Category Archives: US News

Trump closes his ‘beacon of freedom’ website a month after launching it

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Jason Miller, senior aide to former president, confirms closing of the ‘From the Desk of Donald J Trump’ online communication tool

Donald Trump has discontinued the blog-type website he launched in a fanfare less than a month ago as “a beacon of freedom” and “a place to speak freely and safely”.

Jason Miller, a senior aide to the former US president, confirmed the closing of the “From the Desk of Donald J Trump” online communication tool in a statement to CNBC on Wednesday, just weeks after billing the venture as “a great resource” for his boss’s musings.

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Cyber-attack targets world’s largest meat-processing company

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Ransomware attack halts production at JBS, which supplies more than fifth of all beef in US

A cyber-attack on the world’s largest meat-processing company has forced it to halt all US operations while it scrambles to restore functionality.

JBS, which supplies more than a fifth of all beef in America, said all of its US beef plants were pushed offline on Sunday. The ransomware attack on the Brazilian-headquartered company’s networks also disrupted other operations across the US, as well as the company’s businesses in other countries, including Australia, but less severely.

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Ny Nourn: the woman convicted of murder and pardoned – who now fights for other battered women

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Nourn moved from Cambodia to the US as a child, and ended up in an abusive relationship that led to a man’s murder. After years in prison, she is now a powerful voice for those who face incarceration and deportation

When Ny Nourn entered Central California Women’s Facility, the largest women’s prison in the world, there was every reason to believe she would never walk free on American soil again.

She was just 21, and had been sentenced to “life without parole” for her part in a hauntingly brutal murder – a part she was forced into. Even if, at some distant date, a successful appeal commuted that sentence, her conviction made Nourn deportable – so when she had served her time, she was likely to be transported to another prison and ultimately to Cambodia, the country of her parents’ birth, a country she had never set foot in.

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‘Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around’: reverend sings with Tulsa race massacre survivors – video

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Rev Dr William J Barber II sang 'Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around' with the three living survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre at the Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Tuesday, after Joe Biden gave a speech honouring the anniversary. Biden became the first sitting US president to visit the site where hundreds of Black Americans were massacred by a white mob in 1921, as he marked the country's legacy of racial violence

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‘Waiting to happen’: the California region where masks are taboo – and cases are rising

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Rural northern California has been forceful in its pushback against masks, business restrictions and vaccine mandates

Rural northern California is seeing a troubling rise in Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations, an alarming trend that comes as residents and businesses continue to protest against safety measures and vaccinations – with one Mendocino cafe threatening to charge customers $5 for wearing a mask.

While the region makes up a small proportion of the state’s population, the growth in its caseload has been considerable, and comes at a time when the state overall is enjoying some of the lowest rates of Covid in the country. After largely avoiding the worst of the pandemic, a block of far northern California counties now leads the state with nearly 40 cases per 100,000 residents over the past week, according to statistics maintained by the Los Angeles Times. Tehama county ranked the highest in the LA Times case ratings with 139 cases per 100,000 residents. Meanwhile 10 of the 21 total Covid deaths in nearby Siskiyou county have occurred since the beginning of May.

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‘This was a massacre’: Biden honours Tulsa race massacre survivors 100 years on – video

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Joe Biden on Tuesday became the first sitting US president to visit the site in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where hundreds of Black Americans were massacred by a white mob in 1921, as he marked the country’s legacy of racial violence. 

Biden oversaw a moment of silence for the victims after meeting with three people who lived in the district during the massacre: Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis and Lessie Benningfield Randle. 

Now between the ages of 101 and 107, the survivors who met Biden asked Congress for ‘justice’ this year and are parties to a lawsuit against state and local officials seeking several remedies for the massacre, including a victim compensation fund

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Microwave weapons that could cause Havana Syndrome exist, experts say

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Russia and possibly China have developed technology capable of injuring brain and a US company made a prototype in 2004

Portable microwave weapons capable of causing the mysterious spate of “Havana Syndrome” brain injuries in US diplomats and spies have been developed by several countries in recent years, according to leading American experts in the field.

