Category Archives: US News

California county passes law banning criminal background checks for housing, becoming first in US

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Alameda county in the San Francisco Bay Area adopts measure amid worsening homelessness catastrophe

A California county has become the first in the nation to pass a law banning landlords from conducting criminal background checks on applicants, a significant move meant to curb housing discrimination against formerly incarcerated people.

The Alameda county board of supervisors in the San Francisco Bay Area voted Tuesday to adopt a Fair Chance housing ordinance, which would prohibit landlords in private and public housing from using criminal records when considering prospective tenants. While a few cities have passed similar measures, and at least two counties have adopted partial restrictions, Alameda is the first county in the US to broadly prohibit this practice, advocates say.

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Volodymyr Zelenskiy visits US to shore up support for war effort

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Ukrainian president makes first known foreign trip since invasion before vote on package worth $45bn

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has made his first known foreign trip since Russia invaded Ukraine more than 300 days ago, travelling to the US on a high-stakes visit to secure support for his war effort well into next year.

The Ukrainian president was filmed travelling with cars outside Przemyśl railway station in Poland.

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Amount of fentanyl seized in US this year ‘enough to kill every American’

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DEA says more than 379m deadly doses of opioid with strength from one and a half to 50 times stronger than heroin were seized

The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has said it seized enough fentanyl in 2022 to kill every person in America.

In a statement on Tuesday, the DEA said it had seized 50.6m fentanyl-laced fake prescription pills and more than 10,000lb of fentanyl powder this year – seizures that in total represent more than 379m deadly doses.

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Texans brace for freezing weather in hopes storm won’t be repeat of 2021

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Experts say temperatures won’t get as cold as 2021 storm, with expected minimum around 10F

Nervous Texans are preparing for a freezing blast of Arctic air on Thursday but it is not predicted to be a repeat of the disastrous winter storm that struck the state in 2021, crippling large parts of the state’s power infrastructure and killing scores of people.

Residents have been warned to brace for extremely cold weather and to stock up on essentials like bottled water and non-perishable foods in case of power outages and food supply chain issues like those experienced during winter storm Uri in February 2021, when millions of Texans were left without power and 246 people died.

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Sam Bankman-Fried expected back in US after agreeing to extradition

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FTX founder set to be charged with eight criminal counts, including fraud, conspiracy and money-laundering offenses

Sam Bankman-Fried, the jailed founder of the collapsed crypto-currency exchange FTX, is expected to fly back to the US on Wednesday to face criminal charges after waiving his right to contest extradition from the Bahamas.

After several days of conflicting signals from Bankman-Fried’s US and Bahamian legal teams, the disgraced crypto-king appeared in court in Nassau to inform a magistrate judge of his decision.

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Nepal to release ‘The Serpent’ serial killer Charles Sobhraj

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Nepalese supreme court orders release on account of old age of man jailed for murders of two tourists

The Nepalese supreme court has ordered the release of the French serial killer Charles Sobhraj, known as “the Serpent”, who preyed on western tourists travelling on the hippy trail in south Asia in the 1970s and was jailed for life for the murder of an American woman.

Sobhraj, who has French citizenship and is of Indian and Vietnamese descent, has been linked to the killings of 20 foreign tourists across Thailand, Nepal and India. He is said to have lured them in before drugging, robbing and murdering them.

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UAE to deport Egyptian-American activist who called for Cop27 protests

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Arrest of Sherif Osman while visiting family in Dubai raises fears for activists at Cop28 climate conference

The United Arab Emirates is preparing to deport an Egyptian-American citizen detained in Dubai who called for protests during the Cop27 climate conference in Egypt, sparking fears about the treatment of civil society during next year’s Cop28 in the Emirates.

Sherif Osman, a former Egyptian army officer who has lived in the US for decades, was detained at a restaurant in Dubai, where he had travelled with his fiancee to see family.

