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One person is dead and two others are missing after a pontoon boat believed to be carrying 19 people sank near Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay on Tuesday. Search efforts are ongoing.
Another 16 people have been rescued and taken ashore at Fort Mason, the fire department said. Authorities told the San Francisco Chronicle it appears an explosion took place onboard.
Three survivors have been brought to California Pacific Medical Center Van Ness to treat unspecified injuries. Those rescued from the wreck showed signs of impact injuries, likely from hitting the water, according to San Francisco fire chief Dean Crispen.
San Francisco firefighters and the U.S. Coast Guard began responding to the incident around 3:30 p.m.
The Coast Guard initially described the incident as a “vessel fire,” though the fire department later said it did not encounter evidence of a fire on the vessel or among survivors.
One person is reportedly dead and two others are missing after a pontoon boat carrying 1..

Florida executed 74-year-old Dennis Sochor, among its oldest prisoners, on Tuesday. He was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke.
His execution is one of three older inmates scheduled within a month in Florida, the nation’s busiest death penalty state.
Sochor was convicted of killing 18-year-old Patricia Gifford on January 1, 1982, hours after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party.
At 6 p.m., with the death chamber curtain raised, Sochor was strapped to a gurney, an IV in his arm. Asked for last words by the warden, Sochor confirmed he had them.
The execution plans highlight the aging death row population in the U.S. and the busy death chamber in Florida, which has now carried out 10 of the 16 executions conducted in the nation this year (AP Photo/Curt Anderson)He apologized several times to the Gifford family, saying he was “deeply sorry” and also thanked his own loved ones for their support over the years. Then he commended..

US releases video of forces carrying out another wave of strikes on IranThe U.S. is in the process of launching another volley of strikes at Iranian targets.
“We’re hitting ‘em very heavy tonight,” President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday.
He accused Tehran of being “foolish” and repeatedly breaking the tentative peace deal brokered last month.
Iran allegedly retaliated by striking two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, killing one person and injuring eight, and launching attempted attacks on Bahrain.
The renewed strikes come as Trump has vowed to charge a 20 percent toll on vessels moving through the strait, a plan which Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has mocked.
Trump says the U.S. will reinstate the Iranian blockade and impose the tax as part of a new role as the “Guardian of the Hormuz Strait.”
But Araghchi mocked the plan and wrote on X that Iran will always be the “guardian of the strait,” joking that a 20 percent fee is too expensive a..

President Donald Trump announced Monday his intention to scale back the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, revisiting actions from his first term that were later reversed.
This move directly challenges proclamations by his predecessors, who deemed these sites worthy of preservation under the 1906 Antiquities Act, a law granting presidents power to protect areas of cultural, historic, or scientific interest.
The back-and-forth over these protected areas underscores how national monuments have become a significant flashpoint in the management of public lands.
While Trump made similar reductions during his first term, which were subsequently undone by his successor, he is not the first president to reduce the size of such monuments.
Trump made similar moves during his first term, but many were reversed by his successor (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)Here’s a look at U.S. national monuments and presidents who have created or reshaped them:
How many national..

Officials in Atlanta, a World Cup host city, threw away tents, medication, identification, and other items belonging to homeless people without any warning, according to a report.
The items were collected from a public park not far from where many soccer fans have been gathering to watch the soccer tournament, The Guardian reports.
Some of the items taken by city workers reportedly include blood pressure pills, an insulin kit, and hormones.
In response to the accusations, the city's senior advisor on homelessness, Chatiqua Ellison, told the paper that the area that the affected area of Freedom Park was “not an encampment” and that the item removals were part of “routine park maintenance.”
She reportedly said that because the site was not an encampment and the action was not considered a “sweep,” the city was not obligated to give a warning before officials moved in to seize the items.
open image in galleryA tent belonging to a homeless individual in Atlanta, Georgia. City officia..

President Donald Trump rang the opening bells of the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq exchanges remotely from the Oval Office Monday morning to tout the launch of “Trump accounts,” which will use federal money and private donations to start newborns off with $1,000 in savings.
But the dynamics of that move — the country’s first billionaire president leveraging his financial experience to help the masses — could not be more at odds with the unprecedented crypto enterprise Trump and his sons have been running over the last year.
Trump, who called Bitcoin a “scam” back in 2021, made more than $1.4 billion through his family’s own cryptocurrency ventures in 2025, while hundreds of thousands of everyday investors in these companies lost their shirts. It was the president’s most profitable year ever across any business in his multi-decade career.
Fatime Elrgdawy, a 29-year-old software project engineer from California, told Reuters she lost more than $1,000 in savings on one $TRUMP coin..

The White House reportedly instructed FBI Director Kash Patel to investigate a leak to theNew York Times over the newspaper's reporting of President Donald Trump’s Qatari-donated Air Force One alternative.
Patel was planning to fly to Chicago last week to see his girlfriend Alexis Wilkins, a country music singer, and to visit an FBI field office in the city when he abruptly cancelled the trip.
It emerged that Patel was called in to the White House, where he spent “roughly eight hours running the investigation from there rather than FBI headquarters,” on Friday, the newspaper reports. The Times noted the move marked “a major departure from historical practice.”
Two people familiar with the situation told the Times that Patel briefed senior administration officials about the investigation into the paper’s Air Force One report. One person told the newspaper that the FBI director “had his own concerns about the type of information publicly disclosed about the plane.”
On Friday nigh..

Trump says military will ‘completely decimate and destroy’ Iran if he’s assassinatedThe US has launched fresh strikes on Iran less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump threatened to “decimate and destroy” the country in the event of his assassination.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a message on X Saturday night saying, “Iran made a poor choice. Now they pay.”
Central Command confirmed that its forces attacked Iran in retaliation for the nation’s alleged attack on a civilian-crewed container ship in the Strait of Hormuz. The attack comes just hours after Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei vowed revenge for the death of his father at the start of the war.
“Iran was provided yet another opportunity to demonstrate adherence to the Memorandum of Understanding after being held accountable for earlier attacks on commercial vessels but has again failed,” Central Command said in a statement. “In response, the United States is imposing a heavy cost by continuing to degrade Iran’s ab..

Critics are attacking the Trump administration for a deal to let the United Arab Emirates access cutting-edge U.S. technology, accusing the White House of offering the country preferential treatment because a U.A.E. royal invested millions in a Trump family cryptocurrency company last year.
The Commerce Department announced on Friday that it will allow the U.S. ally license-free access to crucial technology such as AI chips. That status will extend to U.A.E. companies such as G42, which is chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser.
Four days before President Trump’s inauguration, another Tahnoon-backed company reportedly spent $500 million to buy what was initially a secret 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s fledgling crypto firm. The deal reportedly sent an immediate $187 million to Trump entities and helped fuel the family’s crypto empire.
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren called the change in Commerce Department e..

Israel reportedly shared intelligence with the U.S. about potential plans by Iran to kill President Donald Trump.
The warning about the alleged plot, reported by The Wall Street Journaland CNN, comes amid growing tension between the U.S. and Israel over what the next phase of the Iran war and peace process should like.
The Independent has contacted Iran’s mission to the United Nations and the Israeli embassy in Washington for comment.
When asked about the alleged intelligence tip, the White House pointed to President Trump’s comments yesterday claiming that he was under threat from Iran.
“They want to take out the U.S. leader — me,” Trump said. “I’m on whatever list. I saw this morning I’m on every single one of their lists. And so far, I guess I’ve been a bit lucky, but maybe that doesn’t last very long. These are evil, sick people. And we have to root out that cancer. That cancer. You know what you do? You’ve got to cut out cancer early. And that’s the way I feel.”
open image in ga..