After an outcry from immigrant and civil rights advocates over plans to equip immigration officers with gloves capable of delivering electric shocks, California lawmakers on Thursday unveiled a bill that would ban the use of shock gloves by any law enforcement agent in the state. The gloves deliver can an electrical shock strong enough to…

Catastrophic flash floods along the Nepal-China border have killed at least 353 people and left more than 1,300 missing, sweeping away villages, roads and hydropower facilities. Authorities say people from more than 30 countries are unaccounted for, including hundreds of foreign tourists and Hindu pilgrims traveling to the sacred Mount Kailash region in Tibet. New…

WASHINGTON — With three months remaining until election day, there is now little the Trump administration can do to bring relief to Americans battered by years of stagnant wages and steep inflation before they hit the polls, experts say — complicating midterm campaigning for Republicans and sharpening the opportunity for Democrats to win back some control in…

Washington — The high-stakes nomination of Todd Blanche to be attorney general has turned into a clash of wills between President Trump and two Senate Republicans whose political careers he claims credit for ending. After a vote on Blanche’s nomination was delayed over concerns raised by two lame-duck Republican senators, the president said Thursday he might put…

With gas prices pushing higher again, California continues to preserve its pole position as the state with the most expensive pump prices. As oil prices have heated up this summer along with the war with Iran, there is more than a $2-per-gallon difference between average prices in the Golden State and in the least expensive…

California hit a major milestone in May, generating more than half its electricity from the sun in what is believed to be a global first, according to an analysis of federal data. “California has had a wealth of solar growth in the last five years,” said Abby Lestina, an analyst at Grid Status, a group…

Taco Bell was sitting solidly in the sweet spot for fast food in troubled times. The Irvine-based chain had developed a menu that was affordable enough for consumers worried about inflation and also fun enough for those looking for more than just hamburgers and pizza. Its sales and stock price were soaring at a time…

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dealt another blow to the Trump administration’s mass deportation project Thursday, ruling alongside the 7th Circuit that most immigrants cannot be held without bond while fighting to remain in the U.S. The rulings will apply to jurisdictions that stretch across much of the southern border, affecting states where…

Investigators on Friday released two notes apparently sent by the individuals who kidnapped Nancy Guthrie from her Tucson home in February. Federal and local law enforcement have worked for nearly six months to find Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie, without success. For months, The Times and other outlets have released…

WASHINGTON — President Trump reaffirmed Friday that Hamas has agreed to disarm and relinquish control of Gaza to a newly created Palestinian government, a milestone he cast as a critical step in the long-stalled effort to end the war in the territory. The agreement, which the president initially announced in a Truth Social post Thursday evening, capped…

WASHINGTON — The nation is set to have its least competitive congressional election cycle in years by some measures, with California partly driving the shift. The redistricting carried out in California and nine other states since 2024 has left the nation with an unusually low number of truly competitive districts, narrowing the battle for U.S. House control…

Another leading artificial intelligence company unveiled details of its cutting-edge bot apparently going rogue. On Thursday, Anthropic said an internal investigation found that its Claude AI models gained unauthorized internet access and hacked three companies during testing. Just last week, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI announced that bots it was developing had escaped what was supposed to be…

Yet another heat wave scorched the Western United States on Saturday, bringing extreme heat warnings to Southern California and record temperatures in the Southwest and Montana. Wildfires erupted in the Pacific Northwest as the region faced an exceptionally rare “Particularly Dangerous Situation” warning because of extremely dry conditions and strong winds. Phoenix reached 116 degrees…

A shooting at a newly opened In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls, Idaho, on Saturday afternoon left multiple people dead, authorities said Sunday. Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks said three people were killed and seven others were injured in the “chaotic” incident at the fast food restaurant. The suspected shooter also was dead at the…

Come 2028, the Democratic presidential campaign promises to be a banger, with all sorts of intrigue and subplots layered within a wide-open fight for the nomination. There’s the prospect of same-state rivals going at it. (California’s Gavin Newsom vs. Kamala Harris; Georgia’s Sen. Jon Ossoff vs. Sen. Raphael Warnock.) There’s sure to be a generational…

MEXICO CITY — Mexico has been a major oil producer for more than a century, but its lack of refining capacity creates a quandary: The country must import much of its gasoline and diesel from the United States. That’s a boon for U.S. refineries and related industries on both sides of the border, but U.S. and Mexican…

Esther Kim Varet has gotten a lot of questions recently from “depressed” liberals wondering whom they should vote for in November to represent them in the redrawn 40th Congressional District, which covers a large swath of inland Orange County and portions of San Bernardino and Riverside counties. The Democratic art gallery owner placed third in…

WASHINGTON — After experiencing some turbulence last week, Todd Blanche’s nomination to be attorney general appears to be back on course. The acting attorney general released an order Sunday night officially declaring dead the nearly $1.8-billion so-called anti-weaponization fund that would have given payments to allies of President Trump. A separate press release also placed limits on…

WASHINGTON  — California and 22 other Democratic-led states urged the Supreme Court on Monday to block President Trump’s plan to take control of voting by mail through the U.S. Postal Service. They said it is too late in the election year to impose a new set of regulations for mail ballots. Doing so, they said, would…

WASHINGTON — President Trump will travel to Los Angeles on Tuesday and Las Vegas on Wednesday as part of a two-day West Coast trip aimed at highlighting his administration’s economic record ahead of the midterm elections, a White House official confirmed. In Los Angeles, Trump is scheduled to attend a Republican National Committee dinner at Trump National…

