The United States announced economic sanctions against Russia on Thursday and the expulsion of 10 diplomats in retaliation for what Washington says is the Kremlin's US election interference, a massive cyber attack and other hostile activity. President Joe Biden's executive order "sends a signal that the United States will impose costs in a strategic and economically impactful manner on Russia if it continues or escalates its destabilising international action," the White House said. The moves are in response to alleged interference in last year's presidential election as well as the hacking last year of federal government agencies.
Dominique Edwards was driving home late Tuesday when he saw something he won't soon forget โ a 2-year-old toddling along the feeder road to North Freeway in Harris County. Police arrived to take the girl then started checking nearby hotels, according to KTRK. An 8-year-old boy and his 3-year-old brother were asleep inside, KHOU reported.
The emerging pattern: Americans in blue states that lean Democratic appear to be getting vaccinated at more robust rates, while those in red Republican states seem to be more hesitant. We can draw a conclusion that red states and voters that voted for Trump are going to be more difficult to vaccinate because we have real good survey data to support that," said Dr. Howard Forman, a professor of public health and management at the Yale School of Medicine. A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in March found that 36% of Republicans said they will probably or definitely not get vaccinated, compared with 12% of Democrats.
A Yemeni model who posed for photographs without wearing a hijab is facing prosecution by Houthi rebels who abducted her from the streets of Sanaa, the woman's lawyer has claimed. Entesar Al-Hammadi, 20, was arrested in the Yemeni capital in February with two friends as they travelled to a film set, according to Saudi media reports, which said the Houthis had accused her of violating Islamic dress codes. Khaled Mohammed Al-Kamal, Ms Hammadi's lawyer, told the news website Arab News that his client was โarrested without a warrant.โ
A former Ugandan child soldier who became one of the top commanders of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army told judges at the International Criminal Court on Thursday that he was not responsible for any atrocities and felt powerless to stop them. In a defiant, sometimes meandering, unsworn statement to the court, Dominic Ongwen cast himself as a victim, saying he could not ask forgiveness for his alleged crimes because he was not responsible for them. "I cannot ask everyone in northern Uganda for forgiveness when there were other people in northern Uganda who were corrupt, who were encouraging this (war)," he told judges.
Kori Gauthier, a Louisiana State University freshman reported missing one week ago, was found dead. LSU officials confirmed Wednesday night that a body recently found in the Mississippi River is Gauthier. โSince Kori was first reported missing, the LSU Police Department, Baton Rouge Police Department and other law enforcement agencies and volunteers have taken exhaustive measures to locate her and, in the process, to determine what led to her disappearance,โ LSU Chief of Police Bart Thompson said in a statement.
In 2015 and 2016, former President Donald Trump's Republican primary rivals and other GOP officials tried to dodge his withering personal insults "while hoping that external events and news media coverage would ultimately lead to his downfall," Maggie Haberman recalls at The New York Times. That strategy obviously failed. But many Republican leaders are once more hoping, mostly in private, that time or some heaven-sent deus ex machina makes Trump fade into retirement, despite his clear intention to retain control over the GOP.
Take a page out of the stylish young star's book, from must-have splurges to affordable accessories Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
The U.S. Navy on Wednesday decommissioned the USS Bonhomme Richard docked off San Diego nine months after flames engulfed it in one of the worst U.S. warship fires outside of combat in recent memory.
Hong Kong school-children were on Thursdayย invited to handle rocket launchers and sing the Chinese national anthem during a day of activities designed to boost loyalty to Beijing. In classrooms across the city, students as young as six were given lessons on the draconian security law imposed last year as part of the first 'National Security Education Day'. Pupils were told to write messages in praise of China on billboards as they took part in flag-raising ceremonies as well as pro-Beijing puzzles and games.
The Biden administration on Thursday announced the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats and sanctions against dozens of people and companies as it moved to hold the Kremlin accountable for interference in last year's presidential election and the hacking of federal agencies. The sanctions also target Moscow's ability to borrow money by prohibiting U.S. financial institutions from buying Russian bonds directly from Russian institutions. The actions, foreshadowed for weeks by the administration, represent the first retaliatory measures announced against the Kremlin for the hack, familiarly known as the SolarWinds breach.
The former Minnesota police officer charged with manslaughter in the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, during a traffic stop was scheduled to make her first court appearance on Thursday. Prosecutors will try to show that Kim Potter, 48, was "culpably negligent" and took an "unreasonable risk" in shooting Wright after pulling him over for expired license plates in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center on Sunday. If convicted of the charge of second-degree manslaughter, Potter, who is white, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine.
The House Judiciary Committee's Wednesday meeting was meant for the markup of legislation and amendments, but one Kentucky congressman took the opportunity to criticize wearing โstupid masksโ while conducting House business. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican representing northern Kentucky, slammed mask-wearing Wednesday morning by attempting to submit for the record an article from ABC which stated that fully-vaccinated people can gather indoors without masks or social distancing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Not everyone attending Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee meeting was fully vaccinated, which Massie acknowledged despite still arguing against wearing masks.
