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A senior White House official said Friday that President Donald Trump, as part of his sweeping immigration crackdown, is looking at suspending habeas corpus, the right of a person to challenge their detention in court.”The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters.”So it’s an option we’re actively looking at,” Miller said. “A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants and has repeatedly referred to their presence in the United States as an “invasion.”Since taking office in January, Trump has been seeking to step up deportations, but his efforts have met with pushback from multiple federal courts which have insisted that migrants targeted for removal receive due process.Among other measures, the Republican president invoked an obscure wartime law in March to summarily deport hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador.Several federal courts have blocked further deportations using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and the Supreme Court also weighed in, saying migrants subject to deportation under the AEA must be given an opportunity to legally challenge their removal in court.The AEA was last used to round up Japanese-Americans during World War II and was previously invoked during the War of 1812 and World War I.Suspending habeas corpus could potentially allow the administration to dispense with individual removal proceedings and speed up deportations, but the move would almost certainly be met with stiff legal challenges and end up in the Supreme Court.It has been suspended only rarely in US history, most notably by president Abraham Lincoln during the 1861-1865 Civil War and in Hawaii after the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Paula Hambrick never imagined that in her lifetime the Catholic Church would be led by a pope from the United States, never mind her hometown of Chicago.But at a mass on Friday in her Midwestern city in honor of the newly elected Pope Leo XIV, a native son of the so-called Windy City, the 77-year-old was counting her blessings.”There’s probably three things that I would have hoped for in my life: to see the Cubs win the World Series, a woman become president and an American pope,” she told AFP, naming one of the local professional baseball teams.”I got two out of three! It’s pretty good odds, right?” said Hambrick, who like the new pope hails from the city’s southern suburbs.”It’s terrific. I’m thrilled,” she added, speaking under the wood vault of Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral.By 8 am the pews were fuller compared to one hour earlier for the first mass to celebrate the new pope, but still relatively sparse.Alejandro Mendoza, who was among the several hundred people to turn out for the service, said he had become more proud of Chicago.”I’m telling everybody that the pope is from where I’m from,” the 24-year-old said.”It feels like you know him. It’s very special, this sense of pride.”- ‘A prophetic figure’ -Maryjane Okolie, a nun who has been working in the southern suburbs of Chicago for more than a decade, said people there were “excited” and “surprised” that Robert Francis Prevost had become the 267th pope.”Everybody is talking about it,” she told AFP. She said she hoped Leo would follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, pope Francis, who gained a reputation for attending to the disadvantaged.Nate Bacon, a 61-year-old deacon who has been working in Guatemala for more than 10 years and was in town to visit his son, said he was “shocked” by the news.”At a time when the United States is in a really dominating kind of posture, to have a pope from the United States felt it had a cringe factor to it,” he said.Those concerns were assuaged when Bacon learned that Prevost had performed years of missionary service in Peru and that the new pope “was someone who built bridges and would continue the work of pope Francis.””I became enthusiastic,” Bacon told AFP.He said he hopes Leo can undo some of the “destruction” wrought by the administration of US President Donald Trump, who has adopted an aggressive anti-immigration stance since taking office this year.”I’m hoping a pope who was born in the United States could be a prophetic figure and a sign of a return to true values of justice, peace, and welcoming strangers and immigrants, and standing with those whom society has thrown away,” he added.Bishop Lawrence Sullivan, who helped lead Friday’s mass, said a return to Chicago by Leo would bring “tremendous excitement and joy.”

