US news

US news

The official response to the first lawsuit filed by one of the victims' families said that the government is liable in the crash partly because the air traffic controller violated visual separation procedures that night. Plus, the filing said, the Army helicopter pilots' "failure to maintain vigilance so as to see and avoid" the airline jet makes the government liable.

UPDATE: In a response received Wednesday after this episode aired, the Administration for Children and Families, which oversees ORR, said the office "has not issued a moratorium" on sponsor releases, but alluded to "enhanced vetting policies" for adults who will be caring for the children after their release. "ORR continues to discharge children to vetted sponsors when all statutory and safety requirements are fully met and when release is assessed to be appropriate given the child's individual needs and circumstances," ACF told the California Newsroom. "Each case is evaluated individually, and decisions are made based on child welfare best practices."

A person of interest has been identified in the Brown University shooting that left two students dead and nine more injured, CBS News reported on Thursday. Multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CBS that the search is under way for a specific person of interest in the shooting. Police previously released footage of a suspect walking in a neighborhood ahead of the Saturday shooting on the college campus.

These hearings will ultimately determine what evidence can and cannot be presented during the trial most notably, the contents of a backpack Mangione had at the time of his arrest, including a 9 mm handgun, a loaded gun magazine and silencer, and a red notebook in which prosecutors allege Mangione wrote of his intent to "wack" a health insurance executive.

The incident occurred on last Wednesday's Flight 87 from Deadhorse, Alaska, to Anchorage, a journey that takes about an hour and a half. During the flight, several passengers had moved seats away from the passenger, named by police as Kassian Fredericks, after becoming concerned by his behavior. Two men who sat behind him said they heard him talking to himself. One of them told investigators that he mentioned invisible people trying to take over the plane.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. Authorities said Thursday that they're looking into a connection between last weekend's mass shooting at Brown University and one two days later near Boston that killed a professor at another elite school, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That is according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity. Two of the people said investigators had identified a person of interest in the shootings and were actively seeking that individual.

The New York police lieutenant leading the investigation into the shooting testified that he set up recording equipment inside an interrogation room in the Altoona station house after Mangione was apprehended in a Pennsylvania McDonald's five days after the shooting. But when asked by defense attorney Marc Agnifilo if he knew whether it was legal to record someone in Pennsylvania without their knowledge, he conceded he did not know.

From The Weather Channel: More than 300,000 homes and businesses remained without power Thursday morning after damaging winds slammed multiple states, including South Dakota, Colorado, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Washington state. Nearly two dozen winds gusts of more than 100 mph were recorded Wednesday. The powerful winds brought down trees and powerlines killing one man and critically injuring two children.

WASHINGTON (AP) The U.S. government admitted Wednesday that the Federal Aviation Administration and the Army played a role in causing the collision last January between an airliner and a Black Hawk helicopter near the nation's capital, killing 67 people. The official response to the first lawsuit filed by one of the victims' families said that the government is liable in the crash partly because the air traffic controller violated procedures about when to rely on pilots to maintain visual separation that night.

According to the FBI's Crime Data Explorer (CDE), in 2023 there were 1,201,857 violent crimes committed in the United States. Violent crimes include homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. 945,601 of those crimes were committed by people in the age group of 20-29. The largest demographic of offenders based on race, sex, and ethnicity are white. This post was updated on December 19, 2025 to include an overview of the disparity that exists across America in terms of crime,

US feds have dismantled a crypto laundering service that they say helped cybercrooks wash tens of millions of dollars in dirty digital cash, seizing its servers and unsealing charges against an alleged Russian operator. The FBI, working with cops in Europe and a grab bag of state and federal agencies, announced this week that it has taken down the infrastructure behind E-Note, an unlicensed virtual currency exchange accused of acting as a financial rinse cycle for ransomware crews, account takeover gangs, and other online criminals.

Digital platforms, gamification and prop betting are driving this boom, he says. A former Ohio State football player, Borchers argues the influx in gambling threatens the integrity of college sports and risks athletes' mental and emotional health. Name, image and likeness payments, combined with media revenue-sharing, contribute to a new reality for college sports that is more transactional than ever, with huge sums of money flowing in and out.

The 51-page complaint, a copy of which was obtained by ESPN, was filed Thursday by McPhee and her lawyers in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. It seeks at least $10 million in damages for her lost earning potential and as "compensation for her humiliation, embarrassment and emotional distress," the lawsuit says. A union spokesperson and an attorney for Howell did not immediately respond to calls for comment on Thursday.

