Category Archives: US News

Special relationship at risk if UK bans arms sales to Israel, says Trump adviser

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Robert O’Brien says UK could face US counter-embargos and put its role in F-35 fighter jet project in danger

Labour risks a serious rift in the UK’s special relationship with the US if it goes ahead with a ban on arms sales to Israel, Donald Trump’s last national security adviser has warned.

Robert O’Brien, still one of the key security voices in the Trump circle, said the UK was endangering its future role in the F-35 project as well as facing the risk of US congressional counter-embargos. The F-35 fighter jets are made in part by British arms firms and are used by Israel’s air force as part of its bombing of Gaza.

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South Carolina prepares for first execution in more than 13 years

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After July ruling that state’s death penalty is legal, a man on death row has a week to decide how he will be executed

A man on death row in South Carolina has until 6 September to decide how he would prefer to be executed by the state.

South Carolina’s prisons director has declared the state’s supply of a lethal injection drug acceptable and said its electric chair was tested two months ago and its firing squad has the ammunition and training to carry out its first execution next month in more than 13 years, if needed.

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FBI failed to investigate suspected child sexual abuse cases properly, report finds

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Internal justice department audit flagged 42 allegations from 2021-2023 requiring ‘immediate attention’ from FBI

The US justice department’s office of inspector general said on Thursday the FBI failed to properly investigate some suspected child sexual abuse cases and did not report some allegations to state or social services agencies.

A July 2021 report by the justice department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, uncovered widespread and dire errors by the FBI that allowed the onetime USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar to continue to abuse at least 70 more victims before he was finally arrested.

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‘World’s largest’ piracy ring Fmovies shut down by police in Vietnam

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Major film studio group Ace spearheaded takedown of piracy operation that garnered billions of site visits yearly

An international anti-piracy coalition including major Hollywood studios has claimed victory over Fmovies, a large illegal streaming operation based in Vietnam.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (Ace), whose governing members include Netflix, Apple TV+, Amazon and the Walt Disney Studios, announced on Thursday that it worked with Hanoi police to shut down Fmovies and affiliated sites. The illegal consortium, with sites including Bflixz, Flixtorz, Movies7 and Myflixer in addition to Fmovies, constituted “the largest pirate streaming operation in the world”, according to Ace, with more than 6.7bn visits between January 2023 and June 2024.

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US army confirms Arlington cemetery worker ‘pushed aside’ by Trump staff

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Strongest official criticism yet over altercation with ex-president’s staff during photo op at military cemetery

US army officials issued a strongly worded rebuke of Donald Trump’s campaign on Thursday as they confirmed a worker at Arlington national cemetery was “abruptly pushed aside” during an altercation with members of the former president’s staff.

The statement was the strongest official criticism yet of Trump’s controversial visit in which he gave a thumbs-up over graves as a photo opportunity and there was an alleged physical assault by two of his staffers on the army official. It came as outrage continued to mount from veterans and families of some of the service members buried there.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

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Xi Jinping holds surprise meeting with senior Biden aide in Beijing

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Chinese leader speaks with Jake Sullivan, who was making his first visit to Beijing as US national security adviser

Xi Jinping has spoken with the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, in a surprise meeting during the senior Biden aide’s three-day visit to Beijing.

The meeting on Thursday afternoon came after days of talks between Sullivan and senior Communist party officials including the foreign minister, Wang Yi, and a vice-chair of the central military commission believed to have the ear of Xi.

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Trump staffers reported over altercation at Arlington cemetery during photo op

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Officials at military cemetery say two campaign members ‘verbally abused and pushed’ a representative

Officials at Arlington national cemetery have filed a report over the behavior of members of Donald Trump’s campaign staff who reportedly shoved and verbally abused an employee during a “crass” photo opportunity for the Republican presidential candidate.

The officials confirmed that a confrontation took place at the Virginia cemetery on Monday after the former president participated in a wreath-laying ceremony for 13 US servicemen and -women killed in a 2021 suicide bomb attack outside Kabul airport in Afghanistan.

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Ludacris sparks alarm by drinking unfiltered Alaska glacier water

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Glaciologist says ‘he’s totally fine’ after video of rapper tasting water goes viral and viewers warn of contamination

Chris “Ludacris” Bridges sparked concern from some social media followers when he knelt on an Alaska glacier, dipped an empty water bottle into a blue, pristine pool of water and drank it.

Video of the rapper-turned-actor tasting the glacial water and proclaiming: “Oh my God!” got millions of views on TikTok and Instagram. Some viewers expressed concern that he was endangering his life by drinking the untreated water, warning it might be contaminated with the parasite giardia.

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Gunman at Trump’s rally saw it as ‘target of opportunity’, FBI official says

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The shooter had done extensive research and had also searched online for events and targets

New details have come to light in the FBI’s investigation into the assassination attempt of Donald Trump, including how the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, researched and planned the attack.

In a call with journalists on Wednesday, a senior FBI official shared that the gunman had searched online for events of both the former president and Joe Biden and saw the Pennsylvania campaign rally where he opened fire last month as a “target of opportunity.”

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Australian PM caught on camera joking with senior US official over funding of Pacific policing plan

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Anthony Albanese tells journalists to ‘chill out’ over comments filmed in the wings of Pacific Islands Forum

The Australian prime minister has been caught on camera in Tonga joking with a senior US official about going “halvies” on the cost of a newly announced Pacific policing plan.

