How Republican women reacted to Trump verdict
US women voters told the BBC how they think the trial will affect Donald Trump's image and his 2024 run.
1970-01-01 08:00
Australia Pledges $1.4 Billion in Bid to Be Hydrogen Superpower
Australia will allocate A$2 billion ($1.4 billion) to support renewable hydrogen projects, as the major fossil fuel exporter
1970-01-01 08:00
Mother of LSU student who died following alleged rape shares her daughter’s last text message to her
The mother of Madison Brooks, the LSU student who died following an alleged rape in January, has shared the final text message her daughter sent her before her death. Ashley Baustert, Brooks’s mother, told Fox News Digital that she texted her daughter on the night of 14 January that she would see her the following day to finish moving her into her dorm room for the start of her second semester at the university. Shortly thereafter, the 19-year-old responded with a text that read “I love you!!!” She also sent a picture of herself at Reggie’s Bar in east Baton Rouge with the son of one of Ms Baustert’s sorority sisters. Three-and-a-half hours later, Brooks was hit by a car in the middle of a high-traffic parkway and died. Initially, investigators did not suspect foul play in the incident. The person who hit Brooks stayed at the scene and called for help, while two passersby stopped But Ms Baustert knew something was amiss. “I know something was wrong,” Ms Baustert told Fox News Digital. “I know something terrible happened. Based on the circumstances of how she was hit, where she was, the time and her being alone.” Ms Baustert’s suspicions were furthered when she went to Reggie’s Bar and found her daughter’s phone had been left there unattended. “We were like there’s no way Madi put herself at three in the morning on the parkway in that neighbourhood without her phone,” Ms Baustert said. “Like, no one would do that.” Eventually, police turned to an investigation of the events between when Ms Baustert last heard from her daughter and when she was hit by a car. Police now believe that in that three-and-a-half hour period, Brooks was raped by four men who she met at the bar — Desmond Carter, 17, Casen Carver, 18, Everett Lee, 28, and Kaivon Washington, 18, who have all been arrested. Desmond Carter was indicted in February for first-degree rape and third-degree rape. Casen Carver was indicted on 3 May on charges of first-degree rape and third-degree rape. Investigators say that following the alleged rape, the men pushed Brooks onto the side of the Burbank Highway. They then believe that she wandered into the parkway, where she was hit by the car. At the time of her death, Brooks had a blood alcohol content of .319 per cent — nearly four times the legal limit to drive. Reggie’s Bar, which was located in the popular Tigerland area of Baton Rouge, had its alcohol license revoked in April and is now permanently closed. Now, Ms Baustert and other members of Brooks’s family are working to ensure that her memory lives on. The Madison Brooks Foundation, launched in the aftermath of her death, will offer financial support to young people in need and advocate for their safety. A billboard of Brooks, wearing pink, her favourite colour pink, is currently on display in Times Square. Read More Madison Brooks’ mother slams release of video from night of LSU student’s alleged rape and death Madison Brooks was killed by a car. Now, four men who left her on the road are charged with rape We were sexually assaulted years before Madison Brooks. LSU failed us, too Madison Brooks timeline: From Baton Rouge bar to alleged rape and death, what happened to the LSU student? Madison Brooks news: LSU student’s family is ‘blown away’ by victim blaming as they say ‘rape is rape’
1970-01-01 08:00
Modi Fights Hard in India Swing State Ahead of National Polls
As India’s election season picks up steam, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has turned his attention to a crucial
1970-01-01 08:00
Eurovision 2023: Meet the volunteers from Ukraine
Why some Ukrainians want to help the city hosting Eurovision on their country's behalf.
