The Associated Press

The primary air traffic control system around Los Angeles shut down last week because data from the a U-2 spy plane’s flight plan confused software that helps track and route aircraft around the region, the Federal Aviation Administration said Monday.

When the system failed Wednesday, a backup helped safely guide ...

The new National Climate Assessment, released Tuesday, concludes that the harms of global warming will become more and more disruptive across the nation throughout this century and beyond.

The report emphasizes how warming and its all-too-wild weather is changing daily lives, even using the phrase “climate disruption” as ...

Ukraine’s military appears to be stepping up its efforts to bring eastern and southern Ukraine back under government control.

Ukrainian troops today have been fighting gun battles with a pro-Russia militia occupying the eastern city of Slovyansk. The country’s interior ministry says four officers have been killed and 30 others ...

Three deaths have been reported as Ukraine launches what seems to be its first major assault against pro-Russian forces who have seized government buildings in the country’s east.

Fighting broke out in the early hours on Friday around a city that has become the focus of the insurgency. Three deaths ...

State officials will be conducting an autopsy of 38-year-old Clayton Lockett, the convicted felon who the state tried to execute with a combination of chemicals last night that the state had never tried before.

Lockett spoke, writhed and clenched his teeth on the gurney as it was happening. Officials lowered ...

A federal judge in Milwaukee has struck down Wisconsin’s voter Identification law, saying it unfairly burdens poor and minority voters.

U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman issued his long-awaited decision Tuesday. It invalidates Wisconsin’s law.

Wisconsin’s law would have required voters to show a state-issued photo ID at the polls. Supporters ...

Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling has been banned for life by the NBA in response to racist comments the league says he made in a recorded conversation.

Commissioner Adam Silver said he will try to force the controversial owner to sell his franchise. Sterling has also been fined $2.5 ...

New Yorker writer Dexter Filkins finds an increasingly authoritarian prime minister — Nouri al-Maliki — sectarian violence, and concern for the future. Iraq holds parliamentary elections Wednesday.

A phenomenon where pranksters call in phony emergencies that elicit a strong police response is being used by video gamers in a twisted competition where their success is based on the level of that response, according to a suburban New York police commissioner.

The phenomenon is known as “swatting.”

More ...

Three years after a tornado devastated the Little Rock suburb of Vilonia, its residents again huddled in storm cellars as the most powerful twister this year carved an 80-mile path of destruction through suburbs north of the state capital, killing at least 16 people.

Emergency officials began to pick through ...

The federal government wants to ban sales of electronic cigarettes to minors and require approval for new products and health warning labels under regulations being proposed by the Food and Drug Administration.

While the proposal being issued Thursday won’t immediately mean changes for the popular devices, the move is aimed ...

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said a federal law limits how much money victims of child pornography can recover from people who viewed their images online, throwing out a nearly $3.4 million judgment in favor of a woman whose childhood rape has been widely seen on the Internet. Two dissenting ...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld Michigan’s ban on using race as a factor in college admissions.

The justices said in a 6-2 ruling that Michigan voters had the right to change their state constitution in 2006 to prohibit public colleges and universities from taking account of race in admissions ...

A somber anniversary is being marked in Boston today. It’s the one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings.

The tribute is being held inside Boston’s Hynes Convention Center, just a few blocks from the marathon finish line where two bombs exploded on April 15, 2013.

Three people were killed and ...

A college visit by more than 40 high school students turned tragic when a FedEx tractor-trailer veered across a grassy highway median and slammed into their bus in a fiery wreck that left 10 people dead, authorities said.

Someone kicked out a window on the bus, and many of those ...

President Barack Obama says he’s nominating his budget director, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, to succeed Kathleen Sebelius as Health and Human Services secretary.

The Cabinet shuffle lets Obama put a new face on his new health care law.

The move comes more than a week after the close of sign-ups for ...

A police chief says a 16-year-old boy “was flashing two knives around” when he injured 19 students and a school police officer who eventually subdued him with the help of an assistant principal at a high school near Pittsburgh.

Murrysville police Chief Thomas Seefeld says the bloody crime scene left ...

A new poll shows nearly half of respondents approved of the job New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is doing.

The New York Times/NY1/Siena College poll released Monday found that 49 percent of those polled liked how he was performing, while 31 percent disapproved.

Seventy-three percent of those ...

Former President George W. Bush has found painting as his new passion to fill the void in his life after he left the White House.

In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, Bush tells his daughter, Jenna Bush Hager, “I paint a lot because, as you know, I’m a driven ...

The Army’s top civilian official says the soldier accused in the Fort Hood shooting this week was deployed for the final months of the Iraq war but did not see combat.

Three people died and 16 were wounded before the shooter committed suicide. At least three military personnel remain in ...