Texas migrant deaths: Lorry driver 'unaware air conditioner had stopped working'

BBC World News - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 15:25
A police informant says he was told that the driver was "unaware" the air conditioning had failed.
Categories: World News

Roe v Wade: Women travelling for abortions will be protected - Biden

BBC World News - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 15:02
The US president warns some US states will attempt to arrest women crossing state lines for access.
Categories: World News

Vera Pauw: Republic of Ireland boss reveals rape and assault in Dutch football

BBC World News - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 14:33
Republic of Ireland manager Vera Pauw says she was raped and sexually assaulted by three different men in Dutch football.
Categories: World News

Russia-Ukraine war: What happened today (July 1)

NPR - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 13:59
A woman cleans the area in front of a building hit by a missile strike in the Ukrainian town of Serhiivka, near Odesa, on Friday. The attack killed at least 18 people and injured 30.

A roundup of key developments and the latest in-depth coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

(Image credit: Oleksandr Gimanov/AFP via Getty Images)

Categories: World News

Driver in the San Antonio tragedy didn't know the truck's AC failed, complaint says

NPR - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 13:59
People gather at a makeshift memorial for the 53 migrants who died this week in San Antonio.

The suspected driver of the truck packed with migrants, including 53 who died earlier this week in San Antonio, was unaware that the air conditioning unit had failed, according to court documents.

(Image credit: Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images)

Categories: World News

Coronavirus FAQ: Can I get COVID outdoors? (With printable poster on how to cut risks)

NPR - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 13:58
Print a poster version of this comic to hang up on your fridge or give away to friends. Download the poster here.

We've heard for months that chances of catching SARS-CoV-2 outdoors are far less than indoors. Is that still true with highly contagious omicron strains? And if it is, what can you do to stay safe?

(Image credit: Malaka Gharib/ NPR)

Categories: World News

2 more British citizens charged as 'mercenaries' in Russian-backed separatist region of Ukraine

CNN World News - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 13:58
Pro-Russian investigators in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) on Friday said they have charged another two British citizens with being "mercenaries," according to the Donetsk News Agency.
Categories: World News

The EPA prepares for its 'counterpunch' after the Supreme Court ruling

NPR - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 13:49

The Supreme Court's ruling that curbs the power of the EPA will slow its ability to respond to the climate crisis, but "does not take the EPA out of the game," according to its administrator.

(Image credit: Joshua Roberts/Getty Images)

Categories: World News

'Stranger Things' season finale succeeds by leaning into excess

NPR - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 13:37
Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven and Matthew Modine as Dr. Martin Brenner in Stranger Things.

The characters' relationships develop and they face an array of surprises and complications in the bustling storyline that closes the fourth season.

(Image credit: Netflix)

Categories: World News

India begins to ban single-use plastics including cups and straws

NPR - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 13:32
Shoppers drink juice in plastic cups at a market in New Delhi, on Wednesday. India banned some single-use or disposable plastic products Friday as part of a longer plan to phase out the ubiquitous material in the nation of nearly 1.4 billion.

Other items like water or soda bottles or snack bags aren't banned yet. But the government has set targets for manufacturers to be responsible for recycling or disposing of them after their use.

(Image credit: Altaf Qadri/AP)

Categories: World News

Ukraine round-up: Elite Russian regiment fights for support and the war for borsch

BBC World News - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 12:52
Support for Russia's elite fighting force looks less certain as the regiment reappears in Ukraine.
Categories: World News

New monkeypox cases have tripled in Europe since June 15, the WHO regional chief says

NPR - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 12:34
Europe is at the center of the monkeypox outbreak — and it must act quickly to prevent the virus from becoming established, the WHO says. Here, a medical laboratory technician works with suspected monkeypox samples to be tested at La Paz hospital in Madrid, Spain, last month.

The monkeypox outbreak is expanding, and Europe is at its center, says Dr. Hans Kluge.

(Image credit: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images)

Categories: World News

UNESCO declares borsch cooking an endangered Ukrainian heritage

NPR - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 12:07

Ukraine's culture minister declared victory in "the war for borsch" as Russia also claims the hearty beet soup. UNESCO says the invasion threatens Ukraine's borsch culture with "extreme urgency."

(Image credit: Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

Categories: World News

Fans are saddened over the death of Technoblade, a popular Minecraft YouTuber

NPR - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 11:35

Technoblade, whose real name is Alex, reached millions with his Minecraft video playthroughs on YouTube. His fans and family remember the 23-year-old beyond just his online content.

