A botched software update to the private network that carries communications between U.S. air traffic control centers triggered Friday's nationwide FAA ground stop on departures, not a cyberattack or terrorism, federal officials said.

Multiple sources briefed on the outage told CBS News that an update to the telecommunications backbone linking America's air traffic control facilities caused the network to reboot and crash, cutting communications and forcing the Federal Aviation Administration to halt all U.S. departures Friday "due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety." Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the problem affected all regional Air Route Traffic Control Centers that manage planes between airports, and that technicians were working to restore service under a nationwide ground stop order in place through at least 11 p.m. Eastern.

A tanker ship collided with a docked Mississippi River cruise vessel near the Port of New Orleans on Friday, sending 32 people to area hospitals but causing no fatalities, officials said.

By Friday evening, authorities said all passengers and crew from the riverboat American Heritage had been accounted for after the vessel was struck by the tanker Atlantic Asphalt while moored at a riverfront pier. The American Heritage, a paddlewheel cruise ship operated by American Cruise Lines, had 129 passengers on board at the time, and images and video from the scene showed the smaller vessel listing in the water with part of its hull partially submerged.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested more than 491,000 people and deported more than 483,000 in the last fiscal year, the highest annual totals in the agency's history and a milestone the Department of Homeland Security is touting as proof of an aggressive crackdown nationwide.

Homeland Security officials are publicly casting the figures as record highs as President Donald Trump pushes toward a stated goal of deporting one million immigrants per year, using the new numbers as evidence that the administration is ramping up but still short of its own benchmark. In a PBS NewsHour segment airing Friday, former acting ICE Director John Sandweg said the statistics raise questions about what such a target would mean for the agency's capacity and for communities across the country.

Nvidia founder Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive on Thursday, November 12, in Santa Clara, California, as U.S. authorities and Congress intensified probes into his affair with a businesswoman linked by American intelligence to China's spy service and into gaps in U.S. controls on advanced chip exports to China.

In a pre-market announcement, Nvidia's board said Huang's departure was effective immediately, named longtime chief financial officer Colette Kress interim CEO and created a new chairman role for veteran director Harvey Jones, moves that sent Nvidia shares down about 10 percent in early trading and left the world's dominant AI-chip maker without its visionary co-founder just as it faces national security, regulatory and shareholder pressure on multiple fronts. Nvidia framed the exit as stemming from fallout over Huang's extramarital affairs, while NPR and CBS linked it directly to a board investigation into whether his relationship with Singapore-based Megaspeed executive Alice Huang exposed the company and U.S. technology to a Chinese intelligence operation.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement quietly moved detainees through Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Friday, with reporters seeing about a dozen people board an ICE-chartered flight and a similar number deplane as the new Appleton immigration jail comes online in western Minnesota.

Local immigration attorneys say some of those detainees are likely being routed to the recently opened Appleton facility, and they now view MSP as an active transit hub in a growing detention pipeline that includes arrests of asylum-seeker families at the airport.

Immigration lawyers in Minnesota say federal agents have shifted from loud "Metro Surge" street sweeps to quieter tactics that use mailed notices and immigration applications to carry out frequent arrests in the Twin Cities.

Attorneys described a new letter from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) titled "Case review and interview" that tells recipients, "This appointment is not a date for your departure," yet some people who appeared for those meetings were still detained, prompting warnings that even routine-sounding check-ins can lead to arrest. They now urge immigrants to coordinate with family and counsel before any ICE appointment or airport travel, saying arrests at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and other low-visibility locations have become more common.

Immigration and civil-rights lawyers in Minnesota say Immigration and Customs Enforcement has shifted in recent weeks to low-profile arrest tactics that quietly pull people with pending asylum or green card cases into custody using misleading appointment letters and flights through Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Attorneys report that ICE has been mailing notices labeled "case review and interview" that explicitly say the visit is not a deportation date, only to detain some attendees on the spot, while others are intercepted using information from their own immigration applications, including a family seized after landing at MSP on a flight from Georgia despite long-pending asylum claims. On the most recent Friday described by lawyers, about a dozen detainees boarded an ICE-operated flight out of MSP and about a dozen deplaned, with some apparently routed to the newly opened Appleton ICE detention center in western Minnesota, prompting local attorneys to urge clients to make safety plans before any ICE appointments and to have counsel ready to file emergency court petitions if they are suddenly taken into custody.

Minneapolis officials are moving to tack more than $1 million in unpaid water, sewer and trash charges from a single landlord, Fine Associates, onto the property tax bills for five city buildings, raising fears among tenants that mounting debt could eventually put their homes at risk.

The unpaid bills are part of more than $12 million in delinquent city utility charges that Minneapolis is certifying to Hennepin County for collection, a process that allows local governments to recover overdue fees through property taxes and, if they remain unpaid, foreclosure. At two large downtown apartment buildings owned by Fine Associates, Marquette Place and 110 Grant West, the city says utility delinquencies total about $505,000 and $363,000 respectively, even as renters say they have continued to pay thousands of dollars each month in rent. The owner has not responded to repeated questions from FOX 9 about why the bills have gone unpaid.

Immigration attorneys in the Twin Cities say federal agents are quietly arresting noncitizens at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and at scheduled immigration appointments, using people's own efforts to legalize their status to locate and detain them.

On a recent Friday, about a dozen detainees boarded a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) flight at MSP and about a dozen others got off, with some believed to be headed to the Appleton immigration detention center in western Minnesota. Immigration lawyer David Wilson says ICE has summoned clients with pending permanent residency applications to "case review and interview" appointments, sending letters that stress "This appointment is not a date for your departure from the United States," yet several people who appeared have been taken into custody. Another Twin Cities attorney, Paschal Nwokocha, says a family with long-pending asylum cases was detained after flying from Georgia to Minneapolis, and he has seen more airport-based ICE arrests nationally.

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review former President Donald Trump's executive order that largely suspends access to asylum for migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border between official ports of entry, a case that could redefine presidential power over immigration enforcement at the southern border.

In taking the case, the justices granted the Trump administration's appeal of lower-court rulings that found the policy unlawful but left it in effect, meaning the near-total bar on asylum applications for covered migrants remains in place while the Supreme Court considers whether a president can categorically refuse to accept such claims. Immigration advocates including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigrant Justice Center say the order is an attempt to "eviscerate" asylum protections by stopping people from even applying, while the administration argues it may deny asylum on a class-wide basis and need not process applications that will be rejected.

A string of court rulings has sharply limited the Trump administration's effort to force states to sideline ballots tied to alleged noncitizens, but Justice Department leaders signaled this week they will keep pursuing voter-roll crackdowns through other lawsuits and criminal investigations nationwide.

In orders issued in late October and early November, judges from a Los Angeles trial court up to the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Justice Department's urgent bid to make California segregate roughly 20,000 mail ballots linked to people federal databases labeled "likely" noncitizens, while a separate federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled on the eve of the midterms that DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security lack legal authority to distribute such suspect-voter lists to states and that doing so violates the Privacy Act. Attorney General Todd Blanche nevertheless told reporters on Thursday, November 12, that the department has "ongoing cases and investigations in various states" and will continue to press election-integrity cases "criminally and civilly," even after abandoning the California ballot suit.

SpaceX launched its giant Starship rocket on a 22-hour test flight from the company's Starbase complex on the Texas Gulf Coast on Friday evening, aiming to prove it can send the fully reusable vehicle to orbit, deploy satellites, and then fly it back to its launch site.

Lifting off at 5:45 p.m. EST, the two-stage, stainless-steel vehicle cleared the pad and powered toward space on the thrust of its Super Heavy booster, which stands 236 feet tall and carries 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines and about 8 million pounds of propellant. Stage separation occurred roughly 2 minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff, after which the booster followed a preplanned trajectory to a splashdown offshore instead of attempting a return to the launch site. On top, the 171-foot Starship upper stage began a mission profile that calls for an 18-minute coast phase, a brief orbital insertion burn, deployment of 26 Starlink Version 3 internet satellites, and an ambitious attempt on Saturday afternoon to guide the ship back to Starbase for a capture and recovery rather than a simple controlled splashdown.

A federal appeals court in New York ruled Friday that the U.S. Department of Transportation illegally withheld nearly $74 million in highway funds from New York after the state refused to cancel thousands of immigrants' commercial driver licenses.

In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the DOT agency that oversees commercial trucking, could not penalize New York for failing to revoke about 33,000 licenses because the federal cancellation rules were not in effect when those licenses were issued.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a rare nationwide halt to all flights on Friday, prompting hours of disruptions and intensifying a White House push for $30.1 billion in emergency funding to modernize the country's aging aviation system.

The FAA described the grounding as a response to "extraordinary circumstances," even as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and White House budget chief Russell Vought urged Congress in a new letter Friday afternoon to quickly approve the $30.1 billion package, which they called "critical" to completing the modernization of the national airspace.

Twelve Republican state attorneys general on Thursday launched an appeal of a federal judge's ruling in Washington, D.C., that blocked a Trump administration rule tightening identification and data-sharing requirements for mail ballots ahead of the 2028 election.

The GOP-led states are asking the D.C. Circuit to overturn U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols' nationwide preliminary injunction, which found that the U.S. Postal Service likely lacks clear legal authority to demand voter-name-and-address lists from states as a condition for delivering ballot envelopes. Election officials and voting-rights groups say reviving the rule, which also imposes new labeling requirements on ballot mail, could again threaten disruptions if it is reinstated close to a federal election.

House Democratic campaign officials said Friday they have hired an outside firm to investigate a sexual harassment allegation involving Rep.-elect Brian Poindexter of Texas, after a campaign volunteer reported an interaction that made her uncomfortable.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) confirmed that its independent investigation began after party-aligned fundraising groups alerted it to the complaint in the closing days of Poindexter's campaign, and said the probe will continue as he prepares to be sworn in next year.

Democrat Eileen Laubacher has unseated Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado's 4th Congressional District, a solidly GOP seat, with networks confirming the upset on Friday, November 13, 10 days after Election Day.

CBS News projected Laubacher the winner by about 1 percentage point once all ballots were counted, finalizing one of the cycle's most closely watched House races and cementing Democrats' newly won majority in the incoming 120th Congress. Laubacher, who has already attended new member orientation in Washington this week, will represent a district that Republicans carried by more than 18 points just two years ago, underscoring the scale of Boebert's loss and the broader GOP setback.

New York City officials have widened inspections and intensified their investigation into this week's deadly Brooklyn building collapse, as survivors and community leaders on Friday demanded answers about whether next-door construction work destabilized their homes.

At a community news conference in Flatbush on Friday afternoon, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the city has now ordered inspections at more than 160 properties tied to six entities connected to the adjacent construction and demolition project, calling the collapse "devastating" and vowing an exhaustive probe by building inspectors and prosecutors. Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani reiterated that any evidence of criminality would be pursued "to the fullest extent of the law," while residents described feeling their walls crack and buildings shake in the months before the disaster.

Family Dollar has agreed to a proposed $63 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and 17 states over allegations that it systematically charged shoppers more at the register than the prices displayed on shelves in thousands of stores across the country.

Announced Thursday, November 12, the settlement would create a $40 million consumer refund fund for shoppers who bought items at Family Dollar between January 1, 2023, and October 1, 2026, and provide another $20 million in discounts through a two-day promotion offering 15% off selected products. The order also requires Family Dollar to adopt an independently certified pricing accuracy program and prohibits the company from misrepresenting prices in its more than 7,000 U.S. stores, on its website, and in its mobile app.

London's Metropolitan Police have opened an investigation into serious sexual offense allegations involving British children's author and television personality David Walliams, after receiving multiple new complaints in recent days from people alleging abuse by a man in his 50s.

The force said Friday that the fresh reports differ from those already described in a joint investigation by ITV News and the Guardian but that detectives will also examine that earlier reporting for potential evidence related to the case. Police have not announced any arrests or charges, and did not name Walliams in their statement, but confirmed the suspect is a high-profile man in his 50s whose details match the entertainer.

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown has turned to an outside law firm to defend Washington's new girls' sports law in court, appointing Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner as special assistant attorneys general on Thursday, November 12, in Olympia.

Brown's move comes as opponents, including civil liberties groups and families, ask a King County judge to block the measure before it takes effect on December 3, arguing it violates privacy and equal-rights protections for transgender students. Brown said his office will instead focus on separate lawsuits seeking to protect transgender residents' access to health care and equal treatment while outside counsel handles the politically charged ballot initiative defense.

The Navy has removed Rear Adm. Brian Monahan as attending physician of the U.S. Capitol and top doctor to Congress after a Pentagon watchdog found lax oversight of powerful prescription drugs in his office, prompting his resignation announced Thursday in Washington.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Thursday, November 12, that Monahan had stepped down amid misconduct allegations, a day after lawmakers were briefed on a Defense Department inspector general report that cited serious gaps in how the Office of the Attending Physician handled medications, including sleep aids and painkillers. The Navy, which commissions and oversees the attending physician, is running a separate inquiry into the office as it weighs potential additional discipline and changes to how medical care is delivered on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland formally launched a campaign Thursday to unseat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, coupling his bid to lead Democrats' new majority with a call to use a looming funding deadline to force President Trump to end the Iran war.

In posts on X, television interviews, and a Thursday appearance on MS NOW, Van Hollen said he will run for Senate majority leader when Democrats choose their leadership in early December and urged his colleagues to threaten a shutdown unless Trump agrees to halt what he called an "illegal war" in Iran, declaring, "Not a penny, not a penny to fuel this war." He framed his challenge as a response to voters' demands to "unrig an economy rigged against working people & fueled by political corruption" and insisted the race "isn't about any one person" but about delivering "new leadership" after Democrats expanded their Senate majority to at least 55 seats.

U.S.-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine have quietly widened into negotiations over Europe's entire security order, even as Ukrainian officials warn that fresh limits on SpaceX's Starshield satellite network are hampering drone and air-defense operations along the front.

After a two-day round in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday and Wednesday, November 10-11, U.S. envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff said Russia has now agreed that European governments will join future talks on postwar European security arrangements, a notable shift from the Kremlin's earlier insistence on a strictly U.S.-Russia-Ukraine format. On Friday, European Council President Antonio Costa confirmed that the EU, plus the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Poland, will send a joint diplomatic team to the next round, as European leaders warned they will not let Washington and Moscow alone redraw the continent's security map. At the same time, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Starshield-imposed speed caps are again limiting Ukrainian drones and some interceptors to about 100 miles per hour across the front and in Russian-occupied territory, a slowdown his government links to recent decisions by SpaceX and senior U.S. officials.

The American Cancer Society has issued major new guidelines urging regular prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, blood tests for most men ages 50 to 69, a shift toward more proactive screening intended to catch dangerous cancers earlier across the United States.

