Category Archives: US News

Foo Fighters announce Josh Freese as new drummer after Taylor Hawkins’ death

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Freese, who previously played at tribute concerts for Hawkins, was announced as the new drummer in a starry, tongue-in-cheek livestream

Foo Fighters have unveiled their new drummer after the death of their former percussionist Taylor Hawkins: the veteran session musician Josh Freese.

Freese has accrued a long and star-studded list of credits over his three-decade career. The 50-year-old drummer has been a member of Devo since 1996 and the Vandals since 1989. He has also toured with the Offspring, Guns N’ Roses, Danny Elfman, Weezer, Sting, Paramore, Nine Inch Nails and 100 Gecs.

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US and Papua New Guinea sign pact amid Pacific militarisation concerns

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Concerns security deal could leave Papua New Guinea stuck between increasingly hostile US and China

The US has signed a security pact with Papua New Guinea despite concerns within the country about increasing militarisation as Washington competes with Beijing for influence in the Pacific.

The state department said the new agreement would provide $45m (£36m) to help improve security cooperation, including protective equipment for the Papua New Guinea defence force, plus help in mitigating the effects of the climate crisis, transnational crime and HIV/Aids.

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US debt ceiling talks ‘productive’ as Biden and McCarthy to meet 10 days from deadline

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A Sunday night phone call between the president and Republican House speaker was reported to have struck a more positive tone

US president Joe Biden and House Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy have held a “productive” phone call on the continued impasse over the debt ceiling and promised to meet on Monday after Biden returned to Washington.

McCarthy, speaking to reporters after the call, said there were positive discussions on solving the crisis and that staff-level talks were set to resume later on Sunday.

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Minneapolis to pay $700,000 to family of man killed by police

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Chiasher Vue’s kids wanted to calm their mentally ill father, but police detained them in vehicle and killed him as he pointed a gun

The city of Minneapolis has agreed to a $700,000 settlement with family members who were locked inside two squad cars when police killed their father after officers refused their offers to try and help calm him down.

A federal judge ruled that officers were justified in shooting 52-year-old Chiasher Vue after he pointed a rifle at them on 15 December 2019. The settlement will resolve a lawsuit his family filed arguing that police had illegally and unconstitutionally detained them that night.

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FBI investigating shooting death of Native man by border patrol in Arizona

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Raymond Mattia of the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona was shot by agents after calling them for assistance

The FBI and Tohono O’odham Nation police are investigating the fatal shooting of a tribal member by US border patrol agents in southern Arizona.

Federal Customs and Border Protection officials said agents from the Ajo border patrol station “were involved” in a fatal shooting on the Tohono O’odham reservation near Ajo at about 10pm on Thursday. They haven’t released any additional information other than to say the encounter was under review by Customs and Border Protection’s office of professional responsibility, which investigates fatal shootings carried out by agents, among other cases.

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Jeffrey Epstein allegedly tried to extort Bill Gates over extramarital affair

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Convicted sexual offender reportedly threatened to expose Gates’s relationship with Russian bridge player Mila Antonova

The convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein appeared to threaten Bill Gates and tried to blackmail the multi-billionaire over his extramarital affair with a Russian bridge player, according to a new report published by the Wall Street Journal.

Speaking to the Journal, sources familiar with the matter said that after Epstein found out about the Microsoft co-founder’s affair with Russian bridge player Mila Antonova, he threatened Gates into reimbursing him for tuition costs that Epstein had initially covered for Antonova to attend software coding school.

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Trans girl denied graduation ceremony after US school’s dress-code ruling

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ACLU says verdict of federal judge not to reverse decision in Gulfport, Mississippi is ‘as disappointing as it is absurd’

A transgender girl in Mississippi did not participate in her high school graduation ceremony Saturday because school officials told her to dress like a boy and a federal judge did not block the officials’ decision, an attorney for the girl’s family said.

Linda Morris, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project, said the ruling handed down late Friday by federal judge Taylor McNeel in the Mississippi city of Gulfport “is as disappointing as it is absurd”.

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Zelenskiy secures fresh US military aid at G7 as Russia hails ‘liberation’ of Bakhmut

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Joe Biden says US doing everything possible to strengthen Ukraine’s defences in war with Russia

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has secured fresh military aid from the US during a day of frantic diplomatic activity at the G7 summit, as Russia claimed a battlefield victory in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

Joe Biden announced military assistance worth up to $375m (£300m) to Kyiv, telling Zelenskiy the US was doing everything possible to strengthen Ukraine’s defences in its war with Russia.

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New York Christian university fires two staff for including pronouns in emails – reports

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Former employees at Houghton University say administrators claimed pronouns in signatures violated new school policy

A New York Christian university terminated two employees for putting pronouns in their respective email signatures, these former workers allege, according to reports.

Raegan Zelaya and Shua Wilmot, who were residence hall directors at Houghton University, said that administrators told them to take the words “she/her” and “he/him” off of their email signatures.

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US rapper Post Malone helps Scottish musician fund downpayment for house

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Local musician Gregor Hunter Coleman was playing in Glasgow pub when star made ‘life-changing’ offer

The US rapper Post Malone helped a Scottish musician fund the downpayment for his first home, according to reports.

The Sunflower crooner’s viral, widely reported act of kindness unfolded at a pub in Glasgow, Scotland, named Wunderbar last week. Post Malone walked into the bar while Gregor Hunter Coleman, an area musician, was playing, BBC Scotland reported.

