Category Archives: US News

Florida to execute man convicted of killing three people in 1992

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The killing of Curtis Windom, 59, by lethal injection will be a record 11th execution in the state this year

A man convicted of killing his girlfriend, her mother and a man he claimed owed him $2,000 is scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Thursday in what would be a record 11th execution in the state of Florida this year.

Curtis Windom, 59, would become the 30th person executed this year in the US, with Florida leading the way behind a flurry of death warrants signed by the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. A 12th man, David Joseph Pittman, 63, is scheduled to be put to death in Florida on 17 September.

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Rwanda accepts seven people from US as part of deportation deal

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Trump administration pushing controversial deal to send people to non-home countries including South Sudan and Eswatini

Seven people have arrived in Rwanda as part of a deal to accept deportees from the US, the Rwandan government has said.

The Trump administration has been negotiating arrangements to send people to third countries including South Sudan and Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, as part of its wider deportation drive.

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Tony Blair attends White House meeting with Trump on postwar Gaza

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Former prime minister in Washington DC on Wednesday for talks that reportedly also included Jared Kushner

The former British prime minister Tony Blair has attended a White House meeting with Donald Trump to discuss plans for postwar Gaza, the Guardian understands.

After stepping down as prime minister in 2007, Blair took on the role of Middle East envoy until 2015 and spent time in Jerusalem trying to formulate a plan for a two-state solution.

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New Orleans archbishop accused of personally hiding child abuse in lawsuit

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Lawsuit has most direct allegations of wrongdoing leveled against Aymond, who denies them, in court filing to date

A lawsuit newly filed against the Roman Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans and its top two officials alleges the city’s archbishop, Gregory Aymond, personally covered up child sexual abuse by priests and deacons – and asks a judge to reject a guarantee on his future retirement benefits as punishment.

The archdiocese responded by saying the allegations brought by the plaintiff, Argent Institutional Trust Co, are baseless.

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Fulton county election board faces $10,000 a day fine for not appointing Republicans

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Democrats voted against appointing two candidates known for election denialism and voter registration challenges

The Fulton county commission in Georgia will be fined $10,000 a day for violating a court order to appoint two Republicans associated with Trump-aligned groups pushing voter fraud conspiracies to the county’s election board.

The county charter states that commissioners “shall” appoint two Republicans and two Democrats nominated by their respective county party chairperson, for two-year terms. When commissioners rejected the nomination by Fulton county’s Republican party chair, the superior court judge David Emerson issued an order requiring the board to appoint them.

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Denmark summons US diplomat over alleged Greenland influence campaign

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Danish media reports three men with ties to Donald Trump are accused of attempting to infiltrate Greenlandic society

Denmark has summoned the US charge d’affaires for an urgent meeting over an alleged influence campaign in Greenland aimed at shaping public opinion and the future of the Arctic territory.

It comes after reports from Danish media, confirmed by the Danish foreign office, that at least three US men with ties to Donald Trump and the White House had been accused of trying to infiltrate Greenlandic society.

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Bruce Willis’ dementia diagnosis: ‘language is going’, says actor’s wife

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Emma Heming Willis recalls the actor’s ‘alarming and scary’ early symptoms and says his family has ‘learned to adapt’ as his brain ‘is failing’ amid ‘really great health overall’

Bruce Willis’s brain is “failing him” and his “language is going”, his wife, Emma Heming Willis, has revealed, more than two years since the actor was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia.

“Bruce is still very mobile. Bruce is in really great health overall, you know,” Heming Willis told Diane Sawyer in an ABC special on Tuesday. “It’s just his brain that is failing him. The language is going. We’ve learned to adapt and we have a way of communicating with him, which is just a different way.”

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Starships are meant to fly: SpaceX’s rocket finally launches after setbacks

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Test flight comes after explosive failures raised doubts over founder Elon Musk’s goals to reach Mars and moon

Third time was the charm on Tuesday for the launch of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket after the launch had been scrubbed two times in as many days. The success of this 10th flight proved the spacecraft had overcome its past failures key to the Mars rocket’s reusable design.

The stainless steel behemoth, 403ft (123 meters) tall, lifted off from the company’s Starbase in southern Texas at 6.30pm local time (2330 GMT), to loud cheers from engineering teams, a webcast showed. This mission was to be a test of the ship’s new heat shield tiles and satellite deployment abilities, among hundreds of other upgrades from past iterations.

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Cracker Barrel reverses course and will scrap new logo after intense backlash

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US restaurant chain previously said it would keep new logo despite some, including Trump and his son, criticizing it

Cracker Barrel, the 56-year-old US restaurant chain known for southern style cooking, has reversed course and will scrap the new minimalist logo it launched just days ago after intense backlash.

“We thank our guests for sharing your voices and love for Cracker Barrel. We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our ‘Old Timer’ will remain,” the company posted on social media, referring to the picture of the overall-clad man – known as “Uncle Herschel” – leaning against a barrel that had been its calling card for decades.

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Illinois governor hits back at Trump in Chicago national guard feud: ‘not in good shape’

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Governor Pritzker says Trump is ‘not in good shape’ as president weighs sending troops into Chicago against local wishes

The Democratic governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, has hit back at Donald Trump for commenting on his weight, saying the Republican president is himself “not in good shape” amid escalating tension over the possible deployment of the national guard on the streets of Chicago.

Trump said on Monday that Pritzker “ought to spend more time in the gym”. While successfully campaigning in 2024 for a second presidency that began in January, Trump said that the Illinois governor is “too busy eating” to lead his state.

