Category Archives: US News

Judge orders release of Adnan Syed after more than two decades in prison

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Judge had overturned Syed’s conviction for the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, a case that was chronicled in the hit podcast Serial

A Baltimore judge on Monday ordered the release of Adnan Syed after overturning Syed’s conviction for the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee – a case that was chronicled in the hit podcast Serial.

Circuit court judge Melissa Phinn ordered that Syed’s conviction be vacated and approved the release of the now 41-year-old who has spent more than two decades behind bars.

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Alaskans continue to grapple with fallout from typhoon-related flooding

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Rising waters brought power outages, damage and concerns over surviving the winter as downpours also affected California

Floodwaters in Alaska are receding after the remnants of a powerful typhoon pummeled the state’s western coastline. But residents are continuing to grapple with power outages, water damage and concerns about how to survive the coming winter.

This weekend, a low-pressure system spinning out from Alaska made its way down the coast to northern California, bringing rare September rain to the region. The downpours aided efforts to contain the 19 sq mile (49 sq km) Mosquito fire in the Sierra Nevada foothills, but raised new concerns.

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California woman who admitted to faking her kidnapping sentenced to 18 months in prison

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Sherri Papini’s case gained national attention when she went missing for weeks but was found staying with an ex-boyfriend

Sherri Papini, the California woman who admitted to faking her own kidnapping in 2016, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Papini’s case grabbed national attention when she went missing for several weeks, prompting a frantic search and widespread media coverage. She eventually reappeared with an elaborate story of being abducted by two “Hispanic women”, chained to a pole for three weeks, beaten and branded before being released by the side of a highway.

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Virginia seeks to strip transgender school students of protections

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State education department issues guidance reinstating bathroom and locker room restrictions and curbing pronoun changes

Virginia is attempting to roll back major protections for school students who are transgender, according to the latest set of guidelines announced by the state’s education officials.

The state’s department of education announced on Friday that it had rewritten a number of policies around the treatment of transgender students, issuing guidance for school districts to follow that ease up accommodations from the previous administration.

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Puerto Rico battles blackout and lack of safe water in wake of Hurricane Fiona

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Floods and rain wreak havoc as critics say total blackout shows authorities have learnt nothing since 2017 hurricanes

Most of Puerto Rico was still without power or safe drinking water on Monday, with remnants of a category 1 hurricane that struck there a day earlier forecast to bring more heavy rain and life-threatening flooding.

Hundreds of people are trapped in emergency shelters across the Caribbean island, with major roads underwater and reports of numerous collapsed bridges. Crops have been washed away while flash floods, landslides and fallen trees have blocked roads, swept away vehicles and caused widespread damage to infrastructure.

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Trump embraces QAnon at rally by playing music similar to its anthem

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Ex-president’s team insists it is a royalty-free tune but to many it is nearly identical to the extremist conspiracy group’s adopted song

Donald Trump made one of his highest-profile embraces to date of the extremist conspiracy group QAnon at a political rally in Ohio on Saturday, making the apparently deliberate choice to play music that is virtually indistinguishable from the cult organization’s adopted anthem.

Dozens of the former president’s supporters in Youngstown engaged in raised-arm salutes as Trump delivered a fiery address to the background of a song his team insisted was a royalty-free tune from the internet, but to many ears it was nearly identical to the 2020 instrumental track Wwg1wga.

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‘End of an era’: how the Queen’s funeral was seen around the world

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From Melbourne to Paris, New York to Delhi, the solemn events in London resonated around the globe

As the doors to Westminster Abbey opened to allow guests to take their seats, across the other side of the world, Australians sat down in front of their TVs to watch the historic event.

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Taliban release American engineer Mark Frerichs in prisoner swap

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Navy veteran exchanged for Bashir Noorzai, who had been held in US since 2005 on drugs charges

The Taliban have freed an American engineer in exchange for an Afghan tribal leader linked to the group whom the US had held on drugs charges since 2005.

Mark Frerichs was exchanged at Kabul airport for Bashir Noorzai, the acting Taliban foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, told a news conference in the Afghan capital.

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Burning world’s fossil fuel reserves could emit 3.5bn tons of greenhouse gas

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The world will have released more planet-heating emissions than have occurred since the industrial revolution, analysis found

Burning the world’s proven reserves of fossil fuels would emit more planet-heating emissions than have occurred since the industrial revolution, easily blowing the remaining carbon budget before societies are subjected to catastrophic global heating, a new analysis has found.

An enormous 3.5tn tons of greenhouse gas emissions will be emitted if governments allow identified reserves of coal, oil and gas to be extracted and used, according to what has been described as the first public database of fossil fuel production.

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Joe Biden again says US forces would defend Taiwan from Chinese attack

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White House confirms US policy has not changed after president’s remarks on 60 Minutes show

Joe Biden has again said US forces would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, in his most explicit statement so far on the issue.

Asked in a CBS 60 Minutes interview broadcast on Sunday whether US forces would defend the self-ruled island claimed by China, he replied: “Yes, if in fact there was an unprecedented attack.”

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Flooding and landslides in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Fiona knocks out power to island

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Category 1 storm damage ‘catastrophic’, says governor, while it continues to strengthen and barrels toward Dominican Republic

Most of Puerto Rico is without power after a category 1 hurricane bringing heavy rains and dangerous winds made landfall on Sunday evening, causing severe flooding and landslides and damaging infrastructure.

