Category Archives: US News

Senate staffer loses job after allegedly having sex in hearing room

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Video surfaced in which Aidan Maese-Czeropski was allegedly having sex in the judiciary hearing room

A Senate staffer accused of filming himself having sex in a congressional hearing room is threatening legal action after getting fired.

The explicit footage, published by the Daily Caller on Friday, shows two men having sex in what appears to be Hart 216, the judiciary room. Aidan Maese-Czeropski, a legislative aide for Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, was widely named on social media as one of the men in the footage.

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Lead contamination in applesauce possibly ‘economically motivated’, says FDA

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Food and Drug Administration is investigating facility in Ecuador and working with authorities to inspect cinnamon supplier

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday said it thinks elevated levels of lead in cinnamon applesauce that has poisoned dozens of American children could be linked to deliberate additives in the food’s cinnamon flavoring, and is inspecting a food facility in Ecuador.

There have been more than 60 reports of children reporting “adverse effects” after eating applesauce and apple puree pouches from the brands WanaBana, Schnucks and Weis. The products have been recalled.

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Diversity policies face ‘full-out attack’ in 2024, leading HR boss warns

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President of the largest human resources organization in country says national shift following George Floyd’s 2020 murder is fading

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies within US companies will “come under full-out attack in 2024”, the president of the largest US human resources organization in the US has said.

“It’s going to become a hot-button issue this year,” Johnny C Taylor Jr, president and chief executive of the Society of Human Resource Management, told reporters. The national shift to be more inclusive that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020, and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed, is already fading, he said. “We’re already seeing companies go away from it.”

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Alex Jones offers $55m to Sandy Hook families to satisfy $1.5bn judgment

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Families of the slain schoolchildren had earlier proposed an $85m settlement for the Infowars host’s lies about the 2012 massacre

The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has proposed to pay $55m over 10 years to the Sandy Hook families who sued him for spreading lies that the 2012 school massacre in Connecticut, one of the worst in American history, was a hoax.

The offer came after a Texas judge ruled that Jones, the host of Infowars, could not use bankruptcy protection to dodge the nearly $1.5bn he was ordered to pay to the victims’ families, who suffered abuse and threats from believers of Jones’s lies.

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Wishes come true for trans youth thanks to Transanta donors’ goodwill

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A project from an anti-discrimination creative arts organization pairs LGBTQ+ youth in need of help with donors willing to give it

At first glance, they could be letters to Santa Claus from any excited young child, hoping they have been good enough to earn a special gift. Meek is looking forward to hearing sleigh bells: “I think I have tried my best this year. I try to be positive,” they wrote. Alex, meanwhile, would love a bicycle and gift cards to bring some cheer to the end of an “extremely hard year”.

Look a little deeper, and all is not as it seems. The letters are genuine, but their authors are young people who are transgender or non-binary, writing not to the North Pole but to an alternative seasonal benefactor named Transanta, whose workshop exists in cyberspace.

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Nobel laureate sues French concrete maker Lafarge over alleged Islamic State support

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Nadia Murad and 430 US citizens of Yazidi background suing conglomerate over payments it made to terrorist group

About 430 Americans of Yazidi background and Nobel laureate Nadia Murad accused French conglomerate Lafarge of supporting brutal attacks on the population through a conspiracy with the Islamic State, according to a complaint reviewed by AFP.

The civil suit, filed in a New York court by attorneys that include human rights lawyer Amal Clooney references a $778m US Department of Justice fine and guilty criminal plea in October 2022 by Lafarge, which was acquired by Swiss company Holcim in 2015.

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Darlene Love says U2’s cover of her Christmas classic is best around

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US singer of Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), recorded in 1963, says she rates U2’s 1987 version as finest of many covers

Darlene Love’s classic tune Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) has spurred numerous covers over the years, but to the singer herself, only one stands above the rest, she recently revealed.

Speaking on the podcast Behind the Table, Love, 82, said U2’s rendition of her hit Christmas song is the best cover.

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Rudy Giuliani dismisses $148m damages verdict as ‘absurd’ as former election workers praise decision – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. You can read the latest report here:

Moss went on to thank the court and jury for listening to her and her mother’s experience in the aftermath of Giuliani’s defamatory statements.

Her voice broke slightly when she added: “I know I won’t be able to retire from my job with the county like my grandma did, but I hope having taken these very big steps towards justice, I can make her proud.”

The lies Rudy Giuliani told about me and my mommy after the 2020 presidential election have changed our lives and the past few years has been devastating.

The flame that Giuliani lit with those lies and passed to so many others to keep that flame blazing changed every aspect of our lives – our homes, our family, our work, our sense of safety, our mental health. And we’re still working to rebuild.

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Multimillion-dollar ruling against Giuliani shows cost of spreading election lies

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As the 2024 election approaches, the $148m judgment against a key Trump ally sends a message that falsehoods have consequences

The judge had already decided Rudy Giuliani defamed the two former Georgia election workers, the question was just how much that cycle of lies and ensuing harassment should cost him.

A jury declared on Friday that it was worth an eye-popping $148m, far beyond expectations and a major blow to the former New York mayor and key Donald Trump ally.

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Matthew Perry died of ‘acute effects of ketamine’, autopsy report says

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Contributing factors in Friends star’s death included ‘drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine’

Matthew Perry died of the “acute effects of ketamine”, the Los Angeles county medical examiner said on Friday.

The Friends star was found “unresponsive in the pool at his residence” on 28 October and pronounced dead at the age of 54. The medical examiner ruled that the manner of death was an accident.

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Rudy Giuliani ordered to pay $148.1m in damages for lies about election workers

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Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, from Atlanta, received threats after Trump ally falsely accused them of trying to steal election

A Washington DC jury has ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay $148.1m to two Atlanta election workers after he spread lies about them, one of the most significant verdicts to date seeking accountability for those who attempted to overturn the 2020 election.

The verdict follows a four-day trial in which Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, her daughter, gave haunting details about the harassment and threats they faced after Giuliani falsely accused them of trying to steal the election in Georgia. The women, who are Black, described how they fled, are afraid to give their names in public, and still suffer severe emotional distress today. Their lawyers asked the jury to award them each at least $24m in damages. Giuliani’s attorney said earlier this week that awarding the plaintiffs their sought damages would be a “death penalty” and would be "the end of Mr Giuliani”.

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Former Pennsylvania mayor imprisoned for shooting at Pokémon Go players

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Ida Reams served as mayor of Osceola Mills from 2013 to 2021 and was intoxicated when she confronted the two men

The former two-term mayor of a Pennsylvania town has been ordered to serve up to a year in jail for shooting a gun at – and threatening to kill – two players of the popular mobile game Pokémon Go.

Ida Reams, who served as mayor of Osceola Mills from 2013 to 2021, was intoxicated when she confronted the two male players of the augmented reality game in the parking lot of a food bank in the town in March last year.

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Binder of classified material on Russia reportedly went missing in final Trump days

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CNN and New York Times report disappearance of 2,700 pages of classified material that caused alarm in US intelligence circles

A 10in-thick binder containing nearly 3,000 pages of highly classified material related to the investigation of Russian election interference as well as links between Moscow and Donald Trump went missing in the final days of his presidency, CNN and the New York Times reported.

CNN said the disappearance raised alarms in the American intelligence community because “some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed”.

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US Congress passes stripped-down measure to release UFO records

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National Archives directed to collect reports but measure gives government departments broad authority to keep them secret

If the truth about UFOs is out there, the American government doesn’t want you to see it yet.

Just months after US space agency Nasa appointed a research director of unidentified anomalous phenomena, and promised more transparency about what it knows, the US Congress has acted to throttle the flow of information that ultimately reaches the public.

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Bernie Sanders demands answers on Israel’s ‘indiscriminate’ Gaza bombing

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Senator introduces resolution to investigate ‘humanitarian cataclysm … being done with American bombs and money’

The US’s support for Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza is facing new scrutiny in Washington following a resolution by the independent senator Bernie Sanders that could ultimately be used to curtail military assistance.

It is far from clear whether Sanders has the support to pass the resolution, but its introduction in the Senate this week – by an important progressive ally of the US president Joe Biden – highlights mounting human rights and political concerns by Democrats on Capitol Hill.

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Satanic Temple condemns vandalism of its statue by Christian military veteran

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Michael Cassidy arrested over tearing down of satanic altar – symbol of humanism and anti-authoritarianism – at Iowa capitol

The leader of an organization whose satanic altar at Iowa’s state capitol was torn down by a Christian military veteran Thursday has dismissed the vandalism as “a real act of cowardice”.

“There’s a certain point at which we need some adults in the room to tell people what … liberal, democratic values are; what they’re value is; why we uphold them; what they’re good for; and they need to stand up for these values or we are going to further degenerate in our polarism towards autocracy,” the co-founder of the Satanic Temple, Lucien Greaves, told CNN’s NewsNight on Thursday.

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Former EPA official says agency fails to protect public from toxic pesticides

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Karen McCormack says regulators at environmental agency are discouraged from speaking up about dangerous chemicals

Federal regulators are discouraged from speaking up about potentially dangerous pesticides, according to a former agency official.

Karen McCormack, a retired Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientist who spent 40 years with the agency, told Al Jazeera’s investigative show Fault Lines that she believed the EPA was not fulfilling its mission to protect the public from harmful chemicals.

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Comedian Kenny DeForest dies after New York bike accident

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Comedian known for appearances on talkshows was struck by a car when riding an e-bike on 8 December

The comedian Kenny DeForest has died after a bike accident in New York, his friend and fellow comedian Ryan Beck confirmed.

DeForest, 37, best known for his appearances on talkshows such as Late Night with Seth Meyers and the Late Show with James Corden, was riding an e-bike on 8 December when he was struck by a car.

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‘It’s going to delay the mail’: the fight over Louis DeJoy’s USPS plan

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Trump’s postmaster general appointee is implementing a 10-year austerity plan that will slash jobs and close sorting centers

More than 500,000 workers at the United States Postal Service (USPS) will be handling billions of deliveries through the holidays. For hundreds of them, this may be their last Christmas at their current mail sorting facility and workers are warning the impact on consumers will be severe.

Donald Trump’s appointee as postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, is currently implementing a 10-year “Delivering for America” austerity plan that will slash jobs and close sorting centers.

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Costco sells $100m in gold bars in most recent quarter

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Retailer began selling bars of 24-karat gold online in September, with each release selling out ‘within a few hours’

Known for selling goods in bulk, Costco’s latest such offering – gold bars – has proved a hit, with $100m worth sold in the most recent quarter, Business Insider reported.

With demand for the precious metal rising globally amid the economic uncertainty of the past few years, Costco in September began selling 1oz (28g) bars of 24-karat gold exclusively online, with Costco members eligible to buy two apiece. The retailer has more than 72m paid memberships.

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