A US judge on Friday ordered the release of a Turkish student detained by federal agents as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism.Judge William Sessions said Rumeysa Ozturk, a Ph.D student at Tufts University in Massachusetts, should be released “immediately” from custody while her removal proceedings continue.Ozturk’s student visa was revoked by the State Department after she co-authored an article in the university newspaper, The Tufts Daily, criticizing the college’s handling of student anger around Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.Video of the 30-year-old Ozturk’s March 25 arrest by masked agents on a sidewalk sparked outrage online, and added to concerns about freedom of speech and respect for due process under Trump.Sessions echoed the concerns during Friday’s live-streamed custody hearing, at which Ozturk appeared remotely from a detention center in Louisiana.”Continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens,” the judge said.”Any one of them may now avoid exercising their First Amendment rights for fear of being whisked away to a detention center from their home,” he said.”Her continued detention cannot stand,” Sessions said. “The court orders the government to release Miss Ozturk from custody immediately.”The judge said he was not putting any travel restrictions on Ozturk and she was free to return to her home in Massachusetts.Ozturk is one of a number of foreign students facing deportation over their pro-Palestinian campus activities, and she still faces removal proceedings.The decision to release her from custody was welcomed by Turkey but condemned by the White House.Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc, in a post on X, called it a “positive development” and said it was “unacceptable for someone to be prosecuted because of their faith or their support for Palestine.”Stephen Miller, a senior White House official, lashed out at the decision, saying “there’s a judicial coup in this country.””Foreigners in this country do not have a right to stay in this country if they support designated terrorist organizations like Hamas,” Miller told reporters.”The secretary of state has the absolute authority… to revoke an immigration benefit or a visa and then to pursue a deportation.”- ‘Won’t stop fighting’ -Tufts University has publicly backed Ozturk, demanding her release so she can return to the school and complete her doctoral studies in child development.Jessie Rossman, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which is among the groups representing Ozturk, welcomed her release.”For 45 days, Rumeysa has been detained in Louisiana,” Rossman said. “During that time, she has suffered regular and escalating asthma attacks.”And at the same time, the government has failed to produce any justification for her detention,” Rossman said, adding that the ACLU “won’t stop fighting until she is free for good.”Trump has targeted prestigious universities that became the epicenter of the US student protest movement sparked by Israel’s war in Gaza, stripping federal funds and directing immigration officers to deport foreign student demonstrators.Critics argue that the campaign amounts to retribution and will have a chilling effect on free speech, while its supporters insist it is necessary to restore order to campuses and protect Jewish students.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved an at-home cervical cancer screening tool as an alternative to Pap smears by a gynecologist, the company behind the device said Friday.The “Teal Wand” — a self-collection vaginal swab shaped like a tampon and developed by Teal Health — will be available online for individuals aged 25 to 65 who are at average risk for cervical cancer.Users request a kit online, have a brief visit with a telehealth provider to gauge eligibility and then the kit is prescribed. They then collect the sample and ship it to a lab for analysis. Cervical cancer, which affects the lower part of the uterus, is diagnosed in about 0.6 percent of women. Although HPV vaccination and regular screening are highly effective at preventing the disease, more than one in four women fall behind on routine appointments.”When we make care easier to get, we help women stay healthy, for themselves and for the people who rely on them every day,” Teal Health CEO Kara Egan said in a statement.The Teal Wand tests for high-risk strains of human papillomavirus (HPV), the primary cause of cervical cancer. A large clinical trial found its accuracy comparable to a traditional Pap smear, which requires a speculum and is often cited as a barrier to screening due to discomfort.Most sexually active people will contract HPV at some point, though only a small fraction develop cancer.Teal Health did not disclose pricing but said it is in talks with insurers to ensure affordability. The product will launch first in California in June.

US authorities said the overstretched airport of Newark, one of three serving the New York metropolitan area, suffered a new 90-second outage early on Friday.Delays and flight cancellations had already followed an April 28 incident at Newark Liberty International Airport, in which traffic controllers stationed in nearby Philadelphia were unable to communicate with planes.In the latest incident, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there “was a telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display” at the same Philadelphia traffic control station that guides aircraft in and out of Newark’s airspace.The outage occurred around 3:55 am (07:55 GMT) on Friday and “lasted approximately 90 seconds,” a short statement said.Following the first incident, the FAA said Wednesday it was slowing arrivals and departures at Newark, which is one of the United States’ busiest airports. In Wednesday’s statement, the FAA said it was adding new telecommunications capacity, replacing copper connections with updated materials and deploying backup equipment.It also cited runway construction as a cause for the slowdown.The troubles at Newark follow a January 29 mid-air collision near Washington’s Reagan National Airport involving a passenger jet and a military helicopter, the first major US commercial crash since 2009.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described Friday’s incident as a “glitch” “caused by the same telecoms and software issues that were raised last week,” adding that FAA and Department of Transportation staff were installing new telecommunications connections. “The goal is to have the totality of this work done by the end of the summer,” she said.Leavitt praised Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who on Thursday unveiled a sweeping plan to modernize the nation’s air traffic control system.”These are much needed changes. This is a very bold plan by the Department of Transportation,” Leavitt said. “I think it’s unfortunate that the previous administration sat on their hands and did nothing,” Leavitt said, referring to the Biden administration.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader in the legislative chamber, called the problem at Newark an “air travel safety emergency that requires immediate and decisive action, not a promise of a big, beautiful unfunded overhaul that will take years to begin to implement,” according to a statement. “The back up system that is not working must be fixed. Now,” said Schumer.Schumer has questioned the impact of FAA job cuts on Newark’s operations, made during Elon Musk tenure as the unofficial head of the Department of Government Efficiency. In a statement earlier this week Schumer said that the incidents are evidence the Trump administration is not “up to the task of keeping people safe.”

