The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a case that could dramatically change the way elections for Congress and the presidency are conducted by handing more power to state legislatures and blocking state courts from reviewing challenges to the procedures and results. The justices will consider whether state courts, when finding violations of […]

Help is coming for many people with medical debt on their credit reports. Starting Friday, the three major U.S. credit reporting companies will stop counting paid medical debt on the reports that banks, potential landlords and others use to judge creditworthiness. The companies also will start giving people a year to resolve delinquent medical debt […]

MADRID — An unstable world could get even more dangerous if NATO does not remain strong and united, the head of the alliance said Thursday at the end of a summit where Western leaders labeled Russia “a direct threat” to the security of their nations. During their three-day meeting in Madrid, NATO members confronted a […]

WASHINGTON — A measure of inflation that is closely tracked by the Federal Reserve jumped 6.3% in May from a year earlier, unchanged from its level in April. Thursday’s report from the Commerce Department provided the latest evidence that painfully high inflation is pressuring American households and inflicting particular harm on low-income families and people […]

NEW YORK — The OPEC oil cartel and allied producing nations decided Thursday to boost production of crude by an amount that will likely do little to relieve high gasoline prices at the pump and energy-fueled inflation plaguing the global economy. The increase of 648,000 barrels per day in August still leaves the world thirsty […]

PARIS — The lawyer for the only surviving attacker from the November 2015 terrorist massacre in Paris criticized her client’s murder conviction and life prison sentence without the possibility of parole, saying Thursday the verdict “raises serious questions.” Olivia Ronen did not say if Salah Abdeslam would appeal the verdict and sentence. He has 10 […]

HONG KONG — Chinese leader Xi Jinping arrived Thursday in Hong Kong to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the British handover of a city that his rule has transformed from a global hub known for its political freedoms to one that is much more tightly controlled by the Communist Party. In a staged event carried […]

MANILA, Philippines — Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the namesake son of an ousted dictator, praised his father’s legacy and glossed over its violent past as he was sworn in as Philippine president Thursday after a stunning election victory that opponents say was pulled off by whitewashing his family’s image. His rise to power, 36 years after […]

NEW ORLEANS — Arizona’s attorney general says a total abortion ban that has been on the books since before statehood can be enforced and Louisiana’s attorney general is warning doctors against performing abortions even while a ban there is temporarily blocked, as states grapple with long-halted laws in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s […]

WARSAW, Poland — A year after migrants started crossing into the European Union from Belarus to Poland, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and top security officials visited the border area on Thursday to mark the completion of a new steel wall. On Friday, Polish authorities will also lift a state of emergency along the border […]