Category Archives: US News

‘They can’t dismiss Leo so easily’: how the pope has confounded conservatives

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As pontiff prepares for visit of King Charles, the contours of his papacy are slowly becoming apparent

When King Charles meets Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican this week, the two leaders are likely to discuss pressing global issues as well as sharing a historic moment of prayer.

In the face of volatility and rising nationalism, Leo, the first North American chosen to lead the Roman Catholic church, has begun to outline the contours of his papacy after a low-key start to his five-month-old papacy.

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Global use of coal hit record high in 2024

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Bleak report finds greenhouse gas emissions are still rising despite ‘exponential’ growth of renewables

Coal use hit a record high around the world last year despite efforts to switch to clean energy, imperilling the world’s attempts to rein in global heating.

The share of coal in electricity generation dropped as renewable energy surged ahead. But the general increase in power demand meant that more coal was used overall, according to the annual State of Climate Action report, published on Wednesday.

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Deputy US marshal and man shot during Ice operation in Los Angeles

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Investigation after federal officers shot at man during ‘targeted traffic stop’ and agent was hit by ricochet bullet

An investigation is ongoing after a man and a deputy US marshal were shot and injured on Tuesday morning during an immigration enforcement operation that took place in south Los Angeles, police said.

Reports from the Los Angeles police department said the incident was reported shortly before 9am and involved a federal agent being shot.

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Elon Musk feuds with US transportation chief in social media posts: ‘2 digit IQ’

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SpaceX owner said Sean Duffy was ‘trying to kill Nasa’ after acting head said agency would reopen contracts for Artemis mission

Elon Musk attacked Sean Duffy, the US secretary of transportation, on Tuesday in a series of posts on X, accusing him of trying to “kill NASA”, suggesting he should be fired and calling him “Sean Dummy”. The posts intensified a long-running feud between Duffy, who is also the acting head of Nasa, and Musk, whose company SpaceX is central to the US space program.

Musk’s tirade against Duffy followed a statement from the transportation secretary on Tuesday that Nasa would reopen contracts for the agency’s Artemis mission to land humans on the moon, which SpaceX had previously secured. Duffy said that SpaceX had fallen behind on its timelines. Duffy suggested the contract might go to another billionaire’s rocket company, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.

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Speaker Mike Johnson says he won’t block House vote to release Epstein files

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Johnson’s House has been in recess since shutdown, delaying petition to force vote on making documents public

The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, on Tuesday said he would not prevent a vote on legislation to make the Jeffrey Epstein files public, even as the chamber remained out of session for a fourth straight week.

Johnson has kept the House of Representatives in recess ever since the shutdown began at the start of the month, after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach an agreement on extending government funding beyond the end of September.

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Scientists say North Atlantic right whale population slowly increasing

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Once hunted to the brink of extinction, the most venerable of the leviathans now numbers 384, up eight from past year

One of the rarest whales on the planet has continued an encouraging trend of population growth in the wake of new efforts to protect the giant animals, according to scientists who study them.

The North Atlantic right whale now numbers an estimated 384 animals, up eight whales from the previous year, according to a report by the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium released on Tuesday. The whales have shown a trend of slow population growth over the past four years and have gained more than 7% of their 2020 population, the consortium said.

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University of Arizona becomes seventh US college to reject Trump’s ‘compact’

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Administration has pushed nine universities to sign a deal that seeks to make changes in line with conservative ideas

The University of Arizona has become the seventh US university to reject a Trump administration proposal that would grant schools funding priority if they agreed to support the administration’s conservative agenda.

The decision follows the administration’s push for nine universities to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which seeks to make sweeping changes to campus culture, hiring and admissions practices and foreign student enrollment. Demands from the Trump administration’s 10-point compact include reforms to the way race or ethnicity are used in admission and hiring practices, as well as a commitment to strict definitions of gender, among others.

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Body of missing woman found buried behind abandoned Philadelphia school

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Kada Scott was missing for two weeks before anonymous tip led police to wooded area with remains in shallow grave

Remains found buried in a wooded area behind an abandoned school are those of Kada Scott, a 23-year-old woman who had been missing for about two weeks, prosecutors in Philadelphia said on Monday.

Authorities said an anonymous tip led police back to the area they previously searched and they found the remains in a shallow grave. DNA tests confirmed her identity.

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US man accused of faking own death after rape conviction gets at least five years in prison

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Nicholas Rossi, who fled US, receives first of two sentences after being convicted of raping two women in Utah in 2008

A judge has sentenced a Rhode Island man who appeared to fake his death and flee the United States to avoid arrest of at least five years in prison for rape.

The sentence handed down Monday for Nicholas Rossi, 38, was the first of two he faces after being convicted separately in August and September of raping two women in northern Utah in 2008. He is scheduled to be sentenced in November for the second conviction.

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Zelenskyy to visit London for talks before expected Trump-Putin summit

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Ukrainian president will seek to win security guarantees at ‘coalition of the willing’ meeting before any US-Russia talks

Volodmyr Zelenskyy will travel to London on Friday for a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” before an expected summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Hungary, amid mounting European disquiet over Ukraine’s exclusion from the Budapest meeting.

Posting on social media, Zelenskyy said the aim of the London visit was to win security guarantees for Kyiv and there would be “many meetings and negotiations in Europe” this week.

