NEW YORK — A City Council committee voted Friday to kill “Ryder’s Law,” a bill that would ban the Central Park horse carriages from operating in New York City, casting doubt over the future of the push to abolish the industry and marking the first time the Council has taken a stance on the politically fraught issue.

The bill, introduced...Read more

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — An immigrant advocacy group in North Carolina has launched a statewide map that shows where federal immigration agents have been spotted.

The map, found at ojonc.org, was unveiled by Siembra NC as there were reports of Border Patrol agents coming to Charlotte for an operation.

Siembra NC said the new website — dubbed “...Read more

CHICAGO — Attorneys for Chicago rapper Lil Durk have asked that his federal murder-for-hire indictment in Los Angeles be dismissed, alleging that a series of threats made against the judge and lead prosecutor in the case was improperly withheld from the defense.

The motion to disqualify was filed on Thursday in Los Angeles federal court. ...Read more

BOSTON — A Cape Cod state representative says “justice has been served” after a jury convicted a local man of making threats against the elected Republican lawmaker, which included the statement, “I will not support you or your Trumpism.”

Rep. Steven Xiarhos, a Barnstable Republican, is thanking Cape & Islands District Attorney ...Read more

As Jeffrey Epstein was reeling from a 2018 Miami Herald investigation about the sweetheart deal he struck with federal prosecutors to settle claims he had sexually abused teenage girls, the financier turned to a trusted confidant for advice: journalist Michael Wolff.

In a series of messages found in the trove of more than 20,000 documents ...Read more

CHICAGO — Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Finance Committee chair delivered a public warning this week against his plans to forge ahead with the first vote on his 2026 budget, targeting his controversial head tax as a nonstarter with her.

Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, told reporters after weeks of budget hearings for Johnson’s $16.6 billion spending plan...Read more

Ukrainian forces carried out an attack on a major Russian Black Sea port overnight, prompting a state of emergency, as Moscow launched a widespread airstrike on Kyiv that killed at least six and damaged residential buildings.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine attacked Russian territory using long-range Neptune cruise missiles, calling...Read more

ATLANTA — Georgia has been trying to wrap its arms around the growing cannabis industry for several years now.

But just as the state is weighing more changes to its hemp policy, negotiations in the U.S. Senate to reopen the federal government included a provision that makes most hemp products illegal.

It’s a decision that hemp store owners...Read more

ATLANTA – A veteran prosecutor said Friday he is appointing himself to take over Georgia’s closely-watched election interference case against President Donald Trump and more than a dozen others.

Pete Skandalakis, the head of the state agency tasked with naming a replacement prosecutor after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was ...Read more

Homicide rates among pregnant women increase with the rate of firearm ownership, according to a state-by-state study published this week in the medical journal JAMA Network Open.

Researchers found the firearm homicide rate for pregnant women was 37% higher than the rate for nonpregnant women. Suspected perpetrators were most often male for both...Read more

Ukrainian forces carried out an attack on a major Russian Black Sea port overnight, prompting a state of emergency, as Moscow launched a widespread air strike on Kyiv that killed at least six and damaged residential buildings.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the Ukrainian attack using long-range Neptune cruise missiles into Russian ...Read more

Three Chinese astronauts who were stuck in space after debris crashed into their spacecraft have returned to Earth.

The Shenzhou-20 crew successfully landed in Inner Mongolia at 4:40pm local time on Friday, state broadcaster China Central Television reported. The astronauts are in good physical condition and used the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft —...Read more

LOS ANGELES — When the special master overseeing a city court-ordered agreement to provide thousands of homeless shelter beds made a spot check at a South Los Angeles shelter she was disappointed in what she found.

The shelter in the parking lot of the historic but shuttered Lincoln Theater in South Los Angeles is a bare-bones affair: gray ...Read more

With a goodbye to their mom, Sam and Ben Luhmann walked out the screen door of their West Chicago home on a recent weekday morning.

A few minutes shy of 7:30 a.m., Ben pulled their midsize sedan out of the garage as Sam stood in the driveway, adjusting the straps around his shoulders and checking his phone.

But the brothers weren’t gunning ...Read more

MIAMI — A Florida college fired a woman after she shared her political views of Charlie Kirk following his death, accusing her of celebrating the conservative commentator’s killing, a federal lawsuit says.

Erika Santos, of Brevard County, who worked as a grant accountant at Eastern Florida State College, made two posts about Charlie Kirk, ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — For four decades, Philadelphia has set specific goals for awarding a portion of its hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly government contracts to businesses that are owned by women and people of color.

But as of this fall, that practice is no more, a major shift in the city’s diversity initiatives that comes as ...Read more

MEXICO CITY — A breakthrough in the decadeslong investigation of a political assassination that convulsed the nation?

Or a political stunt meant to distract from more pressing issues?

Those are the questions that emerged in Mexico after the arrest last weekend of an alleged "second shooter" in the 1994 assassination of presidential candidate...Read more

Despite Charlotte being thousands of miles away from the nearest U.S. border, national news reports say that U.S. Border Patrol could soon be on the way to the Queen City.

U.S. Border Patrol’s presence in cities across the nation has been part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Most recently in Chicago, the ...Read more