Category Archives: US News

Food charity demands independent inquiry into Israeli killing of aid staff

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World Central Kitchen asks countries of workers who died to join its call, as Biden and Netanyahu hold first phone call since attack

The international food charity World Central Kitchen has called for an independent investigation into the Israeli strikes that killed seven of its aid workers in Gaza on Monday, as Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu held their first phone call since the attack.

WCK asked Australia, Canada, Poland, the US and the UK, whose citizens were killed, to join it in demanding “an independent, third-party’’ inquiry into the strikes.

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Los Angeles thieves steal $30m in cash from safe without setting off any alarms

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One of the largest cash heists in the city’s history went unnoticed until police opened vault that few people knew about

Thieves in Los Angeles pulled off one of the largest cash heists in city history over the weekend, stealing as much as $30m from a money storage facility on Easter Sunday, authorities said on Wednesday.

The break-in unfolded at an unnamed facility in the Sylmar area of the San Fernando Valley that handles and stores cash from businesses across the region. Burglars were able to enter without immediate detection and breached a safe, said Elaine Morales, a Los Angeles police department commander, to the Los Angeles Times.

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South Carolina mulls mystery $1.8bn in account: ‘We don’t know why it’s there’

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Governor says officials don’t know how or when money materialised in state coffers, what it’s for, or if it’s even real

To put it mildly, the South Carolina state government faces an unusual problem: what to do about $1.8bn found in a state bank account when no one knows how it got there, how it should be spent or even whether it really exists.

Discussing the problem, the Republican governor, Henry McMaster, made a play for political understatement of the year.

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Dismay as X’s most-followed accounts given blue ticks for free

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Elon Musk’s firm reverses policy of insisting on payment for ‘verified status’ – embarrassing some beneficiaries

Elon Musk has reversed one of his most notorious decisions since taking over X, the social network better known as Twitter, and started bestowing blue ticks on the site’s most-followed users – whether they want them or not.

The entrepreneur and one-time “Chief Twit” had tweeted last week that the service would grant free “premium” status to any user with more than 2,500 “verified subscriber follows” and accounts with more than 5,000 would get “premium+”. That policy is now being enacted.

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‘A new beginning’: US man who received pig kidney transplant returns home

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Richard Slayman was discharged from Massachusetts hospital on Wednesday after pioneering surgery

The Massachusetts man who received the world’s first transplant of a genetically modified pig kidney has returned home less than three weeks after the pioneering surgery, and says he feels just fine.

Richard Slayman, who had been diagnosed with end-stage renal disease, was discharged from Boston’s Massachusetts general hospital on Wednesday, and thanked doctors who performed the four-hour operation on 16 March.

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Ford to delay rollout of new electric pickup and SUV as EV sales slow

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Ford EV unit’s pretax losses expected to jump to more than $5bn as US electric vehicle sales growth slows to 2.7%

With US electric vehicle sales starting to slow, Ford Motor Co says it will delay rolling out new electric pickup trucks and a new large electric SUV as it adds gas-electric hybrids to its model lineup.

The Dearborn, Michigan, company said on Thursday that a much ballyhooed new electric pickup to be built at a new factory in Tennessee will be delayed by a year until 2026.

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Martin Luther King Jr’s family to visit Memphis on anniversary of his murder

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The relatives of slain civil rights leader will visit Tennessee city to bring attention to erosion of civil rights in US

Relatives of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr are making a rare trip to Memphis on Thursday on the anniversary of his assassination, to speak on the rising threat of political violence, especially in an election year.

Martin Luther King III, the eldest son of the late King, will pay tribute to his father’s legacy, 56 years after the assassination in the Tennessee city.

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US tourist killed after bull elephant toppled safari vehicle in Zambia

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Four others were wounded in the attack at Kafue national park, in which the animal barreled into the side of a truck

An elderly US tourist was killed and four others hurt when an aggressive bull elephant charged and toppled their safari vehicle during a game drive in Zambia.

The attack at Kafue national park, in which the large pachyderm ran from a wooded area and barreled into the side of the truck, was captured on video and posted to social media by ABC News. It identified the tourist as 79-year-old Gail Mattson of Minnesota.

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US shipyards up to three years behind schedule on submarines as concerns grow for Aukus pact

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Greens senator David Shoebridge says review of shipbuilding program ‘adds to the growing list of reasons why Aukus is likely to fall over’

US shipyards are running up to three years late in building new Virginia-class submarines, despite suggestions from a senior US diplomat that the Aukus pact with Australia will help deter Beijing from seizing Taiwan.

Australia is relying on a US promise to sell it at least three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines in the 2030s, prior to Australian-made boats starting to enter into service in the 2040s.

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California sheriff’s deputies kill 17-year-old boy with mental health issues

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Boy, as yet unidentified, is third child killed by San Bernardino law enforcement in less than two years and second in under a month

Southern California sheriff’s deputies shot and killed a 17-year-old boy with mental health issues after he armed himself with a knife and locked himself inside a bathroom at a home, authorities said Wednesday.

The teen was being transferred from a hospital, where he had been treated after cutting himself, to a mental health facility when he escaped on Tuesday, the San Bernardino county sheriff Shannon Dicus said.

