Category Archives: US News

FBI and Italian police arrest 19 people in Sicily and US in mafia investigation

Posted on by

Prosecutors allege Inzerillo clan was seeking to rebuild power base in Palermo with help from allied New York-based Gambino family

Italian and US police have launched a coordinated crackdown on a Sicilian mafia family that was seeking to rebuild its power base after years of exile in the United States, Italian investigators said on Wednesday.

More than 200 police, including officers from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), arrested 18 people in Sicily as part of their investigation into the Inzerillo clan in the island’s capital Palermo and the allied New York-based Gambino family.

Continue reading...

Footage of Trump and Epstein together at a party in 1992 emerges

Posted on by

Video from the NBC archive shows Trump making friendly conversation with Epstein and pointing out women

Footage of a friendly exchange between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at a November 1992 party has surfaced after the president tried to distance himself from the wealthy financier who was arrested earlier this month for the alleged sex trafficking of minors.

Related: Jeffrey Epstein: how US media – with one star exception – whitewashed the story

Continue reading...

El Chapo: Mexican drug lord sentenced to life in prison

Posted on by

US district judge imposed life sentence plus 30 years at hearing in federal Brooklyn court

Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Mexican drug lord found guilty of running a murderous criminal enterprise that smuggled tons of drugs into the United States, was sentenced by a US judge on Wednesday to spend the rest of his life in prison.

US District Judge Brian Cogan imposed the sentence of life plus 30 years, which was mandatory under the law, at a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn.

Continue reading...

‘Not a dustbin’: Cambodia to send plastic waste back to the US and Canada

Posted on by

Country vows to return 1,600 tonnes of waste as south-east Asian countries revolt against an onslaught of rubbish shipments

Cambodia has announced it will send 1,600 tonnes of plastic waste found in shipping containers back to the US and Canada, as south-east Asian countries revolt against an onslaught of rubbish shipments.

China’s decision to ban foreign plastic waste imports last year threw global recycling into chaos, leaving developed nations struggling to find countries to send their trash.

Continue reading...

Russia denies visas to teachers at Anglo-American school

Posted on by

Staff say decision is ‘blowback’ as a result of worsening relations with US

Russia has denied visas to teachers of the Anglo-American school in Moscow, in a move described by one teacher as “blowback” over worsening US-Russian relations.

The US ambassador, Jon Huntsman, called the decision to deny visas to 30 teachers at the Anglo-American school “unfortunate” and said it would “affect over 1,100 students and their families, who represent over 60 countries, including Russia”. The day school is popular among the children of western diplomats and businessmen.

Continue reading...

Drug makers flooded US with billions of opioid pills as epidemic surged, data shows

Posted on by

Statistics are a blow to country’s biggest pharmaceuticals that paid millions of dollars in out of court settlements

Drug makers and distributors flooded the US with more than 75bn opioid pills in the crucial years when the country’s epidemic of painkiller addiction and deaths surged to record levels, according to previously secret data released by an American court.

The publication of the Drug Enforcement Administration statistics is a blow to some of the country’s biggest pharmaceutical firms that have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in out of court settlements in part to keep sealed evidence that they profiteered from escalating demand for opioids even as public health officials were declaring an epidemic.

Continue reading...

US imposes sanctions on Myanmar’s military leaders over Rohingya abuses

Posted on by

Steps are the strongest the country has taken in response to massacres of minority Rohingya in 2017

Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, has announced sanctions on the Myanmar military’s commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing and other military leaders over extrajudicial killings of Rohingya Muslims, barring them from entry to the United States.

The steps, which also covered Min Aung Hlaing’s deputy, Soe Win, and two other senior commanders and their families, are the strongest the United States has taken in response to massacres of minority Rohingya in Myanmar, also known as Burma.

Continue reading...

Justine Damond shooting: US police officer Mohamed Noor files appeal

Posted on by

Former Minneapolis officer is in jail after being found guilty of Australian life coach’s murder and manslaughter

The former Minneapolis police officer who shot dead Australian life coach Justine Damond in an alley has made a move for freedom with his lawyers, citing potential “prosecutorial misconduct”, filing an appeal against his murder and manslaughter convictions.

The appeal comes as Mohamed Noor, sentenced to 12 and a half years behind bars last month, was transferred to a new prison for “his own safety”.

Continue reading...

Divided House votes to condemn Trump’s racist attack on congresswomen

Posted on by

Nancy Pelosi’s sharp rebuke of the president’s remarks prompted a challenge from Republicans who claimed rule violations

The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a resolution condemning Donald Trump’s incendiary remarks telling four congresswomen of color to “go back” to where they “came from” as racist.

The measure, which formally rebuked the president’s comments, was approved on a mostly partisan-line vote of 240 to 187.

Continue reading...

House orders Pentagon to review if it exposed Americans to weaponised ticks

Posted on by

A New Jersey lawmaker suggests the government turned insects into bioweapons to spread disease and possibly released them

The US House of Representatives has called for an investigation into whether the spread of Lyme disease had its roots in a Pentagon experiment in weaponising ticks.

The House approved an amendment proposed by a Republican congressman from New Jersey, Chris Smith, instructing the defence department’s inspector general to conduct a review of whether the US “experimented with ticks and other insects regarding use as a biological weapon between the years of 1950 and 1975”.

Continue reading...

