after speaking with his U.S. counterpart Marco Rubio who had sought to de-escalate tensions.

Secretary of State Rubio had spoken with top ...Read more

WASHINGTON — More than 30 years ago, history was made when five women won election to the Senate from states across the country in what was deemed the “Year of the Woman.” So far this election cycle, there are five credentialed women running for Senate in just two Democratic primaries in what looks like an unprecedented election year with ...Read more

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Legendary death penalty lawyer David Bruck has acknowledged he made numerous mistakes while leading the defense team during Dylann Roof’s 2016-17 death penalty trial, errors that may have caused the jury to give Roof the death penalty.

Bruck’s admissions of missteps and misjudgments in the Charleston church killer case ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Spencer Parker has never seen so many dolphin strandings in his more than 20 years as an L.A. County lifeguard.

Since he started in 2002, only twice had he seen them come ashore before this year. But in just the last two weeks, there have been four.

Now, things have gotten so bad that L.A. County lifeguards have begun taking ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Tom Suozzi is worried about his party.

“The Democratic brand is broken on a national level,” the New Yorker said recently. “What do Democrats stand for? People don’t really know.”

The answer, in Suozzi’s mind, is to focus on economic issues, and to relentlessly pitch themselves to voters. “We have to get back to ...Read more

POLSON, Mont. — When someone accused of a crime in this small northwestern Montana town needs mental health care, chances are they’ll be locked in a basement jail cell the size of a walk-in closet.

Prisoners, some held in this isolation cell for months, have scratched initials and the phrase “love hurts” into the metal door’s brown ...Read more

Missouri Republicans may take their tax-cutting efforts to new heights this year as lawmakers consider exempting profits from the sale of stocks, bonds and real estate from state income taxes.

Part of a broader push to eliminate the state income tax altogether, legislation making its way through the Capitol would provide an unprecedented ...Read more

Kamala Harris’ retreat into relative obscurity ended Wednesday when she strode onstage at a glitzy hotel in downtown San Francisco for her first major speech since she left office.

At the event, a gala dinner for a women-focused political organization with which she shares close ties, the former Vice President and Oakland native was met with ...Read more

In the areas of Haiti controlled by gangs, nothing moves without their getting a cut: not food, not fuel, not even humanitarian aid.

Their extortion racket is so extensive that the country’s finance minister, Alfred Metellus, estimates that gangs, which charge $2,000 to allow passage for a shipping container, are pulling as much as $75 ...Read more

DEDHAM, Mass. — Jennifer McCabe, a key witness for both the prosecution and the defense in the murder trial of Karen Read, admitted to misleading investigators at least twice during the probe in John O’Keefe’s death.

The first and more inconsequential mistruth came when McCabe admitted to giving a false name, her sister’s, when first ...Read more

The number of antisemitic incidents in Pennsylvania in 2024 broke previous records following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, according to a new report from the Anti-Defamation League.

The 465 antisemitic incidents that were counted in the commonwealth last year represent an 18% increase over the 393 reported in 2023, and a 308% jump ...Read more

Sectarian battles erupted in Syria on Wednesday, killing at least 16 security personnel and civilians in a suburb near Damascus, and drawing Israeli airstrikes against what Israeli leaders said were groups targeting the minority Druze sect.

The violence in the suburb of Ashrafiyah Sahnaya, about five miles southwest of the Syrian capital, came ...Read more

State and federal officials said they are working with a chemical manufacturing plant in Wyandotte on a "two-pronged approach" to limit the flow of contaminated groundwater into the Detroit River.

The meeting came after the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) wrote a letter to BASF in March, telling the company to...Read more