To hear David Ellis tell it, when ComEd came to Springfield in 2011 hoping to get some utility-friendly legislation passed, they ran into a brick wall named House Speaker Michael Madigan.

“They didn’t like anything I was doing,” Ellis, a state court appellate judge who used to work for the speaker’s office, told jurors Thursday in ...Read more

Landfills in Colorado release millions of metric tons of greenhouse gasses each year as organic waste including food, paper and yard trimmings decomposes into the soil, contributing to global warming and harming human health.

Colorado, as part of its multipronged approach to eliminate 90% of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, is ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- When Donna Heinel arrived at the federal prison camp in Victorville last year to serve a six-month sentence for fraud stemming from the Varsity Blues admissions scandal, she resolved to spend the time productively. She walked two miles in the morning, ran three miles in the afternoon and tutored inmates studying for their high ...Read more

Everyone's favorite Christmas gift giver, the Internal Revenue Service, has announced that it will be doling out more than $2 billion in checks to Americans this month as part of its effort to make sure everyone received their stimulus payments from 2021.

The federal tax agency has announced that an internal review showed many Americans had ...Read more

Christmas came early for Maryland state employees as Gov. Wes Moore on Sunday declared Christmas Eve a state holiday.

In a news release, Moore said state agencies and offices will be closed Tuesday and workers will have the day off, with Dec. 24 being “treated like any other state employee holiday.”

“Our state employees have worked ...Read more

Drones collided, fell from the sky and hit a little boy after “technical difficulties” during a holiday show at Lake Eola Saturday night left him fighting for his life during emergency heart surgery.

At approximately 6:48 p.m. the Orlando Fire Department responded to reports that a person was injured by a drone at the annual show at Lake ...Read more

Top staff shakeups are par for the course under a new police commissioner, but the storm of resignations and reassignments at the NYPD over the past three days — including Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey stepping down amid bombshell sexual misconduct allegations — served as a shock to the system with the head of the Internal Affairs ...Read more

An imprisoned Bay Area killer has been found guilty of the 1986 murder of two young Northern California women after a DNA match connected him to the crime, authorities said.

An Alameda County jury last week found David Misch, 63, guilty of murdering best friends Jennifer Duey and Michelle Xavier, prosecutors said. The naked bodies of both women...Read more

More than 50 Liberal Party members of parliament from Ontario came to a “consensus” during a conference call Saturday that Justin Trudeau must step down as prime minister, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

That would represent about a third of the Liberal caucus, which has 153 seats in Canada’s House of Commons. However, there’...Read more

His second term doesn’t start for a month, but Donald Trump is already sending shock waves around the world.

His trade threats helped set off a cabinet crisis in Canada that has Prime Minister Justin Trudeau teetering. In Europe, tariff fears have weakened already-wobbling governments.

Allied leaders are racing to find ways to keep up ...Read more

With the Denver Broncos playing well this season, the grimmest show in Colorado can be found in a small room near the state Capitol.

That is where the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee has been tasked with cutting hundreds of millions of dollars — even as much as $1 billion — from the state’s $16 billion general fund budget. State ...Read more

The youngest homeless person to die in Orange County this year was Infant Female Radford. Stillborn. July 29. “No fixed abode.”

The oldest was Michelle Marie O’Neal, 88. Arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. July 25. “No fixed abode.”

Their names echoed through the Lutheran Church of the Cross in Laguna Woods on Saturday — the ...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump is nominating Stephen Miran to lead his Council of Economic Advisers, enlisting a former Treasury official who served in Washington during his first administration.

“Steve will work with the rest of my economic team to deliver a great economic boom that lifts up all Americans,” Trump said in a statement Sunday ...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump suggested he’s open to meeting Vladimir Putin to discuss ending the war in Ukraine sparked by Russia’s 2022 invasion.

The Russian president offered on Thursday to hold talks with Trump, saying, “I’ll be ready to meet if he wants.” Speaking at his annual news conference, Putin said he doesn’t know when ...Read more

One issue loomed in aldermen’s anxious speeches last week in the lead-up to a vote on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s budget for next year: 2026.

Though the mayor ultimately eked out a 27-23 win on his $17.1 billion 2025 spending plan, City Council members both for and against it warned the chaos and delays that punctuated the past few months may ...Read more

Syria’s leadership isn’t the only aspect of the country to be changing as a result of this month’s toppling of longtime dictator Bashar Assad. The blurring of its borders is also underway — from Israel to the southwest and Turkey to the north.

Israel’s military wasted no time advancing on Syria after Assad was overthrown by Islamist-...Read more

More than 50 Liberal Party members of parliament from Ontario came to a “consensus” during a conference call that Justin Trudeau must step down as prime minister, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

That would represent about a third of the Liberal caucus, which has 153 seats in Canada’s House of Commons. However, there’s no ...Read more