Category Archives: US News

Republicans one seat away from control of House in midterms | First Thing

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After almost a week of counting, Republicans look set to retake the house with a narrow margin. Plus, media groups urge world leaders to impose climate tax on fossil fuel firms

Good morning.

Republicans are on the brink of taking control of the US House of Representatives after a flurry of races were called for them yesterday.

What’s happening in Arizona? The Democratic candidate for governor in Arizona, Katie Hobbs, has defeated her far-right, Trump-endorsed opponent, staving off a major threat to voting rights in the state. Kari Lake, a former TV anchor who denies the 2020 election results, has refused to say if she will concede to Hobbs.

How did the Democrats stave off the predicted red wave? Analysis shows they have Generation Z to thank. Last week’s big wins can be attributed largely to young voters, who showed up en masse and overwhelmingly voted blue.

Why has he decided not to delay his announcement? We previously reported that some members of his team argued delaying the announcement would give him the appearance of being wounded by the disappointing results in the midterms and would make him look weak.

Are Republicans happy he is running? Not all. The Alabama congressman and once-zealous Trump supporter, Mo Brooks, has a remarkable new stance on the political future of his former hero. “It would be a bad mistake for the Republicans to have Donald Trump as their nominee in 2024,” he said.

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Trump v DeSantis: Republicans split over 2024 run and predict ‘blood on the floor’

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County leaders say they fear ex-president is even more divisive than he was two years ago and is therefore unelectable

Terri Burl was an early member of Women for Trump. As chair of her local Republican party branch in northern Wisconsin, she twice campaigned vigorously for his election in the key swing state. By the time Trump left office, Burl rated him the greatest president since Ronald Reagan. Maybe even better.

But now Burl has had enough.

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Crypto exchange FTX expects to have more than 1m creditors

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Bankruptcy filing says ‘questions arose’ about founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s leadership

The collapsed crypto exchange FTX expects to have more than 1 million individual creditors, the company has said in its first bankruptcy filing, scattered across more than 100 companies in the wider group.

According to the filing at the bankruptcy court in the US state of Delaware, where FTX US is based, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and chief executive, stepped down at 4.30am on Friday, “after consultation with his own legal counsel”.

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Israel will not cooperate with FBI inquiry into killing of Palestinian American journalist

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Defence minister calls investigation into Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing by Israeli army ‘interference in internal affairs’

Israel has said it will not cooperate with an FBI investigation into the killing of the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli army.

Israel’s defence minister, Benny Gantz, denounced the inquiry as “interference in Israel’s internal affairs” and said he “made it clear to the American representatives that we stand behind the IDF [Israel defence forces] soldiers, that we will not cooperate with any external investigation”.

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Rudy Giuliani will not face charges over foreign lobbying, prosecutors say

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Trump lawyer not charged after grand jury investigation in New York that led to seizure of phones by FBI

Prosecutors in New York do not plan to bring criminal charges against Rudy Giuliani in connection with an investigation into his interactions with Ukrainian figures, they revealed in a letter to a judge on Monday.

They said they made the decision after a review of evidence resulting from raids on his residence and law office in April 2021.

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Jay Leno’s face burned in LA garage after car bursts into flames

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Comedian taken to burn center but eye and ear are not severely damaged: ‘I am OK’

Jay Leno was taken to Grossman Burn Center after his face was burned in his Los Angeles garage when one of his cars burst into flames.

The left side of former The Tonight Show host’s face was burned, but Leno’s eye and ear were not severely damaged.

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US midterms 2022: Democrats’ hopes of keeping House fade as counting continues – live

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Democrats are behind in several districts needed to secure control of Congress’ lower chamber for another two years

The Senate will this week vote on a bill to codify same-sex marriage rights, Semafor reports.

Same-sex marriage rights are currently established nationwide by a supreme court ruling, but Democrats are trying to pass a law protecting the rights after rightwing justice Clarence Thomas in June mulled overturning the ruling.

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Google will pay $392m to 40 states in largest ever US privacy settlement

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Case is a historic win for consumers after an investigation found the tech company tracked users’ location even after they opted out

Google has agreed to a $391.5m settlement with 40 states to resolve an investigation into how the company tracked users’ locations, state attorneys general announced on Monday.

The states’ investigation was sparked by a 2018 Associated Press story, which found that Google continued to track people’s location data even after they opted out of such tracking by disabling a feature the company called “location history”.

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CIA director meets Russian counterpart as US denies secret peace talks

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Bill Burns says US is not ‘discussing settlement of war’ in Ukraine as Zelenskiy visits Kherson

The CIA director, Bill Burns, met his Russian counterpart in Ankara on Monday in a rare high-level meeting, but the US insists it is not engaged in secret peace talks with Moscow without Ukrainian officials being present.

The meeting in the Turkish capital with the head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, followed speculation that some senior US figures would like Ukraine to enter negotiations with the Kremlin to end the war.

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Roberta Flack has ALS which ‘has made it impossible to sing’

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The Grammy-winning singer ‘s manager has detailed the diagnosis of the condition, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease

A representative for Roberta Flack announced on Monday that the Grammy-winning musician has ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and can no longer sing.

The progressive disease “has made it impossible to sing and not easy to speak”, Flack’s manager, Suzanne Koga, said in a release. “But it will take a lot more than ALS to silence this icon.”

