Category Archives: US News

Storm-ravaged California scrambles as fresh atmospheric river rolls in

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Newest round of storms expected to produce torrential downpours and gale force winds along the northern coast

California is facing a new round of brutal storms that will bring torrential downpours and gale force winds in the north as the state scrambles to clean up and repair widespread damage amid a break in the weather.

The state has been ravaged by a relentless string of storms that have killed at least 17 people – a number the governor warned was likely to grow. The bout of extreme weather has closed highways, knocked out trees and infrastructure and cut power to thousands of people. More than half of California’s 58 counties have been declared disaster areas.

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Michael Flatley diagnosed with ‘aggressive’ form of cancer

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Riverdance star has undergone surgery and is in care of doctors, according to Instagram account

Michael Flatley, best known for his Riverdance show, has been diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of cancer.

A post on the Irish dancer and director’s Instagram account said: “Michael Flatley has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. He has undergone surgery and is in the care of an excellent team of doctors.”

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George Santos says he won’t resign as fellow Republicans call on him to quit

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Chair of Nassau county committee says Santos ran ‘a campaign of deceit, lies and fabrication’ to win third district

The Republican George Santos said on Wednesday he would not resign from Congress less than a week after being sworn in, despite calls to do so from the chairman of his district committee and a fellow New York representative, amid continuing scrutiny of Santos’s mostly made-up résumé and growing calls for campaign finance investigations.

In a tweet, Santos said: “I was elected to serve the people of the New York third district not the party and politicians, I remain committed to doing that and regret to hear that local officials refuse to work with my office to deliver results to keep our community safe and lower the cost of living.

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‘Cool’: nine-year-old finds rare, ancient shark tooth on Maryland beach

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Molly Sampson found an Otodus megalodon shark species tooth at a beach near her home in Maryland while hunting for fossils

For Christmas, nine-year-old Molly Sampson and her sister Natalie, 17, asked their parents for one thing: insulated waders, to “go shark’s-tooth hunting like professionals”, said Molly’s mother, Alicia Sampson.

When the waders arrived from Santa, Molly told the Guardian, she declared that she would be looking “for a Meg”, or megalodon tooth, and ventured to Maryland’s Calvert Beach to hunt fossils on Christmas Day with Natalie and their father, Bruce Sampson.

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Nobel panel knew Kissinger Vietnam deal unlikely to bring peace, files show

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Accords negotiated by Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1973 sealed US exit from war but were soon flouted by North and South Vietnam

The 1973 Nobel peace prize to top US diplomat Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho, among the most disputed in the award’s history, was given in the full knowledge the Vietnam war was unlikely to end any time soon, newly released papers show.

Nominations to the Peace prize remain secret for 50 years. On 1 January, documents about the prize awarded to Kissinger and Hanoi’s chief negotiator Tho were made available on request.

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Biden’s response to Israel’s far-right government: avoid confrontation

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As Netanyahu takes an aggressively anti-Palestinian line, the White House will seek to avoid the humiliations heaped on Obama

The more things change in Israel, the harder Joe Biden is working to make sure they stay the same.

The new far-right government of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, which includes openly anti-Arab racists, is already causing concern in the White House with commitments to expand illegal settlements in the occupied territories and annex Palestinian land.

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Love across the border: a couple’s 13-year quest to be reunited in the US

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After over a decade of living across two countries – and navigating the US’s tangled immigration policies – Tom Kobylecy and Yedid Sánchez’s life together is no longer shrouded in secret

Tom Kobylecy and Yedid Sánchez’s budding romance took place amid the intoxicating odor of woody oak and sawdust of a Chicago-area Home Depot. Her cleaning shift started at 6am, just as his shift restocking store shelves was ending. He would linger to strike up a conversation, but Yedid, a native of Cuernavaca, Mexico, spoke little English. The few Spanish words he could muster came out in a nasally midwestern accent.

