Ezra Jin, founder of Zion Church, lands in the US and reunites with family who are ‘overwhelmed with joy’
The founder of one of China’s most prominent underground churches has been released from prison and reunited with his family in the United States.
Ezra Jin, the founder of Zion Church, landed in the US on Friday evening. He was one of dozens of church members who were detained in a sweeping crackdown on Christians in October.
Continue reading...Kelsey Pfendler set out to become first US woman, youngest woman and fastest woman to solo over 2,400-mile journey
A Grand Canyon river-rafting guide who aimed to become the first US woman to row solo across the mid-Pacific has completed a record-breaking journey from California to Hawaii.
Hundreds of people gathered to cheer on Kelsey Pfendler as she pulled into a Honolulu harbor on Friday night on her 21ft rowboat, Lily, after nearly a month-and-a-half at sea, local media reported.
Guardian staff contributed
Continue reading...Hundreds of masked members of the white supremacist organization marched and chanted in the US capital
Hundreds of masked men carrying banners, including the Confederate flag, marched through Washington DC on the Fourth of July, the 250th anniversary of the US’s inception.
The group appeared to be led by Thomas Rousseau, founder of the neo-fascist, white supremacist organization Patriot Front. Members of the group wore white masks and gathered in front of DC’s Union Station. They later marched towards Capitol Hill, WTOP reported.
Continue reading...Mt Olive Pickle Company says it was unaware image of flag was included in exhibit, and cites value of ‘human dignity’
A leading vendor of the US delicacy that is the pickle has withdrawn from the Great American State Fair in Washington DC after North Carolina’s booth displayed a video containing a Confederate flag.
The Mt Olive Pickle Company, which is located in eastern North Carolina and bills itself as the “#1 bestselling brand of pickles, peppers and relishes in the US”, told local news station WNCT it had been unaware that an image of the flag would be included in a video as part of the state’s exhibit.
Continue reading...Officials rescued seven other people after a sudden storm led to a boat sinking on Geneva Lake
Three children died after a boat capsized on Wisconsin’s Geneva Lake during inclement weather on the eve of the US’s semiquincentennial celebrations, and seven other people had to be rescued by emergency responders, according to officials.
A recreational motor boat with 10 passengers, including four children, sank on Friday afternoon as the boat “attempted to navigate to safety as weather conditions deteriorated” amid an intense, sudden storm, the city of Lake Geneva police department said in a statement.
Continue reading...Pardons issued to nine people charged with violating Clean Air Act as extreme heat smothers much of US
Donald Trump on Friday issued pardons to 11 men – two convicted fraudsters and nine charged with having violated the federal Clean Air Act by disabling or otherwise modifying trucks’ emissions controls.
Those executive pardons – coming amid US semiquincentennial celebrations blanketed in extreme heat exacerbated by greenhouse gas emissions – were among a broader wave of acts of clemency from Trump during his second presidency, chiefly for those he considers to be aligned with him.
Continue reading...In a speech at Mount Rushmore, the US president claimed a resurgent ‘communist menace’ posed a severe threat to the country
Donald Trump has kicked off America’s 250th birthday weekend with an extraordinary partisan attack on the “communist menace” in America, framing its supporters as “the enemy of July 4th 1776”.
The US president spoke for half an hour on Friday night at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, the latest stop on his tour celebrating the milestone anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence from Britain.
Continue reading...The gap between America and Britain has grown economically as Trump asserts ‘the UK is dying’. Culturally, however, it’s a different story
On 1 June 1785 John Adams travelled to London to become the first US ambassador to Britain, in which capacity he was to meet George III. By his own admission, Adams trembled at the encounter. After all, it had been less than a decade since he helped Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence denouncing the king as an absolute “tyrant” who had “plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people”.
A trepidatious Adams trudged through the London drizzle to St James’s Palace, where he presented his credentials to King George. He bowed three times, then declared he would be “the happiest of men if I can be instrumental in recommending my country more and more to your Majesty’s royal benevolence”.
Continue reading...A fight between two groups of young people who knew each other escalated into gunfire, police said
A shooting altercation between two groups of young people at a shopping mall in Dearborn, Michigan, left two people dead and a third injured over what is typically the most violent weekend of the year in the US, police said.
The shooting occurred as the US began celebrating the Fourth of July, historically a holiday weekend that sees higher rates of gun violence across the country. In 2024, the Gun Violence Archive reported more than 500 shootings over Independence Day weekend.
Continue reading...Parasite cyclospora spreads through produce and water contaminated with feces and causes the intestinal illness cyclosporiasis
The US Centers for Disease Prevention has been working to find the source of a parasitic illness that causes “explosive”, watery diarrhea, with more than 400 cases of the sickness reported across 18 states.
The parasite, cyclospora, spreads through raw produce and water contaminated with human feces – and it causes the intestinal illness cyclosporiasis, whose symptoms include cramps, nausea, fatigue, loss of appetite, low-grade fever and vomiting. The most commonly reported symptom is “watery diarrhea with frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements”, according to the CDC.
Continue reading...People gather outside Madison Square Garden despite security keeping them from seeing anything noteworthy
Taylor Swift’s fans gathered in the heat outside New York’s Madison Square Garden on Friday for her wedding – or at least the celebration of it – to Travis Kelce, and the sense of being close to the superstar singer-songwriter and her NFL champion groom on their big day.
