Category Archives: US News

USAid website offline as Trump moves to put agency under state department

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Move would threaten life-saving global humanitarian aid programs, from HIV/Aids treatments to clean water access

The website for the US Agency for International Development, or USAid, appeared to be offline on Saturday, as the Trump administration moves to put the free-standing agency, and its current $42.8bn budget for global humanitarian operations, under state department control.

A message stating that the “server IP address could not be found” appeared when attempts were made to access the website on Saturday.

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Ken Martin elected new chair of Democratic National Committee

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Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor chair to lead party still reeling from extensive losses

Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor party, won the crowded race to become the next chair of the Democratic National Committee on Saturday.

The move provides Martin with a powerful perch to determine the messaging and trajectory of a party that is still reeling from its extensive losses in the November election and confronting four more years of Donald Trump’s leadership.

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Pentagon swaps desk for New York Times reporters for New York Post

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Other swaps due to new ‘rotation’ include NPR for Breitbart, NBC for One America News and Politico for HuffPost

The Trump administration’s program to shake up media representation at official briefings and press calls in Washington is set to affect the Pentagon, with credentialed media being rotated out of assigned workspaces for media newcomers.

The conservative-leaning One America News Network will replace NBC News, Breitbart will be given space held by National Public Radio, the New York Post has been offered the New York Times’ workspace and HuffPost will replace Politico.

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Medical jet carrying six people crashes in Philadelphia, setting homes on fire

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Jet Rescue Air Ambulance said it could not ‘confirm any survivors’ aboard plane that went down near Roosevelt Mall

A medical transport jet carrying a child patient, her mother and four others including crew crashed into a north-east Philadelphia neighborhood on Friday evening, erupting in a fireball and setting several homes ablaze just 30 seconds after taking off.

“We cannot confirm any survivors,” said a statement from Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, which operated the Learjet 55. “Our immediate concern is for the patient’s family, our personnel, their families and other victims that may have been hurt on the ground.”

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Leaders in the Pacific raise alarm over ‘direct impact’ of Trump’s climate retreat and aid freeze

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Samoa’s prime minister says US withdrawal from Paris climate agreement is ‘very disappointing’ and puts the survival of Pacific countries at greater risk

Leaders and environmental advocates in the Pacific have expressed alarm over Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and freeze foreign aid, warning the moves will accelerate the existential threats they face as nations on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

The Paris agreement is the world’s main effort to address the impacts of the climate crisis. Trump has called it “unfair” and a “rip off”.

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Trump orders USDA to take down websites referencing climate crisis

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Forest service website among many sites affected as agencies scramble to comply with president’s orders

On Thursday, the Trump administration ordered the US agriculture department to unpublish its websites documenting or referencing the climate crisis.

By Friday, the landing pages on the United States Forest Service website for key resources, research and adaptation tools – including those that provide vital context and vulnerability assessments for wildfires – had gone dark, leaving behind an error message or just a single line: “You are not authorized to access this page.”

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Rubio to visit Central America with migration and Panama canal on agenda

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US secretary of state to visit region amid concern over Trump threat to ‘take back’ canal and tensions over China

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, will travel to Central America this week on a five-country tour that will focus on limiting migration to the United States, curbing Chinese influence in the region and on securing Donald Trump’s ambitious goal of reasserting US control over the Panama canal.

Rubio will travel to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic from Saturday to Thursday this week, meeting with the presidents of each. It is the first time in more than a century that a secretary’s first official visit abroad will be to Central America.

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Canada will bring ‘forceful but reasonable’ retaliation to Trump tariffs, Trudeau says

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White House has claimed goods shipped from Canada and Mexico to the US would face a 25% levy starting Saturday

Justin Trudeau says Canada will bring a “forceful but reasonable” retaliation to any tariffs imposed by the US as his country braces for the economic fallout of a trade war.

“I won’t sugarcoat it – our nation could be facing difficult times in the coming days and weeks,” Trudeau said on Friday while speaking to an advisory council on Canada-US relations. “I know Canadians might be anxious and worried, but I want them to know the federal government – and indeed, all orders of government – have their backs.”

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Trump special envoy flies to Venezuela to meet with Nicolás Maduro

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Richard Grenell’s visit prompts fresh speculation of rapprochement between Washington and Caracas

A Donald Trump special envoy has flown to Venezuela to hold talks with its authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, fuelling fresh speculation of a possible deal between the two governments.

Richard Grenell, a prominent Maga cheerleader and diplomat who was the US ambassador to Germany during Trump’s first term, was set to land in Caracas on Friday, according to CNN.

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AstraZeneca cancels £450m Liverpool investment, blaming UK government funding cuts – business live

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Pharmaceutical company says that it will not go ahead with investment at Speke, near Liverpool

Donald Trump’s White House will invoke emergency powers to introduce tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Reuters reports:

Two sources familiar with the matter said that Trump was expected to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as the legal basis for the tariffs, declaring a national emergency over fentanyl overdoses that killed nearly 75,000 Americans in 2023 and illegal immigration.

The statute enacted in 1977 and modified after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 gives the president broad powers to impose economic sanctions in a crisis.

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Ex-Barclays CEO gears up for explosive trial over City regulator’s allegations on Jeffrey Epstein ties

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Court papers seen by the Guardian mean Jes Staley’s appeal against FCA ruling will demand answers on links to sex offender

The former chief executive of Barclays, Jes Staley, is gearing up for an explosive trial next month, that will force him to address evidence suggesting he hid the depth of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the sex offender he referred to as “family”.

