Category Archives: US News

Bed Bath & Beyond help: home goods retailer files for bankruptcy protection

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Company which shot to popularity in the 1990s has seen demand drop off as a strategy to sell more store-branded products flopped

Bed Bath & Beyond filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday, after failing to secure funds to stay afloat, and began a liquidation sale.

The home goods retailer, which shot to popularity in the 1990s as a go-to for couples making wedding registries and planning babies, has seen demand drop off as a strategy to sell more store-branded products flopped.

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Western and other nations escalate plans to evacuate diplomats from Sudan

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Death toll passes 420, including 264 civilians, and more than 3,700 wounded as ceasefires fail to hold

Western and other nations have intensified increasingly desperate efforts to evacuate diplomats and their dependents from Khartoum, as battles raged in the centre of the Sudanese capital and in its twin city of Omdurman.

With a series of ceasefires failing to hold, the death toll has now passed 420, including 264 civilians, and more than 3,700 have been wounded, according to local and international NGOs. However, most analysts believe the true total of fatalities and injuries in more than nine days of fighting is much higher.

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Mike Pence will enter presidential race ‘well before late June’ – if he does at all

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Former vice-president, adrift of Trump and DeSantis in polls, makes less-than-bold presidential prediction to CBS

Mike Pence has not decided whether to enter the Republican presidential primary but if he does he will enter “well before late June”.

The former congressman, Indiana governor and vice-president to Donald Trump has been moving towards a run for months, releasing a memoir, visiting early voting states and establishing a political staff.

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‘The dragon’s head started to glow’: Disneyland fire sends crowds running

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Spectacular conflagration prompts evacuation of Tom Sawyer Island at California resort but no injuries reported

A 45ft-tall Disneyland dragon caught fire late on Saturday during a show in Anaheim, California, causing those in attendance to flee, local media and officials said. No injuries or deaths were reported.

“The dragon’s head started to glow, and I see fire and kind of smoke coming out,” Elaine Gilmer, who was at the event, told ABC News.

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North Carolina: Mark Robinson attracts scrutiny as extremist in Republican race

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Lieutenant governor has achieved national notoriety over views on LGBTQ+ rights, guns, abortion and more

The Republican lieutenant governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, formally entered the race for governor at a rally on Saturday.

The sharp-spoken social conservative, who has made controversial remarks about LGBTQ+ rights, guns and abortion, said North Carolina needed a leader like him who can relate to the challenges and desires of working people.

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Rescued sea lion known for roaming San Diego dies, SeaWorld announces

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Tributes pour in for Freeway, who was named after his rescue from a busy freeway last year

Freeway, the beloved Californian rescue sea lion that would roam around San Diego, has died, SeaWorld San Diego has announced.

“It is with heavy hearts that we share ‘Freeway’, the rescued sea lion, passed away yesterday – surrounded with love from his devoted care and rescue teams. His adventurous spirit won the hearts of all San Diegans and he will be remembered for that and so much more,” the park said in a Facebook post on Friday.

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Trans woman starring in award-winning documentary fatally shot in Atlanta

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Rasheeda Williams, who performed as Koko Da Doll, killed in third fatal shooting of trans woman in the city this year

Rasheeda Williams, an Atlanta-based transgender woman who features in a forthcoming documentary that highlights the stories of four Black transgender sex workers in New York City and Georgia, was fatally shot in this week, the film’s publicist said on Friday.

Williams, 35, who performed under the name Koko Da Doll, was killed on Tuesday evening at a shopping center in the south-west of the city. It was the third fatal shooting of a transgender woman in the city since the beginning of the year, Atlanta police said in a statement.

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Democratic states stockpile abortion pills as legal fight for access looms

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US supreme court has preserved access to mifepristone for now, but blue states announce plans to safeguard abortion rights

Despite a reprieve by the US supreme court, a growing number of Democratic states are stockpiling abortion pills as the legal fight for access to the abortion drug mifepristone is set to continue.

On Friday, the supreme court decided to temporarily block a lower court ruling that would have significantly restricted the availability of mifepristone, an FDA-approved abortion medication.

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JP Morgan execs reportedly maintained contact with Epstein after dropping him as client

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Bank’s links to sex offender financier deeper than previously known, as it faces lawsuit brought by US Virgin Islands

Senior executives with the global banking giant JP Morgan maintained contact with disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for years after dropping him as a client in 2013, six years after he was charged with solicitation of a minor, according to a new report.

The allegation, reported in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, comes as JP Morgan, the world’s largest bank by assets, is being sued by an unidentified Epstein accuser and the US Virgin Islands – where Epstein owned a private island – for benefiting from human trafficking by ignoring internal red flags about his behavior.

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No goodbye for Toodles after poodle revived with Narcan following overdose

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Emergency veterinarians in Philadelphia save dog’s life after suspected accidental drug overdose

A poodle in Pennsylvania called Toodles was successfully revived with Narcan after an apparent accidental drug overdose, local animal welfare experts said.

The Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said they received a call last week from Blue Pearl Emergency Animal Hospital in Philadelphia saying a dog was brought to them showing symptoms of an overdose.

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‘Appalling’ Earth Day greenwashing must not detract from message, says protest founder

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Denis Hayes, who coordinated the first event in 1970, denounces fossil fuel companies that use the event to get positive publicity

Corporate greenwashing should not undermine the message behind Earth Day and has nothing to do with its original aims, one of the founders of the annual environmental event has warned.

Denis Hayes, the American environmental activist who coordinated the first Earth Day in 1970, denounced the “appalling” environmental messaging by oil, gas and other extractive companies and said he hoped it did not distract attention from the threats posed by the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, which he compared to the threat of nuclear conflict during the cold war.