Whether or not Swift and Kelce have already tied the knot, which has been at the center of contradictory reports, fans said they were thrilled at the union – and the location.
Continue reading...Republican Liz Murrill was indicted for the alleged intimidation of New Orleans elected officials
Louisiana’s highest court has granted a stay of the proceedings in a criminal indictment targeting the state’s attorney general, in the latest twist of a high-stakes political battle between Republican state leaders and Democrats who govern its most famous city, New Orleans.
Liz Murrill, a Republican who is Louisiana’s first female attorney general, was slapped with a 16-count indictment on Thursday by a New Orleans grand jury charging her with intimidation and malfeasance. The charges effectively accused her of trying to intimidate New Orleans officials who fought a law passed by Republican legislators to overhaul the city’s courts.
Continue reading...Singer and fiance Travis Kelce have been coy but festivities are getting under way at Madison Square Garden
The streets of New York City and the first-class lounges of Heathrow and JFK airports were crawling on Friday with celebrities on their way to attend the wedding of the year.
Taylor Swift had kept fans guessing about whether it was her nuptials that had caused the closure of 11 streets in midtown Manhattan and the endless deliveries of flowers, food and decorations to the huge Madison Square Garden arena.
Continue reading...Pope Leo urges Americans to live up to ideals of Declaration of Independence in first key address to US
Pope Leo has used his first key address to his home country to praise the US history of welcoming migrants, urging Americans to live up to the ideals put forward in the Declaration of Independence.
In his latest implicit rebuke to Donald Trump, the first US leader of the Roman Catholic church said the word “America” had become a “byword for freedom” across the world because of the way the country welcomed migrants.
Continue reading...New York mayor’s remarks at city hall to come just hours before Trump is set to deliver address at Mount Rushmore
Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, is expected to deliver a speech on Friday morning to mark America’s 250th birthday.
The address, scheduled to begin at 10am local time and streamed live, will be delivered from behind George Washington’s desk in New York city hall. Mamdani will be surrounded by recently naturalized citizens.
Continue reading...Weekend’s high temperatures and humidity ‘virtually impossible’ without climate crisis, researchers say
The scorching heat blanketing much of the US this week would have been “virtually impossible” if not for the climate crisis, researchers have found, warning that the high temperatures could threaten Independence Day celebrations and World Cup matches this weekend.
“The climate the country has today is fundamentally different to the one it had when the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence,” said Theodore Keeping, extreme weather and wildfire researcher at Imperial College London, in a press release.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: As official celebrations spotlight a narrow cast of white heroes, communities across the US are reclaiming the histories that Freedom 250 leaves out
Good morning, and a very happy 250th birthday to the United States of America. If you prefer to celebrate with cage fighting on the White House lawn, an IndyCar rally through the streets of Washington DC, or simply by watching the president do his lonely bop to YMCA at a sparsely attended state fair, so much the better.
It takes a special kind of someone to make the semiquincentennial birthday of a nation of 349 million people, from a whole variety of backgrounds, all about himself. But he wouldn’t be the only one centred on a very particular (white, male, Christian-centric) view of how the nation came to be.
UK news | Women from Black and Asian backgrounds are less likely than their white counterparts to receive an epidural while giving birth, research has revealed.
Ukraine | Ukraine and Russia have promised fresh assaults after Moscow launched a huge barrage on Kyiv, killing at least 27 people, tearing open apartment buildings and sending tens of thousands of people to shelters.
UK news | Criminal investigators in the UK say they have uncovered a “truly international network” of organised drug-facilitated sexual assault in which victims are sedated before being raped and sexually assaulted.
UK politics | Keir Starmer has formally apologised for the British state’s role in past forced adoptions after decades of campaigning by mothers and children affected.
World news | A rescue team pulled a 43-year-old security guard alive from a collapsed basement, ending an operation that became a symbol of hope after the devastation of twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela.
Continue reading...One of 11 surviving copies of ‘Exeter printing’ and only one known outside US was taken from American privateer ship
For Michael Scurr, a volunteer at the National Archives in Kew, west London, it was “just a boring old Thursday morning” when he sat down in late May to catalogue a collection of documents from the British national collection that had never previously been recorded in detail.
As he opened a volume of 18th-century Royal Navy correspondence, however, Scurr unfolded a document whose opening words he recognised. “In Congress, July 4, 1776. A declaration by the representatives of the United States of America …”
Continue reading...National Weather Service warns heat index could reach 115F as heat grips midwest, Ohio valley and east coast
A “prolonged, dangerous heatwave” was sweeping across parts of the central and eastern United States on Thursday, with forecasters warning that extreme record-breaking temperatures are expected to continue into the holiday weekend for millions of Americans.
The National Weather Service (NWS) warned on Thursday that temperatures between 95F (35C) and 105F (40.5C), combined with high humidity, will push heat index values across parts of the region to between 100F and 115F.
Continue reading...Critics condemn decision by education board aligned with hard-right Ron DeSantis to block access to college system
Immigration advocates in Florida have decried a “cruel and harmful” new rule by education officials aligned with hard-right Republican governor Ron DeSantis to ban undocumented students from state colleges and universities.
The Florida board of education voted on Tuesday to bar access to its 28 state-funded institutions to anybody not a US citizen or “lawfully present” in the country. It follows Florida’s move last year to strip discounted in-state tuition rates for certain immigrant students.
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