Category Archives: US News

Trump defeats Haley: South Carolina 2024 primary results in full

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Voters resoundingly choose Donald Trump over the state’s former governor Nikki Haley – see the results in full

South Carolina’s Republican voters went to the polls on Saturday to choose a candidate for president, with two significant choices left: the state’s former governor, Nikki Haley, and former president Donald Trump.

Haley lost the New Hampshire primary last month by about 11 points, and polling suggested Trump would defeat his former ambassador to the United Nations by about 2-1 in her home state.

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South Carolina Republican primaries: Haley defiant as Trump confident of win

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Former governor Nikki Haley urged supporters to turn out in large numbers as Donald Trump declared he’s ‘coming like a freight train’ in November

South Carolinians headed to the polls on Saturday to cast their ballots in the Republican presidential primary, as the state’s former governor, Nikki Haley, fights to hang on in a race still dominated by Donald Trump.

At her primary eve rally in Mount Pleasant, just outside of Charleston, Haley had called on her supporters to turn out in large numbers on Saturday.

When to expect South Carolina results

Key dates for the 2024 election

Who’s running for president?

Haley’s steep odds in South Carolina

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How a TikTok clip led demand for 177-year-old sourdough starter to rise

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US enthusiasts who follow the tradition of sharing dough are now receiving about 1,000 requests a week, up from 30 to 60

“There’s an old pioneer tradition” dating from the earliest days of the colonisation of the US west, says Mary Buckingham, “that you shared your bread starter with anyone who asked.”

Which was all very well until TikTok came along.

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Flaco, New York City’s beloved owl, dies after striking building

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The bird escaped last year after vandals damaged his enclosure at Central Park Zoo

The Eurasian eagle owl named Flaco, which escaped New York City’s Central Park Zoo last year, has died after crashing into a building in Manhattan, officials said late on Friday.

Flaco went down after striking a building on West 89th Street and people reported the injured owl to the Wild Bird Fund (WBF), a statement from the Central Park Zoo said. WBF staffers soon found Flaco unresponsive and pronounced him dead at the scene.

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Hollywood A-list directors band together to save historic LA theater

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Jason Reitman, Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg among those leading charge to buy the iconic Village theater

This week, a group of A-list Hollywood directors, including JJ Abrams, Guillermo del Toro, and Gina Prince-Bythewood, took a group photo outside of one of Los Angeles’ historic movie theaters.

This wasn’t an Oscars event. Instead, the directors were announcing they were “the new caretakers of the Village Theater in Westwood”.

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Los Angeles socialite found guilty of murder for striking two boys with car

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Rebecca Grossman was found guilty of two felony counts and gross vehicular manslaughter for hitting Mark and Jacob Iskander

Rebecca Grossman, a Los Angeles socialite accused of fatally striking two young brothers crossing the street, was found guilty of murder and other charges on Friday.

Prosecutors had said the 60-year-old was impaired and speeding in her Mercedes when she hit brothers Mark Iskander, 11, and Jacob Iskander, 8, at over 70mph. Grossman’s defense had argued that what happened was an accident and that the boys were first struck by another car.

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US spacecraft on the moon ‘caught a foot’ and tipped on to side, says Nasa

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Intuitive Machines CEO says Odysseus tipped over and ended up on its side as it landed on to south polar region

Odysseus, the first US-built spacecraft to touchdown on the moon in more than half a century, is tipped over on its side, according to an update from Nasa and Intuitive Machines, the company that built and operated the lander.

The robotic lander descended on to the south polar region of the moon on Thursday at 6.23pm ET. But several minutes passed before flight controllers were able to pick up a signal from the lander’s communication systems.

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Trump voices ‘strong support’ for IVF treatments after Alabama ruling

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Republicans struggle to find a unified response to the state’s ruling that threw into question the legal status of human embryos

Donald Trump has voiced “strong support” for IVF treatments, days after a ruling by the Alabama supreme court threw into question the legal status of human embryos and several providers in the state cut off access to the procedure.

The former US president said that under his leadership, the Republican party “will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families”.

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Republican Josh Hawley’s anti-abortion arguments echoed in Alabama IVF case

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Arguments that led to Alabama supreme court ruling that embryos are ‘extrauterine children’ similar to Missouri senator’s in 2013 case

Anti-abortion arguments made in the recent controversial Alabama supreme court decision, which led to the shut down of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in nearly half of the state’s clinics, echo those made by the Republican US senator Josh Hawley.

The Missouri lawmaker made similar arguments in 2013 and when he worked on the legal team arguing the “Hobby Lobby” case on contraception before the US supreme court.

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Embryo shipping services to halt business in Alabama after IVF ruling

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Nationwide services say they will cease transporting embryos in and out of state following court decision deeming them ‘children’

Some nationwide embryo shipping services have indicated that they will stop transporting embryos to and from Alabama following the state’s recent supreme court decision ruling frozen embryos are “children”, according to a major infertility association.

In the week since the ruling, IVF clinics, auxiliary services and patients have grappled with whether they are able to legally operate. While the court’s decision recognized embryos as “children”, it did not specify how existing embryos should be handled.

