A man who threw a sandwich at a federal immigration agent deployed by President Donald Trump in the US capital was charged with a lesser offense on Thursday after prosecutors failed to secure a felony indictment.Sean Dunn, 37, a former Justice Department employee, was arrested on August 10 after hurling a footlong sub sandwich at a US Customs and Border Protection agent patrolling the city.The incident was captured on video and went viral, showing Dunn shouting at agents, throwing the sandwich and fleeing on foot.Dunn has been embraced by supporters as a symbol of resistance to the federal takeover of the Washington police force and the deployment of National Guard troops in the city.Dunn, who has earned the nickname “Sandwich Guy” in the media, was promptly fired by Attorney General Pam Bondi from his job at the Justice Department.The US Attorney for Washington initially charged Dunn with felony assault but a grand jury declined earlier this week to return an indictment on that charge.Prosecutors refiled the charge against Dunn as a misdemeanor on Thursday, accusing him of “assaulting, resisting or impeding” a law enforcement officer in the performance of his duties.Trump ordered a federal takeover of the Washington police force and the deployment of thousands of National Guard troops earlier this month to counter what he alleged was out-of-control crime in the capital.Federal law enforcement personnel — including Immigration and Customs Enforcement — have also increased their presence on Washington’s streets, drawing protests from some residents of the overwhelmingly Democratic city.Trump and fellow Republican politicians claim that the capital is overrun by crime, plagued by homelessness and financially mismanaged.Data from Washington police showed significant drops in violent crime between 2023 and 2024, though that was coming off a post-pandemic surge.

An approaching US deadline to end tariff exemptions on small parcels has tripped up global deliveries to the world’s biggest economy, with some businesses halting shipments to American consumers and mulling price hikes.Come Friday, President Donald Trump’s administration is abolishing a rule that allows packages valued at $800 or below to enter the United States duty-free.Instead, packages will either be subject to the tariff level applicable to their country of origin, or face a specific duty ranging from $80 to $200 per item.Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro told reporters that closing this “loophole” helps restrict the flow of “narcotics and other dangerous and prohibited items” while bringing fresh tariff revenues.But the monthlong lead time Trump’s order provided has sparked a frenzy.Postal services, including in France, Germany, Italy, India, Australia and Japan, earlier said most US-bound packages would no longer be accepted.The UK’s Royal Mail, which took a similar step, announced new services Thursday for customers to continue sending goods to the United States.On Tuesday, the United Nations’ Universal Postal Union said 25 member countries’ postal operators had suspended outbound postal services to the country.”Foreign post offices need to get their act together when it comes to monitoring and policing the use of international mail for smuggling and tariff evasion purposes,” Navarro added Thursday.US officials maintain that just five percent of duty-free small package shipments arrived via the postal network, while most went through express couriers.Yet, the impending change has brought confusion and concern to small businesses.- Delays, cost hikes -UK retailer Liz Nieburg told AFP she had stopped shipping products to US customers while the Royal Mail worked out a system to honor the changes.US buyers form about 20 percent of sales at her online business SocksFox, which sells socks, undergarments and sleepwear.She sees little choice but to hike prices if new duties are here to stay: “Our margins are too tight to be able to absorb that.”The Trump administration has imposed tariffs in rapid succession this year.Cornell University professor Li Chen warned that it takes time for postal services to establish systems for duty collection: “It’s not like there’s a switch you can turn on and turn off.””On the consumer side, there will be potential delays, because now all the parcels have to clear customs,” Chen added. Prices may also rise if businesses pass on the tariffs.He expects the impact on small businesses to be “much greater,” as larger firms can absorb shocks.These include businesses like Chinese-founded consumer platforms Shein and Temu, which were hit when Washington ended the exemption for China-origin products this year. They might have to raise costs, Chen said, but they are not fully dependent on US consumers.Ken Huening, whose California-based business CoverSeal manufactures outdoor protective covers in China and Mexico, has had to eliminate free shipping for customers.While he had benefited from the duty-free exemption, the hit to China and now Mexico is posing challenges.”Textile and manufacturing is not available in the US currently,” Huening said. “It might be in the future, but by that time, we’re all out of business.”- Confusion -“It’s a super confusing time for our customers,” said Haley Massicotte, who runs Canada-based cleaning products company Oak & Willow.She said US consumers do not always understand how tariffs work, and how they might have to bear added costs.”We are going to do everything in our power to not raise prices,” she stressed.Similarly, ceramics retailer Sarah Louise Jour in Bangkok is trying to keep shipping costs down after facing issues with Thailand’s postal service.This forced her to tap more expensive services for shipments to US buyers, constituting some 90 percent of her business.”I don’t have time to worry, because I have to think about my team,” she said. “I have rent I need to pay for the office.”While she expects sales to hold up over the holidays, the outlook is murkier afterwards.Massicotte said: “This tariff war is just going to hurt the American and the Canadian consumer, especially small business owners.”