Court documents seen by the Guardian reveal myriad allegations made by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), including that Epstein messaged Staley about sex, women and foreign holidays, while working behind the scenes to bolster Staley’s career by liaising with government officials, business leaders and royalty.

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The Maga backlash against Trump’s crypto grab: ‘This is bad, and looks bad’

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Trump’s meme coin has some conservatives complaining over ‘most blatant ponzi scheme in history’

When Donald Trump announced – three days before assuming the presidency of the United States, and followed shortly by Melania Trump – that he was launching a self-named “meme coin” cryptocurrency, many in the crypto industry were quick to express frustration. Ethics experts were also alarmed.

Among Trump’s base, however, a similar backlash – smaller, more muted, but similarly anguished – has been taking hold.

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Pardoned January 6 attacker sentenced to 10 years for fatal drunk-driving crash

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Emily Hernandez, 24, killed Victoria Wilson, 32, and injured her husband in a 2022 Missouri wreck

One of the US Capitol attackers pardoned by Donald Trump at the start of his second presidency has been handed a 10-year prison sentence for killing a woman in a drunk-driving crash, according to authorities.

Emily Hernandez served 30 days in federal prison after she joined the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 and was photographed holding the broken nameplate of Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker at the time.

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WhatsApp says journalists and civil society members were targets of Israeli spyware

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Messaging app said it had ‘high confidence’ some users were targeted and ‘possibly compromised’ by Paragon Solutions spyware

Nearly 100 journalists and other members of civil society using WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Meta, were targeted by spyware owned by Paragon Solutions, an Israeli maker of hacking software, the company alleged today.

The journalists and other civil society members were being alerted of a possible breach of their devices, with WhatsApp telling the Guardian it had “high confidence” that the users in question had been targeted and “possibly compromised”.

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Nearly half of Danes see US as threat and 78% oppose Greenland sale, poll shows

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Exclusive: More Danish people regard US as a threat than see North Korea or Iran as danger

Almost half of Danish people now consider the US to be a considerable threat to their country and the overwhelming majority oppose Greenland leaving to become part of the US, new polling has found.

The research by YouGov, shared exclusively with the Guardian, comes after weeks of tension between Denmark, Greenland and the US over Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that he plans to take control of the autonomous territory, which is part of the Danish kingdom.

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New Orleans archbishop fires food bank leaders for refusing to fund abuse settlement

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Bankrupt Roman Catholic archdiocese replaced members at church-affiliated non-profit over $16m dispute

The archbishop of New Orleans’ bankrupt Roman Catholic archdiocese on Thursday abruptly fired and replaced top leaders at a church-affiliated food bank, with those dismissed saying it was because the non-profit refused to contribute to paying survivors of child sexual abuse by clergymen.

The ousted members of Second Harvest’s board of directors say the changes “follow months of increasingly aggressive pressure placed on Second Harvest to contribute as much as $16m toward helping to resolve victims’ claims related to the church’s sexual abuse-related bankruptcy”, which has been pending since May 2020.

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US court rules banning gun sales to young adults under 21 unconstitutional

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Conservative New Orleans court ruling for people between 18 and 21 comes amid major shifts in firearm legal landscape

A conservative US appeals court on Thursday ruled that a ban on handgun sales to people between the ages of 18 and 21 violates the second amendment.

The ruling, handed down by a panel of three judges on the fifth US circuit court of appeals in New Orleans, comes amid major shifts in the national firearm legal landscape following a landmark US supreme court decision that expanded gun rights in 2022.

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Tulsi Gabbard grilled on Snowden, Assad and Putin in tense Senate hearing

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Skeptical senators ruthlessly questioned Trump’s national intelligence director nominee ahead of confirmation vote

Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s nominee for national intelligence director, refused to call the whistleblower Edward Snowden a “traitor” but sought to rein in her unorthodox views on foreign dictators and opposition to electronic surveillance during a tense confirmation hearing that could sink her nomination to oversee the country’s sprawling intelligence community.

In a three-hour hearing before the Senate intelligence committee, Gabbard, a former congresswoman and member of the Hawaii army national guard, partially recanted her views that Russia was provoked into invading Ukraine, said she had “no love” for the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and denied meeting with Hezbollah representatives during a trip to Lebanon in 2017.

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Gaza internal checkpoint to be staffed by US private armed contractors

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Deployment of special forces veterans is unprecedented and poses risk that Americans could be drawn into fighting

A US security firm is hiring nearly 100 US special forces veterans to help run a checkpoint in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas truce, introducing armed American contractors into the heart of one of the world’s most violent conflict zones.

UG Solutions, a low-profile company founded in 2023 and based in Davidson, North Carolina, is offering a daily rate starting at $1,100 with a $10,000 advance to veterans it hires, according to a recruitment email.

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‘Disrupt or be disrupted’, mainstream parties warned as voters turn to populists

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Research shows voters losing faith in traditional centre-left and centre-right to deliver meaningful change

Voters in western democracies are turning away from mainstream political parties and towards populists because they are losing faith in their ability to implement meaningful change, a major report based on surveys of 12,000 voters has found.

The popularity of traditional centre-left and centre-right parties across major democratic countries has plummeted from 73% in 2000 to 51% today, according to research by the Tony Blair Institute.

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