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Oklahoma man charged after 11-year-old girl gives birth at home

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DNA test tied man to newborn in case prosecutor calls among most serious, as girl’s mother also accused

An Oklahoma man is facing charges of child sexual molestation after an 11-year-old girl in his orbit gave birth in her home, and her mother is accused of enabling abuse in a case that a local assistant district attorney called possibly “the most serious … I have ever prosecuted”.

The charges that the Muskogee county district attorney’s office filed against Dustin Walker, 34, on Monday came after a DNA test confirmed he was the father of the newborn at the center of the case, the Oklahoma news outlet KWTV reported, citing officials.

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Trump says he is firing Fed governor Lisa Cook in escalating attack on bank’s independence | First Thing

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Cook has said that Trump has no authority to remove her from the job over over allegations she committed mortgage fraud. Plus, a look at the AI-led agency advocating for ‘AI rights’

Good morning.

Donald Trump has said he is firing the Federal Reserve governor, Lisa Cook, over a claim that she committed mortgage fraud, as he intensified his attack on the central bank’s independence.

Why does Trump want Cook out? It would allow him to replace her with someone who could offer him more control over Fed policy, as his demands for lower interest rates have been ignored so far.

What else is the committee seeking? It has also issued deposition subpoenas to figures including Bill and Hillary Clinton, former FBI director James Comey and former attorneys general Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, Merrick Garland, William Barr and Jeff Sessions.

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Trump threatens tariffs on countries that ‘discriminate’ against US tech

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Levies and restrictions could hit UK’s digital services tax and EU states such as France, Italy and Spain

Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs and export restrictions on countries whose taxes, legislation and regulations target US big tech companies such as Google, Meta, Amazon and Apple.

In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, the US president said: “Digital taxes, legislation, rules or regulations are all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American technology.”

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France has ‘no lessons to take’ from US on tackling antisemitism, says minister

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Comments come after US ambassador accused government of failing to do enough to stem hate crimes against Jews

Cabinet ministers and Jewish groups have said France has “no lessons to take” from the US on tackling antisemitism, as Washington’s ambassador to Paris was summoned after accusing the government of failing to do enough to stem hate crimes against Jews.

Charles Kushner, who is Jewish, was ordered to report to the foreign ministry on Monday after he wrote a letter to Emmanuel Macron criticising a “lack of sufficient action” by the government to confront the “dramatic rise” in antisemitism in France.

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Trump says he hopes to meet Kim Jong-un and raises prospect of US taking over some South Korean land

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South Korean president Lee Jae Myung uses Oval Office meeting to encourage Trump to engage with North Korean leader

Donald Trump has said he wants to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, possibly this year, in an attempt to revive the failed nuclear diplomacy of his first term as US president.

“I’d like to have a meeting. I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong-un in the appropriate future,” Trump said during an occasionally awkward meeting at the Oval Office with South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae Myung, in which he raised the prospect of taking ownership of South Korean land that hosts a US military base.

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Lil Nas X charged with four felonies after allegedly attacking police in Los Angeles

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Police say musician charged at them when they confronted him for walking naked down an LA street last week

Lil Nas X was charged on Monday with four felonies after police say he charged at them when they confronted him for walking naked down a Los Angeles street last week.

Prosecutors charged the musician, whose legal name is Montero Lamar Hill, with three counts of battery with injury on a police officer and one felony count of resisting an executive officer, the district attorney’s office said. He was initially booked on suspicion of misdemeanor obstructing an officer on Friday.

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Wildfires in California and Oregon destroy homes and prompt thousands of evacuations

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Pickett fire chars Napa wine country while predicted thunderstorms add to danger of Oregon’s Flat fire

Wildfires raging in northern California wine country and central Oregon have destroyed multiple homes and threatened thousands more as hot, dry weather created challenges for firefighters battles the blazes.

Ten structures – including four homes – have been destroyed in Oregon’s Deschutes County as of Monday, where a wildfire dubbed the Flat fire continues to burn.

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Musk’s AI startup sues OpenAI and Apple over anticompetitive conduct

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Lawsuit accuses companies of ‘conspiracy to monopolize markets for smartphones and generative AI chatbots’

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI is suing OpenAI and Apple over allegations that they are engaging in anticompetitive conduct. The lawsuit, filed in a Texas court on Monday, accuses the companies of “a conspiracy to monopolize the markets for smartphones and generative AI chatbots”.

Musk had earlier this month threatened to sue Apple and OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, after claiming that Apple was “making it impossible” for any other AI companies to reach the top spot on its app store. Musk’s xAI makes the Grok chatbot, which has struggled to become as prominent as ChatGPT.

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Mexican drug lord ‘El Mayo’ pleads guilty to racketeering in New York

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Ismael Zambada was co-founder of Sinaloa cartel led by Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, now imprisoned in US

The Mexican drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges as well as running a criminal enterprise on Monday, more than a year since he was arrested in Texas after what has been described as a kidnapping.

“I recognize the great harm illegal drugs have done to the people in the United States and Mexico,” the 77-year-old Zambada said in court through a Spanish-language interpreter. “I apologize for all of it, and I take responsibility for my actions.”

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Kneecap cancel all US tour dates over clash with court hearing in London

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Band member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh faces terrorism charge in UK for alleged display of Hezbollah flag mid-performance

The Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap have cancelled their scheduled US tour dates in October, citing the proximity to a court hearing in London involving band member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh’s alleged mid-performance display of a Hezbollah flag.

Ó hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was charged with a terrorism offence in the UK in May after being accused of displaying a flag in support of Hezbollah during a concert in London last November.

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