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Framed flag with 13 stars draws $2,952 at auction

The Continental Congress established the design of the United States flag on June 14, 1776. There are several stories about the first Flag Day celebration, such as that it was in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1861, or that a New York kindergarten teacher celebrated it with his class in 1889, but it is generally agreed that the holiday was observed on June 14 in individual states by the late 1800s. It became particularly popular in schools, where students celebrated by writing essays about what the American flag meant to them, or held assemblies where they carried flags and sang ...

Pope shames world over migrants’ plight

ARGUINEGUIN, Spain — Pope Leo XIV traveled to a once-notorious epicenter of the European migration debate on Thursday, challenging countries to uphold migrants’ rights while shaming those leaders, including Christians, who turn them away with indifference. Leo issued an impassioned plea to recognize the dignity of migrants from the port of Arguineguin, in the Canary Islands. In 2020, the port was dubbed “dock of shame” because of the squalid conditions migrants were forced to live in for months during a spike in arrivals. “Human dignity has no passport and does not lose its ...

Scientists brace for El Nino: ‘Extreme events’ expected

WASHINGTON — El Nino, Nature’s chaotic climate agent, has formed in a warmed-up Pacific Ocean and is expected to grow to historic strength, meteorologists announced Thursday. Experts said the El Nino, a natural warming cycle, should further heat a globe already warming from fossil fuel pollution and will likely turbocharge extreme weather across the planet. Meteorologists forecast it will rival — or exceed — a record El Nino that began in 1997 and helped trigger billions of dollars in damage from heat waves, floods, droughts, tornadoes and wildfires. The U.S. National Oceanic ...

Evacuations strain US funds

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration put up $750,000 to charter a private yacht to evacuate a single American citizen from a remote South Pacific island after she had been aboard a cruise ship at the center of a deadly hantavirus outbreak, a move that has further strained the State Department’s emergency budget. The woman, who may have been exposed to the virus while aboard the Dutch MV Hondius cruise liner in April, had gotten off the ship and then flown to San Francisco before traveling to the isolated British territory of Pitcairn Island through Tahiti, according to two U.S. ...

Daily briefing

MINNESOTA Man pleads to killings MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota man who assassinated the top Democrat in the Minnesota House and her husband has pleaded guilty so that federal prosecutors would not seek the death penalty. Vance Boelter fatally shot Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman on June 14, 2025. He is also charged in the nonfatal shootings of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Spy powers to expire WASHINGTON — A key surveillance tool that allows the United States to collect intelligence abroad ...

Trump to tap Clayton for DNI

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he plans to nominate Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and a former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, as director of national intelligence. Trump announced the nomination on social media amid pressure from Congress to name a permanent replacement for Tulsi Gabbard. The job oversees the coordination of 18 intelligence agencies. The resulting uproar led to a standoff in Congress after Democrats said they would refuse to renew foreign intelligence powers unless Trump pulled ...