(Image credit: Technoblade/Screenshot by NPR)

Categories: World News

Biden warns Democratic governors a GOP Congress would try to ban abortion nationwide

NPR - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 11:28
President Joe Biden speaks as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul appears on a screen during a virtual meeting with Democratic governors on abortion rights on Friday.

President Joe Biden met with Democratic governors Friday afternoon to discuss ways their states are protecting abortion access and continuing to push abortion as an election issue in November.

(Image credit: Evan Vucci/AP)

Categories: World News

Capitol Police Arrest 181 Protesters Waging Sit-In for Abortion Rights in DC

TruthOut - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 11:10

Capitol Police arrested 181 pro-abortion demonstrators in Washington, D.C. on Thursday as they waged a sit-in to protest the Supreme Court’s recent overturn of Roe v. Wade.

During the protest by Center for Popular Democracy Action, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Working Families Party – joined by prominent figures like Rep. Judy Chu (D-California) – demonstrators blocked a street near the Supreme Court, demanding that lawmakers take action to protect abortion seekers across the country.

Capitol Police began arresting people around noon on Thursday after surrounding them as the protesters marched to the Supreme Court building, calling for mass civil disobedience and vowing not to back down until abortion rights were restored. Chu, one of the original sponsors of the Democrats’ bill to codify Roe, was among the people arrested, as well as the progressive pastor and activist Rev. William Barber II.

Police said that the reason for the arrests was that the protesters were blocking an intersection, though videos posted on social media show that police closely surrounded protesters as they marched, before the arrests began. Meanwhile, uprisings waged by hundreds of thousands of people over the past week have been met with police violence, including the use of tear gas, which is an abortifacient.

Journalist Chuck Modi documented on Twitter that police were kettling protesters, an anti-protest tactic often used by police to trap protesters in which they surround protesters and confine them to a certain area like an alleyway or a bridge.

Outside SCOTUS Now. Protesters sit-in and block street, and police immediately surround & kettle them, unlike you know when…. #RoeVWade pic.twitter.com/AfjcRBzpZQ

— ChuckModi (@ChuckModi1) June 30, 2022

Modi noted that Capitol Police officers treated the abortion protesters with far more hostility than they did the January 6 attackers – an armed mob with a stated intent of killing political figures and staging a coup backed by the then-president of the United States. D.C. police said that they only arrested about a dozen people out of a mob of thousands of far right militants on the day of the January 6 attack.

Progressive advocates noted that the difference in the police response, while infuriating, was no surprise. “It’s not a coincidence that violent fascists were treated with kid gloves and folks protesting non-violently for abortion are arrested,” said anti-capitalist activist Joshua Potash. “Cops view one group as their friends and the other as an enemy.”

Barber, who said he was held in police custody for over three hours, condemned the police for the arrests. “There is something deeply immoral when you would be willing to use your power, not to provide people living wages, not to provide people voting rights, but to take away a woman’s power over her body,” he said. (Trans men and nonbinary people are also affected by the Roe overturn, and the trans community has seen a wave of attacks on their bodily autonomy even outside of the abortion ruling.)

Abortion advocates have been calling on lawmakers to take immediate action to protect abortion rights and prevent what researchers say will be a sharp uptick in death rates of pregnant people. President Joe Biden called for creating a carveout in the Senate filibuster in order to pass Democrats’ abortion bill, but the pledge means little in the face of recalcitrant conservative Democrats Senators Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona) and Joe Manchin (West Virginia), who were quick to shoot down Biden’s call.

Progressives say that, even if it were possible, creating a filibuster carveout would be wholly insufficient to meet the demands of this moment as the Supreme Court guts Americans’ rights at a rapid clip. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) have called for far right Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe to be investigated and potentially impeached, while other lawmakers have called for expanding the Supreme Court to combat Republican court packing.

Categories: World News

Same-sex couples legally marry in Switzerland

BBC World News - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 10:51
Couples tie the knot nine months after the country voted for marriage for all.
Categories: World News

The federal government will allow states to stop charging families for foster care

NPR - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 10:41
"This will help a lot of single parents out there," Daisy Hohman, a Minnesota mother whose tax refunds were garnished after her three children were placed in foster care, says of the change in federal guidance.

Following an NPR investigation, the Department of Health and Human Services issued guidance to state and county officials that lets them stop charging parents whose children are placed in foster care.

