Category Archives: US News

Wisconsin’s Ben Wikler joins race for Democratic National Committee chair

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In announcement, state’s Democratic chair touts grassroots and new media organizing success in closely divided state

Wisconsin Democratic leader Ben Wikler joined the race to lead the Democratic National Committee on Sunday, promising “to take on Trump, Republican extremists, and move our country forward”, as the party looks to rebuild from its losses in the November election.

In a video posted on social networks, Wikler, 43, touted his state party’s success in organizing to flip 14 state legislative seats and send Senator Tammy Baldwin back to Washington DC in November, and in previously campaigns to win control of the state supreme court and re-elect governor Tony Evers. Wikler, a former podcaster, Air America radio producer and headline writer for The Onion, also stressed his new media expertise.

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Conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead FBI, faces Senate blowback

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‘Deep state’ critic who has threatened to shut down agency’s headquarters could face tough confirmation battle

Donald Trump’s plan to nominate as FBI director the “deep state” conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, a virulent critic of the bureau who has threatened to fire its top echelons and shut down the agency’s headquarters, is facing blowback in Congress as US senators begin to flex their muscles ahead of a contentious confirmation process.

Politicians from both main parties took to the Sunday talk shows to express starkly divergent views on Patel, whom Trump announced on Saturday as his pick to lead the most powerful law enforcement agency in the US. The move is dependent on the incumbent FBI chief, Christopher Wray, who Trump himself placed in the job in 2017, either being fired or resigning.

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Dawson’s Creek actor James Van Der Beek sells merch to pay for cancer treatment

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Actor says he’s selling memorabilia to help cover ‘expensive’ treatment costs for recent colorectal cancer diagnosis

The Dawson’s Creek star James Van Der Beek announced he is selling memorabilia to help cover the “expensive” treatment costs for his recent colorectal cancer diagnosis.

Van Der Beek, also known for the film Varsity Blues, made the announcement on Instagram last week, nearly three weeks after revealing his illness in an interview with People.

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Trump threat of 100% tariffs against Brics nations raises trade war fears

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President-elect threatens retaliation if emerging economies create new currency to rival US dollar

Fears of a global trade war have risen after Donald Trump threatened to impose 100% tariffs on countries in the Brics group if they create a new currency to rival the US dollar.

Writing on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Saturday, Trump declared that he would also act if they supported another currency to replace the dollar.

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Environmental groups demand EPA to start monitoring microplastics in water

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Legal petition filed by 170 groups pushes environmental agency to tackle pressing health threat of pollution

A new legal petition filed by more than 170 top environmental groups demands that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) begin monitoring for microplastics in drinking water, an essential first step to reining in pollution viewed as one of the nation’s most pressing public health threats.

The scale of microplastic water pollution, the extent to which the substance is lodged throughout human bodies, and the many health implications have come into sharp focus in recent years, but the EPA still has not taken meaningful action, public health advocates say.

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Taiwan president stops in Hawaii during Pacific tour, drawing ire from China

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Lai Ching-te’s US stopover on trip to Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau – three diplomatic allies of the self-governed island – prompts Beijing’s protests

The Taiwanese president, Lai Ching-te, has begun a two-day US stopover in Hawaii as part of a Pacific tour after declaring his democratically governed island a key force for promoting global peace and stability.

The trip has sparked fury from China, which views Taiwan as its own territory and opposes any foreign interactions or visits by the island’s leaders. China’s foreign ministry said on Sunday it had lodged “serious protests” with the US.

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American-Israeli hostage urges Trump to free Gaza captives in new video

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Edan Alexander, who was taken prisoner on 7 Oct, asked Donald Trump to secure his freedom in a Hamas video condemned by the White House

The White House has condemned a Hamas-issued propaganda video of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander urging president-elect Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a deal to free remaining hostages in Gaza, calling it “a cruel reminder of Hamas’s terror against citizens of multiple countries, including our own”.

In the video, titled “Soon … Time is running out” and posted on Saturday on the Telegram channel of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, Alexander calls on Trump to use his “influence and the full power of the United States to negotiate for our freedom”.

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Trump maintains hard line on Canada after meeting with Trudeau

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Prime minister becomes first G7 leader to visit president-elect amid concerns over tariff threat

Donald Trump said he had a “productive” meeting with Justin Trudeau after the Canadian prime minister paid a surprise trip to his Mar-a-Lago estate amid fears about Trump’s promised tariffs.

Trudeau became the first G7 leader to meet with Trump before his second term amid widespread fears in Canada and many other parts of the world that Trump’s trade policy will cause widespread economic chaos.

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Trump nominates Jared Kushner’s father for ambassador to France

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Businessman pleaded guilty to illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering in 2005

Donald Trump has nominated Charles Kushner, a businessman who is the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, to serve as US ambassador to France, the president-elect said on Saturday.

Kushner, whose job requires Senate confirmation, is the latest of Trump’s picks to have close ties with the incoming president. Kushner’s son, Jared Kushner, is married to Ivanka Trump, and was a close advisor to Trump during his first presidency.

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After 50 years of mystery, siblings claim hijacker DB Cooper was their father

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Cooper’s whereabouts after he jumped from a plane with $200,000 stumped investigators. Has the case been solved?

It is one of the biggest mysteries in US criminal history: just what happened to DB Cooper, the man who hijacked an airplane before leaping out in mid-air with $200,000 in cash?

Now, more than 50 years later, the infamous crime may have been solved, after a pair of siblings came forward to claim they had found the parachute used in the hijacking, in their mother’s shed, and that Cooper was their father.

