Move to 15 January puts first votes of GOP primary a little more than six months away
Iowa Republicans announced on Saturday that their presidential caucuses will be held on 15 January – the federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.
The move puts the first votes of the 2024 election a little more than six months away, as Republicans try to reclaim the White House.
Continue reading...Meeting partially overshadowed by US president’s decision to send to Ukraine cluster munitions banned in Britain
Joe Biden will meet King Charles for the first time since the coronation, in a fleeting UK visit that will be used by Rishi Sunak and the US president as a “pre-meeting” ahead of joint efforts at this week’s Nato summit.
However, what will be the sixth meeting between Biden and Sunak since Sunak took office in October has been partly overshadowed by the US president’s decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, weapons that are prohibited by 100 countries including the UK, which currently holds the presidency of a convention banning them.
Continue reading...Conscripts will serve longer in attempt to improve current crop of ‘strawberry soldiers’ who bruise too easily
For many people in Taiwan, the threat of conflict with China is a distant prospect that has been lingering in the air for some seven decades. Concern in the west that the Chinese Communist party, led by Xi Jinping in Beijing, is moving ever closer towards attempting to realise its goal of “reunifying” China and Taiwan, by force if necessary, can seem hysterical.
The only beneficiary of the increasing tension between China and Taiwan is the US, which is making money from selling arms to Taipei, jokes one resident of Kinmen, a small Taiwanese island a few miles from China’s eastern coastline.
Continue reading...American groups have helped to establish global web who share ideas and funding in bid to restrict gay and trans rights
When the US evangelical preacher and anti-LGBTQ+ crusader Scott Lively landed in Uganda in 2009 to warn of the “gay agenda”, he was arriving after a series of culture-war defeats at home.
More and more US states were recognizing same-sex marriage, and opinion polls were showing fewer and fewer Americans objected. Lively was there to offer Uganda’s lawmakers some advice on how to drum up outrage. “Emphasize the issue of the homosexual recruitment of children,” he advised.
Continue reading...US treasury secretary feels trip to Beijing has steadied ties and improved communication despite ‘significant disagreements’ between the powers
The US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has said a four-day trip to Beijing has put ties with China on a “surer footing” and paved the way for better communication between top officials who run the world’s two largest economies.
This relatively modest outcome had been flagged by US officials and expected by analysts before Yellen arrived, and is a reflection of how fraught one of the world’s most critical relationships had become.
Continue reading...US leader’s three-country tour aims to ‘showcase the president’s leadership on the world stage’ at a key time for the war in Ukraine
Joe Biden heads to Europe on Sunday for a swift tour dominated by the war in Ukraine, with membership of the expanding Nato military alliance and the US approval of cluster munitions likely to be key talking points. His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the trip would “showcase the president’s leadership on the world stage”.
The US president will arrive at night in London, ahead of meetings with the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and King Charles, and then head to a key Nato summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, before travelling to Helsinki to welcome Nato’s newest member, Finland.
Continue reading...The Charles Manson follower could be free in about two weeks, after spending more than 50 years in prison for two murders
Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten could be freed in about two weeks after California governor Gavin Newsom announced he will not ask the state supreme court to reverse her parole. The move paves the way for Van Houten’s release after spending more than 50 years in a southern California prison for two murders in 1969.
The governor’s office said an appeal against a parole ruling by a California appeals court was unlikely – the court only accepts reviews in about 3% of cases petitioned – to succeed and that Newsom was disappointed. The governor had previously rejected parole for Van Houten but on 30 May an appellate court overturned that decision.
Continue reading...Plane departed from Las Vegas before crashing in Murrieta in Riverside county on Saturday morning
Six people died after a plane crashed over a southern California field on Saturday morning before bursting into flames.
The plane was engulfed in fire along with about one acre of vegetation when deputies arrived. The plane crashed near an airport in the city of Murrieta, California, in south-west Riverside county, about 85 miles (136.79 km) south of Los Angeles.
Continue reading...Michael Burham broke out of jail where he was being held on arson and burglary charges and was suspect in murder investigation
Authorities were searching on Saturday for an inmate described by police as “very dangerous” who escaped from a jail in north-western Pennsylvania using bed sheets, officials said.
Michael Burham was last seen wearing a blue denim coat from the jail, white and orange pants, and orange shoes, Warren police said late on Friday.
Continue reading...Prime minister rules out following controversial US move but says he will urge allies to increase other aid
Rishi Sunak has ruled out supplying Ukraine with cluster bombs, saying the UK will not follow the Biden administration’s controversial move and will instead press countries to boost their aid to Kyiv “in other ways”.
On Friday, Joe Biden defended what he said was a “difficult decision” to send widely banned cluster munitions to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government. Human rights groups criticised the White House and there was unease among some Democrats, with one calling it “unnecessary and a terrible mistake”.
