Category Archives: US News

SpaceX returns four astronauts to Earth in darkness

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Capsule parachutes into Gulf of Mexico at 3am, the first night-time US crew splashdown since 1968

SpaceX safely returned four astronauts from the International Space Station on Sunday, making the first US crew splashdown in darkness since the Apollo 8 moonshot.

The Dragon capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, just before 3am, ending the second astronaut flight for Elon Musk’s company. It was an express trip home, lasting just six and a half hours.

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Biden and Xi talk of a clash of civilisations. But the real shared goal is dominance | Richard McGregor

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The US president has challenged the idea that the ‘east is rising, the west declining’. Instead, he insists that America’s day is far from done

Finally, we have arrived, not at a clash of civilisations, but at the clash of civilisations. Or so President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress would have you believe. The US versus China. The west versus the east. Democracy versus autocracy. Biden’s speech last week was rich in laying down markers for Washington in the contest of the century.

“They’re going to write about this point in history,” Biden told a gathering of US television news anchors before his speech, in remarks later released by the White House. “Not about any of us in here, but about whether or not democracy can function in the 21st century.”

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Havana syndrome: NSA officer’s case hints at microwave attacks since 90s

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When Mike Beck developed a rare form of Parkinson’s US intelligence concluded he was the victim of a hi-tech weapon

When the first reports surfaced of a mysterious disorder that was afflicting dozens of US diplomats in Cuba, Mike Beck’s reaction was one of recognition and relief.

Beck, a retired National Security Agency counterintelligence officer, was at his home in Maryland, scrolling through the day’s news on his computer when he spotted the story, and remembers shouting out to his wife.

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Decline in US Covid vaccinations presents new problem: how to shrink operations

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With less than one-third of Americans fully vaccinated, health authorities switch from mass vaccination clinics to outreach campaigns

A decline in daily Covid-19 vaccination rates has left US public health authorities with a new problem – how to effectively shrink operations.

In the campaign to immunize all American adults against the coronavirus, most of the difficulties to date have involved overwhelming demand and restricted supply. Now, with less than one-third of Americans fully vaccinated, local public health authorities described a sense of whiplash as they pivot from mass vaccination clinics to outreach campaigns, all within a couple of weeks.

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Colorado woman killed in rare black bear attack, authorities say

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  • Boyfriend of 39-year-old victim finds body near Durango
  • Officials say sow and two cubs found and killed near scene

A 39-year-old Colorado woman died in an apparent black bear attack, just the fourth fatal mauling in the state since records began in 1960, authorities said on Saturday.

Related: Montana guide mauled to death in grizzly bear attack outside Yellowstone

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Mexico expects US to send 5m more Covid vaccine doses, president says

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  • Mexican production of AstraZeneca jab suffers setbacks
  • López Obrador: “it’s probable that they’ll help us with a loan’

Mexica’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said on Friday the US will probably send his country 5m more doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, as the company admitted production in Central and South America had suffered multiple setbacks.

Related: US cites Indian variant in implementing travel ban from Tuesday

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George Floyd: New Jersey teacher suspended over rant to pupils

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  • Profanity-laced comments to pupils aired by local TV
  • Howard Zlotkin refers to Floyd as a ‘criminal’

A New Jersey high school teacher was suspended with pay for making profanity-laced comments to students about George Floyd.

Related: Teargas, flash-bangs: the devastating toll of police tactics on Minnesota children

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Bush: ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ideals show pro-Trump Republicans ‘want to be extinct’

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Former president speaks as lone anti-Trump Republican seeks House seat in Texas special election

Ahead of a special election on Saturday to replace a Texas congressman who died after contracting Covid-19, former president George W Bush said the ascendancy of supporters of Donald Trump suggest Republicans “want to be extinct”.

Related: George W Bush on Trump’s Republicans: ‘Isolationist, protectionist, nativist’

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How Biden’s firm line with Republicans draws on lesson of Obama’s mistakes

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The president has sought bipartisan support but not at the cost of delay and dilution of his bold policies

Joe Biden started his presidential campaign with promises to be a unifying force in Washington who would help lawmakers come together to achieve bipartisan reform. But over his first 100 days in office, Biden’s message to Republicans in Congress has been closer to this: get on board or get out of my way.

This willingness to go it alone if necessary appears to be a hard-won lesson from the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency, when Democrats negotiated with Republicans on major bills only to have them vote against the final proposals.

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US beekeepers sue over imports of Asian fake honey

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Commercial beekeepers in the US say counterfeit honey from Asia is forcing down prices and pushing them to financial collapse

Imports of cheap, fake honey from Asia are pushing American beekeepers to financial collapse, according to a lawsuit.

Thousands of commercial beekeepers in the US have taken legal action against the country’s largest honey importers and packers for allegedly flooding the market with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of counterfeit honey.

