No survivors in crash on the North Shore of Oahu after plane burst into flames
Eleven passengers and crew were killed on Friday evening when their plane crashed near an airfield in Hawaii, authorities said.
The twin-engine King Air plane, with eleven people onboard, went down soon after take off from Dillingham Airfield, on Oahu’s North Shore, and there were no survivors, the Hawaii Department of Transportation said.
Continue reading...Three senators had recently been briefed by the Pentagon on navy encounters with unidentified aircraft, a report said
UFOs are usually the preserve of science fiction, but lately they have been enjoying a newfound status across the US, infiltrating conversation from Washington to Kansas City.
Donald Trump kicked the latest round off last week when, responding to a question about the rise in reports of unidentified aircraft by US navy pilots, he revealed that he had been briefed on UFO sightings.
Continue reading...Messages, which were previously filed as a secret attachment to a sentencing memo, were unsealed in Manafort’s federal court case
Hundreds of text messages between Paul Manafort and an ally who appeared to be Fox News host Sean Hannity were released by US authorities on Friday.
A friend calling himself Sean, who referred to working for Fox and presenting a radio show, told Manafort: “Please know you are in my prayers.”
Continue reading...Officials say raids intended to target as many as 2,000 families in Houston, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles in so-called “mass roundup”
Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard defends Joe Biden in a series of tweets calling out her rivals for criticizing him.
(3/3) …we need to find common ground with each other. That is not possible without civility. We don’t need another president who is going to continue to divide our country. We need a president who will unite us. United we stand, divided we fall.
It’s been a busy day in Washington. Here’s what’s happened so far:
Continue reading...Donald Trump has said the US air force was 'cocked and loaded' to attack three Iranian targets, but he withdrew the order with 10 minutes to spare after being told the airstrikes might kill as many as 150 people. The strikes were planned in retaliation for Iran shooting down an unmanned US surveillance drone
Continue reading...Newly appointed chief, Francisco Garduño, said he hoped to prevent hundreds of thousands of migrants entering the country each year
Mexico’s immigration chief has vowed to slash the number of migrants entering his country by 60% and prevent Mexico from being used as “a trampoline” to the United States, as the Mexican government scrambles to satisfy Donald Trump’s demands to curb migration.
Trump has given Mexico a 45-day deadline – which ends on 22 July – to reduce the flow of undocumented Central American migrants to the United States’ southern border, leaving the Mexican government racing to meet those demands and avert the threat of tariffs.
Continue reading...Carroll alleges that Trump assaulted her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in 1995 or 1996, potentially raping her
Donald Trump is facing a fresh allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman in his days as a real estate developer in the mid 1990s, adding to the long list of claims against him of sexual misconduct.
In a cover story in New York magazine, the writer and celebrated agony aunt E Jean Carroll relates an incident in which she encountered Trump in the Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman some time in late 1995 or early 1996. She was 52 years old and had recently started an advice column for Elle magazine called Ask E Jean, and he would have been 49 or 50, and married to Marla Marples.
Continue reading...Everything Trump has done in relation to Iran, driven by his duelling impulses, has kept the US on a trajectory towards conflict
Ordering airstrikes and then calling them off at the last minute is one way of working through the contradictions in your Middle East policy, but it is very expensive and highly dangerous way of going about it.
Ever since Donald Trump took office and his conflicting impulses were applied to US foreign policy, a moment like this was all but inevitable.
Continue reading...US president tweets that he intervened 10 minutes before planned retaliatory attack
Donald Trump has said the US air force was “cocked and loaded” to attack three Iranian targets, but he withdrew the order with 10 minutes to spare after being told the airstrike might kill as many as 150 people.
Trump said in a series of revelatory 9am tweets that he decided late on Thursday that the death toll was not a proportionate response to the Iranian shooting down of a US spy drone off the Iranian coast 24 hours earlier.
Continue reading...Military operation was called off, New York Times reports, as Democratic leaders warn the US could ‘bumble into a war’ with Iran
Donald Trump reportedly gave initial approval for the military to launch strikes on Iran in retaliation for Tehran shooting down a US drone, before pulling back at the last minute.
Planes were in the air and ships were in position, but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down on Thursday night, the New York Times quoted an unnamed official as saying.
Continue reading...The little green invader gobbling shellfish and destroying habitats in the Gulf of Maine could finally have a predator – humans
In the salt marshes and estuaries of New England, the most dominant and fearsome predator is a voracious invader that grows to just inches and lays waste to everything in its path.
The European green crab first arrived in the new world more than 200 years go, smuggling itself to American shores in the ballast holds of transatlantic ships.
