Category Archives: US News

Blinken unveils steps to tackle ‘global threat’ of synthetic drugs at UN summit

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US secretary of state announced the formation of an international coalition to address crisis that has ‘an immeasurable cost’

US diplomats at the UN general assembly in New York have unveiled steps aimed at tackling the proliferation of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs which the American secretary of state, Antony Blinken, described as a “global threat”.

At a meeting on Monday, the most senior US diplomat announced the formation of an international coalition to address the crisis, saying that the US “may have been to some extent a canary in the coalmine when it comes to fentanyl, but alas, we are not alone”.

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Rudy Giuliani sued by own lawyer for $1.3m in unpaid fees

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Former New York mayor-turned Trump attorney reportedly facing financial problems as he defends against multiple legal threats

The New York mayor-turned-Donald Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani has been sued by his own lawyer, who seeks more than $1.3m in outstanding fees.

“This action simply seeks payment of an outstanding bill for legal services rendered by plaintiffs in the amount of $1,360,196.10,” said a lawsuit filed in New York state supreme court on Monday by Robert J Costello, of Davidoff Hutcher & Citron.

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Biden wary of history repeating as he braves Republican criticism of Iran swap

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The failure to free US hostages seized at the US embassy in Tehran over 40 years ago consigned one Democratic president to a single term

For all the widespread fear of a second Donald Trump presidency, the Biden White House could be forgiven for being more preoccupied by the spectre of Jimmy Carter and the baleful images of his last year in office.

Carter was the last Democratic president to serve only a first term, brought low by the searing drama of the Tehran embassy siege, when Iranian revolutionaries had overrun the US diplomatic compound and held 52 American personnel captive for more than a year, heaping international humiliation on a military superpower when the cold war was still at its height.

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Climate action must respond to extreme weather driving health crisis, says WHO

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Melting ice caps and rising sea levels are urgent but people care more about the floods, wildfires and droughts that are here now, New York summit hears

Floods, wildfires, drought and the onslaught of extreme weather are driving a global health crisis that must be put at the centre of climate action, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

“The climate crisis is a health crisis; it drives extreme weather and is taking lives around the world,” Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the WHO, said. “Melting ice caps and rising sea levels are, of course, crucial issues, but for most people they are distant threats in both time and place. The threats of our changing climate are right here and right now.”

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Authorities locate debris of F-35 fighter jet that crashed in South Carolina

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Recovery team worked to secure the debris field of a Marine Corps F-35 fighter jet after pilot ejected and parachuted to safety

Authorities found a debris field Monday from a Marine Corps F-35 stealth fighter jet that crashed in South Carolina after the pilot ejected and parachuted to safety.

The debris field was located in rural Williamsburg county, according to the Marine Corps’ Joint Base Charleston. The field is about two hours north-east of the base, and residents were being asked to avoid the area while the recovery team worked to secure it.

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Former aide says Trump wrote to-do lists on classified documents – report

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Trump denies wrongdoing after ex-assistant reported he wrote tasks for her on back of sensitive materials during presidency

Donald Trump has denied wrongdoing after a report on Monday said that one of the former president’s long-time assistants told federal investigators he repeatedly wrote to-do lists for her on documents from the White House marked classified.

The aide, Molly Michael, told investigators that more than once she got requests or tasks from Trump written on the back of notecards that she later recognized as sensitive White House materials, ABC News reported on Monday, citing sources.

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US anti-child trafficking activist resigns after sexual harassment allegations

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Tim Ballard, whose work was dramatized in Sound of Freedom, has left the Operation Underground Railroad organization

The anti-child slavery activist Tim Ballard, whose work was dramatized in the movie Sound of Freedom, resigned from the Operation Underground Railroad (Our) organization he founded amid allegations he sexually harassed colleagues, it was reported on Monday.

Ballard, a former adviser to the Trump administration on child sexual trafficking, who is reported to be exploring a run for a US senate seat in Utah, resigned abruptly from the group in June for then-unknown reasons.

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Climate activists block Federal Reserve bank, calling for end to fossil fuel funding

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Action came as world leaders begin arriving in New York for the UN general assembly and after Sunday’s march to end fossil fuels

One day after the largest climate march since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, hundreds of climate activists blockaded the Federal Reserve Bank in New York to call for an end to funding for coal, oil and gas, with police making scores of arrests.

“Fossil fuel companies … wouldn’t be able to operate without money, and that money is coming primarily from Wall Street,” Alicé Nascimento, environmental campaigns director at New York Communities for Change, said hours before she was arrested.

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Western leaders defend slow progress to end global inequality as UN summit starts

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Leaders insisted war in Ukraine had not distracted them from sustainable development goals

Western leaders have gone on a charm offensive on the opening day of the UN general assembly as they were forced to defend their record in meeting the organisation’s sustainable development goals (SDGs), and insist that the war in Ukraine had not distracted them from this commitment to end global inequality.

At a special summit in New York amounting to a halfway stocktake on progress towards meeting the goals by the target date of 2030, all sides acknowledged there was little chance that the ambitious set of commitments set in 2015, including ending extreme poverty and safeguarding the environment, will be met on schedule.

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Israel’s prime minister urges Elon Musk to curb antisemitism on his platform, X

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Benjamin Netanyahu told the billionaire owner to clamp down on the hate on the site formerly known as Twitter

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, urged Elon Musk to address the proliferation of antisemitism on the billionaire’s social media platform X.

