Category Archives: US News

‘We need a bigger bazooka’: Liz Truss takes aim at left ‘deep state’ at CPAC

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Hawking a book to many empty seats, former UK prime minister spoke at Maryland’s Conservative Political Action Conference

Liz Truss, the former British prime minister, has made a fresh bid for political relevance by addressing a far-right conference in the US, railing against Joe Biden, transgender rights and a so-called leftwing-run deep state.

Truss was greeted by gentle applause and dozens of empty seats when she walked on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference at the National Harbor in Maryland. CPAC styles itself as the biggest and most influential gathering of conservatives in the world but is now widely seen as a glorified Donald Trump campaign rally, drawing speakers only from the populist right of the Republican party.

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Odysseus spacecraft lands on the moon as Nasa hails ‘giant leap forward’ – as it happened

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Odysseus has started its “powered descent initiative”, as it readies for a landing. The engine on the lander has started up, and it is slowing itself down. As it lowers, sensors on the it will look for a safe spot for a landing,

As an example of the mixed payloads that private space missions are taking, Nasa administrator, Bill Nelson said of today’s mission “Nasa scientific instruments are on their way to the moon, a giant leap for humanity as we prepare to return to the lunar surface for the first time in more than half a century.”

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Ex-FBI informant charged with lying about Bidens arrested again

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Alexander Smirnov, who claims to have Russian intelligence links, taken into custody after meeting at lawyers’ offices in Las Vegas

The former FBI informant who is charged with lying about a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving Joe Biden’s family was again taken into custody in Las Vegas, two days after a judge released him, his attorneys said.

Alexander Smirnov was arrested during a meeting on Thursday morning at his lawyers’ offices in downtown Las Vegas. The arrest came after prosecutors appealed the judge’s ruling allowing 43-year-old Smirnov, who holds dual US-Israeli citizenship, to be released with a GPS monitor ahead of trial. He is charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record.

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Vice Media to lay off hundreds of workers and stop publishing on its site

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Memo sent by Bruce Dixon, the Vice Media chief, talks of transition to ‘studio model’ as employees term move ‘very upsetting’

Vice plans to lay off hundreds of employees next week and stop publishing on Vice.com, according to a memo sent to staffers by Bruce Dixon, the Vice Media chief.

On Friday, Dixon confirmed that “several hundred” staffers would be laid off and that the brand “will no longer publish content on vice.com”. He said the company is transitioning to a “studio model”.

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‘Outrageous and unacceptable’: Biden and Harris decry Alabama court ruling on IVF

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President and vice-president speak out against ruling while Haley attempts to retract comments on embryos being babies

The decision of the Alabama supreme court on in vitro fertilization, granting legal protections to frozen fertilized eggs, drew fire from President Joe Biden and other Democratic leaders on Thursday, laying responsibility for the decision on the US supreme court’s ruling overturning Roe v Wade in 2022.

“A court in Alabama put access to some fertility treatments at risk for families who are desperately trying to get pregnant,” Biden said in prepared remarks on Thursday. “The disregard for women’s ability to make these decisions for themselves and their families is outrageous and unacceptable.”

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US intelligence casts doubt on Israeli claims of UNRWA-Hamas links, report says

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Intel report says some accusations that aid workers participated in Hamas attacks credible but could not be independently verified

A US intelligence assessment of Israel’s claims that UN aid agency staff members participated in the Hamas attack on 7 October said some of the accusations were credible, though could not be independently verified, while also casting doubt on claims of wider links to militant groups.

The assault precipitated a full-scale invasion by Israel of Gaza that has killed upwards of 30,000 Palestinians. Earlier this year, Israel accused 12 employees of the United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency (UNRWA) of participating in the 7 October attacks alongside Hamas. It also said 10% of all UNRWA workers were affiliated with Hamas.

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Britain’s ‘deep state’ thwarted my plans, Liz Truss tells US far-right summit

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Former Conservative PM, whose tenure lasted 50 days, tells CPAC she fell victim to UK’s ‘establishment … its bureaucrats and lawyers’

Liz Truss, the former British prime minister, spoke at a far-right conference in America on Wednesday, styling herself as a populist who took on America’s equivalent of the “deep state” in her own country.

Truss was among the headline speakers at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference at the National Harbor in Maryland. CPAC is billed as the biggest annual gathering of conservatives in the US but has in recent years embraced Donald Trump’s brand of nativist-populism.

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Boss of Japan crime syndicate conspired to traffic nuclear material, say US prosecutors

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Takeshi Ebisawa is being charged over a conspiracy to traffic uranium and plutonium from Myanmar, believing Iran would use it to make weapons

The head of a Japanese crime syndicate conspired to traffic uranium and plutonium in the belief that Iran would use it to make nuclear weapons, US prosecutors have alleged.

Federal officials said Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, and others showed samples of nuclear materials that had been transported from Myanmar to Thailand to an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA] agent.

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White House could use federal law to control US-Mexico border crossings

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Biden administration considering using immigration law used by Trump after Republicans rejected a negotiated immigration bill

The White House is considering using provisions of federal immigration law repeatedly tapped by Donald Trump to unilaterally enact a sweeping crackdown at the southern border, according to three people familiar with the deliberations.

The administration, stymied by Republican lawmakers who rejected a negotiated border bill earlier this month, has been exploring options that Joe Biden could deploy on his own without congressional approval, multiple officials and others familiar with the talks said. But the plans are nowhere near finalized and it’s unclear how the administration would draft any such executive actions in a way that would survive the inevitable legal challenges. The officials and those familiar with the talks spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to comment on private White House discussions.

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Martin Luther King Jr memorial vandalized in Colorado park

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Denver police investigating if racial bias was involved in disappearance of pieces including panel depicting Black veterans

A large Martin Luther King Jr memorial in Denver’s City park was vandalized, and police are trying to determine if racial bias was involved.

