Tag: Region US

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump on July 17 threatened to sue The Wall Street Journal after it published a story about an alleged off-colour letter written by him to late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that featured a drawing of a naked woman. The Journal story, which quickly reverberated around the US capital, says the note to Epstein bearing Mr Trump’s signature was part of a collection of notes for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. The newspaper says it reviewed…

When a major study appears in JAMA Psychiatry—a high-profile journal that shapes headlines and clinical decisions—its findings carry weight. So when Kalfas and colleagues released what they billed as the most comprehensive analysis of antidepressant withdrawal to date, it drew immediate attention. The study concluded that symptoms were generally “mild,” short-lived, and possibly amplified by nocebo effects—positioning itself as the last word on the subject. The authors mobilised a rapid media campaign to shape the public narrative, with the Science Media Centre issuing…

ATHENS – Greek police have arrested five people over the killing of a University of California at Berkeley professor who was shot dead in an Athens suburb earlier in July, police said. The professor’s ex-wife, who has denied any wrongdoing, her Greek partner, and three other people – one Bulgarian and two Albanian nationals – were arrested on Wednesday evening over the incident, a police official said on Thursday. The woman’s partner has confessed to shooting the academic, a 43-year-old…

WASHINGTON – In clearing the way for President Donald Trump’s efforts to transform American government, the Supreme Court has issued a series of orders that often lacked a fundamental characteristic of most judicial work: an explanation of the court’s rationale. On July 14, for instance, in letting Mr Trump dismantle the Education Department, the majority’s unsigned order was a single four-sentence paragraph entirely devoted to the procedural mechanics of pausing a lower court’s ruling. What the order did not include…

By Lucia Sinatra at brownstone dot org. It was nerve wracking, to say the least; having a high school student who had gotten into his dream college in mid-December 2020 but was uncertain if he could attend the following fall due to Covid-19 vaccine mandates. Those harrowing days and nights we spent focusing on little else as we scoured college websites to eventually find what we pretty much expected would come to pass. It started in April of 2021 when…

Delta Air Lines Inc., headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, has agreed to pay $8,100,000 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by awarding compensation to certain corporate officers and employees that exceeded the compensation limits Delta agreed to as part of its participation in the Department of the Treasury’s Payroll Support Program (PSP). The PSP was established by Congress in March 2020 under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act to provide payroll support to passenger and…

AUSTIN, Texas – The official tally of storm-related deaths across Texas rose to 131 on July 14 as authorities warned of yet another round of heavy rains 10 days after a Hill Country flash flood that transformed the Guadalupe River into a killer torrent. A National Weather Service flood watch forecasting heavy downpours of up to half a foot of rain was posted until July 15 morning for a wide swath of central Texas extending from the Rio Grande east…

WASHINGTON – The US Supreme Court on July 14 cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s administration to resume dismantling the Department of Education, part of his bid to shrink the federal government’s role in education in favor of more control by the states. In the latest high court win for Mr Trump, the justices lifted a federal judge’s order that had reinstated nearly 1,400 workers affected by mass layoffs at the department and blocked the administration from transferring key…

TORONTO – Over two months, Canadian officials scrambled to advise and reassure Canadians wanting to travel to the U.S. after President Donald Trump’s executive order on gender, documents show. The order, issued January 20, states the U.S. only recognizes two sexes, requires the government use the term “sex” rather than “gender” and mandates identification documents issued by the government, including passports and visas, be based on what it described as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.”…

BRUSSELS – The European Commission on July 14 said it was putting forward a new list of US goods worth €72 billion (S$108 billion) that could be targeted by European Union levies if tariff talks with Washington fail. The bloc’s trade chief Maros Sefcovic announced the proposal, “accounting for some €72 billion worth of US imports”, at a meeting with EU ministers in Brussels. The move came after US President Donald Trump threw months of painstaking negotiations with the EU…

WASHINGTON — Today, the Department of Justice released Guidance to ensure compliance with President Trump’s Executive Order No. 14224, which establishes English as the official language of the United States of America. Consistent with the Executive Order, the Department of Justice will lead a coordinated effort across federal agencies to minimize non-essential multilingual services, redirect resources toward English-language education and assimilation, and ensure legal compliance with the Executive Order through targeted measures where necessary. “As President Trump has made clear,…

ZURICH – Switzerland is holding talks with the United States after Washington tried to raise the price of new fighter jets Bern is buying for its air force, the government said on Wednesday. Bern chose Lockheed Martin’s F-35A Lightning II as its next-generation fighter plane in 2021, with a fixed price of around 6 billion Swiss francs ($7.4 billion) for 36 jets, a decision that attracted controversy in neutral Switzerland. But the U.S. Joint Program Office overseeing the project said…

AP — Last week, Ukrainian drone hunters picking up the debris from Russia´s nightly assault on their cities found a weapon that stood out from the rest. It had an advanced camera, a computing platform powered by artificial intelligence and a radio link, allowing an operator to pilot it remotely from Russia. It also contained new, Iranian-made, anti-jamming technology, according to a Ukrainian drone expert. Most Russian attack drones are black, said Serhii Beskrestnov, an electronics expert more widely known as…

The number of years former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan spent in Springfield has often been used as shorthand to explain his outsized impact on state government and politics. His political career spanned 50 years in the General Assembly, 23 years chairing the Democratic Party of Illinois, and 36 years as House speaker — the longest tenure of any state or federal legislative leader in U.S. history. But on Friday, a new term was added to the former speaker’s list…

BOSTON – A federal judge on June 13 blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing parts of his sweeping executive order overhauling federal elections, including by requiring proof of US citizenship to register to vote and barring states from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day. US District Judge Denise Casper in Boston issued a preliminary injunction at the behest of 19 Democratic-led states who had argued that the Republican president lacked the authority to mandate changes to elections and…

LONDON – The clashes between rioters and federal and California National Guards troops now unfolding in Los Angeles have played out in typical American fashion, with exaggerated claims and disputes about the interpretation of supposedly grand constitutional principles. US President Donald Trump claims that, had he not deployed a total of around 5,000 troops, Los Angeles “would be burning”. But Ms Karen Bass, Los Angeles’ mayor, argues that law and order was never truly threatened in her city, and that…