Director of the Program

When Doña Milagros Matos Marquez and her husband Don Cruz Marquez received the news that Hurricane María was approaching Trujillo Alto in Puerto Rico, they expected some rain and maybe a little bit of wind, like with previous storms. Instead María blew their roof off once the storm made landfall exactly two years ago on Friday. In the months after...

Some of them aren’t even allowed to drive a car yet, but that’s not stopping a group of local high school students from working hard to become commercial drone pilots.

A string of pending proposals on Capitol Hill could change the way current and future retirees live. But that’s assuming they can first get through both Houses of Congress. And time is ticking as August recess has already begun. After that, there’s just four months left to the year. Even if pushing the changes through a Democratic majority in the...

Two years into Donald Trump’s presidency, Democrats grabbed control of the U.S. House on Tuesday as the country made a move to the left. Republicans retained control of the Senate but Trump now has a tougher path to implementing his agenda, including a border wall. The midterm election was widely seen as a referendum on Trump, and the results reflected...

One parent was upset after she found out her daughter wasn’t in a fourth grade music program at her Tierrasanta school. NBC 7’s Rory Devine has more on why the program was cut.

As Hurricane Florence churns toward the East Coast with catastrophic power, the storm has become a reminder of how vulnerable North Carolina’s coast is. Vast amounts of new development now stand on the shifting sands of barrier islands there, amid the rising waters of climate change. Except for a few short stretches, the state is flanked almost entirely by those...

Feeling pleased that your conscientious recycling is helping to save the environment? Not so fast. Your yogurt container or takeout clamshell might end up in a dump thanks to a ban on discarded items that the United States had been sending to China for processing. This year, China followed through with its threat to prohibit the import of U.S. plastics,...

President Donald Trump labored with South Korea’s Moon Jae-in Tuesday to keep the highly anticipated U.S. summit with North Korea on track after Trump abruptly cast doubt that the June 12 meeting would come off. Setting the stakes sky high, Moon said. “The fate and the future of the Korean Peninsula hinge” on the meeting. The summit, planned for Singapore,...

A summer of natural catastrophes, from epic hurricanes to scorching wildfires, has exposed another peril in disaster-prone states: How to pay for the rescues, repairs and rebuilding. The combined tab from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma is expected to hit $200 billion or more. While the federal government is expected to pay most of that, the affected state and local governments...

Rising sea levels and fierce storms have failed to stop relentless population growth along U.S. coasts in recent years, a new Associated Press analysis shows. The latest punishing hurricanes scored bull’s-eyes on two of the country’s fastest growing regions: coastal Texas around Houston and resort areas of southwest Florida. Nothing seems to curb America’s appetite for life near the sea,...

At the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, the threat of a nuclear meltdown is shifting to concerns over its nuclear leftovers. After being shut down in 2012, 3.6 million pounds of radioactive waste now sit in storage at the facility. NBC 7 Investigates Mari Payton explains where that waste is headed and what is being done to keep the community safe.

If all goes as planned, nuclear waste at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will be stored in bluffs above the facility. NBC 7 Investigates reporter Mari Payton has more on why steady build up is so dangerous.