Category Archives: US News

‘We’re going to get this done’: Biden on Capitol Hill to push infrastructure package – live

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  • President to discuss massive $3.5tn plan over lunch with Democrats
  • Senate minority leader McConnell hits back at Biden on voting rights

Joe Biden is meeting with a bipartisan group of mayors and governors to discuss the bipartisan infrastructure framework.

Among the attendees are New Jersey governor Phil Murphy and Illinois governor JB Pritzker, both Democrats, as well as Vermont governor Phil Scott, a Republican.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her appointees to the January 6 select committee earlier this month, after the chamber voted in favor of forming the panel.

In addition to Republican Liz Cheney, Pelosi named Democrats Bennie Thompson, Elaine Luria, Jamie Raskin, Stephanie Murphy, Pete Aguilar, Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren to the committee. Thompson, who chairs the House homeland security committee, will serve as chairman.

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Top US general warned of ‘Reichstag moment’ in Trump’s turbulent last days

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Gen Mark Milley drew comparison to Nazi Germany as Trump tried to overturn election defeat, new book I Alone Can Fix This says

Shortly before the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, told aides the US was facing a “Reichstag moment” because Donald Trump was preaching “the gospel of the Führer”, according to an eagerly awaited book about Trump’s last year in office.

Related: Trump told chief of staff Hitler ‘did a lot of good things’, book says

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Cuba cracks down on protests as rallies spring up across US in support – video

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Cuban special forces have begun a widespread crackdown on anti-government protests. The historic demonstrations were sparked over food shortages, high prices and other grievances against the government. Meanwhile, rallies have been held in several US cities, with hundreds of people waving Cuban flags and calling for change on the Communist-run island

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Deadly heat: how rising temperatures threaten workers from Nicaragua to Nepal

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As scorching temperatures spread, the search for ways to protect against heat stress is becoming ever more urgent

William Martínez, who as a child worked on a sugarcane plantation in rural Nicaragua, learned the hard way what many in the US and Canada are now realising: that rising temperatures are costing lives and livelihoods.

Martínez, along with fellow villagers in La Isla, found himself getting sicker as he worked long, gruelling days in the fields under the beating Nicaraguan sun two decades ago. Workers at the nearby mill, which supplies molasses to alcohol companies, began to suffer kidney failure, and would be forced out of the workforce and into expensive and time-consuming dialysis. His father and uncles, addled with the same affliction, had died when Martínez was a boy, forcing him to join the workforce.

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Satellite imagery captures wildfires raging through Oregon – video

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Satellite imagery from NOAA shows various clusters of fire in the state of Oregon. The Bootleg fire, which has been burning since 6 July, is the largest active blaze in the nation, covering an area larger than the size of New York City. The growing Bootleg fire continued to devour forest in south-central Oregon, after forcing hundreds of residents in the Klamath Falls area to evacuate

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Biden condemns Trump’s claim of voter fraud: ‘The big lie is just that, a big lie’ – live

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  • President deflects questions over the filibuster in voting rights speech
  • Biden: ‘The 21st century Jim Crow assault is real. It’s unrelenting’
  • Lawmakers arrive in DC to call for legislation to strengthen voting rights
  • Explainer: why did Democratic lawmakers flee Texas?

Texas Democratic lawmakers have fled their state in a desperate attempt to stop the Republican-run legislature from passing laws they say will suppress the vote of people of color.

The extreme move – which saw dozens of Democrats leave via planes and head to Washington DC – is the latest and wildest escalation in a fight over voting rights in the state and in America more broadly.

Related: Why did Democratic lawmakers flee Texas over voter restrictions?

As fires propagate throughout the US west on the heels of record heatwaves, experts are warning that the region is caught in a vicious feedback cycle of extreme heat, drought and fire, all amplified by the climate crisis.

Firefighters are battling blazes from Arizona to Washington state that are burning with a worrying ferocity, while officials say California is already set to outpace last year’s record-breaking fire season.

Related: American west stuck in cycle of ‘heat, drought and fire’, experts warn

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‘Have you no shame?’: Biden decries Republican attacks on voting rights

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President condemns Trump’s ‘big lie’ about a stolen election but fails to mention filibuster in 20-minute Philadelphia speech

Joe Biden has made an impassioned attack on racist voting laws sweeping America, warning that “the 21st-century Jim Crow assault is real” and demanding of Republicans: “Have you no shame?”

Related: Biden defends voting rights – but no word on ending the filibuster

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Biden defends voting rights – but no word on ending the filibuster

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The president gave an impassioned defense of the right to vote, but while the 60-vote Senate rule is in place, reform looks a pipe dream

Joe Biden gave his most muscular defense of the right to vote yet on Tuesday, but offered few specifics on how Democrats could overcome Republican efforts to stymie federal voting reform.

Related: Governor vows to arrest Democrats who fled Texas to block voting restrictions

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Sixty wildfires rage across 10 US states – including blaze bigger than Portland

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Thousands have been forced to evacuate from Alaska to Wyoming amid soaring temperatures and a drought

Nearly 60 wildfires were burning across 10 states in the parched American west on Tuesday, with the largest, in Oregon, consuming an area nearly twice the size of Portland.

