Category Archives: US News

Ted Cruz tried to mock AOC’s scientific knowledge – it didn’t end well

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The Texas senator tried to pick a fight after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out Mike Pence’s coronavirus credentials

If you were in search of a scientifically minded, steadying presence to guide the country through the potential fallout of the coronavirus, you could not do much worse than Vice-President Mike Pence. This being the Donald Trump administration, however, where qualifications and expertise are often seen as prohibitive factors for top jobs, that’s exactly who we’ve been given.

Cutting to the heart of the matter with her characteristic bluntness, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez this week pointed out the absurdity of placing Pence in charge of a potentially looming health crisis.

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Naomi Seibt: ‘anti-Greta’ activist called white nationalist an inspiration

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German teenager spoke at an event at US rightwing conference CPAC

A young campaigner who has been hailed by climate sceptics as the right’s answer to Greta Thunberg has previously described a white nationalist who appeared to promote “white genocide” theories as one of her “inspirations”.

Naomi Seibt, a 19-year-old from Münster, Germany, who styles herself as a “climate realist”, has also had to deny she made remarks that could be seen as antisemitic following an attack on a synagogue last year.

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Self-belief surges as Trump’s conservative faithful plan four more years

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At the annual CPAC conference in Maryland, Republicans were in buoyant mood about the president’s re-election prospects

“Four more years!” the crowd chanted at Mike Pence, the vice-president. “Four more years!”

Not so long ago, under the shadow of investigations, impeachment and dismal approval ratings, Donald Trump’s re-election seemed a long shot. But at the biggest annual gathering of grassroots conservatives on Thursday, self-belief was surging and some were already looking ahead to what a second term might bring.

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Anniversary spotlights criminal justice reform ahead of South Carolina primary

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Five years after a white officer shot Walter Scott in the back, those associated with the case hope its memory will steer voters

Anthony Scott honours the memory of his brother Walter each time he casts a ballot.

“I’m not the sort of person to go and visit graves,” he said, sat at a bustling diner on the outskirts of Charleston. “I can memorialize better by making sure people never forget. Weighing up my vote, making sure the right person is put in the right place.”

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Obama takes legal action over ‘misleading’ Republican attack ad on Joe Biden – live updates

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  • Vice-President Pence to take charge of US response to coronavirus
  • Poll shows widespread concerns about election security and integrity
  • UN chief Michelle Bachelet criticises Trump’s weakened environmental protection standards
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The US Dept. of Justice announced it had created a division tasked with denaturalizing immigrants.

The Denaturalization Section “underscores the department’s commitment to bring justice to terrorists, war criminals, sex offenders and other fraudsters who illegally obtained naturalization” officials said in a statement.

Denaturalizations have ramped up under the Trump administration: Of the 228 denaturalization cases that the department has filed since 2008, about 40 percent of them were filed since 2017, according to official department numbers.

According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, actor Steven Seagal allegedly failed to disclose a promotional agreement related to cryptocurrencies.

The SEC alleges Seagal accepted $250,000 in cash and $750,000 worth of Bitcoiin2Gen (B2G) tokens in exchange for online promotion of the currency, including “posts on his public social media accounts encouraging the public not to ‘miss out’”.

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Trump says coronavirus spread not ‘inevitable’ – video

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Donald Trump has sought to play down the threat from coronavirus, saying the danger to Americans ‘remains very low’ and predicting that the number of cases diagnosed in the country, currently on 15, could fall to zero in a ‘few days’. In a press conference in Washington, the US president also announced he was placing the vice-president, Mike Pence, in charge of coordinating the US response to the coronavirus outbreak

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Milwaukee shooting: five dead at Molson Coors campus after employee opens fire

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  • Police identify attacker as 51-year-old man
  • Authorities offer no immediate motive

An employee opened fire at the Milwaukee campus of Molson Coors on Wednesday, killing five fellow workers before taking his own life, police said.

