North America

NEW YORK (AP) — A tall construction crane caught fire in Manhattan on Wednesday morning, and its arm hit a building as it crashed to the street below.

Photos and videos posted on social media show flames bursting from the car of a crane hundreds of feet above 10th Avenue at 41st Street. The crane’s arm scraped the top floors of a skyscraper across the street as it fell.

There were no immediate reports of injuries from the crane fire and collapse, which happened shortly before 8 a.m.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President Joe Biden’s son Hunter is expected to appear before a federal judge on Wednesday to plead guilty to two tax crimes and admit possessing a gun as a drug user in a deal with the Justice Department that’s likely to spare him time behind bars.

U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika, who was appointed by then-President Donald Trump, will preside over the hearing and must sign off on the deal, in which prosecutors are recommending two years of probation. Hunter Biden is not expected to be sentenced on Wednesday.

25 July 2023; MEMO: The membership of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) has voted to endorse a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions, the association said on Monday.

NEW YORK, July 25. /TASS/: Twitter posts will be called "Xs" instead of "tweets" after the popular social media platform completes its rebranding into X, company owner Elon Musk tweeted on Tuesday.

"X's," the celebrity entrepreneur said, responding to a question about the new name for tweets after the rebranding. "Twitter was acquired by X Corp both to ensure freedom of speech and as an accelerant for X, the everything app. This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing," Musk noted.

July 25 (Reuters) - Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was involved in a car accident in Tennessee on Tuesday but is uninjured, his spokesperson said.

"This morning, the governor was in a car accident while traveling to an event in Chattanooga, Tennessee," the spokesperson, Bryan Griffin, said in a statement. "He and his team are uninjured."

The campaign did not release additional information.

DeSantis, 44, is considered former President Donald Trump's main challenger in the 2024 Republican contest.

WASHINGTON, July 25 (Reuters) - The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives is due to begin voting this week on a series of spending bills that take aim at culture-war targets, putting it on a collision course with the Democratic-led Senate and increasing the odds of a government shutdown come October.

UNITED NATIONS, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Fighting in Sudan began 100 days ago and thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded and millions more displaced, UN humanitarians said on Monday.

"One hundred days of fighting have exacted a devastating toll on the civilian population," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. "It is a senseless conflict, and it must stop now."

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported that during that same period, on average at least one child was injured or killed every hour of the conflict, OCHA said.

HOUSTON, July 24 (Xinhua) -- The Joe Biden administration on Monday filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas over deploying water barriers in the Rio Grande aimed to block migrants from crossing into the United States from Mexico.

In the lawsuit, the Department of Justice is asking the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Texas to force the state to remove the existing marine barriers and stop building more in the border river.

LOS ANGELES, July 24 (Xinhua) -- In recent weeks, the United States has experienced an unprecedented surge in union activities and strikes, as workers across multiple industries take matters into their own hands. Existing labor concerns combined with the economic aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a tsunami of industrial action not seen in decades.

Hollywood actors and screenwriters, hotel workers, postal workers, automakers, and others are either actively on strike or poised to initiate action, making the current nationwide heatwave even hotter as sparks fly.

EAGLE PASS, Texas (AP) — Wrecking ball-sized buoys on the Rio Grande. Razor wire strung across private property without permission. Bulldozers changing the very terrain of America’s southern border.

For more than two years, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has escalated measures to keep migrants from entering the U.S., pushing legal boundaries with a go-it-alone bravado along the state’s 1,200-mile (1,930-kilometer) border with Mexico. Now blowback over the tactics is widening, including from within Texas.