Continue reading...Washington DC committee recommends revoking former New York City mayor’s law license over attempt to overturn election
Rudy Giuliani’s law license should be revoked over his work on a failed lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results on behalf of then president Donald Trump, a Washington DC attorney ethics committee has recommended.
He now faces being disbarred in the capital after the review panel late on Friday condemned the lawyer and ex-politician for aggressively pursuing the false assertions Trump made about his defeat by Democratic rival and now US president Joe Biden.
Continue reading...Data from Greg Johnson’s Counter-Currents sheds light on how organization promotes its ideology online
A data leak from the website of a white nationalist publisher has revealed recordings, published and unpublished documents, and hitherto-private interview recordings that shed light on the way in which the organization promotes its ideology online.
The internal data from Counter-Currents, a publishing house co-founded and run by notoriously secretive far-right ideologue Greg Johnson, was exposed in an Amazon cloud storage container that was left unlocked on the open internet.
Continue reading...Critics say party that touted its law-and-order credentials now intent on wrecking institutions that get in Donald Trump’s way
When Merrick Garland was nominated to the US supreme court by Barack Obama, Republicans refused to grant him a hearing. Now that Garland is the top law enforcement official in America, the party seems ready to give him one after all – an impeachment hearing.
Republicans on Capitol Hill are moving up a gear in a wide-ranging assault on the justice department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that would have been unthinkable before the rise of Donald Trump. The party that for half a century claimed the mantle of law and order has, critics say, become a cult of personality intent on discrediting and dismantling institutions that get in Trump’s way.
Continue reading...Nasratullah Ahmadyar, 31, who left Afghanistan on last flight from Kabul in 2021, died in hospital after being shot in his car
A Virginia man who previously served as an interpreter for the US military in Afghanistan was fatally shot this week working as a rideshare driver in Washington.
Nasratullah Ahmadyar, 31, was shot and killed on Monday while driving for Lyft, WUSA 9 reported. He had worked as an interpreter with the army special forces, but left Afghanistan on the last flight out of the country during the US withdrawal in 2021.
Continue reading...Drones and personal watercraft among measures to protect beachgoers but expert calls for perspective over shark attack data
New York lifeguards are being trained to use drones and personal watercraft after recent shark bites off local beaches – but one shark expert believes such solutions lack specialist input.
Officials in New York’s Long Island say they are upgrading training after five people were reportedly bitten by sharks since Monday, including two minors.
Continue reading...Oklahoma superintendent Ryan Walters decried for comments on 1921 massacre in which hundreds were killed by white mobs
The state official in charge of Oklahoma’s schools is facing calls for impeachment, after he said teachers should tell students that the Tulsa race massacre was not racially motivated.
In a public forum on Thursday, Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s state superintendent of public instruction, said teachers could cover the 1921 massacre, in which white Tulsans murdered an estimated 300 Black people, but teachers should not “say that the skin color determined it”.
Continue reading...President tells CNN he took the recommendation for controversial weapons because Ukraine is ‘running out of ammunition’
The US added 209,000 new jobs in June as hiring slowed amid signs that the economy is cooling.
The rise was the weakest gain since December 2020, lower than the 240,000 jobs economists had expected and lower than the 309,000 jobs added in May. But the increase was also the 30th consecutive month of jobs gains, and the unemployment rate ticked down to the historically low rate of 3.6%.
This alarming development requires the Committee to assess White House security practices and determine whose failures led to an evacuation of the building and finding of the illegal substance.
The presence of illegal drugs in the White House is unacceptable and a shameful moment in the White House’s history.
Continue reading...Rights groups condemn supply of widely banned weapons and fellow Democrat calls it a ‘terrible mistake’
Joe Biden has defended the “difficult decision” to send widely banned cluster munitions to Ukraine, after he was condemned by human rights groups and a fellow Democrat said it was “unnecessary and a terrible mistake”.
Cluster munitions are prohibited by more than 100 countries. They typically scatter numerous smaller bomblets over a wide area, sometimes as big as a football pitch, and can kill indiscriminately. Those that fail to explode threaten civilians, especially children, for decades after a conflict ends.
Continue reading...Pop-star had said she was struck by Victor Wembanyama’s security when she tried to approach the basketball player for a photograph
No charges will be filed following a brief investigation of the altercation involving pop star Britney Spears, San Antonio Spurs rookie Victor Wembanyama and a member of the basketball player’s security team, Las Vegas police said on Friday.
Spears said she was struck by a security guard as she tried to approach Wembanyama on the way into a restaurant in a Las Vegas casino complex on Wednesday night. Wembanyama said a person – he later was told it was Spears – grabbed him from behind.
Continue reading...Florida first lady outlines Ron DeSantis’s hardline rightwing agenda in video accusing progressives of ‘coming after our kids’
Vowing not to let progressives “impose an agenda” on American children and their mothers, Casey DeSantis outlined the hardline rightwing agenda her husband has imposed on Florida and now wants to impose on America.
The Florida first lady did so in a new video for Mamas for DeSantis, a group supporting Governor Ron DeSantis’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
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