"He kills us with missiles directly," she says of Syria's president Bashar Al-Assad. "But the Danish government is waging a psychological war. Ms al-Natoor is one of dozens of Syrian refugees who have been told their temporary residency in the seemingly progressive haven of Denmark has been revoked.
Alex White thought he was watching a huge worm writhing in plastic-wrapped lettuce he'd just brought home from a Sydney supermarket โ until a snake tongue flicked. It was a venomous pale-headed snake that authorities say made an 870-kilometer (540-mile) journey to Sydney from a packing plant in the Australian city of Toowoomba wrapped in plastic with two heads of cos lettuce. The refrigerated supermarket supply chain likely lulled the cold-blooded juvenile into a stupor until White bought the lettuce at an inner-city ALDI supermarket on Monday evening and rode his bicycle home with salad and snake in his backpack.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen told emissaries visiting at U.S. President Joe Biden's request on Thursday that the island would work with the United States to deter threats from Chinese military activities. Former senior U.S. officials, including former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd and former Deputy Secretaries of State Richard Armitage and James Steinberg, are visiting Taipei in a trip to signal Biden's commitment to Taiwan and its democracy. Tsai told the U.S. delegation in a meeting at the Presidential Office that Chinese military activities in the region have threatened regional peace and stability.
A viral video of an army sergeant pushing a Black resident in South Carolina and demanding that he leaves the neighborhood has now resulted in criminal charges. Initially uploaded on Facebook on Monday, the three-minute clip has circulated various media channels before the aggressor was identified asย Jonathan Pentland, a 42-year-old U.S. Army sergeant in Columbia, S.C. Pentland has since been charged with third-degree assault, Washington Post reports. In the video, Pentland pushes, threatens, and verbally assaults a black man and attempts to force him to leave the area.
Around 30 minutes from the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, passing large craters left by roadside bombs, we meet our host: Haji Hekmat, the Taliban's shadow mayor in Balkh district. The Taliban have arranged a display of force for us. It's a similar picture across much of Afghanistan: the government controls the cities and bigger towns, but the Taliban are encircling them, with a presence in large parts of the countryside.
For the first time that Marรญa can remember, half of her marijuana harvest is still in storage on her ranch in Mexico's Sinaloa state months after it should have been sold. Sitting in her wooden house tucked into the same mountains that produced some of the world's most notorious drug traffickers, including Joaquรญn โEl Chapoโ Guzmรกn, the 44-year-old mother of four thinks she knows why: expectations Mexico will soon legalize marijuana. โIt has never happened to us where we harvest and have it (stored) in sacks,โ said Marรญa, who asked that her full name not be used and her exact location not be revealed because in the mountains surrounding Badiraguato, where organized crime controls everything, misspeaking can be dangerous.
BERLIN (Reuters) -German Health Minister Jens Spahn urged the country's 16 federal states on Thursday to impose tougher restrictions quickly to try to slow a third wave of the coronavirus and not to wait until a national law on measures is passed. His appeal came as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases jumped on Thursday by 29,426 to 3.073 million, the biggest increase since Jan. 8. The reported death toll rose by 293 to 79,381, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) showed.
A few years ago, Daunte Wright was talking to a high school mentor about what to do if he was pulled over by police. โMake sure your hands are on top of the steering wheel, don't reach for anything,โ Jonathan Mason told him, given the long history of Black men shot by police during traffic stops. โHe would always say, 'Man, why we gotta do all that just for people not to kill us?'โ Mason recalled this week, days after the 20-year-old Wright was killed by a police officer in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center.
But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had โlow to moderateโ confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unprovenโand possibly untrue. The United States intelligence community assesses with low to moderate confidence that Russian intelligence officers sought to encourage Taliban attacks U.S. and coalition personnel in Afghanistan in 2019 and perhaps earlier,โ a senior administration official said.
A man and a woman were arguing in the middle of a Fort Worth freeway early Thursday when a passing vehicle struck the woman, killing her, police said. The officers determined the couple had been in an argument inside of their car when the vehicle crashed, police said. Officer Tracy Carter, a police spokesman, couldn't immediately say if the other driver will face charges.
Matt Gaetz tweeted an ad due to air in a self-styled fightback after allegations against him. Gaetz was accused of trafficking teenagers and paying for sex, which he strongly denies. Rep. Matt Gaetz is planning to push back at allegations he was involved in sex trafficking via an ad campaign targeting CNN, according to reports.
During a hearing before a Senate panel on Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said the intelligence community does not know whether COVID-19 initially transmitted to humans from an animal, or whether it was due to an accident in a lab. CIA Director Bill Burns then criticized the Chinese government for not being transparent about finding the origins of the virus.
โThereโs no โboth sides of the debateโ when it comes to active voter suppression.โ
โCompanies that do this ooze contempt for their own customers and employees who are not in the leftmost quarter of opinion.โ
โThe truth is that Fortune 500 companies were never taking moral stances from the goodness of their corporate hearts.โ
โThe truth is, the companies hold the cardsโฆIf companies stick to their guns, Georgia is likely to back down as well.โ
โWhen a company folds to the unfounded outrage of a few misinformed nuts, they are forever at the mobโs beck-and-call.โ