Category Archives: US News

Trump administration to cancel $1bn in Biden-era school mental health grants

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Funding will not be continued next year after bill signed in 2022 helped schools hire more mental health workers

The Trump administration is moving to cancel $1bn in school mental health grants, saying they reflect the priorities of the previous administration.

Grant recipients were notified on Tuesday that the funding will not be continued after this year. A gun violence bill signed by Joe Biden in 2022 sent $1bn to the grant programs to help schools hire more psychologists, counselors and other mental health workers.

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Microsoft to report earnings as AI financial boom shows no sign of slowing

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Company has beaten Wall Street expectations in each of its previous three quarterly earnings reports

Microsoft will report its earnings for the third quarter of the fiscal year after the stock market closes on Wednesday. Analysts have predicted that revenue would grow by 10.6% year-over-year to $68.4bn, even as the company plows tens of billions into artificial intelligence as well as earnings-per-share of $3.22. The company has beaten Wall Street’s expectations on each of its previous three quarterly earnings reports.

Analysts said they view the earnings report as a temperature check on Microsoft’s artificial intelligence business, which has announced it will invest around $80bn in this fiscal year alone, though it has also terminated some data center leases in recent months. The company has invested billions in OpenAI in recent years, giving it a large stake in the ChatGPT developer.

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US supreme court seems open to religious public charter schools

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Oklahoma case is part of a broader push to erode separation of church and state, and a test of role of religion in schools

The US supreme court’s conservative majority seemed open to establishing the country’s first public religious charter school as they weighed a case Wednesday that could have significant ramifications on the separation of church and state.

The Oklahoma state charter school board approved the application for St Isidore, a Catholic virtual charter school. The ACLU and other groups filed suit, as did Republican attorney general Gentner Drummond. The state supreme court sided with Drummond, ruling that the US and Oklahoma constitutions “prohibit the state from using public money for the establishment of a religious institution”.

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Judge re-ups demand that White House show efforts to retrieve Kilmar Ábrego García from El Salvador

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With seven-day pause expiring Wednesday, Paula Xinis says administration must provide sworn testimony by May

A federal judge on Wednesday again directed the Trump administration to provide information about its efforts so far, if any, to comply with her order to retrieve Kilmar Ábrego García from an El Salvador prison.

The US district judge Paula Xinis in Maryland temporarily halted her directive for information at the administration’s request last week. But with the seven-day pause expiring at 5pm, she set May deadlines for officials to provide sworn testimony on anything they have done to return Ábrego García to the US.

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Meta to report quarterly earnings amid tariff uncertainty and AI investment

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Wall Street is projecting the company will post $41.36bn in revenue on $5.21 in earnings per share

Meta is set to report its first quarter earnings on Wednesday after the bell, and investors will be looking for news on whether the company met its quarterly revenue goals of somewhere between $39.5bn and $41.8bn.

Wall Street is projecting the company will post $41.36bn in revenue on $5.21 in earnings per share.

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Kristi Noem says Kilmar Ábrego García would be deported immediately if sent back to US

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US homeland security secretary said Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador ‘not under our control’

Kristi Noem, the US homeland security secretary, said that if Kilmar Ábrego García was sent back to the US, the Donald Trump administration “would immediately deport him again”.

Noem repeated White House assertions about Ábrego García, a Salvadorian man who the Trump administration has admitted was mistakenly deported from Maryland last month, in a new interview with CBS.

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Venezuelan detainees at Texas center spell out SOS with their bodies

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Men at Bluebonnet fear deportation to El Salvador under wartime law despite maintaining they do not have gang ties

Detainees at the Bluebonnet immigrant detention center in the small city of Anson, Texas, sent the outside world a message this week: SOS.

With a Reuters drone flying nearby, 31 men formed the letters in the dirt yard of the facility on Monday.

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Chinese e-commerce exports to US plummet by 65% in face of tariffs

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Temu and Shein among fast-fashion sites affected by drop in first three months of this year but sales in rise to EU

Exports to the US from Chinese online shops such as Temu and Shein have plunged in the face of Donald Trump’s trade war, as shipping from China to the EU has increased.

Official Chinese data showed its total e-commerce shipping to the US dropped 65% by volume in the first three months of the year, but rose by 28% in Europe.

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Equinor considers suing Trump administration over halted US windfarm

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Norway’s state energy company’s $2.5bn project off coast of New York was almost a third finished

Norway’s state energy company may take Donald Trump’s administration to court after it ordered an “unprecedented” halt to a $2.5bn (£1.87bn) windfarm project off the coast of New York.

Equinor is considering its legal options after the US interior secretary, Doug Burgum, ordered the company to “immediately halt all construction activities” on an offshore windfarm last month.

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UK launches Yemen airstrikes, joining US campaign against Houthi rebels

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RAF jets target buildings used to make drones, officials say, in Britain’s first involvement since Trump took office

British fighter jets joined their US counterparts in airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels overnight, the first military action authorised by the Labour government and the first UK participation in an aggressive American bombing campaign against the group.

