Category Archives: US News

Bob Newhart, famed comedian and sitcom actor, dies at 94

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Star of game-changing sitcoms The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart, and Christmas comedy Elf, had period of illness

Bob Newhart, the revered US comedian and star of two classic sitcoms known for his deadpan delivery, died on Thursday at the age of 94.

The Chicago native and titular star of game-changing sitcoms The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart in the 1970s and 80s, died at his home in Los Angeles after a period of short illnesses, his publicist Jerry Digney confirmed in a statement.

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Biden reportedly open to 2024 rethink as Pelosi steps up pressure campaign

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Former House speaker has reportedly told colleagues president could be persuaded to leave race soon

Joe Biden has reportedly become more open in recent days to hearing arguments that he should step aside as the Democratic presidential candidate, and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told Democratic colleagues that he could be convinced to leave the race soon.

The Washington Post reported that Pelosi has taken a prominent role in passing messages from House Democrats to the White House, relaying concerns that Biden is incapable of beating Donald Trump in November, and has said she thinks Biden is close to making a decision to end his campaign.

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When is Trump’s RNC speech? How to watch and what’s at stake

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The former president will speak from the Republican national convention in Milwaukee on Thursday night

The biggest event of the Republican convention kicks off Thursday night, with Donald Trump’s address to thousands of party loyalists in attendance.

Trump appeared at the opening night of the Republican national convention on Monday, when he was greeted with thunderous applause, marking his first public appearance since surviving an assassination attempt at his campaign rally. Earlier in the day, Trump announced JD Vance, the Ohio senator and once vocal critic of Trump, as his running mate.

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Lou Dobbs, renowned conservative cable news anchor, dies aged 78

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Fox News host recently had his show canceled after joining in the false narrative of 2020 election being stolen

Lou Dobbs, a longtime cable news anchor known in recent years for supporting Donald Trump and for spreading misinformation, has died at age 78, according to statements posted on his social media accounts.

Trump paid tribute to Dobbs as “a friend, and truly incredible Journalist, Reporter, and Talent” in a post on his social media site, writing: “He understood the World, and what was ‘happening,’ better than others.”

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In Dearborn, home of largest Arab American community, despair and apathy dominate

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The Michigan city’s residents ask ‘where is the humanity?’ as war in Gaza rages on. Some won’t vote this fall in protest

Abu Bilal sits quietly on a stool in Oriental Fashion, a clothing store he owns on Dearborn’s Warren Avenue, listening to the radio. It’s hard to ascertain whether his tone when talking about the war in Gaza is one of near-complete defeatism or seething anger.

“Ninety people were killed today; hundreds were injured,” he says, referencing an Israeli airstrike that killed dozens of Palestinian civilians in Khan Younis on Saturday.

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‘Just missed’: German comedian loses job over Trump shooting joke

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Sebastian Hotz, aka El Hotzo, was dropped from his radio show and provoked anger from Elon Musk after now-deleted posts on X

A 28-year-old German comedian has got into trouble with Donald Trump supporters and then Elon Musk after sending a series of tweets appearing to welcome the assassination attempt on the former US president.

Sebastian Hotz, who posts and performs as El Hotzo, lost his job with a public broadcaster this week for a series of tweets on X, Musk’s social media platform, after Trump narrowly escaped death, saying that the attempt had been like the last bus – “unfortunately, just missed”.

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Donald Trump to give RNC speech as Joe Biden faces ongoing pressure to stand aside – US politics live

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Former president to address RNC after his running mate JD Vance gave populist-tinged speech on Wednesday

Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has written a column for the Guardian, arguing that Trump’s near assassination transformed his theology, giving the decidedly earthly ex-president a powerful spiritual sheen.

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has transformed the theology of Trump. He has long portrayed himself as an innocent lamb falsely accused, the target of slings and arrows to bear the suffering of believers. Now the bullet and the blood of Butler, Pennsylvania, have sanctified him for the faithful and brought forth a new gospel.

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Rightwinger Leonard Leo helped fuel Bud Light boycott, tax filings show

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Documents reveal group linked to Leo gave money to another group that played central role in boycott

Tax filings obtained by the Guardian show how the rightwing dark money impresario Leonard Leo helped fuel the Bud Light boycott in response to ads featuring the transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, an effort that generated threats against Mulvaney, violence against consumers and layoffs by Anheuser-Busch.

Uncovered by the watchdog group Accountable.US, the filings for 2022 show the Concord Fund, a group linked to Leo, gave $350,000 to Consumers Defense, an arm of Consumers’ Research, not long before that group played a central role in the Bud Light boycott.

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Chip stocks fall further after Trump’s remarks on Taiwan defence

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Semiconductor and related tech shares hit hard by former US president’s calls for Taipei to pay for US protection

The stocks of some of the world’s largest chipmakers have fallen further after comments by Donald Trump that Taiwan, which is central to the global industry, should pay for its own defences against China.

Shares in semiconductor and related tech companies had already plunged on Wednesday after the former president’s comments, as well as a report that suggested Joe Biden’s administration was considering the strictest controls on the trade of chips to China.

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Lammy says Christianity and class give him common ground with JD Vance

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UK foreign secretary says he has talked to Trump running mate as he seeks to build bridges with senior Republicans

• UK politics live – latest updates

David Lammy has said he is already engaging with Donald Trump’s controversial running mate, JD Vance, and can identify with him because of their common working class and Christian backgrounds.

