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‘It’s over’: Donald Trump trounces Nikki Haley and turns to contest against Joe Biden

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‘It’s over’: Donald Trump trounces Nikki Haley and turns to contest against Joe Biden

Donald Trump celebrated his latest string of victories on home turf on Tuesday night, addressing hundreds of supporters who had packed a gilded ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

“They call it Super Tuesday for a reason,” the former president said at a podium flanked by a dozen American flags. “This is a big one. They tell me, the pundits and otherwise, that there’s never been one like this. There’s never been anything so conclusive.”

Trump comfortably won all but one of the states up for grabs in the biggest day of the primary calendar on Tuesday, racking up hundreds more delegates that will help him become his party’s official nominee for the White House.

Trump could now cross the 1,215 delegate threshold as soon as next week, giving him the votes needed to officially be crowned the party’s candidate at the Republican National Convention this summer.

“For all intents and purposes, it’s over,” said Jim McLaughlin, Trump’s longtime pollster. “It’s over and then some. The Republicans are united. They are behind Donald Trump.”

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With his mind now fixed on the contest against Joe Biden, Trump used most of a relatively restrained speech to rehearse themes that he will deploy against the president in the coming months — including on immigration, high inflation and foreign conflicts.

“Our cities are choking to death. Our states are dying. And frankly, our country is dying,” Trump said in a voice that sounded hoarse at times. “And we’re going to make America great again, greater than ever before.”

Still, Trump has a thorn in his side thanks to his one-time ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, who, despite trailing him by a large margin in the delegate count and national opinion polls, has refused to suspend her campaign.

Haley pulled off an upset in Vermont’s Republican primary on Tuesday night, notching her second primary victory after winning in the District of Columbia at the weekend.

She has attacked Trump in recent weeks and insisted that her primary results across the country have shown that a significant minority of Republicans do not want Trump to be their party’s nominee. She cites his mounting legal troubles — namely 91 charges spread across four looming criminal trials — as evidence of the “chaos” wrought by the former president.

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Trump has often torn into Haley on the stump and on social media, referring to the former South Carolina governor as “birdbrain”. But the former president made no mention of her in his Mar-a-Lago speech on Tuesday, appealing instead for the party to unite behind him.

“We have a great Republican party with tremendous talent, and we want to have unity, and we are going to have unity, and it’s going to happen very quickly,” Trump said. “I have been saying lately, success will bring unity to our country.”

It was another sign that Trump is now focused on his rematch with Biden, a contest that will require him to project a more moderate image that appeals to the centrist Republicans and independent swing voters that he will need to win the election.

Haley’s camp quickly rejected Trump’s overtures.

“Unity is not achieved by simply claiming ‘we’re united’,” said campaign spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas in a statement on Tuesday night. “In state after state, there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump. That is not the unity our party needs for success.”

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That message did not match the mood at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump supporters were unanimous that it was time for Haley to drop out of the race.

“The primary is over,” said Armando Ibarra, chair of the Miami Young Republicans, who attended Trump’s election night party with his wife. “I think it is very clear that the country is ready for a change, and for the people, that is Donald Trump. It is time for her to get out.”

Haley did not hold any campaign events on Tuesday and has no further events on her public calendar or advertisements set to run on television in the coming days.

At the weekend, she suggested that she was no longer bound by a pledge she made last year to support whoever won the Republican party’s nomination, but many Trump allies expect Haley to fall in line.

“She will eventually endorse him,” said Florida-based Republican consultant Ford O’Connell, who is supporting Trump. “She understands the stakes. She sees the writing on the wall.”

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The Trump campaign has been buoyed in recent weeks by opinion polls that suggest he is in a strong position to beat Biden this year. A New York Times/Siena College poll published at the weekend found a majority of Biden’s 2020 supporters now think he is too old to be president.

But even some of Trump’s most ardent supporters acknowledge the former president has work to do to broaden his appeal.

Franco D’Andrea, a Trump supporter from Horsham, Pennsylvania, who flew to Mar-a-Lago to hear the former president speak on Tuesday, said he did not want Trump to say anything that might “alienate people”.