"I made a bad decision and had a couple of High Noons and danced and acted inappropriately with my boss," Cabot said. "And it's not nothing. And I took accountability and I gave up my career for that. That's the price I chose to pay."

Six Flags is giving one of its oldest licensing agreements a facelift at a California property. On Tuesday, the company announced the transformation of Bugs Bunny World at Six Flags Magic Mountain into Looney Tunes Land, scheduled to open in summer 2026. The goal of the refresh is "to evoke the warm, nostalgic feelings of the Chuck Jones era of Looney Tunes," the park said in a news release.

Who's on the other end of your walkie-talkie?My friend. We're using it to say where we are so we don't get lost or anything. I like the cheetahs on your pajamas. They're jaguars. Do you learn a lot about animals in school? Not that much, but I already know a lot. Just ask me some specific questions and I'll answer. Do you know what the biggest cat is? A tiger!

XRP's 2025 performance trajectory started with sky-high expectations. After ending 2024 around $0.50, pent-up demand and hopes for a U.S. spot XRP ETF approval fueled a massive rally. The token opened at roughly $2.09 in January 2025 and surged more than 60% to a 2025 peak above $3.40 in July-with some intraday prints touching $3.65. By late July, XRP had gained over 580% from its bear-market lows.

Credit scores are lower than they've ever been, particularly with Gen Z," Goodarzi told Editorial Director Andrew Nusca at Fortune Brainstorm AI last week. Credit balances across the board are also the highest they've been, Goodarzi added, but Gen Z are disproportionately hurting in this category, too. "[Gen Z] credit card balances are up 36-37%," Goodarzi added. But there's one silver lining: "They still have jobs," Goodarzi said. "And that's what's really keeping things together."

Vice Adm. Curt Renshaw, the head of US Naval Forces Central Command, said the "first successful launch of LUCAS from a naval vessel marks a significant milestone in rapidly delivering affordable and effective" drones to American military personnel. The drone launched from the Santa Barbara belonged to a new squadron based in the Middle East that operates the LUCAS systems, one-way attack drones that resemble the Iranian-designed Shahed-136 widely used by Russia in attacks against Ukraine.

Greg Biffle's plane caught fire after crash-landing at a regional airport, state authorities said. Other victims have not yet been identified. A former NASCAR driver has been identified as one of seven people who died in a plane crash in the southern United States. Authorities said Greg Biffle and members of his family died when a private jet crashed on Thursday while trying to land at Statesville Regional Airport, north of Charlotte, North Carolina.

A Los Angeles County resident is still looking for her missing cat after an Amazon delivery driver was seen on surveillance video appearing to take the animal from her home earlier this month. After the incident, the driver is no longer working for Amazon, according to the company, which called it a "horrible act." In footage posted to Facebook, someone wearing a vest can be seen placing a package on the porch of a Lakewood home Thursday night. Afterward, the individual moves into the home's front yard, kneels on the ground and tries to pick up the cat, which the post said is named Piper.

For all the anxiety over how AI will upend journalism as we know it, I continue to believe its best immediate uses in our profession remain exceedingly mundane. Among them, extracting structured data from unstructured text: identifying people, places, and events buried in articles; applying metadata and complex taxonomies that reporters and editors don't have the patience to maintain; normalizing things like locations, spellings, names, and entities so they line up cleanly with external databases.

The company has told US staffers across several large divisions that they will need to return to the office five days a week next year, two affected workers told Business Insider. The return-to-office push, which kicks off in September, will affect US employees across a wide set of roles, including staffers who work on advertising sales, marketing, and product, the employees said.

That's a sensible target, given the current setup. García should have right field spoken for with Brandon Marsh in left. The Phils want to give Justin Crawford a chance to take over the center field job. Both Marsh and Crawford are lefties. Marsh has notable career splits, with a .213/.278/.303 line and 61 wRC+ against southpaws in his career. Crawford actually fared slightly better against lefties in the minors this year but in a tiny sample of just 91 plate appearances against southpaws.

Fifty-five minutes before he allegedly shot and killed right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk, Tyler Robinson was bragging about his success playing the online puzzle game Wordle. It was the morning of Sept. 10. Robinson had guessed the answer - "pouty" - on his third attempt. He sent his results and a celebratory meme to a friend, who responded with a meme of his own and conceded that it had taken him five tries.

Lloyd-Jones says risk factors that put people in danger are present year-round, but the holidays can serve as a tipping point when multiple factors converge. "Certainly the weather is a contributor, and also things like the infections that get us during the winter time, changes in our lifestyle, disruptions in our routines, and also the stress of the holiday season," Lloyd-Jones says. Too much merry-making with rich foods and alcohol can strain the heart.