A US company also made the prototype of such a weapon for the marine corps in 2004. The weapon, codenamed Medusa, was intended to be small enough to fit in a car, and cause a “temporarily incapacitating effect” but “with a low probability of fatality or permanent injury”.

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US secretary of state warns Pacific leaders about ‘coercion’ in veiled swipe at China

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Antony Blinken takes a shot at Beijing’s growing influence with rallying call for ‘international rules-based order’

The US secretary of state has warned leaders of Pacific countries about “threats to the rules-based international order” and “economic coercion”, in what appears to be a veiled swipe at China’s growing influence in the region.

Antony Blinken was addressing leaders and their delegates from 11 Pacific countries and territories including Fiji, Solomon Islands, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, French Polynesia, Palau and Marshall Islands as part of the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders, which is held in Hawaii.

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‘Our society is totally nuts’: Fauci emails lift lid on life in eye of the Covid storm

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Communications from America’s top infectious diseases expert shed light on panic and confusion in early stages of pandemic

As Anthony Fauci, the US’s leading infectious diseases official, grappled with the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic last spring, he was pulled in many directions.

Donald Trump’s White House, which was downplaying the dangers, was demanding he portray the outbreak on their terms; the media was hungry for answers; and Fauci’s email inbox was constantly full with officials, the public and celebrities offering advice and seeking information about the world’s deadliest health crisis for a century.

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Sacklers deny responsibility for opioid crisis and claim lawyers ‘invented false narrative’

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A branch of the family launches website and claims they are victims of smear campaign by lawyers seeking to make profit

A branch of the Sackler family has launched a website denying responsibility for the US opioid epidemic even after agreeing to pay billions of dollars to settle lawsuits over the crisis.

The website, called Judge for Yourselves, claims that the family and the company it owns, Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma, are victims of a smear campaign by lawyers seeking to profit from a “strategically invented false narrative” that the firm’s high-strength prescription painkiller, OxyContin, drove an epidemic that has ultimately claimed more than 500,000 lives over the past two decades.

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Coronavirus live news: India aims for 10m Covid jabs a day by July; WHO approves Chinese Sinovac jab

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So far nearly 45 million people fully vaccinated, 4.7% of India’s adult population; Sinovac is second Chinese vaccine approved as safe by WHO

The Coachella music festival will return to the US in April 2022, organisers have announced.

The 2020 event was scheduled for April of that year before being pushed to October.

New infection control guidance to help keep NHS workers safe from Covid-19 “falls short”, leading nurses in the UK said.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said that the updated official Covid-19 infection prevention and control guidance “focuses too much on aerosol generating procedures as the main risk”. But doctors have welcomed the new guidance as a “step in the right direction”, PA reports. Concerns were raised early on in the pandemic that medics were not able to get access to appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) amid a worldwide shortage.

The guidance, issued jointly by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) as well as public health agencies across the UK’s four nations and NHS England, has been updated to “strengthen existing messaging”, it states.

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White House contacts Russia after hack of world’s largest meatpacking company

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The ransomware attack on JBS, probably by a Russia-based group, has disrupted meat production in North America and Australia

A ransomware attack against the world’s largest meatpacking company that has disrupted meat production in North America and Australia originated from a criminal organization probably based in Russia, the White House was informed on Tuesday.

The attack on Brazil’s JBS caused its Australian operations to shut down on Monday and has stopped livestock slaughter at its plants in several US states.

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‘Scary stuff’: International Space Station robotic arm struck by space junk

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  • ‘Lucky strike’ did not endanger seven astronauts on board
  • Not known what debris struck station or when it occurred

The sudden appearance of a small hole in a robotic arm aboard the international space station (ISS) has brought renewed attention to the danger posed by space junk.

