Category Archives: US News

Senator raises alarm Saudis could share US defense technology with Russia

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Richard Blumenthal to seek reassurances from Pentagon that ‘they are on top of’ risk of sharing information with Gulf state

A senior Democratic lawmaker has raised alarms about the possibility that sensitive US defense technology could be shared with Russia by Saudi Arabia in the wake of the kingdom’s recent decision to side with Moscow over the interests of the US.

Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate armed services committee who has proposed a one-year freeze on weapons sales to Saudi following Opec+’s decision to cut oil production, said he would “dig deeper into the risk” in discussions with the Pentagon.

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Whistleblower Trump Media executive says firm violated federal securities laws

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Will Wilkerson, co-founder of Trump’s media company, also alleges that ex-president pressured executives to give shares to Melania

The co-founder of Donald Trump’s beleaguered social media company has turned whistleblower, alleging the firm violated federal securities laws and that the former president pressured executives to hand over lucrative shares to his wife.

Will Wilkerson, a former Trump Media and Technology Group executive, has told the US government’s financial watchdog that the company’s bid to raise more than $1bn via an investment vehicle known as a special purpose acquisition company (Spac), relied on “fraudulent misrepresentations … in violation of federal securities laws.”

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Republican Adam Kinzinger: election deniers won’t ‘go away organically’

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January 6 committee member speaks days after panel voted to subpoena Trump and says ex-president ‘required by law to come in’

Election deniers are not “going to go away organically”, and if they are ever to vanish, US voters must signal “that truth matters” beginning with the upcoming midterms, according to a Republican member of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Adam Kinzinger’s latest remarks on the baseless insistence by Donald Trump’s allies that fraudsters denied him a second term in the Oval Office and handed the 2020 election to Joe Biden came Sunday, days after the House January 6 select committee unanimously moved to subpoena the former president’s testimony over his knowledge of the deadly Capitol attack.

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Woman who escapes month-long captivity says other Black women killed by abductor

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Missouri woman, 22, escapes less than a month after police dismissed concerns about a serial killer as ‘completely unfounded’

A 22-year-old Black woman in Missouri who escaped after a white man abducted, tortured and held her captive for weeks in a basement has said several other Black women were killed by her captor – less than a month after police dismissed community concerns about a serial killer as “completely unfounded”.

The woman, who has not been named, escaped on 7 October after about a month in captivity, still wearing a metal collar locked with a padlock that authorities had to remove.

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Ghislaine Maxwell says she feels bad for ‘dear friend’ Prince Andrew

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Comments will be embarrassing for royal who has tried to distance himself from disgraced socialite

Ghislaine Maxwell has spoken from a US prison cell about how she feels “so bad” for her “dear friend” Prince Andrew.

In her first lengthy interview since her conviction on sex-trafficking charges last year, Maxwell said she still cared about the Duke of York, who has been stripped of royal duties over his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

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Paul LePage: is Maine ready to welcome back the ‘Trump before Trump’?

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The Republican ex-governor was known for his offensive, belligerent attitude – but this time, he says he’s reformed

In the late summer of 2016, Drew Gattine received a surprising voicemail. The sender was Paul LePage, then the governor of Maine, and he called Gattine “a little son-of-a-bitch socialist cocksucker”.

Amid the inevitable media frenzy that followed, LePage lamented not having the opportunity to engage Gattine, a Democrat in the Maine house of representatives, in a duel. Rather than follow in the footsteps of Alexander Hamilton, who pointed his gun in the air when he dueled Aaron Burr in 1804, LePage told reporters, “I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt.”.

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Alaska cancels snow crab season over population decline

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Causes being researched but likely included increased predation and stresses from warmer water

Alaska officials have cancelled the upcoming snow crab season, due to population decline across the Bering Sea.

The fall Bristol Bay red king crab harvest will not happen. The winter harvest of smaller snow crab has also been cancelled for the first time.

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Joe Biden: Liz Truss tax cuts a ‘mistake’ and ‘I wasn’t the only one’ who thought so

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US president rejects ‘cutting taxes on the super-wealthy’ and says he is worried by ‘lack of economic growth and sound policy in other countries’

Joe Biden has called Liz Truss’s abandoned UK tax cut plan a “mistake” and said he is worried that other nations’ fiscal policies may hurt the US amid “worldwide inflation”.

Biden said it was “predictable” that the new British prime minister was forced on Friday to walk back plans to aggressively cut taxes without identifying cost savings, after Truss’s proposal caused turmoil in global financial markets.

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Police make arrest in suspected Stockton serial killer case

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‘We are sure we stopped another killing,’ Stockton police chief says

A man suspected of killing six men and wounding a woman in a series of shootings in northern California was arrested before dawn on Saturday as he drove through the streets of Stockton, armed with a handgun and possibly searching for another victim, police said.

Investigators began watching the suspect after receiving tips and stopped him in a car at about 2am in the Central Valley city where five of the shootings took place, the police chief, Stanley McFadden, said at a news conference.

