Category Archives: US News

Does mysterious painting prove blue denim was around 200 years before Levi’s?

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Woman Begging With Two Children, by an unknown artist, shows what appears to be a denim skirt in 17th-century Italy

The origin of the world’s most enduringly popular fabric is in ­dispute, as a new exhibition spotlights a claim that firmly links denim with 17th-­century Italy and takes its history back 200 years.

Blue denim, that all-American ­symbol of informality and a life lived on the open range, is already also contentiously attributed to ­southern France, while modern jeans ­mythology still has it that Levi Strauss, a German immigrant, first came up with the idea of making workwear out of this sturdy cotton in San Francisco 150 years ago.

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Most difficult global outlook since 1930s heralds end of US-led world order | Larry Elliott

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IMF has revised up growth forecasts but medium-term prospects remain poor as globalisation goes into reverse

The 2020s are almost halfway over and are on course to be the most difficult decade for the global economy since the 1930s. Every finance minister and central bank governor at the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington last week knows that, even if they were not prepared to admit it publicly.

The IMF likes to look on the bright side. It revised up slightly its forecast for global growth and now thinks scarring from the coronavirus pandemic and the cost of living crisis will be less severe than it originally feared. Interest rates have risen without triggering the recessions that were predicted. A soft landing has been finessed. The performance of some countries – the US and India to take two examples – has been strong.

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Suspected drunk driver crashes into Michigan birthday party, killing children

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Brother and sister, ages five and eight, killed as woman drives 25ft into a building, sheriff says

A young brother and sister died and several people were injured, some of them seriously, when a vehicle driven by a suspected drunken driver crashed into a young child’s birthday party on Saturday at a boat club, according to a Michigan sheriff.

An eight-year-old girl and her five-year-old brother died at the scene, when a 66-year-old woman crashed 25ft into the building at about 3pm at the Swan Creek Boat Club in Berlin Township, about 30 miles (48km) south of Detroit, the Monroe county sheriff, Troy Goodnough, said.

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Residents push for renaming of Trump Plaza to disassociate from ex-president

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Tenants of the high-rise in New Rochelle, New York, want to abandon the name which has at times affected real estate value

While Donald Trump endures the ignominy of being the first former US president to face criminal trial, there is further humiliation brewing, with a movement to strip the Trump name from a building in his home state.

Residents at Trump Plaza, a 40-story high-rise in the suburban New York city of New Rochelle, are pushing for the building to be renamed and to escape a near-two decade association with the legally-troubled ex-president and real estate mogul.

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Trump cancels North Carolina rally due to storm in first public address since New York trial

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Former president told thousands of supporters gathered at Wilmington airport the event would be rescheduled ‘bigger and better’

Donald Trump called for debates with Joe Biden before cancelling his own appearance at a planned rally in Wilmington, North Carolina as a rain storm approached the airport where it was staged on Saturday.

Trump called as he was approaching the international airport to tell rally goers that the event would be rescheduled “bigger and better”. This would have been the first time he addressed supporters in public after a week of relative silence in a New York courtroom.

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Professors condemn Columbia crackdown on pro-Palestine students

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Columbia and Barnard chapters of nationwide group issue statement claiming ‘flagrant disregard of shared governance’

The Columbia and Barnard chapters of the American Association of University Professors have issued a joint statement condemning Columbia president Minouche Shafik’s crackdowns on student-led pro-Palestinian protests.

In the statement released on Friday, the chapters said: “We are shocked at her failure to mount any defense of the free inquiry central to the educational mission of a university in a democratic society and at her willingness to appease legislators seeking to interfere in university affairs.”

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US House passes bill that could lead to total TikTok ban

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Bill – with updated language that extends deadline to a year for ByteDance to divest of TikTok – to go before Senate next week

The House of Representatives voted 360 to 58 on the updated divest-or-ban bill that could lead to the first time ever that the US government has passed a law to shut down an entire social media platform.

The Senate is expected to vote on the bill next week and Joe Biden has said he will sign the legislation.

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US House approves $61bn in military aid for Ukraine after months of stalling

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Ukrainian president thanks America after Speaker Mike Johnson secures bipartisan support for funding Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan

After months of stalling, the US House of Representatives finally approved more than $61bn worth of military assistance to help Ukraine in its desperate defense against Russia, as well as billions for other allies including Israel and Taiwan.

