Category: East Asia

A survivor of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation said that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche behaved in a “condescending” manner during his meeting with her and other survivors.
The meeting came as Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) made meeting with Epstein survivors a prerequisite for his vote to confirm Blanche, the deputy attorney general and President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney.
Lara Blume McGee described the meeting to The Independent in a text message on Thursday evening.
“Today, Epstein survivors confronted Todd Blanche — and he treated it like a perfunctory audition for votes, not accountability,” Blume McGee said.
open image in galleryEpstein survivor Lara Blume McGee speaks during a news conference opposing acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche's confirmation to be attorney general, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 15, 2026. REUTERS/Al Drago (Reuters)“Blanche was condescending, repeatedly interrupted and tried to gaslight survivors..

Leavitt asked why Trump can't let go of 2020 election he lost fair and squareIn a highly anticipated Thursday night speech, President Donald Trump accused China of carrying out “the largest compromise of election data in history” beginning with the 2020 election, just one of numerous schemes he claims a “deep state” concealed from him and the American public.
The Chinese effort allegedly netted Beijing 220 million files about U.S. voters.
Trump also claimed China sought to pay journalists to write false and negative articles about him.
The White House will release a trove of documents backing up the president’s claims, Trump said, which will show how U.S. elections are vulnerable to “hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference.”
Meanwhile, the White House is furious that many of the major TV news networks are not carrying the president’s ongoing elections speech live on their main channels.
ABC News, NBC News and CNN will run the speech on their streaming channels. Fox News..

The ESPYS return to New York on Wednesday as the annual awards show honors the year’s top athletes, teams and sports moments. After a couple of decades in Los Angeles, it's back in New York and being held at Lincoln Center.

Vice President JD Vance sought last week to use a military helicopter to ferry himself and his son across Washington for a golf lesson, one of a number of allegedly unusual travel requests that has left the Republican’s security detail “fed up,” MS Now reports.
The alleged travel plans aboard Marine Two were ultimately canceled due to weather, but Secret Service agents nonetheless discussed it among themselves unhappily, according to the outlet.
Past vice presidents have had Secret Service agents drive their children to activities, rather than use military hardware, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars per hour to operate.
A series of last-minute travel requests, known as “off the record” movements, has reportedly led to anger and low morale within the detail.
“The detail is tired of them not giving notice on things and making everything an OTR [off the record],” a source familiar with the mood inside the service told MS Now. “He [Vance] thinks he can still move around like a U..

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..