Despite an unusual number of modest earthquakes this year in Southern California, the state overall remains in the midst of a “drought” of major earthquakes.

There have been no significant damaging earthquakes underneath California’s most populous cities in the last 30 years.

That’s a stark contrast to the prior three decades, when ...Read more

NEW YORK — New York Police Department brass welcomed the city’s new top cop Tom Donlon at 1 Police Plaza on Friday.

Interim Police Commissioner Donlon entered the department’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan around 4:30 p.m. for a meeting with more than a dozen police executives, including Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, Chief of ...Read more

No single factor led a fire in the seaside Hawaiian town of Lahaina last year to rage out of control and kill 102 people, according to a state report that assesses the government’s response to the disaster but not its root cause.

The report released Friday by the state’s attorney general blamed the devastation on a confluence of issues, ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — It would cost $20.4 billion to end homelessness in Los Angeles in a decade, a price tag requiring local, state and federal governments to more than double their spending on the problem, according to a draft budget analysis from city housing officials.

The money would produce 36,000 permanent housing units for homeless residents ...Read more

BRIGHTON, Colo. — A judge in Adams County District Court on Friday wiped away the 5-year prison sentence being served by a former Aurora paramedic convicted in the death of Elijah McClain.

Judge Mark Warner vacated Peter Cichuniec’s prison term and converted the sentence to four years of probation, a move prosecutors previously said would �...Read more

Proposition 47 achieved its goal of decreasing incarceration by reclassifying certain drug- and theft-related felony offenses as misdemeanors, but contributed to a rise in property crime as a result.

That’s the finding of a newly released Public Policy Institute of California report that looked at the impact of the ballot measure nearly a ...Read more

Jailed FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried is asking for a new trial, blaming a federal judge for preventing him from mounting a proper defense.

Lawyers for the former chief executive officer argued “everyone rushed to judgment” after FTX’s collapse and that fair-trial principles were swept away in a “sentence first-verdict afterwards ...Read more

The U.S. imposed sanctions Friday targeting Russia’s state-controlled media outlet RT over its role in Russia’s covert influence operations globally, offering fresh details about the extent of its involvement after a Justice Department indictment earlier this month.

Among the new allegations detailed Friday was that RT helped oversee a ...Read more

DETROIT — Detroit is launching a new, first-of-its-kind quick response team that will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to follow up with suspected opioid overdose survivors after they receive treatment from the Detroit Fire Department.

The team, which was announced during a news conference Friday and will hit the streets Monday,...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — State and local investigators earlier this week seized more than 36,000 illegally-grown marijuana plants at 10 sites hidden among legitimate crops on farmland in the Sacramento County Delta area.

The “cartel-related grow sites” were found are on private property, and the marijuana was grown without the knowledge or ...Read more

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams watched the spacecraft that took them to the International Space Station leave them behind last week as the Boeing Starliner made its return trip to Earth without a crew.

“We’ve got lessons learned that we will go through. We will have discussions. We will be involved with those discussions, and things that ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — An Anaheim man and self-described "incel" who admitted to committing hate crimes by pepper-spraying multiple people was sentenced this week to four years in prison, according to officials.

Johnny Deven Young pleaded guilty to one count of assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury and four counts of illegal use of ...Read more

CHICAGO — A onetime top political aide to House Speaker Michael Madigan testified Friday that passing legislation to end mandated landline service was AT&T Illinois’ top priority in 2017 when they came to him with a plan to secretly pay a Madigan ally through his lobbying firm.

Tom Cullen, a lobbyist who played political point man for years...Read more

ATLANTA — Senate committee heard testimony Friday from two attorneys who argued the panel has the authority to issue and enforce subpoenas as it investigates Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

The veteran prosecutor had received a subpoena to appear at the hearing from the Senate Special Committee on Investigations, but did not ...Read more

ATLANTA — The 14-year-old accused of a mass shooting at Apalachee High School allegedly took the assault-style rifle into the school concealed in his backpack, according to new details released by the GBI.

The state agency said Colt Gray took the weapon into the Barrow County school, which does not have metal detectors, on his own.

“The ...Read more

Denver will turn two shelters that are currently used to house migrants into cold weather shelters for people without a roof over their heads, a reflection of the decreasing number of migrants coming to the city as the homelessness crisis in Denver persists.

The transition will occur later this month, the city announced in a press release ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — A 15-year-old boy was arrested late Thursday after a friend tipped off police about his threats “to become a school shooter,” the Sanford Police Department announced.

Police officers arrested the teen for intimidating written/electronic threat of a mass shooting, a second-degree felony, according to the agency’s news ...Read more

CHICAGO — Hundreds of friends and family poured into St. Mary Immaculate Church in Plainfield Friday morning to mourn Kara Welsh, a national title-winning University of Wisconsin at Whitewater gymnast who was killed last month.

Before the service started on the sunny late-summer day, a procession of about 20 cars pulled up to the church and ...Read more