Category Archives: US News

US investigating JetBlue flight after severe turbulence injures eight

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The plane was en route from Ecuador to Florida, where seven passengers and one crew member were hospitalized on arrival

The National Transportation Safety Board said it has opened an investigation into a JetBlue flight that experienced sudden severe turbulence on Monday, injuring seven passengers and a crew member.

The incident occurred on Monday on JetBlue flight 1256, an Airbus A320, near Jamaica while en route from Guayaquil, Ecuador, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the board said.

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Biden pledges more aid to Pacific islands to counter growing Chinese influence

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Leaders of Pacific island states have been given star treatment in Washington but Chinese influence is the spectre at the feast

Joe Biden has offered more economic aid to Pacific islands at a White House meeting with leaders from the region aimed at bolstering US engagement in the face of a growing Chinese presence.

The president also announced formal US recognition of two new island nations, the Cook Islands and Niue, at the start of the Pacific Islands Forum, two days of Washington meetings with leaders from the group’s 18 members.

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Bob Menendez says money found in police search was for personal use – live

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Democratic senator says he has withdrawn cash over 30 years and expects to be exonerated of corruption charges

We’re awaiting a press conference from Robert Menendez scheduled for 11.30am, where the Democratic senator will reportedly vow not to leave office and instead run for re-election next year, despite being indicted last week for using his position to assist the government of Egypt.

We’ll follow the press conference live, and let you know what he says.

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‘Exceptional’: Hollywood writers hail tentative deal to end strike

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Writers Guild of America says agreement on pay and conditions ‘due to the willingness of this membership to exercise its power’

The tentative deal reached between Hollywood and studio executives has been received well by those on strike and others within the industry.

Members from the Writers Guild of America (WGA), who took on the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) with demands that included better pay and residuals, and safeguards on the use of artificial intelligence, shared their collective relief.

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Bob Menendez refuses to quit and says $480,000 in cash was for personal use

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New Jersey senator strikes defiant tone to reporters and accuses some of ‘rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat’

Insisting he would not resign after being indicted on corruption charges, the embattled New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez told reporters that $480,000 in cash found in a safe, clothing and closets at his home was kept there for emergency personal use.

“For 30 years,” Menendez said, “I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings accounts, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba.”

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‘Hard to know’ if Bruce Willis is aware of dementia condition, wife says

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Emma Heming Willis says she has been ‘care partner’ to husband, 68, after actor was diagnosed with frontotemporal degeneration

Six months after Bruce Willis was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, it is “hard to know” whether the actor, known for roles in Die Hard and Pulp Fiction, is aware of the extent to which his condition has worsened, his wife has revealed in a new interview.

Emma Heming Willis also told Today’s Hoda Kotb in an interview broadcast on Monday that she has been a “care partner” to her husband since the moment of the diagnosis.

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California governor signs bills boosting protections for LGBTQ+ people

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Gavin Newsom signs bills a day after controversial veto on parental support of their child’s gender identity

The California governor, Gavin Newsom, signed several bills on Saturday aimed at bolstering the state’s protections for LGBTQ+ people, a day after the Democrat issued a controversial veto that was criticized by advocates.

The new laws include legislation that focuses on support for LGBTQ+ youth. One law sets timelines for required cultural competency training for public school teachers and staff, while another creates an advisory taskforce to determine the needs of LGBTQ+ students and help advance supportive initiatives.

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‘Full fascist’ Trump condemned after ‘treason’ rant against NBC and MSNBC

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Former president vows to investigate TV networks for ‘country-threatening treason’ should he win US election next year

Donald Trump said Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC, “should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason’” and promised to do so should he be re-elected president next year.

In response, one progressive group said the former US president and current overwhelming frontrunner in the Republican 2024 presidential nomination race had “gone full fascist”.

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‘Anything for my family’: Venezuelans in US welcome temporary protected status

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Asylum seekers who arrived before the end of July – about 472,000 – will now be able to legally live and work in the US

Venezuelan asylum seekers in the United States have welcomed the news of temporary permission to live and work in the country as a vital “helping hand” after the Biden administration announced that it would extend temporary protected status (TPS) to nearly half a million Venezuelan nationals.

The Department of Homeland Security announced that the TPS extension now includes those who arrived in the US by the end of July, whereas the previous cutoff date was 8 March 2021.

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US urged to withhold military aid to Egypt in wake of Bob Menendez charges

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Senator Menendez was indicted on a set of explosive charges of corruptly aiding the government in Cairo

The indictment of Senator Bob Menendez on charges of corruptly aiding the Egyptian government has set the stage for a week of renewed pressure on US lawmakers to withhold military aid to Egypt.

Menendez stepped town temporarily from his position as head of the Senate foreign relations committee on Friday after he was indicted by New York’s southern district court on a set of explosive and detailed charges.

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Biden seeks to win over Pacific leaders as Solomon Islands turns back on talks

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‘Historic’ summit seen as part of effort to counter Beijing in the region as Pacific leaders seek more support on climate change

President Joe Biden will host Pacific leaders at the White House this week as the US seeks to bolster its engagement with the nations amid growing concern about China’s presence in the region.

