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Prince Harry’s past drug use detailed in his explosive memoir should lead to the release of his immigration paperwork, an American conservative think tank has argued in a Washington court.

The Heritage Foundation appealed to US District Judge Carl Nichols for a quicker response to a records request the US government has so far deemed private.

Mr Nichols told the foundation and the Department of Homeland Security to work on the speed of the response and said he would rule if they could not reach an agreement on their own.

The Duke of Sussex moved to Southern California with his wife Meghan Markle and their young family in 2020 after they left royal life.

Read more:
Prince Harry’s US court case could land him in very hot water with the authorities

In his memoir Spare he detailed his past drug use, saying he took cocaine several times starting around age 17 in order “to be different”.

He also admitted using cannabis and magic mushrooms.

The US routinely asks about drug use on its visa applications.

This has led to travel headaches for several celebrities including chef Nigella Lawson and singers Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty.

Acknowledgement of past drug use does not necessarily bar people from entering or staying in the country.

Read more about Harry’s UK case:
Prince Harry blames tabloids for casting him as a ‘thicko’ and a ‘playboy’

The key people named in Harry’s witness statement
Which articles have been brought up?

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Why is Prince Harry’s US visa under scrutiny?

Request denied because group lacks Harry’s permission

The Heritage Foundation sent a public information request to the Department of Homeland Security asking for Prince Harry’s immigration records.

They argue there is “intense public interest” in whether the prince got special treatment during his application process.

The conservative think tank also linked those questions to wider immigration issues in the US such as those surrounding the southern border with Mexico.

The request has largely been denied since the group does not have Prince Harry’s permission to get the private information.

“A person’s visa status is confidential,” said John Bardo, an attorney for the Department of Homeland Security.

The agency’s policy allows the release of information about issues of public interest, but the agency argued media coverage of how Harry’s drug use connects to his visa status in the US has not been widespread among mainstream American publications.

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‘This is about accountability and transparency’

“This case is all about the enforcement of US Immigration Law and certainly Prince Harry is one of the most high profile figures, one of the most well-known figures in the world right now including here in the United States,” Dr Nile Gardiner from the Heritage Foundation told Sky News’s US correspondent Mark Stone.

“But at the end of the day, this is about accountability and transparency and openness on the part of the US administration, with regard to an immigration application by a high-profile individual.

“There is a US public interest in this. But without a doubt, I think that a key factor here has been Prince Harry’s memoir Spare and his revelations about his own drug use; he’s put it all out there.

“Let’s see whether that exactly matches what he put on his immigration application. Because if it doesn’t, that’s perjury, that’s a criminal offence, actually, and everyone should be held to account before the law. No one should be treated any differently.”

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Donald Trump labels hush money trial a ‘mess’ after jury selected

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Donald Trump labels hush money trial a 'mess' after jury selected

Donald Trump described the hush money case against him as a “mess” after the jury who will decide his fate has been selected.

Leaving the court in New York after proceedings were adjourned for the day, Trump addressed reporters, saying he was supposed to be in states like Georgia, New Hampshire and North Carolina as part of his campaign for the 2024 presidential election.

“[But instead] I’ve been here all day,” he said, labelling the trial as “unfair”.

Trump trial as it happened: Former president looks ‘bored’ in court

Trump held up a stack of news stories and editorials that he said were critical of the case while he continued railing against the trial.

“The whole thing is a mess,” he said.

It comes as all 12 jurors have been seated in the first criminal case against a former US president.

Former President Donald Trump speaks alongside attorney Todd Blanche as they return from a lunch break in his trial at Manhattan criminal court in New York on Thursday, April 18, 2024.  (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via AP, Pool)
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Pic: AP

Members of the jury include a sales professional, a software engineer, an English teacher and multiple lawyers.

Sky News’ US partner network, NBC News reported there are seven men and five women on the jury.

It comes after lawyers grilled hundreds of potential jurors asking questions on everything from their hobbies and social media posts to their opinion of the former president.

More than half of a second group of prospective jurors were dismissed by Judge Juan Merchan on Thursday after most said they doubted their ability to be fair and impartial.

One juror was also dismissed after she said she “slept on it overnight” and woke up with concerns about her ability to be fair and impartial in the case.

The challenge now is to select six alternate jury members before the trial can move to opening statements, with Mr Merchan hopeful this will be completed on Friday.

Read more:
Judge warns Donald Trump over ‘intimidating’ potential jurors
Trump calls hush money case an ‘assault on America’

Donald Trump orders ’30 milkshakes at chicken restaurant

Trump is accused of criminally altering business records to cover up a $130,000 (£104,200) payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, during his 2016 election campaign.

Ms Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who was paid $150,000 (£120,000), both claim to have had affairs with Trump.

Stormy Daniels, seen here in January, received a $130,000 payment from Trump's lawyer Pic: AP/DeeCee Carter/MediaPunch /IPX
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Stormy Daniels. Pic: AP

His lawyers say the payment was meant to spare himself and his family embarrassment, not to help him win the election.

Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He could get up to four years in prison if convicted.

The former president faces two other criminal trials accusing him of trying to subvert his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, and another that accuses him of mishandling classified information after he left the White House in 2021.

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.

