Family says Lauren Brooke Robinson, who reportedly contracted fungal meningitis, began to feel ill months after February surgery
A Texas woman has died after contracting fungal meningitis in an outbreak that has been linked to a cosmetic procedure performed in Mexico.
Lauren Brooke Robinson, 29, died on Wednesday from a fungal meningitis infection after receiving cosmetic surgery in Mexico, the local TV news station KBMT reported.
Continue reading...Dupont, Chemours and Corteva agree deal and 3M also reportedly considering $10bn settlement to avoid trial due to start on Monday
DuPont and two related companies said they would pay close to $1.2bn to settle liability claims brought by public water systems serving the vast majority of the US population on Friday, just days before the start of a bellwether trial in South Carolina over PFAS contamination.
PFAS maker 3M was reportedly also considering a settlement that would keep the company from having to face allegations that it was responsible for knowingly contaminating drinking water supplies around the United States.
Continue reading...Lakshmi announced on Twitter that she will be leaving the hit cooking show ahead of its 21st season
The longtime host and producer Padma Lakshmi has announced that she will be exiting the Top Chef kitchen ahead of the hit cooking show’s 21st season.
Lakshmi announced the news on Twitter and Instagram on Friday, saying that she had made the decision “after much soul searching”.
Continue reading...Flies chilled to sub-zero temperatures amputate one or more of their six limbs to protect their internal organs
Flightless snow flies in the US and Canada can amputate their legs to survive as they begin to freeze, researchers have discovered.
Lab experiments in which the flies were chilled gradually to sub-zero temperatures revealed they can detach one or more of their six legs, an apparent “last-ditch tactic” to protect their internal organs from the advancing cold.
Continue reading...Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian-Chilean businessman, conspired with Colombian mercenaries, to kill Jovenel Moïse in 2021
A mastermind of the assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse two years ago has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a federal court judge in Florida.
Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian-Chilean businessman, conspired with a group of Colombian mercenaries to murder Moïse at his home in Port-au-Prince on 7 July 2021. Prosecutors at his sentencing hearing in Miami said Jaar obtained the weapons used in the “commando-style” attack that killed Moïse, 53, and seriously injured his wife.
Continue reading...‘We averted an economic crisis and economic collapse,’ says president in address to the nation about deal, but will not sign bill before Saturday
Here’s more on how the debt ceiling crisis will impact the US’s credit rating, from the Guardian’s Joan E Greve.
The US is not yet out of the woods on a potential credit downgrade, even though Joe Biden is scheduled to sign the debt ceiling bill tonight to avert a federal default.
Continue reading...Jon Waldman says attacks have weighed on his conscience and that Atlanta shooting earlier this month was ‘final straw’
A Georgia gun shop owner said he is closing his store in the wake of several mass shootings targeting young children, as the country reels from recent attacks and an escalating rate of killings.
Jon Waldman, a gun shop owner in Duluth, Georgia, said that he had already closed his store and will have the gun inventory cleared out by 15 June, NBC News reported.
Continue reading...Colonel clarifies comments about ‘rogue AI drone’ that supposedly killed its operator
A US air force colonel “misspoke” when he said at a Royal Aeronautical Society conference last month that a drone killed its operator in a simulated test because the pilot was attempting to override its mission, according to the society.
The confusion had started with the circulation of a blogpost from the society, in which it described a presentation by Col Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, the chief of AI test and operations with the US air force and an experimental fighter test pilot, at the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit in London in May.
Continue reading...Action set to slow population growth for one of the most rapidly expanding areas of the US amid ‘megadrought’
The state of Arizona has restricted future home-building in the Phoenix area due to a lack of groundwater, based on projections showing that wells will run dry under existing conditions.
The action by the Arizona department of water resources on Thursday is set to slow population growth for the Phoenix region, the state capital, home to 4.6 million people and one of the most rapidly expanding areas of the United States.
Continue reading...Change is part of broad Department of Defense initiative, which includes renaming numerous installations
Fort Bragg shed its Confederate namesake on Friday to become Fort Liberty, in a ceremony some veterans said was a small but important step in making the US Army more welcoming to current and prospective Black service members.
The change was part of a broad Department of Defense initiative, motivated by the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis that sparked a national reckoning on police brutality and enduring systemic racism in American society.
