Three-judge panel of Democratic appointees let stand lower court’s ruling that fee constitutes an unlawful tax

A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a ⁠bid by Donald ​Trump’s administration to halt a judge’s order preventing it from imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for ⁠highly skilled foreign workers.

The Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals declined to put on hold a lower court judge’s ⁠8 June ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general, ​striking down the fee on the ‌basis that it ‌constituted an unlawful tax Congress never authorized.

President mocks political opponents and journalists in mostly light-hearted, hour-long speech at White House correspondents’ dinner

Donald Trump joked around with the room of journalists who he again accused of producing “fake news” as he hurled insults at his political enemies in a speech at the White House correspondents’ dinner.

A day after the Trump administration abandoned, for now, an extraordinary bid to subpoena reporters over their coverage, the US president attended the rescheduled White House correspondents’ dinner – an annual celebration of press freedom – in Washington on Friday evening.

President directs interior department to display signs outside museum that accuse institution of inaccuracy

Donald Trump on Friday ordered the interior department to display signs in front of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History that accuse the institution of inaccuracy.

The order escalates the Trump’s attacks against the Smithsonian, which he and his allies accuse of politicizing the institution by focusing too much on injustices in American history, instead of more triumphant moments such as the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

President flew to Ankara onboard Qatari-gifted jet, without advanced defenses, and flew home on old Air Force One

Donald Trump switched aircraft before departing Turkey earlier this month after US officials determined there was a credible threat from Iranian proxy forces targeting him and Air Force One, according to a new report from the New York Times.

The threat surfaced while the US president was attending the Nato summit. He had arrived in Ankara onboard the new Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8, an aircraft that Trump acknowledged does not have the same advanced defensive systems as the older Air Force One.

• Austin FC reported allegations to local law enforcement

• Multiple sources confirm the ongoing inquiries

Multiple players in the academy of Major League Soccer club Austin FC are under investigation by Austin police and the FBI over allegations of sexual abuse within the club’s youth system. Multiple sources, who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation, said the inquiry centers on alleged interactions between academy players. A source with knowledge of the matter said multiple academy families reported the allegations to Austin FC.

The Austin police department confirmed the existence of the investigation to the Guardian on Thursday, adding that because it “involves juveniles and is ongoing”, no other details could be shared. An FBI spokesperson said the bureau could “neither confirm nor deny” the existence of an investigation and declined to comment further. Sources at MLS and Austin FC confirmed the existence of the Austin police department and the FBI’s investigations.

Court fillings show grants denied to states if they didn’t back Trump’s re-election, but administration claims it’s a ‘misrepresentation’

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The Trump administration has admitted scrapping more than $7.5bn in federal grants for clean energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

US federal officials appeared to acknowledge in court documents last week that they had terminated the funding last October “based solely” on political criteria, targeting projects in states that were represented by Democrats and had voted for Kamala Harris.

Abortion medication ruled to be safe as judge orders Trump administration to consider overturning restrictions

A federal judge upheld the safety of the abortion medication mifepristone and ordered the Trump administration to examine and consider overturning restrictions on the drug as barriers to abortion access mount across the country.

Robert S Ballou, a US district judge in Virginia, ordered the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) on Friday to reconsider mifepristone restrictions, which the judge found to be arbitrary and capricious.

After years of trying to be skinny, Guardian reporter Madeleine Aggeler did a 180 and decided to 'bulk'. Bulking, or gaining weight on purpose to get stronger, challenged everything she had been taught about her body, and transformed her relationship to food. Madeleine speaks to Carter Sherman about her owns body image struggles, and they discuss why strength training and weightlifting has become so popular for women. Is this actually healthy, or just an extension of toxic diet culture?

Celeste Rivas Hernandez, who was 13 at the time, later received an abortion, text messages indicate

Singer D4vd had impregnated the teenager he is accused of fatally stabbing, according to evidence presented in a Los Angeles courtroom on Friday. Celeste Rivas Hernandez later received an abortion, text messages between the two indicate.

The musician, who was born David Anthony Burke, apologized to Rivas Hernandez in January 2024 for “putting her through this”, in a text message obtained from his phone.

Colt Gray, who was 14 at time of attack on Apalachee high school, admits 55 charges including four counts of murder

The wife of a teacher killed in a high school shooting in Georgia two years ago told a court on Friday that the families of the four victims had been handed “a life sentence of grief and trauma” by the teenage student who murdered them.

Shayna Aspinwall, whose husband Richard died at Apalachee high school, about 45 miles north-east Atlanta, on 4 September 2024, was speaking at the sentencing hearing for Colt Gray, 16, who earlier pleaded to 55 charges, including second-degree murder.

DNC move aims to better represent views of party’s racially diverse voter base ahead of next presidential cycle

Democrats moved to keep South Carolina as the first state to vote in their party’s 2028 presidential primary process, while moving up several other states, in an effort to better represent the views of the party’s racially diverse voter base.

At a meeting in Washington DC of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) rules and bylaws committee on Friday, South Carolina received a slim majority of votes to take the first spot, scheduled for 22 January 2028, with Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan and Virginia set to follow, in that order. The selections must still be confirmed by the full DNC at a meeting set for next month.