Continue reading...Former White House communications director was steered away from answering questions 155 times
The Democrat-controlled house judiciary committee has released a 273-page transcript of frustrated efforts to interrogate Hope Hicks, a former top White House adviser, during a closed-door hearing on Wednesday.
The session transcript reveals a seven-hour exercise in prevarication as White House lawyers steered Hicks away from answering questions 155 times.
Continue reading...Moore was accused of pursuing relationships with women as young as 14 when he was in his 30s during his failed 2017 Senate bid
Disgraced Alabama Republican Roy Moore has announced he is running for US Senate again in 2020 after failing to win the seat two years ago amid sexual misconduct accusations.
Moore is defying his party with his return to the political stage, and faces a crowded Republican primary field as he aims for an eventual rematch against the Democratic senator Doug Jones, who won against him in the 2017 special election to fill the seat previously held by former US attorney general Jeff Sessions.
Continue reading...President says ‘stay tuned for next week’ when asked if he will authorize strike against Tehran in retaliation for attack on US drone
Alabama Republican Roy Moore, whose unsuccessful 2017 campaign for US Senate was marred by allegations he sexually assaulted or pursued teenage girls while in his 30s, is going to try again.
The Democratic candidate, Doug Jones, a former federal prosecutor, defeated Moore by a narrow margin in a special election in December 2017 to fill the seat vacated by Republican Jeff Sessions when he became US attorney general. Jones was the first Democrat in a quarter-century to be elected to the US Senate in Alabama.
AP is reporting that Roy Moore will jump into the Alabama Senate race https://t.co/gsALWyjY5v
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders hold narrow leads in a theoretical showdown with President Trump in North Carolina ahead of the 2020 presidential race, according to a new Public Policy Polling survey released Thursday.
Forty-nine percent of registered voters surveyed said they would back Biden in a match-up against Trump, while 46 percent said they would support the president. Five percent, meanwhile, said they are unsure who they’d back.
In a match-up against Sanders, 48 percent of North Carolina voters said they’d back the Vermont senator, compared with 47 percent who said they would vote for Trump; 5 percent said they were unsure of their pick.
No other candidate leads Trump in the poll.
Continue reading...The threat of war with Iran is terrifying and the behaviour of the US government risks making the danger real. Its categoric claim that Iran was responsible for last week’s attacks on the two tankers in the Straits of Hormuz has been challenged by the Japanese and the German governments. It has served only to make a dangerous situation more serious.
The context to this is Donald Trump’s scrapping of the nuclear deal with Iran last year, which blocked the way to normalising relations and immediately escalated tension. The accompanying sanctions have caused real economic damage and human suffering. In May the Trump administration turned the screw tighter by dropping exemptions for oil exports. These measures are part of the policy of regime change advocated by John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, Trump’s two senior foreign policy officials, both of whom have called for military attacks on Iran.
Continue reading...US considers response to shooting down of US drone that Tehran claims was flying in Iranian airspace
US security officials have been summoned to the White House to discuss a response to the shooting down of a US spy drone, which Donald Trump has called a “big mistake” by Tehran.
Iran said it shot down the unmanned aircraft in its airspace. The US military has said it was downed over international waters in the strait of Hormuz.
Continue reading...The US state department's expert on Iran, Brian Hook, is repeatedly asked by Democrats how the Trump administration interprets its powers to declare war, following a recent rise in tensions with Iran. Hook repeatedly stressed the US was pursuing diplomacy with Tehran, saying: 'No one should be uncertain about our desire for peace'
Continue reading...On 28 June 1969, a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, sparked a rebellion against discrimination – and proved the catalyst for the modern LGBTQ rights movement. Performers Lady Bunny, Peppermint and Sasha Velour discuss what the Stonewall uprising means to them – and what's next in the fight for equality.
Continue reading...Former vice-president defies calls for apology after highlighting his relationships with lawmakers known for racist views
The Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden responded with defiance after a day of sharp criticism from fellow Democrats, after he named two southern segregationist senators as people he had managed to work with during his career.
In comments at a Wall Street fundraising event on Monday, Biden said that, despite major disagreements, he had worked with the senators with “some civility”. When reporters asked Biden late on Wednesday if he would apologize for his comments, the former vice-president responded, dismissively: “Apologize for what?”
Continue reading...After the Senate majority leader dismissed the idea of reparations, Coates testified before Congress about ‘campaign of terror’ against black Americans
Closing out live coverage this evening, with an updated summary of today’s news from Amanda Holpuch and me:
Watch some of the key moments from today’s Congressional debate over reparations:
Continue reading...