Latest US news, breaking news and current affairs coverage from theguardian.com
The luxury property surge fuels growth in Miami, but a poll finds many residents weighing an exit over housing and living costs
To a casual observer, everything in south Florida’s real estate garden is looking rosy. There’s a “gold rush” in Miami as ultra-wealthy buyers snap up mega-mansions and luxuriously appointed condos as soon as they hit the market; and the Guardian has also reported recently on the “Mamdani effect” of elite New Yorkers arriving in the sunshine state with bulging pocketbooks in search of a high-priced escape from the city’s new mayor.
Yet alongside the boom, there are rumblings of a more troubling parallel reality. Undoubtedly, the billionaire class is helping to pump even more dollars into an already thriving Florida economy. But as prices rise and the less affluent find everything from housing and insurance to gas and groceries increasingly expensive, many are considering doing something about it.
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Tommy Thompson refused to give up the location of 500 missing coins found in 1988 in a historic shipwreck
A US treasure hunter who was imprisoned for 10 years after refusing to reveal the location of missing gold coins has been released from prison, without officials apparently ever learning where that gold is.
Tommy Thompson – a renowned salvager who in 1988 found the long-lost, so-called Ship of Gold near South Carolina – was freed from federal prison on 4 March, records and reports recently indicated.
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Jewish and Arab American leaders decry violence at Temple Israel, but US-Israel war on Iran complicates healing
Jewish and Arab American leaders across Detroit and the US strongly condemned the 12 March terrorist attack on a Michigan synagogue and largely aimed to lower tensions against the backdrop of the US and Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Iran.
But in Michigan, where large populations of Arab Americans and Jews live near one another, the complexities of the situation can be difficult to grapple with – and few people had easy or quick answers on how to move forward.
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Bill faces constitutional hurdles as previous abortion bans were struck down by state supreme court in January
Wyoming’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a six-week abortion ban this week, prompting a new lawsuit and some lawmakers to call it “an insult to voters and our institution”.
Mark Gordon, Wyoming’s governor, signed the bill while simultaneously warning of its constitutional hurdles, noting that prior abortion bans were struck down by the state’s all Republican-appointed supreme court this January. Almost immediately, an identical set of plaintiffs filed suit against the new bill.
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From Gaza to Iran, the pattern is the same: precision weapons, chosen blindness, and dead children. The cost of failing to regulate AI warfare is already too high
There is an Israeli military strategy called the “fog procedure”. First used during the second intifada, it’s an unofficial rule that requires soldiers guarding military posts in conditions of low visibility to shoot bursts of gunfire into the darkness, on the theory that an invisible threat might be lurking.
It’s violence licensed by blindness. Shoot into the darkness and call it deterrence. With the dawn of AI warfare, that same logic of chosen blindness has been refined, systematized, and handed off to a machine.
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The American propelled ahead of frontrunner Michael Kimani Kamau by a fraction of a second
In the final moments of the Los Angeles marathon last weekend, the announcers were already narrating frontrunner Michael Kimani Kamau’s finish when Nathan Martin suddenly propelled forward, shocking newscasters and spectators.
The 36-year-old Martin prevailed in a single stride, stepping across the finish line an almost imperceptible fraction of a second before Kamau and becoming the first Black American to win the contest. He had challenged himself in the final miles of the race to keep putting his all into it, despite physical exhaustion, and finished the 26.2-mile race in 2 hours, 11 minutes and 18 seconds.
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Suspects accused of throwing explosive devices at rightwing anti-Islam protesters as tensions rise across US
Early on Monday afternoon, two teens in white plastic jumpsuits were escorted into a Manhattan federal courtroom. Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, who were shackled and handcuffed, quietly took their seats at the defense table.
If not for the metal restraints and jail garb, Balat, 18, and Kayumi, 19, could have been any number of young men who carry themselves with an aura of discomfort about their place in America.
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Records show DHS tech incubator spending large sums on partnerships that would expand surveillance capabilities
Hacked data from the Department of Homeland Security’s technology incubator shows it funding a variety of companies that would expand its surveillance capabilities with artificial intelligence, the Guardian can reveal.
The projects at the Office of Industry Partnership (OIP) include automated surveillance in airports; adapters allowing agents to use phones for biometric scanning; and an AI platform that ingests all 911 call data nationally and builds “geospatial heat maps” to “predict incident trends”, which appears to be a form of predictive policing.
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Colossal Biosciences’ CEO says its work follows a ‘moral obligation’ while critics say it’s ‘tech bro’ hype that could undermine conservation
Can and should we resurrect animal species that have been extinct for thousands of years? Such weighty, existential questions were once the preserve of science fiction but are now being played out within an unassuming brick building in a Dallas business park.
