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Republicans senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul voted in favor of the motion to prevent Trump from continuing hostilities against Iran

US government, which owes legal services firm $65m, stopped paying in December, as contract runs out FridayCurrent and former prosecutors are denouncing the Trump administration for fast-tracking the deportation of immigrant children, as a key contract for legal services is set to expire on Friday.A series of federal laws has for decades shielded child immigrants from removal, either to protect their safety or to allow them to testify against abusers or human traffickers. Continue reading...

Officers in murder trial testify of arriving at Massachusetts home after anguished 911 call from Patrick ClancyThe two police officers focused first on Lindsay Clancy drifting in and out of consciousness in the snow after jumping from her Massachusetts home's second-floor window in January 2023. Within minutes, they were racing into the basement after her then husband screamed that all three of their children were dead.I can't wake them up - I can't get them up!" Patrick Clancy frantically told the officers who, along with firefighters and paramedics, gave jurors first-hand accounts on Thursday of the aftermath. Continue reading...

Mayor announces resignation of Shon Barnes after city officials faced criticism over response to Sunday shootingSeattle's police chief has resigned amid criticism of the city's response to a fatal shootout at a food festival last weekend, Katie Wilson, the mayor, said on Thursday.The announcement followed hours of speculation about whether Shon Barnes would step down, as some of his supporters said he had rebuffed Wilson's request that he resign. Continue reading...

State department takes full responsibility' for erroneous, widely shared chart displayed at Aids conference in BrazilA US government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a state department presentation at a global conference in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attenders who took screenshots and posted them online.Reuters viewed a video of the presentation given at the Aids 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro, which shows the errant map displayed halfway during a presentation about the state department's new health agreements. Continue reading...

Former lieutenant governor says path to Democratic nomination no longer viable as democratic socialist rival surges aheadMandela Barnes, the former lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, dropped out of the Democratic primary for governor on Thursday, upending the high-stakes contest less than two weeks before the 11 August election.Barnes announced the decision in a video posted on social media, saying he no longer saw a viable path to the nomination, as democratic socialist Francesca Hong surged ahead with a commanding lead. Continue reading...

Kathryn Ruemmler was blasted by family of late Virginia Giuffre after House committee transcripts were released

Republican senators sought written limits on settlement, but president held firm despite risk to attorney general pick

Vast majority of farm workers say raids and deportations have affected their jobs and 61% report shopping less

Measure fails 49-50 as US launches new retaliatory attacks in Iran and lawmakers question the prolonged conflict

Ohio representative is accused by his ex-wife and ex-girlfriend of abuse as he campaigns for re-election

Donations to top US provider have dropped to four-year summer low with less than a day's supply of type O positiveThe American Red Cross has declared the second-ever national blood supply crisis after blood donations fell to a four-year summer low.On Monday, the 145-year-old non-profit said that as the United States' largest single provider of blood products, it now has less than one-day national supply of type O positive blood - the most commonly transfused blood. Continue reading...

President says he has no objection to pulling his former lawyer's name until dissenting Republicans are out of office

We'd like to hear from Black Americans who are using artificial intelligence for health or spiritual guidanceArtificial intelligence is growing in influence in the healthcare space, and more people are seeking guidance from AI tools, including AI-generated social media influencers. Black people in the US, who have been long subject to racism in the healthcare system, are among some of those who are leaning on AI for health-related matters and information.We would like to hear from Black respondents about their experiences with Black AI-generated health and spiritual influencers. Continue reading...

Eric Washington was known for knocking on doors, connecting residents with services and believing Compton could changeAnyone who knew Eric Washington knew that he had two great loves in his life: his mother and the Los Angeles Rams football team.Washington was shot and killed on 4 July alongside Meah Bordenave-Jenkins, a 19-year-old aspiring nurse, while at a block party in Compton, California. With his death, the Los Angeles region lost a homegrown community organizer who worked in the city and county's most underserved neighborhoods. Continue reading...

Lawmakers question delays in medical care, casualty figures and Pentagon's handling of drone attack in Kuwait

First US pope says mission is to be pastor of a universal church but expresses great love' for his home country and its core principlesPope Leo, the first US pontiff, has expressed great love" for his home country and its core principles of freedom, opportunity and welcoming immigrants, but qualified that he just happens to be American".In an interview with the US broadcaster NBC on the sidelines of a prayer event in Castel Gandolfo, the papal retreat near Rome, Leo, who has condemned the immigration policies of Donald Trump's administration, spoke about his own family history in describing his relationship with the US. Continue reading...

