CNN – National

By Celina Tebor, CNN As a powerful storm battered western New York with blinding blizzard conditions in the early hours of Christmas Eve, a Buffalo woman jumped into action when she saw a man who was caught in the storm. Sha’Kyra Aughtry said she was home when she heard someone screaming on her street. When

By Brandon Miller and Cheri Mossburg, CNN The climate crisis is among the key factors in a new assessment that shows more than 85% of California’s rural and unincorporated land is now in “high” or “very high” severity zones for wildfire danger, the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) recently announced. California’s

By Rebekah Riess, CNN A 44-year-old man died in an avalanche in Colorado on Christmas Day, authorities said. Four people were caught in the slide on Berthoud Pass near the town of Winter Park. Two of them were buried, the Grand County Sheriff’s Office said. Bystanders and family members helped rescue one. But when the

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN On certain corners of the internet, a segment of women is exhibiting a nostalgia for an era it has never known. These millennials and zoomers glamorize the aesthetics of 1950s Americana, donning retro fit-and-flare dresses and posting vintage illustrations of aproned housewives placing dinner on the table. Their politics, too, hearken

By Laura Paddison, CNN A little more information on restaurant menus could encourage people to choose meals with a lower climate footprint, according to a new study, which found that adding climate impact labels to foods was an effective strategy to reduce red meat consumption. The food system is responsible for a staggering one-third of

By Faith Karimi, CNN After taking a few days off to celebrate the holidays, 5 Things is back! And speaking of the holidays, inflation forced Americans to shell out more money for retail goods and dining experiences this season. Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your

By Rosa Flores, CNN Nearly 1.6 million asylum applications are pending in US immigration courts and at US Citizenship and Immigration Services — the largest number of pending asylum cases on record, according to analysis of federal data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. US immigration courts have seen an over seven-fold

By Joshua Berlinger, CNN Photographs by Julian Rigg, CNN Armed with an iPhone, a microphone and a lifetime’s worth of connections with former cops and criminals, Michael Moy is racing to capture a piece of New York City’s forgotten history. Moy operates a YouTube Channel called Chinatown Gang Stories, which he launched six months ago.

By Sharif Paget, CNN After thousands of customers in Pierce County, Washington, were affected Sunday when burglars vandalized three energy substations, power was then knocked out for even more homes after a suspect or suspects gained access to a fourth substation, vandalizing the equipment and causing a fire, according to an update from the Pierce

By Michelle Krupa, Artemis Moshtaghian and Nicole Grether, CNN It was days before Christmas when the blizzard slammed Buffalo, New York, with the fierce winds, heavy snow and dangerous cold it already had inflicted across much of the United States. That’s when the power blinked out in nearby Williamsville, leaving Demetrice and Danielle and their

By Camila Bernal and Sarah Moon, CNN When Santa Claus arrived at a migrant shelter in El Paso, Texas, to bring presents for the children, one migrant asked for just a photo with him. The photo Geovanny Caripaz, 39, took was quickly sent through WhatsApp to his 7-year-old son in Venezuela. “I told him Santa