Category Archives: US News

Monkey shot dead as Mexican cartels’ passion for exotic pets leaves bloody toll

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Spider monkey dressed up as gang mascot killed in shootout, and man dies in Michoacán after trying to pet captive tiger

Mexican narcos’ fascination with exotic animals has been on display this week after a spider monkey dressed up as a drug gang mascot was killed in a shootout, a 200kg tiger wandered the streets in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, and a man died after trying to pet a captive tiger in a cartel-dominated area of western Michoacán state.

Eleven suspected gang members died in the shootout on Tuesday in the state of Mexico, which surrounds the capital. Photos from the scene showed a small monkey dressed in a tiny camouflage jacket and a tiny “bulletproof” vest sprawled across the body of a dead gunman.

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‘Frankly quite stupid’: rights groups condemn Biden’s Saudi Arabia visit

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Critics question value of US president’s visit, raising fears it will endanger dissidents and legitimise regime’s human rights stance

Rights advocates fear Joe Biden’s decision to visit Saudi Arabia will endanger dissidents abroad and be seen by the authorities there as giving the green light to restrict civil liberties domestically.

Abdullah Alaoudh, of the thinktank Democracy for the Arab World Now and son of jailed cleric Salman al-Odah, said: “Right before inauguration, he [Biden] said he will be sure to protect Saudi dissidents – those were his words. We’re not protected by someone shaking hands with the same person who is threatening us every day and taking our families hostage due to our activism here in the US.”

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China launches third aircraft carrier in military advance

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Fujian unveiled amid heightened tensions with US over self-ruled Taiwan

China has launched its third aircraft carrier, the first designed and built entirely in the country, marking a significant military advance for the Asian superpower.

The announcement comes as tensions between China and the US have ramped up in recent weeks over Beijing’s sabre-rattling towards self-ruled Taiwan, which it views as a breakaway province to be seized by force if necessary.

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‘System nearly failed’: US democracy was left hanging by the thread of Pence’s defiance

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If the vice-president had acquiesced to Trump’s demand, the country could have plunged into an unprecedented crisis

The January 6 select committee showed on Thursday that Mike Pence withstood an intense pressure campaign from Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump’s advisers repeatedly tried to convince Pence to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory on January 6, even after they themselves acknowledged that there was no constitutional basis for the vice-president to do so.

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Capitol attack prosecutors press January 6 committee for transcripts

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Attorneys general say material is needed for criminal cases but congressional inquiry says it must be left to do its work

Tensions between the US justice department and the House of Representatives January 6 select committee have escalated after federal prosecutors complained that their inability to access witness transcripts was hampering criminal investigations into rioters who stormed the Capitol.

The complaint that came from the heads of the justice department’s national security and criminal divisions and the US attorney for Washington Matthew Graves showed a likely collision course for the parallel congressional and criminal probes into the Capitol attack.

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Pence the ‘hero’ who foiled Trump’s plot – could it lead to a 2024 run?

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The former VP rejected the plot to overturn the election – the death knell for Trump and Pence’s marriage of convenience

Mike Pence was described as the hero of the hour, the man who stood his ground to Donald Trump’s coup plot and saved America from a violent “revolution”.

Yet among the rows of committee members, witnesses, reporters, congressmen and women and young citizens at Thursday’s January 6 hearing into the attack on the Capitol, the former vice-president was nowhere to be seen. Pence was 500 miles away in Ohio to promote “American energy dominance”.

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Jay-Z’s bitcoin school met with skepticism in his former housing project: ‘I don’t have money to be losing’

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The hip-hop mogul loves to rap about his roots in Brooklyn’s Marcy housing projects. But classes in cryptocurrency show the billionaire is out of touch, residents say

Marcy Houses, the 28-acre public housing development in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, is best-known as a pillar of rapper-turned-mogul Jay-Z’s New York persona. Built in 1949 as part of a push by the New York City Housing Authority to house the city’s low-income residents, Marcy had fallen into a state of dangerous disrepair by the 1970s when Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, was growing up there.

“Where I’m from, Marcy son, ain’t nothing nice,” he raps in “Where I’m From”. “Marcy me, just the way I am always gonna be,” he declares in 2017’s Marcy Me.

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Shooting at an Alabama church leaves two dead and one in hospital

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Police confirmed a suspect had been taken into custody after the attack at St Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Birmingham

A shooting at a church in a suburb of one of Alabama’s major cities left two people dead and two others wounded on Thursday, police said, adding a suspect was quickly taken into custody.

The shooting erupted inside St Stephen’s Episcopal church in the Birmingham suburb of Vestavia Hills.

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US agency aware of photograph showing two Americans captured by Russians

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The state department told a relative of one of the men they were working to verify the image which was circulated on social media

The US state department is aware of a photograph appearing to show two missing Americans volunteering to defend Ukraine from Russian invaders in the back of a military truck with their hands tied behind them, seeming to offer evidence that they have been captured, a relative of one of the men said Thursday.

At least one copy of the photograph in question depicting Alexander Drueke and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh was circulating on the social media platform Telegram, which is popular in Russia and Ukraine. An accompanying caption in Russian appeared to mock both men, saying something to the effect of a trip to Ukraine “for easy money” had ended badly, according to an approximate translation provided by Google.

