Homeowner, 84, already faces two felonies for shooting Black teen who knocked on wrong door to pick up siblings
A lawyer for the family of Ralph Yarl, the Black 16-year-old who was shot by a white man in Kansas City, Missouri, after ringing his doorbell by mistake, said the case should qualify as a hate crime.
“Ralph Yarl was shot because he was armed with nothing but other than his Black skin,” Lee Merritt told the Associated Press.
Continue reading...UN population officials say it is not possible to pinpoint a date because of uncertainty about data
India is expected to overtake China as the world’s most populous country with almost 3 million more people by the middle of this year, according to UN figures.
The State of World Population 2023 report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates India’s population will be 1.4286 billion by the end of June, compared with China’s 1.4257 billion.
Continue reading...American Lung Association’s study also found great disparity between coasts, with 10 of 11 most polluted counties in California
The climate crisis has upended progress on improving air quality, with one in three Americans currently living in areas with harmful levels of pollutants known to increase the risk of medical emergencies, pregnancy complications and premature death, new research reveals.
Almost 120 million people in the US are still exposed to unhealthy levels of soot and smog, according to the annual report by the American Lung Association (ALA), which found that people of color are almost four times more likely to live in the most polluted places than white Americans.
Continue reading...The news corporation will have to shell out $787.5m but, for them, it’s just ‘the cost of doing business’
The staggering $787.5m settlement between Fox and the voting equipment company Dominion marked the end of one of the most aggressive efforts to hold someone accountable for spreading misinformation after the 2020 election.
Dominion sued Fox for $1.6bn in damages for knowingly broadcasting false information about the company after the election. The money from the settlement, one of the largest libel payouts in media history, was just the icing on a cake Dominion had, in many ways, already won.
Continue reading...Cleo Nagbe speaks out after white man charged with Missouri’s equivalent for attempted murder for shooting Ralph Yarl
The mother of Ralph Yarl, a Black teenager who was shot by a white man after ringing the man’s doorbell, says that her son has been mentally replaying the shooting “over and over”.
Cleo Nagbe says that her son is still facing physical challenges from last week’s attack, when Andrew Lester, a white Kansas City resident, shot Yarl twice, once in the head and once in the arm, after the 16-year-old went to a mistaken address to pick up his siblings.
Continue reading...Admission reveals potentially major fracture in the group as prosecutors near the end of their investigation
A new legal filing has exposed a potentially major fracture among a group of so-called “fake electors” in Georgia, who sought to aid Donald Trump in overturning the 2020 election results in a scheme now under criminal investigation.
According to a court document filed on Tuesday, a group of people involved in the scheme recently told state prosecutors that another one of the fake electors committed crimes that they were not involved in.
Continue reading...Mixture of sedatives and gas used in spray cleaners incapacitated the rapper and caused the drowning
Singer and rapper Aaron Carter accidentally drowned in his bathtub due to sedatives he’d taken and gas used in spray cleaners he had inhaled, according to a coroner’s report release on Tuesday.
Carter was found submerged and dead at age 34 in the bathtub of his home in Lancaster, California, on 5 November, the autopsy report from the Los Angeles county medical examiner-coroner said.
Continue reading...Cabinet Office secretary, Oliver Dowden, to issue national alert and urge companies to boost cybersecurity
Russian hackers organised along the lines of the paramilitary Wagner group are seeking “to disrupt or destroy” parts of the UK’s critical national infrastructure, a cabinet minister will warn at a cyber conference in Belfast on Wednesday.
Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister, will issue a national alert to key businesses amid growing international concern that as Russia struggles in Ukraine, an under-pressure Kremlin is searching for new ways to threaten the west.
Continue reading...Residents demand resignations after sheriff and officials recorded discussing desire to murder journalists and lynch Black citizens
A sheriff and several officials of a rural Oklahoma county are under pressure to resign after a local newspaper recorded their racist and expletive-laden conversation about their desire to murder journalists and lynch Black citizens.
Dozens of residents of McCurtain county protested at the sheriff’s office in Idabel on Monday, echoing calls from the Oklahoma governor, Kevin Stitt, and the city’s mayor, Craig Young, for the officials to step down.
Continue reading...Deal would build closer economic ties as most western states push to isolate Moscow over Ukraine
India and Russia have entered “advanced negotiations” over a free trade agreement that aims to build closer economic ties as most western governments push to isolate Moscow over the war in Ukraine.