Under the recommendations, published this week, average-risk men are advised to have PSA tests every two years starting at age 50, while high-risk men, including Black men and those with strong family histories of prostate cancer, should begin annual screening at 45. The society estimates that more than 333,000 men in the U.S. will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and about 36,000 will die from it in 2026, underscoring the stakes of catching the disease early.

Antonio Oseguera Cervantes, brother of slain Jalisco New Generation Cartel boss Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera Cervantes, was sentenced Friday to 22 1/2 years in U.S. prison for drug trafficking and firearms offenses.

A federal court imposed the sentence after Oseguera Cervantes admitted he helped move large quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine into the United States and possessed a firearm to advance the trafficking scheme. He had pleaded guilty in July to conspiring to distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine and more than 500 grams of methamphetamine for importation, as well as to using, carrying and possessing a gun in furtherance of that conspiracy.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett has decided not to file criminal charges against the woman whose pickup rolled onto a Wichita youth soccer field in October, killing a 6-year-old boy and a 35-year-old father and injuring 10 others.

Announcing his decision in a 28-page report released Thursday, Bennett said Kansas law does not support charges because investigators found negligence but not the "criminal recklessness" required for manslaughter or vehicular homicide, despite the tragedy's severity.

The US Coast Guard has opened a criminal investigation into the cruise ship MSC Poesia over an alleged illegal oil-discharge "magic pipe" scheme, focusing on possible deliberate pollution and falsified records while the vessel operated from the Port of Miami.

Investigators are reviewing the ship's pollution-control systems, maintenance records and crew practices after earlier detaining the vessel in Miami in November for what officials described as system deficiencies; the Poesia, carrying more than 2,000 passengers at the time, was allowed to depart Thursday after those deficiencies were addressed.

Suffolk County officials on Long Island have identified the young woman long known only as "Montauk Mary" as Sofia Margherita Marrone and are now investigating whether she was an uncounted victim of notorious New Jersey "thrill killer" Richard Biegenwald.

The breakthrough came after nearly five decades, when cold case detectives used modern DNA techniques and genealogical research to match remains found near Montauk's Camp Hero radar tower in 1978 to Marrone, whose family had long lost contact with her. Investigators say Marrone was killed with rare .22-caliber short ammunition that matches rounds recovered from Biegenwald when he was arrested in 1983, and they are re-examining files and witness accounts for a formal link.

Minnesota state Rep. Dan Wolgamott has been charged in Stearns County with criminal vehicular operation causing bodily harm while under the influence and third-degree DWI after a crash in St. Cloud on Wednesday night.

According to the criminal complaint, police allege Wolgamott hit a parked Ford pickup truck on 13th Street North around 8 p.m., injuring the driver, who later reported concussion-like symptoms. Officers say Wolgamott showed signs of impairment at the scene, failed field-sobriety tests, refused a preliminary breath test, and was taken into custody; a blood sample was later drawn under a warrant, with lab results still pending when prosecutors filed the case. He was arrested Wednesday night and is scheduled for an initial court appearance Friday morning.

Senate Democrats have opened a formal records probe into Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s account of a 2019 trip to Samoa to advise on vaccines, escalating a fight that could lead to impeachment proceedings when the party takes control of Congress in January.

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who is expected to chair the powerful Senate Finance Committee next year, said this week he has launched two investigations into Kennedy: one examining whether Kennedy misled Congress about the purpose of his Samoa visit and another scrutinizing reports that he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts while in office. Wyden and Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland have sent a records request to Kennedy seeking documents related to his testimony, signaling that subpoenas could follow once Democrats formally take the gavel. HHS has blasted suggestions that Kennedy lied as "outright defamatory," while Wyden told the Associated Press that if officials broke the law "nothing should be off the table," explicitly leaving impeachment among the possible outcomes.

Disbarred South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh asked a judge on Friday to throw out the murder indictments accusing him of killing his wife and son, arguing that a state agent's false testimony misled the Colleton County grand jury that charged him.

In a hearing before Judge Debra McCaslin, Murdaugh's lawyers said State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) agent David Owen wrongly told grand jurors there was blood spatter on Murdaugh's T-shirt and that ammunition matching the rounds that killed Paul Murdaugh was loaded in guns "all over" the family's rural property. Prosecutors countered that any misstatement was a single mistake, insisted there was ample independent evidence including a kennel video placing Murdaugh at the crime scene and financial-motive proof, and argued they could simply seek new indictments if the current ones are dismissed.

Microsoft was still battling a major global outage of its Microsoft 365 cloud services on Friday morning, leaving Outlook email and Teams collaboration tools unreliable for millions of users across Asia, Europe and the United States.

In an early Friday update, the company said recovery actions were ongoing and overall service health "remains variable," with capacity not yet back to normal, as businesses headed into a second consecutive workday of disruption. A later live segment on CBS around 8:42 a.m. Central confirmed that Outlook and related Microsoft 365 apps were still not functioning reliably for many customers, underscoring that email and other core tools remained impaired well into Friday morning.

The United Nations nuclear watchdog is pressing Iran to immediately grant access to a secretive underground uranium facility near Isfahan, warning in a new November report that inspectors do not know the site's exact location, status, or whether safeguards are in place, even as fresh war jitters flare after Iran allegedly targeted a US radar base in Bahrain.

In its latest quarterly assessment, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it is "increasingly concerned" that Iran has repeatedly refused requests this year to visit the Isfahan Fuel Enrichment Plant (IFEP), a tunnel complex where the agency believes some of Iran's roughly 900-pound stockpile of highly enriched uranium may have been moved or buried. Satellite images reviewed by the agency show regular vehicular traffic in and out of the underground area near the central city of Isfahan, activity Western officials interpret as possible efforts to harden or conceal nuclear material as regional military tensions rise.

Democrat Cindy Holscher has won Kansas' governor race over Republican Ty Masterson, with the Associated Press calling the narrow contest on Thursday, November 12, and The New York Times and other outlets later confirming the result in a state Republicans expected to flip.

The AP call, coming two days after Election Day and following a recount, secures a third straight Democratic term in the governor's office and helps give Democrats a majority of U.S. governorships for the first time in roughly 20 years, even though Kansas remains solidly Republican in presidential races. The race drew heavy outside spending, including about $19 million from the Republican Governors Association backing Masterson, which left GOP allies outspending Democrats by more than 3-to-1 on TV and digital ads. Holscher's margin was powered by a blowout in the Kansas City suburbs, where she took more than 60% of the vote in Johnson County, home to about 23% of the state's roughly 2 million voters, offsetting Masterson's strong rural advantages.

The US Postal Service will lock in an existing 8% fuel surcharge and add a new 3% price increase on select shipping products starting January 17, 2027, effectively raising many package rates by 11% nationwide as it struggles with mounting losses.

The change applies to domestic shipping services such as Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express, USPS Ground Advantage and Parcel Select, which will see average price hikes of 5.9%, while major international products will rise an average 7.9%, though the fuel surcharge itself will not yet apply to international shipments. The Postal Service said the move makes permanent an 8% fuel surcharge first imposed in April 2026 and comes alongside a 3% base-rate adjustment, but it stressed that First-Class stamp prices, which rose from 78 to 82 cents in July, are not slated to increase in January. Postal officials said they will formally reevaluate the permanent fuel surcharge in July 2027 based on fuel prices in the first half of the year.

The FBI said Thursday it has seized more than $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency linked to last month's massive Binance hack, a takedown U.S. officials describe as a major blow to North Korea-backed cyber thieves.

Announcing the operation, the FBI said the recovered digital assets are part of more than $2.7 billion in stolen funds that U.S. agencies and private-sector partners have managed to freeze worldwide after tracking the coins across multiple blockchains. The Justice Department now has court authorization to seize or restrain $1.2 billion of that total as potential criminal proceeds, with officials framing the move as both a law-enforcement milestone and a step toward cutting off a key revenue stream for Pyongyang.

Sen. Ed Markey and several of the nation's largest school districts are pressuring Google to back off a new policy that forces K-12 students to use the company's generative AI tools in order to access its search engine, escalating a national fight this week over the role of artificial intelligence in public education.

In a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai, Markey demanded that Google immediately reverse its decision to cut off traditional Google Search for student accounts when schools disable AI Overviews, saying districts must be able to protect children from untested AI features without losing an essential research tool. Major systems including Los Angeles Unified, Seattle Public Schools and New York City Public Schools have recently adopted classroom bans or tight restrictions on generative AI, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani accused Google on X of using "its monopoly power to force AI into our public schools."

Twelve weeks after a utility pole crashed onto Kenny Green's car in Hopkins and killed the 31-year-old driver, Xcel Energy remains the only entity investigating what went wrong, with no deadline for releasing answers.

In a statement this week, Xcel said its internal review of the August pole failure is still underway, even as Green's family and their attorney press for outside oversight and state regulators confirm they will not probe the fatal collapse.

The Minneapolis City Council on Thursday narrowly approved one of the strictest local data center ordinances in the country on a 7-6 vote, after a separate push for an outright ban on new facilities failed.

The new rules mean any proposed data center will have to be approved case by case by the council through a special overlay district and can operate only in existing buildings, not new construction. Data centers cannot be the primary use of a property, are barred from the first and second floors, and must disclose their energy and water consumption, generator use, and submit both a sound-attenuation plan and a decommissioning plan. Facilities larger than 50,000 square feet will also have to enroll in an Xcel Energy program and pay a premium through renewable energy credits to help fund more renewable power on the grid.

Texas on Thursday executed John Allen Rubio, a 46-year-old man convicted of stabbing and beheading three young children in Brownsville in 2003, putting him to death by lethal injection in Huntsville.

Rubio was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m. local time, 21 minutes after the drugs began to flow, according to the Associated Press account cited in local coverage. In his final statement, Rubio apologized to his wife's family, said he was "going to be with my kids in a little bit," and added that he was ready "to go to heaven." His execution was the second in the country on Thursday, following Oklahoma's execution of James Pavatt earlier in the day.

The Lee County Board of Supervisors has approved a key tax-incentive term sheet with Minnesota-based Mesabi Metallics for a proposed $15 billion steel mill in southeast Iowa, clearing an early hurdle for what would be one of the largest industrial projects in state history.

Supervisors signed off on the agreement Tuesday, Nov. 10, and also passed a resolution backing a broader state incentive package for the plant, which is projected to produce 10 million tons of steel a year and employ about 1,750 full-time workers. Under the term sheet, Mesabi Metallics would have to create at least $112 million in new taxable property value before it can receive county tax rebates, pay up to $10.5 million to local and county governments during construction, and then pay Lee County $50 million over 20 years in lieu of additional property taxes.

Former Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip pleaded guilty Thursday in Oklahoma County District Court to a reduced accessory charge in the 1997 killing of motel owner Barry Van Treese, leading prosecutors to dismiss the long-standing murder charge that once put him on the brink of execution.

Glossip entered the plea under an agreement supported by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who said the deal both secures a conviction tied to Van Treese's death and preserves the state's ability to seek additional prison time. Sentencing is scheduled for December, when a judge could decide that nearly 30 years Glossip has already spent on death row is enough for his new conviction or impose as many as 15 more years in prison.

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has become the first airport in the United States to deploy a mobile heart-lung life support unit on its grounds, giving cardiac arrest patients access to advanced extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, without leaving the terminal area.

Under the new system, when a 911 call for a suspected cardiac arrest comes from anywhere at MSP, airport first responders move the patient to a designated staging area where an M Health Fairview ECMO team can start heart-lung bypass on site, guided in real time by cardiologists who can consult virtually. The rollout, announced Thursday, is a partnership among the Metropolitan Airports Commission, MSP fire and police departments, the airport's contract ambulance service, and M Health Fairview/Minnesota Mobile Physicians.

Four advocacy groups filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court on Thursday seeking to force five of the biggest artificial intelligence developers to immediately halt work on more powerful "frontier" AI systems, arguing the companies have lost control of technology that could cause catastrophic harm.

The complaint, brought by Irreplaceable Education Fund, Public Citizen, Heat Initiative and Future Tech Insights (which does business as The Alliance for Secure AI), targets Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI and two SpaceX Super Intelligence entities. It asks a judge to bar each from building or deploying any AI system more capable than its most advanced model today, and from using AI to autonomously conduct or direct research on even more capable systems. The filing leans on executives' own warnings, citing past comments by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei that advanced AI carries non-trivial risks of catastrophic or even world-ending outcomes, as well as Elon Musk's recent support for an industry slowdown.

U.S. existing home sales fell in October to an annual rate of 3.75 million, the lowest level since 2010, as high mortgage rates continued to chill demand across the country, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said.

The October pace was 8.8% below a year earlier and came in well under economists' expectations of about 3.86 million, with NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun calling the downturn a "punch in the gut" for the market. Single-family home sales dropped to 3.41 million, the weakest since October 2010, while condo and co-op sales slid to a record low 340,000.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development on Thursday published a sweeping final rule that will bar "mixed-status" immigrant families from living in federally funded public housing nationwide unless every household member can prove US citizenship or an eligible immigration status by December 14.

HUD's rule, issued under Secretary Scott Turner, ends a three-decade policy that let families with a mix of eligible and ineligible members stay together in public housing with reduced, prorated subsidies and instead requires immigration or citizenship documents for every resident, including US citizens and children of any age. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates the change will hit about 20,000 mixed-status families, or roughly 80,000 people, including some 37,000 mostly US-citizen children, potentially forcing parents and kids to split up or leave public housing entirely. Turner defended the move by pointing to a joint HUD-Homeland Security audit that flagged nearly 200,000 tenants with incomplete or unverified status and said taxpayers should not subsidize "illegals and ineligibles," a theme he echoed on social media by declaring the "mixed status loophole" closed and vowing that assistance will go only to citizens and those "here legally."

Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he has been notified that a US attorney is seeking to investigate him over a congressional inquiry he is planning into corporate donations to projects backed by former President Donald Trump, sharply condemning the move as an attack on legislative oversight.

Blumenthal said he received a letter from US Attorney Aaron Reitz informing him that he was under investigation in connection with the planned probe and responded with his own letter calling the implied inquiry "baseless" while ordering Reitz to preserve all records and correspondence with the White House and top Justice Department officials. The Connecticut Democrat framed the episode as a threat to Congress's ability to scrutinize the executive branch and private companies, and he vowed to press ahead with his planned investigation.

A 52-year-old District resident who opened fire inside a Logan Circle gym Thursday morning, killing one person and injuring four others before barricading himself in a nearby apartment and dying by suicide, has been identified by police as Dr. Matt Lambert, a healthcare consultant who lived in the building.

