Category Archives: US News

Revealed: leaked files show how Ericsson allegedly helped bribe Islamic State

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Telecoms giant’s internal investigators uncover allegations it was involved in corruption in at least 10 countries

Confidential documents have revealed how the telecoms giant Ericsson is alleged to have helped pay bribes to the Islamic State terrorist group in order to continue selling its services after the militants seized control of large parts of Iraq.

The leak of internal investigations at Ericsson, which also found that the firm had put its contractors at risk and allowed them to be kidnapped by the militants, is potentially damaging for the multinational.

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Republican Tom Cotton refuses four times to condemn Trump on Ukraine

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The Republican senator Tom Cotton refused four times on Sunday to condemn or even comment on Donald Trump’s repeated praise for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

“If you want to know what Donald Trump thinks about Vladimir Putin or any other topic,” Cotton told ABC’s This Week, “I’d encourage you to invite him on your show. I don’t speak on behalf of other politicians. They can speak for themselves.”

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Doomed ship of gold’s ghostly picture gallery is plucked from the seabed

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Eerie photographs recovered from the 1857 wreck of the SS Central America are now being published for the first time

It is one of the most famous treasure wrecks ever discovered, a steamer named the “ship of gold” after it sank in 1857 off the coast of South Carolina with one of the largest cargoes of gold ever lost at sea. Miners who had struck it rich in the California gold rush were among those bringing home to New York their hard-earned wealth, only to lose their lives when the SS Central America was struck by a hurricane, sinking nearly a mile and a half beneath the waves.

When nuggets, ingots and coins were recovered from the seabed in various expeditions between 1988 and 2014, the world was dazzled. But, with reported values of tens of millions of pounds, it sparked a complex legal case that landed its original treasure-hunter in jail.

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‘Don Quixote-like quest’: Ukraine attack and easing Covid mandates leave US trucker protest on the fringe

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The convoy, which set out to ‘clog the streets’ has had too few vehicles to make an impact on traffic

Ryan Wright stood around a campfire in Lupton, Arizona, a town on the Navajo reservation where members of an American trucker convoy protest were resting for the night. As the fire flickered he discussed a conspiracy myth about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he proffered, was a distraction. “I’m not the only one that feels this way,” Wright said. “But I feel like it’s a big fat smokescreen to keep everyone distracted on what is really going on in the world.”

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OxyContin victims fight for their share in Purdue bankruptcy case

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The Sacklers want protection from future suits. Victims’ families want them to ‘know what their greed has caused’

Stephanie and Troy Lubinski met when they were teenagers, and they were married for three decades. Troy was big-hearted, kind, the best fisherman around, a devoted father who cared for the kids during the day after long night shifts as a firefighter.

But he had back pain that began when he worked in construction and then grew worse over the years. His doctor prescribed OxyContin, and that was the beginning of the end.

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Truth Social: will Trump’s ‘free speech haven’ overcome its rocky start?

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Technical snags, criticisms of its terms of service and questions about copyright infringement plague the app’s kickoff

Donald Trump last week launched his long-awaited social media app, Truth Social, luring users with the promises of a platform free from “discrimination against political ideology”.

But with tech glitches plaguing the platform and early criticisms of its content policies the rollout is already raising questions about its future.

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Toni Morrison novel The Bluest Eye off banned list in St Louis schools

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Nobel laureate’s classic debut was removed from libraries but backlash and lawsuits prompted vote to restore

A banned book by the Nobel laureate Toni Morrison will be available again to high school students in a district in St Louis, Missouri, after the Wentzville school board reversed its decision to ban The Bluest Eye, in the face of criticism and a class-action lawsuit.

The board made national news last month when it voted 4-3 to removed the book from school libraries, citing themes of racism, incest and child molestation.

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Donald Trump defends calling Putin ‘smart’, hints at 2024 presidential bid

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Ex-president tells CPAC he could have stopped ‘appalling’ Russian invasion of Ukraine before giving strongest indication he will run again

Donald Trump, the former US president, has defended his description of Russia’s Vladimir Putin as “smart” while seeking to blunt accusations that he admires the invasion of Ukraine.

Trump reiterated his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen by voter fraud as he argued that the invasion of Ukraine would never have happened if he was still in the White House.

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Las Vegas shooting: 13 wounded and one dead at hookah lounge, police say

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Two people reported critically injured in Nevada shooting, which happened early on Saturday morning

Fourteen people were shot before dawn on Saturday at a hookah lounge in Las Vegas. Police said one man died and two people suffered critical injuries.

The shooting happened at about 3.15am and preliminary information indicated there was a party during which two people got into an altercation and exchanged gunfire, striking multiple people, said police captain Dori Koren.

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Coronavirus came from Wuhan market and not Chinese lab, twin studies say

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Two studies released by scientists but yet to be published in journals say virus did not emerge from Wuhan Institute of Virology

International scientists on Saturday released two major studies which one participant said made it “extraordinarily clear” a market in Wuhan, China was the source of the coronavirus which fueled the Covid-19 pandemic – and not a Chinese government laboratory, a theory championed in the US by rightwing campaigners, columnists and politicians.

The question of where Covid-19 came from and how it spread has proved divisive.