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Boeing whistleblower claims 787 Dreamliner planes ‘defective’

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Boeing whistleblower claims 787 Dreamliner planes 'defective'

Crisis-hit Boeing has rushed to defend itself from fresh whistleblower allegations of poor practice, as the airline continues to grapple its latest safety crisis.

A Congressional investigation heard evidence on Wednesday on the safety culture and manufacturing standards at the company – rocked in January by a mid-air scare that saw an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 flight suffer a panel blowout.

One Boeing quality engineer, Sam Salehpour, told members of a Senate subcommittee that Boeing was taking shortcuts to bolster production levels that could lead to jetliners breaking apart.

Money latest: How to claim for pothole damage

He said of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, that has more than 1,000 in use across airlines globally including at British Airways, that excessive force was used to jam together sections of fuselage.

He claimed the extra force could compromise the carbon-composite material used for the plane’s frame.

“They are putting out defective airplanes,” he concluded, while adding that he was threatened when he raised concerns about the issue.

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Boeing quality engineer Sam Salehpour testifies during the Senate homeland security subcommittee hearing. Pic: AP
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Boeing quality engineer Sam Salehpour testifies during the Senate homeland security subcommittee hearing. Pic: AP

The engineer said he studied Boeing’s own data and concluded “that the company is taking manufacturing shortcuts on the 787 programme that could significantly reduce the airplane’s safety and the life cycle”.

Boeing denied his claims surrounding both the Dreamliner’s structural integrity and that factory workers jumped on sections of fuselage to force them to align.

Two Boeing engineering executives said this week that its testing and inspections regimes have found no signs of fatigue or cracking in the composite panels, saying they were almost impervious to fatigue.

The company’s track record is facing fresh scrutiny amid criticism from regulators and safety officials alike in the wake of the incident aboard the Alaska Airlines plane.

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What’s going on at Boeing?

It has become a trust issue again after the worst period in Boeing’s history when two fatal crashes, both involving MAX 8 aircraft, left 346 people dead in 2018 and 2019.

All 737 MAX 8 planes were grounded for almost two years while a fix to flawed flight control software was implemented.

A separate Senate commerce committee heard on Wednesday from members of an expert panel that found serious flaws in Boeing’s safety culture.

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Boeing CEO: ‘We fly safe planes’

One of the panel members, MIT aeronautics lecturer Javier de Luis, said employees hear Boeing leadership talk about safety, but workers feel pressure to push planes through the factory as fast as they can.

In talking to Boeing workers, he said he heard “there was a very real fear of payback and retribution if you held your ground”.

Pressure on Boeing to focus on safety has included restrictions placed on production, limiting its manufacturing output.

At the same time, it is still facing three separate investigations by the Federal Aviation Administration, the Justice Department and the National Transportation Safety Board relating to the panel blowout.

A management shake-up announced amid the inquiries will see the chief executive depart the company by the year’s end.

Sky News has approached British Airways for comment.

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Biden suggests his uncle may have been eaten by cannibals during WWII – in apparent swipe at Trump

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Biden suggests his uncle may have been eaten by cannibals during WWII - in apparent swipe at Trump

Joe Biden has suggested his uncle may have been eaten by cannibals after his plane was shot down during the Second World War – as he said Donald Trump was unworthy of serving as commander in chief again.

The US president visited a war memorial near his Pennsylvania hometown to honour his late uncle Ambrose J Finnegan’s service in the conflict.

“He flew single-engine planes, reconnaissance flights over New Guinea. He had volunteered because someone couldn’t make it. He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals in New Guinea at the time,” Mr Biden told reporters afterwards.

“They never recovered his body.”

But there appears to be no record of his uncle’s death being the result of hostile action or any indication that cannibals played any role in the inability to recover his remains, according to the US defence department.

Military records show he was killed when the reconnaissance plane he was in crashed in the Pacific Ocean off the northern coast of New Guinea in May 1944 after engine failure.

“We have a tradition in my family my grandfather started,” Mr Biden said. “When you visit a gravesite of a family member – it’s going to sound strange to you – but you say three Hail Marys. And that’s what I was doing at the site.”

He attempted to draw a contrast between his family’s record of sacrifice to remarks allegedly made by Mr Trump that fallen service members were “suckers” and “losers”.

Former aides to Mr Trump have said he made the comments when he did not want to visit a cemetery for American war dead in France during his first term as president in 2018.

Mr Trump has denied making those remarks.

The president said Mr Trump – the presumptive Republican candidate to take on Mr Biden in November’s presidential election – “doesn’t deserve to have been the commander in chief for my son, my uncle.”

Mr Biden’s elder son, Beau, died in 2015 of brain cancer. The president has linked his son’s death to his year-long deployment in Iraq, where the military used burn pits to dispose of waste.

Read more:
Why a ‘vibecession’ is hurting Biden
Trump warned not to intimidate potential jurors

White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement to Sky’s US partner network NBC News that the president was “proud of his uncle’s service in uniform, who lost his life when the military aircraft he was on crashed in the Pacific after taking off near New Guinea.”

He added: “The president highlighted his uncle’s story as he made the case for honouring our ‘sacred commitment… to equip those we send to war and take care of them and their families when they come home’, and as he reiterated that the last thing American veterans are is ‘suckers’ or ‘losers’.”

Mr Bates did not comment on the cannibalism claim.

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