Category Archives: US News

Artemis II crew speak out at welcome home event: ‘Earth was this lifeboat hanging in the universe’

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Astronauts make first remarks at jubilant homecoming in Houston after their record-breaking moon flyby

Still marveling over their moon mission, the Artemis II astronauts received a thunderous welcome home on Saturday from hundreds who took part in setting a record for deep space travel during the US space agency Nasa’s lunar comeback.

The crew of four arrived at Ellington Field near Nasa’s Johnson Space Center and Mission Control in Houston, flying in from San Diego, where they splashed down just offshore the evening before.

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Ex-CIA director calls for ousting Trump: ‘25th amendment was written with him in mind’

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John Brennan says president who made volatile remarks about destroying Iranian civilization ‘is clearly unhinged’

The former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan has added his name to growing calls for the president to be ousted on grounds that he is unfit for the job, arguing that the US constitution’s 25th amendment addressing involuntary removal from office was “written with Donald Trump in mind”.

Brennan, who served as head of the spy agency during Barack Obama’s presidency, told MS Now on Saturday that Trump’s recent volatile remarks about destroying Iranian civilization and the danger he posed to so many lives merited his removal from the Oval Office.

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Planeloads of negotiators and too little time: US and Iran’s 21 hours of talks

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The two sides turned up to test one another’s resolve. It was probably unrealistic to expect a dispute that has taken up years of discussion to be settled in one marathon session

It was if the two delegations in the Iran-US peace talks in Islamabad hoped that the sheer number of negotiators flown into Pakistan could overcome the handicap of having only a finite number of hours in which to settle a 20-year dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, now overlaid by complex new issues such as future control of the strait of Hormuz and US compensation for its attack on Iran.

Iran sent two planeloads of negotiators. They included many members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), present to ensure that no gains made in the field were relinquished at the diplomatic table. Diplomats fanned out across political, legal, security, economic and military files. One Iranian-drafted technical explanation on nuclear facility safety ran to more than 100 pages.

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One dead and several injured after mass shooting at Chick-fil-A in New Jersey

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Shooting under investigation but no details yet released about a suspect, a possible motive or any arrests

At least six people were shot, including one fatally, at a fast-food chain restaurant in Union Township, New Jersey, on Saturday night, according to preliminary reports.

The Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan reference resource, listed the reported shooting at the Chick-fil-A restaurant in the 2300 block of Route 22 as the 100th mass shooting documented in the US this year, as of Sunday. The archive defines mass shootings as cases in which four or more victims are wounded or killed.

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Collapse of US-Iran talks heightens fears of prolonged energy shock

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Oil prices and borrowing costs are expected to rise this week as tankers remain stranded in the Gulf

The failure of the US and Iran to reach a peace deal after marathon negotiations has put markets on alert for further oil and gas price rises.

With large numbers of oil tankers remaining stuck in the Gulf, the US vice-president, JD Vance, blamed the collapse of the talks on Tehran’s refusal to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, while Iranian sources hit back at “excessive” demands from Washington.

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‘This is not serious leadership’: Donald Trump and Marco Rubio watch UFC in Miami as Iran talks fail

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  • President has long been a fan of mixed martial arts

  • Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr also at event

Donald Trump and US secretary of state Marco Rubio attended a UFC event in Miami night on Saturday night as peace talks with Iran failed on the other side of the world.

Trump entered the Kaseya Center shortly after 9pm alongside several members of his family and UFC chief Dana White, who has been a supporter of the president since his first term. Seated nearby was Rubio as well as the US ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, the rapper Vanilla Ice and former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino.

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JD Vance says talks failed due to Iran’s refusal to give up nuclear programme

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Iranian delegates in Islamabad say Washington needs to do more to win their trust if talks to resolve US-Iran conflict are to be successful

The US vice-president, JD Vance, has blamed the failure of marathon negotiations with Iran on the country’s refusal to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, while Iranian delegates have claimed Washington needs to do more to win their trust.

Vance, who left Islamabad on Sunday morning after 21 hours of talks with Iranian officials in the Pakistani capital, said his team had been very clear on its red lines, as hopes faded of a quick end to the conflict that began on 28 February.

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Man arrested for allegedly damaging US military aircraft in Shannon airport

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Suspect in 40s arrested after man apparently climbed on to USAF C130 Hercules transport plane on remote taxiway in County Clare

A man has been arrested after entering an unauthorised area of an airport in the Republic of Ireland and allegedly causing damage to a US military aircraft, police have said.

The suspect, aged in his 40s, was arrested for alleged criminal damage and remains in custody over the incident on Saturday at Shannon airport in County Clare.

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Washington officials say 21 dead canines that washed ashore were foxes, solving local mystery

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Animals were used legally as fishing bait, sheriff’s office confirms after incident shook locals in Guemes Island

A Washington state sheriff’s office says it has solved the mystery of nearly two dozen dead canines who washed ashore recently.

The animals were foxes being used legally as bait for fishing operations, the Skagit county sheriff’s office said on Friday.

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US state department revokes green cards of three Iranian nationals it links to regime

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Three arrested by federal agents had family ties to Iranian military general, regime spokesperson or security chief

United States federal agents arrested three Iranian nationals – including the son of a revolutionary at the center of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis – after the US state department terminated their green cards, the department announced on Saturday.