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Inmates burn themselves in protest at ‘inhumane’ Virginia prison conditions

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Officials acknowledge prisoners have harmed themselves but say they did not set themselves on fire or self-immolate

Several incarcerated people in Virginia’s high-security Red Onion state prison have intentionally burned themselves in a protest against harsh conditions at the facility.

A written statement from Virginia’s department of corrections acknowledged that men imprisoned there had harmed themselves, although the authorities confirmed six incidents while others reported that 12 men were injured.

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Trump defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s mother called him ‘an abuser of women’

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Email from mother, published in the New York Times, said he mistreated women and displayed a lack of character

The family dynamics of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, have burst out into the open after an email from his mother criticizing her son over his treatment of women and calling him an “abuser of women” was leaked to a newspaper.

A 2018 email from Penelope Hegseth accused her son of routinely mistreating women and displaying a lack of character.

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Musk could use the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ for self-enrichment

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He’s said $42.45bn spent by the US for rural internet isn’t efficient. His Starlink company stands to benefit if he reduces that investment

Elon Musk, named by Donald Trump to co-lead a commission aimed at reducing the size of the federal government, is poised to undermine funding for rural broadband services to benefit his satellite internet services company, Starlink.

Musk has long been a critic of the Biden administration’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (Bead) Program, which provides $42.45bn through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill to expand high-speed internet access in rural communities. Starlink, the satellite internet services subsidiary of SpaceX, has largely been shut out of this funding after government agencies deemed it too slow to qualify.

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Study links higher PFAS levels to ‘superfund’ sites and limited fresh-food access

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Findings highlight how built environment in low-income neighborhoods presents multiple PFAS exposure routes

New research aimed at identifying which US neighborhoods face increased exposure to toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” found those living near “superfund” sites and other major industrial polluters, or in areas with limited access to fresh food, generally have higher levels of the dangerous compounds in their blood.

The study looked at hundreds of people living in southern California and found those who do not live within a half mile of a grocery store have 14% higher levels of PFOA and PFOS – two common PFAS compounds – in their blood than those who do.

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Smell like Trump: ‘victory cologne’ for sale as president-elect hawks his wares

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President-elect’s list of branded products continues to grow – and he seems to be profiting from his eclectic range

Donald Trump raised eyebrows earlier this month when he announced he was selling a line of $11,000 guitars – the musical instrument becoming the latest item in a string of Trump-endorsed products that include sneakers, a Bible and a “victory cologne”.

Billed as “the only guitar officially endorsed by President Donald J Trump”, the acoustic and electric axes bear all the gaudy insignia of Trump’s political campaigns, and have been developed “with the help of a master luthier”.

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Trudeau in Florida to meet Trump after tariffs threat – reports

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Canada’s PM to dine with US president-elect at Mar-a-Lago resort, news reports say, days after Trump threatens 25% tariff on Canadian imports

The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has arrived in Palm Beach, Florida, ahead of a meeting Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort, according to media reports, days after the US president-elect threatened the US’s neighbour with import tariffs once he takes office.

The Canadian prime minister’s public itinerary does not list a scheduled visit to Florida. Neither Trudeau’s office nor Trump’s representatives immediately responded to requests for comment.

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Canadian media companies sue OpenAI in case potentially worth billions

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Litigants say AI company used their articles to train its popular ChatGPT software without authorization

Canada’s major news organizations have sued tech firm OpenAI for potentially billions of dollars, alleging the company is “strip-mining journalism” and unjustly enriching itself by using news articles to train its popular ChatGPT software.

The suit, filed on Friday in Ontario’s superior court of justice, calls for punitive damages, a share of profits made by OpenAI from using the news organizations’ articles, and an injunction barring the San Francisco-based company from using any of the news articles in the future.

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Ex-activist says FBI offered him deal to inform on fugitive arrested in Wales

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Peter Young says agency sought information from him about Daniel Andreas San Diego, who was on ‘most wanted terrorists’ list

A former animal rights activist who was on the run from the FBI for more than seven years claims that he was offered a deal to inform on one of the organisation’s most wanted fugitives who was arrested this week in Wales.

Peter Young, 47, who now lives in Boulder, Colorado, went on the run after being indicted in 1998 over a string of fur farm raids across three states the previous year. He was jailed in the US for two years in 2005 after spending years hiding from the FBI in the UK.

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New powder that captures carbon could be ‘quantum leap’ for industry

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A ‘covalent organic framework’ can be used to capture carbon to store it or convert it for industrial use

An innocuous yellow powder, created in a lab, could be a new way to combat the climate crisis by absorbing carbon from the air.

Just half a pound of the stuff may remove as much carbon dioxide as a tree can, according to early tests. Once the carbon is absorbed by the powder, it can be released into safe storage or be used in industrial processes, like carbonizing drinks.

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Abandoning Ukraine means ‘infinitely higher’ long-term security costs, MI6 chief says

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If Putin allowed to reduce Ukraine to vassal state ‘he will not stop there’, Richard Moore says in plea to Trump

Abandoning Ukraine would jeopardise British, European and American security and lead to “infinitely higher” costs in the long term, the head of MI6 has warned in a speech that amounted to a plea to Donald Trump to continue supporting Kyiv.

Richard Moore, giving a rare speech, said he believed Vladimir Putin “would not stop” at Ukraine if he was allowed to subjugate it in any peace talks involving the incoming US Republican administration.

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