US President Donald Trump signaled on Friday that he could lower sky-high tariffs on Chinese imports, as the rival superpowers prepare for trade talks in Switzerland over the weekend.”80% Tariff on China seems right!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. Levies on the Asian manufacturing giant are currently 145 percent, with cumulative duties on some goods reaching a staggering 245 percent.In retaliation to the steep tariffs from Washington, China has slapped 125 percent levies on US goods.Trump added that it was “Up to Scott B.” — US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — who will confer with China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng this weekend in Geneva to try to cool the conflict roiling international markets.US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will also attend the talks.”The President still remains with his position that he is not going to unilaterally bring down tariffs on China. We need to see concessions from them as well,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters later Friday.”As for the 80 percent number, that was a number the president threw out there. And we’ll see what happens this weekend,” she added. The cripplingly high duties amount to an effective trade embargo between the world’s two largest economies, with private shipping data already pointing to a sharp slowdown in goods flowing from China to the United States. – ‘A good sign’ -“The relationship is not good,” said Bill Reinsch, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), referring to current ties between Washington and Beijing. “We have trade-prohibitive tariffs going in both directions. Relations are deteriorating,” said Reinsch, a longtime former member of the American government’s US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “But the meeting is a good sign.””I think this is basically to show that both sides are talking and that itself is very important,” Xu Bin, professor of economics and finance at the China Europe International Business School, told AFP. “Because China is the only country that has tit-for-tat tariffs against Trump’s tariffs.” Beijing has insisted the United States must lift tariffs first and vowed to defend its interests.Bessent has said the meetings in Switzerland would focus on “de-escalation” and not a “big trade deal.”The head of the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO) on Friday welcomed the talks, calling them a “positive and constructive step toward de-escalation.””Sustained dialogue between the world’s two largest economies is critical to easing trade tensions, preventing fragmentation along geopolitical lines and safeguarding global growth,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said, according to a spokesperson.Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter also sounded an upbeat note.”Yesterday the Holy Spirit was in Rome,” she said Friday, referring to the election of Pope Leo XIV. “We must hope that he will now go down to Geneva for the weekend.” – 10 percent baseline – Bessent and He will meet two days after Trump unveiled what he called a historic trade agreement with Britain, the first deal with any country since he unleashed a blitz of sweeping global tariffs last month.The five-page, non-legally binding document confirmed to nervous investors that the United States is willing to negotiate sector-specific relief from recent duties — in this case on British cars, steel and aluminum. In return, Britain agreed to open up its markets to US beef and other farm products.But a 10 percent baseline levy on most British goods remained intact, and Trump remains “committed” to keeping it in place for other countries in talks with the United States, Leavitt told reporters. Reinsch from CSIS said one of the practical problems going into the Geneva negotiations is the two countries’ starkly different negotiating strategies.”Trump’s approach is generally top-down,” he said. “He wants to meet with (Chinese President) Xi Jinping, and thinks that if the two of them can get together, they can make a big deal and then have the subordinates go work out the details.””The Chinese are the reverse,” he said. “They want to have all the issues settled and everything agreed to at lower levels before there’s any leaders meeting.”burs-da/acb

US President Donald Trump has fired the country’s top librarian, his spokeswoman confirmed Friday, cutting short the term of the only woman and first African American to take on the role.The White House accused librarian of Congress Carla Hayden of introducing “concerning” initiatives to bolster diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and “putting inappropriate books in the library for children.””