In a bipartisan vote, 210 Democrats and 101 Republicans joined to support Ukraine, with 112 Republicans – a majority of the GOP members – voting against. It came after the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, forced a series of bills onto the floor in the face of fierce resistance within his own Republican party, many of whom oppose spending more on Ukraine’s defense.

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US to withdraw from Niger after security pact fails in strategic victory for Russia

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Biden administration to rethink counter-terrorism strategy after breakdown of pact allowing US forces on soil to fight jihadists

The US will withdraw more than 1,000 military personnel from Niger in a move that will force the Biden administration to rethink its counter-terrorism strategy and amounts to a strategic victory for Russia.

The decision comes a month after the west African country’s ruling military junta revoked a security pact with Washington that had allowed American forces on its soil to help fight jihadist terrorism.

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US House to vote on long-delayed foreign aid bills – including Ukraine support

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Ukraine aid component threatens to throw the Republican party into disarray – and endangers the speakership of Mike Johnson

The US House of Representatives will finally vote on Saturday on a series of foreign aid bills, bringing an end to a months-long standoff in Congress led mostly by Republicans who refuse to support funding Ukraine’s ongoing military defense against Russia’s invasion.

House members will hold separate votes on four bills that represent $95bn in funding altogether – including roughly $26bn in aid for Israel, $61bn for Ukraine, $8bn for US allies in the Indo-Pacific region and $9bn in humanitarian assistance for civilians in war zones, such as Gaza.

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Republicans erupt into open warfare over Ukraine aid package vote

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As the speaker of the House finally allows a vote to go forward on aid, GOP infighting is tearing apart the party

Republican divisions over military support for Ukraine were long simmering. Now, before Saturday’s extraordinary vote in Congress on a foreign aid package, they have erupted into open warfare – a conflict that the vote itself is unlikely to contain.

Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, triggered an all-out split in his own party’s ranks last week by finally agreeing, after months of stalling, to a floor vote on the $95bn foreign aid programme. Passed by the Senate in February, it contained about $60bn for Ukraine, $14bn for Israel, and a smaller amount for Taiwan and other Pacific allies.

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Daring, audacious – but who did it? LA $30m cash heist has it all except clues

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The robbery from a GardaWorld warehouse on Easter Sunday was like something from a movie – and police appear to be puzzled by how it went down

It was a Tinseltown heist that belonged in a movie.

A gang of audacious thieves struck at night, dodged security measures like ghosts in the night and disappeared with a staggering $30m in cash in a record-breaking robbery that played out for real on Los Angeles’s streets, not the fevered script of a thriller writer.

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‘Media firestorm’: Israel protest at professor’s home sparks heated free-speech debate

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Pro-Palestinian students interrupted a dinner held by a top free speech defender at Berkeley. A polarized and very public controversy has followed

During a dinner for students that the dean of the University of California, Berkeley law school held in his house’s backyard earlier this month, a woman wearing a hijab and checkered Palestinian scarf suddenly stood up with a microphone and amplifier. What followed lasted only a couple of minutes, but has led to a fierce debate about the limits of free speech, drew death threats to those involved, and created a “media firestorm,” as the dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, has put it.

Some short and chaotic viral videos illustrate part of what happened. One of them shows the woman, Malak Afaneh, as she gives a Ramadan greeting; she is accompanied by a small group of other student protesters. As Afaneh begins reading a speech about the Israel-Gaza war, Chemerinsky and his wife, the law professor Catherine Fisk, quickly cut Afaneh off.

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Women run 80% of US elections – but are targets of misogyny-laced threats

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Threats lean toward sexual or domestic violence, attacks on their families and criticisms that they can’t do their jobs

Carly Koppes kept her pregnancy hidden from the public as long as she possibly could, fearing the potential harassment that could come from those who frequently attack the Republican elections clerk.

When Koppes, who runs elections in Weld county, Colorado, did media interviews, she asked the people behind the camera to position her so her growing belly wasn’t visible, fearing her harassers would see the images or videos and make comments about her future child. She “never in a million years” anticipated that she’d have to hide her pregnancy, she said.

