List of All Articles with Tag 'm'

African leaders hoping to mediate in the Ukraine war met Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg Saturday.

At least 15 people were injured Saturday, two with possibly life-threatening injuries, after a bus collided with two civilian vehicles in Baltimore, according to Baltimore City Police.

The last time that a Democratic presidential candidate won North Carolina, Anderson Clayton could not vote. But now, the 25-year-old chairwoman of the North Carolina Democratic Party has a task that would overwhelm operatives twice her age: flip North Carolina blue for the first time in 16 years. “Like, I know that we either win in 2024, and we do amazing things and we go forward as a state and as a nation, or we regress backwards,” she told The Independent in an interview. “It really is now or never for North Carolina, in my opinion.” Republicans, for their part, know that the state is important. Last weekend, former president Donald Trump, former vice president Mike Pence and Florida Gov Ron DeSantis, three of the top contenders for the Republican nomination for president, descended on Greensboro for the state GOP convention. North Carolina is not an early primary state like Iowa, New Hampshire, or even neighbouring South Carolina. But the three candidates visiting the state shows the importance of the state, Ms Clayton told The Independent. “They have to win North Carolina,” Ms Clayton said, noting how the last time a Republican won the presidency without winning the Tar Heel State was Dwight Eisenhower’ in the 1950s. “And what’s at stake is that you have three candidates like Trump and Pence and DeSantis, who are coming in who are all three examples, in my opinion, of right-wing extremism each in their own right.” Democratic voters in the state have plenty of reasons to turn out and vote. Despite the fact that the state has a Democratic governor in Roy Cooper, Republicans in the state legislature have enough votes to override his veto, which they did recently when they passed a 12-week abortion ban, cutting off abortion access throughout a majority of the South. Mr Cooper, who is term-limited, will also see the end of his term in 2024, which means Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein will compete for his seat against Mark Robinson, who has a history of making inflammatory remarks. Ms Clayton said she is not taking anything for granted, especially against an incredibly well-organised Republican Party. “I think that Democrats have to take the energy that we have right now and the anger that we have right now and motivate it forward and use people to say how do we turn anger into action,” she said. “Because right now, there’s not a whole lot of things that we can change at the state level, because you know, you do have racial gerrymandering that is now legal ... that is racial gerrymandering to me.” Democrats in North Carolina were not always starting from such a disadvantage. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first Democratic presidential nominee to win North Carolina since Jimmy Carter in 1976, while Kay Hagan won the state’s US Senate seat. Democrats also controlled the governorship and both houses of the North Carolina General Assembly even as other Southern states moved rightward since the 1960s. But since Mr Obama’s 2008 victory, Republicans have run the table in the state. In 2010, as the state reeled from the Great Recession, Republicans took both houses of the General Assembly for the first time since 1898 and in 2012, they won the governorship, giving them the first trifecta in ages. Since then, Republicans flipped the state’s other Senate seat when Thom Tillis won it in 2014 and held it in 2020 when a sex scandal felled Democrat Cal Cunningham, and Joe Biden narrowly lost the state even as Mr Cooper won re-election. Last year, even as Democrats beat back two Trump-endorsed congressional candidates, Republicans gained seats in the state legislature, cleaned up in the Supreme Court, and Republican Ted Budd beat Cheri Beasley in the Senate race thanks in part to Mr Trump’s endorsement and tons of money from Senate Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund political action committee. The weak performance led to Ms Clayton’s election. She said Democrats have made many mistakes in those intervening years, which caused them to fall so far, suggesting the party appears to have mostly abandoned rural voters. “The majority of North Carolina lives in a rural community, you’ve got the highest or the second highest population of rural folks besides Texas in our state,” she said. “And to cede any of that ground to see these populations that have historically black and brown communities. And then in these rural counties that we have not tapped into, it’s just doing a disservice to our party.” She said that means going to every county in the state. “So in our Democratic governor candidate showing up in Cherokee County in North Carolina, my God,” she said. “When was the last time that, you know, Murphy saw a Democrat, like, it’s been a minute, to be honest with you.” She also added that Democrats could learn from Mr Obama’s victory in 2008, when he sent organisers throughout the South. President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee have begun to make a play for the state and Mr Biden visited North Carolina last week. Ms Clayton added that, for the most part, Democrats nationally have avoided supporting state parties in the South. “Georgia had to win an election before the national party came in and invested in them,” she said. “There’s a real aspect here of, we have underfunded the South for generations in this party. And you’re underfunding an area that is predominantly Black and brown communities that are, I think, a sleeping giant of the Democratic Party in the South.” North Carolina has eluded Democrats, unlike other southern states. Virginia has voted for a Democrat for president every election since Mr Obama’s first victory, though it elected a Republican governor in 2021, while Georgia voted for a Democrat for the first time since 1992 when Mr Biden won it in 2020 and it now has two Democratic Senators. Ms Clayton’s youth may befuddle some, and she said she never imagined she’d be a state party chairwoman. “It’s allowed me to be able to say everything that I’ve ever wanted to do on behalf of a Democratic Party,” she said. “And I think that that’s a really empowering place to be. And it’s going to inspire, I hope, more young people to realise that this world that we’re living in is ours to change the reality of.” Since assuming the leadership post, Democrats received a gut punch when Tricia Cotham, a Democratic state legislator, switched parties, giving Republicans a veto-proof majority in the legislature. At the state’s GOP convention last weekend, she was feted as a hero and Mr Pence gave her a shout-out. That enabled them to pass a 12-week abortion ban and override Mr Cooper’s veto. In addition, during the convention, Mr Trump touted how he won the state twice and continued to repeat his lies about a stolen election. Ms Clayton said that she wants North Carolina to be a firewall against election lies. “And for me, the case that I'm making is that, we don't want to give election deniers a two-week window to make that case. We want to make sure this election is wrapped up on the November night,” she said. Still, she added that she is not being a defeatist. “I know it feels like that right now, I know that the defeatist nature of or the Republican extremism is hard to come out of right now,” she said. “But we have to, and we have to snap back as a population and, and being able to say we need to run somebody everywhere.” Read More GOP senator Thom Tillis is pushing back on Trump on guns. Why the North Carolina Republican think it’s time to act ‘It’s making them angrier’: North Carolina Republicans rally around Trump after indictment ‘Everybody needs to support Trump’: Ex-president’s indictment overshadows DeSantis in North Carolina Ivanka and Jared split over attending Trump 2024 launch – follow live Why was Donald Trump impeached twice during his first term? Four big lies Trump told during his 2024 presidential announcement

