Category Archives: US News

Georgia’s Fulton county hacked, but DA says Trump election case is unaffected

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Many county systems are inoperative, but the district attorney’s office says the racketeering case against the ex-president is secure

Officials said court and other systems in Georgia’s most populous county were hacked over the weekend, interrupting routine operations, but the district attorney’s office said the racketeering case against former president Donald Trump was unaffected.

Fulton county, which includes most of Atlanta, was experiencing a “widespread system outage” from a “cybersecurity incident”, the chair of the county commission, Robb Pitts, said on Monday in a video posted on social media. Notably, he said, the outage is affecting the county’s phone, court and tax systems.

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Baby shark! Researchers may have captured first image of newborn great white

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California scientist and film-maker spot apparent pup – never before seen in the wild – in drone pictures

Researchers in California may have gotten the first ever look at a newborn great white shark, which they captured in drone images taken last summer.

The newborn animal has never before been spotted in the wild. But in July, the wildlife film-maker Carlos Gauna and Phillip Sternes, a biology doctoral student at the University of California, Riverside, glimpsed something unexpected in the waters near Santa Barbara on California’s central coast.

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Arizona Republican says state lawmakers, not voters, should pick president

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State senator Anthony Kern, who was a fake pro-Trump elector in 2020, says legislature should choose electors

A proposal from an Arizona lawmaker calls for the state legislature to decide on presidential electors instead of adhering to a popular vote.

The state senator Anthony Kern, a Republican, served as a fake elector in 2020, falsely asserting that Donald Trump won the state. Those involved in the fake electors schemes in several states have been charged. In Arizona, the fake electors are under investigation by the Democratic attorney general, her office has confirmed. Kern also attended the 6 January 2021 rally at the US Capitol.

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Iran on high alert as Biden mulls response to killing of US servicemen

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Tehran warns Washington but regime unsure of degree of support for interventionist foreign policy

Iran has told the US via intermediaries that if it strikes Iranian soil directly, Tehran will itself hit back at American assets in the Middle East, drawing the two sides into a direct conflict.

The warning comes as Iran waits on high alert to see how Joe Biden responds to the death of three US servicemen deemed by Washington to have been killed by a Tehran-backed militia based in Syria.

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Biden says he has decided how US will respond to Jordan drone attack

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Iran-backed militia Washington blamed for attack announces it has suspended anti-US operations

Joe Biden has said he has decided how to respond to a drone strike in northern Jordan which killed three American soldiers and wounded dozens more, as the Iran-backed militia that Washington blamed for the attack said it had suspended anti-US operations.

As Washington pondered its response, Kataib Hezbollah announced the suspension of all its military operations against US troops in the region, claiming the decision was intended to prevent “embarrassment” to the Iraqi government.

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Saudi Arabia surprises oil markets by ditching plan to increase production

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Blow to Joe Biden, who had hoped to benefit from lower pump prices in an election year

Saudi Arabia has cast doubt on the future of the global oil market after abandoning plans to grow its crude production capacity by 1m barrels a day.

The world’s biggest exporter signalled a big change in policy by ordering the state oil company, Saudi Aramco, to drop plans to expand its maximum production capacity to 13m barrels a day by 2027.

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Prominent Australians urge Albanese government to adopt activist middle power role to head off war between US and China

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Statement signed by former foreign ministers, a Nobel laureate and academics outlines anxieties about possibility of conflict in Indo-Pacific region

Australia must step up diplomatic efforts to “avert the horror of great power conflict” and reduce the risk of being dragged into a war between the US and China, according to 50 prominent Australians.

The group, who include the former foreign ministers Bob Carr and Gareth Evans, is urging the Albanese government to play an “activist middle power” role to reduce tensions between Australia’s top security ally and its biggest trading partner.

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Cher denied temporary conservatorship over 47-year-old son Elijah Blue Allman

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The singer argued that receiving payments from the trust of his late father, Gregg Allman, put him in danger due to his substance abuse

A judge has rejected Cher’s request that her adult son be put into an emergency court conservatorship controlling his money.

The Oscar- and Grammy-winning singer and actor had argued in a petition that 47-year-old Elijah Blue Allman’s large payments from the trust of his late father, rocker Gregg Allman, are putting him in danger because of his struggles with mental health and substance abuse.

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Police make five arrests after six bodies are found in southern California desert

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Officials say suspects were arrested in the fatal shootings and believe killings were from a dispute over an illegal marijuana trade

Authorities say arrests have been made in the investigation surrounding six bodies found last week at a remote dirt crossroads in the southern California desert.

Five suspects have been arrested in the fatal shootings, according to the San Bernardino county sheriff’s department. Officials say they think the killings stemmed from a dispute over an illicit marijuana trade.

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N Scott Momaday, Pulitzer-winning Native American novelist, dies aged 89

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The Kiowa tribe member’s debut House Made of Dawn is credited as the starting point for contemporary Native American literature

N Scott Momaday, a Pulitzer prize-winning storyteller, poet, educator and folklorist whose debut novel House Made of Dawn is widely credited as the starting point for contemporary Native American literature, has died. He was 89.

Momaday died Wednesday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, publisher HarperCollins announced. He had been in failing health.

Something like a leaf lies here within me; / it wavers almost not at all, / and there is no light to see it by / that it withers upon a black field. / If it could ascend the thousand years into my mouth, / I would make a word of it at last, / and I would speak it into the silence of the sun.

