Category Archives: US News

Daunte Wright’s brother speaks out at vigil as police use teargas against protesters – video report

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Dallas Bryant, the brother of the 20-year-old Black man who was shot dead by police in the suburbs of Minneapolis on Sunday, says he could never understand Wright's fear of being pulled over by police because he is white. 

He also questioned the validity of the explanation by police that the officer who shot Daunte accidentally shot him because she confused her Taser electrical weapon for her gun.

Police clashed with protesters for a second night. Law enforcement agencies used teargas and other methods to disperse hundreds of people who had gathered outside police headquarters

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Police kill student who fired at them at Tennessee high school, authorities say

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Officer wounded after confrontation in Knoxville high school bathroom

A student at a Tennessee high school has been shot and killed by police after opening fire on officers responding to reports of a gunman on campus, authorities said on Monday.

David B Rausch, the director of the Tennessee bureau of investigation, said at a news conference that police found the student in a bathroom at Austin-East magnet high school in Knoxville, a city about 180 miles (290km) east of Nashville. They ordered him out, but he wouldn’t comply, and that is when he reportedly opened fire, Rausch said. Police fired back.

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Police chief says Minnesota officer mistakenly fired gun instead of Taser – video

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The fatal police shooting of a 20-year-old Black man in a Minneapolis suburb appeared to be an ‘accidental discharge’ by an officer who drew her gun instead of her Taser during a struggle, the city’s police chief said. ‘This appears to me, from what I viewed and the officers’ reaction and distress immediately after, that this was an accidental discharge that resulted in the tragic death of Mr Wright,’ the Brooklyn Center police chief, Tim Gannon, told reporters. Police in the Minneapolis suburb attempted to arrest Daunte Wright following a traffic stop due to an expired vehicle registration. Video footage presented at a news briefing showed a struggle between Wright and officers. Wright then got back into the car and an officer could be heard yelling ‘Taser, Taser, Taser’

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Domino’s to launch robotic pizza delivery service in Houston

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Delivery service will eventually expand to other locations as part of partnership between pizza company and startup Nuro

Domino’s Pizza and Nuro, a Silicon Valley startup, said on Monday they will launch a robotic pizza delivery service in Houston this week as they seek to satisfy increasing online orders during the pandemic.

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Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West both ask for joint custody in divorce

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Like Kardashian West’s filing, the rap and fashion mogul also agreed neither of them need spousal support

Kanye West has agreed with Kim Kardashian West that they should have joint custody of their four children and neither of them need spousal support, according to new divorce documents.

West’s attorneys filed his response Friday in Los Angeles superior court to Kardashian West’s divorce filing seven weeks earlier, which began the process of ending their six-and-a-half-year marriage.

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Harvey Weinstein indicted on sexual assault charges in California

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Former film producer, who is currently incarcerated in New York, faces possible extradition for alleged attacks on five women

Harvey Weinstein has been indicted in California on sexual assault charges, one of his lawyers said on Monday, as the former film producer appeared in a New York court proceeding over whether to extradite him.

The 69-year-old Weinstein appeared by video from the Wende correctional facility, near Buffalo, before a judge on the Erie county court.

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Black army officer pepper-sprayed by police during traffic stop in December 2020 – video

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One of two police officers accused of pepper-spraying and pointing their guns at a Black US army officer during a traffic stop has been fired, a Virginia town announced late on Sunday, hours after the governor called for an independent investigation.

In the December 2020 encounter, two officers are accused of drawing their guns, pointing them at army second lieutenant Caron Nazario and using a slang term to suggest he was facing execution.

Nazario, who is Black and Latino, was also pepper-sprayed and knocked to the ground by the officers, Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker, according to the lawsuit he filed earlier this month against them. The two sides in the case dispute what happened but Crocker wrote in a report that he believed Nazario was “eluding police” and he considered it a “high-risk traffic stop”. Attorney Jonathan Arthur said Nazario was trying to stop in a well-lit area

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Natanz nuclear plant attack ‘will set back Iran’s programme by nine months’

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US intelligence sources believe Israel was behind Saturday’s cyber-attack on heavily guarded facility

The cyber-attack on the heavily guarded Natanz plant in Iran will set back Tehran’s nuclear programme by nine months, US intelligence sources have claimed.

Iran’s foreign ministry has blamed Israel for sabotaging Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility, and although Israel has not formally confirmed responsibility its officials have done little to dispel the notion.

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Inside South Baltimore’s fight against burning trash – video

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​Residents in South Baltimore are fighting to 'starve' their nearby Bresco incinerator due to health concerns over the amount of pollution it creates. Of the 72 remaining facilities in the US, the vast majority are located in predominantly low-income or minority communities, raising concerns about compounding pollutants in already overburdened neighbourhoods

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How Facebook let fake engagement distort global politics: a whistleblower’s account

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The inside story of Sophie Zhang’s battle to combat rampant manipulation as executives delayed and deflected

Shortly before Sophie Zhang lost access to Facebook’s systems, she published one final message on the company’s internal forum, a farewell tradition at Facebook known as a “badge post”.

