Category Archives: US News

US designates two powerful Haitian gangs as terrorist groups

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Rubio calls Viv Ansanm and Gran Grif ‘threat to US national security’ and says support for groups could lead to charges

The United States has designated a powerful Haitian gang alliance, whose members have taken control of almost all the capital city as a “transnational terrorist group”.

The criminal coalition known as Viv Ansanm (Live Together), and another faction, the Gran Grif gang, which in October took responsibility for a shocking massacre of at least 115 people in the agricultural town of Pont-Sondé, were both covered by the move on Friday.

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Trump proposes cutting $163bn in non-defense funds and boosting military

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Education, health, climate and more on chopping block and 13% rise – to over $1tn to Pentagon – in ‘skinny budget’

Donald Trump is proposing huge cuts to social programmes like health and education while planning substantial spending increases on defence and the Department of Homeland Security, in a White House budget blueprint that starkly illustrates his preoccupation with projecting military strength and deterring migration.

Cuts of $163bn on discretionary non-defence spending would also see financial outlays slashed for environmental and renewable energy schemes, as well as for the FBI, an agency Trump has claimed was weaponised against him during Joe Biden’s presidency. Spending reductions are also being projected for the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

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US army plans for a potential parade of 6,600 soldiers on Trump’s birthday

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Plans for a large military parade coinciding with the president’s 79th birthday would likely cost tens of millions

Detailed army plans for a potential military parade on Donald Trump’s birthday in June call for more than 6,600 soldiers, at least 150 vehicles, 50 helicopters, seven bands and possibly a couple of thousand civilians, the Associated Press has learned.

At the same time, Fox News reported that the parade was a definite go-ahead and would happen on 14 June, the 250th birthday of the United States army as well as Trump’s own birthday, when he will become 79.

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King Charles to open Canada parliament as PM Carney reacts to Trump threats

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Liberal PM will also meet with US president on Tuesday amid tensions over threatened annexation and tariffs

King Charles has accepted an invitation to open Canada’s parliament on 27 May, in “an historic honour that matches the weight of our times”, the country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, said on Friday.

In his first news conference since an election dominated by Donald Trump’s threats to Canada’s sovereignty, the prime minister also confirmed he would meet the US president at the White House on Tuesday.

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Woman in Florida deported to Cuba says she was forced to leave baby daughter

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Heidy Sánchez says she was told her 17-month-old, who has health problems and is breastfeeding, couldn’t go with her

A mother deported to Cuba reportedly had to hand over her 17-month-old daughter to a lawyer while her husband, a US citizen, stood outside unable to say goodbye.

Heidy Sánchez was told she was being detained for deportation to Cuba when she turned up at her scheduled Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) check-in appointment in Tampa, Florida, last week.

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China ‘evaluating’ US offer to engage in trade negotiations

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Comments come a week after Trump claimed talks were already taking place

Beijing is “evaluating” an offer from the US to engage in trade negotiations, the Chinese government has said, a week after Donald Trump claimed talks were already under way.

China’s commerce ministry said on Friday: “The US has recently taken the initiative on many occasions to convey information to China through relevant parties, saying it hopes to talk with China.”

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Trump signs executive order to cut funding for public broadcasters

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President says neither NPR nor PBS ‘presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events’


Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to cut public funding for NPR and PBS, accusing the news outlets of being biased.

NPR and PBS are only partly funded by the US taxpayer and rely heavily on private donations.

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Why is Trump ending the ‘de minimis’ tariff loophole on low-value imports?

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Goods worth less than $800 will be subject to 120% levy meaning prices on Chinese exports will probably increase

At one minute past midnight on Friday, eastern time, a US tariff exemption that has fuelled the rise of companies such as Shein and Temu, and stocked the wardrobes of millions of Americans with cheap fast fashion and other household goods, closed. As part of Donald Trump’s flurry of tariffs on China, the US is closing a loophole that allowed low-value goods to be shipped into the US without paying any import fees. The “de minimis” loophole, known by the Latin phrase for “of little importance”, was “a big scam going on against our country”, the US president said on Wednesday. “We put an end to it.”

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Jill Sobule, I Kissed a Girl singer, dies in Minneapolis house fire aged 66

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Musician whose hits also included the satirical anthem Supermodel from the Clueless soundtrack died early on Thursday

Jill Sobule, the singer-songwriter whose hits included the satirical anthem Supermodel from the Clueless movie soundtrack and the groundbreaking single I Kissed a Girl, has died in a house fire at the age of 66.

Sobule’s body was found in a home in Woodbury, Minnesota, on Thursday. Authorities are investigating the cause of the fire.

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Amazon reports better-than-expected earnings despite tumult of Trump tariffs

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Company exceeds expectations for third quarter in a row as chief executive Andy Jassy admits uncertainty over tariffs

Amazon reported strong first-quarter earnings for the 2025 fiscal year on Thursday after the New York stock exchange closed – results that will be seen in the context of consumer resilience in the face of Donald Trump’s tariff wars.

Amazon reported $1.59 in earnings-per-share (EPS) and revenue of $155.67bn. Analysts had estimated that the company’s EPS would come in at $1.36 on revenue of $155bn. In particular focus: Amazon’s advertising business, which grew 19% in the first quarter of 2025, handily exceeding analyst expectations as well. The company has exceeded Wall Street’s expectations for the previous two quarters.

