Category Archives: US News

Media startup Ozy shuts down after New York Times report raises concerns

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Ozy faced questions about its viewership figures and claims that its co-founder impersonated a YouTube executive on a call with Goldman Sachs

Ozy, a digital media startup, is shutting down less than a week after a New York Times column raised questions about the organization’s claims of millions of viewers and readers, while also pointing out a potential case of securities fraud.

The story triggered canceled shows, an internal investigation, investor concern and high-level departures at the company.

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NZ opposition leader says US and UK ‘left door open’ for China in Indo-Pacific

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Judith Collins criticises America as ‘foolish’ for walking away from free trade agreements

New Zealand’s opposition leader has hit out at the US and UK over China, saying their failure to adopt free trade agreements was “foolish” and increased Chinese dominance in the Indo-Pacific.

“If any criticism comes to New Zealand, as it often does about this close relationship with China and trade, my answer to everybody – whether they’re the US or UK – is: ‘So where’s our free trade agreement?’,” Judith Collins, leader of the centre-right National party, said in an interview with the Guardian on Friday.

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Coronavirus treatments: the potential ‘game-changers’ in development

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After positive clinical trials for antiviral drug Molnupiravir, it joins other medicines that have shown promise

The first clinical trial results showing a positive effect for a pill that can be taken at home has been hailed as a potential gamechanger that could provide a new way to protect the most vulnerable people from the worst effects of Covid-19. Molnupiravir joins a growing list of medicines that have shown promise. Here are some of the main developments in treatments so far.

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Canadian designer Peter Nygard consents to US extradition

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Nygard faces sex trafficking and racketeering charges in US, as well as sexual assault and forcible confinement charges in Canada

The Canadian fashion designer Peter Nygard has consented to extradition to the US, where he faces sex trafficking and racketeering charges, lawyers for the prosecution and defence said at a hearing on Friday.

Separately, Toronto police service issued a statement saying it had an arrest warrant for Nygard on six charges of sexual assault and three charges of forcible confinement between 1987 and 2006.

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California synagogue killer not allowed to speak as he gets life without parole

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Judge denies white supremacist, 22, opportunity to address court as survivors of 2019 attack give moving statements

A 22-year-old white supremacist was denied a chance to address a courtroom before a judge sentenced him Thursday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for bursting into a southern California synagogue on the last day of Passover in 2019 with a semiautomatic rifle, killing one worshipper and wounding three others.

An agreement with prosecutors that spared John T Earnest the death penalty left little suspense about the outcome, but the hearing provided 13 victims and families a chance to address the killer and gave a sense of finality to a case illustrating how online hate speech can lead to extremist violence. Many gave heart-wrenching accounts of how their lives were upended and how determined they were to persevere despite such devastating loss.

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Biden upbeat on rare Capitol Hill visit but domestic agenda hangs in jeopardy

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President meets Democrats for talks and insists ‘it doesn’t matter whether it’s six minutes or six weeks – we’re going to get it done’

Democrats returned to the Capitol on Friday deeply divided but determined to make progress on Joe Biden’s ambitious economic vision, after an embarrassing setback delayed a planned vote on a related $1tn measure to improve the nation’s infrastructure.

Biden on Friday made a rare visit to Capitol Hill to meet privately with House Democrats amid a stalemate that has put his sprawling domestic agenda in jeopardy. The visit comes after after the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, delayed a vote on part of his economic agenda, a bipartisan $1tn public works measure, on Thursday night after a frantic day of negotiations failed to produce a deal.

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US congresswomen including Cori Bush share their own abortion stories – video

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Democratic lawmakers including Missouri representative Cori Bush shared personal stories behind their decisions to have abortions during a House oversight committee meeting about reproductive rights on Thursday.

Representatives Barbara Lee of California and Pramila Jayapal of Washington also shared their stories during the committee hearing

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New York mandates vaccines for health workers – how will it play out?

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Some hospitals have experienced staff shortages after new rules went into effect – but the mandate appears to be working

Erie County Medical Center, a hospital in the western New York city of Buffalo, just recorded its highest single-day patient count ever – 553 patients in a facility licensed for 573 beds – but not because of an influx of Covid-19 cases.

Instead, hospital leaders said the caseload is the result of a New York state vaccine mandate – the first statewide “vaccinate or terminate” mandate to be implemented in the nation.

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Congress passes stopgap bill to avert government shutdown – live

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Bill passed by Senate and House will extend funding until 3 December as Democrats continue to wrangle over Biden’s economic agenda

House speaker Nancy Pelosi left her press conference by urging reporters to “think positively” about the negotiations over the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package.

And yet, as Pelosi was making her comments, House majority leader Steny Hoyer said he was not confident that the infrastructure bill would pass today, as Democratic leadership had previously hoped.

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More than half of police killings are mislabelled or not reported, study finds

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Review of 40 years of data shows many fatal police encounters are misclassified, most often when the victim is Black or Hispanic

More than half of all police-involved killings go unreported with the majority of victims being Black, according to a new study published in the Lancet, a peer reviewed journal.

Research at the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that in the US between 1980 and 2018, more than 55% of deaths, over 17,000 in total, from police violence were either misclassified or went unreported.

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The US government avoided a shutdown – but what happens next?

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Congress passed a bill to fund the government into December. But questions remain over the debt ceiling and Biden’s agenda

The US government went into Thursday embroiled in a game of three-dimensional chess with time running out and trillions of dollars at stake.

