Pact will help international students finish their studies amid Harvard’s legal battle with Trump administration
Harvard University and the University of Toronto and have announced a plan that would see some Harvard students complete their studies in Canada if visa restrictions prevent them from entering the United States.
The pact between the two schools reflects the tumultuous and “exceptional” politics of the postsecondary world during the second term of Donald Trump.
Continue reading...Federal jury awards historic damages to man who says he was sexually abused at a school run by Holy Cross order
In a historic verdict, a federal jury in New Orleans has ordered a Catholic religious order to pay nearly $2.4m in damages to a man who reported being sexually abused by one of its members in the late 1960s.
John Lousteau, 68, asserted that he was sexually abused while attending an overnight summer camp for boys at the Holy Cross school in New Orleans. He maintained that his abuser was the camp’s director, Stanley Repucci, who belonged to the Holy Cross order that ran the school.
Continue reading...Court’s conservative justices said Texas law requiring online age verification didn’t violate free expression. PornHub had gone dark in Texas in protest of the law
The US supreme court ruled that a Texas law requiring that pornography websites verify the ages of their visitors was constitutional on Friday, the latest development in a global debate over how to prevent minors from accessing adult material online.
“HB 1181 simply requires adults to verify their age before they can access speech that is obscene to children,” Clarence Thomas wrote in the court’s 6-3 majority opinion. “The statute advances the state’s important interest in shielding children from sexually explicit content. And, it is appropriately tailored because it permits users to verify their ages through the established methods of providing government-issued identification and sharing transactional data.” Elena Kagan dissented alongside the court’s two other liberal justices.
Continue reading...California governor accuses network of falsely claiming he lied about a phone call with Donald Trump
The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has sued Fox News for defamation and demanded $787m, almost exactly the same amount Fox paid in a previous defamation case over election misinformation.
In the new lawsuit, filed on Friday, Newsom accuses the Fox host Jesse Watters of falsely claiming Newsom lied about a phone call with Donald Trump, who recently ordered national guard troops into Los Angeles.
Continue reading...Judge rejects former CEO’s request to dismiss case, paving way for class action also against chair Nigel Higgins
Barclays and its former chief executive Jes Staley are facing a class action lawsuit in the US over claims they defrauded and misled investors over Staley’s relationship with the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
A judge in a Los Angeles court denied Staley’s request to dismiss the case this week, paving the way for a fresh hearing that continues a long-running legal saga emanating from Staley’s statements to regulators and investors over the nature of his ties to the disgraced financier.
Continue reading...Johnny Noviello was detained by US immigration in Florida over a 2023 conviction and died while awaiting deportation
Authorities in Canada are seeking information about the death of a 49-year-old Canadian man who died while in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody in Florida this week.
In a statement, Ice, part of the Department of Homeland Security, said Johnny Noviello, 49, died on 23 June after being found unresponsive at a federal detention center in Miami, where he was being detained “pending removal proceedings” from the US.
Continue reading...European pharmaceutical body says it would be ‘negative for both sides’ if Brussels hits back on threatened US levies
The European pharmaceutical industry has urged Brussels not to retaliate if Donald Trump brings in threatened tariffs on imported drugs, amid fears he could impose the levies as early as next week.
The US president said last week that the sector-specific tariffs were coming “very soon”. There is concern in Brussels that he could impose them imminently to give himself further leverage ahead of his self-imposed 9 July deadline for trade deals with the EU and about 60 countries.
Continue reading...US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick quoted as saying US countermeasures will be removed once US receives rare earths
The United States has reached an agreement with China on how to expedite rare earth shipments to the US, a White House official has said, amid efforts to end a trade war between the world’s biggest economies.
President Donald Trump said earlier on Thursday that the US had signed a deal with China the previous day, without providing additional details, and that there might be a separate deal coming up that would “open up” India.
Continue reading...LA police say suspects broke in through the front window, ransacked the home and fled with property
Police are investigating a break-in at a home reportedly owned by Brad Pitt, who has been on a globe-spanning promo tour for his new movie, F1, after three people allegedly “ransacked” the property.
The Los Angeles police department confirmed they responded to a break-in Wednesday night at a house on the 2300 block of North Edgemont Street in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Continue reading...President calls for passage of signature tax bill but it’s not yet clear whether Senate Republicans have sufficient votes
Donald Trump convened congressional leaders and cabinet secretaries at the White House on Thursday to make the case for passage of his marquee tax-and-spending bill, but it remains to be seen whether his pep talk will resolve a developing logjam that could threaten its passage through the Senate.
The president’s intervention comes as the Senate majority leader, John Thune, mulls an initial vote on Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” on Friday, before a 4 July deadline Trump has imposed to have the legislation ready for his signature.
