Category Archives: US News

Outrage as Black teen shot after going to wrong address to pick up siblings

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Ralph Yarl, 16, in stable condition in Kansas City as lawyer says ‘It is inescapable not to acknowledge the racial dynamics at play’

The shooting of a Black teenager who went to the wrong house to pick up his younger twin brothers from a play date is under investigation by authorities in Missouri, amid growing outrage that the homeowner who wounded him was released by police.

Ralph Yarl, 16, was in a stable condition in hospital in Kansas City on Monday. Reports said he was shot at least twice on Thursday night, first through the front door of the house and a second time when he lay wounded on the ground.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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Pentagon leak suggests Russia honing disinformation drive – report

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Latest disclosure includes claims that social media platforms detect false accounts only 1% of the time

Russia has increased the effectiveness of its disinformation campaigning on social media and boasts that vast amounts of fake accounts are escaping detection, according to a report on leaked US intelligence documents.

The latest material disclosed on the Discord chat platform contains claims by Russian operators of false social media accounts that they are detected by social media platforms only 1% of the time. The Russian disinformation network is known as Fabrika, according to the leak.

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Republican donor pauses Ron DeSantis funding over abortion and book banning

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Thomas Peterffy says Florida governor ‘seems to have lost some momentum’ in undeclared bid for 2024 presidential nomination

A top Republican donor said he had paused plans to fund Ron DeSantis’s expected presidential run because of the Florida governor’s “stance on abortion and book banning”.

Thomas Peterffy, founder of Interactive Brokers, a digital trading platform, told the Financial Times: “I have put myself on hold. Because of his stance on abortion and book banning … myself, and a bunch of friends, are holding our powder dry.”

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Sudan violence escalates as rival factions reject ceasefire calls

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Neither side shows any willingness to heed appeals from US, UK, African Union and Arab states as death toll nears 200

Rival government factions in Sudan have rejected calls for a ceasefire and intensified their battle for control of the vast and strategically important country as diplomatic efforts to end the conflict gather momentum.

At least 185 people have been killed and more than 1,800 injured, UN envoy Volker Perthes said as clashes have spread since Saturday, when violence erupted between army units loyal to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s transitional governing Sovereign Council, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, who is deputy head of the council.

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Judge delays Dominion and Fox News trial amid reports of settlement talks

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Rupert Murdoch’s channel sued for knowingly or recklessly broadcasting outlandish lies about voting equipment after Trump lost election

The trial in the closely watched $1.6bn defamation lawsuit between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox will begin a day later than scheduled, the judge overseeing the case announced on Sunday evening, hours before opening arguments were set to begin on Monday and amid reports of settlement talks.

The trial was rescheduled to begin on Tuesday. Eric Davis, the Delaware superior court judge overseeing the case, did not say why the trial was being delayed. “The court has decided to continue the start of the trial, including jury selection, until Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 9am. I will make such an announcement tomorrow [Monday] at 9am in Courtroom 7E,” he said in a statement released through a court spokesperson.

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Democratic senators condemn federal judge’s ruling to block abortion drug

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Lawmakers from New York, Minnesota and Wisconsin decry the ruling, now on hold by supreme court until at least 19 April

Top Democratic senators across the US are pushing back after a federal judge in Texas decided to block the FDA-approved abortion drug mifepristone.

On Sunday, the New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand criticized as an “outrage” Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision, which is currently halted until at least Wednesday 19 April by the supreme court.

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Lindsey Graham calls fellow Republican ‘irresponsible’ for defending Pentagon leaker

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Conspiracy theorist and election denier Marjorie Taylor Greene says national guardsman Jack Teixeira has been treated unfairly

Senator Lindsey Graham condemned his fellow Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene as “terribly irresponsible” on Sunday, after the far-right congresswoman defended the air national guardsman charged with leaking Pentagon intelligence documents.

Speaking on ABC’s This Week show, Graham said the leaks had “done a lot of damage to our standing” and criticized “those who are trying to sugarcoat this on the right”.

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Four people killed and 28 injured in Alabama shooting at birthday party

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Most of the victims teenagers from shooting at dance studio during 16th birthday party in Dadeville

At least four people were killed, including a high school football player, in a shooting that erupted during a birthday party held inside a dance studio in the small town of Dadeville, Alabama, state police and local news media said.

More than 28 people were injured, some critically, during the shooting about 60 miles (100km) north-east of the state capital of Montgomery, authorities said. The shooting started shortly after 10.30pm on Saturday.

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2 million dimes worth $200,000 stolen from Philadelphia truck, police say

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Police searching for ‘10 or more males’ in black clothing and gray hoodies, as well as white Chrysler 300 and dark pickup truck

Approximately 2m dimes, or the equivalent of $200,000, were taken from a tractor trailer in a parking lot of the Philadelphia Mills shopping mall complex in northeast Philadelphia on Thursday morning.

According to police, the truck driver had picked up $750,000 worth of dimes from the US Mint in Philadelphia and then parked the truck in the mall parking lot on Wednesday evening. The driver had planned on transporting the dimes, which were organized into 15 pallets that contained $50,000 each, to Florida, CBS reports.

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China likely to rapidly achieve air superiority over Taiwan, US leaks say

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Documents among those shared by alleged leaker raise questions over island’s military readiness

China would probably establish air superiority very rapidly in any attack on Taiwan, according to leaked US intelligence assessments that raise disturbing questions about the self-ruled island’s military readiness.

The documents, part of a series allegedly leaked by the US air national guardsman Jack Teixeira, emerged as G7 foreign ministers met to discuss a common China strategy and Beijing briefly halted flights over part of the East China Sea on Sunday.

