Top 5 US news stories

Google Avoids Breakup In Monopoly Case; Shares Surge On Lighter Ruling

Hollywood's Summer Box Office Suffers Worst Slump In Over 40 Years, Fueling Fears Of Permanent Decline For Theaters

DC Mayor Orders Indefinite Coordination With Federal Law Enforcement

Trump Announces U.S. Military Strike On Venezuelan Drug Boat, Killing 11

China’s Xi Flaunts Alliance With Putin And Kim At Beijing Parade

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1. Google Avoids Breakup In Monopoly Case; Shares Surge On Lighter Ruling

Google has avoided a court order requiring it to be broken up after a ruling last year that it had created an illegal monopoly, as a judge set out how the tech giant must loosen its grip on online search. Judge Amit Mehta said the threat to Google’s search engine posed by artificial intelligence chat bots was crucial to his decision to impose a less onerous set of requirements on it. The US Department of Justice had argued that Google should have to sell its Chrome browser and if necessary its Android operating system — after winning a landmark judgment last year that the company maintained an illegal monopoly in online search. The order falls short of the most extreme outcomes feared by investors, such as a full ban on advertising revenue share deals with the likes of Apple. Shares in Google parent Alphabet rose 6 per cent in pre-market trading, while Apple gained about 3 per cent. The order, which directs Google to share more data and bans it from making exclusive distribution contracts, also covers its new generative AI products, such as the Gemini chatbot. The case was being watched closely by investors for the threat it posed to the roughly $20bn that Google pays Apple to be the default search engine on its devices. Under the order, Google may share revenue with companies such as Apple to maintain search and other products on its devices. The agreements can only be for an up to one-year term, and cannot be used to block Google’s partners from offering other search engines or AI products to their customers.

FT

2. Hollywood's Summer Box Office Suffers Worst Slump In Over 40 Years, Fueling Fears Of Permanent Decline For Theaters

This was supposed to be the summer when the North American box office returned to form — finally from the pandemic slump. “We believe that a dramatic reawakening of the industrywide domestic box office has begun,” Adam Aron, chief executive of AMC Entertainment, the continent’s largest theater operator, gleefully told analysts in May. He predicted that Hollywood’s summer movies would be “barn burners, one after another.” Moviegoers, alas, were not cooperative. Multiplexes in the United States and Canada had their worst summer since 1981, after adjusting for inflation and excluding the Covid pandemic years, when many theaters were closed for long periods. Is it time for Hollywood to concede that a lot of moviegoers in North America are never coming back? That movie theaters have permanently lost 20 to 25 percent of their customers?

NYT

3. DC Mayor Orders Indefinite Coordination With Federal Law Enforcement

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) on Tuesday ordered indefinite coordination between the city and federal law enforcement officials, a powerful indication of her willingness to cooperate with President Donald Trump’s effort to take over public safety in the capital city. Bowser issued an executive order that requires local coordination with federal law enforcement “to the maximum extent allowable by law within the District.” The order gives no expiration date. By law, Trump’s federalization of the D.C. police force lasts 30 days and is set to expire next week. Bowser’s announcement may quell any showdown over what happens after that deadline passes by authorizing continued coordination between the city and federal authorities. In a statement on social media, Bowser said that her order would “provide the pathway forward beyond the Presidential emergency.” She has previously said that because of the federal government’s authority over the District — D.C.’s unique status under the U.S. Constitution gives Congress ultimate say over city laws and budgets — she can get more done by working with Trump on “their shared priorities.”

WaPo

4. Trump Announces U.S. Military Strike On Venezuelan Drug Boat, Killing 11

The U.S. military carried out a strike against a drug-carrying boat from Venezuela, President Trump said Tuesday, escalating tensions with that country’s authoritarian government just days after the Pentagon deployed warships to the Caribbean to stop the flow of cocaine. “There’s more where that came from,” Trump said in a news conference at the White House, promising further actions. Trump later posted on social media that he had ordered a strike on “positively identified” narcoterrorists from the cartel Tren de Aragua operating a small boat carrying drugs to the U.S. The strike resulted in the deaths of 11 “terrorists,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post showing a declassified video of the boat being struck and exploding. “Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE! Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!!!!!!!!!” Trump wrote.

WSJ

5. China’s Xi Flaunts Alliance With Putin And Kim At Beijing Parade

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, presided over a massive military parade in Beijing on Wednesday featuring fighter jets, missiles and goose-stepping troops as he issued a defiant warning to rivals not to challenge his country’s sovereignty. His message was underscored by the leaders gathered by his side in the viewing gallery, representing states that have challenged or questioned American dominance of the global order. He was flanked by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, along with the leaders of Iran, Pakistan and other mostly authoritarian nations. Cannons fired 80 times to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II, as soldiers carried a Chinese flag and marched across a red carpet covering part of Tiananmen Square. Crowds watching the parade waved small flags and saluted as the national anthem was played and the flag was raised. Later, pigeons and balloons — said to number 80,000 each — were released into the air.

The parade was the highlight of a weekslong campaign by the ruling Communist Party to stoke nationalism, recast China’s role in World War II and project the party as the nation’s savior against a foreign aggressor, Imperial Japan. The evoking of wartime memories serves to rally domestic Chinese support in the face of economic uncertainty and tensions with the United States, which Mr. Xi has accused of trying to contain and suppress China. He drew a direct line between the sacrifices of World War II and the challenges that China says it faces today. “When faced in the past with a life-and-death struggle between justice and evil, light and darkness, progress and reaction, the Chinese people united in hatred of the enemy and rose up in resistance,” he said. He cast today’s tensions as another fateful choice, between peace or war, dialogue or confrontation, and said China would side with progress. The presence of Mr. Putin highlighted the way that China and Russia have sought to align their histories, each presenting World War II as proof of their countries’ sacrifice and as justification for demanding a greater say in the postwar international order.

Within minutes of the start of the ceremony, President Trump weighed in from Washington, accusing Mr. Xi of ignoring America’s role in helping China during the war. On Truth Social, he wrote that the “big question” was whether Mr. Xi would “mention the massive amount of support and ‘blood’ that The United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader.” Mr. Trump added: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”

NYT

September 3 1783: Treaty of Paris signed

The American Revolution officially comes to an end when representatives of the United States, Great Britain, Spain and France sign the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783. The signing signified America’s status as a free nation, as Britain formally recognized the independence of its 13 former American colonies, and the boundaries of the new republic were agreed upon: Florida north to the Great Lakes and the Atlantic coast west to the Mississippi River.

The events leading up to the treaty stretched back to April 1775, on a common green in Lexington, Massachusetts, when American colonists answered King George III’s refusal to grant them political and economic reform with armed revolution. On July 4, 1776, more than a year after the first volleys of the war were fired, the Second Continental Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence. Five difficult years later, in October 1781, British General Charles Lord Cornwallis surrendered to American and French forces at Yorktown, Virginia, bringing to an end the last major battle of the Revolution.

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Sources

1. https://on.ft.com/4p539yh
2. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/09/03/business/media/summer-box-office-movie-tickets-2025.html
3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/02/bowser-dc-federal-law-enforcement-trump-takeover/
4. https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-military-strikes-drug-vessel-from-venezuela-killing-11-19661cc9?mod=hp_lead_pos11
5. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/world/asia/xi-putin-kim-parade.html

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