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Dozens of homeless people living in national forest evicted by US Forest Service

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Service closing area in Oregon for wildfire prevention plan months after Trump order to increase timber production

Dozens of homeless people who have been living in a national forest in central Oregon for years were being evicted on Thursday by the US Forest Service, as it closed the area for a wildfire prevention project that will involve removing smaller trees, clearing debris and setting controlled burns over thousands of acres.

The project has been on the books for years, and the decision to remove the encampment in the Deschutes national forest comes two months after the Trump administration issued an executive order directing federal agencies to increase timber production and forest management projects aimed at reducing wildfire risk. It wasn’t immediately clear if the evictions were a result of that order, but homeless advocates seized on the timing on Thursday, as US Forest Service officers blocked the access road.

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Trump officials ask supreme court to help strip legal status from Venezuelans

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Justice department calls on court to hold judge’s order against ending temporary protected status for 300,000

The Trump administration asked the US supreme court on Thursday to intervene and assist in its attempt to strip temporary protected status (TPS) from more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants in the US, a move that would clear the way for their deportation.

The justice department asked the supreme court justices to put on hold a federal judge’s order from March that halted the decision of the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to terminate the temporary legal status that previously was granted to some Venezuelans.

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DoJ civil rights division suffers severe personnel reduction under Trump

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More than 250 lawyers have left or been reassigned since January as critics fear ‘end of the division as we’ve known it’

More than 250 attorneys in the justice department’s civil rights division have either left, been reassigned, or accepted a buyout offer since January , according to an estimate provided to the Guardian by people familiar with the matter. The significant decrease in personnel underscores how Donald Trump is gutting the arm of the federal government responsible for enforcing federal civil rights laws.

About 235 attorneys in the division’s civil enforcement sections have accepted buyouts or have quit the justice department and roughly another 20 have been reassigned or detailed to do other work within the agency, including handling public records requests and internal agency complaints.

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No Ken do: Trump says US kids may get ‘two dolls instead of 30’ due to tariffs

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President acknowledged his tariff war with China could lead to a toy shortage and costlier products

Donald Trump on Wednesday acknowledged that his tariffs could result in fewer and costlier products in the United States, saying American kids might “have two dolls instead of 30 dolls”, but he insisted China will suffer more from his trade war.

The US president has tried to reassure a nervous country that his tariffs will not provoke a recession, after a new government report showed the US economy shrank during the first three months of the year.

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Trump has launched more attacks on the environment in 100 days than his entire first term

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Blitzkrieg has hit protections in place for land, oceans, forests and wildlife, and will worsen the climate crisis

Donald Trump has launched an unprecedented assault upon the environment, instigating 145 actions to undo rules protecting clean air, water and a livable climate in this administration’s first 100 days – more rollbacks than were completed in Trump’s entire first term as US president.

Trump’s blitzkrieg has hit almost every major policy to shield Americans from toxic pollution, curb the worsening impacts of the climate crisis and protect landscapes, oceans, forests and imperiled wildlife.

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Trump’s attack on federal unions a ‘test case’ for broader assault, warn lawyers

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Executive order cites national security to strip bargaining rights from more than 1 million federal workers

The Trump administration is seeking to strip collective bargaining rights from large swaths of federal employees in a test case union leaders argue is part of a broader attack on US labor unions that could land before the US Supreme Court.

A Trump win would deliver a severe blow to labor unions in the US. Some 29.9% of all federal workers were represented by labor unions in 2024 compared to 11.1% for all US workers.

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Private firms look to fill research gaps left by federal grant cuts: ‘We can’t wait four years’

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Trump and Musk have gut National Institutes of Health and experts are wary of private efforts’ ability to replicate public service

The federal government has slashed research since Donald Trump took office – hacking away at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its grants, staff and long-held partnerships with academia.

Now, some private companies said they want to pick up strands of research that might have otherwise been funded by the federal government. The effort has stoked little optimism among experts, who caution that private efforts cannot remotely replicate the breadth, depth or public service provided by federal funding.

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US and Ukraine sign minerals deal that solidifies investment in Kyiv’s defense against Russia

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Move seals a deal to create a fund the Trump administration says will begin to repay roughly $175bn provided to Ukraine

The US and Kyiv have signed an agreement to share profits and royalties from the future sale of Ukrainian minerals and rare earths, sealing a deal that Donald Trump has said will provide an economic incentive for the US to continue to invest in Ukraine’s defense and its reconstruction after he brokers a peace deal with Russia.

The minerals deal, which has been the subject of tense negotiations for months and nearly fell through hours before it was signed, will establish a US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund that the Trump administration has said will begin to repay an estimated $175bn in aid provided to Ukraine since the beginning of the war.

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Trump officials contacted El Salvador president about Kilmar Ábrego García, sources say

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Administration in touch with Nayib Bukele over detention of wrongly deported man, according to two people

The Trump administration has been in touch directly with the Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele in recent days about the detention of Kilmar Ábrego García, the man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The nature of the discussion and its purpose was not clear because multiple Trump officials have said the administration was not interested in his coming back to the US despite the US supreme court ordering it to “facilitate” Ábrego García’s release.

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Powerful earthquake could raise Pacific north-west sea levels ‘dramatically’ – study

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Likelihood of potentially devastating quake above 8.0 magnitude in next 50 years is 15%, study states

A massive earthquake in the Pacific north-west could rapidly transform areas of the coast from northern California to Washington, causing swaths of land to quickly sink, “dramatically” raising sea level and increasing the flood risk to communities.

That’s according to a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examining the potential impact of the “big one”, a powerful quake along the Cascadia fault that stretches from Canada to California.

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