US

Chris Rock has spoken about being smacked in the face by actor Will Smith on the Academy Awards stage. During the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles last year, Smith walked onto the stage and slapped Rock, who had made a joke at the expense of the actor’s wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, as he was

It feels like we’ve just sat through one of Prince Harry’s therapy sessions. More than that, we’ve all just paid £17.99 for the privilege, albeit with a free copy of Spare thrown in. This was billed as an “intimate conversation” and that’s exactly what we got, over an hour of Prince Harry talking us through

A US woman who was declared legally dead after disappearing more than three decades ago has turned up alive in Puerto Rico, her family and police have said. Patricia Kopta, now 83, had last been seen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1992 when investigators began looking into her disappearance. She was known to be an “eccentric”

US approval of the abortion medication mifepristone has been revoked, in a decision that could further disrupt reproductive healthcare for millions of people. Mifepristone blocks the hormone needed to maintain a pregnancy and has been approved in the US since 2000 for medical abortion and miscarriage management. It is used safely in more than 60

A lesion removed from President Joe Biden’s chest a month ago was cancerous, a White House doctor has confirmed. The lesion was a basal cell carcinoma – a common form of skin cancer – the president’s long-term physician, Dr Kevin O’Connor, said on Friday. Mr Biden, 80, requires no further treatment after “all cancerous tissue

Alex Murdaugh has been convicted of murdering his wife and son after a six-week trial that revealed the prominent lawyer’s spectacular fall from grace. The 54-year-old shot his wife Margaret, 52, four or five times with a rifle outside dog kennels on their rural Colleton County property in South Carolina on 7 June 2021. On

Drugs designed to treat diabetes and repurposed as miracle diet aids have taken over TikTok. The weight loss caused by these weekly injectables is rapid and previously unattainable, people boast, showing off newly svelte bodies. But what are these drugs, how do they work – and what were they originally designed to do? Mounjaro, Ozempic,

DNA evidence from an alleged sexual assault in 1994 has led to the arrest of a man for a 43-year-old murder in California. Harold Carpenter, 63, is believed to have killed Patricia Carnahan in 1979, the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office in California said. Ms Carnahan’s body was found at a campground at Lake

The director of the FBI has said the agency believes COVID-19 “most likely” came from a lab leak in China. “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Christopher Wray told Fox News. Mr Wray said he could not

China has denounced the US over its TikTok bans, saying it has been “abusing state power”. Congress and more than half of US states have banned TikTok from government-issued mobile devices, following cybersecurity concerns. TikTok is used by two-thirds of American teenagers but there is concern in Washington that China could use its legal and

The trial of a prominent US lawyer for the murder of his wife and son has prompted the reopening of investigations into other deaths. Alex Murdaugh, 54, is accused of shooting dead his wife Margaret, 52, and their youngest son Paul, 22, on their estate in South Carolina. Prosecutors say the lawyer carried out the

Fox Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch has admitted that some Fox News commentators endorsed false claims made by Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen – and that he didn’t try to stop them. The claims are from a deposition unsealed on Monday, which is part of a lawsuit against the

Three crew members on the set of Rust are suing actor Alec Baldwin and others over the death of the film’s cinematographer. Ross Addiego, Doran Curtin and Reese Price say they have suffered anxiety and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder since a prop gun held by Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on

The COVID-19 virus most likely leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, according to the US Energy Department. In a report seen by the Wall Street Journal, the US agency said the virus was not being engineered as part of a weapons program. Recently given to the White House and members of Congress, the updated report

A winter storm that has made its way over the Pacific has brought several days of flooding, freezing temperatures and snowfall to some parts of Southern California. Rivers have swelled to dangerous levels and snow has even fallen in low-lying areas around Los Angeles – with some areas receiving over 30 inches of snow, and

Several US media publishers are dropping the Dilbert comic strip after its creator described black people as members of “a racist hate group”. Several media officials denounced the comments by creator Scott Adams as racist, hateful and discriminatory. Dilbert is a long-running comic strip poking fun at office culture. In an episode of the YouTube