“I think he has got to try and bring in suburban women, for sure,” D’Andrea said. “If he can tone down the rhetoric a little bit, I think he can bring a lot of them back.”

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Want to own a real T. rex? It could cost you $30 million

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Want to own a real T. rex? It could cost you  million

“Gus,” a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, is pictured during a press preview at Sotheby’s in New York City on July 1.

Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images


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Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

If you ever wanted to own an actual T. rex and not just a toy, you now have a chance. But it’s going to cost you some bones. Millions of them.

The Tyrannosaurus rex fossil known as “Gus” will go up for auction Tuesday morning at Sotheby’s New York City office. The starting bid for the dinosaur is $19 million and the auction house estimates it could sell for $20 to $30 million.

Gus was found in Harding County, S.D., on private land in 2021, according to Sotheby’s. The T. rex skeleton, which is 38 feet long and 12 and half feet tall, is believed to be from the late Cretaceous period from about 67 million years ago.

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“Judging from the overall size and degree of bone development it can be determined that Gus’ skeleton belonged to a very large, robust, adult individual,” the auction house said in the listing.

Thomas Heitkamp, president of Theropoda Expeditions, the company that excavated the site, said in a Sotheby’s video about the discovery that nearly a thousand pieces were collected.

The creature is named after the owner of the ranch where it was discovered, Gary “Gus” Licking. He died during the excavation process, which ran through 2023, and was not able to see Gus fully assembled, according to Cassandra Hatton of Sotheby’s.

“Gary had for years roamed around his 6,500 acre property and seeing T. rex teeth and little bits of fossils and such, and he realized that there was probably something really important under the ground,” Hatton said in the video.

Gus is one of the largest and most complete T. rex specimens ever found, according to Sotheby’s.

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It’s not the first time dinosaur bones have been for sale to the highest bidder.

The first auction for a dinosaur was held by Sotheby’s in 1997. The creature, a T. rex named Sue, was purchased by a few large companies for the Field Museum in Chicago. It went for $8.4 million.

In 2024, Apex the stegosaurus sold for $44.6 million, the most ever for a dinosaur fossil. It was purchased by billionaire investor Ken Griffin, who loaned it to the American Natural History Museum in New York for four years.

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Map: 4.1-Magnitude Earthquake Shakes Southern California

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Map: 4.1-Magnitude Earthquake Shakes Southern California

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Note: Map shows the area with a shake intensity of 3 or greater, which U.S.G.S. defines as “weak,” though the earthquake may be felt outside the areas shown.  All times on the map are Pacific time. The New York Times

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A light, 4.1-magnitude earthquake struck in Southern California on Sunday, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The temblor happened at 3:38 a.m. Pacific time about 1 mile southeast of Frazier Park, Calif., data from the agency shows.

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U.S.G.S. data earlier reported that the magnitude was 4.4.

As seismologists review available data, they may revise the earthquake’s reported magnitude. Additional information collected about the earthquake may also prompt U.S.G.S. scientists to update the shake-severity map.

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Aftershocks detected

Subsequent quakes have been reported in the same area. Such temblors are typically aftershocks caused by minor adjustments along the portion of a fault that slipped at the time of the initial earthquake.

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Quakes and aftershocks within 100 miles

Aftershocks can occur days, weeks or even years after the first earthquake. These events can be of equal or larger magnitude to the initial earthquake, and they can continue to affect already damaged locations.

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When quakes and aftershocks occurred

 All times are Pacific time. The New York Times

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Sources: United States Geological Survey (epicenter, aftershocks, shake intensity); LandScan via Oak Ridge National Laboratory (population density) | Notes: Shaking categories are based on the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale. When aftershock data is available, the corresponding maps and charts include earthquakes within 100 miles and seven days of the initial quake. All times above are Pacific time. Shake data is as of Sunday, July 12 at 11:54 a.m. Eastern. Aftershocks data is as of Sunday, July 12 at 2:24 p.m. Eastern.

