Officials in Woodside – a mansion-filled, tech entrepreneur enclave – claim wildcat land keeps them from building multi-unit homes
At first glance, the town of Woodside may look more like a sprawl of mansions built on big-tech billions than crucial habitat for threatened California mountain lions.
But town officials might suggest looking again.
Continue reading...The two-year total compiled by Johns Hopkins University comes less than two months after eclipsing 800,000 deaths
Propelled in part by the wildly contagious Omicron variant, the US death toll from Covid-19 hit 900,000 on Friday, less than two months after eclipsing 800,000.
The two-year total, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is greater than the population of Indianapolis, San Francisco, or Charlotte, North Carolina.
Continue reading...Police have arrested the suspect in a violent altercation that badly injured a San Francisco 49ers fan after last weekend’s NFC championship game between the 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams at LA’s SoFi stadium.
Inglewood police lieutenant Nicole Loudermilk confirmed that the suspect was taken into custody Thursday night, but released no further details.
Continue reading...House speaker Nancy Pelosi applauded Joe Biden for overseeing the US military operation that resulted in the death of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.
“Last night, America delivered justice to the leader of ISIS and struck a serious blow to this terrorist group,” Pelosi said in a statement.
Continue reading...A historic plunge in the stock price of Facebook’s parent company has erased more than $230bn in its market value, easily the biggest one-day loss in history for a US company.
The 26.4% wipeout in Meta comes amid concerns about its future after the company reported its first ever drop in daily user numbers in its Wednesday earnings report. Facebook rebranded to Meta last year as part of its strategic pivot to becoming a virtual-reality based company. The company’s advertising model has also been hit hard by privacy changes at Apple, which Facebook has said it expects will cost them billions.
Continue reading...Trump’s lawyer was revealed to be a contestant on The Masked Singer – and when Robin Thicke storms off in protest, you know you’ve got problems
It’s like something from a Guillermo del Toro film: a grotesque fantasy creature disrobes, only to reveal an even more horrifying monster underneath. But that’s what viewers will see when the US version of The Masked Singer, Fox’s incognito singing competition, returns at the end of this month.
The show, in which a panel of judges and the audience try to guess the identity of celebrity vocalists dressed in furry theme-park costumes, is taped in advance of airing. But Deadline reports that at the first episode’s climax, when the eliminated singer reveals their true identity, it was Rudy Giuliani whose head popped out of the costume. Judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke walked off the set in protest. Quite a good reflection of how bad a guy you have to be when rape-culture chanteur Thicke, the singer of Blurred Lines, decides you’re beyond the pale.
Continue reading...Officials say they have evidence of plot to mock up scenes of attack using corpses, Turkish-made drones and actors playing mourners
US officials claim they have evidence of a Russian plan to make a “very graphic” fake video of a Ukrainian attack as a pretext for an invasion.
The alleged plot would involve using corpses, footage of blown-up buildings, fake Ukrainian military hardware, Turkish-made drones and actors playing the part of Russian-speaking mourners.
Continue reading...US says Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi killed himself when he detonated explosives in home in Atme
Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi took over as leader of Islamic State in 2019 following the deaths in quick succession of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Baghdadi’s nominated successor Abu Hassan al-Muhajjir.
The US operation to try to kill him had been in the planning stages since early December, when officials became convinced that he was living in a nondescript three-storey building on the outskirts of Atme in Syria’s Idlib province, close to the Turkish border.
Continue reading...Fifty years after Nixon and Mao’s historic handshake, the geopolitical world order is again being reshaped
When the leaders of China and Russia meet in Beijing this Friday shortly before the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, observers of the bilateral relationship will be looking for insights into how this 21st century quasi-alliance is reshaping the postwar world order.
It was 50 years ago this month, on 21 February 1972, that the historic handshake between Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong changed the geometry of the cold war. Historians called the visit “the week that changed the world”. It later influenced Washington’s subsequent movement towards détente with Moscow.
Continue reading...Joe Biden says military has removed Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi from the battlefield
Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of Islamic State and one of the world’s most wanted men, has been killed during an overnight raid by US special forces in north-west Syria.
The pre-dawn attack on a house in the village of Atme, just south of the Turkish border, led to up to 13 casualties, among them women and children. It also resulted in the destruction of a US helicopter, which had been used to carry special forces troops from Erbil in Iraq.