Interim Metropolitan Police Chief Jeffery Carroll said officers responded to 911 calls around 8 a.m. Eastern at the VIDA Fitness gym, arriving within about 30 seconds and initially finding one adult male shot, before determining that five people in total had been wounded in and around the Metropole condominium complex that houses the luxury gym. Police and law enforcement officials say Lambert shot at least one person inside the gym, then another in a parking garage elevator, before retreating to a seventh-floor apartment in the building, where he barricaded himself for about an hour as officers tried to negotiate a surrender; he was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and three firearms were recovered from his unit. One victim died at the scene, while four others were hospitalized with injuries; their conditions and identities have not been publicly released.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday announced up to $4.9 million in federal funding to jump-start U.S. research preparations on the psychedelic drug ibogaine as a potential treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, with the effort centered on veterans and run in partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Speaking at an afternoon briefing in Washington, Kennedy said the money will finance work on ibogaine manufacturing, dosing, and study design rather than immediate patient trials, describing it as a "groundwork phase" to ensure any later clinical studies meet strict safety and regulatory standards. Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins said the VA will formally partner on the project and stressed that no ibogaine would be offered to patients outside monitored studies, calling the approach "veteran-driven but science-led."

A Honduran man who says immigration agents shattered his car window, tore him from the vehicle and violently re-injured his surgically repaired knee during a January takedown at a St. Paul gas station filed a federal lawsuit Thursday seeking more than $1 million from the U.S. government.

The complaint, filed on behalf of 28-year-old Orbin Mauricio Henriquez Serrano, accuses Immigration and Customs Enforcement and agents involved in the January 11 arrest at a Speedway in St. Paul of assault, battery, false arrest and imprisonment, negligence, negligent supervision, and interference with personal property, and asks a judge to declare that federal officers broke the law when they detained and deported him.

Minnesota traffic deaths climbed in the first half of 2026 even as national and regional fatal crashes declined, with 178 people killed on the state's roads from January through June, according to a new federal report.

The tally is 14 more deaths than during the same period in 2025, and pushed Minnesota's fatality rate from 0.57 to 0.62 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, though the state still remains below the national rate of 1.02.

The Minneapolis City Council on Thursday rejected Mayor Jacob Frey's choice of interim police chief Bill Peterson for a permanent four-year term, blocking the 31-year department veteran from leading the force through 2030.

Council members spent several hours publicly grilling Peterson before the vote, pressing him on officer misconduct, department reform, professionalism, discipline, and spending, then ultimately voted down his confirmation. Peterson disclosed that the Minneapolis Police Department currently has 41 open misconduct complaints involving about 85 officers and acknowledged that he is the subject of two internal complaints himself, the details of which are not public.

An Alaska judge has rejected the Mary Peltola Senate campaign's attempt to force state election officials to quickly produce a statewide list of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected, a ruling that preserves the secrecy of internal ballot review records while one of the country's tightest races remains undecided.

In a decision issued Wednesday, Nov. 11, Alaska Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews said the campaign's request for names of voters with rejected absentee ballots, along with reasons for each rejection, was "not reasonable" given legal limits on diverting staff during the active count and looming Nov. 18 deadlines for overseas ballots and a possible ranked-choice tabulation. He ruled that although the underlying database could theoretically be redacted, the Division of Elections is not required to generate a new electronic product and scrub it of confidential information under current time pressure, calling the timing of the request something that "could simply not be worse." The Alaska Department of Law, which represented the Division of Elections, welcomed the ruling, while attorneys for Peltola did not immediately comment, with the court hearing and decision falling around the Veterans Day holiday.

The Science Museum of Minnesota plans to cut more than $4 million from its budget in St. Paul, a move that will eliminate staff positions and end its longstanding touring exhibition program as the institution works to close a growing financial gap.

Museum leaders have not yet disclosed how many jobs will be lost, but the cuts are expected to affect a range of departments and will halt the development and travel of exhibits that have been rented to other museums around the country, an important revenue source and driver of the museum's national profile.

H.B. Fuller will close seven manufacturing and distribution facilities in North America and Europe as part of a streamlining plan that lands while the Vadnais Heights-based adhesive maker faces public pressure from an investor pushing for a sale.

The company disclosed the shutdowns Thursday, saying it aims to consolidate operations and cut costs, but did not immediately detail which specific plants will close, how many jobs will be affected, or the precise timetable for the wind-downs. The move underscores that any restructuring or potential sale could directly affect the Twin Cities corporate landscape, where H.B. Fuller is one of the region's notable publicly traded manufacturers.

The US Department of Agriculture has proposed a sweeping new rule that would sharply tighten who qualifies for food stamps by limiting a key eligibility shortcut to families receiving cash welfare through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, potentially cutting off about 6.3 million people from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by 2029.

Unveiled in a Federal Register notice dated November 10, the plan would end most forms of "broad-based categorical eligibility," under which many states now allow people to qualify for SNAP if they receive even small, non-cash TANF-funded benefits such as counseling or help with car repairs. USDA says too many households with incomes or savings above federal limits are getting benefits, while anti-hunger groups, Democratic lawmakers and several policy experts warn the change would increase food insecurity, strip nearly 1.8 million children of automatic free school meals and undermine state flexibility just as voters signal deep concern about affordability.

The Minnesota Supreme Court on Thursday overturned lower court rulings in a drunken-driving license revocation case and said the state, not drivers, must now prove that roadside breath-test results are reliable before they can be used against a motorist.

In a decision involving driver Derek Alexander Knapp, the justices threw out earlier decisions by a district court and the Court of Appeals, which had placed the burden on Knapp to show his breath sample might have been contaminated during the mandatory 15-minute observation period before the test. The court sent the case back to the district court to decide whether Knapp's breath-test result can be admitted under the new standard, while cautioning that an imperfect observation period does not automatically make a test invalid.

The House on Wednesday passed a Republican-written bill by voice vote that would significantly boost monthly pay for tens of thousands of combat-injured military retirees, setting off a fresh partisan clash over how to fund veterans benefits.

Approved without a recorded roll call that many lawmakers had expected, the measure would let about 58,000 combat-injured retirees with fewer than 20 years of service receive both full military retirement and full Department of Veterans Affairs disability compensation, an average increase of roughly $1,450 a month. Republican leaders hailed the plan as long-overdue relief for severely injured veterans, while Democrats objected to how the GOP chose to pay for it and to the decision to push it through on a voice vote.

The SS United States, once the world's fastest ocean liner, is now open to divers as an artificial reef off Florida's Gulf Coast after crews deliberately sank the 990-foot ship Wednesday about 20 miles off Destin.

Okaloosa County officials confirmed Thursday that the new reef site, which sits upright roughly 180 feet below the surface, is now accessible to certified divers, fulfilling expectations that it would open within a day or two of the sinking. The ship was positioned so its upper decks stay within recreational diving limits, a move local leaders hope will draw tourists and help the county recoup its $10 million investment in just a few years. Local dive operator Kerry Freeland is urging early visitors to be cautious, warning that the wreck may still be settling, venting trapped air and shedding loose equipment after its descent to the seafloor.

A South Carolina magistrate judge on Thursday denied bond for 25-year-old Michael A. Comer, the father accused of attempting to kill his 11-month-old son by burying him alive in a shallow grave in Lexington County.

Magistrate Judge Gary W. Reinhart ruled that Comer will remain in jail while facing charges of attempted murder, burglary and unlawfully placing a child at risk, and he set Comer's next court hearing for December 10. Lead investigator Tyler Douglas told the court that Comer showed no remorse for allegedly trying to kill his son, Koah Sharpe, and had tried to flee South Carolina, bolstering prosecutors' arguments against release. Reinhart also approved a public defender to represent Comer.

A federal judge in Chicago has ordered U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros and three of his prosecutors to testify under oath Monday about possible misconduct in a botched case against anti-ICE protesters, rejecting the Justice Department's attempt to halt her inquiry.

In a ruling issued Wednesday, Judge April Perry canceled a separate November 17 hearing on whether she had authority to question prosecutors and instead reaffirmed that power outright, directing Boutros and Assistant U.S. Attorneys William Hogan, Matthew Skiba and Andres Almendarez to appear in her courtroom. She also rebuffed a high-level plea from Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, who argued that compelling their testimony would place the prosecutors in a "Catch-22," forcing them to choose between potential self-incrimination and contempt of court if they refused to answer.

Video recorded from multiple angles shows two US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wrestling 45-year-old Robbinsdale resident Jose Ruelas Viorato to the ground on his front porch, with one agent punching him in the face before dragging him into an unmarked vehicle as his young daughter screams and films the encounter.

The arrest happened early in the morning outside the family's home, prompting the daughter to dial 911 at 7:13 a.m., telling dispatchers that men were taking her father. A Robbinsdale police officer arrived within minutes, but body-camera and dispatch records show the officer did not see any other law enforcement on scene, spoke briefly with the girl, then cleared the call in about two minutes, with the department later stressing it was not involved in the arrest and that the city follows a separation agreement limiting cooperation with ICE.

The Justice Department on Tuesday unsealed terrorism charges in Manhattan federal court against three alleged Iran-backed operatives accused of orchestrating nearly 20 attacks and plots against Jewish targets in Europe and the US and attempting a vehicle-bomb assault on RAF Fairford, a UK airbase that hosts American bombers.

Prosecutors say Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, 32, a dual Iranian-Iraqi citizen, Iranian national Mohsen Mohajeri, 48, and Iraqi national Mohammed Ali al-Hassani, 35, worked for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Iraqi militia Kata'ib Hezbollah, overseeing arson, explosives and stabbing attacks on Jewish communities and a thwarted September 2026 plot to detonate fuel-packed vans outside RAF Fairford. Attorney General Todd Blanche and US Attorney Jamie McDonald cast the case as part of a broader Iran-directed campaign targeting Jewish civilians and a British base housing US servicemembers, with Blanche vowing that "anyone who plans a terrorist plot on a military base housing American servicemembers will be prosecuted by the United States government." Mohajeri and al-Hassani are not currently in custody, according to two sources cited by CBS, while al-Saadi has been held without bail in New York since his extradition earlier this year.

The White House has formally warned the incoming Democratic chair of the House Oversight Committee that his promised investigations of President Trump and his aides could themselves be criminal, escalating a constitutional clash weeks before Democrats take control of Congress in January.

In a three-page letter dated Monday, Nov. 9, White House Counsel Will Scharf told Rep. Robert Garcia of California that Democrats' planned probes "may cross the line into blatant criminality," arguing that "abusive and capricious threats" and "unlawful subpoenas" aimed at deterring executive-branch officials from doing their jobs could warrant investigation themselves. Scharf said members of the next Congress had shown "a clear intent to transgress" constitutional limits on oversight and wrote that the administration is monitoring what it calls "abusive and capricious threats" against Trump and his staff.

Democrat Scott Colom has defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi's U.S. Senate race, an upset the Associated Press called Wednesday evening that makes him the state's first Black senator since Reconstruction and flips a long-safe GOP seat in a state Donald Trump carried by more than 20 points.

The AP projection, followed within minutes by network calls from outlets including CBS and PBS, came after more than a week of counting absentee, mail-in and affidavit ballots and confirmed Colom's margin at under 5,000 votes out of nearly 1 million cast in what NPR called the closest Senate race in the country this year. His win delivers Democrats their eighth flipped Senate seat of the cycle and gives the party at least 55 seats to Republicans' 44, with Alaska still undecided, cementing a robust majority that national analysts are treating as a broad rebuke of Trump and the GOP in several Republican-controlled states. Mississippi's Republican Gov. Tate Reeves quickly congratulated "Senator-Elect @scott_colom" on X and said he hoped to work together on jobs, wages and education, a message Colom echoed in a reply saying "this victory belongs to all of us."

A 32-year-old Mexican national who had previously been deported is accused of injuring an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer with his car during an arrest attempt Tuesday in Chicago Heights, Illinois, after allegedly speeding off while the officer was partially inside the vehicle, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security officials say Jose Garnica-Naranjo accelerated his vehicle as ICE officers tried to take him into custody after he left a home, allegedly dragging an officer, driving over a raised median and striking the agent before fleeing the scene. The officer was hospitalized with contusions, cuts and scrapes on his legs, was found to have no broken bones, and was later released, while Garnica-Naranjo was arrested after a search, DHS said.

Helicopters backed by El Salvador carried out pre-dawn airstrikes on Sunday, November 8, hitting what authorities described as the main headquarters of Haiti's 400 Mawozo gang and the home of its leader on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, in an escalation tied to the disappearance of four Salvadoran troops.

The operation, run by a Haitian police drone task force with Salvadoran military air support, unfolded around 2:30 a.m. and targeted sites officials say were used for kidnappings, arms trafficking and extortion by 400 Mawozo and its boss, Wilson Joseph, known as "Lanmò San Jou." Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said the raid destroyed Joseph's house and the gang's "general headquarters," while Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé publicly praised Bukele and vowed that cooperation between Haiti, El Salvador and other partners in the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force would continue.

An Israeli airstrike hit the surgical wing of Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis early Thursday, killing six people and wounding at least a dozen others, according to Gaza health officials.

Gaza's Health Ministry said the dead included general surgeon Rizk Abu Shaira, a senior physician at the facility, and that the strike tore through one of the few remaining fully functioning hospitals in the territory. The Israeli military said it had targeted a Hamas commander and other militants inside the complex, claiming without providing evidence that Hamas had turned part of the hospital into a headquarters.

The fire-gutted Randolph Terrace apartment building in St. Paul's Mac-Groveland neighborhood was torn down Tuesday morning after officials declared the roughly 100-year-old structure structurally unsound and a total loss following a roof collapse.

Demolition began around 8 a.m. using an excavator, and Randolph Avenue was closed between Fairview Avenue and Howell Street as crews methodically pulled down the remaining walls of the three-story brick building, which had been too dangerous for anyone to reenter. Dozens of displaced residents watched from behind barricades, many saying nearly everything they owned was still inside.

A 22-year-old woman has been charged after police say she drove a vehicle onto a sidewalk toward a group of people and opened fire in the parking lot of a Brooklyn Center apartment complex on Saturday evening, Nov. 7.

Prosecutors in Hennepin County on Wednesday charged Tameka Shantel English with reckless discharge of a firearm within a municipality and carrying a pistol without a permit, days after the gunfire outside the Crest Apartment complex. Police say a vehicle drove up onto the sidewalk toward a group before at least one shot was fired, and officers later recovered three 9mm shell casings from the scene. English surrendered to authorities on Tuesday, Nov. 10, leading to formal charges a day later.

Minnesota hemp businesses are slashing orders, laying off staff and emptying store shelves as a new federal ban on hemp-derived THC drinks and gummies looms over a local market worth about $180 million a year.

The nationwide ban, set to take effect Dec. 11, would outlaw the sale of intoxicating hemp-derived THC products even as Minnesota law still permits them, putting retailers, breweries and specialty shops in legal and financial limbo. Banks, insurance companies and payment processors such as Square have already backed away from THC and CBD transactions ahead of the rule change, forcing some Twin Cities businesses into cash-only operations or to adopt costly, specialized point-of-sale systems.

St. Paul officials are under pressure to quickly add traffic-calming and crosswalk protections at the busy Cleveland Avenue and Ford Parkway intersection after residents demanded changes in the wake of a fatal dump truck crash that killed a pedestrian there last month.

