Police clash with a violent crowd gathered near the site of UK stabbing attack that killed 3 girls
LONDON (AP) — Far-right protesters fueled by anger and false online rumors hurled bottles and stones at police, wounding more than 20 officers Tuesday outside a northwest England mosque near where three girls were fatally stabbed a day earlier.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the “thuggery” and said the crowd had hijacked what had earlier been a peaceful vigil attended by hundreds in the center of Southport to mourn the dead and 10 surviving stabbing victims, seven of whom were in critical condition.
Police said the violent crowd that torched a police van and several cars was believed to be supporters of the English Defence League, a far-right group, and the mayhem was inspired by rumors about the identity of the teenage suspect arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.
“There has been much speculation and hypothesis around the status of a 17-year-old male who is currently in police custody and some individuals are using this to bring violence and disorder to our streets,” Merseyside Police Assistant Chief Constable Alex Goss said.
Police previously said a suspect’s name circulating on social media was incorrect and the boy was born in Britain, contrary to online claims he was an asylum seeker.
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Israel carries out rare strike on Beirut that it says killed Hezbollah commander
BEIRUT (AP) — Israel on Tuesday carried out a rare strike on Beirut, which it said killed a top Hezbollah commander who was allegedly behind a weekend rocket attack that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. The strike in the Lebanese capital killed at least one woman and two children and wounded dozens of people.
Hezbollah did not immediately confirm the commander’s death. The strike came amid escalating hostilities with the Lebanese militant group. An Israeli official said the target was Fouad Shukur, a top Hezbollah military commander whom the U.S. blames for planning and launching the deadly 1983 Marine bombing in the Lebanese capital.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the details of the strike with the media. Shukur is also suspected in other strikes that killed Israeli civilians.
Though Hezbollah issued a rare denial of involvement in the rocket attack Saturday in the town of Majdal Shams, Israel is holding the militant group responsible. “Hezbollah crossed a red line,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant posted on the platform X shortly after Tuesday’s strike.
The two sides have exchanged near-daily strikes for the past 10 months against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, but they have previously kept the conflict at a low level that was unlikely to escalate into full-on war.
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Project 2025 shakes up leadership after criticism from Democrats and Trump, but says work goes on
NEW YORK (AP) — The director of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 vision for a complete overhaul of the federal government stepped down Tuesday after blowback from Donald Trump’s campaign, which has tried to disavow the program created by many of the former president’s allies and former aides.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said Paul Dans’ exit comes after the project “completed exactly what it set out to do.” Roberts, who has emerged as a chief spokesman for the effort, plans to lead Project 2025 going forward.
“Our collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels — federal, state, and local — will continue,” Roberts said.
What started as an obscure far-right wish list is now a focal point in the 2024 campaign. Democrats for the past several months have made Project 2025 a key election-year cudgel, pointing to the ultraconservative policy blueprint as a glimpse into how extreme another Trump administration could be.
The nearly 1,000-page handbook lays out sweeping changes in the federal government, including altering personnel rules to ensure government workers are more loyal to the president. Heritage is building a database of potential new hires to staff a second Trump White House.
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Little-known paper sheets are key to declaring victory in Venezuela’s election
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela was tense on Tuesday as incumbent President Nicolás Maduro and the country’s main opposition coalition both claimed that they had won Sunday’s presidential election.
The national electoral authority proclaimed Maduro the winner. The opposition, represented, by Edmundo González said it has evidence to the contrary.
Electoral authorities installed more than 30,000 voting machines, and by law the opposition had the right to have representatives at all voting centers. But not all were allowed in Sunday or were ousted before polls closed.
After the polls close, Venezuela’s electronic voting machines can print sheets tallying all the votes each counted. Experts say the best way to clear up the dispute is to release those sheets. But the National Electoral Council has not done so.
Here’s a look at what has been said and what is known:
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At boisterous Georgia rally, Harris dares Trump to ‘say it to my face’ and debate her
ATLANTA (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris told a cheering, boisterous, packed Atlanta arena on Tuesday that the next 98 days would be a fight, but they’d win come November, as she taunted Donald Trump for wavering on whether he’d show up for their upcoming debate.
“The momentum in this race is shifting,” the likely nominee said. “And there are signs Donald Trump is feeling it.”
Little more than a week ago, Georgia appeared to be slipping out of the Democrats’ reach: President Joe Biden’s campaign pledged to concentrate more on holding the Midwestern “blue wall” states and indicated they might be willing to forsake “Sun Belt” battlegrounds. But now that Biden has bowed out of the race and Harris is the likely nominee, Democrats are expressing new hopes of an expanded electoral map.
In the state that delivered Biden his narrowest victory margin in 2020, Harris pulled off what has been a signature Trump event: A big, loud rally full of supporters cheering her name, as she mocked her rival and his running mate JD Vance as “just plain weird,” and derided their policies as backward, outdated and dangerous.
Harris mentioned Trump’s efforts to stop the passage of an immigration bill that had bipartisan support and would have been among the strongest border security in decades. She said she’d work to push the bill across the finish line. “I will bring back the border security bill that Donald Trump killed and I will sign it and show Donald Trump what real leadership looks like.”