In a development likely to add to tensions in Washington, London and EU capitals, Russia and India’s trade ministers said on Monday the two countries were in talks to strike a free trade deal.
Continue reading...Kevin Monahan charged with second-degree murder of Kaylin Gillis after opening fire on car
A woman looking for a friend’s house in upstate New York was shot dead after the car she was riding in mistakenly went to the wrong address and was met with gunfire in the driveway, authorities have said.
Kaylin Gillis, 20, was travelling through the rural town of Hebron with three people on Saturday night when the group made a wrong turn on to the property.
Continue reading...Josiah Garcia reportedly told undercover agent he was an excellent shot and willing to torture people and cut off fingers or ears
Fake website RentAHitman.com has snagged another would-be killer-for-hire after a US soldier applied to be an assassin and accepted his first (fake) mission apparently believing it to be real.
Josiah Garcia, a Tennessee air national guardsman, was arrested after federal agents said he responded to an online ad through the parody website.
Continue reading...Thirteen-year-old was rescued and banned from North Carolina park for one year for attempted theft
A 13-year-old boy had to be freed from a claw machine after he climbed inside hoping to score a prize, according to an official at a North Carolina amusement park.
Carowinds officials were alerted just before 2pm on Sunday that the boy was inside the Cosmic XL Bonus Game, which contained plush prizes, according to Courtney C McGarry Weber, a spokesperson for the park south of Charlotte.
Continue reading...Secretary of state condemns apparent attack by fighters linked to paramilitary RSF after days of deadly clashes
A US diplomatic convoy came under fire in Sudan in an apparent attack by fighters associated with Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said, in an incident he described as “reckless” and “irresponsible”.
The incident on Monday prompted a direct warning from Blinken, who separately telephoned the RSF leader Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, and Sudan’s army chief, Gen Abdel Fatah al-Burhan, to tell them any danger posed to American diplomats was unacceptable.
Continue reading...Unique ecosystem on the brink of collapse due to climate crisis and mismanagement, says conservation group American Rivers
A 277-mile stretch of the Colorado River that snakes through the iconic Grand Canyon is America’s most endangered waterway, a new report has found.
The unique ecosystem and cultural heritage of the Grand Canyon is on the brink of collapse due to prolonged drought, rising temperatures and outdated river management, according to American Rivers, the conservation group which compiles the annual endangered list.
Continue reading...Earlier this year, hundreds of top secret Pentagon documents were posted on the social media platform Discord. Manisha Ganguly and Julian Borger report
The US authorities are investigating the leak of hundreds of secret US defence documents, some of which related to the war in Ukraine.
The Guardian’s investigations correspondent, Manisha Ganguly, tells Hannah Moore how these documents migrated between different websites before being picked up by the press. Julian Borger, the Guardian’s world affairs editor, explains what we learned from the leak and how the US authorities have responded.
Continue reading...After being humiliated by its outgoing board, the Florida governor has hit upon another idea to punish the company
Ron DeSantis has unveiled the latest act of retaliation against Disney for speaking out against his “don’t say gay” law: he’s threatening to build a new state prison next to the company’s central Florida theme parks.
The Republican governor dropped the suggestion at a hastily convened Monday lunchtime press conference, at which he laid out steps the state legislature would take to try to regain control over Florida’s largest private employer.
Continue reading...The station, in New York’s Chinatown, was allegedly run by Beijing’s ministry of public security to track Chinese dissidents
The FBI has arrested two men accused of running a covert station for China’s police force in New York, and using it as a base to track Chinese dissidents living in the US.
The station, in Manhattan’s Chinatown, was allegedly set up in February 2022 and operated by Beijing’s ministry of public security (MPS) as part of a campaign of transnational repression against Chinese pro-democracy activists and other political opponents around the world.
Continue reading...In his speech, Kevin McCarthy raised the specter of Joe Biden causing a debt default by refusing to negotiate.
Such an event would be unprecedented in US history, and could have catastrophic consequences for the global economy. Here’s more of McCarthy’s remarks:
Continue reading...Elon Musk says launch of most powerful rocket ever built called off due to ‘pressurisation’ issue
The largest and most powerful rocket ever built was readied and fuelled for its first test flight on Monday, but SpaceX cancelled the launch minutes before blasting off after discovering a “pressurisation” problem.
“A pressurant valve appears to be frozen, so unless it starts operating soon, no launch today,” the SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, said on Twitter. Minutes later, the launch was officially abandoned, with operators ending the countdown 40 seconds before lift-off.
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