(Image credit: Meg Anderson/NPR)

Categories: World News

The Men Disputing Hutchinson’s Testimony Are Two of Trump’s Biggest Acolytes

TruthOut - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 10:25

It was testimony that, for a moment, stopped the world in its tracks.

So, once the president had gotten into the vehicle with [Secret Service agent] Bobby [Engel], he thought that they were going up to the Capitol. And when Bobby had relayed to him we’re not, we don’t have the assets to do it, it’s not secure, we’re going back to the West Wing, the president had a very strong, a very angry response to that.

[White House chief of operations] Tony [Ornato] described him as being irate. The president said something to the effect of I’m the f’ing president, take me up to the Capitol now, to which Bobby responded, sir, we have to go back to the West Wing. The president reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said, sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel.

We’re going back to the West Wing. We’re not going to the Capitol. Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel. And Mr. — when Mr. Ornato had recounted this story to me, he had motioned towards his clavicles.

With this, former White House Aide Cassidy Hutchinson did something few had managed in the six years since Donald Trump rode a golden escalator, and the presidency, down to the depths: She made a great many jaded people actually stop and recoil in horror.

For awhile now, that hadn’t seemed possible; “this is not normal” had become all too normal, and a callus had formed over the sensibilities of most. There’s only so much folks can take before the circuits start to melt, and that was certainly the plan with this White House, as was made plain by former White House adviser Steve Bannon’s operating dictum: “Flood the zone with shit.”

Hutchinson cut through that like a hot knife through, well, shit. She asserted that Trump tried to commandeer the limo and then choke a Secret Service agent because he wanted to physically join the armed insurrectionists sacking the Capitol — and just like that, at long last, a line was finally crossed. While other aspects of her testimony were more legally damaging — Trump tried to wave armed protesters through security when he knew they were armed and Capitol-bound stands out above all — this vignette was the unavoidable boulder in the road.

Of course, it could not be allowed to stand. Trump immediately blazed forth with a frightened-sounding aria of his greatest hits: This woman who is a woman knows nothing and did nothing and was never anywhere and I never met her witch hunt Democrats MAGA give me money! The heavy lifting to debunk the humongous problem presented by Hutchinson’s testimony has fallen to the two men who were in the car with Trump when he allegedly flipped out: Tony Ornato and Bobby Engel.

Within hours of Hutchinson’s testimony, it was announced that Ornato and Engel disputed her version of events and were willing to testify on this point. This was the equivalent of stopping the hole in the Titanic’s hull with a roll of paper towels, but the flooding belowdecks did briefly subside. If her testimony proved questionable on this matter, it casts a bleak light on her entire testimony.

Ornato, and by connection Engel appear to be so deep in the bag for Trump, they may as well be golf balls.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Tony Ornato was once Trump’s senior Secret Service agent, and has been a huge Trump fan from the beginning. Trump likes Ornato so much that he elevated Ornato to an official White House position: White House chief of operations. Ornato’s main portfolio included stage-managing all of Trump’s rallies, campaign events, photo-ops and so forth.

Engel is Trump’s current senior Secret Service agent, and works hand in glove with Ornato to arrange and manage Trump’s public appearances. Given the enormous attention Trump pays to how much attention he’s getting, it is not too far a cry to say Ornato and Engel held two of the most important gigs in the White House, with Ornato enjoying the superior spot between the two… and according to multiple reports, both men have become practiced at altering reality to serve Trump’s needs and desires.

“Tony Ornato has said a lot of things didn’t happen,” Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig told MSNBC. “He has tried to say to the press and to me indirectly that the clearing of Lafayette Square was not done for President Trump’s photo op. Well, that’s not true. He was at the center of that…. The Secret Service often tries to deny things that are unflattering and then when the rubber hits the road, we learn there is a little bit more to it.”

Indeed. It is also worth noting that neither Ornato nor Engel were under oath when they denied the incident, while Hutchinson was sworn before a committee on Capitol Hill when she related her version of events.

Until those men offer sworn testimony refuting hers, Hutchinson’s words will likely carry the day. Ornato, and by connection, Engel, appear to be so deep in the bag for Trump, they may as well be golf balls. Hutchinson, by comparison, has everything to lose by getting crosswise with Trump and labeled a liar.

My money is on Cassidy Hutchinson, until somebody damned reliable tells me otherwise.

Categories: World News

Texas migrant deaths: 'I still have to bring my children home'

BBC World News - Fri, 07/01/2022 - 10:11
'How could I let this happen to my children?" grieving Honduran mother asks.
Categories: World News

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