Related: Chinese cargo craft docks with future space station in orbit

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How the ‘good war’ went bad: elite soldiers from Australia, UK and US face a reckoning

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As coalition troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan after 20 years, former soldiers, key officers and the public are asking what went wrong with some special forces

“Whatever we do … ,” one Australian special forces soldier said of his service in Afghanistan, “I can tell you the Brits and the US are far, far worse.

“I’ve watched our young guys stand by and hero worship what they were doing, salivating at how the US were torturing people. You just stand there and roll your eyes and wait for it to end.”

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Amazon US customers have one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

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Critics raise transparency fears over plan to turn all smart home devices into ‘mesh network’

Amazon customers have one week to opt out of a plan that would turn every Echo speaker and Ring security camera in the US into a shared wireless network, as part of the company’s plan to fix connection problems for its smart home devices.

The proposal, called Amazon Sidewalk, involves the company’s devices being used as a springboard to build city-wide “mesh networks” that help simplify the process of setting up new devices, keep them online even if they’re out of range of home wifi, and extend the range of tracking devices such as those made by Tile.

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Biden corporate tax plan could earn EU and UK billions, study shows

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EU forecast to reap extra €50bn per year with UK expected to gain €200m from BP alone

A proposal to be tabled by the US president, Joe Biden, at the upcoming G7 meeting for a 15% global corporate tax rate could reap the EU €50bn (£43bn) a year, and earn the UK nearly €200m extra alone from the British multinational BP, according to research.

Should the tax rate be set higher at 25%, the lowest current rate within the seven largest world economies, the EU would earn nearly €170bn extra a year – more than 50% of current corporate tax revenue and 12% of total health spending in the bloc.

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Texas Republicans plot to resurrect restrictive voting bill after Democrats’ walkout

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Governor Greg Abbott plans to call special session after Democrats block 11th-hour attempt to ram through bill to make voting harder

Republicans in Texas are already plotting to resurrect their fight for sweeping voting restrictions after Democratic lawmakers walked out of the state capitol and blocked an 11th-hour attempt to ram through legislation that would have made it harder to cast a ballot.

Texas governor Greg Abbott – who leads the state’s domineering Republican majority – has announced he will include the high-stakes issue on his agenda when he reconvenes the legislature for a rapid-fire special session. He called the failure of the bill “deeply disappointing”.

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From a forest in Papua New Guinea to a floor in Sydney: how China is getting rich off Pacific timber

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China is the major buyer of wood from Pacific nations like PNG and Solomon Islands, which are implicated in illegal or unsustainable logging

  • Read more of our Pacific Plunder series here

An illegally logged tree, felled in the diminishing forests of Papua New Guinea, may well end up becoming floorboards in a Sydney living room, or a bookcase in a home in Seattle.

Illegal logging contributes between 15% and 30% of the global wood trade, according to Interpol. China is a major buyer of the world’s illegal timber, according to environmental groups, especially from Pacific nations like PNG and Solomon Islands, which are implicated in illegal or unsustainable logging.

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Overconfident of spotting fake news? If so, you may be more likely to fall victim

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Study suggests people who are most sure of their ability to discern fact from fiction are less likely to do so

Are you a purveyor of fake news? People who are most confident about their ability to discern between fact and fiction are also the most likely to fall victim to misinformation, a US study suggests.

Although Americans believe the confusion caused by false news is all-pervasive, relatively few indicate having seen or shared it, something the researchers suggested shows that many may not only have a hard time identifying false news but are not aware of their own deficiencies at doing so.

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‘Democracy itself is in peril’: Biden delivers Memorial Day speech – video

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Joe Biden warned in a speech commemorating the US's war dead on Memorial Day that American democracy was 'in peril' and called for empathy among his fellow citizens.

Speaking at Arlington National Cemetery, the president, joined by the first lady, Jill Biden, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and her husband, paid tribute to America’s war dead

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