(We) don’t believe that she was serving the interests of the American taxpayer well, so she has been removed from her position and the president is well within his rights to do that,” Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.But the move sparked a furious backlash from Democrats, who accused Trump of trying to silence opposing views.Hakeem Jeffries, who leads the Democrats in the House of Representatives, called Hayden’s dismissal “a disgrace and the latest in (Trump’s) ongoing effort to ban books, whitewash American history and turn back the clock.””The Library of Congress is the People’s Library. There will be accountability for this unprecedented assault on the American way of life sooner rather than later,” he said in a statement.New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich praised Hayden for running a library that was “accessible to all Americans, in person and online.” “While President Trump wants to ban books and tell Americans what to read — or not to read at all — Dr. Hayden has devoted her career to making reading and the pursuit of knowledge available to everyone,” he said.Hayden was nominated to manage the world’s largest library in 2016 but has been criticized by conservatives, including members of the American Accountability Foundation lobby group, which has accused her of seeking to “indoctrinate America’s children with radical sexual ideologies.””Carla Hayden is woke, anti-Trump, and promotes trans-ing kids,” the group posted on social media hours ahead of the librarian’s firing. “It’s time to get her OUT and hire a new guy for the job!”Hayden’s 10-year term was set to expire next year. The Library of Congress provides research and information for the legislative process as well as managing a vast collection of books, films, audio recordings and other materials.The librarian of Congress is responsible for setting policy and managing staff, while also overseeing the US Copyright Office and appointing the poet laureate.The library did not respond to a request for comment.

The United States and Iran will hold a new round of nuclear talks Sunday in Oman, officials said, just ahead of a visit to the region by President Donald Trump.Trump, who will visit three other Gulf Arab monarchies next week, has voiced hope for reaching a deal with Tehran to avert an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear program that could ignite a wider war.Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Oman, which has been mediating, had proposed Sunday as the date and both sides had accepted.”Negotiations are moving ahead and naturally, the more we advance, the more consultations we have, and the more time the delegations need to examine the issues,” he said in a video carried by Iranian media.”But what’s important is that we are moving forward so that we gradually get into the details,” Araghchi said.Steve Witkoff, Trump’s friend who has served as his globe-trotting negotiator, will take part in the talks, the fourth since Trump returned to the White House, according to a source familiar with arrangements.”As in the past, we expect both direct and indirect discussions,” the person said on condition of anonymity.Iranian and US representatives voiced optimism after the previous talks that took place in Oman and Rome, saying there was a friendly atmosphere despite the two countries’ four decades of enmity.But the two sides are not believed to have gone into technical detail, and basic questions remain.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has insisted that Iran give up all uranium enrichment, even for civilian purposes. He has instead raised the possibility of Iran importing enriched uranium for any civilian energy.Witkoff initially voiced more flexibility before backtracking.- ‘Blow ’em up nicely’ -Trump himself has acknowledged tensions in his policy on Iran, saying at the start of his second term that hawkish advisors were pushing him to step up pressure reluctantly.In an interview Thursday, Trump said he wanted “total verification” that Iran’s contested nuclear work is shut down but through diplomacy.”I’d much rather make a deal” than see military action, Trump told the conservative radio Hugh Hewitt.”There are only two alternatives — blow ’em up nicely or blow ’em up viciously,” Trump said.Trump in his first term withdrew from a nuclear agreement with Tehran negotiated by former president Barack Obama that allowed Iran to enrich uranium at low levels that could be used only for civilian purposes.Many Iran watchers doubted that Iran would ever voluntarily dismantle its entire nuclear program and give up all enrichment.But Iran has found itself in a weaker place over the past year. Israel has decimated Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia backed by Iran that could launch a counter-attack in any war, and Iran’s main ally in the Arab world, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, was toppled in December.Israel also struck Iranian air defenses as the two countries came openly to blows in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, which is also supported by Iran’s clerical state.The Trump administration has kept piling on sanctions despite the talks, angering Iran. On Thursday, the United States imposed sanctions on another refinery in China, the main market for Iranian oil.Since Trump’s withdrawal from the Obama-era deal, the United States has used its power to try to stop all other countries from buying Iranian oil.