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China’s economic growth slows amid Trump tariff war and property woes

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GDP rises by 4.8% year on year between July and September, down from second-quarter growth rate of 5.2%

China’s economy grew at its slowest pace in a year in the latest quarter amid a trade war with the US and long-running woes in its property market.

Fragile domestic demand has left China’s economy heavily reliant on manufacturing and trade, at a time of mounting tensions with the Donald Trump administration.

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BBC reporters cannot wear Black Lives Matter T-shirts in newsroom, says Tim Davie

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Director general says it is inappropriate for a journalist who may be covering that issue ‘to be campaigning in that way’

BBC journalists cannot wear T-shirts in the newsroom supporting the anti-racist movement Black Lives Matter, the corporation’s director general Tim Davie has said.

Davie said the BBC stood against racism but it was “not appropriate for a journalist who may be covering that issue to be campaigning in that way.

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Artillery shell exploded prematurely over California freeway during marines celebration

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Shrapnel fragments rained on vehicles parked on Interstate 5 including highway patrol and JD Vance’s detail

A live artillery shell exploded prematurely during a marines live-fire demonstration that launched over a southern California freeway in celebration of the military branch’s 250th anniversary, raining shrapnel down on a California Highway Patrol vehicle and a motorcycle that was part of JD Vance’s detail, according to a police report.

The New York Times reported that fragments that fell from the 155mm shell landed on vehicles parked on a ramp on Interstate 5 – a major artery through southern California – which governor Gavin Newsom had ordered closed after learning that military officials had no plans to close the freeway.

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Florida politician faces backlash over calls for mass deportation of Indians

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Chandler Langevin faced censure from Palm Bay council and calls to resign from series of posts condemned as ‘vile’

A city councilmember in Florida is facing backlash from national Indian American organizations, members of Congress, and local residents after posting a series of social media messages that insulted Indian people living in the US and called for them to be deported en masse.

Chandler Langevin, a Palm Bay council member elected last year, made derogatory comments about Indian people across several posts on the social media platform X over roughly three weeks this fall. He claimed that Indians come to America to “drain our pockets” before returning to India, “or worse … to stay”.

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George Santos says prison sentence was ‘disproportionate’ but ‘large slice of humble pie’

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Disgraced former congressman who was meant to serve seven years for fraud and identity lashes out at critics

Disgraced former US congressman George Santos said on Sunday that his prison sentence had been “disproportionate”, but that he had been served “a very large slice of humble pie”, while lashing out at his critics in his first interview since Donald Trump commuted his sentence.

Speaking to Dana Bash on CNN’s State of the Union, Santos said he was “all politicked out”, and called for his former campaign staffer, Sam Miele, to also receive a commutation.

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US driver kills one and injures at least 14 in car-ramming attack at child’s party

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Driver turned himself in to Maryland authorities after initially fleeing scene, where eight children were injured

A driver rammed into a group of people at a children’s birthday party outside of Washington DC late on Saturday, killing a woman in her 30s and injuring at least 14 others, eight of whom were children.

In a statement released by the Bladensburg police department in Maryland, they announced that the driver of the striking vehicle had turned himself in and had been identified as a 66 year-old man from the surrounding area.

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Trump calls Colombia president ‘illegal drug dealer’ as US says it hit another ship

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Trump vows to cut US funding as Pete Hegseth says US hit Colombian rebel group vessel and ‘three terrorists killed’

Donald Trump on Sunday accused Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, of being an “illegal drug dealer” and threatened to immediately cut US funding to the country as the defense secretary confirmed in a social media post an attack on a vessel associated with a Colombian leftist rebel group.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Sunday that US forces had attacked another vessel, this time associated with a Colombian leftist rebel group. Hegseth, in a post on X, said “three terrorists were killed” in the operation which was “conducted in international waters”.

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Fears over higher rates as Georgia moves to provide more electricity for AI datacenters

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State’s Republican-led public service commission to decide on power expansion and prices, as Democrats vie for voice

Georgia is facing the largest demand for electricity in its history, driven by nation-leading datacenter construction.

The Georgia Power company has made an unprecedented bid to the agency that oversees the utility for about 10 additional gigawatts of energy in the coming years – enough to power 8.3m homes, at an estimated cost of nearly $16bn, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center.

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Republicans mostly silent as millions of Americans protest Trump on No Kings day

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Outside of typical remarks from Donald Trump, JD Vance and Mike Johnson and a Fox News report, party stayed mum

Republican voices were mostly silent as No Kings rallies and marches against Trump administration policies unfurled on Saturday, many in the spirit of a street party that countered the “hate America” depiction advanced by senior members of the party.

Instead of provocation, there were marching bands, huge banners with “we the people” references to the US constitution, and protesters wearing inflatable costumes, particularly frogs, which have emerged as a sign of resistance.

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US military to move survivors of strike on alleged drug boat in Caribbean to nearby countries

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Releasing them from US custody evades thorny legal issues regarding military detention of suspected drug smugglers

The Trump administration is moving to send the two survivors of Thursday’s strike in the Caribbean overseas rather than seek long-term military detention for them, four US officials and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Saturday.

The source, who like the US officials spoke on condition of anonymity, said the survivors were being sent to Colombia and Ecuador.

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