Donald Trump used racist language to attack “the Squad” on Sunday, saying four progressive Democrats who have clashed with party leaders should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”.
Related: ‘Is Bernie going to come?’ Warren seizes on Sanders' Netroots absence
Continue reading...Star clarifies comment: ‘Any actor should be able to play anybody and Art, in all forms, should be immune to political correctness’
Scarlett Johansson has said comments she made on the “authentic casting” debate have been taken out of context and asserted that she supports diversity in film.
Related: Scarlett Johansson drops out of trans role after backlash
Continue reading...Members of the public stepped in to direct traffic in central Manhattan on Saturday night after a power outage knocked out traffic lights and other infrastructure in the heart of New York. Thousands of people streamed out of darkened buildings, crowding Broadway pavements next to bumper-to-bumper traffic. The outage came on the anniversary of the 1977 New York City blackout that left most of the city without power
Relatives hope raising awareness in the US can help end detention of Hathloul who battled the ban on women driving
When Lina al-Hathloul learned her sister, the Saudi activist Loujain al-Hathloul, had been whisked away by Saudi Arabian police in the middle of the night, she thought it was a joke.
Related: Saudi Arabia 'planning to relax male guardianship laws'
Continue reading...Power outage affects about 73,000 people and disrupts traffic, subway system, businesses and Broadway productions
Authorities scrambled to restore electricity to Manhattan following a power outage that knocked out Times Square’s towering electronic screens, darkened marquees in the theatre district and left businesses without electricity, elevators stuck and subway cars stalled.
The New York City Fire Department said a transformer fire on Saturday evening at West 64th Street and West End Avenue affected more than 73,000 customers along a 30-block stretch from Times Square to about 72nd Street and Broadway.
Continue reading...Immigration raids conducted by the Trump administration are expected in major US cities on Sunday, a prospect that has sparked vigils, protests, condemnation and fear.
Related: 'This is tough stuff': Pence visits caged, unwashed, overcrowded migrants
Continue reading...After an explosive leak, the British ambassador resigned. The special relationship has been propelled into a strange and uncertain new era
Donald Trump, president and showman, was staging a military pageant to celebrate the Fourth of July and independence from the British empire. George Washington’s soldiers, he told a rainsoaked crowd in Washington, toppled a statue of King George and melted it into bullets for battle.
Related: Kim Darroch's fall from grace casts chill over Washington ambassadors
Continue reading...Authorities say man threw incendiary devices and tried to ignite propane tank at Tacoma Northwest Detention Centre in Washington state
A 69-year-old man armed with a rifle threw incendiary devices at an immigration jail in Washington state early on Saturday morning, then was found dead after four police officers arrived and opened fire, authorities said.
The Tacoma police department said the officers responded about 4am to the privately run Tacoma Northwest Detention Centre, a US Department of Homeland Security detention facility that holds migrants pending deportation proceedings.
Continue reading...Tropical Storm Barry strengthened into a category one hurricane on Saturday as it neared the Louisiana coast, threatening millions with heavy rains and storm surge. The storm was expected to weaken after it moved inland but forecasters encouraged residents in New Orleans to be patient and stay vigilant.
More than 12 hours after city officials anticipating crippling and potentially historic flooding told residents to “shelter in place”, a few rays of sun peeked through the clouds on Saturday morning, adding a glint to the mostly dry city streets.
Continue reading...Controversy continued on Saturday over Mike Pence’s visit to a detention facility on the Texas border, in which the vice-president said appalling conditions described by a pool reporter were “tough stuff” but placed the blame for the migrant crisis on Democrats in Congress.
Families fleeing violence, poverty and drought in Central America have been coming to the US in record numbers, peaking in May when the border patrol made nearly 133,000 apprehensions. Detention facilities quickly filled up, forcing many migrants to languish in unsuitable facilities much longer than the 72 hours required by law.
Continue reading...Mayors in major cities have pledged to support those targeted by Sunday’s ‘enforcement operations’
When CG heard that Donald Trump had announced raids by the immigration enforcement agency Ice a few weeks ago, she turned to her husband. Get groceries, she told him, like a storm is coming.
“Bananas, milk and bread,” CG lists off, remembering what she told him, “Because who knows when we’ll leave the house.”
Continue reading...The $5bn fine would be the largest ever levied by the Federal Trade Commission against a technology company
The Federal Trade Commission has reportedly voted to approve fining Facebook roughly $5bn to settle an investigation into the company’s privacy violations that was launched following the Cambridge Analytica revelations.