The illegal party drug MDMA – also known as ecstasy – may have led to an astonishing turnaround for a former white supremacist, according to one study. The man, referred to only by his first name, Brendan, took MDMA in February 2020 as part of an University of Chicago research project about whether the drug increased the pleasantness of social touch, Rachel Nuwer, author of new book I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World, wrote for the BBC. Brendan had become indoctrinated into white supremacy while at university in Illinois and gone on to become active within extremist circles, even attending the infamous 2017 rally in Charlottesville and taken on midwestern leadership roles within his organisation. After using MDMA and filling out the standard questionnaire at the end of the study, run by psychiatry and behavioral science professor Harriet de Wit, he added in bold letters: “This experience has helped me sort out a debilitating personal issue. Google my name. I now know what I need to do,’” Ms Nuwer reported. Upon googling his name and realizing his connection to white supremacy, the researchers contacted Brendan to ensure his cryptic message did not refer to violence or other worrying behaviour – but he told a research assistant: ‘Love is the most important thing. Nothing matters without love,” Ms Nuwer wrote. Prof de Wit, speaking to the author nearly two years later, still expressed astonishment at the results. “Isn’t that amazing?” she said. “It’s what everyone says about this damn drug, that it makes people feel love. To think that a drug could change somebody’s beliefs and thoughts without any expectations – it’s mind-boggling.” The use of MDMA and psychedelics such as psilocybin – the hallucinogenic component in magic mushrooms – is gaining traction in the medical community, showing promising results for the treatment of disorders such as PTSD and alcoholism. Brendan later told the author that the MDMA “helped me see things in a different way that no amount of therapy or antiracist literature ever would have done. “I really think it was a breakthrough experience,” he said, while explaining that many white supremacists had used MDMA previously and the drug alone was unlikely to spontaneously change minds. Ms Nuwer’s new book explores the uses of MDMA and whether it could “transform people’s beliefs too”. “MDMA does not seem to be able to magically rid people of prejudice, bigotry, or hate on its own,” she wrote. “But some researchers have begun to wonder if it could be an effective tool for pushing people who are already somehow primed to reconsider their ideology toward a new way of seeing things. While MDMA cannot fix societal-level drivers of prejudice and disconnection, on an individual basis it can make a difference. In certain cases, the drug may even be able to help people see through the fog of discrimination and fear that divides so many of us.” Read More Oregon's magic mushroom experiment steps toward reality Psychedelic drugs to treat depression without causing hallucinations may finally be near ‘Mystical’ experience using psychedelics may improve mental health, study reveals Dealer who bought 100,000 paracetamol he thought were diazepam given away by blue lips Psychedelic drug trip improves symptoms of depression for six months, breakthrough study finds Trump can’t bully his way out of his latest legal woes | Andrew Feinberg The 25-year-old party chairwoman who wants to turn North Carolina blue Trump floats special counsel conspiracy as he claims Fox abandoned ‘King’ of Maga

Hundreds of buildings in western France are declared uninhabitable following the rare earthquake.

Shell Plc, IAG SA’s British Airways, the British Broadcasting Corp., the state of Minnesota’s Department of Education, multiple

A collapsed Interstate 95 bridge in Philadelphia is expected to reopen within the next two weeks, Pennsylvania Governor

Former president Donald Trump began his weekend by lashing out against his long list of enemies, ranting on Truth Social about Biden family conspiracies, the federal indictment against him, and perceived disloyalty at Fox News. The outburst comes after a week of embarassment. On Tuesday, Mr Trump visited the iconic Versailles restaurant in Miami after being arraigned on 37 federal charges and bombastically announced that there would be “food for all.” There was just one problem: according to a report in the Miami New Times, Mr Trump never picked up the tab… Mr Trump’s visit to the Cuban restaurant functioned largely as a campaign stop after he spent the morning in federal court on charges that he mishandled classified documents and impeded the government’s attempts to get them back. The fallout from his arraignment that day continues, with fellow Republicans torn over how to respond to the party’s defacto leader being charged with federal crimes. Read More Trump declared ‘food for all’ in post-arrest stop at Miami cafe – but reportedly skipped bill Donald Trump scores rare legal win as DA drops golf course tax probe Trump's promise of payback for prosecution follows years of attacking democratic traditions Is Donald Trump going to prison?

Binance.US and the US Securities and Exchange Commission reached an agreement that avoids a total asset freeze at

A Chicago police sergeant has been acquitted of aggravated assault and felony official misconduct in a case involving a teenager he held in a prone position with his knee while off-duty, according to attorneys for the teen.

Donald Gray Triplett, the first person diagnosed with autism symptoms, died Thursday, according to his longtime employer. Triplett was 89.

City workers, led by the mayor, clash with police after trying to stop the annual pride event.