Police identified the man responsible for the shooting at one of the world’s largest brewers of beer as a 51-year-old Milwaukee man who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

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Trump campaign sues New York Times for libel over Russia story

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  • Suit alleges ‘extreme bias’ in knowingly publishing falsehood
  • Opinion piece titled ‘The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo’

Donald Trump’s re-election campaign said on Wednesday it had filed a libel suit against the New York Times accusing the newspaper of intentionally publishing a false opinion article related to Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

In an escalation of the Republican president’s long-running battle with the news media, campaign officials said the lawsuit was being filed in New York state supreme court, the state’s trial-level court.

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Democrat challengers face fall-out from rowdy TV debate – live updates

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  • Sanders and Bloomberg bear brunt of attacks in ‘messy’ TV debate
  • Trump defending administration’s handling of coronavirus
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Back to the fall-out from last night’s Democratic debate. With a crowded field it was the last TV opportunity for one of the candidates who isn’t Bernie Sanders to have a break-out moment that could propel them towards next week’s Super Tuesday.

That, according to Ryan Lizza in Politico, is not what happened.

By the end, it was clear that there was no Bernie slayer at the lecterns in Charleston, someone who alone had the time and skills to convince Democratic voters that the democratic socialist was a radical whose nomination would forfeit the party’s chance to defeat Trump.

The court hearing in London into the US attempt to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is underway again. Journalist James Doleman is tweeting from the court.

Judge returns to court and proceedings resume.#Assange

Related: Julian Assange was 'handcuffed 11 times and stripped naked'

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Will coronavirus trigger a global recession? | Jeffrey Frankel

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World economy’s prospects look bleak owing to Covid-19 outbreak and Donald Trump’s trade policy

At the start of this year, things seemed to be looking up for the global economy. True, growth had slowed a bit in 2019: from 2.9% to 2.3% in the US and from 3.6% to 2.9% globally. Still, there had been no recession and as recently as January, the International Monetary Fund projected a global growth rebound in 2020. The new coronavirus, Covid-19, has changed all of that.

Early predictions about Covid-19’s economic impact were reassuring. Similar epidemics – such as the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), another China-born coronavirus – did little damage globally. At the country level, GDP growth took a hit but quickly bounced back, as consumers released pent-up demand and firms rushed to fill back orders and restock inventories.

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Harvey Weinstein: how a Hollywood mogul was undone – video explainer

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Harvey Weinstein, the titan of Hollywood turned convicted rapist, has been sentenced to 23 years in prison. In February 2020, a New York jury found Weinstein guilty of rape and sexual assault against two women who had hoped he could help build their careers. The Guardian's Ed Pilkington looks back at how the disgraced producer was able to operate above the law for decades, and what the verdict means for the #MeToo movement and his dozens of accusers.

In the US, Rainn offers support at 800-656-4673 or by chat at Rainn.org. In the UK, the rape crisis national freephone helpline is at 0808-802-9999. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800-737-7328) or 1800respect.org.au. Other international helplines can be found at Ibiblio.org

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Messy Democratic debate leaves lack of clarity and benefits Trump

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Amid crosstalk and occasional shouting, a continuing lack of clarity over which candidate will emerge as the nominee

Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate was chaotic and messy, underscoring the continuing lack of clarity over which candidate could emerge as the nominee to take on Donald Trump in November’s election.

Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, a self declared Democratic socialist considered the current frontrunner after his win in Nevada last week, found himself the main target of attacks from more centrist contenders, but was closely followed by billionaire New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was pummelled again for his past statements on women and support for Republicans.

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Bernie Sanders faces onslaught from rivals in chaotic South Carolina debate

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Candidates bickered and shouted over each other in sharp exchanges in debate before Super Tuesday contests

The Democratic presidential candidates engaged in a series of chaotic and fiery exchanges on Tuesday night, in the final debate before the critical South Carolina presidential primary and Super Tuesday contests that could represent a make-or-break moment.