After a few stilted attempts at conversation with the help of bilingual friends, she asked for his nombre, Spanish for name. “I thought she was asking me for my number,” Tom said. So, naturally, he gave her his number. A week later he asked her out for pizza. On their second date, he asked her to go fishing. Tom caught three and prepared them shake ’n’ bake-style. Yedid didn’t let on that the meal was not particularly appetizing – if she had they might not have kissed later that evening.

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‘Life-changing’: In-N-Out burger chain takes first eastward steps into Tennessee

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The expansion of family owned fast food company, founded in 1948, has been met with great enthusiasm

In-N-Out Burger, the famous California fast food chain, is expanding eastward as far as Tennessee, a move Tennessee’s governor called “life-changing”.

The family-owned burger company will open an “eastern territory office” in Tennessee, as well as several Nashville-area restaurants, by 2026, according to state officials, and In-N-Out’s owner said further eastward expansion was in the works.

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‘Cruel and cold’: man faces backlash for dousing unhoused woman with water

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Amid an escalating housing and homelessness crisis, San Francisco has seen increased attacks on unhoused people

San Francisco is once again reckoning with its treatment of unhoused people after a video of a business owner spraying a woman with water from a garden hose spread online.

Collier Gwin, the owner of Foster Gwin Gallery in downtown San Francisco, admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle that he blasted water on an unhoused woman sitting on the sidewalk in front of his business. The video, captured on Monday morning by the owner of a nearby bakery, shows Gwin spraying the woman, who was crying out in distress. In a calm voice, Gwin then tells her, “Just move,” before spraying her again.

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Golden Globes 2023: The Banshees of Inisherin and The Fabelmans win big

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The 80th annual ceremony saw a diverse slate of winners as host Jerrod Carmichael took shots at its troubled history

A year after going on mute – no red carpet, no stars, no television broadcast in 2022 – the Golden Globes returned to form at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles: open bottles of champagne, over time and overstretched, gesturing toward improving its longstanding diversity issues while taking shots from host Jerrod Carmichael.

The night’s big winners were The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical family drama that also won him best director, and Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, while the network darling Abbott Elementary, HBO’s prequel House of the Dragon and The White Lotus took home the top TV awards.

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Death toll in California storms hits 17 and ‘likely to grow’, says state’s governor

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Floods and mudslides forced thousands of people to evacuate as more than 100,000 homes and businesses left without power

At least 17 people have been killed in California as a relentless string of storms batter the state, turning rivers into gushing flood zones and forcing thousands of people to evacuate from towns with histories of deadly mudslides.

A catastrophic barrage of storms has caused destruction since late December, with the latest hitting in recent days and more storms on the horizon. Heavy rainfall and winds continued on Tuesday, putting entire communities under flood warnings and evacuation orders, knocking out power to tens of thousands and causing hillsides to collapse.

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Yemen: 87 civilians killed by UK and US weapons in just over a year

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Oxfam says its analysis of January 2021 to February 2022 underlines need for UK to stop arming Saudi Arabia

At least 87 civilians were killed by airstrikes from the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen using weapons supplied by the UK and US between January 2021 and February 2022, according to a new Oxfam analysis.

The charity accused the UK government of ignoring an identifiable “pattern of harm” caused by the indiscriminate bombing – and argues it amounts to legal grounds for Britain to end elements of its lucrative arms trade with Riyadh.

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‘It’s horrifying’: storm deaths of unhoused people highlight California crises

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Fatalities call attention to the grave risks posed by extreme weather to those living outside in Sacramento

California’s devastating winter storms have killed at least two unhoused people, deaths that call attention to the grave risks extreme weather poses to more than 116,000 people living outdoors in the state.

Both deaths occurred in Sacramento, which endured winds of 60mph (96.5km/h) over the weekend and saw thousands of people lose power. Rebekah Rohde, 40, died after a falling tree crashed into her tent along the American River on Saturday. Steven Sorensen, 61, died on Sunday when a tree fell on his tent next to a light rail station.