Neighbors, safety advocates and city staff packed a community feedback session on Tuesday, Nov. 10, where residents called for steps such as flashing crosswalk lights, more visible markings and protected left-turn signals to prevent similar crashes along Ford Parkway in Highland Park.

U.S. Soccer pulled the United States under-17 men's national team out of the upcoming FIFA U-17 World Cup in Qatar on Wednesday, citing federal travel warnings and security concerns linked to regional conflict.

Federation officials informed players and staff that the team would not travel to Qatar, scrapping a scheduled pre-tournament training camp and group-stage matches set for November 21, 24, and 27 against Montenegro, Chile, and Algeria. The decision was tied directly to the U.S. State Department's October 23 Level 3 "reconsider travel" advisory for Qatar, which warns of potential threats to civilian aviation and risks from ongoing armed conflict in the broader Middle East.

The US Supreme Court has declined to hear a civil-rights appeal brought by the family of Ricky Cobb II over his fatal 2023 shooting by Minnesota state troopers during a Twin Cities traffic stop, effectively ending the federal civil case.

In an order issued without comment, the court on Wednesday denied a petition for a writ of certiorari that sought to revive civil claims against Troopers Ryan Londregan and Brett Seide, leaving in place lower-court rulings that found the officers shielded from liability. The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association quickly praised the decision as vindication for Londregan and his legal team, while it closed off one of the last remaining legal avenues for Cobb's relatives in federal court.

A 34-year-old Honduran man who has been deported from the United States twice was arrested in Louisiana after allegedly triggering a hijacking and bomb scare aboard a United Airlines flight that landed safely in New Orleans on Monday, Nov. 9.

United Airlines Flight 2174, a Boeing 737 MAX 9 from Newark carrying 46 passengers and six crew members, declared an emergency after crew reported that passenger Rony Alexander Gomez-Alberto claimed to have a bomb and prompted pilots to report a hijacking in progress. Pilots remained locked in the cockpit after landing at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport while law enforcement boarded, removed flight attendants and then passengers, and took Gomez-Alberto into custody without incident; no injuries were reported.

House Republicans on Tuesday elected Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan as their next minority leader in a closed-door vote at the Capitol, elevating the combative Trump ally to lead a historically small GOP conference after its midterm losses.

Jordan, 62, defeated Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise 106-73 in a secret-ballot election of members-elect for the next Congress, and outgoing Speaker Mike Johnson introduced him moments later to colleagues and cameras as the "new Republican leader." Johnson, who had already announced he will step aside from leadership when Democrats take the House in January, praised both men before the vote and will remain speaker through the end of the current Congress. A CBS News video segment and later PBS NewsHour coverage confirmed Jordan's formal selection on Tuesday afternoon as part of a broader slate of GOP leadership elections in both chambers.

U.S. Central Command has created a new staff task force to choke off Iran's overland weapons and revenue networks just as Tehran announces it has scrapped its self-imposed limit on ballistic missile range, deepening a confrontation already spilling across the Strait of Hormuz and beyond.

Announced around November 7 from CENTCOM's Tampa headquarters, Task Force Iron Gate is a roughly 20-person team charged with helping U.S. agencies identify and disrupt advanced Iranian weapons shipments, dual-use materials and illicit financing that move across Iran's land borders and through the Caspian Sea, on top of a naval blockade that the command says has already denied Tehran more than $25 billion in crude exports. Within days, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman Brig. Gen. Hossein Mohebbi declared that Iran no longer recognizes its 2,000-kilometer missile range cap, warned of future strikes that would "astonish the entire world" and "leave them crippled for years," and mocked the U.S. initiative as mere "wordplay."

House lawmakers escalated their clash over how to reckon with Jeffrey Epstein's crimes on Wednesday, as a bipartisan majority forced a floor vote on new transparency legislation one day after a Republican-led committee released a scathing report blaming prosecutors and federal agencies for allowing his abuse to continue for years.

By early Wednesday afternoon, a discharge petition spearheaded by Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky had gathered the required 218 signatures to bring the Epstein Files Transparency Act II to the House floor, with all Democrats and four Republicans backing the move. The bill would let members of Congress, state attorneys general and Epstein survivors sue the Justice Department for allegedly defying last year's Epstein transparency law, which required wide disclosure of case records. Massie says the department is illegally withholding more than 3 million Epstein-related files and heavily redacting those it has released, charges that coincide with mounting pressure from both parties for more aggressive investigations of Epstein's network.

The Bloomington City Council has approved across-the-board utility rate hikes that city officials say will add about $70 a year to the average homeowner's bill, following a unanimous vote on Monday, Nov. 9.

Under the new rates, water charges will climb 3%, stormwater fees 4%, garbage and solid waste 4%, and wastewater rates 9%, based on a typical household using 5,500 gallons every two months with a medium garbage cart. City staff said the combined changes amount to a 5.19% increase for that standard profile, though actual impacts will vary depending on usage and service levels.

A Shiga toxin-producing E. coli outbreak tied to a popular pumpkin patch in San Luis Obispo County has killed one person and sickened at least a dozen more, county health officials confirmed this week.

The San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department linked the cases to Brookshire Farms, a pumpkin patch and fall attraction outside San Luis Obispo, after patients reported visiting the farm over a 10-day span in October. As of November 6, officials had identified five confirmed infections and 10 suspect cases among people who were at the farm between October 16 and October 26, and three confirmed patients required hospitalization. County officials said the person who died was among those infected but did not immediately release age, hometown, or other identifying details.

A federal judge in South Florida has refused to throw out Donald Trump's $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC, ruling Tuesday that the former president's core claim over a January 6 documentary can move forward while tossing a separate business-practices allegation.

US District Judge Jeffrey Kuntz of the Southern District of Florida partially denied the BBC's motion to dismiss, leaving intact Trump's central allegation that he was defamed by the broadcaster's editing of his January 6, 2021 Ellipse speech, but dismissing his claim under Florida's unfair business practices law. The ruling does not address whether the BBC actually defamed Trump, but it keeps the high-dollar case alive as it moves into discovery, where Trump has already been ordered to sit for a deposition by December 11. Trump celebrated the decision on Truth Social on Tuesday evening, calling it a "Huge Victory" against the BBC and praising Kuntz as a "highly respected" judge.

A federal jury in Minneapolis has convicted Bryan Wesley Edison of Carver, Minnesota, on 16 counts of animal crushing for running an online operation that filmed and sold videos of small animals being tortured and killed.

Jurors found that from July 30, 2022, through at least Oct. 19, 2023, Edison orchestrated and recorded extreme abuse of small animals, including having them attacked by a large exotic reptile, drowned, crushed, or dismembered alive, then sold access to the footage through paid online memberships. Prosecutors said he offered subscription tiers ranging from 99 cents to $99.99 and made at least $1,500 from the videos, which carried titles such as "Dog mauls guinea pig" and "Snapping Turtle Gives Rat a Slow Death." Under the federal Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act, he now faces up to seven years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each count, with sentencing set for March 3, 2027.

Democrats were holding or leading in enough uncalled contests to be on track for 54 Senate seats and 255 House seats as of Wednesday, but more than a dozen key races in multiple states remained unresolved, leaving the final 2026 electoral map unsettled.

One week after Election Day, outstanding mail, absentee and provisional ballots, along with state-specific recounts and ranked choice procedures, continued to delay final calls in several Senate, House and governor races, including closely watched contests in Mississippi, Alaska, Kansas, North Carolina and California.

Democrats poised to take control of the Senate in January say they will use their new majority to stall nearly all remaining Trump judicial nominees, setting up a sharp clash with Republicans who have launched a furious lame-duck push to confirm roughly two dozen judges before relinquishing power in Washington.

Senate Republicans this week began executing an accelerated plan to move about 25 Trump picks - 4 appeals court and 21 district court nominees - through committee and onto the floor, with leaders signaling they are ready to keep the chamber in session well into December to maximize confirmations before Democrats are sworn in early January. Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has compressed the panel's usual schedule, advancing four district court nominees and holding hearings for four more on Tuesday, while the White House continues to feed the pipeline with new nominees even as the clock runs down on GOP control.

House Democrats Reps. Mike Levin of California and Jason Crow of Colorado on Wednesday unveiled legislation in Washington that would clamp new limits and oversight on presidential pardons, explicitly targeting what they call abuses during Donald Trump's presidency.

The Abuse of the Pardon Prevention Act would direct the Justice Department inspector general to investigate clemency grants that appear to involve conflicts of interest, ban presidents and vice presidents from issuing self-pardons, and make clear that trading a pardon for something of value can be prosecuted as a crime. The proposal would also require pardon recipients to disclose gifts or donations they make to projects or entities tied personally or politically to the president, in an effort to flag potential quid pro quo arrangements.

A federal judge in Washington has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's plan to begin construction of a 250-foot "United States Military Triumphal Arch" near Arlington National Cemetery, as nine members of the Kennedy family move to join the lawsuits arguing the monument would desecrate sacred views of John F. Kennedy's grave.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan last week issued a 14-day temporary restraining order barring any excavation, construction or road closures at Memorial Circle, finding that Virginia and the District of Columbia are likely to suffer irreparable harm from traffic, environmental and emergency-response disruptions and sharply questioning the administration's national-security rationale for the project. On Tuesday, nine Kennedy relatives, including Rory, Maxwell, Kerry and Joe Kennedy III, filed a motion to intervene in that litigation, saying the towering arch would physically and symbolically cast a shadow over the Kennedy family gravesites and the Eternal Flame at Arlington, and would violate laws meant to protect the cemetery as hallowed ground. The White House responded that it is "unfortunate" some Kennedys joined the case and criticized Chutkan's order as the work of an "activist district court," insisting the arch is a "beautiful and fitting" tribute to the fallen.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunday formally tasked opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming a new government, giving the former army chief up to six weeks to assemble a coalition after a bitterly disputed election left no clear majority in parliament.

At a ceremony in Jerusalem, Herzog handed Eisenkot the mandate following days of consultations in which most parties recommended the centrist Yashar leader over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose right-wing bloc emerged as the largest but lost its previous majority in the 120-seat Knesset. Eisenkot responded by setting red-line conditions for any partners: recognizing Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, supporting its declaration of independence and national or military service obligations, and defining Hamas as a terrorist organization.

A 19-year-old driver from Minneapolis was killed Tuesday night when his SUV rolled on Interstate 694 in Oakdale, left the roadway and slammed into a sound barrier, according to the Minnesota State Patrol.

The single-vehicle crash happened just before 8 p.m. in the southbound lanes north of 15th Street, where troopers say the SUV veered off, rolled, struck the wall and came to rest in the right-side ditch; the driver, who was not wearing a seat belt, died at the scene.

At least 6,300 schools across Italy and hundreds more in Ireland and the UK received near-identical bomb-threat emails on Wednesday, prompting mass evacuations in major Italian cities and intensifying fears that Europe is facing an expanding campaign of coordinated hoaxes.

Italian officials said messages claiming to be from "Mikhail Andropov, leader of the Vilayat of Misoginistan" threatened a "powerful explosive device" and named Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni personally, but no bombs were found and Meloni said there was no "concrete danger." She called the emails part of "a strategy aimed at causing alarm and concern" and convened intelligence and cybersecurity chiefs in Rome on Wednesday to examine links between the school threats, last week's airline hoaxes and a string of cyber incidents that European and US officials increasingly view through a hybrid-warfare lens involving Russia and Iran.

A 41-year-old senior U.S. Army officer assigned to NATO headquarters in southwest England has been arrested near Gloucester on suspicion of spying for Russia, British and American officials confirmed Wednesday, in a case that could expose sensitive alliance planning.

The officer, whose name has not been made public, was detained Tuesday under the UK's National Security Act 2023 and remains in custody at a London police station as investigators search multiple locations in the wider Gloucestershire area linked to the inquiry. He is based at Imjin Barracks, home to NATO's Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, and had access to sensitive NATO operational information, prompting U.S. and UK authorities to launch a damage assessment of any potential leaks.

The Justice Department on Tuesday unsealed a new six-count federal indictment in Arizona accusing U.S. citizen Roberto Gomez of supplying cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl to international criminal groups tied to former Olympian Ryan Wedding, while detailing how a slain Mexico City cartel boss allegedly helped Wedding move drugs and evade capture for years.

Prosecutors say Gomez spent roughly a decade using cartel contacts, including figures in the Sinaloa Cartel, to feed Wedding's network and others, and attempted to broker a 1,000-pound meth sale worth about $550,000 to Wedding's group as part of the conspiracy. The same filing describes 42-year-old Edgar Aaron Vazquez Alvarado, a Mexico City cartel leader killed by security forces last week, as a key Wedding ally who allegedly moved cocaine for him, arranged bribes to Mexican officials and provided near-daily rotating code words that allowed Wedding's vehicles to pass checkpoints without being stopped.

House Republicans on Tuesday narrowly voted to send eight impeachment articles against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to the Judiciary Committee, a 211-204 move that effectively halts the effort to remove him before the current Congress ends.

All but one Republican backed referral, with Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky breaking ranks to join Democrats in opposing the maneuver, while 11 Democrats were absent from the vote, easing GOP leaders' push to block an immediate up-or-down impeachment decision. The outcome spares Hegseth from becoming only the third cabinet secretary ever impeached and comes after he mounted a defiant public defense, denouncing the case as a partisan "farce" and "political spectacle."

Nima Momeni was sentenced in San Francisco on Tuesday to 16 years to life in prison for the fatal stabbing of tech executive Bob Lee, capping a high-profile case that rattled the city's tech and political circles.

The sentence follows state guidelines for second-degree murder in California and allows the possibility of parole, though Momeni will first have to serve a minimum term behind bars before he can seek release.

Democrats are moving quickly to test whether their sweep of key statehouses can finally bring the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact into force, potentially reshaping how the US elects presidents as soon as 2028.

After Tuesday's midterm results delivered full Democratic control of government in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, party leaders and activists are openly eyeing the compact as a top-tier project for new legislatures that convene in early 2027. Those six states together hold 71 electoral votes, and five of them are not yet part of the agreement, giving Democrats theoretical control over enough electors to trigger a national popular vote if they can line up the necessary bills and withstand certain court challenges. Wisconsin Gov. David Crowley and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro have already said they are interested in a national popular vote model, while new Democratic governors in Michigan, Arizona and Nevada are keeping their options more guarded in public statements.

ExxonMobil has signed a preliminary agreement with Venezuela's government and state oil company PDVSA to explore new oil investments, marking a potential return to a country it abandoned nearly two decades ago after a bitter expropriation fight.

The non-binding memorandum of understanding, announced Monday in Caracas, will allow the US oil major and Venezuelan officials to examine upstream opportunities, likely focused on the Orinoco Belt's vast heavy crude deposits, which are associated with high greenhouse gas and methane emissions. Acting President Delcy Rodríguez said she hopes the memorandum quickly becomes concrete contracts, while Hydrocarbons Minister Paula Henao highlighted plans to boost recovery from heavy and extra-heavy oil fields.