The deputy secretary of state, Kurt Campbell, appeared to suggest in the video that the US had been planning to pursue an unspecified security-related proposal but had been encouraged by Australia not to proceed.

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Joe Biden ordered Gaza pier to be built despite fears of aid experts

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Report by US Agency for International Development into $230m pier paints scathing picture of a failed project

Joe Biden declared the US intention to build a pier off the coast of Gaza as a means of delivering food despite advice to the contrary from aid experts in his administration, according to an official investigation into the ill-fated project.

A new report by the inspector general of the US Agency for International Development (USAid), which was responsible for delivering food to Gaza by the pier, paints a scathing picture of a failed project, in which political and security imperatives outweighed humanitarian considerations.

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Pulse nightclub owners will not face charges over 2016 mass shooting

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Police close investigation into Barbara and Rosario Poma over possible manslaughter linked to Florida massacre

The Orlando police department has closed its investigation into the former owners of the Pulse nightclub without filing any charges. Victims’ families and survivors of the mass shooting that killed 49 patrons at the LGBTQ+ club had asked law enforcement to investigate them for criminal culpability.

No charges will be filed against the former owners, Barbara and Rosario Poma, because probable cause did not exist for involuntary manslaughter by culpable negligence, the Orlando police said this week in an emailed statement.

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Vance attacks Biden-Harris economic record in Wisconsin rally – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. You can find all of our US elections coverage here

Mark Esper, a former defense secretary under Donald Trump, told CNN that he hoped the reported altercation between the former president’s staff and an official at Arlington national cemetery was investigated, while saying that the grounds should never be used for “partisan political purposes”:

Esper served under Trump from 2019 until shortly after the 2020 election, when Trump fired him. The former defense chief has since decried Trump as a “threat to democracy”.

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Colorado man left behind during office retreat survives night on mountain

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Injured hiker became stranded after co-workers descended without him before storm in Rocky mountains

A Colorado man survived a night on a mountain by himself – while injured – after being left behind by his co-workers during an office retreat, which rescue officials pointed out may lead to some “awkward encounters at the office in the coming days and weeks”.

Colorado’s Chaffee County Search and Rescue South (CCSAR-S) shared the hiker’s harrowing ordeal in a Facebook post earlier this week, saying that at about 9pm last Friday, it was “activated for a report of an overdue hiker”. The hiker was wearing all black on the standard route of Mount Shavano, a high mountain summit in the southern Sawatch range of the Rocky mountains.

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Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway hits $1tn valuation on Wall Street

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Vast conglomerate becomes the first non-tech company to hit the major stock market milestone

The market value of Berkshire Hathaway surpassed $1tn on Wednesday, reflecting investor confidence in the conglomerate that Warren Buffett built over nearly six decades into what many consider a proxy for the American economy.

Berkshire joined six other companies, mainly from the technology sector, above $1trn: Apple, Nvidia , Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon.com and Facebook parent Meta Platforms.

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‘Injured’ Missouri bald eagle actually ‘too fat to fly’ after gorging on raccoon

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X-rays show flightless bird found near Springfield was not wounded, but full of roadkill raccoon

Wildlife officials in Missouri rescued what they thought was an injured and flightless bald eagle, only to discover it had gorged itself on a roadkill raccoon and was “too fat to fly”.

The bird was spotted on the ground near the boundary of Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield in Springfield, site of the first major civil war engagement west of the Mississippi river in 1861.

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Swifties for Kamala rally raises nearly $140,000 for Harris

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Fan group holds Zoom call featuring Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and ‘original cat lady’ Carole King

Taylor Swift has yet to publicly endorse a candidate, but some of her fanbase are already mobilizing for Kamala Harris. The Swifties for Kamala Coalition officially launched on Tuesday, raising more than $138,000 for the Democratic candidate in a virtual rally featuring Carole King and the senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Swift, who has no affiliation with the group, was not present on the Zoom call nor involved in the event. The group has amassed about 250 million followers on social media platforms since Joe Biden dropped out of the race in late July and endorsed the vice-president.

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JD Vance attacks childless teachers in newly resurfaced remarks

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Republican vice-presidential candidate criticizes ‘leaders on the left’ and Randi Weingarten in 2021 clip

JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate and US senator from Ohio, attacked teachers who do not have children in newly resurfaced remarks from 2021.

In the resurfaced clip, Vance, who was speaking at a forum held by the Center for Christian Virtue, attacks “leaders on the left” and Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, for not having children.

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Rare mosquito disease prompts Massachusetts to close public parks

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State also bug spraying in several communities due to virus that spreads to humans via bite of an infected mosquito

A rare but serious – and potentially lethal – mosquito-borne disease has prompted officials to close public parks as well as implement targeted bug spraying in several communities in Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, a resident of nearby New Hampshire has died after testing positive for the disease, eastern equine encephalitis, or EEE, according to the Associated Press.

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RFK Jr faces call for investigation into claim he chainsawed whale’s head off

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Activists say Kennedy could’ve committed felony violation for allegedly driving with whale skull strapped to car roof

His independent White House campaign has fizzled, but the flow of bizarre stories of Robert F Kennedy Jr’s unorthodox handling of the carcasses of wild mammals has experienced no similar suspension.

An environmental group is calling for a federal investigation into the former presidential candidate for an episode in which he allegedly severed the head of a washed-up whale with a chainsaw – and drove home with it strapped to his car’s roof.

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