Starting this week, farmers in California's San Joaquin Valley are banned from burning agricultural waste in the field, a legislative mandate aimed at improving air quality that has been decades in the making.

The near-complete prohibition on mass burns of agricultural prunings and field crops, as well as orchards and vineyards removed from ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — Days before she’s slated to return as the region’s top prosecutor, Orange-Osceola State Attorney-elect Monique Worrell quietly appeared with lawyers at the Polk County Courthouse on Friday, amid rumors of a grand jury investigation and speculation about what some believe is a last-ditch attempt to block her from taking ...Read more

NEW YORK — Donald Trump is set to become the first felon to serve as U.S. president after a New York judge on Friday denied his request to throw out the guilty verdicts in his hush money case and, in a stunning development, ordered him to appear for sentencing next week.

In an 18-page decision, state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan ...Read more

Police in Rhode Island removed four bodies from a West Greenwich home where there’d been a heavy law enforcement presence throughout the day on Friday.

Police arrived at the home on Cheyenne Trail around 10:30 a.m. after one of the resident’s co-workers called for a welfare check, reporting their colleague had missed two days of work.

...Read more

LAS VEGAS — The man behind the Tesla Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas likely suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and had other “personal grievances,” but held no animosity toward President-elect Donald Trump, authorities said Friday.

Officials said they did not know why 37-year-old Matthew Livelsberger chose Trump International ...Read more

After a record year of launches, SpaceX kicked things off again with the first mission of 2025 on Friday night.

A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 8:27 p.m. on the Space42 Thuraya 4 mission carrying a communications satellite to a geosynchronous transfer orbit for a commercial company ...Read more

Alcoholic drinks are a leading cause of cancer and should carry a warning about that risk on their label, the U.S. surgeon general said Friday.

Alcohol is a factor in nearly 100,000 newly diagnosed cancers each year and roughly 20,000 deaths from the disease, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said in an advisory intended to focus the public’s...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration suggested that the Supreme Court should reject Donald Trump’s request to delay a law that would ban TikTok in the United States if it isn’t sold by its Chinese parent company.

A week ahead of a Jan. 10 courtroom showdown, President Joe Biden’s Justice Department urged justices to uphold the law ...Read more

BOSTON — A state senator is demanding that the court records be made public in the case of an illegal immigrant evicted from a Revere shelter program following his arrest on charges including possession of an AR-15 rifle and roughly $1 million in fentanyl.

“If there’s anything I can do to effectuate change it’s demanding that the ...Read more

Neither Prince William nor King Charles plan to attend Jimmy Carter’s funeral next week, following the former president’s death on Sunday at age 100.

As of Friday, the British royal family’s Royal Diary only lists the monarch’s younger brother, Prince Edward, also known as the Duke of Edinburgh, as being an attendant of the State ...Read more

LAS VEGAS — The man behind an explosion in a Tesla Cybertruck in Las Vegas likely suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and had other “personal grievances,” but held “no animosity” toward President-elect Donald Trump, authorities said Friday.

Officials said they had no evidence indicating why Matthew Livelsberger chose Trump ...Read more

Bill Cosby, the disgraced comedian who has been accused of sexual assault by dozens of women, now has two Manhattan townhouses facing foreclosure.

Cosby, 87, allegedly defaulted on a mortgage for his 12,000-square-foot Upper East Side house after not making payments since June, according to court records. The complaint, filed in New York County...Read more

ATLANTA — A series of Cobb County, Georgia, police reports over a span of eight months between 2015 and 2016 show instances of alleged domestic violence between the New Orleans terror attack suspect and his wife at the time.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S. citizen from Texas, lived in the Atlanta area during his second marriage, earning a ...Read more

MIAMI — A Miami federal judge on Friday denied bond for one of the Alexander twin brothers on charges of forcing dozens of women to have sex with them, saying he was concerned he might flee the country to avoid a potential life sentence if convicted.

Alon and Oren Alexander both appeared in Miami federal court for what were expected to be ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — As cats across Southern California die from consuming human and pet food contaminated by the H5N1 bird flu virus, one pet owner has decided to fight back — using legal recourse to obtain financial restitution for the tens of thousands of dollars he says he spent trying to save the lives of his three pet cats.

On Wednesday, ...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump ushered in the new year in familiar fashion — using a news event in an attempt to build his case for tougher enforcement of the nation’s southern border, a change he said is crucial to stop violent criminals from flooding into the U.S.

After a pickup truck driver mowed down dozens of people in New Orleans, ...Read more

TikTok has long known that its popular video livestreams encourage sexual content, including streams exploiting and “grooming” minors, according to a lawsuit from the state of Utah that was unredacted on Friday.

TikTok also discovered through an internal investigation that the feature, called TikTok Live, facilitated money laundering and ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order on Friday attempting to limit access to ultra-processed foods, a directive he cast as a continuation of California’s “nation leading” nutrition and health standards.

“The food we eat shouldn’t make us sick with disease or lead to lifelong consequences,” Newsom said ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The new Congress got off to a stumbling start Friday, as Mike Johnson initially appeared to fall short of winning the speakership on the first ballot, before some last-minute arm-bending convinced two Republican holdouts to switch their votes. Johnson was elected speaker with 218 votes, the bare minimum.

Starting the year off ...Read more