Top World News

May 21, 2026 - World

Court throws out state’s challenge to judicial finding that inmate convicted of murder is ineligible for death penaltyThe US supreme court on Thursday threw out a challenge by the state of Alabama to a judicial finding that a death row inmate convicted of a 1997 murder is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible under the US constitution for the death penalty.In this highly unusual move, and in a single-sentence, unsigned order, the court dismissed Alabama’s petition for review in Hamm v Smith without deciding it, effectively undoing its earlier decision to take up an appeal by state officials to the method used by a lower court to determine that Joseph Clifton Smith was intellectually disabled and therefore could not be executed. Continue reading...

May 21, 2026 - World

The UK’s largest police force says Palantir is the only company that can supply what it needs. Is that worth the increasing controversy that comes with them?London mayor Sadiq Khan blocks £50m Met police deal with PalantirIt’s bot vs bobby. The row over whether the controversial US AI company Palantir should be paid £50m to help the Metropolitan police hits to the heart of how public services will be delivered in the coming years.A similar dynamic is playing out in hospitals, schools and town halls, but right now police chiefs are turning to AI to escape a fiscal bind. The UK’s largest police force is shrinking; a £125m funding shortfall means it faces cutting 1,150 posts. Scotland Yard wants to use AI to deploy Palantir’s systems to comb through human intelligence reports, email caches, phone records and the rest of the torrent of digital evidence trail left by 21st century crime. Continue reading...

May 21, 2026 - World

Aimee Bock ran Feeding Our Future, which claimed it helped provide millions of meals to children during the pandemicSign up for the Breaking News US newsletter emailA federal judge has sentenced Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock to nearly 42 years in prison for orchestrating what prosecutors called the largest pandemic fraud scheme in the country.Thursday’s sentencing follows a $250m plot that exploited federal child nutrition programs. The plot later became a flashpoint in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, leading to violent demonstrations and the ICE killings of two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Continue reading...

May 21, 2026 - World

Burnham and Streeting’s latest stances confound caricatures of left and right as party faces electoral bindThe Labour party has seemed to inhabit three parallel worlds over the past fortnight.There is a prime minister celebrating good news on the economy and lower migration figures and breezily insisting he will fight the next election, but with his party intent on deposing him. Continue reading...

May 21, 2026 - World

DHS issued ‘Bolo’ for Ben Palmer, whose videos of calls with members of the public who thought they were reporting immigrants went viralThe Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has circulated a “Be on the Lookout” alert to law enforcement nationwide, targeting a comedian whose satire of US immigration enforcement went viral.The subject of the alert, known as a “Bolo”, was Ben Palmer, a Nashville-based standup comedian and prankster who created a parody anti-immigration tip website. His revealing videos of calls with members of the public who thought they were reporting immigrants to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have garnered millions of views on TikTok and YouTube. Continue reading...