Texas trial, which lasted a week, drew national attention due to race, as Anthony is Black and Austin Metcalf was white
Following a trial that lasted just one week from jury selection to verdict, a Collin county, Texas, jury found Karmelo Anthony, now 19, guilty of murder in the fatal stabbing of Austin Metcalf last year.
The closely watched trial drew national attention, with viral social media posts that highlighted the racial composition of the case: Anthony is Black; Austin was white. Attorneys selected 12 jurors and six alternates for the trial; none of the jurors was Black.
The US has launched strikes against Iran after Donald Trump blamed Tehran for downing a US army helicopter near the strait of Hormuz, imperilling a shaky ceasefire that was announced by the two countries in April.
The attacks triggered a wave of retaliatory strikes from Iran on Wednesday morning, with Tehran saying it had targeted Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan.
Southern Poverty Law Center releases report as US government pursues federal fraud charges against group
A new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) finds hard-right groups have increasingly expanded their influence across the US government, which is pursuing a federal fraud case into the civil rights organization.
Tuesday’s report – which identified 1,263 hate and anti-government groups in operation throughout 2025 – comes less than two months after it was indicted by the government it says the hard right has infiltrated.
Decarlos Brown Jr to stay in custody while receiving treatment for remainder of case over Iryna Zarutska’s death
The man accused of fatally stabbing Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte commuter train in August has been found incompetent to stand trial in federal court for now, the US attorney’s office for the western district of North Carolina said on Tuesday.
Decarlos Brown Jr, 35, is accused of killing Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, on a Charlotte light rail train in a case that drew national attention after a surveillance camera video depicting the violent attack was released.
The theatrical prequel to the Duffer Brothers’ smash-hit Netflix series is to shut down in the West End and on Broadway this winter, after selling more than 1.5m tickets
The London and New York productions of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, the theatrical prequel to Netflix’s TV blockbuster, are to both close this winter. The stage spectacular will have run for just over three years in the West End, where it won two Olivier awards, and for just over 20 months on Broadway, where it won four Tony awards. The final performance at the Phoenix theatre in London will be on 27 December and the last show at the Marquis theatre in New York will be on 3 January.
The announcement, made on Tuesday, comes as a surprise considering the TV series’ phenomenal continued success. The November launch of the fifth and final season broke viewing records for an English-language series on Netflix, with 59.6m views in the first five days, and even caused the streaming service to crash within minutes of the episodes first becoming available. In February, it was widely reported that the New York stage production was being filmed for future release, but Netflix has made no such official statement.
Oysterman and marine veteran favored to win Democratic primary amid a string of controversies
Voters are headed to the polls on Tuesday for primary elections that include a crucial Senate race involving the scandal-haunted Graham Platner.
In Maine, Platner is favored to win the Democratic primary after his main opponent, former governor Janet Mills suspended her campaign. Incumbent senator Susan Collins remains safely at the top of the Republican ticket – just slightly behind newcomer Platner’s lead in polling.
Daniel Crago says he feels ‘extremely lucky’ after encounter with bear at Glacier national park last month
As the large roaring grizzly bear charged down at him from across a snow field in Montana and mauled him, hiker Daniel Crago had just enough time to put his arm up and think: “This is it.”
But two weeks after that perilous, exceedingly rare encounter in Glacier national park, Crago, 32, is still alive, recovering after three surgeries and feeling “extremely lucky”, he said on Monday in an interview with ABC News.
Luca Parmitano to pilot all-male crew of four paving way for planned first human landing of Artemis IV in 2028
Jared Isaacman, the Nasa administrator, hailed the creation of “Earth’s first starfleet” on Tuesday as he revealed the Artemis III crew and details of the next stages of the space agency’s project to return humans to the moon.
An Italian astronaut, Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency (ESA), will be the pilot of the planned two-week mission to lower Earth orbit next year that will test lunar landers from private companies Blue Origin and SpaceX.
Earthquake was region’s strongest tremor in nearly 150 years and was also felt in parts of Mexico including Cancún
An earthquake on Monday off the coast of Cuba, which was that region’s strongest tremor in nearly 150 years, could be felt in Florida and parts of Mexico.
The 6.1-magnitude earthquake, which struck in the afternoon, occurred approximately 65 miles (105km) north-west of Mantua, Cuba, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). The USGS added that the earthquake had a depth of 16 miles.
Tech company says it ‘caught and disrupted’ NSO Group’s attempts to access accounts in Jordan and Lebanon
A spyware firm has been targeting WhatsApp users with malicious links in contravention of a US court order forbidding it from doing so, Meta has said.
In a post, Meta said WhatsApp had “caught and disrupted spear phishing attempts” by NSO Group, which a spokesperson said targeted a handful of users in Jordan and Lebanon. It had also caught the group creating “test accounts and groups” on WhatsApp.
Secure America Act passes largely along party lines in 214-212 vote, ending months-long standoff with Democrats
HouseRepublicans on Tuesday approved a $70bn bill funding through the duration of his term the agencies leading Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, ending a months-long standoff with Democrats that at one point forced the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to shutter.
The Secure America Act passed in a 214-212 vote that was largely along party lines, with Kevin Kiley, an independent who aligns with the Republicans, joining all Democrats in voting no. The Senate approved the measurelast week, which allocates $38bn to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), $26bn to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and $5bn more to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through September 2029. The legislation now awaits Trump’s signature.