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Edie Ceccarelli, the oldest person in the US, dies aged 116

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Born in 1908, Ceccarelli loved to dance and died a little over two weeks after her hometown threw her a huge birthday party

Edie Ceccarelli, who was the oldest person in the US and the second oldest person on Earth, died on Thursday.

Ceccarelli died a little over two weeks after her home town – the small, redwood-crested northern California town of Willits – threw her a huge birthday bash, as is their yearly tradition.

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Shasta: two children killed in hillside collapse following California storms

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Sheriff’s office said victims, pronounced dead at the scene, were caught in debris and fell down the northern California hillside

Two children were killed when a hillside collapsed along a river in northern California, which has been hit by a series of winter storms.

The Shasta county sheriff’s office said in a statement that the two victims were caught in debris that came down from a hillside near Shasta dam on Thursday morning and had fallen down the hillside. They were pronounced dead at the scene, the office said.

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Wisconsin ethics panel calls for felony charges against Trump fundraising group

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Commission says Save America Joint Fundraising Committee evaded campaign finance laws in effort to oust Trump foe

Donald Trump’s legal woes continue in Wisconsin, where the state’s ethics commission has recommended felony charges against Trump’s Save America Joint Fundraising Committee for its alleged role in a plot to bypass campaign finance limits.

Trump is already facing 91 felony charges in criminal cases across multiple states related to his political and business dealings. The newest allegations in Wisconsin were first reported on Friday by the news site WisPolitics.

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Blinken calls new Israeli settlements inconsistent with international law

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Secretary of state’s characterization of West Bank settlements signals return to longstanding US policy reversed by Trump

Israel’s expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank was inconsistent with international law, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Friday, signaling a return to longstanding US policy on the issue, which had been reversed by the previous administration of Donald Trump.

The Trump administration in 2019 in effect backed Israel’s right to build West Bank settlements by abandoning a long-held US position that they were “inconsistent with international law”.

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Cameron warns failure to supply arms to Ukraine will harm US security

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British foreign secretary argues blockage of $61bn aid package in Congress strengthens China and undermines confidence in US

David Cameron has said that the continued US failure to supply arms to Ukraine would undermine its own security, strengthen China and cast doubt on America’s reliability as an ally around the world.

The UK foreign secretary, who attended the G20 meeting in Brazil earlier in the week, admitted that the effort to rally global support for the Ukrainian cause had been “damaged” by the fact that neither the US nor the UK had voted for a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. But he argued the damage had been mitigated by the UK’s clarification of its position.

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Biden officials play down report of US investigation into Mexican president

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US looked into claims that Andrés Manuel López Obrador allies took money from cartels, according to a New York Times report

Officials with the justice department and the Biden administration have downplayed a report that US law enforcement spent years looking into allegations that allies of Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, were investigated for taking millions of dollars from drug cartels after the president took office.

López Obrador, who denied the report, also reacted to the New York Times report on Thursday by revealing the contact details of the journalist at its Mexico bureau, Natalie Kitroeff, including her telephone number – which Mexico’s freedom of information body (INAI) immediately said it would launch an investigation into.

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US returns to lunar surface for first time in over 50 years: ‘Welcome to the moon’

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Intuitive Machines’ spacecraft Odysseus lands after a 73-minute descent, touching down near moon’s south pole

The United States has returned to the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years after a privately-built spacecraft named Odysseus capped a nail-biting 73-minute descent from orbit with a touchdown near the moon’s south pole.

Amid celebrations of what Nasa hailed “a giant leap forward”, there was no immediate confirmation of the status or condition of the lander, other than it had reached its planned landing site at crater Malapert A.

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Large-scale cellular phone outage hits AT&T customers across the US

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More than 70,000 affected as users of AT&T report disruptions including to emergency service calls

A cellular phone outage hit cities across the US early on Thursday. Thousands of AT&T customers reported service disruptions that rendered them unable to send texts, access the internet or make calls, even to emergency services via 911.

More than 50,000 incidents were reported at about 7am ET, according to data from the outage tracking website Downdetector.com. Outage reports spiked above 70,000 around 9am ET.

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US to impose sanctions on 500 Russia-linked targets to mark Ukraine war anniversary

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Military industrial complex and companies aiding Moscow in third countries will be targeted, treasury says

The US will impose sanctions on more than 500 targets on Friday in action marking the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, deputy US treasury secretary Wally Adeyemo has said.

The action, taken in partnership with other countries, will target Russia’s military industrial complex and companies in third countries that facilitate Russia’s access to goods it wants, Adeyemo told Reuters news agency, as Washington seeks to hold Russia to account over the war and the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

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Biden met with Alexei Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya, White House says

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US to impose over 500 new sanctions on Russia after Navalny, main opposition leader to Putin, died after being imprisoned by Kremlin

Joe Biden met with Alexei Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, and the activist’s daughter, Dasha Navalnaya, in California on Thursday.

Navalny, the main opposition leader to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, died in an Arctic penal colony last Friday after being imprisoned by the Kremlin.

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