Colossal Biosciences, valued at $10.2bn after raising hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from investors including celebrities spanning from Tiger Woods to Paris Hilton, has provoked a stampede of acclaim as well as denunciation after announcing last year it had made the dire wolf, a species lost from the world for more than 10,000 years, “de-extinct” via the birth of three new pups.
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Democrat says Congress ‘doing nothing’ may embolden president to attack countries such as Cuba and North Korea
Democratic US senator Cory Booker has criticized both his own political party as well as its Republican counterpart for being “feckless” in ceding congressional war powers to Donald Trump, saying that their decision could embolden the president to unilaterally attack Cuba, North Korea and other countries.
“I’m going to be one of those Democrats [who] say I think both parties have been feckless in allowing the growth of the power of the presidency,” Booker said on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
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Tehran wants ceasefire but terms ‘not good enough yet’, US president claims, as both sides launch new waves of strikes
Donald Trump has warned he is not ready to seek a deal to end the US-Israeli offensive against Iran, saying that though he thought Tehran was keen to negotiate a ceasefire, the US would fight on for better terms.
Trump’s comments came as Iran launched fresh missile and drone attacks on countries in the Gulf and on Israel, and Israeli and US warplanes launched new waves of strikes on Iran.
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Lib Dem leader will tell spring conference Britain can no longer rely on US while Donald Trump is president
Britain should have a completely independent nuclear deterrent as it can no longer rely on the US, Ed Davey is expected to say on Sunday.
In a speech at the Liberal Democrats spring conference, the party leader will argue that the UK should manufacture and maintain its nuclear weapons in Britain, a move that Davey acknowledges will cost billions.
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US Central Command says crash followed unspecified incident, and second refueling tanker landed safely in Israel
The names of the six US service members who died when a military refueling aircraft crashed over Iraq on Thursday have been released.
The Pentagon on Saturday identified the crew members as Maj John “Alex” Klinner, 33, of Auburn, Alabama; Capt Ariana Savino, 31, of Covington, Washington; Tech Sgt Ashley Pruitt, 34, of Bardstown, Kentucky; Capt Seth Koval, 38, of Mooresville, Indiana; Capt Curtis Angst, 30, of Wilmington, Ohio; and Tech Sgt Tyler Simmons, 28, of Columbus, Ohio.
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Humiliating failure now looms, as symbolically damaging to US global standing and national self-esteem as Afghanistan or Iraq
Donald Trump menaces the world. He’s global public enemy number one. He’s steadily losing the illegal war with Iran he started but cannot stop. His violence-addicted Israeli sidekick, Benjamin Netanyahu, is terrorising Lebanon. And ordinary people everywhere, their security threatened, face a huge economic bill for his reckless folly.
Add Trump’s war-making to his daily debasing of democracy, appeasing of Russia, punitive tariffs, climate crisis denial and flouting of international law, and it’s clear this White House travesty has gone on long enough. Americans must put their house in order and act decisively to restrain someone who endangers us all.
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The country’s 900 billionaires have far too much influence over our government and economy. Here’s how we can reduce the power of the ultra-rich
Not a day goes by without some news about billionaires throwing their weight around to bend the system in their favor or about politicians giving them tax cuts, government contracts or pardons. In today’s new Gilded Age, the 900-plus billionaires in the US have far too much influence over our elections, our economy, our government policies and our news media, and it’s urgent for Americans to create a movement to curb their power in order to preserve what’s left of our democracy and assure we have an economy with some basic fairness.
It’s deeply troubling that billionaires have far more power in shaping our nation’s politics and policies than do average Americans, whether they’re auto workers, teachers, nurses, carpenters or supermarket cashiers. What’s more, it’s deeply disturbing that so many billionaires support the most authoritarian president in US history, whether by donating to his campaign or his gilded ballroom.
Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues
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It’s hard to be transported by the glitz and glamour when it’s constantly overshadowed by some white-hot new horror
It’s been a full decade now since I attended the Academy Awards ceremony for this very same publication, and chat, I am feeling, like, totally cooked. I’m so unc’d, it’s cringe, fam.
The article was titled “My first Oscars”, which is a terribly presumptuous statement, because it assumes there will be a second or a third. Despite my best efforts, it remains my only Oscars. I reread the piece to prepare to once again write about the Academy Awards for the Guardian, and I was shocked by how mundane the whole experience came across on the page. As befitting the much younger, more crass version of myself, there was a lot of eyerolling and snark about how soulless the event was. Also, I wouldn’t stop talking about seeing Gary Busey.
Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist
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Self-described UK patriots have spotted an opportunity for advancement and enrichment. That’s why so many outsource their identity to Trump
An underappreciated element of how the “special relationship” between Britain and US emerged in the aftermath of the second world war is that early on, both parties saw themselves as the senior partner. The US’s clear military and economic dominance of the postwar world gave it an obvious claim to seniority; however, there was also a strong strain within English conservatism at the time that saw itself as “Greeks in this American empire”, in the words of former Tory prime minister Harold Macmillan.
In other words, even if the Americans were to be the new Romans, extending their dominion over every corner of the globe, without the intellectual, cultural and political guidance of their wise old mother country they would quickly fall into ruin. As Christopher Hitchens would later describe, the post-imperial UK positioned itself as tutor to its young progeny and, in doing so, assumed the prefix of “Anglo” in “Anglo-American” reflected a subtle primacy of standing.
Dr Kojo Koram is professor of law and political economy at Loughborough University, and writes on issues of law, race and empire. He is the author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire
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Palantir’s CEO says the platforms will have a vast effect on the electoral landscape … especially women. Is it a warning or a sales pitch?
Don’t you just love AI? It has inundated the internet with slop, destabilized the concept of truth, and made it much easier to bomb people. And that’s just the beginning. As we look towards the future of our brave new world, AI might also disrupt all those pesky highly-educated female voters who keep casting a ballot for Democrats.
To be clear: that assessment isn’t coming from me, a highly exhausted female who wishes the Democrats would work a little harder for people’s votes. Rather, it’s coming from one of the key architects of our glorious AI-driven economy: Alex Karp, the co-founder and CEO of tech firm Palantir.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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He is stuck in a quagmire. His goals are elusive. His bombing does not force a surrender. He has no exit strategy. Good morning, Vietnam
Donald Trump is lost in his fog of war. He compounds confusion with improvised fabrications as his naive expectation of a lightning victory has been sunk in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, he felt certain, would easily follow the “perfect scenario” of Venezuela, accede to naming a leader who would instantly do his bidding, and there would be no disruption of the oil markets – “a strong game plan”, stated Karoline Leavitt, his White House press secretary, who defends each of his changeable excuses with equal ferocity.
There may be few if any facts underlying the delusions upon which Trump constructs his vapid explanations and evanescent strategies. The belief that coherent sense can be made out of Trump’s shuffling words is a weakness of the rational mind that refuses to accept the impulses of the inveterate demagogue for what they are. Searching for reason in the jungle of Trump’s tales may compel hopelessly sensible people to superimpose logic where there is none in order to satisfy the need for some semblance of soundness.
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Double standards in Europe and elsewhere are laid bare by the muted response to US and Israeli aggression and the killing of civilians
When Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the international condemnation from Europe and elsewhere was loud and clear. Leaders did not expect legal threats to shift Vladimir Putin or end war crimes by his troops. But they understood the importance of naming what had happened as an illegal act of aggression, and of seeking to hold those responsible accountable.
The same countries have been strikingly muted since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran. This too was an act of aggression. Spain’s Pedro Sánchez has been lonely in his forthright condemnation, though Norway and others also pointed to the breach of international law. Meanwhile, Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, offered unreserved support and Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, declared that it was “not the moment to lecture our partners and allies”.
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Two weeks in, it’s increasingly clear that the US-led war has taken every problem it aimed to solve – and made it worse
It’s not easy, but let’s try to look at this war in the best, most charitable light. Let’s try to see the US-Israel conflict with Iran as its prosecutors and advocates would want us to see it.
They would say that it has two aims, both legitimate. The first is to weaken if not remove a regime that has done terrible evil to its own people. Who could mourn the supreme leader of a government that, according to one report, gunned down 30,000 of its citizens on the streets in just two days on 8 and 9 January? Listen to those Iranians who long ago reached the glum conclusion that the only way they could be rid of their tormentors was through external military action. As one exiled Iranian put it to me this week: “The Iranian people have been begging the world for help for so many years. They tried voting for change in 2009; they were killed. They tried protesting in 2019, 2022 and this year; they were massacred in the tens of thousands … They were out of all other options.”
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
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.
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The path to this reckless war was paved by the collapse of accountability in Washington
Since he reclaimed the White House, Donald Trump loves being compared with a monarch with unprecedented powers. “LONG LIVE THE KING!” Trump said on social media last year, after his administration tried to kill congestion pricing in New York. In October, the US president posted an AI-generated video of himself dumping brown sludge on protesters who participated in a daylong mass protest, known as “No Kings”, against his administration. In the video, Trump wore a crown and was flying a fighter jet labeled “KING TRUMP”.
