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Recent Articles
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Trump to raise US global tariff to 15 percent after Supreme Court ruling
United States President Donald Trump has doubled down on his new global tariffs, raising them from 10 percent to 15 percent, days after the Supreme Court struck down his sweeping levies on imports. The move on Saturday came as businesses and governments around the world sought repayment for the estimated $133bn that Washington has already collected. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump announced the raise “effective immediately” and said the move was based on a review of the “ridiculous, poorly written and extraordinarily anti-American decision” issued by the Supreme Court on Friday. By a six-to-three vote, the court had ruled that it was unconstitutional for Trump to unilaterally s… |
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Spielberg and Coppola and Lucas is the toxic friendship that built modern Hollywood
A new book captures how Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg went from allies to rivals, driving a filmmaking revolution in the process. By Patrick Smith Removed from bookmarks I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice George Lucas should have died. It was 1962; the 17-year-old had just crashed his yellow Autobianchi convertible into a walnut tree, in Modesto, California. The car rolled, bounced and came to rest – it was “beyond mangled, flipped upside down and twisted like a crushed Coke can against the tree”, writes Paul Fischer in his new book, The Last Kings of Hollywood: Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg and the … |
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Oil prices are skyrocketing but companies will not rush to drill in California
If you are an oil producer with wells in California and global oil prices have risen to over $100 a barrel in the last week, are you going to drill new wells? It’s a question that touches the lives of hundreds of thousands of Californians who either live near oil wells or receive royalty checks as mineral rights owners. Experts said probably not, given this state’s aging fields and the unpredictability of global prices. It’s too early for data that will show if companies have ordered more drilling rigs on their fields — known as the rig count — since the U.S. and Israel invaded Iran and sent oil prices soaring. But analysts and producers say only if prices stay above $80 for at least a year … |
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Lucy is the Woman Who Rewired America
Biography Feature Lucille Desiree Ball was born in 1911 in Jamestown, New York, into circumstances that offered little illusion of permanence, and when her father died of typhoid fever before she was four, the loss did not simply register as grief but as an early lesson in instability, a condition that would follow her for decades and quietly harden her instincts. The Ball household fractured into temporary arrangements, relatives stepped in, finances tightened, emotional certainty thinned, and Lucy learned—long before she had words for it—that security was conditional and visibility could not be assumed. Her mother remarried, the family moved, and the young Lucy developed a temperament that… |
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The assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will likely backfire
A favourite tactic of war is to try to decapitate the enemy leadership. While such strategies might work in certain contexts, in the Middle East, they have proven to be a disastrous choice. For sure, the assassination of an enemy leader might give a quick boost of popularity amid war. Certainly, United States President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are basking in the limelight of their perceived “success” in assassinating Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But killing an 86-year-old man who had already been planning his succession due to his ill health is not that much of a feat considering the overwhelming firepower that the US and Israel together possess. Mor… |
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Rail regulators accused of ignoring safety recommendations
More than 3,000 rail accidents, causing 23 deaths and nearly 1,200 injuries over the past decade, have been attributed to human error and track defects. Yet, federal railroad regulators have largely ignored most safety recommendations arising from these investigations, according to a new study. An analysis by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland reveals a powerful industry behind these failures, using its influence to thwart federal safety reforms. It is accused of actively lobbying President Donald Trump’s administration to reduce track inspection and repair requirements and loosen rules aimed at preventing crew fatigue. The center’s analysis of data … |
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Father Guns Down Mother In Front Of Daughter
A man used his vehicle to trap his former girlfriend before shooting her twice with a twelve gauge shotgun as their ten year old daughter watched, turning what began as a confrontation between former partners into a killing that has stunned the local community and left a child at the center of an unthinkable trauma. The woman had no clear path to escape once the suspect positioned his vehicle to block her movement. Witness accounts and charging documents indicate the shooting unfolded in front of the couple’s daughter, who saw her mother killed in broad daylight before emergency responders arrived at the scene. Authorities arrested the suspect shortly afterward. Prosecutors are expected to p… |
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A few Senate races will decide the future of America
Editorial The American presidency draws the cameras, the rallies, the chants. The Senate decides what survives the morning after. Long after the campaign buses pull away and the victory speeches decay into archive footage, it is the upper chamber that writes the terms of governance: who gets confirmed, which laws live or die, whether crises are met with action or theater. Control of the United States Senate is not a procedural detail. It is the difference between a country that can act and one that performs its arguments until time runs out. This election cycle is saturated with noise—culture war skirmishes, personality feuds, the endless re-litigation of the last decade. Yet the Senate map … |
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The Epstein Files and the Machinery of Forgetting
Editorial The first instinct of power, when threatened, is not denial but delay. Delay until outrage exhausts itself, until headlines thin, until the public grows bored or distracted or numb. The newly unsealed Jeffrey Epstein-related documents land in public view with the weight of something both familiar and unfinished, a reminder not merely of a disgraced financier and the crimes that orbited him, but of how expertly the machinery of forgetting has been engineered. These files do not arrive as a revelation in the cinematic sense. There is no single smoking gun, no neat moral closure. Instead, they arrive like sediment, layer upon layer of testimony, allegation, recollection, and evasion. … |
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They Married When He Was Supposed to Die
Human Interest He was dying, and it was the saddest thing for their relatives, friends, and even the hospital staff. Most of all, Arlaine, his longtime girlfriend, was with him in the hospital. They'd been together for decades before the illness. Now, the room smelled of antiseptic and overripe flowers—the kind people buy when they’re afraid they’ve waited too long. The lights were too bright, and the machines emitted steady, monotonous noises. Bendigo Davies lay flat on his back, staring at a ceiling he hadn’t chosen, while Arlaine stood beside him, holding his hand like it was the last solid thing in the room. But they looked and admired each other, the smiles hiding dreadful worry. They h… |