The British foreign secretary was speaking just hours after the possible future US vice-president reiterated his “America first” views, pledging to the Republican national convention (RNC) that he would not send US soldiers to war abroad unnecessarily.

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Trump expected to call for national unity in first speech since assassination attempt

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Strategists view Republican convention address as time to ‘pivot’ ex-president’s image, while critics remain skeptical

With political winds at his back, Donald Trump on Thursday is expected to use his first speech since surviving an assassination attempt to plead for national unity.

Strategists view the Republican national convention address, likely to be watched by tens of millions of Americans on primetime television, as a unique opportunity to redefine the former US president as more palatable to moderate voters.

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JD Vance fires salvos at Democrats in first speech as Trump’s running mate

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Junior senator of Ohio leaned into his own background and attacked Biden in Republican national convention address

JD Vance formally accepted the Republican vice-presidential nomination on Wednesday with a deliberate, and at times divisive, pitch to re-elect Donald Trump in November.

Addressing delegates in Milwaukee on the third night of the convention, Vance, the junior senator of Ohio, presented the Republican party as a champion of working-class Americans while denouncing Democrats as out of touch and ineffective. The populist-tinged rhetoric offered the latest sign of how Trump has reshaped the Republican party and rejected much of the traditional conservatism of its past.

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JD Vance tells Republican convention ‘people who govern this country have failed and failed again’ – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. You can read some of our latest stories on the RNC below:

In his speech to the Republican convention, Greg Abbott gave a strenuous and well-received defense of his state’s forays into immigration enforcement, and vowed to keep up his controversial practice of bussing migrants from the state to cities nationwide.

“When Biden took 50 acres of Texas border property to illegally process up to 5,000 illegal immigrants a day, I directed the Texas National Guard to take back our land and wire it shut,” Abbott said, in an apparent reference to a legal clash between the state government and the Biden administration earlier this year.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refused to even come to Texas and to see the border crisis that they created. I took the border to them. I began bussing illegal immigrants to Washington DC, and we have continued bussing migrants to sanctuary cities across the entire country, and those busses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border.

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Syrian official who ran prison where detainees alleged torture arrested in US

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Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, 72, who oversaw notorious Adra prison, detained at LAX on immigration fraud charges

A former Syrian military official who oversaw a prison where human rights officials say torture and abuse routinely took place has been arrested in Los Angeles, court documents show.

Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, 72, was taken into custody last week at Los Angeles international airport on immigration fraud charges, specifically that he denied on his US visa and citizenship applications that he had ever persecuted anyone in Syria, according to a criminal complaint filed on 9 July. Investigators are considering additional charges, the complaint shows.

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Biden hasn’t done enough to ease age concerns, former top Obama adviser says – live

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David Axelrod, former top Obama adviser, says the question of whether Biden can survive is ‘entirely in his hands’

Today’s theme at the Republican national convention will be “Make America Strong Once Again,” and many of the speeches are expected to focus on foreign policy.

“Each one of these has a theme, like last night was ‘bend the knee and grovel’ apparently,” Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, said at a Democratic press conference in Milwaukee. “And today is ‘celebrate Russia day,’ I guess.”

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US military to dismantle ill-fated Gaza aid pier, saying it is ‘mission complete’

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Although Central Command praises operation, scheme announced by Biden cost $230m and only operated 25 days

The US military-built pier for carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza will be dismantled and brought home, ending a mission that has been fraught with repeated weather and security problems that limited how much food and other supplies could get to starving Palestinians.

Vice Adm Brad Cooper, deputy commander at US Central Command, told reporters in a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday that the pier had achieved its intended effect in what he called an “unprecedented operation”.

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Man who tried to assassinate Reagan says ‘violence is not the way to go’

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John Hinckley Jr tweets ‘give peace a chance’ in wake of Trump assassination attempt – drawing bemused responses

John Hinckley Jr, who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981, has waded into the discourse around the recent attempted assassination of Donald Trump in a social media post seemingly disavowing his own past actions.

“Violence is not the way to go. Give peace a chance,” Hinckley wrote on X on Wednesday, sentiments that drew a welter of bemused and often ironic responses.

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Democrats’ rift widens as Nancy Pelosi reportedly joins calls for Biden to quit

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Tensions amid party members rise as Biden tests positive for Covid and will be in self-isolation in Delaware

Pressure for Joe Biden to step aside as the Democrats’ presidential pick to face Donald Trump had eased since the Republican survived an assassination attempt last weekend, but began to rise again on Wednesday.

The tension rose as Biden was diagnosed with Covid and cancelled events to self-isolate at his home in Delaware.

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Adam Schiff says Biden should ‘pass the torch’ and bow out of 2024 US election

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California Democrat and US Senate candidate calls on Joe Biden to end his campaign, stating he has ‘serious concerns’

Adam Schiff, the high-profile California Democrat and US Senate candidate, on Wednesday called on Joe Biden to end his presidential campaign, stating he had “serious concerns” about the president’s ability to beat Donald Trump in November.

In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles-area congressman joined almost 20 other congressional Democrats in asking the president to step aside. Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history”, Schiff said, but it was time “to pass the torch”.

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Cellphone and detonator found on rooftop near suspected Trump shooter

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Items seen in picture obtained by Pittsburgh-area TV station while motives remain unclear

A picture obtained by a Pittsburgh-area TV station shows a cellphone and detonator carried by the gunman who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at the Butler county show grounds in western Pennsylvania last Saturday.

The items were shown on the rooftop from which Thomas Matthew Crooks used an AR-15-style rifle to fire on the former president and Republican presidential nominee.

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