The US is expected to offer funding for infrastructure and more maritime cooperation, and new embassies for Cook Islands and Nuie. But the talks have already suffered a setback as Solomon Islands prime minister Manasseh Sogavare, now closely aligned with Beijing, will not attend.

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Seven months after entering hospice care Jimmy Carter visits peanut festival

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Former US president, who has been in ill health for several years, is set to turn 99 on 1 October

Former president Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, have made a surprise appearance at a peanut festival in their Georgia home town, the Carter Center wrote in a social media post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The former president, who was also once a peanut farmer, and his wife are seen in a video riding through the Plains Peanut Festival in a black SUV.

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‘A treasure for scientific analysis’: Nasa holds Bennu asteroid sample press conference – as it happened

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The blog is now closed, but you can read the full story about the successful Osiris-Rex sample touchdown here

Another hope is that by studying the samples from Bennu, scientists can compare their results against the data they obtained from instruments on board the spacecraft.

This ‘ground-truthing’ means they can then calibrate the latter, allowing them to more accurately explore differences in composition across the surface of Bennu. Remember - the samples that are heading from Earth only came from one small crater on the asteroid.

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Poll showing Trump up 10 points over Biden for 2024 election criticized

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A Washington Post-ABC poll showed results that diverge from most other surveys, and even the pollers made a caveat

A new Washington Post-ABC poll showing Joe Biden trailing his presidential predecessor Donald Trump by 10 percentage points was excoriated by leading political pollster Larry Sabato.

Noting that the pollsters themselves cautioned that their survey was an outlier, Sabato – the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia – called the decision to release it “ridiculous”.

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‘Like a dream’: successful return of Nasa capsule with asteroid sample hailed

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Return of the largest asteroid sample ever to be recovered marks the culmination of a seven-year journey

Sitting isolated in the arid landscape of the Utah desert, its orange and white parachute cast aside, the Osiris-Rex capsule was a picture of stillness. Yet all around, scientists were swinging into action, rushing to recover its precious cargo: 4.6bn-year-old chunks of space rock.

Racing towards the scene were four helicopters bearing scientists, engineers and military safety personnel. Their mission: to recover the capsule as quickly as possible to prevent samples of asteroid Bennu from becoming contaminated by planet Earth.

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Pete Buttigieg condemns Trump’s reported remarks about wounded veteran

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Ex-president reportedly told Gen Mark Milley in 2019 that severely wounded soldier should be banned from public appearances

Pete Buttigieg, the US transport secretary and a military veteran, has criticized Donald Trump after a report that he sought to bar a severely wounded veteran from public appearances during his presidency.

In an interview with the Atlantic, Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said Trump had been irritated after Luis Avila – who lost a leg and suffered brain damage after an IED attack in Afghanistan – sang at Milley’s 2019 welcome ceremony.

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Minnesota’s cannabis head resigns after reports she sold illegal weed products

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Erin Dupree’s Loonacy Cannabis Co reportedly sold products stronger than recently enacted marijuana legalization allowed

The recently appointed director of Minnesota’s new marijuana regulatory agency, Erin Dupree, has resigned amid reports that she sold illegal cannabis products in the state.

Dupree ran a business that sold products exceeding state limits on THC potency, owed money to former associates and accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in tax liens, Minnesota Public Radio reported.

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US progressive groups facing ‘five-alarm fire’ ahead of 2024 as donations down

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Fundraising down 48% as Movement Voter Project’s director says ‘sense of urgency’ has ‘dissipated in people’s minds’

Progressive political fundraising in America is facing a crisis, according to a leading Democratic grassroots donor organization, which warned this month that donations to progressive groups are “way down in 2023 across the board”.

According to the Movement Voter Project, progressives have “a five-alarm fire going into 2024”. The organization’s director, Bill Wimsatt, said he was “pressing the panic button” because donor-inaction is creating a movement-wide crisis.

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An old master? No, it’s an image AI just knocked up … and it can’t be copyrighted

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US ruling on works created through artificial intelligence gives boost to creative workers fighting for livelihoods

The use of AI in art is facing a setback after a ruling that an award-winning image could not be copyrighted because it was not made sufficiently by humans.

The decision, delivered by the US copyright office review board, found that Théâtre d’Opéra Spatial, an AI-generated image that won first place at the 2022 Colorado state fair annual art competition, was not eligible because copyright protection “excludes works produced by non-humans”.

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Cassidy Hutchinson left DC amid ‘security concerns’ after January 6 hearings

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Former White House aide to Donald Trump tells CBS News Sunday Morning she ‘could not go back to my apartment’

The former Donald Trump White House aide who became a pivotal January 6 witness remembers wanting to make a last-minute run for it before delivering her crucial testimony about the US Capitol attack that the defeated president’s supporters staged.

But Cassidy Hutchinson kept her nerve, and the cost of breaking ranks with Trump and his fanatical supporters was steep.

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