Category Archives: US News

Biden tells Democrats to revise primary calendar to boost Black voters’ voices

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Predominantly white New Hampshire reportedly could be scheduled later with South Carolina tipped to move up to first

Democrats are poised to shake up the way in which they nominate presidential candidates, after Joe Biden said the primary process should better represent the party’s non-white voters.

Biden has reportedly told Democrats that Iowa, the state that has led off the Democratic voting calendar since 1976, should be moved down the calendar, with South Carolina instead going first.

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Republicans delete tweet that appears to support Kanye West after he praises Nazis

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House judiciary committee account contained cryptic post - ‘Kanye. Elon. Trump’ – that seemingly expressed support for Ye

Leading Republicans in the US Congress have deleted a tweet that seemingly expressed support for Ye, a rapper formerly known as Kanye West, after he praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

Since October, a Twitter account run by Republicans on the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee has contained a cryptic post that said: “Kanye. Elon. Trump” – apparently claiming Ye, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and former president Donald Trump as their own.

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Do you have what it takes to be New York’s new rat czar?

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The city is looking for ‘somewhat bloodthirsty’ applicants to a new role designed to tackle its very old rodent problem

Hate rats? Are you a “somewhat bloodthirsty” New Yorker with excellent communication skills and “a general aura of badassery”? Then you might have what it takes to be the city’s new rat czar.

Mayor Eric Adams’s administration posted a job listing this week seeking someone to lead the city’s long-running battle against rats. The official job title is “director of rodent mitigation”, although it was promptly dubbed the rat czar. Salary range is $120,000 to $170,000.

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Failure of officials to follow policy caused California gun owners’ data leak

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Investigation says personal information of nearly 200,000 people was released as officials didn’t understand their website

California’s department of justice mistakenly posted the names, addresses and birthdays of nearly 200,000 gun owners on the internet because officials didn’t follow policies or understand how to operate their website, according to an investigation released Wednesday.

The investigation, conducted by an outside law firm hired by the California department of justice, found that personal information for 192,000 people was downloaded 2,734 times by 507 unique IP addresses during a roughly 12-hour period in late June. All of those people had applied for a permit to carry a concealed gun.

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Rural Arizona county certifies midterm results after judge orders vote

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The Cochise county board of supervisors voted 2-0 to approve the results after threat of lawsuits

A rural Arizona county finally certified its election results on Thursday after a judge ordered the county’s board of supervisors to do their jobs just a couple of hours earlier.

The Cochise county board of supervisors voted 2-0 to approve the midterm results, allowing the statewide canvass of the election to continue as planned on 5 December. A third member of the board who had spearheaded the effort to delay certification, Tom Crosby, did not attend the vote.

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US court strikes down appointment of special master to review Trump records

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Decision marks decisive defeat as judges opine the request should never have been granted in the first place

A federal appeals court on Thursday terminated the special master review of documents seized from Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago property, paving the way for the justice department to regain access to the entirety of the materials for use in the criminal investigation surrounding the former president.

The decision by the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit marked a decisive defeat for Trump in a ruling that said a lower-court judge should never have granted his request for an independent arbiter in the first place and is unlikely to be overturned in the event of appeal.

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Florida QB Jalen Kitna released on bail after child abuse image charges

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  • College athlete faces up to 15 years in prison if found guilty
  • Player is son of former NFL quarterback Jon Kitna

Florida back-up quarterback Jalen Kitna was released from jail on an $80,000 bond on Thursday, a day after he was arrested on five charges involving child abuse images.

Judge Meshon Rawls set the bond and as conditions for Kitna’s release ordered him not to have any unsupervised contact with minors and not to have any internet access.

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Biden ‘working with Macron’ to hold Russia accountable for ‘brutal’ Ukraine war – as it happened

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We’re still waiting for Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron to appear for their press conference at the White House.

Elsewhere in Washington, the Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz might be a little uneasy today, as a former tax collector whose arrest led to a wide-ranging sex-trafficking investigation faces sentencing.

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US sees surge in children under five hospitalized for respiratory viruses

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Wave of illness caused by RSV, influenza and other infections has seen more than three-quarters of pediatric hospital beds full

When his son was born seven weeks early, weighing only 2.5lbs, RH watched as the little boy stayed in the neonatal intensive care unit for 37 days.

When they finally left the hospital, RH, who asked to use his initials for health privacy, breathed a sigh of relief. The baby, despite his difficult start, was perfectly healthy. But only a few months later, the child landed back in the hospital with a dangerous virus, RSV.

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Florida doctor found dead days after arrest on suspicion of raping sedated patients

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Eric Salata faced investigation over claims he assaulted two women at his clinic after incapacitating them

A doctor in Florida who was accused of drugging and raping his patients has been found dead, according to local authorities.

Investigators could not immediately determine how Eric Salata, 54, died when his body was discovered in woodland on Monday. But they said he had a gunshot wound to the head, was lying next to a pistol, and that they did not suspect he had been the victim of a crime.

