Category Archives: US News

Ex-secretary of state George Shultz was besotted by Theranos fraudster Holmes, book says

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He was either ‘corrupt’, ‘in love’ or had ‘completely lost’ his mental edge, says grandson who blew whistle on Holmes’s scheme

Former US secretary of state George Shultz’s support for Elizabeth Holmes and her fraudulent blood testing company, Theranos, which devastated his family and caused a bitter feud with his grandson, receives fresh scrutiny in a biography published on Tuesday.

Shultz was Ronald Reagan’s top diplomat at the end of the cold war. Before that, he was secretary of the treasury and secretary of labor under Richard Nixon. He is now the subject of In the Nation’s Service, written by Philip Taubman, a former New York Times reporter.

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Kevin McCarthy faces rocky first day as House speaker – live

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California Republican takes reins of Congress’s lower chamber after 15 rounds of voting last week

The Guardian’s Kira Lerner reports that the GOP has been waging a legal assault on voting nationwide, with more lawsuits aimed at restricting ballot box access filed last year than ever before:

The Republican party filed a record number of anti-voting lawsuits in 2022, a sign that they are shifting the battle over voting access and election administration to courtrooms in addition to state legislatures.

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More than 7,000 nurses go on strike at two New York City hospitals

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Nurses walked off the job at the Mount Sinai and Montefiore medical centers in Harlem and the Bronx over staffing issues

More than 7,000 nurses at two New York City hospitals went on strike on Monday, saying their concerns around staffing issues had not been addressed by management.

Talks failed on Sunday night. At 6am on Monday, nurses went on strike at Mount Sinai medical center on the Upper East Side and Montefiore medical center in the Bronx.

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California faces ‘relentless parade’ of new storms with heavy rain

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Evacuations ordered for communities in Montecito, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz counties as more rain is expected

A series of deadly and destructive storms continued to hammer California on Monday, as the drought-stricken state grapples with the sudden onslaught of a very wet January.

Joe Biden issued an emergency declaration for California on Sunday, unlocking federal aid to support recovery as mud slides, engorged rivers and streams, and wind-strewn trees wreaked havoc on already-inundated infrastructure across the state. The California department of water resources warned that more than a dozen places were at high risk of flooding.

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New House speaker McCarthy faces threat of moderate revolt over rules

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Crucial rules package vote serves as yet another barometer of how dysfunctional Republicans’ tiny majority could be

Kevin McCarthy, the newly elected Republican House speaker, was facing a rocky first full day in charge of the House of Representatives on Monday with the fresh threat of a challenge to his hard-won authority – this time from moderate party members, not the hard-right fringe.

The House was set to vote on Monday evening on a crucial rules package governing business in the lower chamber in the 118th Congress, which kicked off last week with California congressman McCarthy needing a historic 15 rounds of voting to clinch the speakership.

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Doctors ‘ecstatic’ at Damar Hamlin’s progress as player returns to Buffalo

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  • Bills safety suffered cardiac arrest during game last week
  • Player thanks medical staff in Cincinnati for care

Doctors who treated Damar Hamlin said the Bills safety was back in Buffalo on Monday, an uplifting sign of the remarkable progress he has made a week after going into cardiac arrest on the field during a game in Cincinnati.

Hamlin was discharged from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center on Monday morning and flown to Buffalo, where Dr William Knight said he is “doing well.” The player will continue his recovery at a Buffalo hospital.

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Brazil capital attack complicates US relationship with Bolsonaro

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The former Brazilian president has taken up residence in Florida, and some Democrats are calling for his visa to be revoked

The future of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who flew to Florida in his last days in office, is emerging as a potential diplomatic issue between Brazil and the US amid calls for his expulsion for inciting insurrection.

Bolsonaro has distanced himself from the mob which stormed government buildings in the capital, Brasília, on Sunday, denying accusations from his successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, that he had encouraged the rioters from the US.

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Goldman Sachs to start cutting up to 3,200 jobs this week

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Redundancies expected to be concentrated in investment banking division and consumer arm

Goldman Sachs is expected to start one of the biggest rounds of redundancies in its history this week, with as many as 3,200 jobs to go as it looks to cut costs.

The bank is expected to begin informing people that they will lose their jobs on Wednesday.

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Harvey Weinstein’s sentencing on Los Angeles rape conviction delayed

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Ex-film mogul faces up to 18 additional years in prison after being convicted of forcibly raping a woman in California

Harvey Weinstein’s sentencing on his second rape and sexual assault conviction in Los Angeles has been delayed until February, as his lawyers ask for a new trial.

Winstein, 70, faces up to 18 additional years in prison after being convicted of forcibly raping a woman in California in 2013. He is already serving a 23-year prison sentence after being convicted of rape and sexual assault charges in New York in 2020.

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Elon Musk seeks to move trial out of San Francisco, claiming he can’t get fair trial

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Musk says negative local media coverage of shareholder lawsuit over 2018 Tesla tweet has biased jurors against him

Elon Musk has urged a federal judge to shift a trial in a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco because he says negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him.

Instead, in a filing submitted late Friday – less than two weeks before the trial was set to begin on 17 January – Musk’s lawyers argue it should be moved to the federal court in the western district of Texas. That district includes the state capital of Austin, which is where Musk relocated his electric car company, Tesla, in late 2021.