Federal prosecutors have charged Abdullahi Mohamed, a former bodyguard to Representative Ilhan Omar, with lying under oath to a government official, a case his lawyer says is being used to pressure him to incriminate the Minnesota Democrat in a sweeping federal immigration and corruption probe.

The perjury indictment of Mohamed, a Somali immigrant who once handled Omar's personal security, stems from statements he allegedly made to federal agents as they examined Omar's family immigration history, an alleged sham marriage tied to a green card application, and her finances, according to people briefed on the investigation. Mohamed's attorney has publicly claimed that prosecutors spent months trying to turn his client into an informant and told him the Omar case was "100 percent being run by 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.," suggesting direct White House involvement in a Justice Department investigation of a sitting member of Congress.

New York police say a man accused in three separate Central Park rapes was arrested Tuesday at a Burger King in Miami Beach, where he is now being held without bond while New York seeks his extradition.

Dereck Rivera-Deleon was taken into custody Tuesday at a Burger King on the 1100 block of Washington Avenue in Miami Beach after officers located him on an extraditable warrant issued out of New York, authorities said. He is being held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami-Dade County as officials in Manhattan move to bring him back to face charges.

An SUV slammed into a crowded food stand near a Metro stop in North Hollywood on Tuesday evening, killing three people and critically injuring several others, authorities said.

The crash happened at about 5:55 p.m. Central (3:55 p.m. Pacific) near the Metro station at Lankershim and Chandler boulevards, where the white SUV veered into a sidewalk food vendor area and struck at least five pedestrians before coming to a stop. The Los Angeles Fire Department said three victims were pronounced dead at the scene, and at least three more were transported to a hospital in critical condition, along with the driver, a man in his 60s. Images from the scene, published earlier by local outlets, showed mangled metal, toppled canopies and debris scattered across the sidewalk near the busy transit hub.

A former West Point cadet who admitted to drugging his pregnant girlfriend and causing a nonconsensual abortion is now facing a federal civil lawsuit filed by the woman in late October, while his criminal sentencing has been delayed until January so he can finish graduate classes at Columbia University.

The lawsuit, filed October 28 in federal court, seeks unspecified monetary damages from Caleb Suh, who the complaint accuses of secretly administering abortion pills without his then-girlfriend's knowledge or consent while they were cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, an act her attorneys have called "horrifying."

An alleged member of the Muddy gang who was barred from the Minnesota State Fair this summer has been charged with aiding an offender in connection with a Minneapolis shooting that left a man critically wounded on Washington Avenue North.

Prosecutors say 22-year-old Imran Abdi Habib drove the suspected gunmen to and from the shooting scene, then falsely reported his vehicle stolen to police, according to a criminal complaint filed in Hennepin County. The victim survived but was hospitalized in critical condition and has undergone multiple surgeries for two punctured lungs, a lacerated liver, and other internal injuries. Jail records show Habib was booked on Nov. 2, released on bond on Nov. 4, and is scheduled to appear in court again on Dec. 2.

A machine recount completed Tuesday confirmed Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar's narrow re-election in Florida's 27th Congressional District, preserving the Miami Republican's 1,086-vote lead over Democratic challenger Eliott Rodriguez.

The automatic recount, triggered under Florida law because the initial margin was within 0.5%, ran for about 18 hours and produced only tiny shifts in vote totals, leaving the outcome of the rematch effectively unchanged. State officials are expected to formally certify the FL-27 results on November 17, clearing the way for Salazar to begin a third term representing the Miami-based district.

Brooklyn Center police now say 30 people have been identified as victims in a major sex-trafficking raid at the Super 8 and Travelodge hotels, significantly higher than the 18 initially reported from the September operation.

Incident Commander Richard Gabler said Tuesday that despite the expanded victim count, no criminal charges have yet been filed in connection with the raid, which led the city to revoke business licenses for both hotels and board up the Super 8.

Tennessee is asking a Nashville court to block death row inmate Christa Pike's attorneys from examining leftover execution drugs, warning that even a glimpse at redacted vial labels could expose the state's pentobarbital supplier and effectively halt future executions.

In a filing submitted Friday, November 6, Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti urged Chancellor I'Ashea Myles to roll back part of her October preservation order that lets Pike's legal team inspect, collect, or test pentobarbital remaining from a botched execution attempt on September 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. An anonymized Tennessee Department of Correction employee said in an affidavit that the current supplier believes it could be identified even if the state redacts labels on the leftover vials, and warned Tennessee would likely be unable to secure another source if the company walks away.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday blocked a Trump administration bid to force LinkedIn to turn over a sweeping trove of journalists' account data, ruling that the Justice Department's demand would improperly expose the identities of confidential sources.

In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said the order requiring 18 months of data about several reporters was overly broad and violated press protections, and it sent the case back to the lower court to craft a narrower request. Judge Harvie Wilkinson, writing for the panel, warned that complying with the subpoena as written could unmask numerous people who had nothing to do with the underlying leak investigation, including confidential sources whose identities news organizations are duty-bound to shield.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in Washington on Tuesday in a case that could sharply limit federal agencies' ability to impose civil fines, as justices weighed whether the Labor Department could levy roughly $500,000 in penalties on a New Jersey farm accused of mistreating migrant workers.

The case centers on Sun Valley Orchards, which was cited for alleged violations involving its use of H-2A seasonal guest workers, including unsafe drinking water, overcrowded housing and failure to pay promised wages, and then fined through an in-house Labor Department process rather than in a federal court. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned whether such administrative penalty schemes give executive-branch agencies too much quasi-judicial power, while the court's liberal justices pressed how federal courts could realistically take over the massive volume of civil enforcement cases now handled by agencies. Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris warned that requiring every civil penalty to be pursued in an Article III court would be "catastrophic" for enforcement across programs from Medicare and Medicaid to student loans.

An Elk River man is accused of sexually abusing two young girls at a home daycare last week and is now facing multiple felony charges in Sherburne County, according to a criminal complaint.

Prosecutors say Bryan Michael Bernardson, 50, was charged on Friday, Nov. 6, with two felony counts of attempted sexual contact with children under 14, a felony grooming-related charge, and a gross misdemeanor indecent exposure count stemming from an incident on Tuesday, Nov. 3, at a licensed daycare residence on 196th Lane NW in Elk River. The complaint alleges Bernardson was supervising the daycare while the provider was away, lured the girls with Skittles he said were in his pocket, exposed himself to them, and took a 6-year-old into a bathroom where the attempted abuse occurred. He was arrested, then released on $100,000 bond under supervision and other conditions, and is scheduled to make his next court appearance on Feb. 3, 2027.

Federal aviation regulators are investigating a near collision between an Air France jet and an American Airlines flight that departed parallel runways at Los Angeles International Airport just after midnight on Saturday, November 7, and reportedly came within a few hundred feet of each other.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Air France Flight 28 made an unauthorized left turn shortly after takeoff around 12:20 a.m., placing it in the flight path of American Airlines Flight 1660 and forcing controllers to issue urgent course and altitude instructions to keep the jets apart. An aviation expert cited in the coverage estimated the aircraft closed to roughly 400 feet vertically and less than a mile horizontally, a distance the FAA has labeled dangerous and serious enough to merit a formal safety review.

Senate Republicans on Tuesday reelected Sen. John Thune of South Dakota as their conference leader in closed-door meetings at the Capitol, choosing continuity at the top despite losing at least seven seats and their majority in the midterm elections.

After hours of internal debate spread across three private meetings, the GOP proceeded to a secret-ballot vote on Tuesday, where no alternative candidate emerged and Thune was formally chosen to lead Republicans in the next Congress. Some conservatives pressed to postpone the decision, but Sen. Jim Lankford of Oklahoma said there was "widespread support" for Thune and argued it made sense to hold the vote immediately because newly elected Republican senators were already in Washington for orientation.

President Trump's Election Day claim that he is cutting $4 billion in U.S. aid to Israel is not a move to end support but part of a plan to shift much of it from the State Department's foreign-aid books into the Pentagon's budget, according to U.S. and Israeli officials and outside analysts.

Speaking on Fox News on November 3, Trump said he was slashing billions from assistance to Israel, rattling Israeli officials and some U.S. voters who took it as a signal of waning American backing for a key ally. But people involved in ongoing talks over the 2027 defense policy bill say the money is being reclassified into joint Pentagon programs that would fund missile defense, cybersecurity, biotechnology and drone projects with Israel, in some cases slightly increasing overall support rather than cutting it.

A new peer-reviewed study released this week in the journal Nature Energy finds that the rapid buildout of AI-driven data centers is significantly driving up electricity costs on major U.S. power grids, with rural and lower-income households shouldering disproportionately higher bills even in states where residents report using little generative AI.

The research, covering four large regional grids and roughly 4,000 U.S. data centers between 2020 and 2025, estimates transmission spending on those grids jumped from about $2 billion in 2020 to $34.2 billion in 2025, with data centers responsible for about $8.25 billion of the 2025 costs. Residential customers were billed more than $16 billion for these grid expenses in 2025, while data centers themselves were billed only about $3 billion, and rural and lower-income households saw power-cost increases up to 76% larger than urban residents.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that consumer prices rose 0.4% in October, a hotter-than-expected increase that shows inflation pressures spreading beyond energy even as average gas prices dip back below $4 a gallon.

The report showed "core" prices, which strip out food and energy, climbed 0.3% from September, with both figures coming in a tenth of a percentage point above economists' forecasts and keeping real wages flat for the month. Housing costs alone made up about one-third of the October increase, while groceries, electricity and a range of goods from beef to computers also posted notable gains.

Ohio State University has suspended its Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity chapter after a widely shared video appeared to show two young men being set on fire during a gathering near campus on Saturday, leaving both with serious burns and prompting a police investigation.

The suspension came as Columbus police confirmed that the men, described as participants in a "dangerous activity," suffered second- and third-degree burns when flames spread across their clothing, and as a 911 caller reported a video that seemed to show pledges being doused with gasoline before being ignited. In the clip, one man's sweatpants are seen on fire before a second man also catches fire while dozens of bystanders, many wearing Ohio State colors, look on and some rush forward to help.

A 7-year-old American girl with dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship was killed when police gunfire struck her family's vehicle during an October 29 security operation targeting a Gulf Cartel suspect in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexican authorities and relatives say.

The child, identified as Aranza Aidelany Pardo, died after state police pursuing alleged cartel figure Axel Alfredo Cárdenas Rodríguez, known as "El Titán," opened fire near the border city across from Brownsville, Texas, according to officials and local reports. Tamaulipas Public Security Secretary Carlos Arturo Pancardo has said three state police officers who were aboard a helicopter involved in the operation are under investigation but remain on active duty, while state prosecutors review ballistic and video evidence to determine whose weapon fired the fatal shot.

Former Stoughton, Massachusetts police officer Matthew Farwell has been convicted in federal court of killing pregnant 23-year-old Sandra Birchmore in her Canton apartment and causing the death of her unborn child, following a jury verdict announced Tuesday.

Jurors found Farwell guilty of killing a witness or victim in a federal case and causing the death of an unborn child, after prosecutors argued he strangled Birchmore on February 1, 2021, then staged her death to look like a suicide with a strap around her neck. Sentencing has not yet been scheduled, but the rare federal conviction tied to the death of an unborn child is expected to carry a lengthy prison term.

Thomas Markle Sr., the estranged father of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, was back in federal custody Tuesday after authorities say he cut off his court-ordered ankle monitor while awaiting trial on child pornography charges in Florida.

The 82-year-old allegedly removed the electronic bracelet around 1:45 a.m. Tuesday while on home detention, violating the terms of his pretrial release, and was arrested shortly afterward, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said. He is now being held ahead of another federal court hearing in Tampa, where prosecutors are expected to argue that he should not be released again.

Genocide suspect Jean Léonard Teganya arrived in Kigali on Monday, November 9, after being deported from the United States and will stand trial in Rwanda on long-standing genocide-related charges, Rwandan officials said.

Prosecutors say Teganya is accused of participating in killings and other crimes in the Huye district of southern Rwanda, including at a university and medical school where he was a student during the 1994 genocide. A survivor quoted by local media welcomed his return for prosecution, saying it shows that suspected perpetrators will continue to be hunted and brought to justice regardless of how much time has passed.

Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are projected to fall slightly in 2026 as war-related disruptions to Iran's oil exports push up prices and dampen demand, according to new estimates released Tuesday by the Global Carbon Project at the UN climate talks in Antalya, Turkey.

The research team estimates fossil-fuel CO2 output at 42.2 billion tons this year, a 0.4% decline from 2025, driven largely by a nearly 2% drop in oil-related emissions alongside a 0.3% fall in natural gas and a 0.6% rise in coal. The findings, published in Earth System Science Data Discussions and Nature Climate Change, were timed to inform negotiations at COP31, where countries are under pressure to strengthen their climate pledges.

The United States left its seat empty Tuesday at a United Nations human rights hearing in Geneva for the second year in a row, deepening a historic boycott of the UN Human Rights Council's flagship review process.

US officials again failed to appear for the country's universal periodic review, a mandatory examination of every member state's human rights record held before the 47-nation Human Rights Council, making the US the only UN member ever to skip the process twice. UN diplomats had prepared questions on issues including the death penalty and tightening abortion restrictions, but the council instead postponed any decision on whether to conduct the review in Washington's absence until early 2027. The American Civil Liberties Union sent its own delegation to Geneva, and its human rights director Jamil Dakwar accused the administration of violating rights "unabashed" and seeking to "dismantle human rights."

California voters have rejected Proposition 40, decisively turning down a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of state residents worth more than $1 billion that backers said would raise about $100 billion for healthcare.

The Associated Press called the measure defeated on Monday, November 9, ending an unusually expensive and bitter campaign that pitted labor unions and national progressive figures against many of the state's richest residents and most powerful Democratic leaders. The tax would have applied to most forms of wealth above $1 billion as of January 1, 2026, with payments allowed over five years and 90% of revenues earmarked for healthcare and the rest for education and food assistance.

The Food and Drug Administration has ordered new warnings on all GLP-1 diabetes and weight-loss drugs about a possible risk of a rare eye condition that can cause sudden, permanent vision loss, telling patients and prescribers to watch for abrupt vision changes but not to stop the medications on their own.

The updated labeling will warn about non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, and apply across the fast-growing class of GLP-1 medicines used for Type 2 diabetes and obesity, including injectable and pill versions, according to coverage of the agency's move. In televised guidance Tuesday, eye and endocrine specialists said patients taking GLP-1 drugs should seek urgent evaluation from an eye doctor if they develop sudden blurred or dim vision, blind spots, or vision loss in one or both eyes, but emphasized that people should first speak with their own clinicians before changing or stopping therapy.