He has also launched a relentless campaign of self-aggrandizement, plastering his name and face on government buildings, including the Kennedy Center and the US Institute of Peace. Trump demolished the White House’s East Wing and is overseeing plans to replace it with an enormous ballroom; the National Park Service designated the president’s birthday as a free-admission day at national parks; and the US treasury is poised to issue $1 coins featuring Trump’s image to commemorate the 250th anniversary of America’s independence later this year.
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American wins eighth slalom race of World Cup season
Shiffrin has 140-point lead over Germany’s Emma Aicher
Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin won her record-equaling eighth World Cup slalom of the season on Sunday but her main rival in the overall standings was second to maintain pressure on the American star.
Shiffrin dominated the last race before the World Cup finals in Norway to beat Germany’s Emma Aicher by 0.94 seconds, with Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener a second off the pace in third.
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World No 1 sitting outside the top 20 with one round to go
Åberg takes three-shot lead into final 18 holes at Sawgrass
There is a robotic element to Scottie Scheffler during periods of success but observing the world No 1 in times of adversity is far more intriguing. There is more – much more – to the American than meets the eye.
This is a golfer who was once reduced to tears after a Ryder Cup trouncing. While all charges were eventually dropped, the mere fact Scheffler found himself in a prison jumpsuit before a round at the 2024 US PGA was highly unusual. Last summer, he was filmed in long and histrionic discussion with his coach amid struggles at the US Open.
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Police find suspect after incident near course
Third round began on time despite delays
Police have captured a man who they say killed two people on Friday night about a mile from TPC Sawgrass. The incident led the Players Championship to delay opening the gates to the public for the third round by a couple of hours.
The St Johns County sheriff, Rob Hardwick, said the suspect, whom he identified as Christian Barrios, shot two people multiple times about 10:30pm on Friday in the parking lot of Walgreens in a domestic violence situation. The store is located about a mile away from the course.
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The former No 3 overall NBA draft pick opens up about addiction, homelessness and redemption in a candid memoir revisiting basketball’s cocaine era
When the Golden State Warriors drafted Chris Washburn with the No 3 pick in 1986, it should have been a dream come true. Instead, it might have been the worst thing that could have happened for the 6ft 11in NC State prospect.
“I put on a smile because they were paying me to be out there,” Washburn, a former three-time high school All-American, tells the Guardian. “But I felt alone.”
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Oil could pass 2008 record of $147.50 a barrel as damage and field closures risk compounding supply shock caused by Iran war
About 20 miles off the coast of Iran lies the source of the petrostate’s economic lifeblood and the latest target of US military aggression: an 8 sq mile coral island through which nine in every 10 barrels of Iranian crude passes each day.
The US president’s decision to launch a weekend attack on Kharg Island, the home of Iran’s processing hub and the heart of its economy, is an unsurprising counterstrike to the Iranian regime’s ongoing chokehold on the oil market’s trade artery.
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Could we be at the beginning of a change never before seen by humans – allowing us to escape the drudgery of work?
The other day I pulled into the parking lot of a client’s offices and in the spot next to me was a woman sitting in her car blasting music. She caught me looking and rolled down her window and said, “I’ll be inside in a minute … Just enjoying my last few moments of freedom!”
Is this way we want to live? No, it’s not.
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US workers are finding it difficult to afford basic necessities as the president claims ‘the economy is roaring back’
US workers are still struggling with the cost of living despite Donald Trump’s campaign promises to fix the US affordability crisis.
The Guardian spoke to workers as an exclusive poll showed cross-party concerns about the Trump administration’s handling of the US economy.
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Trump DoJ’s investigation was purportedly about the management of the central bank’s renovation
A federal judge on Friday blocked the justice department from serving subpoenas to Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell in an inquiry purported to be about the management of the central bank’s renovation.
Powell disclosed the surprise investigation on 11 January, and described the move as a threat to Fed independence and part of the Trump administration’s attempts to pressure the Fed to cut rates.
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Videos posted by the US president on Truth Social show strikes on the Iranian island of Kharg. The US president said on Friday that US forces had 'obliterated' military targets on the island and that crucial oil infrastructure there could be next
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Crisis in the Middle East, Ramadan in Gaza, the Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics and Paris fashion week – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
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Multiple law enforcement agencies responded on Thursday afternoon to reports in Michigan of a shooter at a synagogue in a Detroit suburb after a driver crashed a vehicle into the building and shots were fired. Michael Bouchard, the Oakland county sheriff, confirmed the attacker had died and that one security officer had been taken to hospital
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