1970-01-01 08:00
Asian Stocks Tick Lower Ahead of US Inflation Data: Markets Wrap
Asian equities opened slightly lower on Wednesday ahead of a critical inflation report and as the US debt
1970-01-01 08:00
Exclusive: Rep. George Santos charged by Justice Department in federal probe
Federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against New York Rep. George Santos, the Republican lawmaker whose astonishing pattern of lies and fabrications stunned even hardened politicos, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
1970-01-01 08:00
Tucker Carlson Says He’s Launching a New Show on Twitter
Tucker Carlson is starting a show on Twitter after being fired by Fox News. On Tuesday, Carlson posted
1970-01-01 08:00
California reaches $24 million settlement with family of man who died in police custody
The state of California has reached a $24m settlement with the family of Edward Bronstein, the man who died while being restrained by state highway patrol officers in 2020. Mr Bronstein was pulled over by officers on suspicion of driving under the influence on March 31, 2020 and was pinned to the ground by officers after initially declining to submit to a blood test. In a nearly 18-minute video of the incident filmed by a sergeant and released nearly two years after the incident, Mr Bronstein can be heard telling the officers “I can’t breathe” before losing consciousness. According to Mr Bronstein’s family, he had initially declined to submit to the blood test because of a longstanding fear of needles. As he was being pinned to the ground by officers, Mr Bronstein can be heard shouting, “I’ll do it willingly! I’ll do it willingly, I promise!” “It’s too late,” one officer says in response. Another admonishes Mr Bronstein for yelling. After Mr Bronstein ceased speaking, it took officers eleven minutes to start performing CPR on him. By then, it was too late. Mr Bronstein was pronounced dead, with the Los Angeles County coroner ruling that his cause of death was “acute methamphetamine intoxication during restraint by law enforcement.” According to Annee Della Donna, an attorney for Mr Bronstein’s family, the settlement is the largest civil rights settlement ever agreed to by the state of California and second largest in the history of the country following the settlement reached by the city of Minneapolis with George Floyd’s family.
1970-01-01 08:00
People can get controlled medications via telehealth for awhile longer, DEA says
The DEA has extended the controlled medication prescription flexibilities allowed via the Covid-19 public health emergency set to end May 11.
1970-01-01 08:00
Federal prosecutors file criminal charges against New York congressman George Santos, report says
Federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against George Santos, the Republican congressman whose campaign was littered with falsehoods about his past, CNN reported. Mr Santos is expected to appear on Wednesday at a federal court in New York’s Eastern District, where the charges have been filed, the network reported, citing three sources familiar with the matter. CBS also reported that charges had been filed. The exact charges have not yet been revealed, but Mr Santos was reportedly under investigation by the Justice Department for his campaign finances. The charges represent a rapid rise and fall for a man his own constituents decried as an “imposter.” Mr Santos was elected to represent New York’s third congressional district in November 2022, defeating Democrat Robert Zimmerman by a margin of 54 per cent to 46 per cent. Soon after that victory, it emerged that Mr Santos had lied about much of his personal history and work experience. A New York Times investigation found that he had lied about working for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, lied about the college he attended, fabricated an animal charity, that the company from which he had earned a salary of $750,000 and dividends of $1m did not have any online presence, lied about saying he lost four employees in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, in 2016, and that he faced criminal charges in Brazil for cheque fraud. A local pressure group started by local citizens was formed with the aim of forcing Mr Santos from office. They held regular protests outside his campaign office and called on Republican leaders to expel him from Congress. Republican House majority leader Kevin McCarthy refused to hold a vote to expel Mr Santos, but the GOP leader said he would likely face a probe by the House Ethics Committee. Following the news of criminal charges on Tuesday, Mr McCarthy told CNN: “I’ll look at the charges.” Since Mr Santos was sworn into office in January, revelations about his past have continued to emerge. The most recent report found that Mr Santos was charged with writing bad checks to purchase puppies from Amish farmers in 2017. Mr Santos, 34, has apologised for what he described as “résumé embellishment,” but has refused to resign. The Independent contacted New York’s Eastern District for comment. Read More In George Santos’s district, setting of The Great Gatsby, cries of ‘imposter’ abound
1970-01-01 08:00
McCarthy says ‘no movement’ from meeting over debt ceiling with Biden as GOP continues holding US economy hostage