U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud signaled deep skepticism Tuesday about federal civil-rights and obstruction charges brought against several journalists who covered an anti-ICE church occupation in St. Paul, as he weighed whether to dismiss parts of the case.

At a hearing on dismissal motions in St. Paul, Tostrud sharply questioned prosecutors on how the Ku Klux Klan Act and the federal FACE Act, which protects access to religious services and reproductive health clinics, could be applied to reporters who say they were present only to document the protest. From the bench, he suggested the indictment might be overbroad as to the media defendants, asked both sides for additional written arguments on First Amendment issues, and said he was considering throwing out at least some counts for at least some of the accused journalists rather than ruling immediately.

Kelley Blue Book said Tuesday that the average price paid for a new vehicle in the United States has climbed to a record $51,109, underscoring how buying a car is becoming increasingly out of reach for many households.

The new-vehicle average is up about 2.1% from a year earlier, a slower rise than overall inflation and below the roughly 3.4% average annual increase seen over the past decade, but still a new high in dollar terms. At the same time, data from Edmunds show average auto loan rates now top 7% for new cars and roughly 11% for used vehicles, meaning a growing share of buyers' monthly payments is going toward interest rather than principal.

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to resume building border wall segments across a remote 300-mile stretch of southwest Texas, including inside Big Bend National Park, lifting a lower-court order that had halted work.

In an unsigned 8-1 decision, the justices temporarily set aside an October injunction from a federal judge in El Paso, concluding he lacked authority to block the project while a lawsuit from preservationists, a river guide and an environmental group moves forward. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson publicly dissented, while the majority said the injunction interfered with the federal government's "compelling interests" in border security and integrity and was beyond the judge's power. The order, which the Court said remains in effect as the case continues, immediately clears the way for contractors to restart construction in and around Big Bend, a move news outlets highlighted as one of the nation's top stories.

The Department of Homeland Security has quietly adopted a policy that hides the locations of most immigrants with final deportation orders from Immigration and Customs Enforcement's public detainee database, a change now affecting tens of thousands of people in more than 300 facilities nationwide.

A DHS document obtained by the New York Times shows that as of mid-September, detainees with administratively final removal orders are removed from ICE's Online Detainee Locator System, and contractors answering calls are given a script telling relatives and lawyers that location information for those people is not public. Attorneys say the policy is already making it difficult to track clients, file last-minute court challenges and even confirm whether someone is still in the country, while families report frantic searches for loved ones who suddenly vanish from the system.

Incumbent Spring Lake Park Mayor Robert Nelson kept a provisional hold on his office Monday night when his name was drawn from a bag to break a tied election at a city meeting in the north metro suburb.

The drawing, conducted under Minnesota law that requires tied local races to be decided by lot, made Nelson the tentative winner over challenger Halyn Roth while the city prepares for a full recount of the ballots. Roth has already requested a publicly funded recount, which election officials have scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 17.

French and U.S. authorities are investigating a wave of cyberattacks on industrial refrigeration systems that Paris has now formally blamed on an Iranian military cyber unit linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), amid mounting concern the same tactics could hit American groceries, hospitals and military logistics.

On Monday, the Paris prosecutor's office said it had opened a judicial investigation into "organized cybercrime serving a foreign power" and is seeking international arrest warrants for the leader and two deputies of the IRGC-affiliated Shahid Kaveh hacking unit, which investigators accuse of remotely sabotaging supermarket fridges at roughly 700 French retail sites last month. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called the hacks "the first large-scale cyberattack aimed at sabotage on our national territory" and said France has summoned Iran's ambassador and will push for European Union sanctions on those responsible.

A Massachusetts judge on Monday denied Lindsay Clancy's bid to throw out murder charges in the deaths of her three young children, clearing the way for a potential retrial in Plymouth County.

Judge William Sullivan ruled that the mistrial he declared in September, after jurors deadlocked in Clancy's first trial, was supported by "manifest necessity," meaning a second trial would not violate constitutional protections against double jeopardy. He also rejected defense arguments that he should have removed the lone juror favoring conviction and declined to question jurors about their deliberations, citing the importance of jury secrecy.

Assistant Director Peter Marketos, the senior official who runs the U.S. Marshals Service Investigative Operations Division, has been placed on administrative leave over an alleged racist incident in which a watermelon was left on a Black subordinate's desk, according to people familiar with the matter.

The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) confirmed that an unnamed senior official had been sidelined, saying in a statement that the agency "takes allegations of misconduct very seriously," but cited federal privacy laws in declining to discuss the specifics of the case. Staff were told in an internal email that veteran official Don Snider would assume leadership of the Investigative Operations Division on Monday, and a source told CBS News that Marketos is expected to be terminated following the internal inquiry.

A California man previously released on $1,000 bail after a domestic violence arrest has been charged with murdering his wife in their Concord home, where police found both spouses with stab wounds on Friday, October 23.

Concord officers forced entry into the Panoramic Drive residence around 8 p.m. and discovered 40-year-old Thomas Iovenitti and his wife, Alisha, injured; Alisha died at the scene, and prosecutors now say Iovenitti is being held without bail and faces up to 29 years to life in prison if convicted.

Dozens of migrants trying to reach Europe died in separate shipwrecks near the Greek island of Crete and off the coast of Senegal, authorities said Monday, underscoring how shifting sea routes are becoming deadlier even as overall irregular crossings into the European Union fall.

Greek officials said that by Monday they had recovered 13 bodies from a heavily overloaded vessel south of Crete and that the sole survivor later died in a hospital, bringing the death toll from that boat to 14. A second boat in waters off Crete yielded eight more bodies, while about 28 Sudanese survivors were pulled from the sea; aircraft and drones from the EU border agency Frontex then spotted three additional boats on the Libya-to-Crete route carrying more than 180 people, prompting a large search-and-rescue operation. In West Africa, Senegalese authorities said the number of confirmed dead from a capsize reported Sunday off Kébémer had risen to 39, with only one known survivor from a boat that left the northern city of Saint-Louis bound for Spain's Canary Islands.

President Trump on Monday directed Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to begin talks with Democrats on immigration reform while vowing publicly that any deal will not include amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

Speaking at a counter-drone conference in Maryland on Monday, Mullin said Trump told him to start working with Democratic lawmakers and to meet with them later, but insisted there had been no discussion about easing enforcement and declared, "We're never going to allow amnesty to happen." Mullin also, for the first time in public, said Congress could look at a legislative pathway to permanent legal status for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, signaling a narrow area where the administration might accept legalization. A few hours later, Trump told reporters at an impromptu White House press conference, "There's no amnesty. ... There won't be amnesty," as conservative groups and the House Freedom Caucus blasted any talk of legalization.

Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate abruptly resigned Monday as head of the Justice Department's Civil Division in Washington, the latest in a wave of senior Justice Department exits following last week's Democratic midterm sweep.

In a brief statement on X, Attorney General Todd Blanche praised Shumate's tenure, highlighting his aggressive litigation against so-called sanctuary policies and legal victories against local measures the administration said put federal law enforcement at risk. But career lawyers in the Civil Division told CBS they were caught off guard by the immediacy of the resignation, which reporting links in part to criticism from newly named White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, who reportedly viewed Shumate as not hard-charging enough.

The Trump administration on Monday proposed a new Labor Department rule that would require unemployed workers nationwide to complete at least five distinct job searches each week to remain eligible for benefits, significantly tightening current standards in many states.

The proposal, set to be formally published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, November 10, would then enter a 60-day public comment period before the administration decides whether to finalize it or make changes. Most states now require only two or three weekly work-search activities, so the new rule would effectively raise the minimum bar across much of the country and could force states to reprogram benefit systems and retrain caseworkers. Worker advocates and some state officials warn that the shift could overwhelm already stressed unemployment agencies and push some jobless workers off the rolls if they cannot document five unique applications or contacts every week.

A Utah judge on Monday set a June 21, 2028 start date for the capital murder trial of Tyler Robinson, the man accused of killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, scheduling a 105-day jury proceeding in Provo that will unfold nearly three years after Robinson was bound over for trial.

Fourth District Judge Tony Graf said the trial will be held in courtroom 4B in Provo and ordered monthly pretrial status conferences to monitor progress, citing the constitutional rights at stake in a case where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. He set an April 11, 2028 hearing to confirm both sides can complete essential preparation before jury selection and directed lawyers to submit proposed jury questionnaires by May 3, 2028. Prosecutors had pushed for a January 2028 start, Robinson's defense team asked for the third quarter of 2029, and an attorney for Kirk's widow, Erika Kirk, argued for a trial no later than October 4, 2027, leaving Graf to choose a mid-2028 compromise that disappointed all sides to varying degrees.

A 76-year-old driver accused of being impaired slammed into a group ride of more than 40 cyclists on a two-lane road in Wake County, North Carolina, on Saturday morning, killing one rider and injuring at least a dozen others, state troopers say.

North Carolina Highway Patrol officials said the driver, identified as Donald Robert Morris-Jones, allegedly crossed the center line before striking the group and then fled, later crashing his vehicle into a ditch. The impact killed 63-year-old cyclist Patrick Allen Turner of Cary and left at least seven riders with major injuries and several more with minor wounds, for a total estimated injury count between about 12 and 22 cyclists. Troopers described a chaotic crash scene with mangled bicycles and injured riders scattered along the roadway as emergency crews rushed multiple victims to area hospitals.

A driver was pulled from Lake Phalen by bystanders Monday afternoon after his vehicle crashed into the water in St. Paul and became submerged, authorities said.

The driver was out of the vehicle before first responders reached the scene and was taken by ambulance to Regions Hospital for treatment; his condition has not been released. St. Paul Fire crews and the Ramsey County dive team then entered the lake and searched the submerged vehicle to confirm no one else had been inside.

Voters and newly elected governors across the country have moved to sharply restrict construction of large AI data centers, and the U.S. Senate on Monday is taking up a permitting bill that could further reshape where and how those facilities get built.

The Senate is scheduled to convene at 3 p.m. Eastern Monday to hold a procedural vote on bipartisan permitting legislation that would shorten federal approval timelines for big energy projects, from pipelines to transmission lines, and explicitly require data centers to pay for the energy infrastructure they use, tying national permitting reform directly to the AI buildout that just became a flashpoint in the midterms. President Donald Trump urged senators Sunday to back the bill as a "BIG WIN" for U.S. energy dominance, while major environmental groups warn it would lock in fossil-fuel projects and weaken bedrock review laws, and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries is already signaling that his larger caucus next year will demand a more clean-energy-focused rewrite.

Nearly 200 governments opened the UN COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, on Monday, launching nearly two weeks of talks over how to accelerate emissions cuts and unlock climate finance after a year of punishing extreme weather.

In his opening address, UN climate chief Simon Stiell warned delegates that the world is choosing between an "electric age" powered by clean energy and a future of ongoing fossil-fuel price shocks, calling climate change a global health emergency on the scale of a pandemic. COP31 president Murat Kurum told negotiators it is now clear the planet will overshoot the Paris Agreement's 1.5 degree Celsius warming limit and unveiled an "Action Agenda" that targets faster methane cuts, more climate-resilient cities, and raising electricity's share of total energy use to 35 percent by 2035. Delegations from developing countries, including the 54-nation African Group, pushed hard to strengthen the official agenda on funding adaptation and paying for climate "loss and damage," positions that immediately ran into resistance from the EU and Canada.

Democrats are preparing to wield unusually large majorities in both the House and Senate when the new Congress is seated in January, even as Republicans return to Washington this week facing a lame-duck leadership fight and a looming government funding deadline.

By Friday, Democrats were projected to hold at least 54 Senate seats and between 251 and 268 House seats once remaining races are counted, securing unified control of Congress despite two still-uncalled Senate contests in Alaska and Mississippi. House Republicans will choose new leaders on Tuesday with Speaker Mike Johnson stepping aside, while Senate Republicans weigh an effort led by Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson to delay their own leadership elections after what he called a "stunning defeat" that demands an internal reckoning. The current GOP-controlled Congress, clinging to only a two-vote House majority, has just over a month to avert a shutdown before funding runs out December 11, and is widely expected to pass another short-term spending bill rather than full-year appropriations.

British comedian and actor Russell Brand was sentenced Monday to 10½ years in prison for raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others, in a high-profile case at Southwark Crown Court in London.

Judge Joel Bennathan imposed the decade-plus term on November 9 after hearing harrowing victim impact statements that described years of trauma, addiction and fear, while condemning Brand for a "casual and arrogant disregard" for women and describing him as having become "a sexual predator" about 20 years ago. One woman said she felt like "damaged goods," another called Brand "a sexual predator who has no remorse," and a rape victim recounted anxiety, heavy drinking and years of fearing she had contracted HIV. Brand sat in the dock holding white rosary beads and appeared to pray as statements were read, briefly gesturing toward his wife Laura as he was led away, while his supporters with Christian-themed signs demonstrated outside.

Mexican security forces have captured alleged Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) regional commander Rafael Alvarez, known as "R2," in a violent operation Sunday in Zapopan, Jalisco, arresting him on an outstanding U.S. warrant for drug and firearms charges.

Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch said Alvarez was wounded in a shootout during the raid, and authorities detained 19 additional suspects believed to be part of his protection network. Mexican officials described the arrest as a coordinated intelligence-led operation carried out with U.S. assistance, and the Justice Department has reiterated that it will pursue Alvarez's extradition to face federal charges.

At least eight Iranian detainees who had been boarded onto a secretive deportation flight in Mesa, Arizona, on Sunday were taken off the plane after the flight was abruptly canceled, intensifying a federal court fight over whether the Trump administration has been quietly working with Iran to return people there during wartime.

The Sunday flight was routed through Georgia and then Pakistan, and a senior official from Iran's Interests Section in Washington told the detainees that the Iranian government would move them from Pakistan on to Iran, according to attorney Ali Rahnama of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund. Rahnama and other lawyers say roughly a dozen Iranian nationals in immigration detention had been warned over the past week that they were being placed on a removal flight to Pakistan and then Iran, suggesting detailed operational planning that may have violated a federal judge's order requiring advance notice of any such deportations. In a statement to the Associated Press, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said the agency does not comment on specific or planned removals but added that the administration is "employing all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history."

Elon Musk said Monday that Tesla will stop building the Cybertruck at its Texas factory by mid-2027 and will return deposits to many customers whose trucks will never be produced.

In a social media post on Monday, Musk said Cybertruck orders "far exceed" Tesla's production rate and that the company will "try to make as many as possible before shutting down the line in about 8 months" but "will have to return deposits for a lot of people." He argued Tesla is not ending Cybertruck production because the vehicle is unprofitable, saying the "opportunity cost of the complexity of Cybertruck is vastly outweighed by the value of incremental Cybercab production" as the company prepares to convert factory capacity to its planned Cybercab robotaxis.