Trump's overall approval rating slumps to 34%, according to new CNN poll, as midterms testing Republican power loomThree-quarters of Americans believe Donald Trump is not paying enough attention to the country's most important problems, and two-thirds think he places himself above the needs of the US, according to a new poll.The CNN survey, conducted by the market research company SSRS, comes less than 100 days before November's midterm elections in which the president's Republican party is widely expected to lose control of one or both chambers of Congress. Continue reading...

Father of 10-year-old rescued in a dramatic scene captured on video says lifeguard saved his son

A century ago, compounding pharmacies helped people get bespoke drugs. Now under RFK Jr, these less-regulated businesses are fueling the peptide boomRobert F Kennedy Jr is sitting stiffly in Joe Rogan's podcast studio, inside the influencer's enormous Texas mansion. Atypically for Rogan's guests, Kennedy still cloaks himself in the trappings of authority; in a blue suit and pink novelty tie featuring kayakers paddling upstream, he is a stark contrast from Rogan, who sports a biceps-hugging T-shirt depicting a cowboy and an outline of Texas, from the regenerative wellness" brand Ways2Well.This was in February, when Kennedy, amid his nationwide Take Back Your Health tour, was pushing his new red-meat-heavy food pyramid on to Americans. For an hour and a half, the two chatted casually about everything from soda pop to medical scams that supposedly fund Boko Haram. Continue reading...

The conservative columnist Ross Douthat is the network's latest perplexing hire - but the move is in line with the new leadershipIn media circles, this week's hire of a prominent New York Times columnist as a correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes was greeted with disbelief.The collective response went something like this: What?!" Continue reading...

Live, rolling coverage of business, economics and financial markets as three members of monetary policy committee vote to raise ratesThat German GDP reading has indeed contributed to the wider eurozone hitting expectations - and then some.The eurozone economy grew by 0.4% in the second quarter of 2026, according to the preliminary reading from Eurostat - defying the gloom caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. Continue reading...

Democrat Kaohly Her, Minnesota's city's first female mayor, allegedly sent inappropriate messages to employeesThe first female mayor of St Paul, Kaohly Her, is reportedly under investigation for sexual harassment following a complaint filed by the Minnesota city's police chief.City leaders have contracted an outside law firm to conduct an independent inquiry into the allegations that Her, a Democrat who was elected in November, sent inappropriate messages to employees, including several members of the police department, the New York Times and NBC News said. Continue reading...

Consumer spending remained resilient even as policymakers kept interest rates on holdThe US economy expanded at a sluggish 1.5% pace from April through June as rising imports weighed on growth. But consumer spending rose. And the Federal Reserve's favored measure of inflation grew more slowly last month, but remained above the central bank's 2% target.The commerce department reported on Thursday that growth in US gross domestic product (GDP) - the nation's output of goods and services - decelerated from 2.1% in the first three months of 2026 and came in below economists' expectations. Continue reading...

Gianni Infantino's plan for a Fifa subsidiary is odious - but it's hard to feel surprisedJust when you thought global soccer couldn't get more odiously capitalistic, Gianni Infantino said: Hold my beer" (as long as that beer you're holding is a Michelob Ultra, one of the official sponsors of the 2026 World Cup).The World Cup, one of the largest and most prestigious sporting competitions on the planet, is for sale. Infantino, the president of the soccer governing body Fifa, is the architect of a plan to sell up to 20% of a new subsidiary that would administer tournaments such as the World Cup and Club World Cup. The subsidiary, which would oversee Fifa's commercial activities, would be called Fifa Forward Enterprises". If I see the word forward" in a corporate initiative, I assume it's either a diversity program that'll get dropped after a couple years, a training video on how to exit a building during an emergency evacuation, or a blatant cash grab. Take a guess which one I think this is. Continue reading...

Spoilt food smelling like dead body' plagues residents after weeklong fire, yet company asks permission to rebuildOne month after a huge fire ravaged a Los Angeles warehouse and doomed neighbors to a persistent, thick stench of rotting food, the facility's owners have filed applications to rebuild.That request to restore the warehouse - which residents called a ticking bomb" after a similar fire at the building in 2024 - was publicly criticized by the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, in a post on social media earlier this week. Continue reading...

