Category Archives: US News

California town proposes ban on Pride, Black and women’s history celebrations

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Far-right council members in Huntington Beach introduce agenda item to switch focus to US wars and America’s independence

The southern California city of Huntington Beach, a bastion of conservative voters, has made the move to block diverse monthlong celebrations of Black history, women’s history and Pride, in favor of observing the revolutionary and civil wars, California’s history and America’s independence.

An agenda item introduced on 19 December forbids any programming that pertains to previously established honorary celebrations for women, people of color and LGBTQ+ groups from taking place on city-owned property, including libraries, or of being featured in city communications such as social media posts, according to Natalie Moser, a city council member who voted against the action.

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House speaker’s Christian nationalist ties spark first amendment fears

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Mike Johnson’s links to key leaders prompts alarm he might try to erode elements of constitution on separation of church and state

Links between the new Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and key Christian nationalist leaders have sparked fears the devout Louisiana congressman might seek to erode elements of the first amendment, which protects key US civil liberties including freedom of religion and the separation of church and state.

Long before th eevangelical conservative Johnson became speaker, he had forged close ties with Christian nationalists like David Barton, whose writings claiming the country’s founders intended to create a Christian nation have been widely debunked by religion scholars.

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Nike to axe hundreds of jobs in bid to save $2bn amid sales slump

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US sportswear brand announces job cuts and simplification of product ranges in ‘streamlining’ of operations

Nike is to cut hundreds of jobs, simplify its product ranges and increase its use of automation as part of attempts to save $2bn (£1.6bn) in costs over the next three years amid poor sales.

The US sportswear brand said it was “taking steps to streamline the organisation” and would be spending up to $450m on the changes, mainly on payoffs for employees.

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Weather tracker: Nor’easter drenches US south-east coast

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Up to 127mm of rain falls on Florida and gusty winds and flash flooding hit parts of Georgia and South Carolina

Last weekend, a low-pressure system that had developed over the Gulf of Mexico tracked north-east across the Florida peninsula. Lashings of heavy rain and strong winds were brought to Florida during the early hours of Sunday morning, dumping up to 127mm (5in) of rain on the state in its passing.

The low-pressure system, termed a “nor’easter”, continued to track north-east, strengthening and bringing gusty winds and flash flooding to the coastal parts of the south-east US, including Georgia and South Carolina.

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Severe rainstorms hit southern California, with more to come

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Torrents of rain on Wednesday night submerged streets and prompted rescues of people and pets

A strong, slow-moving storm unleashed torrents of rain on southern California on Wednesday night, submerging streets and prompting water rescues, and residents across the region are bracing for more wet weather.

Evacuation orders were issued in parts of Ventura county due to the extreme rainfall, where the deluge dumped more than 3in of rain in a single hour, and emergency responders were inundated with calls for help through the night. The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for Oxnard and the city of Ventura at 1.28am due to the high-intensity thunderstorm; it expired an hour later as the risks calmed. However, the rain continued.

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Book bans use ‘parental rights’ as cover to attack civil liberties, Democrat warns

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Florida congressman Maxwell Frost, who introduced Fight Banned Books Act, says bans are ‘baseless attack on our civil rights’

The growing number of book bans in the US are using a so-called parental rights movement as cover for a wide-ranging attack on civil rights in America, a Democratic congressman has warned.

Earlier this month, a new study by PEN America revealed that there had been at least 5,894 book bans in US public schools from July 2021 to June 2023, with more than 40% of them in Florida, birthplace of a rightwing parents group called Moms for Liberty.

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Man who spent 48 years in prison for murder formally declared innocent

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Glynn Simmons, who served US’s longest wrongful imprisonment for a 1974 murder, wins rare ruling

The man who served the US’s longest wrongful imprisonment for a 1974 murder he has always denied committing has now won a rare ruling declaring him to be actually innocent of the crime.

Glynn Simmons’s murder conviction was dismissed in July after a judge in Oklahoma determined that prosecutors withheld some evidence in the case, including a police report that documented how a witness may have identified alternate suspects. The 71-year-old was freed from prison, and state prosecutors later said they would not retry him in the case because there was no longer any physical evidence.