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‘Our credibility must be safeguarded’: Cyprus in turmoil after Russia sanctions

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Island shuts 10,000 Russian bank accounts as US and UK put Cypriot lawyers and accountants under sanctions for enabling oligarchs including Roman Abramovich

Back-to-back meetings, an air of discernible panic, policymakers engaged in frantic damage limitation and Cyprus once again in the eye of a Russia-related storm. It’s been an unusually fraught fortnight for the Mediterranean island’s newly installed president, arduous in ways that Nikos Christodoulides might never have imagined when he assumed office on 1 March.

First came the news that 13 Cypriot entities and individuals had been placed on Anglo-American sanctions lists for enabling Russian oligarchs. The measures were aimed at dismantling the financial networks of Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov, both close allies of Vladimir Putin. Overnight, bank accounts and other assets belonging to their alleged “financial fixers” were frozen.

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Fake accounts, chaos and few sign-ups: the first day of Twitter Blue was messy

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Elon Musk’s attempt to make the social media site profitable seemed to flop as the verification check lost all meaning

Friday marked the first full day Twitter’s new policies for verified accounts were applied – and the results were not pretty.

Twenty-four hours after blue checkmarks began to disappear from formerly verified Twitter accounts, chaos reigned on the website, with impersonation and false information running rampant and few people signing up for the service the changes were meant to promote.

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Couple help to save a girl and her father from drowning: ‘we’re not heroes’

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Samantha Conover and her companions were on a boat and took action to locate a man and his teen whose jet ski had sunk

A woman, her fiancé and her friends were heading back from dinner on a boat last weekend when they ended up helping save the lives of a father and daughter whose personal watercraft had sunk near Tampa, Florida.

The Tampa news channel WFTS hailed Samantha Conover and her companions as heroes after they helped a local sheriff’s office deputy search for the missing man and girl and pull them out of the water, but the group has resisted the label.

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Montevideo Maru: wreck of ship sunk in Australia’s worst maritime disaster found after 80 years

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About 1,060 WWII prisoners died when the ship, which has now been found in the South China Sea, was sunk by an American missile in 1942

The wreck of a ship caught up in Australia’s worst ever maritime disaster has been found 4,000 metres under the sea, 80 years after it was torpedoed by an American submarine.

The Montevideo Maru, discovered off the coast of the Philippines, sank with about 980 Australian troops and civilians on board – almost twice as many Australians killed than during the Vietnam war.

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Suspect in shooting of six-year-old over stray basketball arrested in Florida

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Robert Singletary will not resist being transferred back to home state of North Carolina to face four attempted murder charges

The North Carolina man who is accused of shooting a six-year-old girl along with her parents after a basketball with which the child was playing rolled into his yard is not resisting being transferred to his home state after being arrested in Florida.

After his arrest on Thursday in Tampa, Florida, 24-year-old Robert Louis Singletary made a court appearance on Friday during which he was asked whether he would sign the extradition waiver that would allow officials to transport him back to North Carolina, where the shooting occurred two days earlier.

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US judge who ruled in favor of church in key abuse case donated to archdiocese

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Greg Guidry gave the New Orleans church thousands of dollars and now refuses to step down from a case involving 500 victims

A federal judge donated tens of thousands of dollars to New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archdiocese and consistently ruled in favor of the church amid a contentious bankruptcy involving nearly 500 clergy sex abuse victims, an Associated Press investigation has found, but the judge won’t step down from the case.

Confronted with AP’s findings, which had not been previously reported, US district judge Greg Guidry abruptly convened attorneys on a call last week to tell them his charitable giving “has been brought to my attention” and he would consider recusal from the high-profile bankruptcy he oversees in an appellate role.

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New Lyft CEO David Risher announces plans to lay off hundreds of workers

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Employees were informed via email that a ‘significant’ number would lose their jobs to cut costs and bring fares in line with Uber

The ride-hailing service Lyft is preparing to lay off hundreds of employees just days after its new CEO, David Risher, began steering the company with an eye toward driving down costs to help bring its fares more in line with its biggest rival, Uber.

Risher, a former Amazon executive, informed Lyft’s workforce of more than 4,000 employees in an email posted online on Friday that a “significant” number of them will lose their jobs. The message came at the end of his first week as Lyft’s CEO.

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Belgium crushes 2,000 cans of Miller High Life over ‘champagne of beers’ slogan

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Comité Champagne asks for destruction of shipment on grounds Miller High Life’s motto infringes champagne’s protected origin

The guardians of champagne will let no one take the name of the bubbly beverage in vain, not even a US beer behemoth.

For years, Miller High Life has used the “Champagne of Beers” slogan. This week, it became clear that for some the name has became impossible to swallow.

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US supreme court expected to rule on abortion pill access lawsuit – live

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Justices consider appeal by White House following lower court order reimposing restrictions on drug mifepristone

Speaking of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, two polls were released today concerning the men that tell us … not much new.

The first, from the Wall Street Journal, confirms that Trump remains the most popular figure among contenders for the GOP’s presidential nomination in 2024. The WSJ was one of the few surveys that found Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who has not entered the race yet but is widely expected to, with an edge over Trump in a survey released last December. That trend has now reversed: in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, Trump gets 51% support, and DeSantis 38%. The former president also beats DeSantis even in a poll that includes other potential Republican candidates – none of whom crack double-digit support.

The possible charges are two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion related to a business expense for one year of taxes, and the gun charge, also a potential felony.

Two senior law enforcement sources told NBC News about “growing frustration” inside the FBI because investigators finished the bulk of their work on the case about a year ago. A senior law enforcement source said the IRS finished its investigation more than a year ago.

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