Federal Reserve votes to hold its key interest rate steady, sending stocks tumbling. Plus: the origins of Coca-Cola may have been foundGood morning. US government borrowing costs have hit their highest level since 2007 after the Federal Reserve voted to hold its key interest rate steady, feeding fears it may not move fast enough to tame a rise in inflation. Kevin Warsh, the central bank's chair, said the Fed would not waver" in its commitment to tackling rising prices.The decision to leave rates on hold has spooked investors, who are worried about the US economy's ability to absorb a rise inflation, triggered by Donald Trump's war in Iran. US inflation cooled to an annual rate of 3.5% in June after Washington and Tehran agreed a brief ceasefire - but this has since ended. US stocks fell sharply on Wednesday, with the blue chip S&P 500 index closing down 1.5%. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 2.2% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 1.7%. Continue reading...

Tensions in the national party are trickling down to US college campuses, where a newer student group is rapidly outflanking longstanding moderate rivalsWhen the Utah county clerk's office announced last month that it was hiring Kai Schwemmer - an undergraduate at Brigham Young University and a rightwing influencer - to help reach younger voters, an uproar ensued.An energetic and fast-talking 23-year-old, Schwemmer is a rising star of campus organizing at the College Republicans of America (CRA). He is also a prolific livestreamer with a record of provocation - which returned to haunt him when more than 80 prominent women in Utah signed a letter protesting against his hiring. Continue reading...

Americans are facing a deepening affordability crisis but at least Trump and co have ... 250 new Cadillac Escalades

Black voters in south motivated to turn out by Republican push to redraw maps after supreme court rulingA new analysis of Black voters in the south indicates that Republican attempts to dilute their political power is driving them to the polls in larger numbers and shifting their counties further left.After the supreme court effectively gutted section 2 of the Voting Rights Act protections in late April, Republican legislatures across the south rapidly pushed to disenfranchise Black voters by redrawing congressional maps. Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama all immediately worked to pass new maps, while the Mississippi governor has said that he wants legislators to redraw maps before the upcoming midterm elections. Continue reading...

To understand the experience of life, don't look to the mind. Look to the bodyIn a 1982 article, the American feminist scholar Elizabeth Spelman coined the term somatophobia" to describe the strange human delusion that we are minds rather than bodies.Forty years later, artificial intelligence is everywhere, offering the most powerful illusion yet that intelligence can exist without flesh. Two-thirds of people surveyed in a recent study believe that tools like ChatGPT possess some consciousness and feeling. We are living in the age of somatophobia. Now is the moment to resist it. Continue reading...

Bank's chair pledges to keep up fight against inflation but decision brings fears of a failure to keep pace

Losing funds should force leaders to confront their own challenges, they said, while many voiced concerns over increasing foreign influenceA quarter of young Africans believe aid cuts by the US could have a positive impact, saying that losing foreign money will force leaders to confront and solve their own challenges, according to a new survey.In Ghana and Nigeria, almost half (41% and 40% respectively) of young people aged 18 to 24 were optimistic, with Liberia not far behind (37%). A further one in 10 (11%) young people were uncertain about the impact, according to the African Youth Survey, which interviewed almost 5,000 people across 16 of the continent's 54 recognised countries. Continue reading...

US former top health official, who was subpoenaed to appear at a Senate hearing into Covid-19, says Markson's reporting about virus's origin does not make any sense'

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Republican John Cornyn says he will not back nomination without written confirmation $1.8bn slush fund is deadTodd Blanche's hopes of becoming US attorney general seemed to be in jeopardy on Wednesday after the Department of Justice did not provide written assurances to a key Republican senator that a $1.8bn slush fund was dead.The US Senate judiciary committee postponed a vote scheduled for Thursday on whether to advance Blanche's nomination. Continue reading...

Police link shooting to gang violence but have not said who might have fired bullets that killed bystanders on SundayBullets that fatally struck two bystanders during a shootout at a Seattle food festival last weekend do not appear to have come from the gun that a 15-year-old arrested at the scene was firing, police said in court documents filed on Wednesday.The teen sprayed an untraceable ghost gun" into a crowd, authorities say. Preliminary ballistics testing did not match the bullets recovered from the deceased bystanders to that weapon. Continue reading...

Longtime Epstein associate serving 20-year sentence for sex-trafficking crimes has exhausted series of appealsThe US Senate on Wednesday unanimously passed a resolution declaring its opposition to any presidential pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes.Introduced by Senator Jacky Rosen, a Democrat of Nevada, the resolution states that Maxwell should not be granted a Presidential pardon or any form of clemency for her crimes with Jeffrey Epstein relating to the sexual exploitation and abuse of minors". Continue reading...