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‘Not losing hope’: jailed Russia reporter Evan Gershkovich writes to his parents

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Wall Street Journal reporter on espionage charges jokes about prison food in letter home

Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter imprisoned in Russia on espionage charges, has said in his first direct communication to his parents in the US that he is not “losing hope”, and joked in the letter about the quality of the prison food.

Gershkovich, 31, became the first American journalist to be detained in Russia on spying charges since the end of the cold war when he was detained in the city of Ekaterinburg, 1,100 miles (1,800km) east of Moscow, on 29 March.

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California’s ‘big melt’ has begun and could bring perilous flooding with it

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The snowpack contains enough water to fill downstream reservoirs ‘multiple times over’, which could mean a rapid runoff

Spring has offered California a welcome reprieve from the record rains and historic snowfall that hammered the state in recent weeks, but a new danger wrought by the warming weather looms large. The state’s enormous snowpack will soon begin to melt – and communities are bracing for waters to rise yet again. Trillions of gallons of water packed within the record level of snow blanketing the Sierra Nevada range are expected to rush into rivers and reservoirs as the weather heats up, heightening flood risks in areas already saturated by the state’s extremely wet winter.

The snowpack, which stands at 233% of the 1 April average, contains enough water to fill downstream reservoirs “multiple times over”, said climate scientist Daniel Swain in an online briefing this week. “That’s a big deal,” he added.

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US officials knew of more Chinese spy balloons, according to Pentagon leaks

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Documents allegedly leaked by Jack Teixeira show US knew of at least four balloons beyond one shot down in February

US officials were aware of up to four Chinese surveillance balloons, beyond one that flew over the continental US and was shot down in February, according to leaked top intelligence. One balloon flew over a US carrier strike group located in the Pacific Ocean, in an incident that was never reported.

The information comes from documents that were allegedly leaked by Massachusetts air national guard member Jack Teixeira that were first reported by the Washington Post.

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South Dakota governor says her two-year-old grandchild has several guns

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Kristi Noem tells audience at NRA forum toddler has a shotgun, a rifle and a pony

South Dakota’s governor told an audience of people that her two-year-old grandchild has several guns.

While speaking on Friday at a National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbying leadership forum in Indiana, the Republican governor Kristi Noem told audience members her toddler grandchild has multiple guns, reported Mediaite.

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Too many with access, too little vetting. Pentagon leaks were ‘a matter of time’

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Jack Teixeira’s arrest has exposed a system weakened by the legacy of 9/11 and caught off guard by an enemy that is increasingly within

Jack Teixeira, 21 years old, clean-shaven, with buzz-cut hair and proudly uniformed, is the face of America’s newest security threat, one it is struggling to resolve.

The formidable US counter-intelligence infrastructure is adept at finding spies and rooting out whistleblowers. Teixeira, charged on Friday on two counts of the Espionage Act, is neither spy nor whistleblower.

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Man found dead eaten by bed bugs in Atlanta jail, lawyer says

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Family of Lashawn Thompson call for criminal investigation after his death in custody in filthy jail cell

An Atlanta man died in a local jail after being eaten alive by bed bugs, alleges a lawyer representing the man’s family.

The family of Lashawn Thompson, 35, is calling for a criminal investigation into Thompson’s death and for the closure and replacement of a local jail after alleging that Thompson died in custody from bed bugs in a squalid jail cell.

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Mike Pompeo says he will not run for president in 2024 election

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Former secretary of state and Trump ally decides not to challenge ex-boss for the Republican nomination

Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said on Friday that he will not run for president in the 2024 election.

The devoted ally and defender of Donald Trump opted out of a contest that would have put him into competition with his former commander in chief.

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Joe Biden says he will announce 2024 presidential run ‘relatively soon’

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US president says Ireland trip ‘reinforced my sense of optimism about what can be done’

Joe Biden left Ireland in the early hours of Saturday vowing to run again for president, promising to formally announce his decision to run for a second presidential term “relatively soon”.

At the same time he spoke of his hope of an epoch of renewal in Northern Ireland, restating the “incredible” US investment opportunities that lay ahead if peace endures.

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‘They created this’: are Republicans willing to lose elections to retain their abortion stance?

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The right has, for decades, relied on abortion to rally their conservative base, but now their unified policy is flagging

Democrats have taken multiple actions in response to what they say is a “draconian” and “dangerous” decision by a federal judge in Texas threatening access to the most commonly used method of abortion in the US.

Several Democratic governors have begun to stockpile doses of the drugs used in medication abortions. Nearly every Democrat in Congress signed onto an amicus brief urging an appeals court to stay the decision, while some called on the Biden administration to simply “ignore” the ruling, should it be allowed to stand. A group of House Democrats introduced a bill that would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) final approval over drugs used in medication abortion.

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Pentagon leaks suspect wins praise from far-right US politicians and media

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Marjorie Taylor Greene calls Jack Teixeira ‘white, male, Christian and anti-war’ as Tucker Carlson says his sin was ‘telling the truth’

Washington lawmakers have written off Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old air national guardsman accused of being behind the worst US intelligence leak in a decade, as an “alleged criminal” after his arrest yesterday, but that hasn’t stopped him from winning praise from the political right.

“He revealed the crimes, therefore he’s the criminal. That’s how Washington works. Telling the truth is the only real sin,” declared the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson on Thursday evening in the opening monologue of his show, which is the most watched on cable television. “The news media are celebrating the capture of the kid who told Americans what’s actually happening in Ukraine. They are treating him like Osama bin Laden,” the late al-Qaida terrorist leader.

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