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Colorado supreme court justices face death threats after Trump ruling

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Report finds ‘significant violent rhetoric’ against justices and Democrats online after ruling to exclude Trump from ballot

Justices on the Colorado supreme court are receiving a barrage of death threats after it ruled to exclude Donald Trump from the state’s presidential ballot next year because of his attempts to cause insurrection.

A report compiled by Advance Democracy, a non-partisan non-profit organization, said there was “significant violent rhetoric” against the justices and Democrats on social media, according to NBC News.

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Texas sends plane to Chicago with over 100 people who crossed US-Mexico border

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Spokesman for Greg Abbott says flights are result of criticism over his operation of bussing migrants to Democratic-led cities

Texas sent a plane with more than 120 people who crossed the US-Mexico border to Chicago in an escalation of Greg Abbott’s bussing operation, which has sent more than 80,000 people to Democratic-led cities across the country since last year.

The first flight, which the Republican governor’s office said left from El Paso and arrived Tuesday, was arranged a week after Chicago’s city council took new action over the busloads of migrants that have drawn sharp criticism from Brandon Johnson, the city’s mayor. The city has said bus operators began trying to drop off people in neighboring cities to avoid penalties that include fines, towing or impoundment.

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‘Very serious’ ceasefire negotiations in Gaza face impasse | First Thing

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Hamas has said it will not discuss releasing more hostages until Israel ends its war, while Israel has vowed to continue ‘to the end’. Plus, the women who fought back against a couch-surfing predator

Good morning.

The US has said “very serious” negotiations are taking place in Egypt on a new Gaza ceasefire and for the release of more Israeli hostages, but prospects for a deal remain uncertain as Hamas has reportedly insisted it will not discuss anything less than a complete end to Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian territory.

How many Palestinians are being held in Israel? More than 8,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails, according to human rights groups.

What has the French president said about Israel’s actions? Emmanuel Macron has said that Israel’s goal of fighting terrorism did not mean it had to “flatten Gaza”, referring to its response to Hamas’s attack on 7 October. “We cannot let the idea take root that an efficient fight against terrorism implies to flatten Gaza or attack civilian populations indiscriminately,” Macron told the broadcaster France 5.

What has Joe Biden said about the Colorado ruling? The president said it was “self-evident” that Donald Trump was an insurrectionist, adding he would not comment on the legal arguments or any likely intervention of the US supreme court.

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Chemical leak at Tennessee cheese factory sends 29 workers to hospital

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Two leaks of anhydrous ammonia were reported at La Quesera Mexicana in Greeneville on Wednesday morning

Twenty-nine workers at a Tennessee cheese factory were sent to the hospital on Wednesday morning after a leak of anhydrous ammonia, the Greeneville city manager, Todd Smith, said at a news conference.

The Greeneville fire department was first called to La Quesera Mexicana at 7.15am when a leak occurred during maintenance on a valve. Six people were hospitalized at the time.

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White South Carolina couple ‘harassed Black neighbors with burning cross’

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Worden Butler and Alexis Hartnett charged after FBI search house in Horry county following alleged racially motivated campaign

The FBI has searched a house in South Carolina after a white couple allegedly put up a cross that faced their Black neighbors and set it on fire.

On Wednesday morning, federal agents searched the house of 28-year-old Worden Butler and 27-year-old Alexis Hartnett in Horry county for a “civil rights investigation involving allegations of racial discrimination”, WBTW reports the agency saying.

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US-Venezuela prisoner swap includes notorious key ally of Nicolás Maduro

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Ten Americans were released in the deal, but critics say release of Alex Saab shows that corrupt Venezuelan officials enjoy impunity

Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, has managed to free a key collaborator from US custody after agreeing to release 10 Americans and 20 Venezuelan citizens from jail.

The Colombian-born businessman Alex Saab – a close Maduro ally whom US prosecutors accused of pilfering hundreds of millions of dollars from Venezuelan social programs as part of a vast money-laundering scheme – was extradited to the US in 2021 after being detained while transiting through Cape Verde.