Joanna Ruth Shields’ body was found in a pool of water with suspicious marks, driving speculation she was attacked

A young woman whose body was found in the backcountry of California’s Big Sur with suspicious marks on her face and neck died of alcohol withdrawal, the Monterey county sheriff’s office said on Thursday.

The discovery of Joanna Ruth Shields’ body in April had driven widespread suspicion that she had been the victim of a violent attack. A group of hikers found Shields, 37, naked in a pool of water in the Sykes hot springs area of the Ventana wilderness with marks on her neck and a cut across her forehead.

• Romo booked for operating vehicle under the influence

• First-offense OWI is not criminal charge in Wisconsin

Tony Romo, the CBS NFL analyst and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback, has been arrested on suspicion of operating a vehicle while under the influence.

According to an arrest report by the Milwaukee county sheriff’s office, Romo performed poorly on field sobriety tests after getting stopped while driving south on Interstate 43 on Thursday. Sheriff’s officials said Romo was taken into custody, booked and released.

Forced labor is a problem, especially in the US, where prisoners are coerced to work for pennies – or nothing at all

• US politics live – latest updates

Don’t believe the Trump administration’s rationale for its new volley of tariffs against everybody.

The new levies, ostensibly to punish countries for failing to do enough to curb forced labor, switched on at 12.01am on Friday, to coincide with the expiration of a temporary 10% blanket duty that Donald Trump imposed in February, ostensibly to protect the United States from a balance-of-payments crisis.

Wildfires in Europe, Russian missile strikes in Kyiv, the cockroach protests in New Delhi and the World Cup final – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Warning: this gallery contains images some readers may find distressing

Philadelphia wasn’t the obvious destination for LeBron James. That may be exactly why it makes perfect sense for a player who has always prioritized fit over sentiment

Should we have seen this coming all along? LeBron James knew that joining the Golden State Warriors would have been a losing gamble on the health of players five times closer to the ends of their careers than the beginnings. He knew the Cleveland Cavaliers, however strong their analytics, hopelessly lacked the unquantifiable greatness of a championship team. He knew the Giannis Antetokounmpo-led Miami Heat were too unproven to hitch his wagon to.

Of course he knew.

After Google fined €890m by EU, US president said Brussels was ‘robbing’ American companies and taxpayers

• What to know about Trump’s new tariffs on more than 80 countries

Donald Trump has threatened the European Union with additional and “substantial” tariffs after Brussels imposed a series of steep fines on US tech giants.

The US president accused Brussels of taking “direct aim” at several American companies including Apple, Meta Platforms, Amazon and Google, writing in a Truth Social post: “The United States of America is not a ‘PIGGYBANK’ for Europe, nor will we allow it to be!”

Six migrants from Honduras and Mexico – including 14-year-old boy – were found dead in May near US-Mexico border

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A US attorney announced a federal indictment on Friday against 11 people in the smuggling deaths of six migrants whose bodies were found in a rail cargo container in Texas in May.

The six people were found dead in a rail yard shipping container in Laredo, on the US-Mexico border. They were from Honduras and Mexico and included a 14-year-old boy, all part of a human-smuggling effort on a freight train, authorities said.

Traffic cameras captured the moment a driver dressed as Spider-Man helped a wheelchair user safely cross a busy road in Arkansas. In the footage, a person who was on his way back from a superhero-themed event is seen jumping out of his vehicle to help the struggling pedestrian

The 25 Democratic attorneys general say administration imposed ‘unlawful’ conditions on federal disaster grants

A group of 25 Democratic attorneys general led by California’s Rob Bonta are taking the Trump administration to court for imposing “unlawful” conditions on federal grants for disaster preparedness and response.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) have been placing stipulations on federal grants that amount to a “campaign of coercion” designed to force states to adopt the White House’s preferred voting and immigration policies says the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Rhode Island on Thursday.

• Star will play record 24th NBA season in Philly

• Deal is reportedly two years, $8m with player option

• 41-year-old spent last eight seasons with Lakers

• Analysis: LeBron to Philly is perfectly in character

LeBron James is signing with the Philadelphia 76ers on a two-year, $8m deal that includes a player option. Klutch Sports Group CEO Rich Paul confirmed the terms of the agreement to ESPN, and James addressed the move in a post on X on Friday morning, saying it came after he strongly considered retirement.

“I believe I can help make the Philadelphia 76ers a championship team and I am so excited to energize a new fan base and start this incredible journey one last time,” he said.

Over 11,500 people this summer are suspected to have been sickened by disease that can cause explosive diarrhea, CDC says

Investigations into the largest cyclosporiasis outbreak on record expanded to nine states this week, as more than 11,500 people are suspected to have been sickened this summer, according to reports and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Data released by the CDC this week said the agency is looking into 4,173 laboratory-confirmed domestic cases of the disease and investigating an additional 7,400.

Explosive diarrhea infection detected in 41 states with at least 72 sickened by new, as yet unknown source of parasite

Confusion abounds in the cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands in at least 41 states, as officials identify a new cluster of cases and more potential products come under scrutiny.