Rates remain unchanged for fifth time since December as tenuous Iran peace deal pushes energy prices up againThe US Federal Reserve held interest rates steady on Wednesday in a divided vote, indicating growing pressure on the central bank to address heightened inflation.The Fed's federal open market committee voted 9-3 to maintain rates, with three dissenting members indicating a preference to raise the rate by a quarter-percentage point. It was the first time in a decade that three board members shared dissent over a policy decision. Continue reading...

Planned overhaul forms part of president's broader pattern of directing changes in Washington after arch and ballroomDonald Trump announced on Wednesday a $22bn plan to rebuild Washington's Dulles international airport on Wednesday after the US president personally weighed in on the design of the capital's main international gateway.In the end, you can end up with - I think - maybe the best airport, and one of the biggest airports, anywhere in the world, and it's going to be a great thing for Washington DC," the president said during an announcement at the Oval Office on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Six years on from Covid crisis, Republicans still politicizing science - and Fauci remains a political punching bagA US Senate committee hearing featuring Dr Anthony Fauci revealed at least one certainty: six years after the pandemic, politicizing science remains a vital political tactic.The high-profile hearing was pitched by its Republican chair, Rand Paul of Kentucky, as an investigation into the origins of the Covid pandemic. It quickly became a forum for recrimination of a once-leading US government scientist by Republican senators. Continue reading...

Report on Interlochen Center for the Arts details sexual allegations against 47 faculty and staff members since 1950sTwo people who attended a prestigious Michigan fine arts school reported conduct of a sexual nature by Jeffrey Epstein, a major donor, according to an investigation that also uncovered dozens of allegations spanning decades against nearly 50 other people.Interlochen Center for the Arts operates a summer camp and performing arts school that draws students from around the world. It hired a law firm in 2024 to investigate reports of sexual abuse by faculty and staff. Subsequently, it expanded the work to include information about Epstein, the 66-year-old financier who killed himself in jail in 2019. Continue reading...

Adviser to Trump and Biden for pandemic says Republican senator has unhinged obsession' with him

Fifa's president hopes to sell stakes in the planet's most watched sporting event. In the wider interests of football, he must be resistedLike a sporting Dr Pangloss, Fifa's president, GianniInfantino, would like to persuade football followers that they are living in the best of all possible worlds. Maddeningly for him, many disagree. On Monday, Mr Infantino published a 15-page Instagram rant in which he bemoaned the hate and false rumours" in circulation during the recent men's World Cup. White House interference over a crucial refereeing decision, prohibitive ticket prices, unnecessary but lucrative hydration breaks; it was all, as his best friend in politics, Donald Trump, would say, fake news".But where the president of world football's governing body sees haters, others see lovers of the game rightly concerned over where he is taking it. On Tuesday, Fifa confirmed that it hopes to sell stakes in the World Cup and other tournaments to private investors who may include Joshua Kushner, the brother of MrTrump's son-in-law Jared. The investors would buy into a new $20bn company, Fifa Forward Enterprise, which would sell all of Fifa's commercial rights, including ticketing, and take charge of operational delivery" of World Cups.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Lawyers for Massachusetts mother say she was in throes of postpartum psychosis amid January 2023 tragedyMore than three years after a Massachusetts mother strangled her three young children, her former husband described returning home to the aftermath and a jury listened on Wednesday to his frantic 911 call, as her lawyers seek to prove she was in the grip of post-pregnancy psychosis.Lindsay Clancy, 35, admits she killed her children in January 2023 while her then husband was on an errand away from their home in the Boston suburb of Duxbury. Her attorney says she was driven by postpartum mental illness and a jury cannot find she intentionally murdered the children. Continue reading...

James Comey's lawyers say Secret Service illegally tracked him to develop case around his 8647' seashell postLawyers for former FBI director James Comey alleged on Tuesday that US Secret Service agents illegally surveilled Comey, Donald Trump requested regular updates into the investigation, and law enforcement turned to ChatGPT and a known mafia killer as they scrambled to find justification for criminally charging Comey for posting a picture of seashells that spelled out 8647".The claims were laid out in a motion to dismiss a criminal case the US Department of Justice filed against Comey in April, in which it said the post by Comey - whom Trump fired in his first term - was a threat on the US president's life. Continue reading...

Fifa president Gianni Infantino has announced plans to sell off stakes in the World Cup to private investors in a new commercial entity worth $20bn. One of the leading would-be investors is Joshua Kushner, brother of Trump's son-in-law Jared.The plans have prompted an immediate backlash - with Uefa accusing Fifa of trying to sell football's soul'. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian reporter Paul MacInnes - watch on YouTube Continue reading...