Key events
Trump caps his Scottish visit by opening a new golf course
President Donald Trump is opening a new golf course bearing his name in Scotland on Tuesday, capping a five-day foreign trip designed around promoting his family’s luxury properties and playing golf.
Trump and his sons, Eric and Donald Jr, are cutting the ceremonial ribbon and playing the first-ever round at the new Trump course in the village of Balmedie, on the northern coast of Scotland, AP reported.
The overseas jaunt let Trump escape Washington’s sweaty summer humidity and the still-raging scandal over the case of Jeffrey Epstein.
It was mostly built around golf — and walking the new course before it officially begins offering rounds to the public on Aug. 13, adding to a lengthy list of ways Trump has used the White House to promote his brand.
Billing itself the “Greatest 36 Holes in Golf,” the Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, was designed by Eric Trump. The course is hosting a PGA Seniors Championship event later this week, after Trump leaves.
Signs promoting the event had already been erected all over the course before he arrived on Tuesday, and, on the highway leading in, temporary metal signs guided drivers onto the correct road.
Golfers hitting the course at dawn as part of that event had to put their clubs through metal detectors erected as part of the security sweeps ahead of Trump’s arrival.
Several dozen people, some dressed for golf, including wearing cleats, had filled the sand trap near the tee box to watch the ribbon-cutting ceremony shortly before it was scheduled to start.
Another group of people were watching from the other side in tall grass growing on sand dunes flanking the first hole.
Gunman kills four people in shooting at Manhattan skyscraper
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.
We start with the news that a gunman killed four people at a Manhattan skyscraper that houses the headquarters of the NFL and the offices of several major financial firms before turning the gun on himself, New York officials have said.
An NYPD officer identified as Didarul Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh and a father of two whose wife is pregnant, was among those killed. He was working off-hours as a security guard at the time, New York mayor Eric Adams told reporters, describing him as a “true blue hero”.
Authorities offered few details about the three other victims killed by the suspect – two men and a woman. A third male was gravely wounded by the gunfire and was “fighting for his life” in a nearby hospital, the mayor said.
Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, confirmed that “the lone shooter has been neutralized”. New York police also said the shooter acted alone and was dead.
Tisch said the gunman, identified as Shane Tamura, a 27-year-old Las Vegas resident with a history of mental illness, had driven cross-country to New York in recent days.
The shooting spree in the evening rush hour began in the lobby of the Park Avenue tower in Midtown Manhattan. Tisch said that surveillance videos showed the gunman exiting a double-parked Black BMW between 51st and 52nd street on Park Avenue.
Read our full report here:
In other developments this morning:
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Ghislaine Maxwell asked the supreme court to overturn her conviction for taking part in and facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, arguing that a non-prosecution agreement with the late sex offender struck by federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008 should have barred any of his co-conspirators from prosecution as well.
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Donald Trump said that he did indeed bar Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club for “inappropriate” behavior. But the president explained that what was inappropriate was not, as his aides have suggested, doing something lewd or illegal, but hiring away staff from the club.
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An Israeli settler who was sanctioned by Joe Biden as a violent extremist, but removed from the sanctions list by Trump, was arrested in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday after the fatal shooting of a Palestinian activist. The Palestinian man who was killed was denied entry to the United States last month when he arrived in San Francisco for a series of planned talks sponsored by faith groups, including a progressive Jewish synagogue.
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The US justice department filed a misconduct complaint against a federal judge who has clashed with the administration over deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador over private comments first reported by a far-right publication.