President Donald Trump told "60 Minutes" he planned to fire aides after Republicans lost both chambers of Congress, comments that aired the same week he installed longtime adviser Stephen Miller as White House chief of staff in Washington, D.C.

In the pre-taped interview with Ross Douthat, recorded before Friday, Trump said he expected to "fire" people after the midterm defeat and would "maybe" make "a few changes" to his team, while insisting he loved his Cabinet. Asked if he still had confidence in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth amid internal questions, Trump answered "I do," even as aides say he had privately asked whether Hegseth should remain. In the same segment, he boasted that the U.S. had "won Venezuela" in "less than one hour," underscoring how he is touting recent military campaigns while recalibrating his senior staff after a political setback.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in Washington on Monday on whether a Hawaii federal inmate can sue individual prison officers for allegedly denying him medical care, a case that could sharply limit when people may seek money damages from federal officials accused of violating the Constitution.

The lawsuit by inmate Kekai Watanabe stems from a 2021 gang assault in a federal prison, after which he says staff ignored his repeated complaints of severe pain, gave him only over-the-counter medication, kept him more than two months in solitary confinement without a specialist visit, and did not discover his fractured tailbone with bone chips until an x-ray seven months later. At stake is whether courts may still hear damages claims like Watanabe's under the Supreme Court's 1980 precedent Carlson v. Green, or whether the justices will further gut or effectively end such suits for federal prisoners, immigration detainees and others held by federal officers.

Staff at the federal Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence, the government's main AI testing hub, have in recent weeks been told to informally report to a White House office instead of operating at arm's length inside the Commerce Department, according to two former officials, raising new questions about the center's independence as AI risks and capabilities accelerate.

The shift, not formally announced but described by people familiar with the instructions, effectively pulls the $10 million-a-year center known as CAISSI closer to President Donald Trump's inner circle at a time when it lacks a permanent director and has already drawn bipartisan concern in Congress for abruptly halting publication of its AI safety and performance reports earlier this year.

Okinawa Governor Genta Koja said Monday he will formally demand a "fundamental review" of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), escalating local anger after the alleged murder of a Japanese woman by a U.S. Marine on the island.

Koja told reporters he wants faster transfers of U.S. suspects to Japanese custody and the application of Japanese laws, including the Aviation Act, to U.S. military operations, and he plans to send the prefectural assembly's resolution calling for SOFA revisions to the U.S. Embassy. Tokyo and Washington, meanwhile, agreed on Friday to start talks on crime prevention and community relations, and the U.S. military has extended a nighttime curfew for some troops on the island through December 7.

Ousted Paraguayan president Santiago Peña was arrested, placed under military custody and questioned by prosecutors in Asunción on Saturday, days after Congress impeached him over the collapse of Ueno Bank that froze access to millions of accounts.

Peña arrived at the attorney general's office in a police-escorted SUV, not in handcuffs, to face questioning on allegations including breach of trust, influence peddling and using public office for personal gain, charges that could bring up to 10 years in prison. Prosecutors had ordered his arrest, along with that of former Central Bank chief Carlos Carvallo, on Friday, shortly after the Senate unanimously removed Peña from office and his former vice president, Pedro Alliana, was sworn in to serve the rest of the term through August 2028.

NASA has opened a new astronaut application window for Americans who want to live and work on a future Moon base, with candidates able to apply now through December 3, 2026.

The new class of astronauts will be recruited to support NASA's Artemis program, including planned landings near the Moon's south pole and long-duration stays on a permanent lunar base that the agency hopes will pave the way for eventual missions to Mars. In a notable policy change, NASA now recognizes master's-level nursing degrees as qualifying STEM education for astronaut applicants, expanding eligibility beyond traditional science and engineering fields.

A Singapore court has ordered the arrest of the MV Odyssey, the so-called "forever cruise" ship whose round-the-world voyage collapsed last month, with court filings listing law firm Helmsman LLC as the arresting solicitor at the city-state's port.

The vessel is currently being operated by its lender after its owner, Villa Vie Residences, fell behind on financial obligations and reportedly owes about $500,000 to at least one supplier in the region, according to records reviewed by CBS News. The court-ordered arrest effectively prevents the Odyssey from leaving Singapore while the dispute over unpaid bills and control of the ship is fought out.

Russian forces unleashed another night of heavy missile and drone strikes across Ukraine into Sunday, November 8, cutting power to more than 850,000 people as Kyiv accused Moscow of trying to gain leverage ahead of U.S.-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi this week.

Utility company DTEK said over 600,000 residents in the central Dnipropetrovsk region lost electricity after key energy facilities were damaged, while a drone strike on critical infrastructure in the northeastern Kharkiv region left nearly 250,000 more customers in the dark. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported "widespread power outages across the country," including heating cuts to 140 apartment buildings in the Zhytomyr region with temperatures near freezing, and said Russia even sent an FPV attack drone back to Komyshuvakha in Zaporizhzhia, where rescuers are still pulling bodies from the ruins of a bombed aid center and have now confirmed at least 55 dead there.

New York City police have arrested a 27-year-old Department of Education employee in the fatal stabbing of Brooklyn jogger Katie Suarez, charging him with murder more than a week after the attack along a waterfront path.

The NYPD identified the suspect as Brooklyn resident Sayed Mohassib and said he is charged with second-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and criminal possession of a weapon in connection with the October 30 stabbing on the Shore Parkway greenway in Bath Beach. Authorities said Mohassib, who worked as a teacher's aide at PS 200, has been suspended by the city Department of Education, which plans to seek his termination, and he was ordered held without bail after his arrest was announced on Saturday, November 7.

Osman Hi Kamara, a 22-year-old from Brooklyn Center, has pleaded guilty in Hennepin County District Court to aiding and abetting second-degree assault in a 2025 drive-by shooting in Brooklyn Park that left college football player Michael Blidi Jr. paralyzed from the knees down.

Kamara entered the guilty plea on Nov. 3 as part of a deal that calls for a stayed 36-month prison sentence and up to 180 days in jail, with the final punishment still subject to a judge's approval at sentencing.

A small plane made an emergency landing on a busy North Fort Myers roadway on Saturday, November 7, 2026, clipping a pickup truck with its wing but leaving everyone involved unharmed, according to local officials.

The single-engine aircraft came down on Bayshore Road near the I-75 interchange around midday after the pilots reported mechanical trouble, and video of the incident shows the plane descending low over traffic before its wing strikes the rear of an eastbound pickup. The truck appears to swerve briefly but continues forward, and Lee County authorities said neither the driver and any passengers nor the two people aboard the plane reported injuries.

Native American women won a series of landmark elections on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, capturing New Mexico's governorship, a U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota, and the first female presidencies of the Navajo and Seneca Nations.

Deb Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo citizen and former U.S. interior secretary, was elected governor of New Mexico, while Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a citizen of the White Earth Nation, won an open U.S. Senate seat, becoming the first Native American woman ever elected to the chamber. In tribal elections the same day, Crystalyne Curley became the first woman elected president of the Navajo Nation and Tina Abrams won as the first woman president of the Seneca Nation of Indians in western New York, victories that together mark an unprecedented breakthrough for Native women in tribal, state and federal government.

Polish prosecutors have opened a terrorism investigation after a gunman killed six people and wounded 15 others in Krakow's Main Market Square on Saturday, an attack now linked to far-right extremism and followed by the discovery of three additional bodies at the suspect's family home.

On Sunday, officials said they are treating the murders and attempted murders, including of police officers, as acts "constituting a terrorist offense," and declared two days of national mourning as mourners returned to the reopened square to lay flowers and candles. Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski said the 24-year-old Polish suspect held "very radical" and "ultranationalistic" far-right views, and investigators have seized 11 firearms tied to him and his father, who legally owned more than 10 guns. The six victims in the square were identified as four Polish nationals, a man from the UK and a woman from Austria, while two police officers and at least five foreign tourists from the UK, Portugal, Russia, Germany and Austria were among the injured.

Floods from a series of late October and early November storms have pushed Lake Powell up more than 20 feet and eased local water shortages in parts of Colorado and Arizona, offering rare relief amid the Southwest's long drought.

Since hitting a low point in mid-September, Powell has gained more than 1.2 million acre-feet of water, but remains just over one-quarter full and most boat ramps are still unusable, underscoring how depleted the huge reservoir remains. Around Pagosa Springs in southern Colorado, about 7 inches of rain allowed local officials to lift water restrictions, while Upper Lake Mary near Flagstaff, Arizona, added more than 3 billion gallons, giving that city more than two years of typical surface water supply. In central Arizona, the Salt River Project released water from two almost-full Verde River dams into a stretch that is normally dry near metro Phoenix to reduce flood risk downstream.

A 42-year-old man from Blaine was struck and killed by a pickup while walking on Highway 65 near 125th Avenue just before 8 p.m. Saturday, according to the Minnesota State Patrol.

State Patrol investigators say the man had entered a northbound traffic lane on the four-lane divided highway when he was hit by a Dodge Ram, and he died from his injuries at the scene. Authorities have not said why he was on the roadway, and no other injuries were reported.

Two Newport Beach fishermen pulled a cruise ship employee alive from the Pacific Ocean on Friday after finding him treading water 15 to 20 miles off the Southern California coast, ending what officials say was a harrowing overnight ordeal.

The man, who identified himself as a pianist working aboard Royal Caribbean's 14-deck Ovation of the Seas, told his rescuers he had been in the water for about nine to ten hours before they spotted him while returning from a fishing trip to Catalina Island. After they brought him aboard, the fishermen issued an emergency maritime call that drew Newport Beach lifeguards, who transferred him to shore to be hospitalized; authorities say he is expected to survive as the U.S. Coast Guard investigates how he went overboard.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Saturday blamed "pro-Russian hackers" for publishing Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani's personal data on the dark web, saying Italy would not be intimidated over its support for Ukraine.

Tajani disclosed that his own and his family's data had appeared in online leaks in recent days, which he described as a targeted campaign linked to his and Italy's pro-Ukraine stance, but vowed not to change his position. He filed a report with judicial authorities, while Italy's privacy watchdog warned media that republishing illegally obtained data would itself break the law.

Democratic leaders in Congress, newly empowered by this week's midterm election wins, are preparing wide-ranging investigations into a string of fatal shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol officers since Donald Trump returned to the White House.

Lawmakers say they intend to call senior Trump administration officials, subpoena internal use-of-force reports and training records, and scrutinize at least nine deaths since early 2025, including high-profile killings in Minneapolis and Houston that sparked nationwide protests. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, expected to chair the powerful House Judiciary Committee when the new Congress is seated in January, said Democrats will use "every tool" they have to force ICE to explain the shootings and the policies behind them.

A cooperating federal witness told jurors in New York that a group of Massachusetts Uber drivers used "inside information" to place dozens of winning prop bets on Cleveland Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase's pitch speeds during the 2023 season, before the flow of tips abruptly stopped after the Shohei Ohtani betting scandal became public.

Testifying Friday, Luis de Aza Baez said he won about $69,000 wagering on Clase because he received advance guidance on pitch velocity and sequences in a group chat called "Uber Inc.," which he said was started by Clase associate Enoc Pena. De Aza Baez told the jury he never communicated with Clase directly, only with Pena, and that he agreed to forfeit his winnings and cooperate in exchange for dismissal of a wire fraud charge. He also testified that after Ohtani's former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara was exposed in March 2024 for illegal gambling and theft, "there was no more information like that" about Clase's pitches for the 2024 season.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., said Saturday she intends to appoint former U.S. attorney Jessie Liu as a special master to investigate whether federal officials misled the court in a lawsuit over Donald Trump's planned overhaul of the East Potomac Golf Course.

Judge Ana Reyes of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia told lawyers she plans to tap Liu to probe the conduct of officials and attorneys from the Interior Department, the National Park Service and the Justice Department, focusing on whether they provided false or incomplete information or broke ethics rules during earlier hearings. She ordered both sides to file written positions on Liu's potential appointment by Friday, ahead of the next hearing in the case, which has already produced an injunction blocking tree removal and other irreversible work at the historic public course.

Two people were killed when an Acura SUV fleeing a Ramsey County sheriff's deputy at more than 100 mph crashed into a tree in St. Paul shortly after midnight Saturday, authorities said.

The Ramsey County Sheriff's Office said a deputy attempted to stop the Acura RDX near Rose Avenue East and Burr Street North in St. Paul, but the driver took off, leading to a roughly one-mile pursuit that topped 100 mph before the vehicle hit a dip at Wheelock Parkway, lost control, and slammed into a tree near Payne and Nebraska avenues, ejecting both occupants. The suspected driver, a 27-year-old man who had outstanding felony warrants for drug offenses and for fleeing police, and a 29-year-old passenger were pronounced dead at the scene, and officials have not yet released their names.

Two licensed and experienced skydivers died after colliding in midair while preparing to land at the Skydive Elsinore facility in Riverside County, California, on Friday, November 6, authorities and company officials said.

The pair reportedly crashed into each other about 150 feet above the ground, causing their parachutes to become entangled before impact. Both were rushed from the drop zone to a local hospital in critical condition and were later pronounced dead, according to officials and a statement from Skydive Elsinore. The company said there was no evidence of an equipment malfunction, and investigators are examining how the final approach to landing turned fatal.

Researchers reported Saturday that the experimental drug pelacarsen, once seen as a potential game-changer for heart disease, failed to prevent heart attacks, strokes or other major cardiovascular events in a large international trial unveiled at the American Heart Association meeting in Chicago.

The five-year randomized study followed 8,350 adults who already had heart disease and were given either pelacarsen or a placebo in addition to standard therapies, including statins, but patients on the drug did no better at avoiding cardiovascular complications despite seeing their lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a), levels drop by about 78 percent. Novartis, which co-developed pelacarsen, acknowledged the trial did not meet its primary endpoint, and detailed results were published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine and NEJM Evidence.

The U.S. Coast Guard has detained the MSC Poesia cruise ship in PortMiami after inspectors found safety deficiencies, prompting MSC Cruises to cancel the vessel's ongoing 11-night Caribbean itinerary and disrupt travel plans for more than 2,000 passengers.

The Coast Guard said Tuesday, November 3, that the ship will remain held in Miami until the problems identified during a Port State Control examination are fixed and the vessel is cleared to sail. MSC canceled the November 1-12 cruise and said affected guests will receive full refunds and assistance arranging flights and hotel stays as they disembark in South Florida.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has moved to commute every death sentence in the state, announcing Thursday that all 548 people on California's death row will instead serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In a public letter released Thursday, Newsom said "state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California's values" and emphasized that he alone bears responsibility for the sweeping decision and its consequences. His office said the commutations apply to 529 men and 19 women and that 382 of the 548 have more than one felony conviction, meaning their clemency must also be approved by the California Supreme Court under the state constitution. A later PBS News segment reported that Newsom has now issued the commutation orders converting all 548 sentences to life without parole, calling it the largest single removal of people from death row in modern U.S. history.