RAF Typhoons, refuelled by Voyager air tankers, targeted a cluster of buildings 15 miles south of the capital, Sana’a, which the UK said were used by the Houthis to manufacture drones that had targeted shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

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The white Afrikaners lining up to accept Trump’s offer of asylum

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Thousands of South Africans are hoping to move to the US to escape crime –and what they say is discrimination against white people

Kyle believed God was looking out for him when he survived a violent farm robbery in South Africa eight years ago with only a black eye and broken ribs. The robbers failed to get the kettle and iron working, so were unable to burn anyone. Then the gun trigger jammed when they tried to shoot Kyle in the spine.

“They specifically said they were coming back for this farm … [that] it was their land,” said the 43-year-old, who did not want to use his full name. “Only afterwards, we found out that the guy that stays on the plot was actually killed … the farmhand … I don’t know what his name was.”

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Man charged with attempted rape of person who died on New York subway

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Felix Rojas, 44, arraigned after video showed him performing sexual acts on unresponsive passenger

Authorities in New York have charged a man with attempted rape after surveillance video taken showed him performing sexual acts on an unresponsive passenger who was later determined to have died.

Police have been looking for suspects in the case for weeks, after footage captured two different people robbing the corpse of a man on a train traveling from Brooklyn to Manhattan, one of whom allegedly sexually violated him.

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Trump border pick accused of ‘cover-up’ over death of man beaten by US agents

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Former top official calls for Rodney Scott to be blocked from CBP role over handling of investigation into Anastasio Hernández Rojas’s death

Rodney Scott, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has been accused by a former top official of orchestrating a “cover-up” over the death of a man detained while trying to enter the country from Mexico, according to a letter obtained by the Guardian.

Scott is a former US border patrol chief who has supported the president’s vow to build a wall along the border with Mexico and criticized Joe Biden’s handling of immigration policy. As commissioner of CBP, Scott would lead one of the largest federal law enforcement agencies, which encompasses the border patrol and staffs ports of entry across the United States.

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Measles cases in Texas rise to 663 amid outbreaks in other US states

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Texas officials say 87 patients hospitalized as researchers say country at tipping point for return of endemic measles

Measles cases in Texas rose to 663 on Tuesday, according to the state’s health department, an increase of 17 cases since 25 April, as the US battles one of its worst outbreaks of the previously eradicated childhood disease.

Cases in Gaines county, the center of the outbreak, rose to 396, three more from its last update on Friday, the Texas department of state health services said.

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Runaway kangaroo on the loose named Sheila shuts down Alabama interstate

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Marsupial spotted hopping along side of interstate before police surrounded area and owner used dart to tranquilize it

A runaway kangaroo named Sheila shut down a stretch of interstate in Alabama on Tuesday before state troopers and the animal’s owner wrangled the wayward marsupial.

The Alabama law enforcement agency said the kangaroo was spotted on Tuesday hopping along the side of Interstate 85 in Macon county, which is between Montgomery and Auburn.

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Kim Kardashian robbery accused, 71, says he ‘totally regrets’ $10m heist

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Yunice Abbas claims he acted as lookout in Paris hotel lobby while US celebrity’s jewellery was taken at gunpoint

A 71-year-old man who has said he played a bit part in a jewellery heist in which Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint in 2016 has said he “totally regretted” having participated.

Yunice Abbas is one of 10 people on trial in Paris for having taken part in the robbery on the night of 2-3 October.

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Carney gave a eulogy for Canada’s old relationship with the US. Now he must redefine it

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Prime minister pledges to reduce country’s reliance on US trade – but must navigate competing visions for the future

In his victory speech early on Tuesday, Mark Carney wasted little time calling for a dramatic reshaping of his government’s relationship with the United States, arguing that threats from Donald Trump cast doubt Canada’s ability to function as a “free, sovereign, and ambitious” nation.

The former central banker and investment executive had for months focused his electoral campaign on the threats from Canada’s largest trading partner and longtime political ally.

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The Smashing Machine: Dwayne Johnson fights for an Oscar in first trailer

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Actor makes dramatic bid for awards glory as UFC fighter Mark Kerr in biopic also starring his Jungle Cruise co-star Emily Blunt

Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt aim for awards glory in the first trailer for fact-based sports drama The Smashing Machine.

The wrestler-turned-actor plays the MMA fighter Mark Kerr in the film inspired by the 2002 documentary with the same name. Kerr won multiple awards and medals in his career and also struggled with substance abuse.

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HSBC sets aside more cash for bad loans amid Trump tariff war

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UK-based bank warns that trade tensions will lead to lower investment, consumer spending and GDP growth

HSBC has sounded the alarm about the impact of higher trade tariffs on economic growth, unemployment and inflation around the world, as it set aside more money to cover bad debts and reported lower profits.

The UK-based bank reported a $200m (£149m) rise in expected credit losses to $900m in the first quarter, as it increased allowances to “reflect heightened uncertainty and deterioration in the forward economic outlook due to geopolitical tensions and higher trade tariffs”.

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US fighter jet rolls off aircraft carrier as ship reportedly swerves Houthi fire

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Crew members jump out of Super Hornet before jet and towing tractor fall into the Red Sea

US sailors had to leap for their lives when a fighter jet fell off a navy aircraft carrier that was reportedly making evasive maneuvers to avoid Houthi militant fire in the Red Sea on Monday.

The F/A-18 fighter Super Hornet jet, along with the vehicle towing it into place on the deck of the USS Harry S Truman, rolled right out of the hangar and into the water, the navy said.

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