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Melania Trump to hit campaign trail for husband after early absence

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The enigmatic former first lady to appear at fundraiser on Saturday, marking a return to her husband’s side as he seeks re-election

Her biggest fashion statement as first lady was a green jacket emblazoned with the words “I really don’t care, do u?” More recently, Melania Trump has given the impression that she doesn’t care whether her husband, Donald, returns to the White House. That is about to change.

On Saturday Melania, 53, will appear at a fundraiser at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, for the Log Cabin Republicans, the biggest Republican organisation dedicated to representing LGBT conservatives. It will be her first appearance at a political event since Trump, 77, launched his bid to regain the presidency.

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‘It bust loose and went to Europe’: Florida buoy washes up in Scotland

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Navigation buoy sails 4,000 miles across Atlantic, joining storied history of wrecks upon shores of tiny Scottish island of Eriskay

From Bonnie Prince Charlie’s ill-fated 1745 landing, to the shipwreck of a whisky-laden cargo freighter two centuries later that inspired a bestselling novel and blockbuster movie, the tiny Scottish island of Eriskay has a rich and outsized history of notable maritime events.

Now, the arrival of a visitor from Florida following a 4,000-mile solo voyage across the Atlantic has added another curious chapter. It is a navigation buoy that slipped its mooring in the Florida Keys and rode the Gulf Stream to the British Isles, coming ashore in Eriskay and discovered by one of its 143 residents.

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California officers charged in killing of man held face-down for five minutes

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Three police officers charged with involuntary manslaughter in death of Mario Gonzalez, whom they held down on the ground

Three California police officers have been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the 2021 killing of a man they restrained in a prone position for five minutes until he lost consciousness.

Pamela Price, Alameda county district attorney, announced the charges on Thursday, three years after the asphyxia death of Mario Gonzalez, 26. The officers, Eric McKinley, James Fisher and Cameron Leahy, face up to four years in prison.

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Oxford shuts down institute run by Elon Musk-backed philosopher

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Nick Bostrom’s Future of Humanity Institute closed this week in what Swedish-born philosopher says was ‘death by bureaucracy’

Oxford University this week shut down an academic institute run by one of Elon Musk’s favorite philosophers. The Future of Humanity Institute, dedicated to the long-termism movement and other Silicon Valley-endorsed ideas such as effective altruism, closed this week after 19 years of operation. Musk had donated £1m to the FIH in 2015 through a sister organization to research the threat of artificial intelligence. He had also boosted the ideas of its leader for nearly a decade on X, formerly Twitter.

The center was run by Nick Bostrom, a Swedish-born philosopher whose writings about the long-term threat of AI replacing humanity turned him into a celebrity figure among the tech elite and routinely landed him on lists of top global thinkers. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Tesla chief Musk all wrote blurbs for his 2014 bestselling book Superintelligence.

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Chris Pratt draws ire for razing historic 1950 LA home for sprawling mansion

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Actor and wife Katherine Schwarzenegger dismantle 1950 Zimmerman house designed by architect Craig Ellwood

Chris Pratt has drawn ire from architecture aficionados after news broke that the actor and his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, had razed a historic, mid-century modern home to make way for a sprawling 15,000-sq-ft mansion.

Last year, the couple purchased the 1950 Zimmerman house, designed by the architect Craig Ellwood, in Los Angeles’s Brentwood neighborhood for $12.5m. The residence, with landscaping by Garrett Eckbo – who has been described as the pioneer of modern landscaping – had previously been featured in Progressive Architecture magazine.

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Billionaire Republican donor’s firm brands Trump’s social media CEO ‘loser’

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Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities claimed Devin Nunes would be ‘fired on The Apprentice’ amid stock trading row

The CEO of Donald Trump’s social media empire was branded a “proverbial loser” whom the former president “would have fired on The Apprentice” by a trading firm owned by the billionaire Republican donor Ken Griffin on Friday.

In an extraordinary statement, Citadel Securities accused Devin Nunes, chief executive of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), of trying to deflect blame for the company’s recent stock market woes. TMTG hit back claiming Citadel was “world famous for screwing over” small investors.

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