In an in-person meeting in California on Monday, Netanyahu said he hoped Musk would find ways within the confines of the first amendment to clamp down on antisemitism and other forms of hatred on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

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Freed American decries Iran’s ‘vile path to profit’ of holding foreigners hostage

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Siamak Namazi was held in Iran’s notorious Evin prison for nearly eight years before the $6bn prisoner swap on Monday

An American citizen freed in a complex exchange deal after being imprisoned for nearly eight years in Iran has urged the Biden administration to launch a “gamechanging global endeavour” to end the Islamic regime’s longstanding practice of holding foreign nationals hostage.

Siamak Namazi, 51, was one of five US citizens released on Monday under the terms of an agreement that saw five Iranians facing charges in the United States granted clemency and Iran being given access to $6bn of previously frozen oil revenues.

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Five Americans head home in $6bn US-Iran prisoner swap deal

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Joe Biden announces return of detainees as US in turn frees five Iranians under controversial agreement

The US and Iran have freed five detainees each in a controversial prisoner swap involving the unfreezing by the Biden administration of $6bn (£4.8bn) of Iranian oil money.

In an elaborate and delicate diplomatic deal, months in the making, the five Americans – some held for nearly a decade – were taken from hotels in Tehran to a plane that flew to Qatar, before heading back to Washington.

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US-Iran prisoner swap: the detainees freed in exchange agreement

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US and Iran agree to free five people each under deal also involving transfer of $6bn in unfrozen Iranian assets

The US and Iran have freed five detainees each under an exchange agreement that also involves the transfer of $6bn (£4.8bn) in unfrozen Iranian assets from South Korea.

The following are the US citizens who were previously imprisoned in Iran:

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Iran prisoner release deal may signal new direction in western diplomacy

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Joe Biden is taking risks with detainee swap, but US can now test the waters with Tehran on its nuclear programme

Soon after her release, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe remarked that freedom for a former Iranian political prisoner is never complete since those freed always recall those left behind.

But when five Americans released from Iranian captivity touch down in Qatar on their way back to their families, the mood will be simple, joyous and emotional. By contrast, the drawn out diplomacy that has led to this moment has been the polar opposite – complex, fraught and calculating.

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US and Iran expected to complete $6bn prisoner swap deal

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Conservationist Morad Tahbaz among prisoners to be swapped in deal involving unfreezing of Iranian oil money

The US and Iran are expected to pull off a controversial prisoner swap on Monday involving the unfreezing by the Biden administration of $6bn (£4.8bn) of Iranian oil money held in South Korea since 2018.

Tehran and Washington are due to swap five prisoners each, including the conservationist Morad Tahbaz, a British-American citizen.

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Congressional Biden ally dismisses Republicans’ impeachment strategy

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Ro Khanna of California threw cold water on House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s capitulation to the hard right over government funding

One of Joe Biden’s key congressional allies has rejected the notion that Republicans can bait the president’s fellow Democrats into embracing an impeachment inquiry as an opportunity for him to be cleared over questions about his son’s business affairs.

“What the American people want is for us to fund government and solve their issues,” the California congressman Ro Khanna said on Fox News Sunday, referring to how some hard-right Republicans have made a Biden impeachment inquiry a condition for them to support new funding that would avoid at least a partial federal government shutdown after 30 September.

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US military asks for help to find missing F-35 fighter jet after ‘mishap’ sees pilot eject

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Search for F-35B Lightning II fighter jet focused on two lakes after Marine Corps pilot ejected over North Charleston for unknown reason

US military officials have appealed to the public for help to find a fighter jet after losing track of it somewhere over South Carolina when the pilot ejected.

A Marine Corps pilot safely escaped the F-35B Lightning II jet over North Charleston on Sunday afternoon after a “mishap”, military officials said, and the search for his missing aircraft was now focused on two lakes north of North Charleston.

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‘Forever chemical’ exposure linked to higher cancer odds in women

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New research finds evidence that exposure to PFAS and phenols increases odds of certain ‘hormonally driven’ cancers for women

Women exposed to several widely used chemicals appear to face increased odds for ovarian and other certain types of cancers, including a doubling of odds for melanoma, according to new research funded by the US government.

Using data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a team of academic researchers found evidence that women diagnosed with some “hormonally driven” cancers had exposures to certain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are used in thousands of household and industrial products, including in stain- and heat-resistant items.

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Billy Miller, star of The Young and the Restless and General Hospital, dies aged 43

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Actor’s manager says the Daytime Emmy-winning star ‘was struggling with manic depression’ when he died in Austin, Texas

Billy Miller, a Daytime Emmy-winning actor best known for his roles on US soaps The Young and the Restless and General Hospital, has died aged 43.

In a statement to Variety, his manager, Marnie Sparer, said Miller “was struggling with manic depression when he died”.

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Ex-officer who left woman in car to be hit by train in Colorado given probation

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Jordan Steinke to serve 30 months’ probation for 2022 incident in which she handcuffed and placed woman in car parked on train tracks

A former Colorado police officer who put a handcuffed woman in a parked police vehicle that was hit by a freight train, inflicting serious injuries to the woman, has avoided a jail sentence and must serve 30 months on supervised probation.

Jordan Steinke, 29, was sentenced on Friday by Weld county district court judge Timothy Kerns, who found her guilty of reckless endangerment and assault for the 16 September 2022 crash near Platteville. Kerns acquitted the former Fort Lupton police officer of criminal attempt to commit manslaughter after her bench trial in July.

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