Opinion

WASHINGTON —  The Supreme Court on Tuesday confronts a major test of the 2nd Amendment and its protection for gun rights, including whether they extend even for people who are subject to a domestic violence restraining order. At issue is the broader question of whether modern gun control laws may deny firearms to potentially dangerous people, including felons and drug addicts.The court’s conservatives strongly support the 2nd Amendment, and last year Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion for a 6-3 majority that threatens many of the nation’s gun laws enacted since the 1960s.Thomas said the government may not deny an individual’s right to bear arms unless it can “affirmatively prove” the restriction is “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition.”Few gun laws can meet that test b...

Not LeBron James.Not Stephen Curry.Not Kevin Durant.Not Victor Wembanyama.Not Nikola Jovic.Nobody in basketball has executed a move better than the one South Carolina freshman MiLaysia Fulwiley pulled off during the second quarter of her first collegiate basketball game.That’s coming from no less of a basketball authority than Lakers legend Magic Johnson.First, here’s Fulwiley’s spectacular play during the No. 6 Gamecocks’ 100-71 season-opening win over No. 10 Notre Dame on Monday in Paris.Now here’s what Johnson had to say about it. I’m watching the women’s basketball game between South Carolina and Notre Dame right now and I just saw the best move in all of basketball including the pros like LeBron, Steph, KD, Victor, and Jokic. Everyone must see the coast-to-coast, behind-the-back mov...

GAZA STRIP —  Life in Gaza is a numbers game these days, where you try to calculate the odds of surviving even the most mundane tasks.Do you risk going out to find drinkable water, despite word of Israeli tanks up the road? How long can you stand in line outside a bakery before the drone circling overhead drops a missile nearby? Which neighborhood has shelter for you and your family, doesn’t have a Hamas member or tunnel nearby, and could possibly be spared the relentless bombing? Since the the Gaza-based militant group Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack inside Israel spurred the bombardment inside the Palestinian territory, such calculations have become crucial.Through voice recordings, messaging apps and phone calls over several weeks, our correspondent worked with Times staff writer Nabih Bulos to gi...

WASHINGTON —  Last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken headed for the Middle East to try to keep Israel’s war in Gaza from spinning out of control, and to begin talks on what diplomats call “the day after” — what happens after the shooting stops.Who will govern a shattered Gaza? Who will feed and house its refugees?Who will police its ravaged streets?And perhaps improbably, can the war, however brutal its toll, be turned into an opening for a wider peace?“When this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next,” President Biden said last month. “And in our view, it has to be a two-state solution” — an agreement under which a sovereign Palestinian state would live side by side with Israel, with security guarantees for both.Blinken took that message to Tel Aviv on Friday...

WASHINGTON —  The Supreme Court agreed Friday to rule on whether the government may ban the sale or use of “bump stocks” that can transform a semiautomatic rifle into one that shoots hundreds of bullets per minute with a single pull of the trigger.Since 1934, federal law has banned machines guns, but there has been dispute over whether a bump stock can be outlawed as a type of machine gun.The government was prompted to adopt new regulations after a shooter in Las Vegas used semiautomatic weapons equipped with bump stocks to kill 58 people and wound more that 500 others. Officials said the bump stocks allowed the shooter to rapidly fire “several hundred rounds of ammunition” into a crowd that had gathered for an outdoor concert on Oct. 1, 2017.Congress did not revise the law, but the Trump ...

Last season, Rui Hachimura helped save the Lakers. Now the 6-foot-8, 230-pound forward is hoping to help save the Earth — even though he’s in concussion protocol with the Lakers — by dunking an approaching meteorite into oblivion.Or something like that. The details of Hachimura’s heroic endeavor will be revealed Saturday, when a cartoon version of the Japanese basketball star appears on the anime series “Crayon Shin-chan” in an episode with a title that translates to “The Adventures of Buri Buri Zaemon: Space Dunk Edition.”Hachimura provides his own voice for his character on the popular Japanese series, which debuted in 1992 and has aired more than 1,000 episodes.“My family and I are big fans of Crayon Shin-chan,” Hachimura said in a statement posted in Japanese on the TV Asahi website. “...

A Los Angeles city employee who was trapped in Gaza for weeks has been safely evacuated from the besieged territory, according to the mayor’s office.“Our office has been working to get him to safety and I have been in regular contact with his son. I am relieved to announce today that the employee is now safe in a neighboring country and out of the war zone,” Mayor Karen Bass said Thursday afternoon in a statement. The city employee is Simi Valley resident Sohail Biary, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly. Hundreds of Palestinians with foreign passports have been allowed to leave Gaza since Wednesday after weeks of attention on their plight, according to the Associated Press. The isolated Palestinian territory has faced a worsening ...

Prosecutors won’t seek the death penalty against the man accused of orchestrating the killing of Tupac Shakur, they told a Las Vegas judge Thursday as Duane “Keffe D” Davis pleaded not guilty to murder.Davis, 60, a self-admitted shot caller of the Compton Southside Crips, appeared in court handcuffed and told the judge he understood the charge he faced. He then entered his plea on his third court appearance since his late September arrest in one of the nation’s most infamous celebrity murder cases.After Clark County Judge Tierra D. Jones asked prosecutors whether they would seek the death penalty against Davis in the 1996 slaying, a prosecutor said they were not planning to ask a review panel to consider such a move.Davis asked the judge to explain what she meant by the question. “Every f...

WASHINGTON —  Supreme Court justices on Wednesday sounded ready to rule that a T-shirt with the phrase “Trump Too Small” cannot be trademarked by a California attorney seeking the exclusive right to sell clothing with the slogan.Trump is not a party to the case of Vidal vs. Elster, but in the past he objected when businesses and others tried to make use of his name.In arguments Wednesday, Biden administration attorneys urged the court to deny the trademark for the disputed shirts, but their position was not related to the message, which is critical of the former president. Since 1946, Congress has barred the registering of a trademark that includes a name or image that identifies “a particular living individual,” administration attorneys said.When they adopted this provision, lawmakers wer...

JENIN, West Bank — Even amid the terrible destruction that has transformed parts of Jenin into pits of jumbled masonry, the bullet-pocked tower of the Palestinian government headquarters stands out — not for the relatively light damage it sustained but for who caused it. Whereas homes in this West Bank city have been demolished by Israeli troops, roads have been churned up by Israeli bulldozers and storefronts have been disfigured by Israeli gunfire, the offices of the Sultah, or Palestinian Authority, were attacked by Palestinians themselves during a noisy protest over Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Disgusted with the authority’s inability to protect its own people or stand up to Israel, militants in the crowd aimed their bullets at the government compound after its security forces tried t...