The United States’ measles outbreak has surpassed 1,000 confirmed cases with three deaths so far, state and local data showed Friday, marking a stark resurgence of a vaccine-preventable disease that the nation once declared eliminated.The surge comes as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to undermine confidence in the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine — a highly effective shot he has falsely claimed is dangerous and contains fetal debris.An AFP tally showed there have been at least 1,012 cases since the start of the year, with Texas accounting for more than 70 percent.A vaccine-skeptical Mennonite Christian community straddling the Texas–New Mexico border has been hit particularly hard.A federal database maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has lagged behind state and county reporting, as the globally renowned health agency faces deep workforce and budget cuts under President Donald Trump’s administration.North Dakota is the latest state to report an outbreak, with nine cases so far. Around 180 school students have been forced to quarantine at home, according to the North Dakota Monitor.”This is a virus that’s the most contagious infectious disease of mankind and it’s now spreading like wildfire,” Paul Offit a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia told AFP.He warned the true case count could be far higher, as people shy away from seeking medical attention. “Those three deaths equal the total number of deaths from measles in the last 25 years in this country.”The fatalities so far include two young girls in Texas and an adult in New Mexico, all unvaccinated — making it the deadliest US measles outbreak in decades.It is also the highest number of cases since 2019, when outbreaks in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York and New Jersey resulted in 1,274 infections but no deaths.- Vaccine misinformation -Nationwide immunization rates have been dropping in the United States, fueled by misinformation about vaccines, particularly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The CDC recommends a 95 percent vaccination rate to maintain herd immunity.However, measles vaccine coverage among kindergartners has dropped from 95.2 percent in the 2019–2020 school year to 92.7 percent in 2023–2024.Measles is a highly contagious respiratory virus spread through droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes or simply breathes.Known for its characteristic rash, it poses a serious risk to unvaccinated individuals, including infants under 12 months who are not ordinarily eligible for vaccination, and those with weakened immune systems.Before the measles vaccine’s introduction in 1963, it is thought that millions of Americans contracted the disease annually, and several hundred died. While measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, outbreaks persist each year.Susan McLellan, an infectious disease professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch, pushed back against messaging that promotes remedies like Vitamin A — which has valid but limited uses — over vaccines.Kennedy has led that messaging in frequent appearances on Fox News.”Saying we’re going to devote resources to studying therapies instead of enhancing uptake of the vaccine is a profoundly inefficient way of addressing a vaccine-preventable disease,” she told AFP.McLellan added that the crisis reflects broader erosion in public trust in health authorities.She said it is hard for an individual untrained in statistics to understand measles is a problem if they don’t personally see deaths around them. “Believing population-based statistics takes a leap, and that’s public health.”

San Francisco’s main public transport system abruptly shut down Friday morning, stopping all trains in the Bay Area and throwing the morning commute into chaos.”Due to a computer networking problem BART service is suspended system wide until further notice,” said a message on the Bay Area Rapid Transit website.”Seek alternate means of transport.”The shutdown left tens of thousands of commuters scrambling to find other ways to work.Pictures showed crowds of people pressing aboard buses, while reports said both the Golden Gate Bridge and the Oakland Bay Bridge — key routes into and out of the city — were clogged.Unlike many major US cities, San Francisco has a well developed public transport network that includes an underground train network, buses, trams and ferries that traverse the bay between San Francisco and other cities in the region.The closure of the BART train system, whose 131 miles (210 kilometres) of track carry more than 174,000 passengers every day, appeared to be related to how the system had powered up after overnight maintenance, communications officer Alicia Trost told ABC7.There was no immediate indication that the problems had been the result of a cyberattack, she said.The halt caused misery for those trying to get to work.David Meland told the San Francisco Chronicle he had waited in vain outside his local station for an hour to see if the service would resume.”It’s happened a lot. BART’s just too inconsistent,” he said. “This is pretty bad.”Patrick Dunn, who had driven to an exurban station to ride into the city said he was going to have to switch transport.”Now I have to take the bus, and I never take the bus,” he told the Chronicle.”I already have a long commute and now I have to wait for the (bus). I’ll be late by an half hour or so.”The shutdown came on the day that the overstretched airport in Newark, one of three serving greater New York, also suffered an outage — the second in the last few weeks.The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said there “was a telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display” at the same Philadelphia traffic control station that guides aircraft in and out of Newark’s airspace.The outage occurred around 03:55 (07:55 GMT) on Friday and “lasted approximately 90 seconds,” a short statement said.