Category Archives: US News

Uvalde police chief placed on leave amid outrage over shooter inaction

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Pete Arredondo is blamed for police waiting 77 mins before intervening as 19 children and two teachers were killed

The police chief for the Texas elementary school where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers has been placed on administrative leave amid outrage that officers did not intervene sooner to stop the shooter.

Under the command of Pete Arredondo, the police chief for the Uvalde school district, officers held back for about an hour and 15 min outside the classrooms where an 18-year-old with an AR-15 had opened fire on children and teachers, according to the Texas state police.

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Portly python: heaviest-ever snake captured in Florida tips scales at 215lbs

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Biologists used male ‘scout’ snakes to find the female Burmese which was nearly 18ft long and had 122 developing eggs

A team of biologists recently hauled in the heaviest Burmese python ever captured in Florida, officials said. The discovery was part of the state’s python removal program.

The female python weighed in at 215 pounds (98 kg), was nearly 18ft long (5 metres) and had 122 developing eggs, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida said in a news release.

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FDA to order Juul to take e-cigarettes off the market in the US – report

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FDA had delayed decision in September as it weighed the public health impact of the products

The US Food and Drug Administration is preparing to order Juul Labs to take its e-cigarettes off the market in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Shares in the tobacco giant Altria Group, which owns a 35% stake in the maker of vaping products, fell 8.5% following the report. The decision could come as early as Wednesday, the Journal report said.

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US senators to start debate on breakthrough bipartisan gun violence bill – live

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One of the star witnesses at yesterday’s hearing of the January 6 committee was Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of Arizona’s House of Representatives. He detailed how he was pressured by Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to take part in a scheme to disrupt the certification of Arizona’s vote for Joe Biden in the 2020 election, or overturn it entirely.

He said he wanted nothing to do with their plans, which he described as unsupported by evidence and “against my oath,” adding, “I will not break my oath.”

Uncertainty has clouded Juul since it landed in the FDA’s sights four years ago, when its fruity flavors and hip marketing were blamed for fueling a surge of underage vaping. The company since then has been trying to regain the trust of regulators and the public. It limited its marketing and in 2019 stopped selling sweet and fruity flavors. Juul’s sales have tumbled in recent years.

The FDA has barred the sale of all sweet and fruity e-cigarette cartridges. The agency has cleared the way for Juul’s biggest rivals, Reynolds American Inc. and NJOY Holdings Inc., to keep tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes on the market. Industry observers had expected Juul to receive similar clearance.

The proposal comes as the Biden administration doubles down on fighting cancer-related deaths.

Earlier this year, the government announced plans to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50% over the next 25 years.

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Daunte Wright’s family to receive $3.2m in settlement over police shooting

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The settlement also includes changes in police policies and training involving traffic stops

Authorities in Brooklyn Center, a city in the suburbs of Minneapolis, have agreed to pay $3.2m to the family of Daunte Wright, a Black man shot dead by a police officer who said she confused her gun with her Taser.

The tentative settlement also includes changes in police policies and training involving traffic stops like the one that resulted in Wright’s death, according to a statement from attorneys representing Wright’s family.

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James Rado, co-creator of Broadway hit Hair, dies at 90

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The award-winning writer, whose hit musical originally opened on Broadway in the late 60s, died in New York City of cardiorespiratory arrest

James Rado, the award-winning co-creator of Hair, has died at the age of 90.

The writer, whose hit musical launched songs such as Aquarius and Let the Sunshine In, died peacefully in New York City surrounded by family. The cause of death was cardiorespiratory arrest, as confirmed by longtime friend, publicist Merle Frimark.

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US woman left traumatised after Malta hospital refuses life-saving abortion

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‘Desperate’ tourist who fell foul of country’s total ban fears for her life if complications set in while she waits for transfer to UK

Doctors have denied an American woman on holiday in Malta a potentially life-saving abortion, despite saying her baby had a “zero chance” of survival after she was admitted to hospital with severe bleeding in her 16th week of pregnancy.

Despite an “extreme risk” of haemorrhage and infection, doctors at the Mater Dei hospital in Msida told Andrea Prudente that they would not perform a termination because of the country’s total ban on abortion.

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Panel makes case that Trump campaign knew alternate electors scheme was fraudulent

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Text appears to indicate campaign sought to use certificates it knew were not state-certified to obstruct Biden’s victory

The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack made the case at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that the Trump 2020 campaign tried to obstruct Joe Biden’s election win through a potentially illegal scheme to send fake slates of electors to Congress.

The panel presented a text message sent on 4 January 2021 that appeared to indicate the Trump campaign was seeking to use fraudulent election certificates they would have known were not state-certified to obstruct the congressional certification of Biden’s win.

Note: This post was updated to clarify the former US attorneys’ titles.

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Microsoft limits access to facial recognition tool in AI ethics overhaul

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Company also restricts use of custom neural voice technology owing to deepfake concerns

Microsoft is overhauling its artificial intelligence ethics policies and will no longer let companies use its technology to do things such as infer emotion, gender or age using facial recognition technology, the company has said.

As part of its new “responsible AI standard”, Microsoft says it intends to keep “people and their goals at the centre of system design decisions”. The high-level principles will lead to real changes in practice, the company says, with some features being tweaked and others withdrawn from sale.

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Brexit: unilateral action on NI protocol ‘not conducive’ to trade deal, warns US

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Exclusive: officials’ comments put paid to idea displeasure with UK is limited to Irish caucus on Capitol Hill

The US government has warned that Boris Johnson’s move to unilaterally axe some of the Northern Ireland Brexit arrangements protocol was a matter of continuing concern and “not conducive” to a trade deal.