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday’s meeting between him, other Congressional leaders and President Joe Biden had produced no forward progress on an agreement to stave off what economists say would be a catastrophic default on America’s sovereign debt. Mr McCarty, who has kept the House in recess for the last two weeks and for a majority of the days since he and Mr Biden last met on 1 February, told reporters outside the White House that Mr Biden and both Republican and Democratic leaders had merely reiterated the positions they held when the House Speaker and the President met 97 days before. “Nothing has changed since then ... everybody in this meeting reiterated the positions they were at. I didn't see any new movement,” he said. The California Republican’s last meeting came just a few weeks after he eked out enough votes to claim the Speaker’s gavel with support from extremist and white nationalist members of the House Republican Conference, many of whom demanded that he use the need to lift the government’s century-old statutory debt ceiling as leverage to force Mr Biden to roll back much of the legislative record he and Democrats accomplished over the prior two years. Since that February meeting, the White House and the House of Representatives have remained far apart on what is needed before legislation allowing the US to resume issuing new debt instruments can reach Mr Biden’s desk for his signature. For his part, the president’s view has remained consistent since the beginning of the year. Mr Biden has repeatedly said that Congress should pass a “clean” debt ceiling increase and negotiate on spending cuts desired for next fiscal year when Congress begins work on a budget. Mr McCarthy characterised Mr Biden’s insistence that the Congress lift the debt ceiling on its’ own and address the spending cuts Republicans covet during the regular budgeting process as intransigent even though Republicans have not introduced a budget proposal for the next fiscal year. He also accused Senate Majority Leader Check Schumer of trying to stymie negotiations so Congress would be left without a choice but to pass the “clean” debt ceiling increase desired by Democrats and Mr Biden. “Chuck's whole idea before was to take us to the brink and someone's going to have to break right. I don't want to play politics with this. I think this is too important,” said the Speaker, who suggested the only reason Mr Biden had called a meeting was because the GOP-led House had passed a bill to raise the debt limit while enacting drastic cuts to government programmes favoured by Democrats. That legislation, which passed the House with a bare majority of GOP votes last month, would provide just a year’s worth of relief coupled with spending provisions that slash non-defence spending by as much as 20 per cent. Among the programmes on the chopping block: President Joe Biden’s student debt relief initiative, as well as funding for new IRS personnel. The plan would also add new work requirements for adults on Medicaid, cap the growth of the federal government, and impose 2022 limits on discretionary spending. The White House said in response to the bill’s passage that Republicans were attempting to “strip away health care services for veterans, cut access to Meals on Wheels, eliminate health care coverage for millions of Americans and ship manufacturing jobs overseas”. While the House-passed bill is unlikely to go anywhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate, thus far Mr McConnell and Senate Republicans have backed up Mr McCarthy’s demand for Mr Biden to sign off on GOP-endorsed austerity measures in exchange for Republican votes to allow the US to continue paying its’ debts. Prominent GOP figures frequently claim that raising the statutory debt limit to enable the US to continue meeting financial obligations — a practice that was once routine under presidents of both parties and met no objections when it was done under Mr Biden’s predecessor — is akin to authorising new spending. That claim, however, is not how the debt limit works. Raising the debt limit does not increase or decrease the amount of money that is spent on programmes that have already been authorised by Congress and have had funds allocated to them in appropriations legislation. Experts say a failure to raise the debt limit would force the government to default on its debt and precipitate a worldwide financial crisis. The last time the US flirted with that disastrous outcome was 2011, when Republicans controlled the House and Democrats controlled the Senate and the White House. Mr Biden, then the vice president under Barack Obama, led the negotiations with congressional leaders that headed off a default, but not before the US had its credit rating decreased for the first time in history. That 2011 dispute ended with Republicans suffering a drop in their approval ratings and facing accusations of endangering the US economy for political reasons. It also came along with an unprecedented downgrade in America’s credit rating. Those same charges are being raised again now by the White House and the president’s allies in Congress, who are holding firm on Mr Biden’s call for a clean debt limit boost. Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that unless Congress acts, the US will by 1 June cease having the legal ability to issue debt instruments that allow the government to pay for spending already authorized and incurred. Despite attempts by reporters to get Mr McCarthy to guarantee that the US would not default, the House Speaker repeatedly refused to make such a promise.
1970-01-01 08:00