David Perdue’s remarks come after a Taiwanese minister spoke of the ‘severe’ military threat posed by Beijing to the self-ruled island
Donald Trump offered to sell weapons to China while hosting its leader, Xi Jinping, last week, the US ambassador to China said on Sunday.
David Perdue told Fox News on Sunday: “President Trump continues to say, hey, we sell arms to other people around the world. He actually asked President Xi, would he like to buy some at one point.”
Continue reading...Hurricane Nolo is moving away from Hawaiian islands but threat of heavy rain, flash floods and strong winds persists
Hurricane Nolo was moving away from the Hawaiian islands on Sunday, but the threat of heavy rain, flash flooding and strong winds persisted in areas of the island chain still recovering from previous storms.
Nolo was about 365 miles (585km) south-south-west of Honolulu and moving away from the Big Island at about 12mph (19km/h). But the Hawaii county civil defense agency said a high wind warning, wind advisory and high surf advisory remained in effect for parts of the island through Sunday evening as Nolo’s maximum sustained winds rose to 115mph.
Continue reading...Thom Tillis says Trump’s decision to back Paxton over John Cornyn has put the Senate seat at risk for Republicans
US senator Thom Tillis on Sunday criticized Donald Trump, his fellow Republican, for the president’s support of Ken Paxton over incumbent John Cornyn in the Texas Senate Republican primary.
“He made a colossal mistake,” Tillis, a frequent Trump critic from North Carolina, said during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union in reference to the president’s support of Paxton who defeated Cornyn in the May primary.
Continue reading...Waltz says Trump rejected Iran’s proposal to end war because they ‘were asking for everything up front’
The Trump administration’s ambassador to the United Nations said the US rejected Iran’s proposal to end the ongoing war there because Iranian negotiators “were asking for everything up front”.
Echoing comments by Donald Trump on Saturday, the president’s UN ambassador Mike Waltz told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that Iran had asked for relief “from billions and billions of sanctions that are going into place” as part of an economic blockade on Iran. The blockade is aimed at putting pressure on Iran to stop its attacks on vessels in the strait of Hormuz.
Continue reading...At least one person killed and nearly 150,000 households lost electricity from North Carolina to New England
A strong, deadly storm known as a nor’easter battered the US’s east coast over the weekend, bringing power outages, flooding, damaging winds and hazardous ocean conditions.
Trees and power lines were knocked down across the region, at least one person was killed and hundreds of thousands were left without electricity as officials cautioned that conditions could deteriorate further.
Continue reading...Firms manipulating process to avoid emission controls and scrutiny of their projects, environmental groups warn
Datacenter developers are manipulating the EPA’s air pollution permitting process to avoid emission controls and scrutiny of their projects, environmental advocates allege.
Companies need federal permits to emit a range of pollutants. In their permit applications, some in big tech are avoiding “major” reviews by dividing their emissions sources into separate, multiple “minor” sources that require less regulatory oversight, the advocates say.
Continue reading...Ping Ping and Fu Shuang to live at Atlanta zoo in Georgia as part of loan deal between Chinese and US governments
Two giant pandas from China arrived in Atlanta, Georgia, on Sunday morning as part of an agreement between the Chinese and American governments.
While in Washington DC for a three-day summit with Donald Trump, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced that the pandas would arrive in Atlanta in the coming days. The loan of the pandas to the Atlanta zoo was one of the few concrete outcomes to come out of Xi’s state visit with the US president, which saw expressions of goodwill between the leaders, but no fixes to any of the longstanding differences between the two countries.
Continue reading...Various factors block sufferers of disease from receiving treatment that is effective and has widespread availability
Sickle cell patients are missing out on an effective treatment despite widespread US hospital access to the technology, new research has found.
That treatment is called a red blood cell exchange, a procedure that discards a patient’s damaged red blood cells while simultaneously mixing the patient’s remaining plasma, platelets and white blood cells with red blood cells from a donor before returning them to the body.
Continue reading...Decision follows disclosures that OpenAI agents searching government websites had acted in unexpected ways
OpenAI said it has paused training of its latest artificial intelligence models as reports of AI agents going rogue mount.
The decision to halt development came just hours after the company disclosed Friday that it was reviewing several incidents from the summer in which OpenAI agents searching federal government websites acted in unexpected ways beyond what was asked of them while gathering and distributing information.
Continue reading...Residents across New Jersey, Massachusetts, Delaware and New York without electricity as storm hits
A slow-moving, powerful storm known as a nor’easter crept along the coast of the US north-east on Saturday, producing high winds that knocked out electricity to thousands of people while whipping up big waves and heavy rains that created dangerous conditions in some places.
Tens of millions of people were in the path of the storm, which was forecast to affect the mid-Atlantic area and New England throughout the weekend. About 100,000 customers in the region were without electricity Saturday.