Two men were arrested at a Turning Point USA event on the University of New Mexico campus Monday in Albuquerque, and a 70-year-old New Hampshire man faces charges in a separate alleged assault on a Turning Point volunteer outside a polling place the next day.

University of New Mexico police took Kevin Castro and Harrison Magnus into custody during the campus event after officers said one man hurled a lacrosse ball toward the crowd and both were heard discussing plans to throw objects. Castro is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, disorderly conduct and conspiracy, while Magnus faces counts of conspiracy, disorderly conduct and concealing identity.

An armed man who allegedly told officers he was hearing voices directing him to assassinate President Trump was arrested late Thursday near the White House after Secret Service agents stopped a suspicious vehicle, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Secret Service officers approached the parked truck on the 1600 block of Constitution Avenue NW near the Ellipse on Thursday night, where the driver, identified as Venezuelan national Ronny Yordrix Guanipa Chrinos, admitted there were weapons in the vehicle and said voices had told him to kill the president, DHS said. A search of the allegedly stolen Ford F-150 recovered three firearms, including a rifle, and dozens of rounds of ammunition, and Guanipa Chrinos now faces multiple firearms and weapons-possession counts along with charges of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, theft and receiving stolen property.

Democratic socialist Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman has unseated incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in this week's runoff election, a stunning upset in the nation's second-largest city that will put a Democratic Socialists of America-backed mayor in charge at City Hall next month.

Bass conceded on Thursday after updated tallies showed Raman leading roughly 52% to 48%, making Bass the first Los Angeles mayor in about two decades to lose a reelection bid; Raman is scheduled to be sworn in on December 8. Raman ran on ousting the city's police chief, overhauling homelessness policy, and focusing on basic services such as road and sidewalk repairs, and she won despite lacking endorsements from major City Council colleagues or top national Democrats.

Democrats secured full control of Arizona's state government on Friday, November 6, as the Associated Press projected the party had flipped both the state House and Senate while keeping the governor's office, ending six decades of Republican legislative dominance.

The projected wins give Democrats their first trifecta in Arizona since 1966 and come after voters re-elected Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who has clashed sharply with the GOP-controlled Legislature over the past two years. Unofficial tallies reported by the Arizona Capitol Times suggest Democrats are on track for roughly a 37-23 majority in the House and 20-10 in the Senate, while also leading in most statewide races as counting continues. The AP call sparked celebrations among Democrats and progressive activists on social media, where accounts like @unusual_whales and @States_Win hailed the result as a historic shift and @MsWinterrrr cast it as a governing mandate for Hobbs.

The U.S. economy added 165,000 jobs in October 2026, far more than forecasters expected, as hiring in health care, manufacturing and professional services helped push the unemployment rate down to 4.1% even as inflation continues to squeeze workers' budgets.

The Labor Department report released Friday showed particularly strong gains in professional and business services, which added about 70,000 jobs, health care with nearly 42,000, manufacturing with 19,000, and warehouse and transportation employers with 25,000, while hotels, restaurants, bars and construction companies cut jobs. Average hourly pay rose 0.4% from September and 3.1% over the past year, but with consumer inflation running around 3.7%, economists say workers are still losing purchasing power even as more people find work. Investors and analysts now see a December interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve as highly likely, with some expecting another increase early next year as policymakers try to contain price pressures.

U.S. Border Patrol agents seized more than 1,435 pounds of cocaine worth an estimated $9.8 million after stopping two vehicles at the San Clemente checkpoint in Southern California on October 25, authorities said.

Agents at the Interstate 5 checkpoint, located about 70 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, pulled both vehicles aside for further inspection after noticing suspicious behavior by the drivers, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). A Border Patrol canine alerted to possible contraband in each vehicle, leading agents to 550 vacuum-sealed packages of suspected cocaine hidden inside black garbage bags. The drivers were arrested at the scene, and the Drug Enforcement Administration later took custody of both the suspects and the narcotics for federal prosecution.

Minnesota's newly enlarged Democratic-Farmer-Labor majorities at the Capitol are moving ahead on an aggressive agenda for affordability and gun safety even as Governor-elect Amy Klobuchar holds firm to a pledge not to raise taxes, setting up an early test of unity for the state's DFL trifecta.

In St. Paul, Speaker-elect Zack Stephenson and House Majority Leader-elect Jamie Long are drafting plans to tackle child care, health care, housing costs, gun legislation and new limits on federal immigration enforcement, while openly discussing higher taxes or fees on Big Tech and renewed surtaxes on the wealthiest Minnesotans. Klobuchar, who campaigned on tightening state spending and has promised to lower some taxes if possible despite a shrinking surplus, has reiterated that she will not sign a bill that raises overall taxes, even as early revenue reports come in stronger than expected ahead of the February budget forecast.

The White House quietly restored public access to its online ethics and financial disclosure hub on Friday afternoon, hours after the page began returning a 404 error as reporters sought records on President Trump's investments.

The disclosures portal at whitehouse.gov/disclosures, which hosts ethics filings for senior administration officials, was reachable at 3:01 p.m. Eastern but was showing a "page not found" error by 3:31 p.m., according to access records reviewed by CBS News. After CBS emailed the White House at 4:20 p.m. Eastern asking why the page had disappeared, the hub was restored sometime between 4:31 p.m. and 5:01 p.m., without any public explanation. When it came back online, the page included a new entry for President Trump's periodic stock transaction report, a document that had been posted by the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) nearly a month earlier.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire on Friday ordered the city's police department to sharply narrow when officers contact federal immigration authorities, saying Houston will no longer call ICE on people stopped for non-jailable offenses such as routine traffic citations.

The directive, signed Friday, instructs Houston Police Department officers to reach out to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement only when someone is arrested on a jailable offense and ICE has issued an administrative immigration warrant, and it bars using suspected immigration status alone as a reason to detain someone or involve ICE. Police Chief J. Noe Diaz said the updated instructions were sent department-wide the same day and will be read at roll call for five days to make sure every officer understands the change.

Cornell University's Faculty Senate on Friday approved a no-confidence resolution in the university's top leaders, escalating a campus reckoning over the administration's handling of an alleged 2024 gang rape at a fraternity house in Ithaca, New York.

The resolution passed by a 75-50 vote, with five abstentions and five non-votes, and while it does not explicitly demand President Michael Kotlikoff's resignation, its sponsors say they intend it as pressure on Cornell's Board of Trustees to confront what they call longstanding institutional failures around sexual misconduct. Within hours, the board publicly reaffirmed its full support for Kotlikoff and his team, even as it acknowledged the vote reflected deep anger on campus and called the alleged assault "unacceptable."

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy was released Friday from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and will spend several weeks in a rehabilitation facility after suffering a small hemorrhagic stroke, a recovery that will keep him from Senate votes for weeks.

Murphy, 53, said in a statement that he expects to miss several weeks of floor votes while he undergoes rehab but stressed that he remains engaged with his staff and colleagues remotely and that his office's legislative and constituent work will continue uninterrupted. Johns Hopkins critical-care neurosciences chief Dr. Jose Suarez said the Democrat suffered a small hemorrhagic stroke in the thalamus region of his brain and is expected to make a full recovery following rehabilitation.

Federal prosecutors in New York have unsealed an indictment charging three people with running a $129 million, AI-driven executive impersonation scheme that targeted thousands of companies worldwide, using deepfake voices and images to trick employees into wiring money.

The defendants allegedly posed as corporate CEOs and lawyers on phone and video calls, relying on artificial-intelligence tools to clone voices and, in some cases, generate realistic images, then directing finance and operations staff to move large sums into accounts they controlled. Prosecutors say victims included hospital systems in Missouri and California, a bank in Rhode Island, a United Kingdom fintech firm, a mutual fund company in Massachusetts, and a Florida pet food company.

The European Commission on Friday accused TikTok of breaking the European Union's Digital Services Act, saying the video app's core recommendation system steers users into harmful content and fails to give them real power to opt out.

In preliminary findings issued November 6, regulators said TikTok's "For You" feed relies too heavily on how long people watch videos, which they argue traps users in so-called rabbit holes and exposes especially young people to addictive or damaging material. The Commission said it wants the platform to reduce its dependence on viewing time as a ranking signal and to strengthen tools that let users set and enforce their own content and recommendation preferences. TikTok called the accusations "fundamentally inaccurate," and will be allowed to submit a formal defense before Brussels decides whether to confirm the violations and impose penalties that could reach up to 6% of the company's global annual revenue.

Harmeet Dhillon resigned as head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division on Thursday, November 5, with Attorney General Todd Blanche announcing he had accepted her departure after an 18-month tenure that radically reshaped the office.

Blanche made the resignation official in a statement on X, praising Dhillon for defending civil liberties and enforcing the law "without fear or favor," while Dhillon simultaneously cast the move as her own choice, calling her time leading the division "the honor of a lifetime" in a social media post. She told Fox News and PBS/Associated Press she had decided weeks before the midterm elections to step down but stayed at the White House's request until after Election Day, insisting, "My decision, my choice," and saying she plans to return to her law firm in California. Her exit makes her the first senior Justice Department official to leave since Democrats retook Congress in Tuesday's midterms, and colleagues now expect further departures from the depleted division.

Minnesota officials on Thursday dedicated a stretch of Highway 610 in the north metro as the Hortman Memorial Highway, unveiling new roadside signs to honor Mark and Melissa Hortman, the married political couple assassinated in 2025.

Gov. Tim Walz, state Sen. John Hoffman, and the Hortmans' children, Colin and Sophie, joined transportation and community leaders along the corridor on Nov. 5 as the signs were revealed, giving drivers a permanent visual reminder of the couple's legacy. Colin told attendees that his parents were not "spotlight people" and said the family believes they would have liked being remembered through a highway that thousands of Minnesotans quietly use every day.

Former West Virginia governor and five-term U.S. senator Jay Rockefeller died Thursday night at his home in Washington, D.C., at age 89, ending the political career of the last Rockefeller to hold elective office.

Mary Stewart of public broadcaster WETA confirmed Rockefeller's death, which was reported Friday by multiple outlets; no cause was immediately disclosed. Current Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, a Republican whose father defeated Rockefeller in his first run for governor, called him "a true gentleman" and said their friendship "transcended politics."

Kenya's High Court in Mombasa on Friday sentenced pastor Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison for the murders of 191 followers of his Good News International Church doomsday cult.

Justice Diana Kavedza ruled that 183 of the victims died after being starved and eight were killed outright, calling the crimes "cold and calculated" and placing primary criminal responsibility on Mackenzie. During the hearing, Mackenzie smiled and chatted with his assistant pastor, Smart Mwakalama, who received a 160-year sentence for his role in the killings. Defense lawyer Lawrence Obonyo said he has already filed an appeal, arguing that such lengthy terms amount to unconstitutional life sentences by another name and accusing the court of "circling around the constitution."

Marine veteran and Citibank security officer John Fraley has been identified as the guard who shot and killed a gunman during a deadly attack at Citibank's Brandon, Florida, campus on Wednesday, an intervention that the local sheriff says likely prevented a mass-casualty shooting.

Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister on Thursday named Fraley, a former Marine working armed security at the four-building Citibank Center near Tampa, and said he fatally shot 35-year-old Jacob Pearson inside the cafeteria after Pearson had already killed one employee and was hunting for more victims. Investigators have now publicly tied Pearson's rampage to his anger over a $2,500 delinquent Citibank credit card debt and a related court summons, a conclusion reiterated Friday by CBS News.

An infant in southwestern Wisconsin has died from measles, state health officials said Thursday, marking the first measles-linked death in Wisconsin since 1990 amid a fast-growing outbreak this year.

The Department of Health Services (DHS) said the coroner listed measles as the infant's immediate cause of death and released no details about the child's exact age or hometown, citing privacy. As of this week, Wisconsin has recorded 431 measles cases across 13 counties in 2026, including nine hospitalizations, the highest statewide tally in more than 35 years. Officials again urged vaccination, saying the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine remains the best protection, especially for young children, pregnant people and immunocompromised residents who face the greatest risk of severe complications.

The Minnesota Department of Health says the state's measles outbreak has climbed to 139 confirmed cases, after 59 new infections were reported this week, all among unvaccinated people.

Health officials say the new patients have a median age of 9.5 years, with most of the recent cases linked to existing exposure chains in Todd County that show measles is still spreading in that community. One of the latest cases, in Scott County, is tied to international travel and is not connected to the Todd County cluster, underscoring the risk of the virus being reintroduced from outside the country. The department has secured additional doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help local health departments expand outreach and vaccination during the outbreak.

Two young men with alleged ties to a west-metro street gang have been charged in Hennepin County with drive-by shooting and second-degree assault in a rush-hour attack that wounded a rival motorist on southbound Highway 100 in St. Louis Park on September 30.

Prosecutors say Ayub Abdirashiid Said, 19, and Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed, 20, opened fire from a vehicle at a white Honda Accord, hitting the car six times and striking the driver in the ankle, while a third man, previously charged driver Abdisalan Ali, allegedly sped them away from the scene. The complaint alleges the victims are members of the Muddy gang, while the three suspects are associated with rival SLP and "1300" gangs that investigators have also linked to other recent shootings in the west metro.

Record multi-day rains across Minnesota have sharply eased the state's drought this week, cutting both moderate and severe drought coverage nearly in half as of Thursday, according to the latest federal update.

The U.S. Drought Monitor now shows 24.92% of Minnesota in moderate drought and 2.86% in severe drought, down from 35.55% and 24.52% a week earlier, while 45.72% of the state is classified as abnormally dry. A slow-moving system dropped 1.5 to 2.5 inches of rain on the Twin Cities and surrounding areas, part of a soaking that broke daily rainfall records in both Minneapolis-St. Paul and Hibbing.

The Shakopee City Council has approved spending up to $140,000 on an independent noise and vibration study of the Mystic Lake Amphitheater, seeking hard data on sound complaints that neighbors say have rattled homes miles from the tribal casino concert venue.

In a vote taken earlier this week, the council signed off on a $130,000 contract with GZA Environmental, plus a $10,000 contingency, to measure how music and bass from the outdoor amphitheater travels through nearby neighborhoods and to recommend ways to reduce the impacts. The consultant will deploy temporary sound monitors in areas where residents have logged the most complaints, analyze how weather and topography affect sound, and design a permanent monitoring network whose data Shakopee police will be able to see in real time.

St. Paul voters overwhelmingly approved a "right-to-repair" ballot measure for renters, passing a new ordinance by a 79%-to-21% margin that will let tenants arrange certain repairs themselves if landlords fail to act, reshaping the rules for multifamily housing across the city.

The ordinance, approved in the November 2026 election, gives renters the right to hire qualified contractors for specified repairs after giving proper notice and time to their landlord, then seek reimbursement or rent offsets under procedures the city will spell out in detail. It immediately raises compliance and cost questions for owners and managers of multifamily properties, who now must adapt their maintenance practices and lease terms to the new framework.