WASHINGTON — Doctors treating the U.S. Embassy victims of suspected attacks in Cuba have discovered brain abnormalities as they search for clues to explain hearing, vision, balance and memory damage, The Associated Press has learned.

It’s the most specific finding to date about physical damage, showing that whatever it was that harmed the Americans led to perceptible changes in their brains. The finding is also one of several factors fueling growing skepticism that some kind of sonic weapon was involved.

Medical testing has revealed the embassy workers developed changes to the white matter tracts that let different parts of the brain communicate, several U.S. officials said, describing a growing consensus held by university and government physicians researching the attacks. White matter acts like information highways between brain cells.

Loud, mysterious sounds followed by hearing loss and ear-ringing had led investigators to suspect “sonic attacks.” But officials are now avoiding that term. The sounds may have been the byproduct of something else that caused damage, said three U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. They weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly and demanded anonymity.

Physicians, the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies have spent months trying to piece together the puzzle in Havana, where the U.S. says 24 U.S. officials and spouses fell ill starting last year in homes and later in some hotels.

Cuba has denied involvement. The FBI investigation has struggled to identify a culprit, method and motive.

U.S. homeless population swells for 1st time since 2010, data find

LOS ANGELES — The nation’s homeless population increased this year for the first time since 2010, driven by a surge in the number of people living on the streets in West Coast cities.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released its annual Point in Time count Wednesday, a report that showed nearly 554,000 homeless people across the country during local tallies conducted in January. That figure is up nearly 1 percent from 2016.

Of that total, 193,000 people had no access to nightly shelter and instead were staying in vehicles, tents, the streets and other places considered uninhabitable. The unsheltered figure is up by more than 9 percent compared to two years ago.

Rents have soared beyond affordability for many lower-wage workers in the West.

House OKs GOP bill expanding rights of gun owners in states

WASHINGTON — Republicans rammed a bill through the House on Wednesday that would make it easier for gun owners to legally carry concealed weapons across state lines, the first significant action on guns in Congress since shootings in Nevada and Texas killed over 80 people.

The House approved the bill, 231-198, largely along party lines. Six Democrats voted yes, while 14 Republicans voted no.

The bill would allow gun owners with a state-issued permit to carry a handgun in any state that allows concealed weapons. It now goes to the Senate. Republicans said the reciprocity measure, a priority of the National Rifle Association, would allow gun owners to travel between states without worrying about conflicting state laws or civil suits.

Self-styled prophet charged with abduction of girls in Utah

SALT LAKE CITY — A man described as a self-styled prophet was charged Wednesday with child abuse and kidnapping after two girls were found hidden in plastic water barrels near what authorities called a makeshift compound in the southern Utah desert.

Samuel Shaffer, 34, led a group with beliefs in doomsday and polygamy, police said. He left the two girls in the 50-gallon barrels to hide them from authorities, police said.

Two other girls were also found in an abandoned trailer Monday. The four girls ranged in age from 4 to 8, police said.

Two of the girls were Shaffer’s children, and the other two were daughters of his follower John Coltharp, 33.

Coltharp has also been charged with child kidnapping and obstruction of justice.

6 file suit alleging ‘Weinstein Sexual Enterprise’

NEW YORK — Six women sued Harvey Weinstein and men who served on the board of his film company Wednesday, accusing them of functioning like an organized crime group that used agents, producers and others to prey on women seeking a break in a competitive industry.

The racketeering lawsuit in federal court in New York sought to represent “dozens, if not hundreds” of women who say they were assaulted by Weinstein after being isolated in close quarters such as a hotel room after bystanders were sent away.

Lawyers for the women say Weinstein used his company to supply himself with a steady stream of victims, and to cover up his misbehavior, an effort they dubbed the “Weinstein Sexual Enterprise.”

The lawsuit mirrored one filed in Los Angeles last month that did not identify plaintiffs by name.

LA expected to be largest recreational pot city in U.S.

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles is in line to become the nation’s largest city with legal recreational marijuana after the City Council voted Wednesday to license sales and cultivation next year.

The vote came after a hearing in which council members characterized the rules as a work in progress almost certain to see revisions next year, after California launches its recreational pot industry in January.

City Council President Herb Wesson’s office said city rules would take effect after the signature of Mayor Eric Garcetti, which is expected. Under the Los Angeles rules, residential neighborhoods would be largely off-limits to pot businesses, and buffer zones would be set up around schools, libraries and parks.

Medical pot has been legal in the state for two decades.

Terror plot? Naa’imur Zakariyah Rahman, 20, has been ordered held Wednesday after being accused in a plot to assassinate British Prime Minister Theresa May. Another man, Mohammed Aqib Imran, is accused of trying to join the Islamic State but wasn’t charged in connection with the plot. The two were arrested Nov. 28.

Outdoor company Patagonia filed a lawsuit Wednesday to block President Donald Trump’s cuts to Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument. Patagonia becomes the fourth legal challenge after Trump announced Monday he would shrink Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah.