Category Archives: US News

Biden threatened ‘consequences’ over Navalny, but he has few options

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Sanctions already imposed on Russia over Ukraine have not deterred the Kremlin. Will unconventional approaches work?

When Joe Biden met Vladimir Putin in 2021, the leaders staring at each other across the library of a Geneva lakeside villa, the US president warned there would be “devastating consequences” for Moscow if Alexei Navalny died in Russian custody.

Biden was reminded of those words on Friday following Navalny’s sudden, mysterious death in a Russian penal colony, and his response was to point out that the warning had been delivered three years ago and that, in the intervening time, Putin had “faced a hell of a lot of consequences”.

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Very cool: trees stalling effects of global heating in eastern US, study finds

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Vast reforestation a major reason for ‘warming hole’ across parts of US where temperatures have flatlined or cooled

Trees provide innumerable benefits to the world, from food to shelter to oxygen, but researchers have now found their dramatic rebound in the eastern US has delivered a further, stunning feat – the curtailing of the soaring temperatures caused by the climate crisis.

While the US, like the rest of the world, has heated up since industrial times due to the burning of fossil fuels, scientists have long been puzzled by a so-called “warming hole” over parts of the US south-east where temperatures have flatlined, or even cooled, despite the unmistakable broader warming trend.

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With business empire on brink of abyss, tycoon Trump recasts himself as victim

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Former president’s business fortune risks slipping from his grasp after ruling, while he marches closer to the Republican nomination

From Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue to the Trump Building on Wall Street, the Trump World Tower by the United Nations to the Trump International overlooking Central Park, Donald Trump has stamped his name in golden letters on skyscrapers across New York City.

This real estate empire was the springboard for Trump’s ascent from tabloid fodder to reality TV stardom, and ultimately the presidency, all built on his self-projected image as America’s most famous businessman.

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Donald Trump banned from running businesses in New York for three years – live

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Arthur Engoron ordered Trump to pay more than $350m in fines and barred him from running New York businesses for three years

Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis’ father took the stand now, testifying about threats she faced at the home he lived in with her in 2019 and 2020, before she moved to a new place after people outside her house called her slurs and threatened her there.

John Floyd, Willis’ dad, was asked about her romantic relationships and how often he saw people she had dated, including special prosecutor Nathan Wade. He said he hadn’t met Wade until 2023, and a previous boyfriend he saw often in earlier years was a disc jockey. (Previous testimony from a former friend of Willis claimed the two started dating much earlier than they’d claimed.)

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Donald Trump ordered to pay over $350m in New York financial fraud case

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Trump also banned from running any New York corporation or entity for three years in devastating blow for ex-president

Donald Trump, his eldest sons and associates have been ordered to pay over $350m by a New York judge who found them guilty of intentionally committing financial fraud over the course of a decade.

“The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience,” judge Arthur Engoron wrote in his decision. In a devastating blow for the former president who had built his reputation as a successful real estate developer, Engoron barred Trump and two other executives from serving as officers or directors of any corporation or entity in New York for three years. His sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr, were banned for two years.

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Pregnant women in Indiana show fourfold increase in toxic weedkiller in urine – study

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Seventy perc ent of pregnant women in state had herbicide dicamba in their urine, up from 28% in an earlier study

Pregnant women in a key US farm state are showing increasing amounts of a toxic weedkiller in their urine, a rise that comes alongside climbing use of the chemicals in agriculture, according to a study published on Friday.

The study, led by the Indiana University school of medicine, showed that 70% of pregnant women tested in Indiana between 2020 and 2022 had a herbicide called dicamba in their urine, up from 28% from a similar analysis for the period 2010-12. The earlier study included women in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio.

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US officer fired at handcuffed man in SUV after mistaking acorn for gunshot

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Florida deputy Jesse Hernandez resigned after opening fire when he thought sound of acorn hitting police cruiser was shot from gun

A Florida sheriff’s deputy mistook the sound of an acorn hitting his patrol cruiser for a gunshot and fired multiple times at the SUV where a handcuffed Black man was sitting in the backseat, officials said.

The man, who was being questioned about stealing his girlfriend’s car, was not injured during the 12 November shooting. He was taken into custody but released without being charged. The officer who initiated the shooting resigned.

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Remains of 30 people found in Denver after ex-funeral home owner evicted

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Body of woman, 63, also found at house as police issue warrant for Miles Harford, 33, who owned funeral home that closed in 2022

The body of a woman who died in 2022 and the cremated remains of about 30 people were found at a rental house in Denver after the eviction of a former funeral home owner, Denver police said on Friday.

A warrant was issued for Miles Harford, 33, who owned Apollo Funeral and Cremation Service in Littleton, which has been closed since September 2022. The expected charges include abuse of a corpse, forgery of the death certificate and theft of the money paid for the cremation.

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New York jury begins deliberations in NRA civil corruption trial

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Gun rights group and ex-leader Wayne LaPierre accused of being ‘caught with their hands in the cookie jar’ over lavish spending

A New York state jury on Friday began its deliberations in the civil corruption trial of the National Rifle Association and its former long-serving leader Wayne LaPierre.

Jurors started deliberating a day after a lawyer with the New York attorney general’s office said on Friday that the NRA and LaPierre were caught “with their hands in the cookie jar”, summarizing accusations that the gun rights group’s executives wildly misspent millions of dollars on private flights, vacations and other lavish perks.

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Biden ‘privately defiant’ over chaotic 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, book says

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The Internationalists details how the president was determined to leave a country in which 2,324 US troops were killed since 2001

Joe Biden is “privately defiant” that he made the right calls on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in summer 2021, a new book reportedly says, even as the chaos and carnage that unfolded continues to be investigated in Congress.

“No one offered to resign” over the withdrawal, writes Alexander Ward, a Politico reporter, “in large part because the president didn’t believe anyone had made a mistake. Ending the war was always going to be messy.”

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Pressure builds on Israel to ditch Rafah offensive as ministers gather in Munich

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US secretary of state and foreign ministers from UK, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and Jordan join Israel at security conference

Western leaders are hoping a round of meetings at a security conference in Munich will put overwhelming pressure on Israel not to press ahead with a ground offensive in Rafah.

Almost all the key figures, save the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, will be present in Munich on Friday, including foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and Jordan. The Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, and foreign minister, Israel Katz, will also attend along with three freed hostages, Raz Ben Ami, Adi Shoham and Aviva Siegel. Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, is flying in too.

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New Beyoncé song Texas Hold ‘Em gets country music radio airplay after online campaign

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Oklahoma’s KYKC initially refused to play the song, but later added it to its rotation after saying it had not been aware of Beyonce’s new single

A country music radio station in the US that initially refused to play a listener’s Beyoncé request has now added the artist’s new tracks to rotation after an online firestorm.

On Tuesday, a Beyoncé fan contacted the station to request her song Texas Hold ‘Em – one of two released in a surprise drop during the Super Bowl where the 32-time Grammy winner also announced the second album in her Renaissance trilogy.

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FBI informant charged with lying about Bidens’ role in Ukraine business

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Alexander Smirnov falsely said executives linked to energy firm Burisma paid Joe and Hunter Biden $5m each in 2015 and 2016, prosecutors say

An FBI informant has been charged with lying to his handler about ties between Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company.

Alexander Smirnov falsely told FBI agents in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5m each in 2015 and 2016, prosecutors said on Thursday.

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Los Angeles firefighters rushed to hospital after huge truck explosion

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Blast occurred in Wilmington neighborhood as spokesperson says ‘the ball of flame was as high as the telephone poles’

A truck’s fuel tank exploded on Thursday in a Los Angeles neighborhood, sending a fireball into the air and injuring nine of the 10 firefighters responding to the blaze, including two critically, fire officials said.

All nine firefighters were rushed to Harbor-UCLA medical center and were stabilized, and one of the critical patients had to be intubated and airlifted to a burn unit at Los Angeles General medical center, said Dr Molly Deane, a trauma surgeon.

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Personal questions, and a witness stays mum: key moments from the Fani Willis hearing

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Willis and her special prosecutor Nathan Wade took the stand during a stormy hearing about the pair’s romantic relationship

On the first day of a heated hearing, the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis and her deputy, special prosecutor Nathan Wade, took the stand, hoping to put an end to the allegations that their past relationship threatens the criminal case against Donald Trump and his allies in their attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

A defendant in the Trump case, Mike Roman, is seeking to have Willis and Wade disqualified, alleging their relationship constituted a conflict of interest. His lawyer attempted to prove Willis financially benefitted from her relationship with Wade.

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‘I’m not on trial’: Fani Willis denies wrongdoing over relationship with Trump prosecutor

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Fulton county DA rejects accusations that relationship with Nathan Wade should lead to disqualification from election case

Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, vehemently denied wrongdoing while testifying at a court hearing on Thursday as she rebutted accusations that her romantic relationship with a deputy prosecutor on the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump meant she should be disqualified from the case.

The district attorney testified that her relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade started months after he was retained to work on the case, charging Trump over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state, and ended in summer 2023.

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House Republicans will hold hearing with Robert Hur over Biden report

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Hur investigated president’s mishandling of classified papers after his vice-presidency and raised questions about his ‘poor memory’

House Republicans will hold a public hearing next month with special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents after his vice-presidency, as the White House counsel reportedly wrote to the attorney general attacking Hur’s commentary on the US president’s memory as a violation of federal policy.

The House judiciary committee, chaired by rightwing Republican Jim Jordan, will hear testimony from Hur on 12 March, two unnamed people familiar with the plans told the Associated Press on Thursday. The White House declined to comment on the plans.

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Heavy metals and E coli: raw sewage at US-Mexico border a ‘public health crisis’

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The Tijuana River flows through Mexico and empties off California, carrying pathogens and chemicals and threatening public health

Raw sewage and runoff in the Tijuana River is exposing communities at the US-Mexico border to an unusual and noxious brew of pathogens and toxic chemicals, according to a report released this week.

Billions of gallons of sewage flow through the river, which winds north from Mexico through California and empties into the Pacific Ocean, containing a mix of carcinogenic chemicals including arsenic, as well as viruses, bacteria and parasites, according to public health researchers at San Diego State University, who published the report.

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Ukraine’s war effort already affected by block on $60bn US aid, says Nato chief

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Jens Stoltenberg believes Congress will finally vote for package but meanwhile Russian forces are advancing near Avdiivka

The US failure to vote through a fresh military aid package for Ukraine is already having an impact on the battlefield, Nato’s secretary general has warned at the end of a defence ministers’ meeting.

Jens Stoltenberg said he still believed Congress would eventually approve the stalled $60bn (£50bn) package, but his cautious remarks came as Nato officials warned Russia was making “significant gains” near the frontline town of Avdiivka.

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Donald Trump again threatens to sacrifice Nato allies to Russia

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The ex-president said that ‘if they’re not going to pay, we’re not going to protect’ at rally in South Carolina

Donald Trump has doubled down on his threat to undermine Nato, repeating his threat not to protect countries he believes do not pay enough to maintain the alliance and claiming such nations “laugh at the stupidity” of the US.

On Wednesday night, at a rally in South Carolina, Trump said: “I’ve been saying, ‘Look, if they’re not going to pay, we’re not going to protect, OK?’ And [Joe] Biden who said, ‘Oh, this is so bad. This is so terrible that he would say that.’ No … nobody’s paying their bills.

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