News And Current Events

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he is considering “taking away” the U.S. citizenship of a longtime rival, actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a decades-old Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits such an action by the government.

“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday. He added that O’Donnell, who moved to Ireland in January, should stay in Ireland “if they want her.”

...

But O’Donnell’s situation is notably different from Musk, who was born in South Africa. O’Donnell was born in the United States and has a constitutional right to U.S. citizenship. The U.S. State Department notes on its website that U.S. citizens by birth or naturalization may relinquish U.S. nationality by taking certain steps – but only if the act is performed voluntary and with the intention of relinquishing U.S. citizenship.

Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, noted the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the Fourteen Amendment of the Constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.

“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born U.S. citizen,” Frost said in an email Saturday. “In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”

Gali Baharav-Miara calls meeting with law enforcement to review police summons for questioning of TV legal reporter Aviad Glickman over press freedom concerns

https://www.timesofisrael.com/ag-postpones-investigation-into-journalist-who-allegedly-shoved-sara-netanyahu-aide/

"The situation is very catastrophic because the electricity will abruptly go off within 24 hours," one doctor warned.

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/gaza/gaza-israel-babies-fuel-hospital-at-risk-blockade-rcna218201

https://www.gbnews.com/news/london-news-harrow-council-parks-trees-warm-weather

https://apnews.com/article/state-department-layoffs-trump-administration-rubio-6a74fb3eee36982deef261b4f9b8799d

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2025/07/11/microsoft-outlook-down-outage-update/84554799007/

An Israeli strike killed 15 people, including women and children, gathered outside a health center in the central Gazan city of Deir Al Balah on Thursday, according to medical staff and officials in the enclave.

The Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza said eight of those killed in the strike were children, with the youngest two years old, and the oldest aged 14. It said three women and four men were also killed.

In footage obtained by CNN, several children were seen lying motionless and others appeared injured amid the sound of screams. Another video showed several children, bloodied and lying motionless, being transported on a cart.

The Israeli military said it was targeting a Hamas militant who took part in the group’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.

“The (Israel Defense Forces) is aware of reports regarding a number of injured individuals in the area. The incident is under review. The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and operates to minimize harm as much as possible,” the Israeli military said in a statement to CNN.

President Donald Trump told NBC on Thursday he struck a deal with NATO for the US to send weapons to Ukraine through the alliance, and that NATO will pay for those weapons “a hundred percent.”

“We’re sending weapons to NATO, and NATO is paying for those weapons, a hundred percent,” the president told NBC News’ Kristen Welker in a phone interview Thursday. “We’re going to be sending Patriots to NATO, and then NATO will distribute that,” he said, according to NBC News.

CNN has reached out to NATO for comment.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte spoke to Trump earlier Thursday. “Earlier today I urged leaders to go further so Ukraine has more ammunition & air defences,” Rutte posted on X. “I’ve just spoken with President Trump & am now working closely with Allies to get Ukraine the help they need.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said earlier Thursday that the United States is “actively” talking to countries in Europe about sharing Patriot batteries with Ukraine.

“There are other Patriot batteries and there are other opportunities. Countries that have ordered Patriot batteries that are about to receive shipments of them, it’d be great if one of them volunteered to defer that shipment and send it to Ukraine instead,” Rubio told reporters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, after meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Russia pummelled Ukraine Wednesday with its largest missile and drone attack in more than three years of war, hours after US President Donald Trump launched an expletive-filled attack on Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

AFP journalists in Kyiv heard explosions ringing out and drones buzzing over the capital during the barrage after air raid sirens sounded.

The air force said Russia fired 728 drones and 13 missiles, specifying that its air defence systems intercepted 711 drones and destroyed seven missiles.

The strike, which officials said killed one civilian in the Khmelnytsky region, beat a previous Russian record of 550 drones and missiles fired at Ukraine on one day last week.

"This is a telling attack -- and it comes precisely at a time when so many efforts have been made to achieve peace, to establish a ceasefire, and yet only Russia continues to rebuff them all," President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.

Zelensky, who met Pope Leo XIV and US special envoy Keith Kellogg on a visit to Rome, called for Ukraine's allies to step up sanctions on Russia, particularly on its key energy sector.