Continue reading...Moscow says US deployments in eastern Europe increase tensions, as Nato says Russia has moved 30,000 troops to Belarus
The US decision to deploy more than 3,000 US troops in Germany, Poland and Romania is a “destructive step” that makes it harder to reach a compromise over Ukraine, Russia’s deputy foreign minister has said, as Moscow continues to build up its forces.
Alexander Grushko said the move by the US president, Joe Biden, would “increase military tension and reduce scope for political decision”, and would “delight” Ukrainian authorities, who would continue sabotaging the Minsk agreement “with impunity”. The Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 were designed to reach a political settlement in the east of Ukraine, including greater autonomy.
Continue reading...Few corals are safe from warming oceans, a new study warns, but studies are finding surprisingly hardy corals, natural sunscreens and how coral ‘IVF’ can regrow reefs
In new book, David Friedman recounts private meeting with Israeli president in which Trump also knocked Netanyahu – and how he says he turned his man around
Meeting then-Israeli president Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem in May 2017, Donald Trump stunned advisers by criticising the then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for being unwilling to seek peace while Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, was “desperate” for a deal.
The comment “knocked everyone off their chairs”, David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, writes in a new book.
Continue reading...Rhode Island archaelogists denounce Australian National Maritime Museum announcement as ‘premature’ and driven by ‘Australian emotions or politics’
A 22-year partnership between US and Australian researchers to identify James Cook’s ship the Endeavour has descended into a row after the Australian Maritime Museum announced the discovery.
The museum’s chief executive, Kevin Sumption, announced on Thursday he was satisfied that a shipwreck in waters off Rhode Island in the US was “the final resting place of one of the most important and contentious vessels in Australia’s maritime history”.
Continue reading...White House press secretary Jen Psaki is briefing right now. She’s talking further about planned US troop deployments to NATO’s eastern flank to bolster Ukraine’s preparedness in facing massed Russian military might at its border.
“They are not going to Ukraine to fight,” Psaki said, attempting to clarify the mission, in response to questions from reporters about what they’ll be doing.
Continue reading...Concealable devices with ‘modest energy requirements’ which could emit pulsed electromagnetic energy and ultrasound exist
A US intelligence report by a panel of expert scientists has named pulsed electromagnetic energy and ultrasound as plausible causes for the mystery Havana Syndrome symptoms suffered by US diplomats and spies in recent years.
The report found that a group of cases could not be explained by health or environmental factors or by psychosomatic illness. It also said that devices exist with “modest energy requirements” which were concealable and could produce the observed symptoms and be effective over hundreds of meters or through walls.
Continue reading...Authorities also warned brining in the military carried a ‘massive risk’ as they believed the protesters are armed
Police in Ottawa warned they may have to call in the military to disband “unlawful” protests in the nation’s capital and a town near the US border, amid mounting tensions between protesters opposing Covid restrictions and local residents.
The Ottawa police chief, Peter Sloly, warned on Wednesday that the officers did not have the resources to remove a fleet of trucks parked by the protesters in the national capital, adding the city was considering requesting help from Canadian armed forces.
Continue reading...Analysis: While Putin’s intentions remain unclear, Kyiv would rather it didn’t get classed as the next Kabul
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has again insisted that Russia does not currently have enough troops in place to mount a further invasion of Ukraine, a day after Boris Johnson travelled to Kyiv and said there was a “clear and present danger” of an imminent military campaign.
Even taken together, the troops currently massed on Ukraine’s border with Russia, on the annexed Crimea peninsula and in neighbouring Belarus, are “insufficient for a large-scale military operation”, said Kuleba in a briefing for foreign journalists on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Army secretary says move is essential for combat readiness after vaccination made mandatory for service members in August 2021
US soldiers who refuse to get a Covid-19 vaccine will be immediately discharged, the US army said on Wednesday, saying the move was critical to maintain combat readiness.
The army’s order applies to regular army soldiers, active-duty army reservists and cadets unless they have approved or pending exemptions, it said in a statement.
Continue reading...More than 3,000 troops headed to Germany, Poland and Romania after talks between Washington and Moscow failed to ease tensions
Joe Biden will deploy more than 3,000 US troops in Germany, Poland, and Romania, as Russia continues to build up its forces around Ukraine, and after talks between Washington and Moscow failed to bring any breakthrough or easing of tensions.
Nearly 2,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne division will be going to Poland, a headquarters unit from the 18th Airborne Corps will move to Germany, and a 1,000-strong army armoured unit is being transferred from Germany to Romania.
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