Associated Press

Vice President Kamala Harris called on Vietnam to join the U.S. to challenge China’s “bullying” in the South China Sea, a continuation of her sharp rhetoric against Beijing as she tours Southeast Asia this week. “We need to find ways to pressure and raise the pressure, frankly, on Beijing to abide by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and to challenge its bullying and excessive maritime claims,” she said, in remarks at the opening of a bilateral meeting with Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed an executive order Wednesday making New Mexico the latest Western state to join an ambitious effort to conserve nearly one-third of America's lands and waters by 2030.

A California judge said Wednesday that she anticipates a two-week hearing early next year before she decides if Scott Peterson deserves a new trial in the 2002 death of his pregnant wife.

A California fire that gutted hundreds of homes advanced toward Lake Tahoe on Wednesday as thousands of firefighters tried to box in the flames and tourists who hoped to boat or swim were enveloped in a thick yellow haze of the nation's worst air.

President Joe Biden is meeting Wednesday with top executives from some of the country's leading technology companies and financial institutions as the White House urges the private sector to help toughen cybersecurity defenses against increasingly sophisticated attacks.