Senator Bernie Sanders, the frontrunner who cruised to victory in Nevada last week, bore the brunt of criticism from a number of his centrist rivals, including the former vice-president Joe Biden, the ex-New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

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Sanders and Bloomberg come under attack in chaotic Democratic debate – live

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Bernie Sanders was asked why he voted to protect gun manufacturers from legal liability, which other candidates have criticized him for.

Sanders initially tried to pivot to criticizing Joe Biden for his record on trade deals, which prompted boos from the Charleston audience.

Elizabeth Warren has so far directed more criticism at Mike Bloomberg than Bernie Sanders, the frontrunner in the primary race.

As another progressive senator, Warren will likely need to pick off some of Sanders’ supporters to have any chance of the nomination.

The difference between how aggressively Warren goes after Bernie (the front runner & existential threat to her candidacy), and Bloomberg (who she clearly despises), is something to behold.

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David Roback, Mazzy Star co-founder, dies aged 61

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Roback, a producer, guitarist and keyboardist, played a leading role in the neo-psychedelic revival of the 1980s and ’90s

The Mazzy Star co-founder and multi-instrumentalist David Roback has died, a representative for the band announced Tuesday. He was 61. A cause of death has not yet been released.

A producer, guitarist and keyboardist, Roback formed Mazzy Star alongside Hope Sandoval. The pair would go on to write all of the group’s songs.

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‘Help me!’: video shows Florida officer arresting six-year-old after tantrum

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Body camera footage shows first-grader Kaia Rolle placed in a police car with her wrists bound

Newly released body-camera footage shows the moment a police officer in Florida arrested a six-year-old girl as she cried and begged not to be taken from school.

Kaia Rolle was led to a police vehicle with her hands fastened behind her back in zip ties after having a tantrum at her school in Orlando that included kicking and punching school personnel.

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Ex-White House doctor: to help Trump’s diet I hid cauliflower in his mash

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  • Ronny Jackson says he encouraged president to eat vegetables
  • ‘The exercise stuff never took off as much as I wanted it to’

A former White House physician who memorably said Donald Trump might have lived to 200 if he had improved his junk-food heavy diet has confessed to sneaking cauliflower into the president’s mashed potatoes.

Related: Trump lashes out at Schumer as Democrats slam 'no plan' on coronavirus – live

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The era of ‘whites-only’ elections in America has returned | Carol Anderson

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As we head back to South Carolina, the state that fought to protect the white primary until the 1950s, it’s as if black voters don’t matter – again

In 1896, a moment marked by increased lynchings, violence and disfranchisement, South Carolina added to the woes and created the white primary. The law, which the rest of the one-party south would adopt throughout the Jim Crow era, said only white people could vote in the Democratic primary election.

White people, mostly men, would alone choose who would go on to the general election in November. Then, and only then could African Americans and others, who had managed to squeeze through the array of voter suppression tactics such as the poll tax and the literacy test, cast their meaningless ballots. But make no mistake, the real contest was in the primary, and whites had already determined the ultimate winner.

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Delhi rocked by deadly protests during Donald Trump’s India visit

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Hindu and Communist groups clash ahead of US president’s visit, with further conflict over controversial citizenship laws

Donald Trump’s visit to Delhi has been overshadowed by deadly protests that have continued to engulf India’s capital, as protesters and armed mobs wreaked havoc on the streets and the death toll rose to seven.

Violent clashes between groups of protesters who either supported or were opposed to a new citizenship law left one policeman and six civilians dead on Monday. Police deployed teargas and smoke grenades in an attempt to control the violence.

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‘I gotta stay strong’: the Native American families with a legacy of violent deaths

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An untracked number of Indigenous people have more than one relative missing or murdered in unexplained circumstances

When Pauline HighWolf’s son came to her home in Montana three months ago to tell her that her sister was dead, she was overwhelmed by a painful jolt of deja vu.

HighWolf, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, had been helping her 64-year-old sister Laverna Wallowing to transition out of homelessness in California to a senior living apartment in southern Montana. Wallowing had died of a head injury, but HighWolf still doesn’t know how or why.

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