The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, both citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter, reported Friday afternoon that the settlement was approved by a 3-2 vote that broke along party lines, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed. The justice department is expected make a final approval of the fine.
Continue reading...Acosta was under fire for having granted Jeffrey Epstein immunity from federal prosecution in 2008, following sex trafficking ring investigation
Another big House vote this afternoon.
With a 402-12 vote, Congress approved a bill that would ensure funding for the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund.
Jon Stewart says he looks forward to signing ceremony for bill funding 9/11 first responders compensation fund: "We'll all be here for that one final moment—not of celebration, but of relief. Let them exhale." https://t.co/NkJuIoh4fP pic.twitter.com/p7PI4cLDOc
The House has just voted to limit Trump’s authority to make war in Iran as part of a bill which also restricts the president’s budget request for the Pentagon.
Republicans joined the majority Democrats for a 251-170 vote.
Trump said last month he believes he does not need congressional approval to strike Iran. The vote Friday amounted to a pointed and bipartisan rebuttal — led by strange ideological bedfellows, Representatives Ro Khanna, a liberal Democrat from California, and Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of Trump’s most strident Republican allies in Congress.
“When this passes, it will be a clear statement from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle that this country is tired of endless wars, that we do not want another war in the Middle East,” Khanna said before the amendment vote.
Continue reading...“This is a dangerous game,” an Iranian foreign ministry official warned on Friday. He was urging the UK to release the Iranian tanker which the British navy helped authorities in Gibraltar to seize last week. But the context, as he made clear, is the intensifying struggle between Washington and Tehran, in which the main players appear overconfident they know the rules and understand the stakes, while minor players fret about outcomes they have limited power to change.
Mohamed ElBaradei, who headed the UN nuclear watchdog in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, has offered one of the sharpest warnings of the potential consequences: “All that I hear basically [brings] to mind the days before the Iraq war,” he told the BBC. The Iranian regime’s record at home and in the region is a grim one. But this crisis was created by the US president’s determination to destroy an international nuclear deal – which Iran was abiding by – and throttle the economy. It cornered Tehran and empowered its hardliners, who seized on the proof that America could never be trusted.
Continue reading...Exclusive: advice columnist says for the first time in her life she has bullets loaded into the handgun in her bedroom
E Jean Carroll, the esteemed New York journalist who has alleged Donald Trump raped her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the 1990s, now sleeps with a loaded gun by her bed having received online death threats.
In the course of a two-hour interview with the Guardian in her upstate New York cabin, the advice columnist described the fallout of her decision to go public last month with the most serious allegations of sexual assault yet leveled at the US president. She said she had received so many death threats that she had been forced to stop looking at her social media feeds and for the first time in her life had bullets loaded into the handgun in her bedroom.
Continue reading...China has said it will impose sanctions on US firms involved in a deal to sell $2.2bn worth of tanks, missiles and related equipment to Taiwan, saying it harmed China’s sovereignty and national security.
The Pentagon said on Monday the US state department had approved the sale of the weapons requested by Taiwan, including 108 General Dynamics Corp M1A2T Abrams tanks and 250 Stinger missiles, which are manufactured by Raytheon.
Continue reading...MoD says destroyer will be deployed within days to protect British commercial oil tankers
The UK is stepping up its military presence in the Gulf by sending a second warship to the region to protect British commercial oil tankers, the Ministry of Defence has said.
The HMS Duncan, a Type 45 destroyer, will be deployed within days after it completed a course of Nato exercises in the Baltic Sea with the aim to be in the Gulf region by next week.
Continue reading...The US labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, is resigning following criticism of his handling of a plea deal with financier Jeffrey Epstein, who has been accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls. Donald Trump announced the news on Friday with Acosta by his side before the president left on a trip to the midwest
Acosta is stepping down following criticism of his handling of a 2008 plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein, who is awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges
Donald Trump’s labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, has resigned following criticism of his handling of a 2008 plea deal with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who is awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking underage girls.
Trump announced the news on Friday with Acosta by his side at the White House. “Alex Acosta is a great secretary of labor,” Trump said. “I hate to see this happen.” He said he did not ask Acosta to leave the cabinet.
Continue reading...First S-400 parts delivered to military base outside Ankara as Washington considers sanctions
The first batch of a Russian S-400 missile defence system has arrived in Turkey, a development likely to anger the US and put the struggling Turkish economy at risk of new sanctions.
Three planes carrying equipment for the reported £1.6bn system arrived in Ankara from Russia on Friday, the Turkish defence ministry said.
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