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Trump classified documents case faces delays amid argument over ‘flawed legal premise’

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Jack Smith says if judge decides Trump can cite federal records law in his defense to claim immunity, he will appeal to higher court

In a court filing, the special counsel Jack Smith said that the judge in Donald Trump’s criminal case over his retention of classified information was relying on a “fundamentally flawed legal premise” when asking lawyers to consider whether the former president can claim immunity under federal records law.

Smith also said that if the judge, Aileen Cannon, ruled Trump can indeed cite the Presidential Records Act (PRA) in his defence, he would appeal to a higher court, seeking an order for her to apply the law correctly and, implicitly, her removal from the case.

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More than 150 people call on Missouri governor to forgive Brian Dorsey’s death penalty

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Prison guards, judges, jurors and prison workers have beseeched Mike Parson to commute capital punishment to life without parole

With less than a week until Brian Dorsey is scheduled to be executed at Potosi correctional center in Missouri for the 2006 killings of his cousin and her husband, an extraordinary effort is underway to have the 52-year-old’s capital sentence commuted to life without parole.

More than 150 people have called on the Missouri governor Mike Parson to commute Dorsey’s punishment – including more than 70 current and former prison workers, many of whom got to know Doresy behind bars, Republican state representatives, jurors and even the appeals judge who upheld Dorsey’s conviction and death sentence in 2009.

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US reprimands Microsoft for security failures that allowed Chinese hack

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Federal report says ‘cascade of errors’ by tech giant let Chinese operators break into senior government officials’ email accounts

In a scathing indictment of Microsoft corporate security and transparency, a Biden administration-appointed review board issued a report Tuesday saying “a cascade of errors” by the tech giant let state-backed Chinese cyber operators break into email accounts of senior US officials including commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo.

The Cyber Safety Review Board, created in 2021 by executive order, describes shoddy cybersecurity practices, a lax corporate culture and a lack of sincerity about the company’s knowledge of the targeted breach, which affected multiple US agencies that deal with China.

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Texas concedes law allowing judges to deport migrants may have gone ‘too far’

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Solicitor general says in appellate hearing that SB4, paused from going into effect, may have gone beyond limitations of state laws

The state of Texas has conceded that it may have gone “too far” in passing a law last year that made entering the state illegally a crime and allowing state judges to order undocumented people to be deported.

The admission that Texas’s SB4 may have gone beyond the limitations of state laws, which typically bow to federal law on immigration matters, came at a hearing on Wednesday before the fifth US circuit court of appeals.

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Disney wins boardroom showdown with activist investor

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CEO Bob Iger says defeat of Nelson Peltz campaign will allow company to focus on ‘growth and value creation’ for shareholders

Disney saw off a boardroom coup on Wednesday, defeating a bid by one of corporate America’s most renowned activist investors to overhaul its management.

The entertainment giant announced at its annual shareholder meeting that it had secured enough votes by a “substantial margin” to defeat a campaign launched by the billionaire Nelson Peltz, who has spent months demanding change at the Magic Kingdom and excoriating its top executives.

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John Barth, American postmodernist novelist, dies aged 93

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The author of Giles Goat-Boy and The Sot-Weed Factor was part of a wave of writers in the 1960s who challenged standards of language and plot

John Barth, the playfully erudite author whose darkly comic and complicated novels revolved around the art of literature and launched countless debates over the art of fiction, has died aged 93.

Johns Hopkins University, where Barth was an emeritus professor of English and creative writing, confirmed he died on Tuesday. No cause of death was given.

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Trump rails against ‘migrant crime’ and ‘rigged’ 2020 election at Wisconsin rally

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Thousands show up in Green Bay where ex-president attacks ‘fake media’ and ‘tyrants’ in state where he lost to Biden four years ago

On Wisconsin’s presidential primary election day, Donald Trump made his first campaign stop in the state, where he railed against so-called “migrant crime” and doubled down on false election claims.

“We won in 2016 – we did much better in 2020, hate to say it, we did a hell of a lot better,” the former president told the roaring crowd, nodding to the disproven and unfounded “rigging” numerous times during his speech.

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Biden and Trump sweep four primaries including battleground state Wisconsin

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Both candidates have clinched nominations, but Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin turnout may hint at 2024 results

Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump won primary elections in four states, including the crucial battleground state of Wisconsin.

Hundreds of delegates were up for grabs in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Wisconsin on Tuesday, and Biden and Trump have already amassed enough delegates to win their respective nominations. But the turnout could provide more clues about the general election in November.

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Biden says Israel is not doing enough to protect aid workers and calls for inquiry

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US president ‘outraged and heartbroken’ after IDF drone attack killed seven people working for World Central Kitchen in Gaza

Joe Biden has said that Israel is not doing enough to protect aid workers and has called for a swift investigation into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) drone attack in Gaza which killed seven people working for the World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity.

“This conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed,” the US president said, in comments that were highly critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

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Moon Standard Time? Nasa to create lunar-centric time reference system

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Space agency tasked with establishing Coordinated Lunar Time, partly to aid missions requiring extreme precision

The White House wants Nasa to figure out how to tell time on the moon.

A memo sent Tuesday from the head of the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has asked the space agency to work with other US agencies and international agencies to establish a moon-centric time reference system. Nasa has until the end of 2026 to set up what is being called Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC).

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