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Largest queer health center in the US midwest to lay off 15% of staff

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Staff cuts at Chicago’s Howard Brown Health could squeeze care as attacks on LGBTQ+ and trans healthcare have escalated

Howard Brown Health, a nonprofit community health center in Chicago that is the largest provider of health and wellness care for the LGBTQ+ community and people living with HIV in the US midwest, has announced it wants to lay off at least 100 employees, or about 15% of staff.

The layoffs were proposed as voluntary in the first instance, but the company says “a reduction in workforce is required”, suggesting that if 100 volunteers are not found then layoffs will be compulsory.

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New York and Singapore top the list of world’s most expensive cities in 2022

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Sydney sneaks into Top 10 as rising energy prices send inflation soaring globally, Economist Intelligence Unit survey finds

New York was the world’s most expensive metropolis in 2022, sharing the unwanted title with Singapore, as soaring energy prices doubled the inflation rate across the major global cities, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual survey.

Last year’s leader Tel Aviv dropped to third, while Sydney snuck into the Top 10 and Moscow and St Petersberg in Russia scaled the rankings by as much as 88 places as sanctions and buoyant oil prices propelled prices higher, the EIU’s Worldwide Cost of Living report found.

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Judge declares mistrial in actor Danny Masterson’s rape trial

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The jury said they could not come to a consensus over the allegations after a month-long trial

A judge declared a mistrial Wednesday after jurors said they were hopelessly deadlocked at the trial of That ’70s Show actor Danny Masterson, who is charged with three rapes.

Los Angeles judge Charlaine F Olmedo had ordered the jurors to take Thanksgiving week off and keep deliberating after they told her on 18 November that they could not come to a consensus about the rape allegations after a month-long trial in which the Church of Scientology played a supporting role.

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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried says he ‘screwed up’ but didn’t commit fraud

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Disgraced CEO said he ‘didn’t knowingly comingle funds’ with FTX’s sister company Alameda Research

“Look, I screwed up,” fallen crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried told a conference in New York on Wednesday, but he maintained he “didn’t ever try to commit fraud” and was “shocked” by the collapse of his businesses.

Bankman-Fried, with glassy eyes and visibly shaking at times, appeared via video conference from a nondescript room in the Bahamas. He told the New York Times’s DealBook Summit he was “deeply sorry about what happened” but consistently argued he did not have a full picture of what was going on within the various branches of FTX, his now bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, and its offshoots.

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Garland vows to hold January 6 attackers to account after Oath Keepers conviction – live

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Attorney general condemns ‘those responsible for crimes related to the attack on our democracy’ – follow US politics live

The former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who was also Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, will use the coming Christmas holidays to decide whether to launch a run for the presidency in 2024.

Speaking in her home state and at her alma mater, Clemson University, on Tuesday, Haley said: “We are taking the holidays to kind of look at what the situation is. If we decide to get into it, we’ll put 1,000% in, and we’ll finish it.”

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Third Islamic State leader killed in battle

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White House welcomes news of Abu al-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi’s death

The Islamic State jihadist group said its leader has been killed in battle, the third head of the violent extremist faction to have met a violent death.

A spokesperson for the group said Abu al-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, an Iraqi, was killed “in combat with enemies of God”, without elaborating on the date of his death or the circumstances.

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US justice department sues city of Jackson over water crisis

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City and Mississippi health department sign order agreeing to federal oversight of the failing water system

The US justice department has taken drastic action regarding the crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, that has affected drinking water for its 150,000 residents for several months.

On Tuesday, the city of Jackson and the Mississippi health department signed an order agreeing to federal oversight of the failing water system, in an attempt to restore clean and safe drinking water.

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Hawaii site that measures global CO2 shuts down after Mauna Loa volcano eruption

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Scientists scramble to re-establish the crucial monitoring that has been situated on the volcano since 1958

The world’s premier measurement site for global carbon dioxide levels has been shut down because of a volcanic eruption in Hawaii, with scientists scrambling to re-establish the crucial monitoring that has been situated on the volcano since 1958.

Lava has been shooting more than 150ft into the air from Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano, since Sunday night and a river of molten rock is now not only menacing the main highway on Hawaii’s big island but also the Mauna Loa Observatory, a scientific station situated on the northern flank of the volcano.

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Ron DeSantis book announcement a clear sign of presidential ambition

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Florida governor expected to challenge Trump for Republican nod in 2024 will publish The Courage to Be Free in February

In the clearest signal yet that Ron DeSantis is preparing a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, it was announced on Wednesday that the rightwing governor of Florida will publish a campaign-style book, mixing memoir with policy proposals.

The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Renewal, will be published by Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins, on 28 February.

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Federal Reserve to slow interest rate rises as it tackles 40-year inflation high

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Jerome Powell warned there ‘was more ground to cover’ and rates would stay higher for an extended period

The Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, indicated the central bank is preparing to slow the pace of interest rate rises as it tackles a 40-year high in inflation. But Powell warned there “was more ground to cover” and rates would stay higher for an extended period.

In a speech to the Brookings Institution, Powell said that the Fed may increase its key interest rate by a smaller increment at its December meeting, only a half-point, after four straight three-quarter point hikes.

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