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Trayvon Martin compared to Emmett Till on 10th anniversary of death

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Martin’s mother says fight for justice must continue as Al Sharpton makes comparison with teen lynched in Mississippi in 1955

Trayvon Martin’s mother used the 10th anniversary of his death on Saturday to urge those who sought justice for her family to continue to fight.

Sybrina Fulton spoke to the National Action Network, the civil rights organization founded by the Rev Al Sharpton in Harlem. She said she had come to New York City from Florida in order to support her supporters.

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Calls to expel Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene after speech at white nationalist event

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Republican leadership condemned for failing to discipline Georgia congresswoman for speaking at far-right summit

Republican leaders are facing fresh demands to expel the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, after she spoke at a conference of white nationalists and sympathisers with Vladimir Putin.

The event in Orlando, Florida, on Friday night was organised by the far-right extremist Nick Fuentes, who told attendees: “Now they’re going on about Russia and Vladimir Putin is Hitler – they say that’s not a good thing.”

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Poll: US majority believes no Russian invasion with Trump as president

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Caps-Harris poll shows 62% of respondents believe Putin would not have ordered troops into Ukraine with Trump in White House

A clear majority of Americans think Vladimir Putin would not have ordered the Russian invasion of Ukraine had Donald Trump still been in the White House, according to a new poll.

The poll, by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies (Caps)-Harris, found that 62% of those surveyed believed Putin would not have sent troops into Ukraine with Trump in the White House.

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The strange Republican world where the big lie lives on and Trump is fighting to save democracy

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Welcome to the the grassroots CPAC summit, where conservatives see themselves not as dismantlers of democracy, but as saviors

On stage in a hotel ballroom glowing red, white and blue, Ron DeSantis was recalling his days in Congress and a book he wrote about America’s troubles. It was “read by about a dozen people,” the Florida governor said with rare self-deprecation.

DeSantis then told a gathering of grassroots conservatives on Thursday: “I look back at that time, it almost seems a little quaint to me because the threats we face to freedom, the threats we face to a just society, are much more pervasive than they were just 10 years ago.”

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Man wrongfully convicted of Alice Sebold rape sues New York for $50m

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Anthony Broadwater served 16 years in prison but was exonerated last year after prosecutors re-examined case

Anthony Broadwater, who served 16 years in prison for the 1981 rape of the author Alice Sebold but was exonerated last year, has filed a $50m wrongful conviction lawsuit against New York state.

Broadwater, 61, was cleared in November of his conviction for the rape after a re-examination of the case found serious flaws in his arrest and trial.

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Tucker Carlson condemned for Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘Rwanda’ comments

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Fox News anchor accused of presenting ‘perfect distillation of white supremacy’ in rant against Biden supreme court nominee

The nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson is an attempt to “defile” the supreme court and “humiliate and degrade” the US, the Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson claimed on Friday night.

If confirmed, Jackson, whose nomination was announced by Joe Biden earlier on Friday, will be the first Black woman on the court.

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A woman’s boyfriend was holding her captive. Sticky notes helped her escape

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Brandon Toseland has been charged after Las Vegas police discovered the woman and her daughter – and the body of her son

On Tuesday, a 7-year-old girl arrived at her Las Vegas elementary school with a stash of sticky notes in her hand, which she gave to her teacher. The notes, from her mother, were a cry for help.

The woman wrote that she was being held captive by her boyfriend and feared that her 4-year-old son, who she had not seen for weeks, was dead, according to her attorney. After the teacher notified authorities, police went to the home of Brandon Toseland, where they found the body of Mason Dominguez in Toseland’s freezer.

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An inch apart: new troubles for San Francisco’s Millennium Tower

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Engineer overseeing the luxury tower’s retrofit discovered the space between it and a smaller building had widened by an inch

San Francisco’s troubled Millennium Tower, which has continued to sink despite multimillion dollar efforts to correct it, has developed yet another problem.

The luxury tower, popular among star athletes and retired Google employees before the tilting issues were widely publicized, has sunk 18in since its construction was completed in 2009 and has a 26in tilt at the top. Now, the engineer overseeing the retrofit of the tower has said the movement caused the formation of a one-inch gap between the building and a smaller 12-story adjacent structure.

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Judge orders new trial for US woman sentenced to six years for trying to register to vote

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Pamela Moses, who has been in prison since December but is being released on Friday, says she had no idea she was inelegible

A Memphis judge ordered a new trial for Pamela Moses, a woman who was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register to vote.

The case attracted national attention in recent weeks, following a Guardian report, because of the severity of the sentence. Moses said she had no idea she was ineligible.

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Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination is rare moment of celebration for Biden

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Biden is embattled on all fronts – from a stalled domestic agenda to international order – but a supreme court pick is an enduring act

Two years ago exactly, Joe Biden stood on a debate stage in Charleston, South Carolina, his candidacy on the ropes, and made a promise: if elected president, he would nominate the first Black woman to the supreme court.

Days later, Biden won the South Carolina primary on the strength of his support among Black voters. The victory propelled him to the Democratic nomination and then to the presidency. Last month, Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement, presenting Biden with an opportunity to fulfill that campaign commitment.

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