Continue reading...Moyers, who served as Johnson’s press secretary for two years, became one of television’s most revered journalists
Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary who became one of television’s most honored journalists, masterfully using a visual medium to illuminate a world of ideas, died on Thursday at age 91.
Moyers died in a New York City hospital, according to longtime friend Tom Johnson, the former chief executive of CNN and an assistant to Moyers during Lyndon B Johnson’s administration.
Continue reading...Tailoring assessments to suit political prejudices undermines their very function and led us to the Iraq war
In the run-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, journalists covering the preparations for war became familiar with the concept of “stovepiping”.
The term described the tactic of pushing intelligence to key political decision makers, bypassing checks and balances within the system.
Continue reading...Decision could embolden red states in US to block clinics that provide abortions from receiving Medicaid funds
The US supreme court has paved the way for South Carolina to kick Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program over its status as an abortion provider, a decision that could embolden red states across the country to effectively “defund” the reproductive healthcare organization.
The case, Medina v Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, centers around a 2018 executive order from South Carolina’s governor, Henry McMaster, that blocked clinics that provide abortions from receiving Medicaid reimbursements. “Payment of taxpayer funds to abortion clinics, for any purpose, results in the subsidy of abortion and the denial of the right to life,” McMaster said at the time, even though the reimbursements could not be used for abortions. Abortions are also now banned in South Carolina after six weeks of pregnancy.
More details soon…
Continue reading...High-profile case enters its final stage after more than a month of testimony from 34 witnesses
Closing arguments began on Thursday morning in the federal sex-trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs, signaling the final stage of the high-profile case.
Assistant US attorney Christy Slavik began her closing argument by describing Combs as the “leader of a criminal enterprise” who “doesn’t take no for an answer”.
Continue reading...‘We should be the party of peace abroad, good jobs at home. Donald Trump took that from us,’ says congressman
In the days since Donald Trump authorized strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, and then forged a shaky ceasefire agreement, Congressman Ro Khanna has called on Democrats to reclaim a political identity he says they lost: being the party of peace.
“Now is the time for the Democratic party to be the anti-war party – the party against wars of choice,” Khanna said in an interview. “We should be the party of peace abroad, good jobs at home. Donald Trump took that from us in 2016 and 2024 and my leadership this past week has been trying to reclaim the anti-war mantle.”
Continue reading...Defense chief says US bombings degraded Iran’s nuclear sites, citing AI models over leaked intel doubts
The US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has defended the US strikes on Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities and said that Donald Trump had “decimated … obliterated” the country’s nuclear program despite initial intelligence assessments that last week’s strikes had failed to destroy key enrichment facilities and they could resume operations within just months.
But he and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, largely based that assessment on AI modeling, showing test videos of the “bunker buster” bombs used in the strikes and referred questions on a battle damage assessment of Fordow to the intelligence community.
Continue reading...Democratic socialist tells MSNBC his campaign against Cuomo shows leftist politics can thrive beyond New York
Zohran Mamdani, in his first major interview since his upset victory in the Democratic party’s mayoral primary in New York shook up US politics, said his brand of campaigning and leftist political stances can translate to anywhere in the US.
Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, stunned many observers by beating Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday night, delivering a devastating blow to the former New York governor who ran a centrist campaign backed by most of the party establishment.
Continue reading...Daniel Ervér cites ‘fast-moving situation’ as US administration has changed rules on several occasions
Clothing prices are beginning to rise in the US as Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported goods start to have an effect, according to the boss of H&M, one of the world’s biggest fashion retailers.
Daniel Ervér, the chief executive of the Swedish retailer, said: “In the US, we are starting to see some competitors increasing prices. Different competitors are acting in different ways. Some more aggressively and some more cautiously.”
Continue reading...Iran’s supreme leader says attack on US base in Qatar was ‘slap to America’s face’
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has threatened to respond to any future US attack by striking American military bases in the Middle East, in his first public comments since a ceasefire with Israel was declared.
The 86-year-old, who has not been seen in public since taking shelter in a secret location after the outbreak of the war on 13 June, said his country had “delivered a slap to America’s face” – a reference to an Iranian missile attack on a US base in Qatar on Monday, which caused no casualties.
Continue reading...Others accuse US president of interfering in Israel’s judicial system after he said case against PM was a ‘witch hunt’
Benjamin Netanyahu has thanked Donald Trump after the US president publicly called for the Israeli prime minister’s long-running corruption trial to be cancelled.
Trump on Wednesday posted a lengthy diatribe against the trial, which could lead to a prison sentence for his ally, describing a “ridiculous witch hunt” that was an “unheard of … horror show” and showering praise on Netanyahu for his leadership of Israel during the short war with Iran that was ended by a ceasefire earlier this week.
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