Following his meeting with Kellogg, the Ukrainian leader urged US lawmakers to pass a bill targeting Russia with tougher sanctions.

PKK fighters were to begin laying down their weapons at a ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan Friday, two months after the Kurdish rebels ended their decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish state.

The disarmament ceremony marks a turning point in the transition of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) from armed insurgency to democratic politics, as part of a broader effort to draw a line under one of the region's longest-running conflicts.

Founded in the late 1970s by Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK took up arms in 1984, beginning a string of bloody attacks on Turkish soil that sparked a conflict that cost more than 40,000 lives.

But more than four decades on, the PKK in May announced its dissolution, saying it would pursue a democratic struggle to defend the rights of the Kurdish minority in line with a historic call by Ocalan, who has been serving a life sentence in Turkey since 1999.

President Donald Trump late Thursday threatened a 35% tariff on goods imported from Canada, a dramatic escalation in an on-again, off-again trade war with America’s northern neighbor and one of its most important trading partners.

And, in a separate NBC News interview, he suggested blanket tariffs on other US trading partners will jump, as well.

The Thursday actions are the latest examples of a whipsaw policy that’s left investors, trading partners, businesses and everyday Americans alike scrambling to make plans even as the economic ground shifts not just from week to week but in some cases from hour to hour.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the new tariffs, set to take effect August 1, would apply to all Canadian goods or if Trump’s threat applied only to the limited number of goods on which the United States currently levies tariffs.

“Throughout the current trade negotiations with the United States, the Canadian government has steadfastly defended our workers and businesses,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement to X.

“We will continue to do so as we work towards the revised deadline of August 1.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had gotten the ball rolling on this Monday by signaling he had nominated Trump, and nobody was about to disagree.

“I can guarantee you that Mauritania would never be opposed to President Trump receiving a Nobel Peace Prize,” said the president of that country, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, during a lunch at the White House.

“Of course we are” supportive of Trump winning the prize, Guinea-Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embaló said.

Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye called it “a deserved prize.”

“I think that President Trump deserves it for all the efforts that he’s worked on,” Gabonese President Brice Oligui Nguema said. Nguema cited a peace deal the Trump administration has brokered between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.

Never mind that we have no idea how real that deal actually is, and that Trump has failed to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, as he promised to do upon taking office. And never mind that Trump, in the same event Wednesday, displayed a striking lack of familiarity with the African continent. (He didn’t even seem to know that English was the national language of Liberia, praising its president for his ability to speak it and asking where he studied.)

Never mind all that. Trump was pleased.

“I didn’t know I’d be treated this nicely,” Trump said. “This is great. We could do this all day long.”

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened Brazil with a crippling tariff of 50% starting August 1, according to a letter he sent to the country’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

In the letter posted on Truth Social, Trump alleged Lula is undertaking a “Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!” over charges against its right-wing former president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro, who has bragged about his closeness with Trump, is facing trial for allegedly attempting to stage a coup against Lula.

Lula vowed to reciprocate if Trump follows through with his threat.

“Brazil is a sovereign nation with independent institutions and will not accept any form of tutelage,” Lula said in a post on X.

“Any measure to increase tariffs unilaterally will be responded to in light of Brazil’s Law of Economic Reciprocity,” he added.

This marks the first time in months another country has threatened to match Trump’s tariff threat.

Brazil exported $40.4B worth of the goods to the US last year, with crude oil topping the list.

Russia aims to recruit up to 1 million Indian workers in 2025 to offset domestic labor shortages created by the deployment of Russian men to the war in Ukraine, according to Andrei Besedin, head of the Ural Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Experts supporting the parents of children with special education needs have told LBC they are aware of ‘an alarming trend’ in cease-and-desist letters being sent to those trying to get a support plan in place for their child.

LBC has heard claims of schools and local authorities using legal firms ‘to deter, frighten and punish’ special educational needs and disability (SEND) advocates and parents who are trying to obtain documents relating to their child’s care or asking questions in relation to their child’s Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) - the legal document outlining what support their child is entitled to.