California filed two lawsuits against the Trump administration Monday — one to block President Trump’s latest round of tariffs on international trading partners, the other to block his administration from sharing needy families’ personal data with immigration officials. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office brought the lawsuits alongside other Democrat-led states, said they were…

WASHINGTON — Todd Blanche cleared the first hurdle Tuesday on his path to confirmation as attorney general, setting the stage for a vote by the full Senate this week as Republicans race to shore up support among three potential holdouts in their party. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12 to 10 along party lines to advance his…

The federal law enforcement probe into the financial affairs of the Dodgers’ controlling owner, Mark Walter, seems to focus on what looks like an obscure financial maneuver: related-party transactions. They are deals between entities with business or personal ties, including loans, sales and other transactions, that can have legitimate reasons but pose potential conflicts of…

WASHINGTON — Midterm battle lines have been drawn across the Western states, as attention turns to general election campaigning with three months until November’s election day. Washington state completed its primary Tuesday, the last mainland state west of the Rocky Mountains to do so. A national spotlight is on the state’s 3rd District, just over the border…

MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities on Wednesday were investigating possible links to organized crime in the shooting death of a well-known influencer who was gunned down while live-streaming in front of a fast-food outlet in the northwestern city of Culiacán, capital of violence-wracked Sinaloa state. César Gastélum, 25, who was shot dead late Tuesday — apparently targeted…

GAZA CITY — For 18 days last month, Palestinian Civil Defense crews searched for the bodies of people killed almost three years ago in the opening weeks of the Hamas-Israel war. This week the remains the crews recovered were finally laid to rest. In Gaza City, community elders, mokhtars, local dignitaries and civil defense crews gathered Tuesday…

WASHINGTON — The narrow victory of progressive doctor Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s bitterly fought Democratic Senate primary sets up a defining test of the party’s progressive wing in one of the highest-stakes U.S. Senate contests of the midterms. Whether El-Sayed, a former public health official, can carry swing voters in a battleground state could both determine the…

A few months ago, Pinchas Cohen learned of a thriving online trade in MOTS-c — a peptide that, when injected into mice, seems to mimic the effects of exercise. The dean of the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology was very familiar with this particular short chain of amino acids. His lab identified it years…

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security’s system for paying for detainee medical care has collapsed, records show, leaving a backlog of unpaid claims likely costing millions of dollars. With a new payment system still not in place, advocates for immigrant detainees fear some are going without necessary treatment as medical providers near a year without compensation….

British regulators on Thursday cleared tech scion David Ellison’s $111-billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery — the latest international agency to find the blockbuster combination of TV channels and historic film studios wouldn’t dampen competition. Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority and the government’s culture minister separately reviewed Paramount Skydance’s proposed Warner acquisition, which is…

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s choice for attorney general is facing a tight vote for confirmation in a Republican-controlled Senate nearly halfway through his second term, reflecting mounting doubts about his leadership of the Justice Department as bipartisan concerns over the weaponization of justice intensify. The confirmation of Todd Blanche hangs on the support of two Republicans who…

Mexico City  — Mexico is sending 1,500 more troops to the embattled state of Michoacán after the U.S. announced this week that it temporarily stopped inspecting avocados there over security concerns, disrupting exports of the fruit. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday that her government was doing everything in its power to improve security in Michoacán,…

President Trump has again targeted birthright citizenship, signing a pair of executive orders purporting to narrow it by cracking down on “birth tourism” and limiting which children born to immigrants in the U.S. qualify. The new orders follow a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that rejected an attempt by Trump to end birthright citizenship…

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, said Friday he will vote to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general, likely delivering the decisive vote needed to push President Trump’s embattled nominee to oversee the Justice Department. Cassidy, who had expressed reservations about Blanche’s nomination, had been the last undecided Senate Republican, and his support all…

The world is celebrating a possible breakthrough for Gaza, but the details still hinge on Israel’s decisions. Hamas agreed last week to total disarmament in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territory and a technocratic committee governing Gaza with the protection of an international force. The agreement can hold only if compliance on both…

RIDGWAY, Colorado — Namgyal Sherpa speaks yak. So when a calf disappeared into the tall grass recently, he roamed among the herd making low, rumbling grunts. Then a few higher-pitched calls. There was a rustle and a flash of black. A youngster sprang from the grass, running toward its mother, draped in what looked like a roomy…

The Strait of Hormuz is, by some accounts, named for a Zoroastrian deity destined to emerge victorious after a 9,000-year standoff with an adversary. Iran’s leaders feel their own victory is at hand and won’t require the same epic patience. They are betting that military pressure will ultimately force the United States to accept their…

DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip  — Every day for the last three months, he had looked at it. And for every day of the last three months he had ignored it, even as it moved ever closer. But now the Yellow Line — the demarcation indicating the limit of Israel’s military zone in Gaza — was…

Los Angeles police Officer Daniel Flores may have broken the law when he secretly recorded his colleagues making ugly, unacceptable comments that were variously racist, homophobic, misogynistic or otherwise gross and unprofessional at best. So L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman is right to take this, or any, violation of the law by a badge-wearing…

On Monday, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia, killing more than 250 people so far and compromising hundreds of buildings. Many others remain trapped under collapsed structures as rescue crews race to account for the missing. The seismic event heavily impacted the country’s third-largest city, Cali, which lies near the Pacific Coast. Colombia’s Pacific…