“Officially, I’m a low-level [data scientist] who’s being fired today for poor performance,” the post began. “In practice, in the 2.5 years I’ve spent at Facebook, I’ve … found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry, and caused international news on multiple occasions.”

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Revealed: the Facebook loophole that lets world leaders deceive and harass their citizens

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A Guardian investigation exposes the breadth of state-backed manipulation of the platform

Facebook has repeatedly allowed world leaders and politicians to use its platform to deceive the public or harass opponents despite being alerted to evidence of the wrongdoing.

The Guardian has seen extensive internal documentation showing how Facebook handled more than 30 cases across 25 countries of politically manipulative behavior that was proactively detected by company staff.

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Police say officer who shot and killed unarmed Daunte Wright intended to fire Taser

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Brooklyn Center police chief describes fatal shooting of Black man, 20, as result of ‘accidental discharge’ from handgun

Police in a Minneapolis suburb said an officer accidentally shot and killed a 20-year-old Black man on Sunday afternoon during a traffic stop, releasing graphic body-camera footage they say shows the officer intended to use a Taser not a handgun during the death of unarmed Daunte Wright.

Related: ‘They didn’t have to kill him’: anger and outrage as locals mourn Daunte Wright

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Whitmer won’t go ‘punch for punch’ with Republican who called her a witch

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  • Governor and others ‘ready for burning at stake’, GOP chair said
  • Democrat laments ‘layer of misogyny’ towards female leaders

Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, will not “go punch for punch” with Republican leaders in the state who have attacked her in misogynistic terms, one going so far as to call Whitmer and two other leading Democrats “three witches” set to be “burned at the stake”.

Related: ‘Dumb son of a bitch’: Trump attacks McConnell in Republican donors speech

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Secretary of state Blinken hits out at China over Taiwan and Covid

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Joe Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Sunday the US is concerned about China’s aggressive actions against Taiwan and warned it would be a “serious mistake” for anyone to try to change the status quo in the western Pacific by force.

Related: Chaos Under Heaven: Trump as raging bull in a China policy shop

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Ukrainian soldier reportedly killed in artillery fire from Russia-backed troops

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Attacks have intensified in recent weeks as Kremlin assembles troops along border

The Ukrainian military said a soldier was killed and another seriously wounded in artillery fire from Russia-backed separatist rebels, as hostilities rose sharply in the east of the country.

As of the reported attack on Sunday, Ukraine says 27 soldiers have been killed in the east this year, more than half the number who died in all of 2020. Attacks have intensified in recent weeks and Russia has built up troops along the Ukraine border.

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‘No community should suffer this’: Florida’s toxic breach was decades in the making

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A leak at an abandoned fertilizer plant is just the latest development at a site that has polluted the area since it was built

It’s been a week since a significant leak at a long-abandoned fertilizer plant in the Tampa Bay area threatened the surrounding groundwater, soil, and local water supplies.

Last weekend, officials ordered more than 300 families living near the 676-acre Piney Point plant site in Manatee county to evacuate. The sheriff even emptied out his jail’s first floor of inmates in case a “20-foot wall of water” came rolling their way.

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Britain risks damaging reputation by keeping Julian Assange in jail, says partner

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Stella Moris says continued detention of WikiLeaks founder is compromising UK’s global standing

Britain would be on stronger ground campaigning against authoritarian regimes if it pressed the Biden administration to drop its call to extradite Julian Assange on espionage charges, Stella Moris, Assange’s partner, has told the Guardian.

Moris – who has two children with Assange – is trying to broaden the campaign of support for him by pointing to the global damage caused to the UK’s reputation by keeping him in jail for so long.

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Nasa preparing to attempt first controlled flight on another world

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The Ingenuity helicopter, which arrived on the red planet in February, is expected to take to the skies on Wednesday

Nasa is gearing up to attempt the first controlled flight on another planet next week, with the tiny Ingenuity helicopter on Mars.

The helicopter is expected to take to the skies next week, with Wednesday being the earliest time scheduled.

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Ghislaine Maxwell: prosecutors defend new indictment as July trial looms

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  • Defense complains of ‘gamesmanship’ and may seek trial delay
  • Arraignment on new charges due in New York this month

Prosecutors in the case of Ghislaine Maxwell have defended a late expansion of charges against her, saying it became necessary because a woman spoke after the Briton’s arrest about abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein in the early 2000s.

Related: Ghislaine Maxwell faces new charges, including sex trafficking of a minor

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‘Clear the Capitol’: Pence plea amid riot retold in dramatic Pentagon document

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Previously undisclosed internal report reveals how officials sought to re-establish order during 6 January attack

A previously undisclosed document prepared by the Pentagon for internal use reveals dramatic new details about how authorities sought to quell the attack on the Capitol on 6 January and re-establish order – and how such help took agonising hours in coming.

Related: Why aren't we calling the Capitol attack an act of treason?

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