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Nikki Haley was swatted twice within days amid ‘spike’ in threats to officials

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Police responded to fake calls targeting Republican presidential candidate, along with several other high-profile politicians

Nikki Haley was targeted by a second “swatting” attempt on New Year’s Day – just two days after authorities responded to a similar call regarding Haley, according to Reuters.

This time, the call was made by someone who said Haley’s daughter had been shot and was lying in a pool of blood. The caller, who told police her name was Rose, also said she was on the phone with Haley, who was threatening to shoot herself.

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Pennsylvania case challenging ban on Medicaid abortions back in court

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Supreme court rules lower court must hear case arguing decades-old law barring coverage for procedure should be overturned

Pennsylvania’s supreme court ruled on Monday that a lower court must hear a case challenging a ban on the use of government-funded healthcare to pay for abortions, raising hopes among reproductive rights advocates for an expansion of abortion access in the state and the establishment of a constitutional right to the procedure.

The case, brought by abortion providers in the state, challenged a decades-old state law barring Medicaid from covering abortions, arguing that it should be overturned because it violates the broader rights guaranteed by the state constitution’s Equal Rights Amendment.

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Elon Musk says Neuralink has implanted first brain chip in a human

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Billionaire’s startup will study functionality of interface, which it says lets those with paralysis control devices with their thoughts

Elon Musk, Neuralink’s billionaire founder, said the first human received an implant from the brain-chip startup on Sunday and is recovering well, in a post on Twitter/X on Monday.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had given the company clearance last year to conduct its first trial to test its implant on humans.

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Middle East crisis live: US vows ‘very consequential’ response to deadly attack as reports suggest drone was misidentified

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White House spokesman says Biden mulling options as media reports suggest the drone that killed three US service people was confused with a US drone

Medical sources in the West Bank have said that the man killed by Israeli military fire in the village of Yamoun, near Jenin, was 21-year-old Tair Hamo, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported.

As we reported earlier, the Israeli military carried out raids on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin overnight, as well as a nearby town and village.

If we don’t want another October 7, we need to go back home and control [Gaza]. We need to find a legal way to voluntarily emigrate [Palestinians] and impose death sentences on terrorists … I turn to you, prime minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu: this is time for brave decisions.

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Biden beware: US must fully consider response to soldiers’ deaths – or risk Iran escalation

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President is facing pressure from Republicans after numerous attacks on US bases by Iran’s proxies

The killing of three American soldiers in Jordan and the wounding of dozens more, allegedly by an Iranian-backed group, is a red line that was always likely to be crossed in what is becoming an increasingly dangerous region.

The US had up to this weekend avoided fatalities in more than 150 attacks on its military bases by Iranian proxies since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war after the 7 October attacks, but that luck could not last for ever. The question now is what lies on the far side of that red line.

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Jury selection begins in fatal shooting trial of Run-DMC’s Jam Master Jay

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Karl Jordan Jr, 40, and Ronald Washington, 59, are accused of murdering the musician over a drug deal in 2002

Jury selection began Monday in the trial of the two men charged in the 2002 fatal shooting of Jam Master Jay, a member of the legendary hip-hop group Run-DMC.

The defendants, Karl Jordan Jr, 40, and Ronald Washington, 59, are accused of murdering the musician over a drug deal. Opening statements were expected in a state courthouse in Brooklyn after the jury is selected.

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‘Existential’ avian flu outbreak forces US egg farmers to kill entire flocks

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Highly contagious virus has particularly ravaged California’s Sonoma county, know as the ‘Egg Basket of the World’

Last month, Mike Weber got the news every poultry farmer fears: his chickens tested positive for avian flu.

Following government rules, Weber’s company, Sunrise Farms, had to slaughter its entire flock of egg-laying hens – 550,000 birds – to prevent the disease from infecting other farms in Sonoma county north of San Francisco.

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Woman trapped overnight in freezing cold as Tahoe gondola grinds to a halt

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Monica Laso survives ordeal on Heavenly gondola in California ski resort, where temperatures fell to 23F (-5C)

A snowboarder visiting a California resort survived freezing temperatures after accidentally getting stuck in a gondola overnight.

Monica Laso’s story, as she told it to NBC affiliate KCRA, vividly illustrated how suddenly and unexpectedly leisure trips can turn into near-death experiences.

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E Jean Carroll aims to give defamation money ‘to something Trump hates’

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Former Elle columnist tells Good Morning America: ‘If it’ll cause him pain for me to give money to certain things, that’s my intent’

E Jean Carroll intends to spend the $83m awarded to her in her defamation trial against Donald Trump on something the former president “hates”, she revealed just days after the judgment.

On Friday, the jury in Carroll’s case decided that she should receive $18.3m in compensatory damages and $65m punitive retribution in the case pitting her against Trump. Of the $18.3m, Trump was told to pay Carroll $11m to fund a reputational repair campaign and $7.3m for the emotional harm caused by statements he made against her in 2019.

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Pentagon mulls response to Jordan drone strike amid fears for Gaza ceasefire efforts

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Lloyd Austin says president ‘will not tolerate attacks on US forces’, but Qatar warns that reprisal attacks could undermine Israel hostage talks

US defense secretary Lloyd Austin has vowed to take “all necessary actions” to defend US troops after Iran-backed militants killed three US troops and wounded dozens more in a drone attack on a US base in Jordan.

“The president and I will not tolerate attacks on US forces and we will take all necessary actions to defend the US and our troops,” Austin said at the Pentagon on Monday.

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