America

    Donald Trump Jr. has long been his father's id, the brawler who has helped fuel the president's pugilistic instincts and stood firm as one of his fiercest defenders. Now the president's eldest son is at the center of the firestorm over Russian connections swirling around his father's administration and trying to fight off charges that he was open to colluding with Moscow to defeat Hillary Clinton. Offered Russian help in defeating Hillary Clinton last year, Don Jr. jumped at the offer: I love it, he emailed. That was in an email chain the younger Trump released Tuesday in which an associate arranging a June 2016 meeting between the president's son and a Kremlin-linked lawyer promised damaging information about Clinton. Earlier this week, when news about the meeting first s...

    Donald Trump has backtracked claims that he and Vladimir Putin would work on an impenetrable cyber security unit hours after the US President promoted the idea. The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't, Trump said on Twitter. He added that an agreement with Russia for a partial ceasefire in Syria can & did happen. A total of 13 hours before, he had tweeted, Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded. The suggestion was met with widespread criticism from both Democrats and some Republicans. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said: It's not the dumbest idea I've ever heard, but it's p...

    President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it. The meeting was also attended by his campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner only recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in confidential government documents described to The New York Times. The Times reported the existence of the meeting on Saturday. But in subsequent interviews, the advisers and others revealed the motivation behind it. The meeting at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two wee...

    After he was forced to resign as a family medicine doctor amid sexual harassment allegations, he threatened his colleagues. He said he would kill them. On Friday, Bello returned to Bronx Lebanon Hospital with an AR-15 assault rifle tucked under his white lab coat and opened fire in his old department, killing one doctor and critically wounding six other people at the hospital, according to law enforcement officials. Bello then shot himself, and staggered, bleeding, into a hallway where he collapsed and died with the rifle at his side, officials said. A photo showed the doctor on a blood-spattered floor as police stood over him. Now, detectives are trying to piece together what prompted Bello to snap two years after he was forced out, and whether he was hunting for someone ...

    A scaled-back version of President Donald Trump’s travel ban took effect Thursday evening, stripped of provisions that brought protests and chaos at airports worldwide in January yet still likely to generate a new round of court fights. The new rules, the product of months of legal wrangling, aren’t so much an outright ban as a tightening of already-tough visa policies affecting citizens from six Muslim-majority countries. Refugees are covered, too. Administration officials promised that implementation this time, which started at 8 p.m., would be orderly. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Dan Hetlage said his agency expected ‘‘business as usual at our ports of entry,’’ with all valid visa holders still being able to travel. Still, immigration and refugee advocates ar...

    The US Supreme Court on Monday partially reinstated Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban targeting citizens from six predominantly Muslim countries, prompting the president to claim a victory for national security. The court said it would examine the case in full in October but said that the ban could be enforced immediately for travelers from the targeted countries “who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.” The court tempered its ruling by saying the ban could not be implemented for now against people who have personal links to the United States, citing the examples of foreign nationals wishing to visit family or students accepted to attend a university. But the Supreme Court’s decision nonetheless marks a win for the Republican...

    Ivanka Trump, daughter of President Trump, is greeted by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., as she arrives at the Capitol to meet with lawmakers about parental leave. Sen. Marco Rubio went in for the hug with Ivanka Trump on Tuesday, and, well, something happened. We're just not sure what. It wasn't quite a chummy embrace or a firm denial. Rather, as displayed in a delightfully awkward photo, Rubio approached stiff as a board while Trump stood straight, not reciprocating. Not since the Florida Republican took a water break during his 2013 State of the Union response has he looked so stilted. At least no one on the Internet noticed. Just kidding. Twitter seized the moment, gleefully spreading the photo snapped by Associated Press photographer Erica Werner. Ultimately, he deemed a hu...

    US President Donald Trump met Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela at the White House on Monday and took the opportunity to discuss security, the battle against drug trafficking, economic issues - and the Panama Canal. During a photo opportunity in the Oval Office, Trump said the US did a good job building the more than 100-year-old Panama Canal. The Panama Canal was constructed by the US from 1904 to 1914 and connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The US later transferred control of the canal to Panama in December 1999. We have many things to discuss, Trump told reporters. We're going to spend quite a bit of time today. The Panama Canal is doing quite well. I think we did a good job building it, right? Trump said, turning to Varela. Very good job. Varela responded: ...

    A 17-year-old Muslim girl was assaulted, abducted and killed as she was travelling home in Virginia on Sunday, after attending her local mosque. The girl, named locally as Nabra Hassanen of Reston, had been attending the All Dulles Area Muslim Society mosque in observance of the last 10 days of Ramadan when the attack happened in the early hours of Sunday morning. Nabra was walking home from with several friends when they were confronted by a motorist. At one point the man got out of his car and assaulted the girl, according to police. The teenagers scattered during the attack but were unable to find Nabra afterwards. She was reported missing to police, sparking an hours-long search by authorities in Fairfax and Loudon counties. A body was found in a pond in the Sterling a...

    The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it is cancelling an Obama-era policy to allow millions of illegal-immigrant parents of children born in the United States to stay in the country. The 2014 policy, known as DAPA, for Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, aimed to help the families of so- called ‘dreamer’ children stay together free from the threat of deportation. It was never implemented after 26 states successfully sued in a Texas federal district court to block it. The US Supreme Court let the lower court ruling stand last year after a four-four tie vote. Set out in a memo from the administration of then-president Barack Obama, the policy said the government would defer any action against illegal immigrant parents of ch...