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Climate-focused reform of World Bank could be done in a year, says Al Gore

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Former US vice-president says bank should refocus its spending and end its role in ‘fossil fuel colonialism’

Fundamental reform of the World Bank could be completed within a year, to refocus its spending on the climate crisis and end its contribution to “fossil fuel colonialism”, according to the former US vice-president Al Gore.

“I don’t know why it need take longer than a year,” said Gore, a longtime campaigner on the climate crisis since leaving politics, in an interview with the Guardian at the Cop27 UN climate summit. “We have an emergency on our hands.”

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Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake’, Republican says as blame game deepens

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Alabama congressman Mo Brooks, a once-zealous Trump ally, comments after party fails to retake Congress in midterms

Alabama congressman and once-zealous Trump supporter, Mo Brooks, has a remarkable new stance on the political future of his former hero. “It would be a bad mistake for the Republicans to have Donald Trump as their nominee in 2024,” he said.

The stark judgment from Brooks was indicative of the deepening and brutal blame game among Republicans which continued on Monday, nearly a week after the party failed to retake Congress in the midterm elections and a day before Trump’s expected announcement of a new presidential campaign.

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Donald Trump handled records marked classified after presidency, court filing alleges

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Justice department filing claims former US president kept secret documents in drawer at Mar-a-Lago with other files from after his time in office

Donald Trump retained documents bearing classification markings, along with communications from after his presidency, according to court filings describing the materials seized by the FBI as part of the ongoing criminal investigation into whether he mishandled national security information.

The former US president kept in the desk drawer of his office at the Mar-a-Lago property one document marked “secret” and one marked “confidential” alongside three communications from a book author, a religious leader and a pollster, dated after he departed the White House.

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‘Died doing what he loved’: tributes pour in for pilots after planes crash at airshow

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Six killed in Dallas show during an exhibition involving two historic second world war-era aircraft

Tributes have poured in for pilots who were among the six killed when two historic military planes collided in midair during a show in Dallas on Saturday afternoon, with people saying they were heartbroken that the aerialists died while engaging in what they loved.

The union which represents pilots for Dallas-based American Airlines said on Twitter that retirees Len Root and Terry Barker were aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber that crashed with a P-63 Kingcobra fighter during an exhibition involving the two second world war-era aircraft.

The AP contributed reporting

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US midterm elections: Democrats retain control of Senate as House race still undecided – as it happened

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Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer hail achievement after Nevada victory, while Georgia Senate heads to runoff

Analysts say victory by Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, which secured her party’s control of the Senate for two more years, will be of massive importance to Joe Biden’s plans for filling judicial vacancies.

Retaining the majority in the chamber gives the president the opportunity to keep getting his picks confirmed, something for which the incumbent senator was a key ally even before the midterms.

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Democrats celebrate retaining control of Senate as Republicans take stock

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House control still undecided as Republicans lead and attention pivots to Florida, where Trump is expected to announce 2024 run

As the balance of power in the US House of Representatives remained unresolved on Sunday, Democrats are celebrating the projection that they won control of the Senate, marking a significant victory for Joe Biden as Republicans backed by his presidential predecessor Donald Trump underperformed in key battleground states.

While senior Democrats remained guarded Sunday about the chances of keeping control of both chambers of Congress, House speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed the party’s performance in the midterms following months of projections indicating heavy losses.

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Democrat Cisco Aguilar defeats election denier in Nevada secretary of state race

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Victory over Republican Jim Marchant for state’s top elections post is significant win against efforts to sow doubt in US elections

Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, was elected Nevada’s top election official, beating Jim Marchant, a Republican who is linked to the QAnon sought to spread misinformation about the results of the 2020 race.

His victory is a significant win against efforts to sow doubt in US elections, a growing force in the Republican party.

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The arrest that shocked the firefighting world – and threatens a vital practice

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A fire chief is under investigation for a prescribed burn gone wrong and stirred up long-simmering tensions over wildfire risk

Hours before Rick Snodgrass was cuffed and loaded into a squad car, he’d called the sheriff himself. The United States Forest Service burn boss had requested the help of local law enforcement in Grant county, Oregon, reporting his crew was being harassed while conducting a controlled burn within the Malheur national forest.

It was the second burn that crews had conducted in the area in two weeks, with flames intended to char around 300 acres. But that warm October afternoon, the treatment did not go according to plan.

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‘It’s time to move on’: have the US midterms finally loosened Trump’s grip on the Republican party?

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After the party came up short in another election, Ron DeSantis may be poised to become its new leader

Sitting at the head table in a white and gold ballroom, beneath glistening chandeliers and an ornately corniced ceiling, Donald Trump looked sullen as midterm election results flashed up on a giant TV screen.

Across Florida, 200 miles from his opulent Mar-a-Lago estate, the mood was quite different. In Tampa, Governor Ron DeSantis was celebrating his landslide re-election by repurposing lines from Winston Churchill.

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Nasa’s rocket launch to the moon next week aims to close 50-year-long gap

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Barring technical issues and Florida’s weather, Artemis 1 will launch after midnight Wednesday on a 15-day, 1.3m-mile journey

Fifty years ago this month, mission managers at the US space agency Nasa gave the final go-ahead for what would turn out to be humanity’s most recent odyssey to the moon. Few realized at the time it would be more than half a century before Nasa would be ready to return, not least Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan, whose belief as he stepped back into the lunar module in December 1972 was that it would be “not too long into the future” that astronauts were there again.

Four minutes after midnight Wednesday, late technical issues and Florida’s weather gods notwithstanding, Artemis 1, the most powerful rocket ship in history, will attempt to close that decades-long gap.

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