Continue reading...Sullenberger landed a disabled passenger plane safely in the Hudson River in 2009 without any loss of life
Capt Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III – the pilot known for safely landing a US Airways flight in New York City’s Hudson River during a 2009 emergency – has been inducted into the US’s National Aviation Hall of Fame, two months after he went public with an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis.
Sullenberger, 75, received the honor during a ceremony held in Washington DC on Thursday, 17 years after he engineered what has become widely known as the Miracle on the Hudson.
Continue reading...Eric Clark, 45, charged with murder as autopsy concludes Fortune was dead days before body discovered in tree
A third person has been arrested in the death of 29-year-old Tasia Fortune in Mississippi’s capital city, while investigators said they had determined the scene where her body was found hanging had been staged.
Eric Clark, 45, surrendered to authorities on Friday and was charged with murder, according to the Jackson police department (JPD). Clark was scheduled to make a court appearance on Monday.
Continue reading...Pledges found covered in food in heated basement of fraternity house near University of Wisconsin-Madison
Police are investigating suspected illegal hazing after about 30 partially clothed young men covered in food, condiments and other liquids were found recently in the basement of a fraternity house near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
Madison police said some of the men, whom they described as pledges of a fraternity, had signs of being physically assaulted.
Continue reading...Attorney says fishers ‘losing their livelihoods’, but Marco Rubio maintains US still willing to ‘blow up ships if need be’
While the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was being decorated in Quito by Ecuador’s president for “helping to promote peace in the region”, 10 Ecuadorian fishers whose boat had been blown up by US forces were adrift in the eastern Pacific.
On 8 September, a day before Rubio arrived, a US patrol vessel intercepted the fishing boat Don Rufo in international waters near Ecuador.
Continue reading...Trump tries to dominate at the UN as his approval ratings plummet and even some Republicans stray from the script
Donald Trump stood before the United Nations on Tuesday and threatened to “annihilate” Iran. Yet even as the most powerful man on the planet flexed his military muscles, he was powerless to keep the gravitational pull of domestic politics at bay.
Heading into the UN building in New York, the US president was questioned by Kaitlan Collins, an anchor at CNN, which he had banned from the White House before a judge ruled against him. “I’m surprised that CNN is here covering me,” the 80-year-old snapped. “You should not be here covering me.”
Continue reading...Outgoing secretary Lonnie Bunch rejects claims the institution is unpatriotic, telling audience ‘You cannot understand all without illuminating the dark corners’
Lonnie Bunch, the outgoing secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, has defended the organisation against political interference, insisting that telling the unvarnished and complex truths of history is an act of “great love” for the country.
Speaking on Friday at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, Bunch received a standing ovation from hundreds of audience members and rejected claims that the institution’s staff or exhibitions were unpatriotic.
Continue reading...Trial had been set for Monday over claims by Alabama that TikTok misled parents about tools meant to shield children from harmful content
TikTok has agreed to pay Alabama at least $100m and enact time limits and other restrictions for teenage users, avoiding a trial with a settlement that was modelled on Instagram-owner Meta’s recent agreement with US states.
Alabama described it as a “first-in-the-nation settlement” with a state in the sweeping litigation over social media’s affect on teen wellbeing.
Continue reading...President using rare power to revoke expenditure with bipartisan approval to aid immigrant services
Donald Trump is canceling nearly $1bn in spending approved by Congress, the White House announced on Friday, using a rare and contested power to axe funding for immigrant services and diversity-focused initiatives.
Trump’s office of management and budget described the funding cut as focused on “the most harmful government spending”.
Continue reading...Jane Smith reportedly used ChatGPT to edit photo to show name Trump ordered US agencies to use for Lake Ontario amid trade war with Canada
The CEO of a Michigan credit union is no longer employed there, according to the organization, after she posted on social media what appeared to be an AI-generated image of her and her family wearing sweaters emblazoned with the Donald Trump-associated words “Lake America”.
In the statement recently announcing that Jane Smith would no longer be its CEO, Family First Credit Union also apologized “for the concern, disappointment and pain this situation has caused”.
Continue reading...Iran’s seven-day timetable would restart nuclear talks, but will the US be willing to deliver on terms that include reining in Israel in Lebanon?
Iran’s seven-day timetable to reopen the strait of Hormuz and start talks on its nuclear programme has been pitched as a deal that could rapidly extricate Donald Trump from a political crisis but requires the US president to make difficult concessions.
In the five days left before the proposed reopening of the strait, which is expected to relieve pressure on global energy markets, Trump would need to lift Iranian asset freezes, permit Iran to export its oil and, probably most difficult of all, order Benjamin Netanyahu to end Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, thus achieving the “ceasefire on all fronts”.
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