Career diplomats and other staff begin receiving notices amid Trump administration cull of about 15% of workforce

The US state department has begun issuing the first of more than 1,350 termination notices as part of a huge reorganisation of America’s diplomatic corps under the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, according to internal documents and US diplomats at the state department on Friday.

Career diplomats and other staff began to receive the notices on Friday morning, days after the supreme court lifted a ban on the Trump administration moving forward with mass firings of government employees that will affect hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

In an internal email obtained by the Guardian on Friday, state department workers were told that nearly 3,000 employees would leave as part of a vast reorganisation meant to align the department’s goals with Donald Trump’s stated goal of putting America first.

The recent college grad previously prompted a complaint after allegedly sending threatening messages over a girl

A 22-year-old loyalist to Donald Trump with no counterterrorism experience is now leading the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) top terrorism prevention office, drawing scrutiny over his past conduct and the administration's alleged sidelining of national security.

Thomas Fugate, a recent college graduate and former Trump campaign volunteer, was appointed earlier this year to run the DHS Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), which oversees an $18 million grant program meant to combat extremist violence, ProPublica reported in June.

Scrutiny around Fugate intensified this week after The Daily Beast revealed he was investigated in 2020 for reportedly sending threatening messages to someone he was competing with for the affections of a girl.

An Alaskan volcano that has been inactive for more than 100 years is showing signs of rumbling, according to scientists.

However, there's a chance that the activity could be signs of a pending avalanche, rather than a volcanic eruption, NASA said.

The Iliamna volcano, located near the Cook Inlet in southern Alaska, last erupted in 1867, but would still rumble every few years due to avalanches large enough to register on nearby seismic and infrasound instruments, according to NASA.

Rubio meets Chinese counterpart at gathering, as questions remain about US trade polices and commitment to region

Even as they face among the most punitive tariffs globally, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has sought to reassure south-east Asian countries of Washington’s commitment to the region, saying they may get “better” trade deals than the rest of the world.

In his first official visit to Asia, Rubio met the foreign ministers of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in Malaysia on Thursday, telling his counterparts that the US had “no intention of abandoning” the region.

His visit came days after Donald Trump renewed his threat to impose severe tariffson many south-east Asian countries if they did not strike deals by 1 August.

A homeowner in Goodyear, Arizona is locked in a dispute with his homeowner's association over his practice of distributing free cold water from his driveway.

Neither side has released documentation of the tariff terms, raising questions about whether they did, in fact, reach an agreement.

Vietnam’s negotiators had not, in fact, agreed to the 20% rate; they believed the tariff rate would be around 11%, according to the four people.

Some on the U.S. side were surprised, too, including outside groups who’d been tracking the talks, according to one Washington-based lobbyist who works with Vietnam and other Asian governments.

“Trump sandbagged everybody,” said the lobbyist. They described the Vietnamese government’s reaction as “surprise, as well as disappointment and anger.”

FEMA records show Kerr County officials did not use FEMA’s system to send warnings to phones in the critical hours as the flooding began on July 4.

FEMA records obtained by NBC 5 Investigates show that Kerr County officials did not use FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert & Warning System to send warnings with safety instructions to all mobile phones in the affected area during critical hours as the flooding began on July 4.

Researchers who have studied the cell phone warning system told NBC 5 Investigates that policies on how and when to issue critical alerts vary widely from one county to another, potentially risking delays when seconds count.

As the search for the missing continues in Kerr County, records reviewed by NBC 5 Investigates raise new questions about whether local officials could have used the nation’s wireless emergency alert system to better warn people in the flood’s path.

Africa’s wealth disparity has reached unprecedented levels, with just four billionaires now holding more wealth than 750 million people combined – half the continent’s population.

According to a report from Oxfam entitled Africa’s Inequality Crisis and the Rise of the Super-Rich, released on Thusday, Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, South Africans Johann Rupert and Nicky Oppenheimer and Egyptian businessman Nassef Sawiris control a combined $57.4 billion (€49.07bn).

This staggering concentration of wealth highlights the deepening inequality across the continent, the report warns.

Number of African-born millionaires to skyrocket over next decade: report

Despite brief post-election bounce, Trump has struggled throughout term to get majority approval from Black voters

Donald Trump appears to have lost of goodwill he had among Black voters during the 2024 presidential campaign, according to a new poll.

Among African-Americans, 71.5 percent disapprove of Trump’s presidency so far, while just 24.1 percent approve, according to a Decision Desk HQ average of polls current through July 7.

The president hasn’t gotten majority approval from Black voters since the end of his first week back in office, according to the aggregator, but the latest numbers represent a notable increase in discontent, after Trump had a 63.7 percent average disapproval rating among the voting demographic in mid-June.

Pakistan police on Friday said a father shot dead his daughter after she refused to delete her account on popular video-sharing app TikTok.

In the Muslim-majority country, women can be subjected to violence by family members for not following strict rules on how to behave in public, including in online spaces.

"The girl's father had asked her to delete her TikTok account. On refusal, he killed her," a police spokesperson told AFP.

According to a police report shared with AFP, investigators said the father killed his 16-year-old daughter on Tuesday "for honor." He was subsequently arrested.

Brazilian president says ‘if he charges us 50%, we’ll charge him 50%’ after Trump cited trial of Bolsonaro to justify tariff

Brazil threatened to hit back against Donald Trump’s plan to introduce 50% tariffs on its exports with its own 50% tariff on US goods, setting the stage for a precipitous trade war.

“If he charges us 50%, we’ll charge him 50%,” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, told local news outlet Record, a day after Trump threatened to impose steep duties on Brazilian goods and accused the country of conducting a “witch-hunt” against its former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing a trial over his attempt to overturn his 2022 election defeat.

Brazil could appeal to the World Trade Organization, propose international investigations and “demand explanations”, Lula suggested. “But the main thing is the Reciprocity Law, passed by Congress,” he told Record, referring to recent legislation designed to defend Latin America’s largest economy from tariff attacks.

A grandmother planning to document ICE arrests at the San Diego courthouse instead became the story Tuesday after video of her own arrest began circulating.

An ICE agent accused the woman of pushing her. After she spent hours in custody, she denied that to NBC 7 on Wednesday.