The recall of products during this outbreak of explosive diarrhea has been an unusual one, complicated by poor communication, politicization and the delay of a new regulatory rule could have helped trace the cyclosporiasis outbreak faster.

Marriage offers an opportunity to ask for help creating a home. But what about when the marriage ends – and the household with it?

It’s peak wedding season, and my own divorce is waiting on a judge’s signature. People are being congratulated with Dutch ovens and serving bowls for dinner parties they may not ever host.

Marriage comes with an etiquette system for asking people to help build a home. The registry says the embarrassing part for you. Divorce deserves the same grace.

Court questions plan to offer male hormone treatment to cisgender troops while denying it to trans service members

Pete Hegseth’s controversial plan to screen older soldiers for testosterone deficiencies and offer them more of the hormone faced scrutiny this week from a federal judge, who ordered the Trump administration to explain a discrepancy with the treatment of transgender troops.

The US defense secretary announced earlier this month that male service members aged 30 and above would be checked to ensure they have the “right testosterone levels” to perform in the military at an optimal level.

If OpenAI loudly proclaims how dangerous AI is, investors will hear how powerful it is. And who benefits from that?

On 14 February 2019, OpenAI announced a language model called GPT-2, the precursor to the models that power modern AI chatbots and agents such as ChatGPT and Claude. But OpenAI declared GPT-2 was too risky to release, citing concerns about safety and abuse.

I recall being annoyed at the time that OpenAI would make such a useless announcement: the risks seemed overblown, and without access to the model there wasn’t much for a researcher like me to learn about GPT-2.

Sister Leticia Ugboaja says she went into a cold sweat as ICE officers approached her in McAllen on her way to church

A nun who was taken into immigration custody last month in Texas said on Thursday that she went into a cold sweat as two armed men approached her while she walked to Sunday mass in her habit, thinking about the day’s Bible readings and carrying little more than her rosary and cellphone.

“Honestly, in that moment, I did not understand what was going on, what was happening to me,” Sister Leticia Ugboaja said at a news conference at Our Lady of Sorrows church in McAllen, Texas, on the US-Mexico border, where she spoke out for the first time since US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrested her on 28 June.

An incident in which an autonomous OpenAI agent hacked a startup either confirms that the end is nigh – or that the product is just amazingly sophisticated

Throughout history, many things have been seen by terrified populaces as a harbinger of doom. A comet. A crow on the battlefield. A solar eclipse. A mutant livestock birth. Yet times move on. In the modern era, the leading harbinger of doom is literally any picture of the OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, attached to a news story. You know it’s not going to be good, right? You know that by the time you’ve read it, you’ll be begging to go back to the time when the worst thing that could happen to us at the hands of the techlords was just some democracy-subversion, or childhood destruction, usually followed by Mark Zuckerberg putting on a suit and claiming: “We will learn from this.”

Anyway: a lot of pictures of Sam Altman in the news of late. Most recently, this week, one darkened the skies alongside the tale of how an OpenAI autonomous agent went rogue during a supposedly sandboxed/guardrailed test, and hacked a major startup that functions as a repository of coding information. (I’m slightly obsessed with the fact that the startup in question is called Hugging Face, adding weight to my suspicion that some vast, tweely benign emoji is the last face humanity will see before it dies.)

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Rightwing provocateur meets Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who says he expects to meet Donald Trump in Washington next week

Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet Donald Trump in Washington next week, according to the rightwing US influencer Laura Loomer, amid signs the White House’s traditional hostility towards Ukraine is beginning to crumble.

In an interview with Loomer, the Ukraine president said he will probably attend the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham and hold talks with Trump, which will take place as the latest version of the Russian sanctions bill makes its way through Congress.

US president faced criticism from Democrats after tariffs of between 10% and 12.5% imposed on more than 80 countries

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Donald Trump has been accused of using forced labor as “a pretext” to impose a fresh wave of tariffs on dozens of countries, as critics warned of higher prices for Americans.

The US president faced swift criticism from Democrats after his officials presented their latest effort to make his signature economic policy permanent following a string of high-profile legal setbacks. Some Republicans also expressed concern.

Connor Read, who is married and has two children, was detained in June during residency permit interview

A British-born man who has lived in the US since he was nine years old has been held in an ICE detention facility for more than a month and a half under threat of deportation, it has been reported.

Connor Read, 29, was taken by ICE agents after he was invited to a green card (residency permit) interview in Tampa, Florida, on 3 June, and separated from his wife, Jaelin, 25, and his thre-year-old twin sons Ryder and Ozzie.

Residents warn project could worsen gambling addiction and raise rents, while developers promise jobs

On Main Street in Flushing’s Chinatown, shoppers weave between fruit stands, restaurants and family-run businesses that have served the New York City neighborhood for decades. But behind the bustle, many residents fear the working-class immigrant community is under threat from an $8bn casino development that could displace thousands of renters and force small businesses to close.

“A predatory project is being dumped in our community that disproportionately harms our people,” said Jack Hu, 35, a Flushing resident and member of the No Casino in Flushing Meadows Corona Park campaign. “This community is really upset about this project and how it was pushed through without our consent.”