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Seattle public schools sue social media platforms for youth ‘mental health crisis’

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Lawsuit accuses companies behind TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube of harming young people’s mental health

Seattle’s public schools district has filed a lawsuit in the US against multiple major social media companies, accusing them of harming young people’s mental health across the country.

The lawsuit which was filed on Friday with a US district court accused the social media companies behind TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube of creating a “mental health crisis among America’s youth”.

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After chaotic week, McCarthy faces new battle as House votes on rules package

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Some Republicans indicate they may withhold support unless details of concessions made to hard-right lawmakers are unveiled

After five days of chaos and 15 rounds of floor votes, newly elected Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is set to face an instant challenge on Monday as the House votes on a new rules package.

A handful of establishment Republicans indicated on Sunday they may withhold their support for the rules unless more details of concessions made to ultraconservative lawmakers during a week of torrid negotiations are unveiled.

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Russell Banks, award-winning fiction writer, dies at 82

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American novelist wrote about rural working class communities and those who died trying to break out in his native north-east

Russell Banks, an award-winning fiction writer who rooted such novels as Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter in the wintry, rural communities of his native north-east and imagined the dreams and downfalls of everyone from modern blue-collar workers to the radical abolitionist John Brown, has died. He was 82.

Banks, a professor emeritus at Princeton University, died Saturday in upstate New York, his editor, Dan Halpern, told the Associated Press. Banks was being treated for cancer, Halpern said.

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German police arrest Iranian man suspected of planning chemical attack

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Police detained 32-year-old man in town near Dortmund after tip-off from foreign agency believed to be the FBI

German police have arrested an Iranian man suspected of planning a chemical attack motivated by Islamic extremism.

The 32-year-old was seized at his flat shortly before midnight on Saturday in the town of Castrop-Rauxel, close to Dortmund in western Germany. The arrest followed a tip-off from a foreign intelligence agency that the man had obtained toxins, including cyanide and ricin, with which he planned to carry out a terror attack, authorities said on Sunday.

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Biden visits border for first time as critics condemn his migrant crackdown

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President makes brief stop in El Paso, ground zero for the consequences of US system that he acknowledges is deeply broken

President Joe Biden on Sunday landed in Texas to visit the US-Mexico border for the first time in his nearly two years as commander-in-chief, even as lawmakers and immigrant rights advocates have widely condemned his administration’s latest hardline response to the deepening humanitarian emergency there.

Biden – who is due in Mexico City this week for an international summit – made a brief pit stop in El Paso, a recent ground zero for the consequences of a US immigration system that he has readily acknowledged is deeply broken.

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Shooting of teacher by six-year-old a red flag for US, says mayor

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Boy taken into custody after wounding of teacher, whose condition is said to be showing signs of improvement

The shooting of a teacher in the city of Newport News in Virginia by a six-year-old student should be a red flag for the US, the city’s mayor has said, as the teacher’s condition showed signs of improvement.

The mayor, Phillip Jones, said the condition of the teacher, identified by local media as Abby Zwerner, was “trending in a positive direction” in hospital.

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NFL trainer who rushed to Damar Hamlin’s aid lauded as ‘real hero’

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Denny Kellington performed CPR on stricken Bills safety who collapsed after making a tackle against Cincinnati last week

As Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin reportedly progresses “remarkably” in his recovery from suffering a cardiac arrest during a game last week, a trainer who rushed to his aid after he collapsed and had a hand in resuscitating him has drawn praise as a “real hero” from supporters of the stricken athlete.

The Bills’ trainer, Denny Kellington, immediately went to Hamlin when the 24-year-old safety’s heart stopped beating properly after making a tackle during the first quarter of his team’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals on 2 January.

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In Santos’s district, reactions to brazen lies remain mixed: ‘I might let him slide’

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In the New York Republican’s district, some people defend the serial fibber, while others are adamant George Santos must quit

It was only after George Santos was elected to Congress that the news broke: the New York Republican had told lies during his campaign.

But these weren’t just little lies, or white lies. Santos appears to have lied brazenly, with abandon, about almost everything it’s possible to lie about: his career, his education, his faith, his relationships, his finances, 9/11.

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The US government just took two big steps on abortion. Will they matter?

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While the decisions cannot undo abortion bans in the 13 states they exist, it could make a huge difference where the right is protected

This week, the federal government announced two decisions designed to improve abortion access in the US. The first, a rule change made by the Food and Drug Administration, allows pharmacies to dispense mifepristone, one of the two drugs needed for a medication abortion. The second, an opinion drafted by the justice department, gives the US Postal Service the all clear to continue mailing abortion pills, even to states where abortion is severely restricted.

How big an impact the moves will have, however, remains to be seen.

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Revealed: US allowing long-tailed macaque imports despite risk of disease

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Campaigners urge government to stop ‘cruel trade’ as documents show highly pathogenic agents entered the US with monkeys

US authorities are continuing to allow imports of long-tailed macaques from Cambodia, despite revelations that deadly pathogenic agents, including one deemed to be a bioterrorism risk, are entering the country with primates and recent charges of illegal trafficking of wild macaques falsely labeled as captive-bred into the US biomedical industry from Cambodia.

Animal rights campaigners are urging the US government to stop the “cruel trade”, saying it’s impossible to prove provenance and that the risk of disease is significant.

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