A gunman’s attack on four people sleeping on the Blue Line last Monday came during a difficult week on the Chicago Transit Authority, highlighting the challenges city and transit officials face in tackling violent crime rates that have remained persistently higher than before the pandemic.

The likelihood of being a victim of violent crime on ...Read more

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Evergreens and aspens cover the luscious mountainscapes, and clouds settle heavy over Cook Inlet. The hum of float planes can be heard overhead as Alaskans travel to the remote wilderness, while locals drive to work.

Though at a smaller scale than the crowds who flock to the glittering lights and jingling slot machines of ...Read more

DENVER -- Everyone knew Yvonne “Missy” Woods worked fast.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA scientist made her way around the state laboratory in a walk-run, a signature forward-leaning gait. She handled two and three times as many cases as other analysts, worked the maximum 40 hours of overtime a month. Spent nights, weekends on the...Read more

The computer systems run by the consulting giant Deloitte that millions of Americans rely on for Medicaid and other government benefits are prone to errors that can take years and hundreds of millions of dollars to update. While states wait for fixes from Deloitte, beneficiaries risk losing access to health care and food.

Changes needed to fix ...Read more

For decades, licensed hunters have killed hundreds of Colorado mountain lions every year to control the state’s population of the elusive feline.

Voters in November will decide whether to ban the practice, along with the trapping of bobcats. That prospect has set off a deluge of competing claims about what will happen if big-cat hunting ...Read more

Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan ordered a probe into abductions of political figures and government critics ahead of upcoming elections in the East African nation.

The investigation follows the abduction and murder of a senior member of the main opposition Chadema party, Ally Mohamed Kibao.

“I have ordered investigative agencies...Read more

Republican lawmakers accused the Biden administration of lying to Americans and sacrificing the safety of U.S. soldiers during the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, in a report that sought to implicate Vice President Kamala Harris before the presidential election.

The report said President Joe Biden’s team “misled and, in some instances, ...Read more

The U.S. is preparing for a gargantuan spike in the amount of energy it harnesses from the sun, and vastly changing the desert landscape of the Silver State’s public lands is a major component of that vision.

Within the Bureau of Land Management’s controversial plan that updates preferred solar zones for the first time in 12 years, Nevada ...Read more

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer emphasized the importance of avoiding a government shutdown on Sept. 30, as lawmakers return to Washington after the August break with the U.S. election ahead in November.

In a letter to his Democratic colleagues on Sunday, Schumer said his party favors a short-term funding extension, known as a continuing ...Read more

A storm system in the Gulf of Mexico is forecast to strengthen into a hurricane early this week, bringing heavy rain, damaging winds and potentially life-threatening storm surges to parts of the Texas and Louisiana coastlines.

The system is forecast to become a tropical storm on Monday as it moves north, with storm watches in effect for parts ...Read more

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy will soon make a historic decision that could restore water to the long-dammed Eklutna River.

The decision could mark a turning point in a dispute between two electric utilities on one side, and the municipality of Anchorage and Native Village of Eklutna on the other.

The Chugach and Matanuska electric associations ...Read more

Five years after state law empowered prosecutors to recommend the early release of people who have substantially rehabilitated in prison, an architect of the landmark reform saw something starkly missing: women prisoners were a tiny fraction of those set free.

“We see this across every industry. We’re underrepresented,” said Hillary Blout...Read more

For decades, gases from car exhaust and cow waste have drifted from Colorado’s Front Range to harm plants, fish and wildlife in Rocky Mountain National Park, and while a decades-long effort to slow the damage is working, it’s not moving as quickly as environmentalists hoped.

Nitrogen and ammonia, largely generated by heavy traffic along the...Read more

WINDER, Ga. — The Rev. Chris Strickland ended his Sunday service at Winder First United Methodist Church a little different this week.

Instead of the usual closing hymn, Strickland issued an invitation: Anyone in the pews who needed to sort out the emotions they may be feeling after four community members were shot and killed earlier this ...Read more

The National Hurricane Center on Sunday increased odds for a Gulf of Mexico system to become a tropical depression or storm while chances for two Atlantic systems increased as well.

As of the NHC’s 2 p.m. Eastern tropical outlook, the broad area of low pressure in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico had increased showers and thunderstorms.

“...Read more

CHICAGO — Betty Bogg remembered how excited Margaret Miller and her husband were when they landed a place to stay at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Miller, 64, and her husband had been living out of their truck when they first sought help from Connections for the Homeless, where Bogg is the CEO. They were eventually sheltered through ...Read more

It’s September! That means Christmas trees are twinkling at Big Box stores (despite the heat), Jack Skellington and Oogie Boogie rule the holiday makeovers at Disney (and have since well before Labor Day), rejiggered vaccines are landing at pharmacies and officials are bracing for the fall/winter waves of COVID, flu and other respiratory ...Read more

In the wake of Rep. Carolina Amesty’s indictment last week, Florida Republicans have mostly kept silent, avoiding public comment on her fitness for office even though state law places the authority to judge her in the legislative majority’s hands.

It’s a stance that suggests tacit support for the Orlando-area GOP lawmaker just as her 2024...Read more