State department officials revoked the green card status of Seyed Eissa Hashemi, whose mother was an Iranian revolutionary who served as the spokesperson for Iran’s regime during the hostage crisis that defined the late Jimmy Carter’s presidency. The state department also revoked the green card – or legal permanent resident – statuses of Hashemi’s wife and son.

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Louisiana Republicans move to eliminate court office won by exonerated man

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After Calvin Duncan served 28 years for a murder he didn’t commit, he won an election to serve as criminal court clerk. But now the office might be shut down

A man imprisoned for nearly 30 years before being exonerated won a landmark election in New Orleans promising to fix a judicial system that failed him. Now, Louisiana’s governor, Jeff Landry, and the Republican-controlled state legislature are racing to eliminate his job before he can be sworn in.

Calvin Duncan won 68% of the vote last November to become the Orleans parish clerk of criminal court after pledging to reform the justice system based on his own experience fighting to access court records while in maximum security prison.

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Trump reportedly says he’ll issue mass pardons at end of his presidential term

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President already has issued sweeping pardons throughout second term, including for 1,500 US Capital riot defendants

Donald Trump has reportedly said he will issue pardons en masse to his closest advisers at the end of his second presidency, promising them in casual conversations over the last year.

“I’ll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval [Office],” the president reportedly said in a recent meeting, garnering laughs from the room, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing an anonymous source.

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US man in Bahamian jail after wife disappears into Atlantic waters during boat trip

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Lynette and Brian Hooker, from Michigan, were years into a sailing adventure when Brian said his wife fell overboard

Lynette Hooker bounced around the deck of the docked Soul Mate, smiled into the camera and proclaimed, “We’re finally leaving Kemah,” referring to a Texas port town.

“It’s only been four months,” she said as her husband, Brian, tugged on some rigging as they got ready to set sail.

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Native Americans were gambling with dice 6,000 years earlier than anyone else, study says

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Archaeological record suggests hunter gatherers were playing games of chance at the end of the last ice age

Native American hunter gatherers were using dice for gaming and gambling more than 6,000 years before the practice appeared anywhere else, a new study argues.

It says dice were being made and used on the western great plains of North America at the end of the last ice age, more than 12,000 years ago.

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McDonald’s CEO blames mother’s etiquette training for awkward burger bite in video

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Chris Kempczinski’s taste test was mocked online, to which he said his mother had taught him: ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full’

The chief executive officer of McDonald’s recently blamed etiquette guidance from his mother for a February on-camera taste test that made him a target for ridicule – and summarily recorded another video of him eating one of the fast-food giant’s offerings in a manner potential consumers found awkward.

Chris Kempczinski suggested to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) earlier in April that he was simply heeding maternal advice to never talk with his mouth full when he took the humorously small bite at the center of a viral video which depicted him discussing and sampling the new Big Arch burger from McDonald’s.

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Is Iran Trump’s Suez crisis, or just a passing thunderstorm?

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Britain’s standing in the world was never the same after its assault on Egypt in 1956. Now the US risks repeating history in the Middle East

Donald Trump’s addiction to framing every event in the most apocalyptic terms is what allows conservative commentators such as Mark Levin to praise him as “a once-in-a-century president”.

But Trump cannot play out his entire presidency on a reckless high wire without eventually falling off – potentially taking America with him into a steep decline into the unknown.

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‘Just the beginning’: Artemis II crew splashes down after record-breaking moon flyby

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The four astronauts touched down on Earth off the coast of California, concluding historic 10-day mission

The Artemis II, and the four astronauts aboard the Orion space capsule, splashed down into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego on Friday night, with all four astronauts in good health.

“53 years ago, humanity left the moon. This time we return to stay. Let us finish what they started. Let us focus on what was left undone. Let us not go to plant flags and leave, but to stay with firmness in our purpose, with gratitude for the hands who built the machines and with love for the ones that we carry with us,” Nasa’s associate administrator Amit Kshatriya said at the late-night press conference after the astronauts landed.

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JD Vance dispatched to negotiate Iran peace with few cards to play

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Vice-president’s war doubts and his boss’s desperation to reopen the Hormuz strait constitute a weak deck against bolstered opponents

As JD Vance arrives in Islamabad to negotiate a peace deal with Iran, his first high-profile assignment of the war looks to be a poisoned chalice.

Vance, a vocal opponent of US wars in the Middle East gone quiet since the beginning of the current military campaign, will now face off with Iranian negotiators who feel emboldened by their new control of the Hormuz strait and their resilience in the face of the largest US-Israeli onslaught in history. Vance’s presence at the talks as vice-president will make it the highest-level meeting since the Iranian revolution of 1979.

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Former New York City mayor Eric Adams obtains Albanian citizenship

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Adams was granted citizenship and a passport from Balkan country by a special decree from the republic’s president

Eric Adams has obtained citizenship and a passport from Albania, the Balkan country which received effusive compliments from the former New York City mayor during a visit there relatively recently.

The Albania Daily News first reported on Friday that Adams had requested both and was granted them by a special decree from the republic’s president, Bajram Begaj. A spokesperson for Adams then confirmed that development in a statement distributed to the news media, and it was evidently chronicled in Albania’s official government journal.

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Kamala Harris says she’s ‘thinking about’ running for president again in 2028

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Former vice-president spoke before a crowd at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network gathering in New York

Kamala Harris said she is “thinking about” running in the 2028 presidential election.

“I might, I might. I’m thinking about it,” the former vice-president told the crowd at a gathering of the National Action Network (NAN), a civil rights organization founded by Al Sharpton, on Friday in New York City.

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