A shooter who sprayed bullets into a church filled with young students was “obsessed with the idea of killing children,” investigators said Thursday, after reviewing writings and videos that detailed hate for a myriad of groups.As young children attended Mass on Wednesday marking their first week back at school, the attacker opened fire through the stained-glass windows of a church in the Midwestern city of Minneapolis, in the latest deadly shooting that has shaken the United States.The assailant, who died by suicide in the parking lot, left behind a manifesto, online videos and hundreds of pages of writings that investigators have been sifting through while searching for a motive.”The shooter expressed hate towards almost every group imaginable,” including Mexicans, Christians and Jews, acting US attorney for Minnesota Joseph Thompson told a press conference.”The shooter’s heart was full of hate.”The one group the attacker did not hate was “the most notorious school shooters and mass murderers in our country’s history,” whom the suspect “idolized,” Thompson said.In particular, “the shooter was obsessed with the idea of killing children.”The FBI has gathered evidence “demonstrating this was an act of domestic terrorism motivated by a hate-filled ideology,” director Kash Patel said on X earlier Thursday.Two children, aged eight and 10, were killed in the pews of the church during the attack. The number of wounded children rose to 15 on Thursday after one previously unknown victim came forward, city police chief Brian O’Hara told the press conference. Three people in their 80s were also injured.A child is in critical condition, and a pensioner is in serious condition at Hennepin Healthcare facilities, CEO Thomas Klemond told reporters.Police found 116 rifle rounds and three shotgun shells at the scene, as well as a round that appeared to have been stuck in the chamber of a handgun, O’Hara said.The shooter, who had no criminal record, had recently purchased all three guns legally, according to police.The attacker was a 23-year-old who legally changed names in 2020 and identified as a transgender woman, authorities have said.O’Hara requested the media stop saying the shooter’s name because the purpose of this “heinous attack” was to gain “notoriety.”The shooter once attended the Catholic school linked to the church, he added, and the attacker’s mother also previously worked at the church.

From a gold-plated White House to a grandiose revamp for the capital Washington, Donald Trump is trying to leave an architectural mark like no American president has attempted for decades.”I’m good at building things,” the property magnate said earlier this month as he announced perhaps the biggest project of all, a huge new $200-million ballroom at the US executive mansion.Trump made his fortune developing glitzy hotels and casinos branded with his name. Critics say the makeover Trump has given the White House in his second presidency is of a similar style.Parts of it now resemble his brash Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, particularly the newly paved-over Rose Garden with its picnic tables and yellow and white umbrellas.During Trump’s first term the British style writer Peter York dubbed his style “dictator chic,” comparing it to that of foreign autocrats.But Trump has also recently unveiled a grand vision for the entire US capital.Trump signed an executive order on Thursday declaring that “classical architecture” is the preferred style for all federal buildings in Washington — and requiring him to be notified of “brutalist or deconstructivist” plans.And he has explicitly tied his desire to “beautify” Washington to his recent crackdown on crime which has seen him deploy troops in the Democratic-run city — some of whom have ended up clearing up trash.”This is a ratcheting up of the performance of power,” Peter Loge, director of George Washington University’s School of Media, told AFP.”That’s what he does. Puts his name on bibles and casinos, so the logic makes complete sense. Except now he’s playing with lives, the reputation of the United States and a democratic legacy.” – Oval bling -Trump is far from the first president to carry out major renovations at the White House in its 225-year history.Franklin Roosevelt oversaw construction of the current Oval Office in 1934, Harry Truman led a major overhaul that ended in 1951 and John F. Kennedy created the modern Rose Garden in 1961.The White House Historical Association put Trump’s changes in context, saying the building was a “living symbol of American democracy, evolving while enduring as a national landmark.”Its president, Stewart McLaurin, said in an essay in June that renovations throughout history had drawn criticism from the media and Congress over “costs, historical integrity and timing.” “Yet many of these alterations have become integral to the identity of the White House, and it is difficult for us to imagine the White House today without these evolutions and additions,” he wrote.Trump’s changes are nevertheless the furthest reaching for nearly a century.Soon after his return he began blinging up the Oval Office walls with gold trim and trinkets that visiting foreign leaders have been careful to praise. Then he ordered the famed grass of the Rose Garden to be turned into a patio. Trump said he did so because women’s high-heeled shoes were sinking into the turf. After it was finished, Trump installed a sound system and AFP reporters could regularly hear music from his personal playlist blaring from the patio.Trump has also installed two huge US flags on the White House lawns, and a giant mirror on the West Wing colonnade in which the former reality TV star can see himself as he leaves the Oval.- ‘Big beautiful face’ -Billionaire Trump says he is personally funding those improvements. But his bigger plans will need outside help.The White House said the new ballroom planned for the East Wing by the end of his term in January 2029 will be funded by Trump “and other patriot donors.” Trump meanwhile says he expects Congress to agree to foot the $2 billion bill for his grand plan to spruce up Washington.That ranges from a marble makeover at the Kennedy Center for the performing arts to fixing broken road barriers and laying new asphalt.But Trump’s Washington plans also involve a crackdown by the National Guard that he has threatened to extend to other cities like Chicago.He has repeatedly said of the troop presence that Americans would “maybe like a dictator” — even as he rejects his opponents’ claims that he is acting like one.Trump’s own face even looms above Washington streets from huge posters on the labor and agriculture departments.”Mr President, I invite you to see your big beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor,” Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer said Tuesday at a cabinet meeting.