Mike Charles, a senior director at Sinclairs Law, which specialises in Education Law and Special Educational Needs, told LBC the use of cease-and-desist letters is an ‘alarming trend’ and “a direct attack on access to justice”.

“It makes people think that they're doing something terribly wrong. It makes them think that they might face some kind of regulatory action. It makes them think that they might be sued or taken to court. It's extremely frightening and it discourages, in my view, participation."

“It's quite a chilling effect."

Rio Ruidoso rises 5 feet above previous record, governor signs emergency declaration

https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-mexico-flooding-leaves-3-dead-fast-moving-water-sweeps-through-mountain-resort-town

Israel is preparing to establish a so-called “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where the Palestinian enclave’s entire population is to be moved, the country’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has announced. Critics of the initiative promptly branded the “city” an internment camp and warned of potentially widespread human rights abuse.

The “humanitarian city” is expected to initially accommodate some 600,000 Palestinians – primarily displaced persons living in the coastal Mawasi area to the northwest of Rafah, Katz told reporters on Monday. Eventually, all of the estimated 2.2 million Gazans will be placed into the “city,” which is to be secured by the Israeli military from a distance and run by unspecified international organizations, the minister stated.

The Palestinians will undergo screening before being placed into the “city” to ensure no Hamas operatives slip in, Katz noted. The scheme is ultimately designed to displace the entire Gaza population and encourage it to “voluntarily emigrate” from the enclave elsewhere, the minister admitted. Those who end up in the zone will not be allowed to return to other parts of Gaza, he added.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has criticized the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank for what he described as a deeply unbalanced distribution of financial aid, citing data that shows Ukraine has received more support in recent years than the entire African continent.

Speaking at the 17th BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Lavrov argued that the current structure of global financial institutions, established under the Bretton Woods system, disproportionately benefits Western-aligned countries at the expense of other developing nations.

“This has been most clearly demonstrated in the case of Ukraine,” Lavrov said, noting that the scale of financial assistance provided to Kiev exceeds all IMF and World Bank funding for the nations of Africa combined over the past two years. He called the disparity a “disgraceful statistic” that undermines the credibility of both institutions.

According to Lavrov, the World Bank has committed $54 billion to Ukraine since early 2022, twice as much as the annual volumes allocated to all Africa countries by Bretton Woods institutions. He also cited the IMF’s approval in 2023 of a $15.6 billion loan to Ukraine, equivalent to 577% of the country’s quota.

Russian officials have sounded the alarm over what they claim is an intelligence-gathering scheme disguised as a patriotic photo contest, orchestrated by foreign spy agencies. A counter-disinformation group has suggested that Ukraine is behind the scheme.

In a statement issued on Monday, a regional branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB) warned the public that online advertisements promoting contests could be traps aimed at drawing individuals into illegal activities.

The FSB cited a supposed contest in which organizers requested high-quality photos of bridges, railway junctions, and industrial facilities. Officials said the true intent of the project was “the collection of intelligence on infrastructure and its transfer to a foreign intelligence service at the expense of Russian security.”

Russian media outlets identified an online post believed to have prompted the warning. They noted several signs suggesting the contest was suspicious – beginning with a typo in the word “contest,” possibly indicating the use of AI in its creation. Organizers also failed to publish detailed rules or obtain formal consent to process personal data, both of which are required under Russian law.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article310155150.html

Tren de Aragua gangster has 'congenital deficiency' that could have rendered him mentally unfit, lawyers argue.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/justice-for-laken-riley-at-risk-shocking-court-decision-could-give-vicious-killer-a-new-trial

The United Nations, human rights groups and some scholars have condemned the idea of removing people from their homeland in the Gaza Strip.

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/israel/trump-netanyahu-gaza-relocation-palestinians-rcna217418

It's probably nothing.

https://gizmodo.com/doj-releases-video-of-jeffrey-epsteins-jail-cell-but-theres-a-minute-missing-2000625372

Trump continued expresses frustration with Putin while ordering defensive weapons shipments to war-torn country

https://www.foxnews.com/world/us-have-to-send-weapons-ukraine-trump-says-days-after-pentagon-pause

https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/watch-wild-philadelphia-shootout-that-left-3-dead-caught-on-doorbell-camera/