Trump administration to continue deporting Venezuelans despite crisis

Posted on by
  • US as yet unwilling to grant temporary protected status
  • Senators accuse Trump of ‘having it both ways’ over Maduro

The Trump administration has said it is not yet willing to grant temporary protected status to Venezuelans, meaning it will continue to deport people back to a country it says is being destroyed by a tyrant.

The news comes amid a humanitarian crisis that could forcibly displace as many as 8.2 million people by the end of 2020, and the same month that the United Nations accused the Venezuelan government of killing thousands of its own citizens.

Continue reading...

Concern grows over oil tanker last seen off Iran

Posted on by

US intelligence fears vessel could have been hijacked by Revolutionary Guards

US officials suspect that a Panamanian-flagged oil tanker that stopped transmitting its location after straying into Iranian waters may have been hijacked by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Iran’s semi-official news agency ISNA said on Tuesday that the country’s navy came to the assistance of the Panamanian ship MT Riah after it had mechanical problems.

Continue reading...

‘Do not take the bait’: congresswomen denounce racist Trump attack

Posted on by

Four Democratic women targeted by Trump accuse him of following an ‘agenda of white nationalists’ at a press conference

Four Democratic congresswomen of color targeted by Donald Trump’s racist attacks have accused the US president of following an “agenda of white nationalists” and asked that Americans “do not take the bait” of his divisive rhetoric.

In a joint press conference at the Capitol, the congresswomen spoke out after Trump said they should “go back” to the “crime infested” countries they came from, prompting condemnation in the US and across the world.

Continue reading...

‘His only tool is racism’: why Trump’s bigoted tirade could be a vote winner

Posted on by

The president seems to regard divisive, nativist rhetoric as his best chance of staying in the White House. Analysts say he may be right

It was foul and repugnant. But was it a vote winner?

Donald Trump’s bigoted tirade against four congresswoman of colour, telling them to “go back” to the countries they came from, prompted widespread revulsion – the comments “drip with racism,” said the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer – and yet will not necessarily damage his chances of reelection.

Continue reading...

Judge advises $14m in damages to Jewish woman targeted by neo-Nazi ‘troll storm’

Posted on by

Daily Stormer publisher incited his readers to contact Tanya Gersh, who received threatening emails, texts and voicemails

The publisher of a neo-Nazi website, who organized a “troll storm” to target a Jewish woman and her family with months of abusive messages, should have to pay more than $14m in damages and remove all posts that encouraged his readers to contact her, a US judge has recommended.

The US magistrate judge called the harassment campaign, launched by the Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin a month before Donald Trump’s inauguration, “egregious and reprehensible”. Anglin targeted Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent in Whitefish, Montana, a town where the prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer and his family have sometimes lived.

Continue reading...

Republican response to Trump’s bigoted tweets reveals party’s ingrained racism

Posted on by

Trump telling four politicians of color to ‘go back’ to countries they came from shows more than just his own nativist instincts

In an unfashionable corner of Washington, with African American community activists standing behind him, House speaker Paul Ryan described Donald Trump’s view that an American-born judge was not qualified to preside over a case because of his Mexican heritage as the “textbook definition of a racist comment”.

Related: 'You can leave': Trump unrepentant over racist attack on congresswomen

Continue reading...

Donald Trump says tweets about congresswomen were ‘not at all’ racist – video

Posted on by

Donald Trump has said that his tweets on Sunday were 'not at all' racist after he was questioned by the media as he walked up the podium at his Made in America showcase speech. 

On Sunday, the US president used racist language to attack four progressive Democratic congresswomen, telling them to 'go back and help fix the totally broken and crime[-]infested places from which they came'. Trump did not name his targets, but the attack was directed at a group of liberal congresswomen who have had a run-in with the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and who are sometimes referred to as 'the Squad': Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota

Continue reading...

‘You can leave’: Trump unrepentant over racist attack on congresswomen

Posted on by
  • Weekend tweets had urged them to ‘go back’ home
  • President targets Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Pressley and Omar

In the face of international condemnation – and a trickle of disapproval from his own party – Donald Trump has returned to the offensive against four Democrats he targeted with racial invective on Sunday.

Related: 'Go back home': Trump aims racist attack at Ocasio-Cortez and other congresswomen

Continue reading...

Boeing 737 Max ordered by Ryanair undergoes name change

Posted on by

Decision fuels speculation that troubled plane will be rebranded once it is given all clear to fly

A Boeing 737 Max due to be delivered to Ryanair has had the name Max dropped from the livery, further fuelling speculation that the manufacturer and airlines will seek to rebrand the troubled plane once it is given the all clear to fly again.

Photos have emerged of a 737 Max in Ryanair colours outside Boeing’s manufacturing hub, with the designation 737-8200 – instead of 737 Max – on the nose. The 737-8200 is a type name for the aircraft that is used by aviation agencies.

Continue reading...

Beto O’Rourke’s ancestors were slaveholders, records reveal

Posted on by

Exclusive: O’Rourke addresses family history for the first time and admits that he and his children are ‘beneficiaries’ of slaveholding

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke recently delivered an impassioned speech while meeting with the Gullah-Geechee Nation, an organization of African Americans whose ancestors were enslaved on plantations from Florida to South Carolina.

The speech in Beaufort followed one attendee’s question about whether O’Rourke supports reparations, the idea of compensation for the descendants of slaves.

Continue reading...