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House committee votes to release Donald Trump’s tax returns – as it happened

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It’s lunchtime, and an opportunity to look at where we stand on a busy Tuesday in US politics. The House ways and means committee will meet shortly to discuss and vote on releasing Donald Trump’s tax returns to the public.

Here’s what else we’ve been looking at:

The fallout continues from Monday’s bombshell criminal referral by the House January 6 panel of former President Trump on charges including insurrection. Some Republicans don’t seem to be happy.

Long-serving Democratic senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont delivered an emotional farewell speech to the chamber, condemning the January 6 Capitol riot as an assault on democracy, and calling on colleagues to return to a more civil age of bipartisanship.

Details have emerged of the $1.7tn omnibus government spending package agreed by congressional leaders in Tuesday’s early hours. The bill includes more financial aid for Ukraine, more visas for Afghans who helped the US, and banning the TikTok app on government devices.

When I arrived here, bipartisan cooperation was the norm, not the exception.

Make no mistake, the Senate of yesterday was far from perfect. [But] the Senate I entered had one remarkable, redeeming quality. The overwhelming majority of senators of both parties believed they were here to do a job.

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‘Bomb cyclone’ storm could bring deadly winter weather to US

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An estimated 50 million Americans also under windchill alerts as ‘once-in-a-generation-event’ could impact holiday travel

Severe winter weather is set to affect millions across the US this week, as freezing temperatures and strong storms threaten to wreak havoc on holiday travel plans.

A burst of arctic air settling over several states this week is forecast to drop temperatures to dangerous – and potentially deadly – levels just as more than 110 million Americans are expected to set out for their celebrations.

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House committee votes to release Trump’s tax returns to the public

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As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump broke decades of precedent by refusing to release his tax forms to the public

A powerful congressional committee on Tuesday voted to publicly release Donald Trump’s tax returns in a move that is sure to ignite a political row as well as anger among some privacy experts in America.

The Democratic-controlled House ways and means committee decided to release the documents, which the former US president has long tried to shield, after several hours of debate.

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Zelenskiy to meet congressional leaders in Washington on Wednesday – reports

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Trip would be Ukrainian president’s first foreign visit since Russia invaded in February

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will travel to Washington on Wednesday where he is expected to visit the White House and the US Capitol, according several US media reports.

Zelenskiy is expected to meet congressional leadership and national security committee chiefs from the Republican and Democratic parties, and might address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, news outlets reported..

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Investigation of Musk’s Neuralink targets federal oversight of animal testing

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Sources tell Reuters law enforcement authorities are concerned about USDA’s record on animal welfare violations

Law enforcement officials investigating Elon Musk’s Neuralink over its animal trial program are also scrutinizing the US Department of Agriculture’s oversight of the company’s operations, after the agency failed to act on violations at other research organizations, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Reuters reported on 5 December that the USDA’s watchdog, the Office of the Inspector General, is investigating Neuralink, a medical device company that is developing brain implants, over potential animal-welfare violations. A federal prosecutor in the civil division at the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California requested the investigation, people familiar with the matter said.

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Two dead after 6.4 magnitude California quake leaves 70,000 without power

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Eleven people were reportedly injured and assessment of total number is ongoing, said officials

A magnitude 6.4 earthquake shook parts of northern California early Tuesday, jolting people awake, damaging buildings and roads and leaving tens of thousands without power. Two fatalities have been linked to the quake “as a result of medical emergencies occurring during and/or just following” the incident, the Humboldt county sheriff’s office reported Tuesday afternoon.

Centered just south-west of the town of Ferndale in Humboldt county, a small community near the coast about 213 miles (343km) north-west of San Francisco, the quake took place in area where tremors aren’t uncommon. But locals called it the largest in recent memory.

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Simone Biles and mental health start-up Cerebral end endorsement partnership

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The split comes seven months after federal investigators issued a subpoena to the firm for its prescriptions of controlled substances

Superstar US gymnast Simone Biles and tele-health provider Cerebral have ended an endorsement partnership, the company announced Tuesday, bringing to a close a deal in which the 25-year-old Olympic champion used her own mental health experience to promote the controversial mental health start-up.