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Trump lawyers urge supreme court to reject fast-tracking immunity decision

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Federal 2020 election interference trial is currently set for 4 March, the day before Super Tuesday

Lawyers for Donald Trump on Wednesday urged the US supreme court to reject a request from the special counsel to expeditiously decide whether he was immune from prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, contending prosecutors lacked standing to bring the petition.

The argument from the ex-president was that prosecutors had no basis to appeal a lower court ruling that was favorable to them, and should instead defer intervening in the case until a federal appeals court issued its own judgment first.

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No sheep’s clothing needed: Colorado reintroduces five gray wolves

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Wolves are the first part of a plan to reintroduce the endangered species into the state after it was eradicated in the region

In an effort to restore an endangered species, Colorado just released five gray wolves in the western part of the state.

On Monday, Colorado parks and wildlife released two female and three male wolves on to remote public land. The predators were captured and brought over from Oregon, after Wyoming, Idaho and Montana refused to share their wolves citing interstate migration and financial concerns.

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Rite Aid facial recognition misidentified Black, Latino and Asian people as ‘likely’ shoplifters

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Surveillance systems incorrectly and without customer consent marked shoppers as ‘persons of interest’, an FTC settlement says

Rite Aid used facial recognition systems to identify shoppers that were previously deemed “likely to engage” in shoplifting without customer consent and misidentified people – particularly women and Black, Latino or Asian people – on “numerous” occasions, according to a new settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. As part of the settlement, Rite Aid has been forbidden from deploying facial recognition technology in its stores for five years.

The FTC said in a federal court complaint that Rite Aid used facial recognition technology in hundreds of stores from October 2012 to July 2020 to identify shoppers “it had previously deemed likely to engage in shoplifting or other criminal behavior”. The technology sent alerts to Rite Aid employees either by email or phone when it identified people entering the store on its watchlist.

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Rare Air Jordans made for Spike Lee fetch $50,000 for homelessness charity

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The shoes – which debuted as Lee’s footwear at the 2019 Academy Awards – were found in a clothing donation bin in Portland, Oregon

A pair of rare Nike Air Jordan 3s made for Spike Lee have sold for more than $50,000 at Sotheby’s after they were discovered earlier this year in the donation chute of a homeless charity in Portland, Oregon.

On Monday, the gold shoes, one of only four to five pairs custom-made for the film director Spike Lee and his inner circle, were auctioned off at Sotheby’s for $50,800. The shoes were originally discovered in April by a participant in Portland Rescue Mission’s long-term shelter program who was sorting through several clothing and shoe donations.

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Man charged in Tupac Shakur killing asks to move from jail to house arrest

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Attorneys of Duane Keith ‘Keffe D’ Davis, whose trial is set for 2024, says the 60-year-old is not getting proper medical attention

A former Los Angeles-area gang leader charged with murder in the killing of hip-hop music icon Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas is deriding the case against him as the product of speculation and second-hand testimony as he asks a judge to put him on house arrest ahead of his trial.

A 2 January hearing date was set Tuesday on Duane “Keffe D” Davis’s bid to be released on no more than $100,000 bail. His court-appointed attorneys wrote that the health of their 60-year-old client has deteriorated in jail and that he is not getting proper medical attention following a bout with colon cancer that they said is in remission.

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Would you drink toilet water? California approves wastewater for human consumption

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Regulators approve rules to let agencies recycle wastewater into drinking water for homes, schools and businesses

When a toilet is flushed in California, the water can end up in a lot of places: an ice-skating rink in Ontario, ski slopes around Lake Tahoe, farmland in the central valley.

And – coming soon – kitchen faucets.

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Ex-Haitian senator gets life in prison for 2021 killing of country’s president

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John Joel Joseph, an opponent of the late president’s party, is third of 11 suspects charged for plotting to assassinate Jovenel Moïse

A former Haitian senator has been sentenced to life in prison for conspiring to kill Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, an assassination which caused unprecedented turmoil in the Caribbean nation.

John Joel Joseph is the third of 11 suspects detained and charged in Miami to be sentenced in what US prosecutors have described as a plot hatched in Haiti and Florida to hire mercenaries to kidnap or kill Moïse, who was 53 when he was shot dead at his private home near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on 7 July 2021.

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