USA

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Louisiana-based federal judge’s order broadly limiting executive branch communications with social media companies could cause “grave harm” by preventing the government from “engaging in a vast range of lawful and responsible conduct,” Biden administration attorneys said in a motion filed Thursday with a federal appeals court.

The request to stay the order was the administration’s first substantive response to a July 4 ruling by U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in Monroe.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The first of two Iowa teenagers who pleaded guilty to beating their high school Spanish teacher to death with a baseball bat was sentenced Thursday to life with a possibility of parole after 35 years in prison.

A judge sentenced Willard Miller after a sentencing hearing that lasted more than seven hours.

Miller and another teen, Jeremy Goodale, had pleaded guilty in April to the 2021 attack on Nohema Graber. The 66-year-old teacher was fatally beaten while taking her regular afternoon walk in a park in Fairfield.

NEW YORK (AP) — Seven weeks before the premiere debate of the 2024 GOP primary, anxiety is building that the event could prove messy and divisive for the party.

Some candidates, like former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, are struggling to meet fundraising and polling requirements to make it on stage. He and others are pushing back on a loyalty pledge the Republican Party is insisting candidates sign to participate. And the race’s frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, is considering boycotting and holding a competing event instead.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Would-be homebuyers are willing to take on sharply higher mortgage payments, even as home prices have begun to pull back this year.

The median monthly payment listed on applications for home purchase loans jumped 14.1% in May from a year earlier to an all-time high $2,165, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The May figure also represents a 2.5% increase from April.

(AP) --- A judge on Thursday ordered the owner of a controversial firearms training center in Vermont arrested until he proves that parts of the 30-acre facility have been removed or demolished.

The property, known as Slate Ridge, includes multiple buildings and two firing ranges on land about the size of 30 football fields (12 hectares). Fueled by complaints from neighbors, the town of Pawlet has attempted unsuccessfully for several years to get the facility owner Daniel Banyai to remove structures he built without a permit.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Another solid month of hiring in the United States is expected to be reported Friday, an outcome that would suggest no recession is near but could make it harder for the Federal Reserve to succeed in its drive to cool the economy and curb high inflation.

Employers are forecast to have added 205,000 jobs in June, according to economists surveyed by data provider FactSet. Though below recent monthly gains, that would amount to a healthy increase and reflect a historically high number of advertised job openings.

(AP) --- As a warming Earth simmered into worrisome new territory this week, scientists said the unofficial records being set for average planetary temperature were a clear sign of how pollutants released by humans are warming their environment. But the heat is also just one way the planet is telling us something is gravely wrong, they said.

“Heat sets the pace of our climate in so many ways ... it’s never just the heat,” said Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at Brown University.

NEW YORK, July 6. /TASS/: Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has said that he told US and European leaders that Ukraine wanted to launch its counteroffensive earlier but it needed more weapons for that.

NEWARK, NEW JERSEY, July 6 (Reuters) - Two New Jersey firefighters were killed and five injured while battling an intense blaze overnight on a cargo ship packed with hundreds of vehicles docked at Port Newark, officials said on Thursday.

The Italian-flagged Grande Costa d’Avorio was carrying 1,200 new and used vehicles when a fire broke out on its 10th deck at about 10:30 p.m. EST (0330 GMT) on Wednesday, vessel operator Grimaldi Deep Sea said in a statement.

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Two firefighters were killed battling a blaze that began when cars caught fire deep inside a cargo ship carrying 5,000 cars at a New Jersey port, Newark’s fire chief said Thursday.

Responding firefighters found five to seven vehicles already on fire when they reached the 10th floor of the cargo ship at Port Newark around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday night. The blaze quickly extended to the 11th and 12th floors, and as firefighters were pushed back by the intense heat, two of them were lost, Fire Chief Rufus Jackson said at a news conference.