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Australia, India, Japan and US take thinly veiled swipe at China

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Beijing clearly target of joint statement by Quad group calling for ‘stability in Indo-Pacific maritime domain’

The leaders of the Quad group – Australia, India, Japan and the United States – delivered a thinly veiled swipe at Beijing’s behaviour on Saturday at a summit in Hiroshima.

The US president, Joe Biden, and his three partners in the group did not mention China by name but the communist superpower was clearly the target of language in a joint statement calling for “peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific maritime domain”.

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Viral story of migrants displacing unhoused veterans from hotels turns out to be false

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Leader of non-profit organization accused of fabricating stories about veterans being kicked out of hotels in upstate New York

Recent reports about how migrants displaced unhoused veterans from upstate New York hotels have turned out to be false after circulating widely among rightwing media outlets.

In an odd saga involving apparently altered receipts and paid unhoused actors, the chief executive of Yerik Israel Toney Foundation (YIT) – a non-profit organization focused on housing military veterans – has been accused of fabricating stories about unhoused veterans getting kicked out of hotels to make space for migrants.

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Providing Ukraine with F-16 jets a ‘colossal risk’ for west, Russia says

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Warning comes after Joe Biden said US would back joint effort to train Ukrainian pilots to fly fighter jets

Providing Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets would be a “colossal risk” for western nations, a senior Russian minister has warned, as Washington and London reasserted their commitment to equipping the embattled nation with the military hardware it needs.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has been pushing western allies to supply the jets for months, with Downing Street saying on Saturday that the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, had again discussed the matter with him at the G7 summit in Japan.

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Boy who saved sister by hitting would-be kidnapper with slingshot speaks: ‘I had to’

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Owen Burns, 13, says he grabbed the closest thing after he heard his eight-year-old sister’s screams in Alpena Township, Michigan

A Michigan boy who recently channeled his inner David and warded off his sister’s hulking, would-be kidnapper by shooting him with a slingshot has said he grabbed the unconventional weapon because he was “freaking out” at the unfolding danger and it was the closest thing.

“It just felt like I was scared, and I had … to do” something, 13-year-old Owen Burns told CNN on Friday. “Cause if I didn’t … she would’ve been taken away or … worse.”

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Family of teen shooter who killed three says he struggled with mental illness

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New Mexico 18-year-old killed three women and injured six others in mass shooting on Monday in Farmington

The family of an 18-year-old high school student who took three of more than a dozen guns to which he had access and killed three elderly women without provocation in New Mexico on Monday has claimed he was struggling with his mental health before the attack.

The shooter, who was armed with at least three guns and wore body armor before police killed him, “was fighting a battle of mental illness that he lost”, his family asserted on Friday in a statement, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

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Atlanta politicians face pressure to vote against giving $31m to ‘Cop City’

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City council to vote on giving taxpayer money to controversial project as state characterizes opposition as work of ‘terrorists’

Pressure is growing on Atlanta politicians to vote against giving $31m to a police and fire department training center known as “Cop City”, even as the state continues to characterize opposition to the project as the work of “terrorists”, and the city’s mayor doubles down on the notion it is needed for “public safety”.

Atlanta’s city council will soon vote on giving taxpayer money to the controversial scheme, which is months behind schedule due to protests. The Atlanta Police Foundation, the organization behind it, is also apparently coming up short in sought-after $60m in corporate funding.

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Mother of girl who died in US border patrol custody says agents ignored her

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Mabel Alvarez Benedicks says eight-year-old daughter ‘cried and begged for her life’ but did not receive hospital care for influenza

The mother of an eight-year-old girl who died in US border patrol custody said on Friday that agents repeatedly ignored pleas to hospitalize her medically fragile daughter as she felt pain in her bones, struggled to breathe and was unable to walk.

Agents said her daughter’s diagnosis of influenza did not require hospital care, Mabel Alvarez Benedicks said in an emotional phone interview. They knew the girl had a history of heart problems and sickle cell anemia.

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Joe Biden apologises to Anthony Albanese after cancelling Sydney Quad meeting at last minute

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US president and Australian prime minister launch joint initiative to accelerate transition to clean energy

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has met the US president, Joe Biden, on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Japan and signed an agreement to advance climate and clean energy action.

Albanese is holding a round of key talks at the G7 summit as some of the world’s most powerful leaders convene, with a rescheduled Quad meeting on the agenda.

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Debt ceiling talks briefly resume as US default deadline creeps closer

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Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary, has said that without action the US will cease to be able to pay its debts around 1 June

Negotiations for a deal to raise the US debt ceiling and thereby avoid a default with potentially catastrophic consequences for the world economy briefly resumed Friday before concluding with no progress cited by either side.

Republicans had returned to the bipartisan talks with the White House on Friday evening, hours after negotiations had come to an abrupt stop earlier in the day.

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FBI broke own rules in January 6 and BLM intelligence search, court finds

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Critics decry ‘egregious’ abuse after Fisa court shows repeated violations related to vast foreign intelligence database

FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when they searched a vast repository of foreign intelligence for information related to the January 6 insurrection and racial justice protests in 2020, according court order released Friday.

FBI officials said the thousands of violations, which also include improper searches of donors to a congressional campaign, predated a series of corrective measures that started in the summer of 2021 and continued last year. But the problems could nonetheless complicate FBI and justice department efforts to receive congressional reauthorization of a warrantless surveillance program that law enforcement officials say is needed to counter terrorism, espionage and international cybercrime.

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