America's best-run cities revealed...and there isn't a Democrat lawmaker in sight
America's best run city has been revealed, and it's led by a Republican in a deep red state.
Provo, Utah, has been declared the most efficient city in the United States thanks to its safe streets and the quality of its government services.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Donald Trump to extend US TikTok ban deadline, White House says
TikTok will live on for at least another three months in the United States, as President Donald Trump is poised to extend a sale or ban deadline for the third time since taking office this year."President Trump will sign an additional Executive Order this week to keep TikTok up and running," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on popular video sharing app was supposed to be banned in the US after its Chinese owner, ByteDance, refused to sell it to a US buyer by a January and ByteDance did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the BBC. Leavitt said the 90-day extension would "ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure."Before Leavitt's announcement, Trump told the BBC that he would "probably" extend the TikTok."We'll probably have to get China approval," Trump said. "I think we'll get it. I think President Xi will ultimately approve it."When asked if he has the legal basis to extend the deadline, he responded: "We do."Trump's extension is at odds with the will of Congress, which passed the sale-or-ban measure last year. His predecessor, former President Joe Biden, immediately signed the bill into law was aimed to address concerns that TikTok, which has 170 million American users, could be used by China as a tool for spying and political Supreme Court agreed with a lower court and upheld the legislation in January just before Trump was set to take platform briefly went dark for a few hours during the weekend before Trump's praised Trump for saving the platform after it became available unilateral deadline extensions have led some analysts to dismiss the notion that a ban might ever take place during his time in office."What ban? There is nothing 'looming' about the potential TikTok ban anymore," said Forrester principal analyst Kelsey Chickering. "TikTok's behaviour also indicates they're confident in their future, as they rolled out new AI video tools at Cannes this week.""Smaller players, like Snap, will try to steal share during this "uncertain time," but they will not succeed because this next round for TikTok isn't uncertain at all," Ms Chickering Trump administration said in April that the US and China had neared a deal that would have placed majority control of TikTok's US operations under American ownership. That deal has yet to materialise."There are key matters to be resolved," a ByteDance spokesperson said at the time. "Any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law."Trump has said he would be open to seeing it sold to cloud computing giant Oracle, whose co-founder Larry Ellison is a long-time ally of Trump' Frank McCourt, Canadian businessman Kevin O'Leary, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian are part of another team bidding for the the biggest YouTuber in the world Jimmy Donaldson - AKA MrBeast - has said he's also interested in buying TikTok as part of a different investor group. Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world's top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
How has the US shifted military jets and ships in the Middle East?
The U.S. is shifting military aircraft and warships into and around the Middle East to protect Israel from Iranian attacks as President Donald Trump warns Tehran to step back from the conflict. Trump's social media posts saying his patience with Iran was 'wearing thin" have raised the possibility of deepening U.S. involvement, perhaps by using its bunker-busting bomb to strike a key Iranian nuclear site built deep underground in the mountains. Israel doesn't have the massive munition it would take to destroy the Fordo nuclear fuel enrichment plant, or the aircraft needed to deliver it. Only the U.S. does. As America's national security leaders discuss the next steps, the Pentagon has moved to ensure that its troops and bases in the region are protected. Here's a look at the U.S. military presence in the Middle East: US aircraft moving to the Middle East In a social media post, Trump warned that 'we now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.' U.S. officials insisted as of Tuesday that the American military has not taken any offensive actions against Iran, only defensive strikes to take out incoming Iranian missiles to protect Israel. Additional U.S. fighter jets and refueling tankers have been deployed to the region, but officials have declined to provide specific numbers. Fighter jets have joined in launching strikes to defend Israel, but officials said Tuesday that no American aircraft were over Iran. Aurora Intel, a group that reviews open source information in real time in the Middle East, said the U.S. Air Force had put additional refueling aircraft and fighter jets in strategic locations across Europe, including England, Spain, Germany and Greece. The information was obtained from public aviation tracking websites. U.S. fighter jets have been patrolling the skies around the Middle East to protect personnel and installations, and bases in the region are on heightened alert and are taking additional security precautions, the officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has not provided any details, but said on Fox News Channel late Monday that the military movements were to 'ensure that our people are safe.' Warships taking out Iranian missiles and ready to protect US bases American warships also are shooting down Iranian ballistic missiles targeting Israel, with the USS The Sullivans and the USS Arleigh Burke launching strikes over the weekend. The Sullivans has been joined in the Eastern Mediterranean by the USS Thomas Hudner this week to continue those defense strikes, while the Arleigh Burke has moved away from the area, according to a U.S. official. The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier is in the Arabian Sea with the four warships in its strike group. They are not participating in the defense of Israel. But they are positioned to provide security for U.S. troops and bases along the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf. The USS Nimitz has been long scheduled to take over for the Carl Vinson and is heading west from the Indo-Pacific region toward the Middle East. The official said it is slated to arrive in the region by the end of the month, and the two carriers would likely overlap at least for a short time before