Category Archives: US News

US nurse and her child kidnapped in Haiti, aid group announces

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Alix Dorsainvil of New Hampshire was working for Christian organization El Roi Haiti near capital Port-au-Prince

An American woman and her child have been kidnapped in Haiti, according to a non-profit humanitarian organization affiliated with the woman.

On Saturday, El Roi Haiti announced that Alix Dorsainvil and her child were kidnapped two days earlier from the non-profit’s campus while the woman served in the group’s community ministry near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

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Nikki Haley suggests Mitch McConnell should step aside amid health concerns

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Presidential hopeful makes comment after Senate Republican leader, 81, froze and was unable to speak this week

Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley has suggested her fellow Republican Mitch McConnell – the longtime powerful US Senate leader – should step aside after an episode in which he physically froze and was unable to speak at the Capitol this week.

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Haley was asked by the host Margaret Brennan whether she still had confidence in McConnell’s ability to lead after the episode.

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Alito ‘stunningly wrong’ that Senate can’t impose supreme court ethics rules

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Senator Chris Murphy dismisses Justice Samuel Alito’s claims that Senate has ‘no authority’ to regulate the supreme court

Senator Chris Murphy has dismissed claims by the supreme court justice, Samuel Alito, that the Senate has “no authority” to create a code of conduct for the court as “stunningly wrong”.

The Connecticut Democrat made those remarks in an interview on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, adding that Alito “should know that more than anyone else because his seat on the supreme court exists only because of an act passed by Congress”.

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‘A rerun of a soap opera’: Republican governor warns against Trump 2024 bid

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New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu attacks ex-president and says his 2024 bid is a far cry from his victorious 2016 run

Donald Trump’s campaign for president is a far cry from his victorious run for the White House in 2016, his fellow Republican and New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu said on Sunday.

“This is not the Donald Trump of 2016, don’t fool yourself,” Sununu – who recently passed on an Oval Office run of his own in part to elevate his credibility in speaking out against the ex-president – said during an interview on ABC’s This Week. “He doesn’t have the energy, he doesn’t have the fastball, he basically is droning on for 90 minutes in his long-form speeches about his legal battles, as opposed to talking about the future of this country.”

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Judge blocks Arkansas law allowing librarians to be charged over ‘harmful’ books

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Decision comes as lawmakers in conservative states are pushing for measures making it easier to ban or restrict access to books

Arkansas is temporarily blocked from enforcing a law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing “harmful” materials to minors, a federal judge ruled on Saturday.

US district judge Timothy L Brooks issued a preliminary injunction against the law, which also would have created a new process to challenge library materials and request that they be relocated to areas not accessible by kids. The measure, signed by the state’s Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, earlier this year, was set to take effect on 1 August.

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Elon Musk reinstates Kanye West’s Twitter account after ban

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Social media platform rebranded as X lifts ban on rapper-producer imposed after swastika tweet

Kanye West’s account on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, has been reinstated almost eight months after he tweeted an image of a swastika blended with a star of David.

The rapper-producer and designer, legally known as Ye, embarked on a series of antisemitic rants on social media and during interviews towards the end of last year. In October, he tweeted that he would go “death con 3” on Jewish people. His account was subsequently locked but he was soon readmitted.

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Family of US woman who died from ingesting kratom wins $11m damages

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Krystal Talavera, 39, took legal herbal extract, which has opioid-like effect on the brain, in 2021 and died shortly after

The family of a Florida woman who died in 2021 after ingesting kratom has been awarded more than $11m from a distributor of the south-east Asian herbal extract that has an opioid-like effect on the brain.

In a ruling finalized Thursday, judge Donald Middlebrooks of the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach, Florida, told a company operating as the Kratom Distro to pay damages to the four surviving children of Krystal Talavera as well as her estate.

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Judge throws out Donald Trump’s $475m ‘big lie’ defamation lawsuit against CNN

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Judge Raag Singhal ruled that CNN’s words were opinion and could not be the subject of a defamation claim

A federal judge has thrown out Donald Trump’s $475m defamation lawsuit against CNN, in which the former president claimed the network’s description of his claims of election fraud as the “big lie” associated him with Adolf Hitler.

In a ruling late on Friday night, US judge Raag Singhal, who was nominated by Trump in 2019, said CNN’s words were opinion, not fact, and therefore could not be the subject of a defamation claim.

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Pentagon hit by ‘critical compromise’ of US air force communications – report

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Forbes reports claim that engineer at Arnold air force base in Tennessee had taken home government radio technologies

The Pentagon is investigating a “critical compromise” of communications across 17 US air force facilities, according to reports.

The US department of defense’s investigation comes amid a tip from a base contractor that a 48-year-old engineer at the Arnold air force base in Tennessee had taken home various government radio technologies, Forbes first reported Friday.