Several pieces of the marble and bronze I Have a Dream memorial were stolen sometime Tuesday. The missing pieces include a bronze torch and angel, as well as a bronze panel that depicted Black military veterans, the Denver Post reported.

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Girl dies after sand hole at Florida beach collapses on her

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Five-year-old Sloan Mattingly of Indiana was buried in a rare but deadly event unknown to many Americans

The collapse of sand holes, like the one that killed a five-year-old Indiana girl who was digging with her brother on a Florida beach, is an under-recognized danger that kills and injures several children a year around the country.

Sloan Mattingly died Tuesday afternoon at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea’s beach when a 4-5ft-deep (1-1.5-metre) hole collapsed on her and her seven-year-old brother, Maddox. The boy was buried up to his chest, but the girl was fully covered. Video taken by a bystander shows about 20 adults trying to dig her out using their hands and plastic pails, but the hole kept collapsing on itself.

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Speeding Seattle officer who struck and killed student will not face charges

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Death of Jaahnavi Kandula, 23, from India, ignited outrage after fellow officer was recorded making ‘appalling’ remarks about case

Prosecutors in Washington state said on Wednesday they will not file felony charges against a Seattle police officer who struck and killed a graduate student from India while responding to an overdose call – a case that attracted widespread attention after another officer was recorded making callous remarks about it.

Officer Kevin Dave was driving 74mph (119km/h) on a street with a 25mph (40km/h) speed limit in a police SUV before he hit 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk on 23 January 2023.

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‘Safe’ air-quality levels in US, UK and EU still harmful for health, study says

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Even small amount of exposure to minute soot particles – known as PM2.5 – raises the risk of cardiovascular disease

The sooty air pollution spewed out by cars, trucks and factories is causing widespread harm to people’s hearts and lungs even with the smallest amounts of exposure, with government regulations still routinely allowing for dangerous risks to public health, two major new studies have found.

There is no safe amount of a microscopic form of airborne pollution known as PM2.5, consisting of tiny particles of soot measuring less than the width of a human hair, for heart and lung health, US researchers found, with even small amounts raising the risk of potentially serious problems.

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Nikki Haley says she believes embryos created through IVF are ‘babies’

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Former UN ambassador and Republican presidential candidate expresses support for Alabama supreme court ruling

The Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has spoken in response to the recent supreme court ruling out of Alabama, revealing that she believes embryos created through IVF are “babies”.

In a new interview with NBC, the former UN ambassador expressed support for the Friday ruling by Alabama’s supreme court that deemed that frozen embryos are “children”.

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US asks world court not to call for Israeli pullout from Palestinian territories

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US calls for international court of justice to consider Israel’s security needs in hearings on legal status of occupied territories

The US has urged the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague not to issue a ruling calling for Israel’s immediate withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories, arguing that Israeli security had to be taken into account in any solution to the conflict.

“Any movement towards Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza requires consideration for Israel’s very real security needs,” Richard Visek, the state department’s acting legal adviser, told the ICJ judges.

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Ex-CNN anchor John Avlon announces Congress run to defeat ‘Maga minions’

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Journalist seeks to flip Long Island seat as a Democrat to build ‘broadest possible coalition to defeat Donald Trump’

The former Daily Beast editor and CNN anchor John Avlon announced his candidacy for US Congress in New York as a Democrat, seeking to flip a seat on Long Island, where Republicans saw surprising gains in the 2022 midterm elections.

In a video announcement, Avlon said he was running to help Democrats win back the House from Donald Trump’s “Maga minions”.

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Russia-Ukraine war: head of Germany’s far-right AfD condemns ‘theatrics’ over Navalny’s death – as it happened

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Tino Chrupalla says it is ‘unbearable’ the extent to which Putin has been blamed, with similar comments from Italian deputy PM Matteo Salvini

The Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a key ally of Donald Trump, has been added to a list of “terrorists and extremists” kept by Russia’s state financial monitoring agency.

Tass, the state-run news agency, first reported the move by Rosfinmonitoring, which allows authorities to freeze Russian bank accounts, though in Graham’s case is likely to be chiefly symbolic.

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Hunter Biden lawyers say prosecutors confused photo of sawdust for cocaine

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President’s son claims use of picture shows prosecutors’ evidence against him shouldn’t be taken at face value

Lawyers for Hunter Biden have claimed that a picture government prosecutors are using to support a tax fraud case against him shows neatly arranged lines of sawdust from a carpentry shop – and not cocaine as the government contends.

Joe Biden’s son is facing tax evasion charges for failing to disclose millions in foreign income and a charge for failing to disclose he was a drug addict on gun licensing forms. He claims that use of the picture shows that prosecutors’ evidence against him should not be taken at face value.

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University of Florida student senate passes ‘green new deal’

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In a rebuke to Governor Ron DeSantis’s denialism, the student body calls for campus-wide measures to tackle the climate crisis

The University of Florida student senate voted in favour of a “green new deal” late on Tuesday, becoming the first public university to adopt such a resolution through student government.

The mandate – which was unanimously passed – calls for sweeping campus-wide measures to tackle the climate crisis that include just transition, total divestment from fossil fuels, disclosure of the university’s financial ties within the private sector and a ban on receiving research funding from the fossil fuel industry.

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Covid death toll in US likely 16% higher than official tally, study says

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Researchers think undercounting goes beyond overloaded health systems to a lack of awareness of Covid and low levels of testing

The Covid death toll in the US is likely at least 16% higher than the official tally, according to a new study, and researchers believe the cause of the undercounting goes beyond overloaded health systems to a lack of awareness of Covid and low levels of testing.

The second year of the pandemic also had nearly as many uncounted excess deaths as the first, the study found.

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