The first dimension was a must-do: fund the government by midnight to avoid it shutting down. In a typical shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal employees stop getting paid and many stop working; some services are suspended and numerous national attractions and national parks temporarily close.

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‘You can’t sue your way to the moon’: Elon Musk intensifies Bezos space feud

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SpaceX founder, who in April won a contract from Nasa, took a jab at Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin for suing when it lost out on deal

Elon Musk intensified the feud over lawsuits and rocket sizes with space rival Jeff Bezos this week, kicking off the latest round in the billionaire battle over humanity’s return to the moon.

The SpaceX founder, who in April won a contract from Nasa to build the next-generation spacecraft to take astronauts to the moon’s surface for the first time since 1972, took a jab at Bezos for suing the US government when his company lost out on the deal.

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‘Strategy of terror’: 116 dead as Ecuador prisons become battlegrounds for gangs

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Struggle between cartels to control smuggling routes leads to third – and deadliest – prison riot this year

A bitter struggle between rival Mexican cartels to control cocaine trafficking routes in Ecuador has erupted in a day of bloodshed inside a high-security prison which left 116 inmates dead. Many of the victims were butchered with chainsaws or beheaded with machetes.

As security forces battled to retake the Litoral penitentiary in the coastal city of Guayaquil on Wednesday, scores of bodies were found dumped in bathrooms and corridors, piled and burned in courtyards, or even stuffed into air ducts.

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Stephanie Grisham book sheds light on Trump’s bizarre brushes with world leaders

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Memoir reveals Trump once discussed strength of kangaroos in meeting with UK PM – one of the few European leaders he liked

Boris Johnson once devoted a considerable part of a meeting with Donald Trump to discussing how strong kangaroos are, as the British prime minister struck up a robust relationship with a fellow “pudgy white guy with crazy hair”.

In contrast, the then US president considered his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, “a wuss”.

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Democrats search for a path forward as key deadlines loom

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Pelosi says talks moving ‘in positive direction’ as series of legislative and fiscal deadlines loom for Biden’s $1tn public works measure

With the fate of Joe Biden’s domestic agenda on the line, Democrats searched furiously for a path forward after negotiations over a once-in-a-generation expansion of the social safety net neared collapse and a vote on a smaller public works measure appeared increasingly unlikely.

With almost no margin for error and little time left to break an impasse that threatens to imperil its passage – and possibly the entirety of the president’s program – Democrats charged ahead on Thursday, even as a crucial Democratic holdout called for shrinking the $3.5tn plan in half. But assurances of progress offered little comfort to nervous Democrats on Capitol Hill, where a series of legislative and fiscal deadlines loom.

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Warnings as Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupts and spews lava

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One of the world’s most active volcanoes destroyed 700 homes and displaced thousands when it erupted in 2018

One of the most active volcanoes on Earth, Hawaii’s Kilauea, has begun erupting, the US Geological Survey has confirmed.

Webcam footage of the volcano’s Halemaumau crater showed lava fountains covering the floor of the crater and billowing clouds of volcanic gas were rising into the air. The same area has been home to a large lava lake at various times throughout the volcano’s eruptive past.

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‘I’ve been dead so many times’: the life and times of New Orleans’s blues king

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Little Freddie King has survived three shootings, stabbings, a near fatal bike accident, a stomach ulcer, an accidental electrocution, Hurricane Katrina, and now a pandemic

In a dark, wood-panelled room, thick with humidity and reeking of smoke, the bluesman sits on a battered red couch that droops in the middle. He takes a moment to reflect before walking to the stage. He’s dressed in a pair of shades, a straw fedora, and a technicolor suit jacket splashed with turquoise, pink and peach. His flamboyance is an instant contrast with the dingy surroundings. He takes a final drag of a cigarette, down to the butt, before adjusting his tie.

Little Freddie King has played this venue – BJ’s Lounge, a ramshackle bar in the Bywater neighbourhood of New Orleans – for the past 27 years. But tonight is special. Tonight is his 81st birthday.

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Kim Jong-un orders hotline with the South to reopen as he condemns ‘cunning’ US

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North Korean leader said Biden offer of dialogue is ‘a facade’ and blamed the US for ‘hostile policy’

Kim Jong-un has condemned a US offer of dialogue as a “facade”, state media reported, but said he had ordered officials to restore communication lines with South Korea to “promote peace”.

Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, the North Korean leader accused the US of continuing a “hostile policy” against his nuclear-armed country, despite the Biden administration’s offers of negotiations without preconditions.

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Britney Spears’ father suspended from conservatorship in victory for singer

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Star has sought liberation from Jamie Spears’ control of her finances and personal life for years

A Los Angeles judge has suspended Britney Spears’ father from the conservatorship that has controlled her life for 13 years, marking a major victory for the singer, who has long objected to the arrangement that has stripped her of independence.

At a court hearing on Wednesday, Judge Brenda Penny ordered Jamie Spears suspended as conservator effective immediately.

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Death toll in Ecuador prison riot exceeds 100 with some inmates beheaded

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Clash is the most deadly act of violence ever reported in the country’s prison system

The death toll in a gang battle at one of Ecuador’s largest prisons rose to 116, president Guillermo Lasso said, as authorities discovered the bodies of more victims including at least six that had been beheaded.

Another 80 inmates were injured during the Tuesday night clashes at the Penitenciaria del Litoral in Guayas province, which has been the scene of bloody fights between gangs for control of the prison in recent months.

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