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‘Stop’: Black Republican congressman attacks DeSantis over slavery curriculum

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John James of Michigan says presidential contender has ‘gone too far’ as outrage grows over Florida teaching of history

Florida governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis has “gone too far” in defending his state’s new educational standards which require public schools to teach that enslaved Black Americans benefited from their forced labor by learning useful skills, Republican congressman John James has said.

James – who is Black – made his remarks in a post on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter.

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US man who killed woman by driving car through BLM protest pleads guilty

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Dawit Kelete, 30, pleads guilty to multiple charges after hitting two protesters, one fatally, during 2020 protest in Seattle

A man who hit two Black Lives Matter protesters with his car, killing one of them, during a 2020 demonstration in Seattle has pleaded guilty to multiple felonies.

Dawit Kelete, 30, pleaded guilty Thursday to vehicular homicide in the death of 24-year-old Summer Taylor, the Seattle Times reported. He also pleaded guilty to vehicular assault and reckless driving charges.

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US Mega Millions lottery jackpot soars to $1.05bn

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No winner of Friday’s $940m prize, meaning only fifth time in history of Mega Millions grand prize has reached into the billions

The Mega Millions jackpot climbed to an estimated $1.05bn Friday night, only the fifth time in the history of that particular lottery that the grand prize has reached into the billions.

It has been less than two weeks since someone in Los Angeles won a $1.08bn Powerball prize that ranked as the sixth-largest in US lottery history. The winner of that Powerball prize still has not come forward.

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US officer who put handcuffed woman in car hit by freight train found guilty

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Jordan Steinke convicted on misdemeanour charges but found not guilty of more serious charges over 2022 crash in Colorado

A Colorado police officer who put a handcuffed woman in a parked police vehicle that was hit by a freight train was found guilty of reckless endangerment and assault but was acquitted of a third charge of criminal attempt to commit manslaughter during a trial Friday.

Jordan Steinke was the first of two officers to go to trial over the 16 September 2022 crash that left Yareni Rios-Gonzalez seriously injured.

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Five wounded, two critically, in Seattle parking lot shooting

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Shooting on Friday night, in lot near where community event was taking place, the 413th US mass shooting this year

The latest mass shooting in the US left five people wounded in a Seattle parking lot Friday night, including two who were in critical condition, the city’s police chief said.

Seattle police responded to the shooting about 9pm on Rainier Avenue South in the parking lot of what was formerly known as King Donuts, and a community event was occurring nearby, the city’s police chief, Adrian Diaz, said at the scene.

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Julian Assange: US rejects Australia’s calls to end pursuit of WikiLeaks founder during Ausmin talks

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Ministers’ meeting focused on military cooperation and agreed to increase ‘tempo’ of US nuclear-powered submarine visits to Australia as part of Aukus pact

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has pushed back at the Australian government’s calls to end the pursuit of Julian Assange, insisting that the WikiLeaks founder is alleged to have “risked very serious harm to our national security”.

After high-level talks in Brisbane largely focused on military cooperation, Blinken confirmed that the Australian government had raised the case with the US on multiple occasions, and said he understood “the concerns and views of Australians”.

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US bars Hong Kong leader John Lee from San Francisco Apec summit

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Chief executive, who is under US sanctions over role implementing city’s national security law, will not be invited to November event

The United States will not invite Hong Kong’s chief executive, who faces US sanctions, to visit San Francisco during November’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

John Lee, Hong Kong’s top official, was placed under US sanctions in 2020 because of his role in implementing what Washington deems a “draconian” national security law when he was the city’s security secretary.

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McCarthy plays down Trump charges as former White House lawyer says evidence in case is ‘overwhelming’ – live

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Former president says he will not drop out of 2024 US election race despite new charges in classified documents case

CNN managed to track down Republican speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy at the Capitol to ask him if he was concerned about the new charges against Donald Trump.

The short version of the speaker’s answer, as you will see from the clip below, is that he is not:

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Marles says aircrew ‘yet to be found’ after military helicopter crash – as it happened

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Four feared dead after Australian army helicopter crashes into waters off Hamilton Island. This blog is now closed

Tasmania police use cadaver dog in search for missing Belgian tourist

AAP reports Tasmania police hope an interstate cadaver dog can reveal where a missing Belgian tourist ended up after weeks of fruitless searches.

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Carlee Russell charged after admitting she fabricated kidnapping

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Alabama authorities file criminal charges after Russell says story that she was kidnapped after checking on toddler was hoax

Authorities in Alabama said on Friday they had filed criminal charges against a woman who confessed to fabricating a story that she was kidnapped after stopping to check on a toddler she saw walking on the side of an interstate highway.

Carlee Russell was charged with misdemeanor false reporting to law enforcement and falsely reporting an incident.

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Mystery surrounds case of US teen who re-emerged after going missing in 2019

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Alicia Navarro, who police said had not been harmed and does not face charges, disappeared days before her 15th birthday

When Alicia Navarro disappeared in 2019 from her home in a Phoenix suburb, days before her 15th birthday, she left a signed note promising she would return.

“I will be back, I swear,” the note read. “I’m sorry.”

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