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LA Olympics chief Wasserman issues Maxwell apology but denies Epstein ties
Los Angeles 2028 Olympics chief Casey Wasserman has apologized for communicating with whom convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell more than 20 years ago, after the publication of a series of personal emails between the two. New files related to late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell’s former boyfriend, published by the United States Department of Justice on Friday, included flirtatious email exchanges between Wasserman, who was married at the time, and Maxwell dating from 2003. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being found guilty in 2021 by a jury in New York on charges including sex trafficking of a minor. Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting tr… |
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Dangerous Emergency Powers Are Addictive
Editorial | Feature Democracies borrow power in crises but rarely return it. Without safeguards, emergencies become permanent, eroding freedom. The Siren and the Decree It begins with a siren. A coastal city braces for a storm surge, and within hours the government issues a decree: curfews, restricted movement, suspension of normal legislative debate. Citizens line up for aid, but they also face checkpoints. The justification is clear — safety demands speed. Yet beneath the urgency lies a deeper question: when power is borrowed in the name of emergency, will it ever be returned? Part I: The Logic of Emergency Democracies are designed for deliberation. They thrive on debate, compromise, and p… |
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Man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie convicted of terrorism charges
After being found guilty of federal "terrorism" charges, a man who is already serving a jail sentence in New York for attempting to assassinate novelist Salman Rushdie is now facing the risk of spending the rest of his life behind bars. A knife attack on Salman Rushdie in 2022, which took place during a public engagement in New York, led in Rushdie being half blind. Hadi Matar, who is now 28 years old, is currently serving a sentence of 25 years for his crime. In May of the previous year, Matar was given a sentence of twenty-five years in prison. A New York jury found Matar guilty on all charges, including an effort to offer material support to Hezbollah in Lebanon, after deliberating for tw… |
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New Epstein file photos appear to show Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on floor with woman
Photos included in newly released files on pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein appear to show Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor crouched over a woman on the floor. In the undated images, the royal appears to kneel on the ground as he leans over an unidentified woman, while another angle shows the woman’s abdomen being touched. The images, among more than three million documents published by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday, have no captions and it is not known where they were taken. But they will likely put further pressure on Andrew, who has faced ongoing questions over his friendship with the late financier. The royal has always denied any wrongdoing. Other files revealed Andrew—str… |
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Trump officials have tried to justify ICE shootings
This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. Just a few hours after Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a statement that said, without evidence, that the 37-year-old registered nurse “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem would later imply Pretti had been “asked to show up and to continue to resist” by Minnesota’s governor. Multiple videos from the scene immediately undercut those claims, and there has been no indication in the days since that Pretti threatened or planned to hurt law enforcement. Several high-profil… |
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US judge blocks Trumps 2bn anti weaponization fund
A United States federal judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s nearly $1.8bn “anti-weaponisation fund” to compensate victims of alleged government “lawfare”. On Friday, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia blocked the Trump administration from “taking any further action” to set up or operate the fund while she hears legal arguments. The judge, who was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton, scheduled a June 12 hearing about whether to extend the order blocking payouts. The Department of Justice announced the fund last week as part of an agreement to settle a lawsuit brought on behalf of Donald Trump, in his personal capacity, against… |
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Convicted murderer rearrested after cutting GPS monitor
This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. Authorities have caught a convicted murderer who they say was on probation and cut off his GPS ankle monitor and disappeared while attending classes at an Orange County community college. Jose Angel Aguilar, 22, was found around 11 p.m. Thursday and taken into custody without incident after Anaheim SWAT officers executed a search warrant at a motel room where the youth had been observed, according to the Orange County Probation Department. Aguilar fled Tuesday from Santiago Canyon College while on a court-approved academic furlough from a juvenile probation facility, according to the Orange County Probation… |
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ICE Murders Unarmed Woman in Minnesota
Feature Editorial An ICE agent stepped in front of a slowly moving vehicle, raised his firearm, issued a command, and then fired multiple rounds through the windshield. One of those bullets struck Renee Nicole Good in the face. She died at the scene. She was a mother of two. She was unarmed. She was not advancing. She was moving away. Everything that follows must begin there, because everything else—press statements, procedural language, institutional reflexes—exists to blur that moment until it disappears. This editorial is not about whether law enforcement work is dangerous. It is. It is not about whether officers must sometimes make split-second decisions. They do. It is not about whether… |
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US Embassy in Baghdad attacked with missile that hits helipad
The United States Embassy in the Iraqi capital Baghdad has been hit by a missile attack that caused smoke to rise from the building. An Iraqi security source told Al Jazeera on Saturday that the attack destroyed part of its air defence system, without giving further details. A missile struck a helipad inside the US Embassy in Baghdad, two security officials told The Associated Press news agency. The projectile landed within the embassy’s boundaries in the Green Zone, the heavily fortified district in central Baghdad that houses Iraqi government institutions and foreign embassies, added the security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not authorised to speak with the pr… |
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Woman Killed by Police After She Stabs Young Boy at Walmart
Omaha police shot and killed a woman on Tuesday after they say she seized a 3-year-old kid at a Walmart and slashed him with a knife. The police named her Noemi Guzman and said she was 31 years old. According to WOWT, police say she stole a big knife from a store, accosted the boy and his guardian, and then had the guardian go ahead as she pushed the cart into the parking lot. Deputy Chief Scott Gray says she "took the child, which is basically kidnapping the child." Police claim the two ladies "talked back and forth" for a few minutes before officers got to the scene after getting a 911 call. Police said that officers told Guzman to drop the knife many times. According to the AP, Gray then … |