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Group aiming to sabotage Whitmer’s Covid policies funded by dark money

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Non-profit affiliated with utility DTE Energy funded effort to repeal Michigan governor’s emergency order powers

A dark money non-profit linked to power utility DTE Energy funded a group behind the effort to repeal the emergency order powers of Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and end the state’s Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions.

Internal Revenue Service records revealing a $100,000 donation made in 2020 were not publicly available until late 2021, and show the funds were contributed to another dark money non-profit that served as a primary funder of the Unlock Michigan repeal campaign.

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Democrats decry new House rules as a ‘ransom note to America’ | First Thing

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Partisan lines divided the vote on rules, with no Democrats voting for them and only one Republican voting against. Plus, how US state agencies got funny

Good morning.

The Republican-led US House of Representatives yesterday adopted a package of internal rules that give rightwing hardliners more leverage over the chamber’s newly elected Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy.

What do the Democrats say is wrong with the package of rules? Democrats denounced the legislation as a rules package for “Maga extremists” that would favor wealthy corporations over workers, undermine congressional ethics standards and lead to further restrictions on abortion services.

What else is going on? The rapper Dr Dre has spoken out against the use of his song Still DRE in a self-promotional video by the Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene to celebrate her role in electing fellow GOP lawmaker Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House. “I don’t license my music to politicians, especially someone as divisive and hateful as this one,” he said.

Why is Biden in the news regarding classified documents? The US justice department is investigating a number of documents bearing highly sensitive classified markings stored at Joe Biden’s former institute in Washington DC from his time as vice-president in the Obama administration, the White House acknowledged in a statement yesterday.

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Games Workshop and Hornby report sales rise but warn over economy

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Warhammer achieves record sales of £200m in half-year but says figures for US are flat

The two companies behind Warhammer miniature figures and Scalextric racing sets have enjoyed a good Christmas, while warning about the impact of the cost of living crisis.

Games Workshop – which last month struck a deal with Amazon to create a series based on Warhammer – achieved record sales of more than £200m in the six months to 31 December, its first half.

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DoJ seeks to question Trump team that found more classified documents

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Government recently persuaded judge to force Trump lawyers to turn over names of people who searched for retained documents

The US Department of Justice is intensifying its investigation of Donald Trump’s unauthorized retention of national security materials at Mar-a-Lago as it prepares to question the people who searched the former president’s Florida properties at the end of last year and found more documents with classified markings.

The department was given a general explanation from Trump’s lawyers at the time about who conducted the search – a company known to Trump with experience handling classified records cases – when the new documents marked as classified were returned to the government around Thanksgiving last year.

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No fight or warning before six-year-old boy shot teacher, say Virginia police

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Police chief gives first detailed description of last week’s classroom shooting that has shocked US

The shooting of a Virginia teacher by a six-year-old boy in her classroom last week happened without warning, and with no fight or physical struggle, authorities have said.

“What we know today is that she was providing instruction. He displayed a firearm, he pointed it and he fired one round,” said the Newport News police chief, Steve Drew.

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China’s ‘wolf warrior’ foreign affairs spokesperson moved to new role

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Zhao Lijian's shift to low-profile department seen by some as a sign of Beijing softening its diplomatic strategy

The face of China’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy, Zhao Lijian, has been moved from his role as foreign affairs spokesperson to a low-profile department, in what some analysts say is a demotion.

Zhao is the most well-known of the ministry of foreign affairs’ public-facing spokespeople, making a name for himself during his three years fronting the foreign press, with strong criticism and hostility towards the west and combative defence of China’s policies.

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Republican George Santos faces campaign finance complaint

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Controversial newly elected congressman who appears to have made up most of his résumé is subject of FEC complaint

The newly sworn-in Republican congressman George Santos, whose campaign résumé has been shown to be largely made-up, is the subject of a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission.

The complaint concerning the New York representative was filed with the FEC on Monday by the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), a non-partisan watchdog group.

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