Lead Two sisters, Caroline Sekar, 45, of San Francisco, and Liz Clabaugh, 52, of Boise, Idaho, were killed in an avalanche near Lake Tahoe on Tuesday at the end of a three-day backcountry skiing trek. The incident occurred on a trail in the Castle Peak area of the Sierra Nevada and struck a close-knit group … Read more
Lead On February 19, 2026, at India’s AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi staged a high-profile photo moment with 13 other business and political leaders. The staged line saw a widely circulated image of participants holding hands aloft — but Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Dario Amodei (Anthropic) notably did not join … Read more
On February 19, 2026, newly released Justice Department records show that Jeffrey Epstein cultivated close relationships with several U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers based in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and that those ties prompted a criminal investigation beginning in 2019. The records detail gifts and favors Epstein provided—food, helicopter rides, financial advice … Read more
Lead An anonymous contribution to the Pima County Attorney’s Office raised the posted reward for information leading to the location of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie to more than $200,000 on Thursday. Guthrie, the mother of NBC “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie, was last seen at her Tucson home on Jan. 31, and investigators describe the case as … Read more
On Tuesday near Castle Peak on Donner Summit, a guided backcountry ski party was struck by a large avalanche; by Feb. 19, 2026 Nevada County authorities reported nine people dead and six survivors rescued after teams reached the scene amid continuing storms. The group—four guides and 11 clients on a Blackbird Mountain Guides trip—was descending … Read more
Lead Workers began reinstalling interpretive panels at the President’s House Site on Independence Mall in Philadelphia on Feb. 19, 2026, after a federal judge ordered their return while litigation continues. The panels, removed by the National Park Service in January, portray the lives of nine people enslaved by George Washington during his presidential residence in … Read more
Lead A deadly avalanche struck backcountry terrain near Donner Pass on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026, killing at least eight people and leaving one person missing and presumed dead. The slide hit a party of 15 skiers at about 11:30 a.m. as a severe winter storm swept the Sierra Nevada. Local officials and rescue teams evacuated … Read more
Lead President Donald Trump convened the inaugural Board of Peace in Washington on Thursday and announced that nine member states pledged a combined $7 billion toward Gaza reconstruction while five countries committed troops to an international stabilization force. He also said the United States would pledge $10 billion, though he offered no timeline or funding … Read more
On Feb. 19, 2026, JPMorgan Chase & Co. told a court that President Donald Trump improperly named CEO Jamie Dimon as a defendant in the $5 billion lawsuit over the bank’s closure of his accounts. The bank filed to remove the case from Florida state court to federal court in Miami, saying the complaint’s strategy … Read more
On Feb. 16, 2026, at the Dennis M. Lynch Arena in Pawtucket, bystanders intervened when a gunman opened fire during a youth hockey event. Michael Black, a retired printing-company owner, and at least two other men rushed the shooter after bullets rang out, seizing a weapon and pinning him to the floor. The attacker, identified … Read more
David Ellison’s campaign to steer Warner Bros. Discovery to Paramount Skydance rather than Netflix has moved squarely into Brussels, where EU competition officials are preparing pre-notification talks and are expected to open a formal antitrust review once a U.S. deal is sealed. Warner Bros. Discovery this week said it would give Paramount a seven-day window … Read more
Lead A 29-researcher international team has drilled deeper beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet than ever before at Crary Ice Rise, retrieving 523 metres of ice and 228 metres of underlying sediment. The cores contain shell fragments and other marine material that indicate the site was open ocean, at least intermittently, as far back as … Read more
Lead: A seven-member federal arts panel composed largely of President Donald Trump’s January appointees voted Thursday to approve his plan for a new 90,000-square-foot ballroom on the footprint of the former East Wing in Washington, D.C. The vote, 6-0 with one commissioner absent from deliberations, clears one of two required federal reviews; the National Capital … Read more
Lead: Hilary Duff, 38, is returning to pop with her first full-length record in over a decade, Luck … or Something, due Feb. 20 via Atlantic. Speaking by Zoom in late January, the former child star described the album as an honest update on motherhood, marriage and the passing of time and said its release … Read more
Lead: Samsung has begun rolling out a new One UI 8.5 beta build (Android 16 QPR2) to the Galaxy S25, S25+ and S25 Ultra in India. The OTA carries firmware ID ZZAN and is a 553.08MB package that the changelog lists as a Bixby version update. In India this is the fourth beta build; if … Read more
