List of All Articles with Tag 'rica'

Chocolate maker Barry Callebaut AG delayed its date for selling 100% sustainably sourced cocoa as part of a

George Santos, the New York congressman who rose to prominence for a string of exaggerations , lies, and irregularities related to his personal background and campaign finances, has been hit with a series of federal charges. The exact nature of the charges aren’t yet public and remain under seal but they concern federal crimes, NBC News and CNN report. Mr Santos could reportedly appear in federal court in New York’s eastern district as soon as Wednesday. The New York Republican has been under investigation by multiple bodies since being elected, including the House Ethics Committee, as well as the Federal Election Commission, and local and federal prosecutors. When reached for comment about the news on Tuesday, Mr Santos claimed he was unaware of the charges. “This is news to me,” he told The Associated Press. “You’re the first to call me about this.” Derek Myers, a former aide for the congressman, tweeted that he had been working as a “confidential informant and human asset” for the FBI. He told NewsNation that the Justice Department’s charges are “just the start” of an “avalanche” of probkems for the Republican lawmaker. Read More Federal prosecutors file criminal charges against New York congressman George Santos, report says George Santos: Every lie disgraced Republican Congressman has been accused of making George Santos insists he has a ‘clean conscience’ after lying about background

Donald Trump posted a series of video rants on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday night after a Manhattan federal jury found that he sexually abused Elle magazine columnist E Jean Carroll in a dressing room in Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s. Ms Carroll, 79, sued the former president for raping her and then “destroying” her reputation when he accused of lying about the encounter, claiming that she wasn’t “my type”. After almost two weeks of testimony, the jury found Mr Trump liable of sexually abusing Ms Carroll, but did not find that she had proven that he raped her. As it is a civil case, Mr Trump does not face any jail time and does not have to register as a sex offender but has been ordered to pay Ms Carroll almost $5m in damages for battery and defamation. The former president went on the defence following the verdict, posting three blistering videos online where he vowed to appeal. “The whole thing is a scam,” he fumed. CNN is now coming under mounting pressure to ax its town hall with Mr Trump scheduled for Wednesday night in light of the verdict. Read More I represented Trump’s accusers - because five brave women stood up, he has been caught in his truth E Jean Carroll says the ‘world finally knows the truth’ after a jury finds Donald Trump liable for sexual assault The lessons we should all be taking from E Jean Carroll’s Trump sexual abuse case Trump rape case explained: How a chance department store meeting led to a court case decades later

He calls for help as a vigil is held in in Derry to show solidarity with the city's Sudanese community.

Inflation in urban parts of Egypt eased for the first time since June 2022, providing a reprieve that

Two visitors and two security guards are killed in an attack on the Tunisian island of Djerba.

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’

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.

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

Progressives are beginning a new offensive on Capitol Hill: Taking on America’s staggering $88bn in medical debt. Headed up by the Bernie Sanders spinoff group Our Revolution, advocates around the country are gathering horror stories of instances where necessary procedures were blocked by insurance companies or, perhaps worse, approved with stipulations such as “out of network” classifications that can quickly (and often do) lead to lifesaving treatment becoming a financial death sentence. The group hosted a town hall led by executive director Joseph Geevhargese on Monday, where a number of Americans shared their own personal versions of ruin at the hands of medical debt collectors and hospital bills. Between 10 per cent and half of adult Americans are thought to carry medical debt in some form, with estimates widely varrying thanks to the complexities of tracking paid-off debts. Elizabeth McLaughlin, one woman who shared her account with participants of the town hall event on Monday, spoke about how treatment she received in 2017 has led to her taking on tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt as she placed utility bills and other basic needs like groceries on lines of credit rather than face medical debt collectors. “I pass it from one [card] to another, and in the meantime I’m just grateful that I’m employed, and insured, and I can keep making the payments,” she explained. Another woman, Kristin Noreen, explained that she even filed for bankruptcy, only for her debt to immediately begin climbing into the thousands again thanks to tax obligations and other costs. Her treatment bills rose past $1m dollars after she was struck by a car on her bicycle and suffered grievous injuries, including the amputation of her hand, and now she explains that she has little chance of ever climbing out of her personal debt trap — even after her insurance paid for all but $60,000 of the treatment cost, and $50,000 of the remaining debt was handled by a charitable donation. The remaining $10,000 was still more than enough, coupled with the cost of years of therapy she says is “barely” covered by her Affordable Care Act plan, to leave her in financial desolation. “I’m back up to $10,000 on credit cards and as of last month, I have another $3,000 in debt to the IRS for prioritising my care over my estimated taxes. I’ve been denied disability and I work part-time from home as much as I’m able to,” she explained, while noting that if her pay increases from her part-time work, she is legally required to pay it towards Affordable Care Act subsidies rather than her own debt. Mr Sanders, along with a colleague in the House, Ro Khanna, reportedly plan to introduce legislation in the coming weeks aimed at addressing the issue — along with a nationwide campaign aimed at pressuring vulnerable lawmakers to get on board. Among the legislation’s priorities will be halting “predatory” debt collection practices and going after price gouging in medical billing. And while the demands in their upcoming legislation are small in comparison to Mr Sanders’s long-held desire to overhaul America’s for-profit healthcare system into a single-payer system aimed at affordability and access, the efforts by progressives to highlight the tragic cases of Americans consumed by medical debt likely aid in the left’s work to popularise the idea of major reforms and changes to the structure of America’s health system. Mr Sanders called for the elimination of all medical debt in the spring of 2022 after three leading credit agencies announced that they would no longer track paid-off medical debts when calculating credit ratings for Americans. “‘Medical debt’ and ‘Medical bankruptcy’ are two phrases that should not exist in the United States of America,” the senator said at the time. “Removing 70 percent of past-due medical debt from credit reports is a step in the right direction, and much more needs to be done. We must cancel all medical debt.” Read More Deal or default? Biden, GOP must decide what's on the table Black voters backing Biden, but not with 2020 enthusiasm House Republicans pressure Biden as they vote to raise debt ceiling in exchange for spending cuts

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.

Tucker Carlson is bringing a “new version” of his influential political commentary programme to Twitter, the right-wing pundit announced in a video on Tuesday, following the anchor’s high-profile split with Fox News last month. In a video posted on his Twitter page, Mr Carlson said the social network was the “last” major media distribution channel that allowed free speech, while appearing to allude to his recent exit at Fox. “The best you can hope for in the news business at this point is the freedom to tell the fullest truth that you can,” he said in his announcement video. “There are always limits. And you know that if you bump up against those limits often enough, you will be fired for it. It’s not a guess — it’s guaranteed.” The former Fox News anchor used the announcement to lash out at other media outlets, calling them purveyors of “thinly disguised propaganda.” “The news you consume is a lie, a lie of the stealthiest and most insidious kind,” he added. The move means Mr Carlson will forgo at least $25m from Fox Corp related to a non-compete clause in his previous contract, Puck News reports. This is a breaking news story and will be updated with new information.