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Mexico-US relations are already strained, but experts say they’re about to get worse | CNN

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Mexico-US relations are already strained, but experts say they’re about to get worse | CNN

The death of a Mexican man in Houston at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is threatening to upend already-strained relations between Mexico and the United States.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum took the unusual step of announcing at a press conference on Thursday that Mexico is seeking civil and criminal investigations in the US related to the deaths of 17 Mexican nationals during immigration enforcement operations or at detention centers.

These investigations aim to “protect the human rights of Mexicans in the United States,” the Mexican government said.

The impetus for the announcement was the ICE shooting death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas last week. ICE officials said agents shot Salgado Araujo, whom they said was in the US illegally, after he rammed a law enforcement vehicle and refused to follow verbal commands during a traffic stop.

His family has disputed ICE’s account, telling CNN that the 52-year-old father of three would have stopped if he had known the car that followed him belonged to law enforcement.

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At her press conference announcing the request for criminal investigations, Sheinbaum also called for petitions to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Asked about Sheinbaum’s comments, the US Department of Homeland Security defended ICE’s actions.

“ICE agents are trained to use the minimum necessary force to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and our officers,” the agency said.

The agency also said that detainees in ICE custody “receive full due process, are provided with adequate food, water, and medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their families and attorneys.”

Analysts who spoke with CNN said that Salgado’s death and Mexico’s response may signal a major rift between Mexican and US authorities.

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“This is no minor incident,” said José Luis Valdés Ugalde, academic at the Center for Research on North America at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). “It affects the bilateral relationship and the pending issues that Mexico and the United States have before them,” including “security, migration, and trade.”

International affairs expert and newspaper columnist Fausto Pretelin said the relationship between Mexico and the United States was at “its worst moment” in the aftermath of the killing of Salgado Araujo. But he thinks Sheinbaum’s actions will damage relations further, for little more than political points gained within Mexico.

“It’s a performance,” Pretelin said of Sheinbaum’s announcement. “The opportunity to take these issues seriously is lost. And when I say seriously, I mean that diplomatic channels should be used.”

Yet some might argue that diplomatic channels have seen plenty of traffic, especially on this issue. Mexico’s government has already issued 11 diplomatic notes of protest to the US over the deaths of its citizens, Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco told reporters.

Now, his country had to go “beyond the diplomatic realm.”

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While Pretelin and Valdés Ugalde have warned that Sheinbaum’s announcement spells trouble for US-Mexico relations, some experts believe that the Mexican president hasn’t gone nearly far enough.

Academic and columnist Tomás Milton Muñoz Bravo, professor of international relations at UNAM, says that this type of response should have come much earlier.

“It’s incredible that 17 deaths had to occur for Mexican authorities to finally announce a strategy that goes beyond the merely diplomatic to the judicial,” said Muñoz Bravo. “Of course, the announcement has been made, but I still want to see the actions that have been stated actually develop.”

Yet Valdés Ugalde points out that the US shows no signs of caring about Mexican criticisms of its immigration policy. Likewise, Valdés Ugalde said, Mexico has not known how to defend the migrant community and has made what he describes as “mistakes” in its foreign policy.

One of these, according to Valdés Ugalde, has been rejecting extradition requests for politicians allegedly linked to drug trafficking on the grounds of national sovereignty. This has given the Trump administration an opening to retaliate in other areas, such as the renegotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which protects many Mexican exports from American tariffs.

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“There are no signs of rebuilding the relationship; the relationship is very damaged by the attitudes of both governments and by Mexico’s defensive stance,” Valdés Ugalde said.

Muñoz Bravo said that the November midterm elections in the US could open an opportunity for Mexico if Republicans lose their control of Congress.

“What we’re going to see in November is extremely important,” he said. If Trump “does not have a majority in the chambers, there will be checks and balances that will even allow for room to negotiate with other actors in the United States.”

Until then, tensions between the neighbors remain high, with any further deaths of Mexican migrants threatening to deepen the rift.

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