Convicted serial murderer Ramon Escobar is suspected of killing his new cellmate on Friday at a central California prison, officials have said. Escobar, 51, shared a jail room with Juan Villanueva at North Kern State Prison in Delano. Villanueva, 53, was found unresponsive on 24 February at 8.49am. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

Jill Biden has dropped the strongest hint yet that President Joe Biden will run for a second term – saying there is “pretty much” nothing left to do but work out the time and place for the announcement. The US president has long said it is his intention to seek re-election, though he has yet

The production company behind the film Rust has agreed to pay a $100,000 fine to an occupational health and safety bureau following a fatal shooting on set. The New Mexico Environment Department’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau (OHSB) had issued a $136,796 (£114,457) fine, the maximum allowable by state law, last April. It was later

A billionaire financier, considered a pioneer of private equity investment, has been found dead in his New York office after reportedly taking his own life. While the family of Thomas (Tom) H Lee, who was 78, confirmed he had passed away there was yet to be any official confirmation from the New York Police Department

Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein begged “please don’t sentence me to life in prison, I don’t deserve it” as he was jailed for another 16 years for rape and sexual assault. Weinstein, 70, will serve the jail term after completing his 23-year sentence for a sexual misconduct conviction in New York in 2020. It is

Residents near the site of a toxic train derailment say they are afraid to take showers because of the fear of contamination. It has been almost three weeks since about 50 freight carriages on a 150-car Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, and the controlled burn a few days later of the toxic

A TV journalist has been shot dead while reporting from the scene of a murder in Florida. They were covering the fatal shooting of a 20-year-old woman in Pine Hills at the time of the attack. Another Spectrum News 13 employee was injured while reporting at the scene, which is west of Orlando. Detectives also

A school superintendent has resigned after an eight-year-old found his gun unattended in a bathroom.  The firearm was discovered in Rising Star Elementary School in Texas – and many parents were furious because they were not informed about the incident when it happened. The boy told his teacher about the gun, prompting the teacher to

Joe Biden has said Vladimir Putin expected his enemies to “roll over” when he invaded Ukraine but was met with the “iron will” of its allies – as the Russian president suspended a key nuclear treaty with the US after accusing the West of starting the war. The American president gave a historic speech from

More than 300,000 Starbucks drinks have been recalled by PepsiCo, after glass was found in some of its bottles. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said 25,200 cases of the vanilla Frappuccino chilled coffee drink were recalled after the detection of the material inside the 405ml bottles. There are twelve bottles in each case,

US President Joe Biden has become the latest and most powerful Western leader to visit Kyiv since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year. The show of solidarity for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his people came as a surprise to many, as the White House said last week that the US president had no

Actor Tom Sizemore is in critical condition after suffering a brain aneurysm. The 61-year-old suffered the aneurysm at around 2am on Saturday while at his Los Angeles home, his manager Charles Lago said. The actor is in intensive care in hospital, with Mr Lago describing the situation as “wait and see”. Sizemore is best known

The US Secretary of State has warned China there will be “consequences” if Beijing provides material support to Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. Antony Blinken said in an interview after meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi that Washington was concerned Beijing was considering supplying weapons to Moscow. The top diplomats of the two

Former US president Jimmy Carter has decided to receive hospice care and “spend his remaining time at home with his family”, his representatives have said. It follows a series of brief hospital stays for the 98-year-old, the Carter Centre said in a statement. Mr Carter, the oldest living former US president, opted for hospice care

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has met with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi, in the first meeting between the two nations since an alleged spy balloon was shot down over America. The hour-long meeting took place in Germany, where the pair were attending the Munich Security Conference, which debates the most pressing challenges to

The US and Canada have called off searches for three unidentified objects that were shot down last weekend, as investigators begin analysing the last of the debris collected from first Chinese “spy” balloon shot down at the start of the month. Authorities did not manage to locate any debris from the three unknown objects, they

The five former Memphis police officers who pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder of Tyre Nichols did not have “the courage to look me in my face,” his mother has said. Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr, Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, aggravated assault,