Woman who fled country is a suspect in relation to a collision that killed Harry Dunn, 19
Police chiefs have written to the US embassy in London to demand immunity is waived for an American diplomat’s wife who is a suspect in relation to a fatal road crash.
Nick Adderley, chief constable for Northamptonshire police, said US authorities had been appealed to in “the strongest terms” to apply a waiver and “allow the justice process to take place”.
Continue reading...Jubilee Debt Campaign says the Fund broke its own rules by not ensuring sustainable debt burden
Debt campaigners have accused the International Monetary Fund of encouraging reckless lending by extending $93bn (£75bn) of loans to 18 financially troubled countries without a debt restructuring programme first.
In advance of the IMF’s annual meeting in Washington next week, the Jubilee Debt Campaign (JDC) said the the Fund was breaking its own rules by providing financial support without ensuring that the debt burden was sustainable.
Continue reading...Hate crimes have risen steadily since 2016, and Latinos say they feel vulnerable: ‘It rattles you at your core’
The first time someone called Lidia Carrillo a “wetback” she had to ask her teacher what the slur meant. She was only 13, and had recently moved to California from Jalisco, Mexico, with her parents and six siblings.
Carrillo had tried to explain that her family hadn’t crossed any river, but it didn’t matter. “They looked at us differently,” she recalled.
Continue reading...Republican defenders mostly silent, with two vivid exceptions, as at least one additional whistleblower steps forward
As Donald Trump strived to enforce message discipline among Republicans in the face of a building threat that he will be impeached, new forces beyond the US president’s control appeared likely to accelerate the congressional impeachment inquiry further in the coming week.
At least one additional whistleblower has stepped forward to describe an alleged scheme by Trump to extort Ukraine for dirt on Democratic 2020 presidential rival Joe Biden, the individual’s lawyer announced.
Continue reading...A conservation group plans to buy the largest privately owned sequoia grove as the climate crisis threatens the species’ future
Few living beings have experienced as much as the giant sequoias. With ancestors dating back to the Jurassic era, some of the trees that now grow along California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains been alive for thousands of years, bearing witness to most of human history – from the fall of the Roman empire to the rise of Beyoncé.
But a couple hundred years of human encroachment on to the sequoias’ habitat, combined with the climate crisis, increasingly intense wildfires, and drought have threatened the species’ future. The last of the world’s most massive trees now live on just 73 groves scattered across the Sierras. Most lie within protected national parks such as Sequoia national park, where visitors flock from around the world to marvel at General Sherman, the world’s most massive tree.
Continue reading...The only tool he has to placate US consumers is successive interest rate cuts – but the whole world is playing at that game
Donald Trump’s cunning plan to make America great again by launching a trade war with China has officially backfired. Last week, a keenly watched measure of US manufacturing showed firms cutting back on production and jobs at a rate not seen since 2009. Recession warning lights are flashing and the outlook seems a world away from the cheery one presented by the president when he entered the White House in 2017.
It is quite something for a president to impose a trade policy that weighs heavily on parts of a crucial sector for the US economy – and it’s a bizarre tactic given that the votes of manufacturing workers delivered him his first term in office.
Continue reading...As the walls of an impeachment inquiry closed in, Trump’s incoherent statements renewed fears about his fitness for office
The eye of a storm is deceptively calm. At the White House this week the sun was shining, a bust of Ronald Reagan reposed outside the West Wing office of the press secretary, a US marine saluted the president as he boarded Marine One and scores of African American millennials cheered him in the east room.
But inside Donald Trump’s head, there was no calm. The storm was a firestorm.
Continue reading...Joshua Brown, who testified against a white police officer who murdered her black neighbor, has been killed: reports
A witness in the murder trial of a white Dallas police officer who fatally shot her black neighbor has been killed in a shooting, the Dallas Morning News reported, citing authorities.
The newspaper reported that authorities said Joshua Brown, who lived in the same apartment complex as Amber Guyger and Botham Jean, was shot and killed Friday in Dallas. Guyger was still in her police uniform after a long shift when, according to her trial testimony, she mistook Jean’s apartment for her own one floor below and shot him after pushing open his unlocked door and thinking he was a burglar.
Continue reading...The US president reportedly disputed UK’s ‘overwhelming evidence’ of Russian involvement in Salisbury attack
Donald Trump disputed that Russia was behind the attempted murder of a former Russian spy in a tense call with Theresa May, it has emerged.
Despite the widespread conclusion that Vladimir Putin’s regime was behind the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia last year, the US president is said to have spent 10 minutes expressing his doubts about Russian involvement.