Biles became Cerebral’s “chief impact officer” three months after her dramatic withdrawal from individual competition at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 saying she was “not in the right head space” to compete.

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Confusion and tension high at US-Mexico border despite upholding of Covid-era rules

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Emergency housing, food and other essentials had been set up in preparation for an influx of migrants at Texas border cities

Along the US southern border, two cities – El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez just across the waters of the Rio Grande in Mexico – were trying to prepare for a new surge of as many as 5,000 new migrants a day as pandemic-era immigration restrictions were set to expire this week, setting in motion plans for emergency housing, food and other essentials.

Even with the ruling from the US Supreme Court on Monday evening that the restriction known as Title 42 would not end after all, as had been ordered by a lower court, confusion and tension were high.

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First Thing: January 6 panel recommends criminal charges against Donald Trump

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The referral marks the first time in US history that Congress has taken such action against a former president. Plus, the rescue of nearly 4,000 beagles

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Good morning.

The January 6 committee has recommended criminal charges against Donald Trump, accusing the former president of fomenting an insurrection and conspiring against the government over his attempt to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election, and the bloody attack on the US Capitol.

What have the committee accused Trump of? He’s accused of breaching four federal criminal statutes, including those relating to obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, assisting an insurrection and conspiring to defraud the United States. It also said Trump may have committed seditious conspiracy.

How will prosecutors pursue the House panel’s charges? The justice department may find it difficult to obtain a conviction for each charge referred by the January 6 committee, writes Hugo Lowell.

What did Siebel Newsom say after? “Throughout the trial, Weinstein’s lawyers used sexism, misogyny and bullying tactics to intimidate, demean and ridicule us survivors,” she said in a statement. “This trial was a stark reminder that we as a society have work to do.”

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British Airways apologises after flights delayed in US and Caribbean

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Airline blames technical issue for disruption at airports including Denver, New York and Miami

British Airways has apologised after a technical issue triggered a wave of flight delays across the US and the Caribbean.

The airline said problems with its third-party flight planning supplier were behind the delays, as customers reported disruption in departing cities including Denver, New York and Miami.

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Democrats praise January 6 panel’s work as Republicans call it ‘witch hunt’

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House panel concluded investigation and referred Trump to the justice department for criminal prosecution on four counts

Democrats in Congress on Monday praised the House January 6 select committee for referring former president Donald Trump to the justice department for violating at least four criminal statutes, while Republicans called the committee’s work a “political stunt”.

In its last public meeting, the committee chose to refer Trump for charges on obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement, and assisting, aiding or comforting an insurrection. Though the unprecedented criminal referrals are largely symbolic as the justice department will decide whether to prosecute Trump, they will give the justice department a road map should it choose to proceed.

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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried agrees to US extradition

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Crypto mogul’s lawyer in Bahamas says he wanted to see indictment before consenting to travel to face fraud charges

Fallen crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried has now decided to agree to be extradited to the United States to face fraud charges, two of his lawyers said on Monday, just hours after one of them told a Bahamas judge the FTX founder wanted to see the US indictment against him before consenting.

On Monday afternoon, Jerone Roberts, Bankman-Fried’s criminal defense lawyer in the Bahamas, told media outlets including the New York Times that his client had agreed to be voluntarily extradited and that he hoped Bankman-Fried would be back in court later this week.

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Donald Trump: how will prosecutors pursue the House panel’s charges?

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The justice department may find it difficult to obtain a conviction for each charge referred by the January 6 committee

The House January 6 select committee outlined criminal referrals against Donald Trump for charges that experts believe the justice department could definitely pursue should it move forward with prosecuting the former US president over his efforts to stop the congressional certification of the 2020 election.

The panel voted at its final public session on Monday to recommend prosecution for Trump for four possible crimes: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to make a false statement and incitement of insurrection.

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