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A speaking invitation to Donald Trump splits the most prominent American group for Black journalists
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s invitation to address the National Association of Black Journalists has sparked an intense debate within the organization and a flurry of arguments online.
Journalism organizations for people of color traditionally invite presidential candidates to address their summer gatherings during election years. But Trump’s acceptance of NABJ’s invitation has led at least one high-profile group member to step down as a convention co-chair and others to argue their convention may become a platform for Trump to make false claims or be seen as winning NABJ’s endorsement.
Trump will be interviewed at 12 p.m. CDT Wednesday in Chicago by three reporters: Kadia Goba of Semafor, Rachel Scott of ABC News and Harris Faulkner of Fox News. Vice President Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic nominee and first Black woman to hold her office, is not currently scheduled to address the convention. A person familiar with her schedule, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Harris campaign was unable to find a time to appear at NABJ in person and claimed the organization turned down an offer for her to appear virtually.
The debate over NABJ’s invite reflects how many journalists are still grappling with how to approach Trump nearly a decade after his first presidential run. Some group members argued journalists should allow newsmakers to be heard, while others pointed to Trump’s demeaning of prominent Black journalists while president and his frequent attacks on the free press, including labeling reporters “the enemy of the people.”
Trump and NABJ also have a tense history over his treatment of Black women journalists. In 2018, NABJ condemned Trump for repeatedly using words such as “stupid,” “loser” and “nasty” to describe Black women journalists including several Black journalists such as Yamiche Alcindor of NBC News; Abby Phillip of CNN; and April Ryan of The Grio.
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Acting Secret Service director says he’s ‘ashamed’ after the Trump assassination attempt
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Secret Service’s acting director told lawmakers Tuesday that he considered it indefensible that the roof used by the gunman in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was unsecured and said it was regrettable that local law enforcement had not alerted his agency before the shooting that an armed subject had been spotted on a nearby roof.
Ronald Rowe Jr. also testified that he recently visited the shooting site and laid down on the roof of the building where shots were fired in order to evaluate the gunman’s line of sight during the July 13 shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“What I saw made me ashamed. As a career law enforcement officer and a 25-year Secret Service veteran, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured,” he said.
The testimony was the most detailed catalog to date by the Secret Service of law enforcement failings and miscommunications, with Rowe accepting blame for his own agency’s mistakes while also pointedly criticizing local law enforcement for communication breakdowns that resulted in his agency not receiving information that a gunman, later identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, had been seen on the roof of a building less than 150 yards (135 meters) from the rally stage where Trump was speaking.
“Neither the Secret Service counter sniper teams nor members of the former president’s security detail had any knowledge that there was a man on the roof of the building with a firearm,” Rowe said. “It is my understanding those personnel were not aware the assailant had a firearm until they heard gunshots.”
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Tesla in Seattle-area crash that killed motorcyclist was using self-driving system, authorities say
DETROIT (AP) — Authorities in Washington have determined that a Tesla that hit and killed a motorcyclist near Seattle in April was operating on the company’s “Full Self Driving” system at the time of the crash.
Investigators from the Washington State Patrol made the discovery after downloading information from the event-data recorder on the 2022 Tesla Model S, agency spokesman Capt. Deion Glover said Tuesday.
“The investigation is still ongoing in this case,” Glover said in an email to The Associated Press. The Snohomish County Prosecutor will determine if any charges are filed in the case, he said.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said last week that “Full Self Driving” should be able to run without human supervision by the end of this year. He has been promising a fleet of robotaxis for several years. During the company’s earnings conference call, he acknowledged that his predictions on the issue “have been overly optimistic in the past.”
A message was left Tuesday seeking comment from Tesla.
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Simone Biles and Team USA earn ‘redemption’ by powering to Olympic gold in women’s gymnastics
PARIS (AP) — Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles and Sunisa Lee spent the night before perhaps the biggest gymnastics meet of their lives restless.
There was a tension in the air. They’d all been in the Olympic spotlight before, experiences that left them with medals but also the kind of scars — be they physical, psychological or both — that heal but never really go away.
And here they were in Paris, the leaders of a star-laden U.S. team everyone expected to finish atop the medal stand, and something wasn’t right.
In a different time, in a different era, it might have festered. Might have followed them onto the floor at Bercy Arena and into the history books, too.
This is not a different time. This is not a different era. This is now.
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Investigation finds at least 973 Native American children died in US government boarding schools
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — At least 973 Native American children died in the U.S. government’s abusive boarding school system, according to the results of an investigation released Tuesday by Interior Department officials who called on the government to apologize for the schools.
The investigation commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland found marked and unmarked graves at 65 of the more than 400 U.S. boarding schools where Native American children were forcibly assimilated into white society. The findings don’t specify how each child died, but officials said the causes of death included disease and abuse during a 150-year period that ended in 1969.
Additional children may have died after becoming sick at school and being sent home, officials said.
The findings follow a series of listening sessions held by Haaland over the past two years in which dozens of former students recounted harmful and often degrading treatment they endured at the hands of teachers and administrators while separated from their families.
“The federal government took deliberate and strategic action through boarding school policies to isolate children from their families, deny them their identities, and steal from them the languages, cultures, and connections that are foundational to Native people,” Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico and the country’s first Native American Cabinet secretary, said in a Tuesday call with reporters.
The Associated Press