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‘It’s just the beginning’: Covid push to digital boosts big tech profits

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Apple, Google owner Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft raked in money in first quarter

Big tech is on a roll. In every minute of the first three months of 2021, Apple, Google owner Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft sold products and services worth about $2.5m (£1.8m) combined. Profits before tax for the period came in at $88bn – more than $1bn of profit for every working day.

After a year of shifting to online work and leisure across the global economy, financial results published this week by most of US tech’s biggest names were bound to be strong. But even more bullish analysts on Wall Street were surprised by how fast they raked in money in the quarter, auguring even greater profits in the years ahead.

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US-China doomsday threat ramped up by hi-tech advances, says Kissinger

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Former US secretary of state says strained relationship is world’s ‘biggest problem’, as he warns of Beijing’s economic and military might

Former US diplomat Henry Kissinger has said that US-China tensions threaten to engulf the entire world and could lead to an Armageddon-like clash between the two military and technology giants.

The 97-year-old former US secretary of state, who as an adviser to president Richard Nixon crafted the 1971 unfreezing of relations between Washington and Beijing, said the mix of economic, military and technological strengths of the two superpowers carried more risks than the cold war with the Soviet Union.

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Trump’s border wall hits a wall as Pentagon cancels parts funded from its budget

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Defense department will cancel all construction paid for with military funds originally intended for other purposes

The US Department of Defense said on Friday it was cancelling the construction of parts of former president Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico that were being built using military funds.

All unobligated money was being returned to military, the Pentagon said.

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Restorationists urge Jill Biden to erase Melania Trump’s Rose Garden makeover

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A petition, signed by more than 54,000 people, calls on Biden to return the garden to its ‘former glory’ as Jacqueline Kennedy designed

Efforts to erase the Trump family legacy have reached the White House potting sheds and nurseries with Jill Biden being urged to restore the mansion’s garden to a state that predates ex-First Lady Melania Trump’s 2019 makeover.

An online petition calling on the first lady to return the Rose Garden to its “former glory” has been signed by more than 54,000 people. The petition says Biden’s predecessor “had the cherry trees, a gift from Japan, removed as well as the rest of the foliage and replaced with a boring tribute to herself”.

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California drought forces 15m salmon to take unusual route to Pacific: by road

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State officials will truck the young fish to the ocean, with the waterways they use to travel downstream historically low

California officials will truck more than 15 million young salmon raised at fish hatcheries in the state’s Central Valley agricultural region to the Pacific Ocean because projected river conditions show that the waterways the fish use to travel downstream will be historically low and warm due to increasing drought.

Officials announced the huge trucking operation on Wednesday, saying the effort is aimed at ensuring “the highest level of survival for the young salmon on their hazardous journey to the Pacific Ocean”.

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Biden urged to end US aid ‘abortion ban’

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More than 140 rights groups call for repeal of 1973 Helms amendment widely misinterpreted as total ban on funding abortion services overseas

Joe Biden is being urged to clarify a longstanding US law restricting overseas aid that has been misinterpreted by successive administrations as an outright ban on funding abortion for any reason.

As the US president marked his first 100 days in office on Friday, more than 140 human rights and global health organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International US and the Global Justice Center, signed a letter asking him to confirm that US aid can be used for abortion care in cases of rape, incest and when the woman’s life is in danger.

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World’s largest plane takes flight for the second time – video

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The largest airplane ever to take flight has made its second voyage, soaring above California's Mojave desert. Stratolaunch's massive carrier aircraft, nicknamed 'Roc', is designed to transport hypersonic vehicles and facilitate easy access to space.

The company was founded by the late billionaire and Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen in 2011, and sold to private ownership in late 2019 after Allen's death.

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AstraZeneca CEO hits back at Covid vaccine supply criticism

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Pascal Soriot says firm is doing its best to produce more and ‘should be proud of what we did in the world’

AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, has mounted a robust defence of the drugmaker’s Covid-19 vaccine efforts, and said the business should be proud of what it has done for the world and is doing its “very best” to produce more, as the company faces legal action from the EU over delivery shortfalls, and shipments to poorer countries have also been delayed.

The company generated $275m (£197m) in revenues from the Covid vaccine it developed with Oxford University in the first three months of the year and shipped 48m doses to 120 countries through the global vaccine-sharing initiative Covax, 80% of which went to low and middle-income countries. In total, it has supplied more than 300m vaccine doses to more than 165 countries so far this year.

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Biden’s world: how key countries have reacted to the US president’s first 100 days

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The new administration has signalled a sharp break in foreign policy from the Trump era – but how is that playing globally?

At the opening of Joe Biden’s online climate summit last week, Europe’s relief was was palpable: “It is so good,” gushed the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, “to have the US back on our side.”

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