Former Letcher County sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines, who shot and killed a Kentucky judge inside the judge’s chambers last year, is asking for a special judge to be removed from the case.

Stines, 44, argues special judge Christopher Cohron, of Bowling Green, Ky., may be partial because he sat next to District Judge Kevin Mullins at a ...Read more

Fifty-two bears were killed in the first black bear hunt in Florida in a decade, far fewer than the cap the state had set, according to numbers released Tuesday by the state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The 23-day hunt from Dec. 6 through Dec. 28 was restricted to 172 permit holders, each of whom won a “tag” through a ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS – Just before Friday prayer in south Minneapolis, Flannery Clark steered her family’s station wagon down congested E. Lake Street, seeking signs of federal agents.

Suddenly a full-size SUV with heavily tinted windows barreled alongside. She started tailing it, trying to decipher the license plate or determine whether the driver ...Read more

D4vd is likely to be indicted by a grand jury for his suspected role in the murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez, the teenager whose mangled remains were found decomposing in the singer’s trunk in September, according to a report.

Sources tell TMZ that, contrary to previous reports, the Los Angeles grand jury hearing from witnesses in the case ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Wildflower seekers typically must wait until February or March to see blankets of color in Borrego Springs but, thanks to the early autumn rain, the blooms are arriving early. Last weekend, visitors walking through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and nearby areas found tall, bright sunflowers, deep pink desert sand-verbena, basket...Read more

NASCAR drivers, teams and other powerhouses in the sport offered an outpouring of support for Denny Hamlin and his family after the passing of his father in a house fire Sunday evening.

Dennis Hamlin, 75, died from “catastrophic injuries” sustained during the fire. Denny Hamlin's 69-year-old mother, Mary Lou, was transferred to Atrium ...Read more

SAN DIEGO — A local construction union is proposing a San Diego sales tax increase that could have a better shot at passing than a failed 2024 measure, because it would restrict uses of the additional revenue mostly to infrastructure projects.

The union, Local 89 of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, or LIUNA, believes a ...Read more

An undercover NYPD cop monitoring Instagram snared a would-be ISIS sympathizer in Texas, chatting him up online and steering him to two more undercovers who the suspect provided bomb-making materials to, according to the feds.

The suspect, 21-year-old John Michael Garza, was arrested by the feds on Dec. 22 and charged with attempting to provide...Read more

BALTIMORE — Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its initial report on a recent outbreak of a strain of Salmonella linked to raw oysters, cases and hospitalizations in Maryland have seen a slight increase.

On Dec. 23, the CDC reported one Maryland resident as having fallen ill after being infected with the strain. In ...Read more

President Donald Trump’s unusual decision to reveal a covert U.S. strike against what he said was a drug-trafficking facility in Venezuela marked a new escalation in his pressure campaign against the regime of Nicolas Maduro, raising new questions about how far Trump is willing to go.

Trump, who’s repeatedly threatened to expand his ...Read more

On the second day of Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino’s brief, chaotic return to Chicago earlier this month, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection supervisor dialed 911 as a convoy of federal vehicles sped north on DuSable Lake Shore Drive.

“This is Supervisory Border Patrol Agent (redacted),” the agent said. “How are you doing today?�...Read more

NEW YORK — Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of John F. Kennedy, died Tuesday just over a month after revealing her terminal cancer diagnosis. She was 35.

Schlossberg announced in a Nov. 22 essay that she had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and given a year to live. She was first diagnosed in May 2024.

“Our beautiful ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Health care policy will be top of mind when Congress returns to Washington in January, with lawmakers acknowledging that escalating insurance premiums are hitting millions of Americans.

That’s about where the agreement ends. The parties and even the factions within them are sharply divided on the path forward — with several ...Read more

For many years, autism has been identified as a spectrum with differing levels of ability. New research suggests that the age when symptoms first appear may help anticipate the specific traits, behaviors and genetic markers associated with an individual’s specific type of autism.

“Unraveling the complexity of autism is a particularly ...Read more

The Trump administration on Monday announced that all 50 states will receive proceeds from a $50 billion rural health fund, the creation of which helped secure the support for President Trump’s tax cuts law from Republican senators worried about the impact of Medicaid cuts in their states.

In 2026, the first year of the program, states will ...Read more

DENVER — Colorado is coming closer to universal access to overdose-reversing medication as residents snap up an over-the-counter version and hospitals offer it to more patients.

Naloxone, sold under the brand name Narcan, counters the effect of opioids so that a person who is overdosing doesn’t stop breathing. For the last decade, Colorado ...Read more

Idaho’s U.S. senators have sounded the alarm with President Donald Trump over his recent decision to relax federal marijuana restrictions.

Republicans Mike Crapo and Jim Risch each signed a letter sent to Trump opposing his executive order this month that directs reclassification of marijuana to a lower-level drug in the U.S. Initial word of ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The mere threat of a billionaire tax landing on the California ballot in 2026 has already prompted some of the state’s ultra-wealthy to move their residences and assets elsewhere, according to one tax adviser.

David Lesperance, who advises several ultra-high-net-worth individuals and families on tax and immigration ...Read more

In a year in which the Nevada Legislature met twice, including a special session in November, legislators passed hundreds of bills. Some of the laws take effect the first day of 2026.

They include an expansive crime bill re-introduced by Gov. Joe Lombardo and “Lizzy’s Law,” which is named after a Reno girl who died in a bounce house ...Read more

NEW YORK — More cops will be patrolling the Crossroads of the World during Wednesday’s New Year’s Eve celebration as the NYPD starts to employ a secondary screening process for revelers already inside the viewing pens waiting for the ball to drop, police said Tuesday.

Speaking at Times Square with Mayor Eric Adams, Police Commissioner ...Read more