Continue reading...Compromise package to suspend debt ceiling passed US Senate late on Thursday with 63 votes to 36
The bipartisan bill to solve the US debt ceiling crisis just days before a catastrophic and unprecedented default was on its way to Joe Biden’s desk on Friday as the US president prepared to address the nation and hailed “a big win for our economy and the American people”.
The compromise package negotiated between Biden and the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, passed the US Senate late on Thursday.
Continue reading...40,000 sq ft manor overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Malibu is thought to be California’s most expensive home ever
With its steep green cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Malibu is a top contender in America’s ultra-luxury real estate market. Its rise in the rankings of the favorite spots of the super-rich was solidified again in past weeks, with reports that Beyoncé and Jay-Z purchased a 40,000 sq ft oceanfront mansion in the coastal enclave.
TMZ first reported that the star couple had snapped up a modernist mansion designed by the celebrity Japanese architect Tadao Ando. With a sale tag of $200m, the acquisition appears to break the record for the most expensive home in California.
Continue reading...From Sweden to the US, the handling of the pandemic has been questioned. In some cases criminal proceedings are under way
Britain’s public Covid-19 inquiry, led by the retired judge Heather Hallett, is far from the first independent commission in the world to begin examining a country’s experience confronting the pandemic.
Their formats, mandates – and their progress – vary widely according to systems and traditions, but their task is essentially the same: to assess preparedness, make a record of decision-making, review government responses and learn lessons for the future.
Continue reading...US president took a tumble at the end of a ceremony honoring air force graduates in Colorado; White House vows to use veto
Supreme court justices on Thursday took aim at pharmacies who overcharge the government for prescription drugs, their unanimous ruling reopening a pathway for legal action by individuals seeking to protect taxpayers’ money.
The case involves “whistleblowers” ostensibly acting for the government, whom a lower court said could not sue pharmacies claiming their own “objectively reasonable” reading of the law allowed them to overbill federal health programs including Medicare and Medicaid.
Continue reading...‘He’s fine,’ says White House after president, 80, loses his footing handing out diplomas at commencement in Colorado
Joe Biden tripped and fell after handing out the last diploma at a graduation ceremony at the US Air Force Academy on Thursday.
He was quickly helped up and walked back to his seat unassisted.
Continue reading...Proposed bill would require ‘online platforms’ to pay a fee to state news providers whose work appears on their services
Meta is threatening to remove news content from its platforms in its home state of California if the state government moves forward with legislation that would force tech companies to pay publishers.
The proposed bill would require “online platforms” like Google and Meta to pay a “journalism usage fee” to California news providers whose work appears on their services.
Continue reading...Quanishia ‘Peach’ Berry was trapped for several hours before rescuers found her in collapsed apartment building
A woman was rescued from a six-story building in Davenport, Iowa, which collapsed last weekend – but only after having a leg removed.
The 116-year-old building which housed 53 tenants partly collapsed in downtown Davenport on Sunday.
Continue reading...Victims of con invested thousands of dollars in fake bills plastered with Trump’s face they believed would make them rich
Websites launched by companies selling “Trump Bucks” to some of the former president’s most ardent supporters have been taken down.
NBC reported the closures, after its investigation found several Colorado-based companies were behind the scam that promised investors they would get rich if the disgraced former president is re-elected in 2024.
Continue reading...The world’s richest person lapsed into an unusual silence on social media during his trip to the electric carmaker’s second largest market
Followers of Elon Musk didn’t know what to expect from his trip to China. Would he speak about Tesla, a company with a large market and manufacturing footprint there? Or SpaceX, with its symbiotic relationship with the American state? Or even Twitter, the social network he bought because “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy”?
The one thing no one expected: silence.
Continue reading...Morris Wortman, 72, was passenger in hand-built, experimental plane that went down in New York state on Sunday, killing pilot too
A New York fertility doctor who was accused of using his own sperm to impregnate several patients died when the hand-built airplane he was in fell apart mid-flight and crashed, authorities said.
Dr Morris Wortman, 72, of Rochester, was a passenger in the experimental aircraft that went down on Sunday in a pasture in Orleans county. The pilot, Earl Luce Jr, of Brockport, also was killed, the county sheriff said.
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