the Vinson heads home to San Diego. There also are destroyers in the Red Sea, and others are based in the Western Mediterranean and participating in exercises in the Baltic Sea. US troops are on heightened alert and families are allowed to leave The forces in the region have been taking precautionary measures for days, including having military dependents voluntarily leave bases, in anticipation of potential strikes and to protect personnel in case of a large-scale response from Tehran. Officials said they were not aware of many families actually leaving. Typically around 30,000 troops are based in the Middle East, and about 40,000 troops are in the region now, according to a U.S. official. That number surged as high as 43,000 last October in response to heightened tensions between Israel and Iran as well as continuous attacks on commercial and military ships in the Red Sea by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. The B-2 and the bunker buster The Air Force's B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is the only aircraft that can carry the 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, known as the bunker buster. The powerful bomb uses its weight and sheer kinetic force to reach deeply buried targets — and then explode. There are currently no B-2 bombers in the Middle East region, although there are B-52 bombers based at Diego Garcia, and they can deliver smaller munitions. If tapped for use, the B-2 bombers would have to make the 30-hour round trip from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, refueling multiple times. ___ AP writer Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Childhood friend says Minnesota suspect had 'darkness inside of him'
Hours after the shootings of two Minnesota lawmakers over the weekend, authorities asked David Carlson to identify his lifelong friend in a harrowing photograph. Carlson says he had known and trusted Vance Boelter from the time the two played together as children. But he barely recognized the 57-year-old in the surveillance image police showed him of Boelter wearing a flesh-colored mask as he carried out what authorities described as a political rampage. 'The guy with the mask, I don't know that guy,' Carlson said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, recounting his decades-long friendship with a man he likened to a brother. Boelter's involvement in such an attack, he said, was as surprising to him as 'getting struck by lightning.' 'There was a darkness that was inside of him," Carlson said. "He must have kept it hidden." As authorities piece together Boelter's movements and motivations, Carlson and others are conducting their own inventory of their interactions with the conservative evangelical pastor, wondering whether they missed any red flags. Boelter is a married father of five but often stayed at Carlson's home in Minneapolis to shorten his commute to work. In hindsight, Carlson said, Boelter 'was a sick man' and needed help, even if those around him didn't realize it in time. Law enforcement has cautioned the motive could be more complex than pundits might prefer, even as Boelter's own disjointed writings suggest he was hell-bent on targeting Democrats. Boelter has been charged with federal murder and stalking, along with state counts, in the fatal shootings of former Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. He is also accused of wounding Democratic Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. At the time of the shootings, Carlson said Boelter had been struggling to find work and was 'disappointed' he wasn't hearing back from people. In February, Boelter abruptly quit his job delivering bodies from assisted living facilities to a funeral home and returned for several weeks to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he had founded several companies focused on farming and fishing. 'I thought it was a mistake for him to quit his job,' Carlson said. 'I didn't think he was going to get anywhere with the Congo.' But the life change was in keeping with Boelter's impetuous 'mentality to always go to the extreme,' Carlson said, recalling a time in the 1990s when Boelter was captured by security forces after sneaking into Gaza to preach Christianity on a trip to Israel. 'That's how crazy Vance is,' Carlson said. 'He wasn't supposed to be there.' Years earlier, after becoming a Christian, Boelter 'burned all of his belongings,' Carlson said, including karate and martial arts weapons and anything else that distracted from his religion. Boelter graduated in 1990 from an interdenominational Bible college in Dallas, earning a diploma in practical theology in leadership. The Christ For The Nations Institute said in a statement it was 'aghast and horrified" to learn the suspect was among its alumni, saying 'this is not who we are.' The church Boelter attended outside Minneapolis has not responded to emails from AP but issued a similar statement condemning the shootings as 'the opposite of what Jesus taught his followers to do.' Boelter, who worked as a security contractor, offered a glimpse of his opposition to abortion in a 2023 sermon he gave in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, saying "they don't know abortion is wrong in many churches.' 'He wasn't a radical cultist," Carlson said. 'He was just a regular Christian and kind of outspoken.' Boelter was unrestrained when it came to his distaste for Democrats, Carlson said, but that rhetoric never seemed threatening. Carlson and another friend, Paul Schroeder, told AP they never heard Boelter talk about abortion or any of the officials who were targeted. The FBI said Boelter 'made lists containing the names and home addresses of many Minnesota public officials, mostly or all Democrats.' 'It wasn't like, 'We gotta stop them, man,'' Carlson said. 'But it chills me to think he was in his room writing that stuff in my house.' Boelter would go to a shooting range occasionally but was not fanatical about firearms, another friend, Paul Shroeder said. 'I thought he was just collecting them for self-defense," Carlson said. "It was 1,000 miles away from stalking people and killing them.' Carlson said he awoke Saturday to an alarming text message from Boelter, who warned he was 'going to be gone for a while,' and 'may be dead shortly.' Carlson initially thought his friend was suicidal and went to check his room. He said he was so concerned he called police, who 'at first didn't seem too interested" before quickly connecting the messages to the shootings. 'Why throw your whole life away? God, he's so stupid," Carlson said. "He had everything.' __ Associated Press writers Giovanna Dell'Orto in Minneapolis and Michael Biesecker in Washington contributed to this report.
