Nicholas Wu USA TODAY Published 10:29 AM EDT Jul 19, 2019 WASHINGTON – The Trump campaign says they have a plan to make straws great again.  Brad Parscale, President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign manager, tweeted on Thursday evening, “Making Straws Great Again,” along with a link to buy Trump-branded straws from the Trump campaign store.  “Liberal paper straws don’t work. STAND WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP and buy your pack of recyclable straws today,” says the straws’ description on the Trump campaign website.  The pack of 10 straws sells for $15, coming…

It started as a quarrel on a quiet Stockholm street, but the case of ASAP Rocky, the rapper detained in Sweden on a preliminary charge of assault, has escalated to become an international incident, with politicians and diplomats weighing in, and his celebrity backers pulling strings at the White House. On Friday a court in Stockholm approved a request from prosecutors to hold Rocky in detention for six more days, on the grounds that the rapper was a flight risk. A spokesman for the Swedish Prosecution Authority said another hearing…

Donald Trump took aim at the “faulty thought process” at the Federal Reserve less than a day after the central bank’s New York branch took the unusual step of clarifying one of its policymakers’ speeches that boosted market expectations for aggressive interest rate cuts. In his second Twitter attack on the Federal Reserve this week, the US president took to the social media platform on Friday and said: “Because of the faulty thought process we have going for us at the Federal Reserve, we pay much higher interest rates than…

Sean Rossman USA TODAY Published 9:26 AM EDT Jul 19, 2019 Rep. Ilhan Omar, who faces security concerns after President Donald Trump’s supporters chanted to “send her back” during a Wednesday rally, was enthusiastically welcomed to her home state of Minnesota on Thursday with a crowd of people shouting “Welcome home, Ilhan.” Video of Omar, D-Minn., arriving at the airport shows her walking into a crowd of people clapping and cheering. As she walks into the mass, she’s surrounded by supporters and television cameras as the chants grow louder. More than 100…

“My maternal grandfather, who was a humble gardener, loved Verdi and Puccini,” the Danish composer Poul Ruders recalled recently. “And when I was 10 or 11, he took me first to see ‘La Bohème,’ and then to see ‘Aida.’” “But the experience,” he added, “did not turn me into an opera freak. I only know a few operas — perhaps four or five.” He was being either modest or mischievous: Mr. Ruders has by now composed five operas of his own. As he spoke, seated alongside Becky and David Starobin…

To hear Beyoncé speak is such a rare occurrence that any new instance of it, no matter how fleeting, feels special, like catching a glimpse of a shooting star. So naturally, her involvement with Disney’s remake of “The Lion King”— she voices the adult Nala and created a companion album featuring new music inspired by the movie — has dominated the film’s promotional tour, complete with a meeting between Queen Bey and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, at the British premiere. But how much (non-singing) Queen Bey should audiences expect to…

Rebecca Morin USA TODAY Published 7:23 PM EDT Jul 18, 2019 WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s feud with The Squad, a group of four Democratic congresswomen of color, came to a head Wednesday evening when a “send her back” chant broke out at the president’s rally after he began talking about Rep. Ilhan Omar. During a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, Trump blasted the members of “The Sqaud” — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich, and Omar, D-Minn. While he was riffing about Omar, chants of “send her back” erupted from the crowd several times….

EL PASO — The young migrants often arrived at night. They were teenagers from Central and South America, brought by border agents to the Tornillo Detention Facility and led to rows of metal bunk beds in military tents ringed by barbed wire. Human touch, even a simple hug, was rare inside this secured temporary city, where nearly 3,000 unaccompanied minors at a time were confined between June 2018 and January 2019. In this harsh environment, the Chihuahuan Desert, imagination and faith helped them make it through. The Rev. Rafael Garcia,…

Ledyard King USA TODAY Published 7:25 PM EDT Jul 18, 2019 WASHINGTON – Nearly two years after Hurricanes Irma and Maria left Puerto Rico in shambles, the pace of recovery on the U.S. territory remains at a crawl as the island faces fresh controversies and verbal attacks from President Donald Trump.   Disputes between the Trump administration and island leaders over rebuilding costs and the unsteady implementation of a new process to approve project funding have severely hamstrung recovery. Out of some 10,000 schools, bridges and other damaged sites dotting the island, funding for only…

There’s London and then there’s Richard Curtis’s London. The 62-year-old filmmaker has spun the city into a cozy, romantic oasis in back-to-back cinematic hits — from “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Notting Hill” to ”Love Actually.” His latest film is “Yesterday,” a comedy about the enduring power of the Beatles. Mr. Curtis was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and moved to England when he was 11. He credits his outsider perspective for the snow globe version of London that he portrays in films. “I think in some ways it…