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Florida governor Ron DeSantis will fly migrants to Illinois and Delaware

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Spokesperson confirms plan to continue with immigration stunts which have attracted investigations and lawsuits

The Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, plans to continue flying undocumented migrants to Democratic strongholds, his spokeswoman said on Saturday, a day after released records showed the state paid nearly $1m to arrange two sets of flights to Delaware and Illinois.

Documents released on Friday showed that the planned flights will transport about 100 migrants. They were scheduled for before 3 October but were halted or postponed. The contractor hired by Florida extended the window for the trips until 1 December, according to memos released by the state transportation department.

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Elon Musk says SpaceX will keep funding Starlink internet in Ukraine

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World’s richest man’s company previously said it could not pay for satellite internet in country indefinitely

Elon Musk on Saturday announced that his company would continue to pay for Starlink satellite internet in Ukraine, a day after suggesting he could not keep funding the project, which he said was losing around $20m a month.

“The hell with it,” the world’s richest man wrote on Twitter. “Even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”

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Florida clown murder trial postponed after discovery of ‘clown sighting file’

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In 1990 incident, Sheila Keen Warren is alleged to have dressed as a clown before shooting her employer’s wife in the face

The trial of a Florida woman accused of dressing up as clown in 1990 and fatally shooting the wife of a man she later married has been postponed, following the disclosure of a law enforcement file containing information about other clown-sighting leads at the time.

Prosecutors informed defense attorneys for Sheila Keen Warren last Thursday that they had found a “clown sighting file” which defense attorneys had been demanding but prosecutors had been saying they didn’t have, according to a court filing by defense attorneys in the Palm Beach county case.

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Pakistan summons US envoy over Joe Biden’s ‘most dangerous nation’ remark

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US president questioned country’s nuclear weapons safety protocols sparking outrage in Islamabad

Pakistan on Saturday summoned the US ambassador for an explanation after President Joe Biden described the south Asian country as “one of the most dangerous nations in the world” and questioned its nuclear weapons safety protocols.

Biden made the apparently off-the-cuff remark late on Thursday while talking about US foreign policy during a private Democratic party fundraiser in California, but the White House later published a transcript of his comments, which provoked outrage in Pakistan.

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Juror in Gretchen Whitmer kidnap case dismissed for flirting with defendant

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Judge acts after prosecutor says woman and Paul Bellar, 24, had ‘non-verbal communication’ in form of eye contact and smiling

A judge dismissed a young woman from the jury hearing the trial of three men in connection with a 2020 plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, after attorneys accused her of flirting with a defendant.

Judge Thomas Wilson announced on Friday that the woman had been removed from the jury, two days after attorneys raised concerns she was having too much non-verbal communication with the defendant Paul Bellar, the Jackson Citizen Patriot reported.

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Barack Obama to campaign for Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin Senate race

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Barnes, who would be the first Black senator from Wisconsin, is looking to unseat Republican Ron Johnson

Barack Obama, who twice won Wisconsin by large margins, will travel to the battleground state in the final weeks of the current midterm elections, seeking to boost Mandela Barnes, the young lieutenant governor looking to unseat the Republican Ron Johnson in a key US Senate contest.

Barnes would be the first Black senator from Wisconsin. He held early leads over Johnson but the Republican, a prominent figure on the GOP hard right, has surged back. This week, a Marquette University Law School poll showed Johnson in the lead.

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North Carolina shooting: 15-year-old suspect to be charged as an adult

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Authorities have not commented on what charges teen could face after five people killed and two injured

A 15-year-old boy alleged to have killed five people and injured two in a shooting rampage in Raleigh, North Carolina will be charged as an adult, authorities said.

The Wake county district attorney, Lorrin Freeman, said adult charges would be brought. Authorities have not commented on what charges the teen could face.

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Mel Gibson can testify in Harvey Weinstein’s Los Angeles trial, judge says

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Actor and director was one of many witnesses whose identities were revealed in Los Angeles superior court

Mel Gibson can testify about what he learned from one of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers, a judge ruled on Friday in the rape and sexual assault trial of the disgraced movie mogul.

The 66-year-old actor and director was one of many witnesses whose identities were revealed in Los Angeles superior court. The judge and attorneys had taken a break from jury selection for motions on what evidence will be allowed and who can testify. The witness list is sealed.

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Idaho man dies while fighting as volunteer soldier in Ukraine

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Dane Partridge, 34, died from injuries sustained during a Russian attack in Luhansk

Dane Partridge, a 34-year-old man from Idaho who fought as a volunteer soldier in Ukraine, died on Tuesday from injuries sustained during a Russian attack in Luhansk.

The Ukrainian government has recruited people with military experience to join the International Legion for the Territorial Defense of Ukraine. At least four other US citizens have been killed fighting in Ukraine, based on reports from families and the state department.

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Roger Stone slammed Ivanka Trump after not getting pardoned, video shows

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Republican operative calls Trump an ‘abortionist bitch’ in video released by film-maker who provided footage to January 6 panel

In video released by a Danish film-maker who provided footage to the January 6 committee, Roger Stone, furious he will not be pardoned for his activities around the Capitol attack, is seen to call Ivanka Trump an “abortionist bitch”.

The Republican operative also says Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband and like her an adviser to Donald Trump in the White House, “has an IQ of 70”.

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