Continue reading...Australian artist disclosed that she has Ehlers-Danos syndrome, a neurological disease affecting at least 1 in 5,000 people worldwide
The singer-songwriter Sia Furler has disclosed that she has the chronic pain disease Ehlers-Danos syndrome, and told others suffering from pain “you’re not alone”.
In a Tweet late Friday night, Sia said: “Hey, I’m suffering with chronic pain, a neurological disease, ehlers danlos and I just wanted to say to those of you suffering from pain, whether physical or emotional, I love you, keep going. Life is fucking hard. Pain is demoralizing, and you’re not alone.”
Continue reading...The US secretary of state was being asked if Balkan countries would be subjected to political pressure if they were unwilling to help Donald Trump. ‘You are going to be under enormous political pressure,’ he said, joking that the Greek foreign minister pressurised him all the time
Continue reading...A woman who has been cheated on has a complex social role to play – she must be devastated, dignified and instantly unforgiving (banishing the sexual miscreant), as though she’s been given Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive to act out in some ghastly, very public round of emotional charades. No one knows this more than Hillary Clinton, who, in some eyes, committed a heinous feminist faux pas by forgiving her husband, Bill, for his multiple infidelities.
Instead of the “Go on now, go – walk out the door!” narrative that is practically the cheatee-national anthem, Hillary “stood by her man”, even as she denied becoming a Tammy Wynette caricature. She has been relentlessly questioned, mocked and distrusted on account of this decision, arguably suffering more for her husband’s betrayals than he ever did. Now, interviewed with her daughter, Chelsea, about their new The Book of Gutsy Women, she cited “the decision to stay in my marriage” as the gutsiest personal thing she ever did. Just the gutsiest, Hillary – or also the smartest, the only outcome that made any kind of sense?
Continue reading...A 24-year old suspect is in custody after series of attacks in New York’s Chinatown neighborhood, police say
A homeless man wielding a long metal pipe rampaged through New York City early Saturday attacking other homeless people who were sleeping, killing four and leaving a fifth in critical condition, police said.
The chief of Manhattan south detectives, Michael Baldassano, said at a Saturday news conference that the men were attacked at random in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood with the object that authorities recovered.
Continue reading...Intelligence official was interviewed by watchdog to corroborate initial complaint about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, report says
A second intelligence official is reportedly considering filing a whistleblower complaint about Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine as the Democrats’ impeachment investigation into the president and his administration continues to escalate.
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, also failed to meet a subpoena deadline to turn over documents related to the investigation, as House Democrats broadened their subpoena request to the White House, demanding documents after the executive branch ignored requests to provide them voluntarily.
Continue reading...At a press conference in Greece the US secretary of state says state department lawyers 'harassed his team' after he missed the the subpoena by three congressional committees to provide the House Democrats with documents relating to Ukraine in accordance with an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump
2020 candidate used a 21-year-old’s false tale as an excuse to argue for affordable education and cancelling student debt
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Continue reading...Harry Dunn, 19, died after collision near Northamptonshire air force base
The wife of a US diplomat has left the UK after becoming a suspect in an investigation into the death of a motorcyclist involved in a fatal road collision, police said.
Harry Dunn, 19, died after his motorbike and a car collided near RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire on 27 August.
Continue reading...President revels in mutual flattery during White House event organized by pro-Trump Turning Point USA
Through the looking glass, and a wormhole, in the farthest reaches of a parallel universe, Donald Trump is not facing impeachment. Instead he is truth-teller, a healer of divisions and such a moral champion of African Americans they wonder if that Obama chap was a bit overrated.
To be in the East Room of the White House on Friday afternoon was to step into this alternative reality. More than 200 African American students and young professionals roared with delight and adulation, chanting “USA! USA!” and pointing camera phones, as Trump walked in and gave a typically jarring speech that veered off teleprompter.
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It’s been another wild day in the US, as the impeachment inquiry moves forward despite resistance from the Trump administration.
Here’s a rundown of the day’s main developments:
Here’s the White House press secretary’s response to the House impeachment inquiry subpoena.
.@PressSec says the subpoena from House Democrats tonight “changes nothing” pic.twitter.com/LTswanriTx
Continue reading...House Democrats have subpoenaed the White House demanding documents that could shed light on Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine, in the latest escalation of their impeachment investigation into the president and his administration.
The move comes as the senior Democrats also formally requested documents relating to Ukraine dealings from Mike Pence, the vice-president.
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