President Donald Trump’s crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion has reached beyond the federal government and into corporate board rooms, as his administration threatens legal action against businesses that don’t dismantle their DEI programs.

Some prominent Seattle employers — including Amazon, Starbucks and the law firm K&L ...Read more

IRVINE, California — Four years before the Palisades and Eaton fires ravaged Los Angeles, Irvine braced for a blaze of its own.

A bone-dry summer left the landscape parched and primed to ignite as Santa Ana winds roared through the region at 80 mph. On the morning of Oct. 26, 2020, the Silverado fire erupted.

Firefighters deployed. The city ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — Housing counselor Kenya Dow-Hill is good at striking deals.

Through Philadelphia’s Eviction Diversion Program, she was paired with a tenant living in a cold and leaky home who faced eviction after withholding rent for two months to try to force the landlord to make repairs.

During a mediation session last month, the landlord...Read more

As the flames plunged down Eaton Canyon on Jan. 7, Todd Smoyer fled his Altadena, California, home in tears knowing it would be the last time he’d see it.

His neighbor confirmed the next morning that the Midcentury ranch was a heap of ash.

The devastating news kicked off a manic January for Smoyer and his husband, who joined thousands of ...Read more

For President Donald Trump’s operatives seeking corporate targets to investigate for “illegal DEI,” conservative activists have already done the legwork and drawn up a list.

From Amazon.com Inc. to Yum! Brands Inc., 45 companies with a combined market value of almost $10 trillion have been attacked for their DEI efforts in the past three ...Read more

Delta Air Lines is offering to pay $30,000 each to passengers on Delta Connection Flight 4819 that crashed while landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Monday afternoon.

The Atlanta-based airline confirmed the amount Wednesday afternoon. Spokesperson Morgan Durrant said in an email the Delta Care Team is telling customers the money...Read more

A federal judge in Minneapolis has ruled portions of a patient lawsuit can move forward in which plaintiffs allege UnitedHealthcare has used a faulty artificial intelligence program to deny coverage for post-acute care needed by Medicare patients.

Judge John Tunheim of the U.S. District Court of Minnesota ruled last week that federal law ...Read more

LAS VEGAS — Boosted by online gambling and expanded sports betting, the U.S. gaming industry grew for the fourth straight year in 2024, with $71.9 billion in revenue, and the Las Vegas Strip remained the largest American gaming market, the American Gaming Association reported Wednesday.

But in a 25-minute state-of-the-gaming-industry webinar,...Read more

Farmers Insurance, the state's second-largest home insurer, said it expects to lose at least $600 million from the Los Angeles fires, a substantially smaller figure than some other major insurers have announced.

The Los Angeles-based company said the figure includes payments from its reinsurance program but not an expected assessment from the ...Read more

CHICAGO — A union seeking to represent Trader Joe’s workers at a Chicago grocery store notched a win in a hotly contested union election Tuesday. But Trader Joe’s said it plans to appeal the decision, a move that could stall the case indefinitely before the paralyzed National Labor Relations Board, which has not been able to issue ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — People who toil on the Universal Studios lot out of the public eye recently got an upgrade to their workplace meant to bring it more in line with its glamorous image as a historic movie factory and theme park known to the world.

The old campus was so uninspired and bland that wags compared it to "a mayonnaise factory," said Ed...Read more

Microsoft Corp. unveiled artificial intelligence tools that can create video-game scenes that would normally have to be programmed and animated by a human, a model it built using data collected from Xbox gamers and their controllers.

Called Muse, the model is the first of its kind, according to Microsoft. A machine learning research team ...Read more

The push to put pennies out of circulation that was kicked off during the Super Bowl by President Donald Trump ultimately depends on Congress, which has shown reluctance to cancel the 232-year-old coin since one of the first serious proposals to do so during the administration of President Gerald Ford.

Although momentum may be building toward a...Read more

The federal cost-cutting effort dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency says it has saved $55 billion in federal spending so far, but its website only accounts for $16.6 billion of that.

And that’s before factoring in an error in the data published on DOGE’s website that mislabels a contract as $8 billion, which was later corrected ...Read more

While Americans should be greatly concerned about Elon Musk accessing their Social Security data, what could ultimately threaten monthly benefit checks would be efforts to reduce the agency’s staffing, former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley said in a TV interview Tuesday night.

President Donald Trump’s administration has ...Read more

A group of Los Angeles fast food workers walked off the job Tuesday to urge city officials to approve a law that would give them more control over their work schedules.

Fast food workers have long complained of unstable schedules that make it difficult to plan their finances, child care, medical appointments and other obligations.

Los Angeles ...Read more

Grok looks like any plush toy you’d find in a kid’s bedroom. Its round body is shaped like a rocket, and my two kids have been playing with it for months. It’s different from other toys they’re used to. For one thing, Grok is heavy. Inside it is a plastic box containing a small computer, so that whenever it detects human speech it can ...Read more

Facebook's parent company Meta said it's working on the world's longest undersea cable as part of the social media giant's efforts to connect more people to high-speed internet.

Called Project Waterworth, the massive cable spanning more than 50,000 kilometers will bring "industry-leading connectivity" to the United States, India, Brazil, South ...Read more

Toyota Motor Corp. has agreed to shift a $1.5 billion order with LG Energy Solution to bolster operations at a Michigan battery plant after General Motors Co. backed out of the project, according to people familiar with the matter.

GM said in December it would sell its $1 billion stake in the Lansing, Michigan, plant, leaving LG scrambling to ...Read more

Calling the trend of children buying antiaging skin care "ridiculous and a paradox," a state legislator has introduced a bill that would ban the sale of such beauty products to customers under the age of 18.

The recent obsession among so-called Sephora Kids for skin care containing potent chemicals has alarmed parents and dermatologists, who ...Read more