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Biden Saudi visit is ‘presidential pardon for murder’, says ex-spy chief’s son

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President ‘made it clear that there won’t be any direct consequences’ for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, says Khalid Aljabri

Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia and meeting with its de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is “the equivalent of a presidential pardon for murder”, according to Khalid Aljabri, the son of the exiled former senior Saudi intelligence officer Saad Aljabri.

The US president once vowed to make Saudi Arabia “a pariah” after the death of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist whose 2018 murder was ordered, according to US intelligence. But this week the White House announced that Biden will meet the crown prince in Jeddah at the end of a four-day trip in July – a development described by Saudi human rights activists as a “betrayal”.

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Proud Boys developed plans to take over government buildings in Washington DC

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Document reveals plans for entering buildings and blocking traffic to prevent law enforcement access

A document revealed in court on Wednesday has exposed a detailed plan by the Proud Boys to occupy government buildings in Washington DC, including the supreme court.

The document, titled “1776 Returns”, laid out the plans for which buildings to target, the number of members required for each building, and tactics, including instructions to use the pandemic as an excuse for wearing masks and face shields without raising suspicion.

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Revlon files for bankruptcy in US after supply chain trouble and surging costs

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Cosmetics company hopes to refinance and keep trading, saying demand for products remains strong

Revlon, the 90-year-old multinational beauty company, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US, weighed down by debt load, disruptions to its supply chain network and surging costs.

The New York-based company said that on court approval, it expects to receive $575m (£469m) in financing from its existing lenders, which will allow it to keep its day-to-day operations running.

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Retired judge to testify on Trump’s ‘well-developed plan’ to overturn election at any cost – live

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The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell explain why the January 6 committee has opted to make today’s hearing about the actions of Mike Pence, who played a major role in torpedoing Trump’s plan to stop Biden from taking office:

The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack intends to outline at its third hearing on Thursday how Donald Trump corruptly pressured then vice-president Mike Pence to reject the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election and directly contributed to the insurrection.

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Blonde: first trailer for ‘disturbing’ Marilyn Monroe biopic released

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Netflix film, which has been called ‘startling’ by source author Joyce Carol Oates, stars Ana de Armas as the tragic actor

The first trailer has launched for Blonde, Netflix’s controversial biopic of Marilyn Monroe.

Directed by Andrew Dominik, best known for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, the film stars Ana de Armas as the tragic star and is based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize.

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Greenhouse gases must be legally phased out, US scientists argue

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A petition calls on the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions under the Toxic Substances Control Act

Greenhouse gas emissions should be subject to legal controls in the US and phased out under the Toxic Substances Control Act, according to a group of scientists and former public officials, in a novel approach to the climate crisis.

“Using the TSCA would be one small step for [the US president] Joe Biden, but potentially a giant leap for humankind – as a first step towards making the polluters pay,” said James Hansen, a former Nasa scientist, who is a member of the group alongside Donn Viviani, a retired 35-year veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

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Mo’Nique and Netflix reportedly settle lawsuit alleging discrimination

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The Oscar-winning comedian and actor accused the streamer of racial and sexual discrimination over a proposed comedy special

Mo’Nique and Netflix reportedly have settled her lawsuit that accused the streaming service of racial and sexual discrimination for allegedly making her a lowball offer for a proposed comedy special.

The matter has been “amicably resolved”, Michael Parks, an attorney representing Mo’Nique in the suit, told the Hollywood Reporter.

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Ghislaine Maxwell asks court for sex trafficking sentence of ‘well below’ 20 years

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The disgraced British socialite’s lawyers argued that she was threatened in jail and cannot be made proxy for Jeffrey Epstein

Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorneys argued on Wednesday that the disgraced British socialite should be sentenced to “well below” the 20 years imprisonment that probation authorities have recommended in her New York federal sex-trafficking case.

In a pre-sentencing report, Maxwell’s attorneys provided detailed descriptions of her allegedly perilous conditions in jail, and described an emotionally distressing upbringing, as part of their argument for leniency.

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Two US volunteers in Ukraine feared taken prisoner by Russia

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The pair’s disappearance, the first believed to have been captured in Ukraine, would add another layer of complexity to US efforts against Russia

Two American volunteers in Ukraine have gone missing and are feared to have been taken prisoner by Russia, officials and family members said on Wednesday.

Alexander Drueke, 39, and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, are both US military veterans who had been living in Alabama and went to Ukraine to assist with war efforts. Relatives have been in contact with Senate and House offices seeking information on the men’s whereabouts.

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Biden signs executive order to curb anti-trans laws and conversion therapy

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The move expands gender-affirming care and urges federal departments to counter anti-LGBTQ+ bills passed by states

Joe Biden has signed an executive order aimed at curbing discrimination against transgender youth and drying up federal funding for the controversial practice of “conversion therapy”.

Biden’s executive order, which comes during Pride month, asks the federal health and education departments to expand access to gender-affirming medical care and find new ways to counter a flurry of bills passed in US states by conservative lawmakers this year that ban these treatments for transgender youth.

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Grand jury indicts man accused of trying to assassinate Brett Kavanaugh

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Nicholas John Roske, 26, faces a possible life sentence after federal grand jury indictment

The man accused of trying to assassinate Brett Kavanaugh at the US supreme court justice’s home in Maryland last week is facing a possible life sentence after a federal grand jury indicted him on Wednesday.

Nicholas John Roske, 26, faces one count of attempting to murder an associate justice of the supreme court, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

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