Hurricane Fiona was causing “catastrophic flooding” in Puerto Rico early on Sunday evening, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

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Iran president rules out meeting with Biden, saying it won’t be beneficial

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Ebrahim Raisi says he sees no ‘changes in reality’ from Trump administration as hopes to revive nuclear talks dampen

Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, has ruled out a meeting with Joe Biden on the margins of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) this week, saying he saw no “changes in reality” from the Trump administration.

Raisi underlined the firm position of his government and dampened hopes that a week of summitry at UNGA in New York might yield any progress in negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. Washington has rejected the latest Iranian bargaining positive as “not constructive”, and most observers believe there will be no breakthroughs at least until after the US congressional elections in November.

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Attorneys for ‘duped’ migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard call for criminal investigation

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Republican governors made ‘false promises to migrants in order to induce them to travel’, lawyers say

Attorneys representing Venezuelan asylum-seekers flown thousands of miles to an affluent holiday island in Massachusetts at the behest of Republican governors have formally requested authorities open a criminal investigation, claiming the victims were “induced to board airplanes and cross state lines under false pretences”.

Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), a Boston-based group representing 30 of the 48 people flown from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday, said: “Individuals, working in concert with state officials, including the Florida governor, made numerous false promises [to the migrants] – including of work opportunities, schooling for their children, and immigration assistance – in order to induce them to travel.”

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California’s fast-food industry calls for referendum on new labor legislation

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Law provides for councils to represent workers, but opponents claim menu prices will increase and restaurants will close

The fast-food industry is seeking to overturn one of the most significant labor wins in recent American history by trying to scrap a new law in California that will establish an industry council for the sector on wage standards and other regulations, including safety.

The Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act, AB 257, was signed into law by the California governor, Gavin Newsom, on 5 September in what is seen as a huge fillip to a US labor movement seeking to capitalize on a wave of unionization drives.

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‘I can’t stay silent’: Roe reversal powers new generation to sign up and vote

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Huge bloc of women expected to turn out in November midterms to protect abortion rights – could it alter the election outcome?

Sonya Koenig is scared. A 19-year-old student from Kalamazoo, Michigan, Koenig often stays up until 2am thinking. Sometimes she paces up and down the hall, or speaks to her roommate about nightmare scenarios in which she ends up pregnant and in need of an abortion.

“Being in college, I hear stories all the time of women getting drugged at parties, or just walking down the street, and something unfortunate can happen,” says Koenig, a freshman at Michigan State University. “A guy can walk away, but [these abortion bans] mean the woman has to choose: ‘Do I want to give this baby up … or raise this child with no help from anybody?’ That’s a really hard decision.”

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Special master ruling shows Trump’s takeover of courts has started to sting

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Aileen Cannon, who Trump nominated in 2020, granted his wish over the Mar-a-Lago search – a maverick decision that is the thin end of the wedge

In the first televised presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in 2020, the sitting president was asked why voters should re-elect him to the White House. He gave a relatively obscure answer – it was all about the judges, he said.

By the end of his first term in office, Trump bragged, he would have smashed all records for the number of his appointments to the federal bench. “I’ll have approximately 300 federal judges.”

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Liz Truss’s first big diplomatic meeting with Biden postponed

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Meeting rearranged for Wednesday in New York as Bidens travel to UK for Queen’s funeral

Liz Truss’s planned meeting with Joe Biden in Downing Street, which was to be her first major diplomatic event as prime minister, has been rescheduled for Wednesday at the UN.

Officials from both countries said that a meeting in the margins of the UN general assembly would allow “fuller” bilateral discussion and was not the result of friction. But, whenever the two leaders meet, they face disagreements over Northern Ireland.

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Joe and Jill Biden fly to London for funeral of Queen Elizabeth II

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State funeral will be attended by almost 100 presidents and heads of government

Joe Biden and his wife Jill arrived in the UK on Saturday to attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, who the US president has described as “more than a monarch” and a woman who “defined an era”.

The Queen’s state funeral on Monday is to be attended by almost 100 presidents and heads of government, and the Bidens were traveling without any former US presidents.

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Texas sends another busload of migrants to Kamala Harris’s home

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About 50 mainly Venezuelan migrants including a baby deposited unannounced at Naval Observatory in Washington

About 50 migrants, including a one-month-old baby, have been sent in a bus from Texas to the Washington DC residence of Vice-President Kamala Harris, in the latest move by Republican-led states to transfer migrants unannounced across the country.

The bus let off the migrants, who are believed to be mostly Venezuelan, outside the Naval Observatory, the traditional home of US vice-presidents, on Saturday morning.

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Puerto Rico under hurricane warning as tropical storm Fiona nears

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Residents warned of heavy rain, potential landslides, severe flooding and power outages

Tropical Storm Fiona was expected to become a hurricane as it neared Puerto Rico on Saturday, threatening to dump up to 20 inches (51cm) of rain as people braced for potential landslides, severe flooding and power outages.

The storm previously battered various eastern Caribbean islands, with one death reported in the French territory of Guadeloupe. Regional prefect Alexandre Rochatte told reporters on Saturday that the body was found on the side of a road after floods washed away a home in the capital of Basse-Terre.

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