The fires have torched homes and forced thousands to evacuate from Alaska to Wyoming, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Arizona, Idaho and Montana accounted for more than half of the large active fires.

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Fish dropped from planes as part of annual aerial lake stocking in Utah – video

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The Utah division of wildlife resources has released video footage showing planes dropping small fish from the air into the lakes below.

The fish – which are usually between 1 and 3 inches (2.5cm-7.5cm) long and include rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, brook trout, tiger trout, splake and Arctic grayling – are specifically raised for fishing. They are dropped into fishless lakes that do not have any natural reproduction, and they are often sterile. 

Utah’s DWR says this allows the state to control their numbers and does not affect any native fish populations. This method of stocking, in which the small fish can survive the high fall because of their size, has been used since the 1950s

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Severe drought threatens Hoover dam reservoir – and water for US west

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The wellspring of Lake Mead created by the dam’s blocking of the Colorado River has plummeted to an historic low as states in the west face hefty cuts in their water supplies

Had the formidable white arc of the Hoover dam never held back the Colorado River, the US west would probably have no Los Angeles or Las Vegas as we know them today. No sprawling food bowl of wheat, alfalfa and corn. No dreams of relocating to live in a tamed desert. The river, and dam, made the west; now the climate crisis threatens to break it.

The situation here is emblematic of a planet slowly, inexorably overheating. And the catastrophic consequences of the extreme weather this brings.

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Drunken Giuliani urged Trump to ‘just say we won’ on election night, book says

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As key states started to slip away from Trump, Rudy Giuliani repeatedly urged former president to lie, according to new book

A drunken Rudy Giuliani repeatedly urged Donald Trump to “just say we won” on election night last November, according to a new book, even as key states started to slip away from the president and defeat by Joe Biden drew near.

Related: Landslide review: Michael Wolff’s third Trump book is his best – and most alarming

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American west stuck in cycle of ‘heat, drought and fire’, experts warn

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Wildfires in several states are burning with worrying ferocity across a tinder-dry landscape

As fires propagate throughout the US west on the heels of record heatwaves, experts are warning that the region is caught in a vicious feedback cycle of extreme heat, drought and fire, all amplified by the climate crisis.

Firefighters are battling blazes from Arizona to Washington state that are burning with a worrying ferocity, while officials say California is already set to outpace last year’s record-breaking fire season.

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Forty-three bodies found in Arizona borderland amid brutal heat

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Non-profit group sees apparent surge in number of migrant deaths this year

The bodies of an unusually large number of migrants who died in Arizona’s borderlands are being recovered this summer amid record temperatures in the sun-scorched desert and rugged mountains.

An increase in migrant deaths also has been noted in Texas, and rescues are up throughout the border with Mexico.

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Biden to denounce Trump’s lies about stolen election in Tuesday speech

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Jen Psaki said he will also ‘decry efforts to strip the right to vote’ as Republican state legislatures pass voter suppression bills

Joe Biden, who has been criticised for failing to use his “bully pulpit” to defend voting rights, is set to deliver on Tuesday an aggressive denunciation of Donald Trump’s “big lie” about a stolen election.

After months of sidestepping acrimony with his predecessor in a bid to lower the political temperature, Biden will argue that Trump’s false conspiracy theories led to the 6 January insurrection and a rash of voter restrictions, the White House said.

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Texas Democrats flee the state to thwart voting restrictions law

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Texas Democrats fled the state as part of an all-out effort to block Republicans from passing new restrictions on voting in the state.

The move, first reported by NBC News, escalates one of the most high-stakes battles over efforts to make it harder to vote in America.

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Paratrooper whose parachute failed to open survives after crashing into house

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British soldier falls through roof of California house, crashing into the kitchen in a burst of insulation and roofing material

A British paratrooper whose parachute failed to open correctly sustained only “minor injuries” after a 15,000ft fall took him through the roof of a house in California, crashing into the kitchen in a burst of insulation and roofing material.

The soldier, who was not immediately named, jumped out of a plane during a High Altitude Low Opening (Halo) exercise, a technique used by special forces. He lost control as he approached the ground near Camp Roberts, in Atascadero.

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Goldfish dumped in lakes grow to monstrous size, threatening ecosystems

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Minnesota pet owners warned not to release fish into wild, where they wreak havoc on native species

Authorities in Minnesota have appealed to aquarium owners to stop releasing pet fish into waterways, after several huge goldfish were pulled from a local lake.

Officials in Burnsville, about 15 miles south of Minneapolis, said released goldfish can grow to several times their normal size and wreak havoc on indigenous species.

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Denver: four arrested and weapons seized ahead of All-Star Game

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Police discover weapons at downtown hotel but FBI say ‘no reason to believe this incident was connected to terrorism’

Four people were arrested and more than a dozen weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition seized at a downtown Denver hotel close to several events planned in conjunction with the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

The showpiece MLB event takes place on Tuesday at Coors Field. Festivities have been staged in and around the ballpark and downtown for the past several days.

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