Southwest Airline passengers have “cracked a code” allowing them to subvert the travel provider’s boarding rules by claiming to need wheelchairs.

A report on airline site View From the Wing alleges 30 passengers claimed to need wheelchairs on a recent flight between Florida and Puerto Rico. When the plane landed, 28 of those travelers ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Overnight campers won't be able to stay at El Capitán State Beach starting next month as the park undergoes a yearlong construction project.

The state beach, located off the 101 Freeway just 30 minutes north of Santa Barbara's downtown, features 132 standard campsites, five group sites and spaces for hike-and-bike campsites.

...Read more

SEOUL, South Korea — After two leaders were impeached in as many weeks, a deadly plane crash has prompted South Korea’s feuding political camps to temporarily halt a protracted power struggle.

In the immediate aftermath of the Jeju Air flight crash on Sunday, which killed all but two of the 181 people onboard, South Korea’s rival ...Read more

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his deputy, Robert Habeck, used their New Year addresses to castigate Elon Musk over his backing for a far-right party in February’s snap election.

Musk, a key adviser and major donor to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, has repeatedly praised the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany in recent weeks on his...Read more

Liam Payne’s psychiatrist reportedly dropped the One Direction singer before his frantic drug-related death in Argentina because the 31-year-old pop star needed a “higher level of care” than she could give him.

In a legal document obtained by TMZ, a therapist who’d been working with Payne before his fatal plunge from a hotel balcony in ...Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Matthew Muller, who is serving simultaneous prison sentences for kidnapping and raping a Vallejo woman in a case that drew international infamy after police wrongly accused the victim of fabricating the ordeal, is now being charged with home invasions in Mountain View and Palo Alto reported years earlier.

Authorities say ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — The state Department of Employment and Economic Development has awarded a southeastern Minnesota city a $1 million grant to support the state’s first pig-to-human transplant center.

Stewartville will use the funding, announced Monday, to construct streets and public utilities around the Schumann Business Park, the future home ...Read more

LAS VEGAS — The top U.S. law enforcement official in Nevada, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, is stepping down from his position shortly before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

U.S. Attorney Jason Frierson’s last day is Jan. 17, three days before Trump’s inauguration, his office announced Monday.

Frierson, a Democrat, ...Read more

SEATTLE — More Washington children are expected to qualify for public child care and preschool programs in 2025 and 2026.

But in the final weeks of his administration, Gov. Jay Inslee has proposed a budget that could delay the expansions for several years.

Although it will be months before state lawmakers finalize the budget, Inslee's ...Read more

China cracked down on rumors that a Washington, D.C., zoo abused its pandas, as it seeks to steady ties with the United States weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to return to the White House.

Police in Sichuan accused two people of spreading false information that the bears, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, were mistreated at the National...Read more

The U.S. Treasury Department was hacked by a Chinese state-sponsored actor through a third-party software service provider, according to a letter the agency sent to Congress on Monday.

Treasury described the intrusion as a “major cybersecurity incident,” since it was attributed to a state-sponsored actor, according to the letter, which was ...Read more

SEATTLE — Hours before she boarded a flight to Honolulu without a ticket on Christmas Eve, the woman who has become known as the “ Delta stowaway” walked through Seattle-Tacoma International Airport barefoot with a bottle of alcohol and got in line to board at least two other flights.

Shemaiah Patrice Small, 33, did this without a ...Read more

Bob Kroll, the outspoken and incendiary former Minneapolis police union leader, is seeking President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination to be Minnesota’s next U.S. marshal, according to documents obtained by the Star Tribune.

Kroll is banned from serving as a law enforcement officer in three of the state’s most populous counties for 10 years...Read more

NEW YORK — In an eleventh-hour ruling, a federal judge in New Jersey allowed MTA officials to press forward with congestion pricing in midtown Manhattan next week, but said regulators have two weeks to spell out their plans to offset expected pollution increases in New Jersey from changing traffic patterns.

Judge Leo Gordon wrote in an ...Read more

DETROIT — Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard is urging legislators and judges to rethink laws and policies that let some violent offenders out of prison on parole after authorities said a man with a lengthy history of convictions went on a crime spree Christmas Eve that left one woman dead.

Malik Webb had just been released from prison on ...Read more

The National Park Service has started a project to stabilize a group of 113-year-old wooden towers inside Death Valley National Park.

Two leaning towers have been straightened, the agency announced Monday, but repairs have yet to begin on a tower that was knocked down in April by a park visitor who was trying to free a vehicle that was stuck in...Read more

Chinese hackers accessed workstations and stole documents in a “major incident” earlier this month, the Treasury Department announced Monday.

In a letter to the leaders of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, assistant secretary for management Aditi Hardikar wrote that the state-sponsored hackers compromised a third-...Read more

Elon Musk is reportedly staying in a cottage at President-elect Donald Trump’s estate that rents for $2,000 a day.

The world’s richest man, who holds substantial government contracts and appears to have spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump and his surrogates elected to office, has been a Trump tenant since the ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Property tax assessments in Maryland will climb in 2025, reflecting the state’s tight housing inventory and rising home prices and leading to higher tax bills for many owners.

The total assessed value on residential and commercial property around the state rose a combined 20.1% over three years, according to the State Department...Read more