Senior officials have hit back at suggestions that the lack of public commentary by the Biden administration meant it was not troubled by the move to bring in new laws to ditch part of the Brexit deal signed in 2020.

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US Senators announce gun violence bill with bipartisan support

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The breakthrough in a 29-year stale mate on gun reform comes after two devastating mass shootings in Texas and New York

US senators have announced an agreement on a bipartisan gun violence bill, marking a small but notable breakthrough on gun control in the wake of recent mass shootings.

Nine days after Senate bargainers agreed to a framework proposal – and 29 years after Congress last enacted major firearms curbs – senators Chris Murphy, a Democrat and John Cornyn, a Republican, told reporters on Tuesday that a final accord on the proposal’s details had been reached.

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Airplane catches on fire at Miami airport after landing gear collapses

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Authorities said all aboard the flight, which had arrived from the Dominican Republic, were safe

An airplane caught fire after landing at Miami International airport on Tuesday, but authorities have said all passengers are safe.

The fire broke out when landing gear inside the airplane collapsed during landing, NBC Miami reported. The Red Air flight had arrived from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, according to a spokesperson from the Miami-Dade aviation department.

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US Forest Service admits ‘multiple miscalculations’ caused New Mexico fire

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In an 80-page review, the agency states missteps by its employees in setting prescribed burns led to explosive wildfire

Employees with the US Forest Service made multiple miscalculations, used inaccurate models and underestimated how dry conditions were in the south-west, causing a planned burn to reduce the threat of wildfires to explode into the largest blaze in New Mexico’s recorded history, the agency said on Tuesday.

The agency quietly posted an 80-page review that details the planning missteps and the conditions on the ground as crews ignited the prescribed fire in early April. The report states officials who planned the operation underestimated the amount of timber and vegetation that was available to fuel the flames, the exceptional dry conditions and the rural villages and water supplies that would be threatened if things went awry.

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A few good Republicans stopped Trump – but his threat to democracy isn’t over

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Three Republicans testified how they resisted a relentless campaign by Trump and his allies to overturn Biden’s 2020 win

Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, wanted Donald Trump to win the 2020 election. He worked hard to elect him and, when the time came, cast his ballot for the president.

What he wasn’t willing to do was cheat.

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Bill Cosby found guilty of sexually abusing minor at Playboy Mansion

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Jurors at the civil trial ruled in favor of Judy Huth who accused the comedian of forcing her to perform a sex act in 1975 at 16 years old

Bill Cosby sexually abused a 16-year-old girl at the Playboy Mansion in 1975, jurors determined on Tuesday after a nearly month-long civil trial.

Jurors in Los Angeles county ruled in favor of Judy Huth, who is now 64, awarding her $500,000 in a legal defeat for the once-beloved comedian and star of The Cosby Show.

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‘There’s nowhere I feel safe’: Georgia elections workers describe how Trump upended their lives

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Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, testified how Trump and his allies fueled harassment and racist threats

In powerful and emotional testimony about the sinister results of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a mother and daughter who were Georgia elections workers described how Trump and his allies upended their lives, fueling harassment and racist threats by claiming they were involved in voter fraud.

Testifying to the January 6 committee in Washington, Shaye Moss said she received “a lot of threats. Wishing death upon me. Telling me that I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.’”

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US volunteer fighters captured in Ukraine could face death penalty, says Russia

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Alexander Drueke, 39, and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, from Alabama have been taken into detention in Donetsk

The Kremlin has said that two captured US volunteers are not covered by the Geneva conventions and could face the death penalty.

The remarks were made by Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, following claims in the Russian media that two of three US volunteers missing in Ukraine had been captured and were being held by pro-Russian separatist forces.

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Donald Trump plotted fake electors scheme, panel set to show | First Thing

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Committee also expected to investigate Trump’s pressure in crucial states to reverse election defeat. Plus Juneteenth celebrations over time

Good morning.

The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is expected to show at its fourth hearing today that Donald Trump and top advisers coordinated the scheme to send fake slates of electors as part of an effort to return him to the White House.

What happened with the fake electors? After the authorized Democratic electors met at statehouses to formally name Biden as president, in seven battleground states, illegitimate Republican electors arrived too. The Trump electors were turned away but they signed fake election certificates that declared they were the “duly elected and qualified” electors certifying Trump as the winner.

What has this got to do with what happened on January 6? The scheme was conceived in an effort to create “dueling” slates of electors that Pence could use to pretend the election was in doubt and refuse to formalize Biden’s win at the congressional certification on January 6.

Delays in the law enforcement response have been the focus of the federal, state and local investigation of the massacre and its aftermath. Questions about the law enforcement response began days after the massacre. On 2 June, the state senator Roland Gutierrez said there was a “system failure”.

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Texas school shooting: heavily armed police with ballistic shields were there ‘within 19 minutes’

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Timeline published in local news reports suggests police in Uvalde had ability to confront gunman far earlier during May attack in which 21 died

Multiple police officers armed with rifles and at least one ballistic shield were at the site of the Robb elementary school mass shooting in Texas within 19 minutes, earlier than previously known, according to a timeline in documents reviewed by local media.

The information revealed by the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE-TV is to be presented to a public Texas Senate hearing in Austin on Tuesday.

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Donald Trump plotted fake electors scheme, January 6 panel set to show

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Committee also expected to probe Trump’s pressure on officials in crucial states to corruptly reverse his election defeat

The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is expected to show at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that Donald Trump and top advisers coordinated the scheme to send fake slates of electors as part of an effort to return him to the White House.

The panel is expected to also examine Trump’s campaign to pressure top officials in seven crucial battleground states to corruptly reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the weeks and months after the 2020 election.

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