The US vice-president, JD Vance, asked the Department of Justice to investigate Tim Walz, his rival in the 2024 election, after a congressional report renewed allegations of inaction and retaliation over fraud schemes in Minnesota.
In the Trump administration’s latest broadside against the midwestern state and its political leaders, Vance referred Walz, its Democratic governor, and Keith Ellison, its Democratic attorney general, for investigation.
President backs Pulte for acting DNI chief despite backlash that puts reauthorization of key surveillance law at risk
Donald Trump met with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, at the White House on Tuesday as pressure mounts on the president to nominate a permanent director of national intelligence, the step some Republicans now believe is the only way to save a controversial and powerful surveillance law before it expires by the end of the week.
At stake is section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a post-9/11 authority that allows US intelligence agencies to collect the communications of foreign targets overseas without a court warrant. While the program is intended to target non-Americans abroad, it can also sweep up communications involving Americans. This powerful and contentious spy tool is set to expire at midnight on Thursday.
Police dispersed demonstrators in Nanyuki, 120 miles from Nairobi, amid rising anger at US plans
Kenyan police have shot dead a man during a protest against a proposed Ebola quarantine facility for US citizens.
Patrick Wahome, who has organised protests in Nanyuki against the centre, told Reuters on Tuesday the man died from a gunshot wound to the head. Reporters from the agency saw his body lying motionless in a police van with a large head wound.
Sharp rise in hospital visits will in turn drive up annual healthcare costs for heat-related conditions to over $1bn
People in the US are poised to endure another summer of unusually ferocious heat and there will be little respite in the years ahead, with a new study finding that the coming 15 years could see a doubling in hospitalizations due to heat-related illnesses.
The number of annual heat-related emergency department visits or hospitalizations across the US are set to rise from about 109,000 cases a year to as many as 237,000 cases by 2040, the new research has estimated.
Rights groups and some locals worry that program to ‘track illicit activity’ could become a data collection project
The Great Lakes have rarely ever been considered a hotbed of illicit drug activity or center for illegal immigration.
But that hasn’t stopped US government agencies and the company behind surveillance sailing drones from treating the region as such. The US Coast Guard recently announced it has launched an armada of at least six sailing drones in the Great Lakes this summer in an attempt to, in part, “track illicit activity”.
Vice-president JD Vance has added a chicken coop to his residence at the US Naval Observatory, the Daily Wire reports, along with a dozen baby chicks whose new henhouse is designed to look like the Victorian home where the second family lives.
The coop was built without taxpayer money, a person familiar with the project told the Associated Press. The residence hosted a family event over the weekend where local 4-H students taught other kids about the newly installed coup, the person said.
Attorney Dan Cogdell backs Paxton’s Democratic opponent and says the Republican is too focused on appeasing Trump
A lawyer who represented Ken Paxton, Texas’s attorney general, for nearly a decade over accusations of corruption and securities fraud is supporting Democrat James Talarico – and not his former client – in one of the biggest US Senate races.
Talarico on Monday drew attention to his campaign winning the endorsement of Houston attorney Dan Cogdell, who was part of Paxton’s defense team during the Republican’s historic impeachment trial in 2023 that ended in acquittal.
In an exclusive interview, Ukraine’s president says he believes the war will be won when Russian society feels its impact. Plus, why California’s election count is taking so long (hint: it’s not fraud)
In the fifth year of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine, Volodymr Zelenskyy says he is feeling upbeat and has been grateful for military support from the US, but has a pointed message for Washington.
Speaking to Luke Harding and Pippa Crerar in London, the Ukrainian president acknowledged that the priority of Trump’s second term in foreign policy had shifted away from Ukraine to conflict in the Middle East.
What did Zelenskyy say about Trump’s relationship with Putin? He carefully praised US diplomatic efforts, despite his bruising encounter in the Oval Office and the fact that Trump has been willing to meet Vladimir Putin, saying: “I always said to President Trump that Putin is lying. He plays games with you, with the White House.”
Does he see any prospect of the war ending? The military situation was the most promising it had been for Kyiv for two and a half years, Zelenskyy ssaid. “We can’t say Russia is losing this war. But we can say they are losing the initiative each day, day by day,” he added. “Victory in this war is when Russian society recognises that the war is awful, that the war is a tragedy not for someone, somewhere, but for themselves.” To that end, Zelenskyy said the purpose of long-range strikes – drones buzzing above apartment blocks in greater Moscow and St Petersburg – was to make residents “feel” what war meant.
Which other AI companies are making market moves? In addition to Anthropic, which makes the popular Claude chatbot, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which owns his artificial intelligence company xAI, is also imminently slated to go public at an expected valuation of $1.75tn.
Groff tells lawmakers ‘I am not a conspirator’ and that she had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes while working for him
Lesley Groff, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime executive assistant, testified Tuesday before the House oversight and reform committee, telling lawmakers that she had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes while working for him.
“I believe that my testimony will dispel the false notion that because of my employment with Epstein, I must have knowingly enabled or conspired with him to commit his evil acts,” Groff told lawmakers in her prepared opening remarks, obtained by the Guardian. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”