Page 158 - United States

Tornado devastates Iowa town, killing many as storms rip through Midwest

Multiple people died on Tuesday and at least a dozen were injured when a powerful tornado tore through a small Iowa town, carving a bleak landscape of destroyed homes and businesses, shredded trees, smashed cars, and widely strewn debris. The tornado destroyed much of Greenfield, a town of about 2,000 around 55 miles (88.5 kilometers) southwest of Des Moines, during a day that saw multiple tornadoes, giant hail and heavy rain in several states. We do have confirmed fatalities, Iowa State Patrol Sgt. Alex Dinkla said at a news conference on Tuesday night. He said authorities were still determining the total number but thought they had accounted for all of the town's residents. Dinkla said there were at least a dozen injuries amid widespread devastation in Greenfield, including at the community's small hospital. Patients there had to be transferred to other facilities in nearby cities. Authorities said they would only allow residents to enter Greenfield until Wednesday morning and ..

China may raise temporary tariffs on some US, EU cars, warns lobby group

Chinese EVs are under the spotlight in the EU and US, as China controls a majority of the battery supply chain and produces more EVs than anywhere else in the world

Israel addressed many of Biden's concerns over Rafah operation: US official

Israel has addressed many of President Joe Biden's concerns over its long-simmering plan to carry out a widescale military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah aimed at rooting out Hamas, a senior Biden administration official said Tuesday. The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and requested anonymity, said that in talks over the weekend with White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Israeli officials incorporated many changes into their planning that seem to meet concerns about deepening an operation in an area that has been flooded with Palestinian refugees during the seven-month war. Biden had previously said he opposed a widescale operation in Rafah that did not prioritize the safety of innocent Palestinian civilians. The official said the administration stopped short of greenlighting the Israeli plan but said Israeli officials' altered planning suggested they were taking the American administration's concerns seriously. About 900,000 ...

India rises to 39th position in WEF index for travel, tourism development

Country top performer in South Asia and among the lower-middle-income nations

Will step down once successor is announced, says FDIC chair Gruenberg

Gruenberg had clung to his job since November when a Wall Street Journal report exposed widespread misconduct at the FDIC, despite outcry from multiple congressional Republicans and some Democrats

Ford Motor backs new US rules to cut vehicle emissions through 2032

Earlier, a trade group representing General Motors, Toyota Motor, Volkswagen, Ford and nearly all other major automakers on Monday said it supported two key aspects of the rule

Assange can appeal against extradition order to US, rules UK court

A British court has ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can appeal against an order that he be extradited to the US on espionage charges. Two High Court judges on Monday said Assange has grounds to challenge the UK government's extradition order. The ruling sets the stage for an appeal process likely to further drag out a years-long legal saga. Assange faces 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over his website's publication of a trove of classified US documents almost 15 years ago. The Australian computer expert has spent the last five years in a British high-security prison after taking refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for seven years.

US NSA, Saudi's crown prince meet to discuss 'semi-final' security deal

President Joe Biden's national security adviser met early Sunday with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to discuss what the kingdom described as the semi-final version of a wide-ranging security agreement between the countries. The announcement by the state-run Saudi Press Agency comes as the strategic deal had been upended after Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage back to the Gaza Strip. In the time since, a punishing Israeli airstrike campaign and ground offensive there has killed over 35,000 Palestinians, endangering the security deal that had included Saudi Arabia diplomatically recognising Israel for the first time since its founding in 1948. Saudi state media released no images of Jake Sullivan and Prince Mohammed meeting in Dhahran, a city in the kingdom's far east that's home to its state-run oil giant, the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. known as Saudi Aramco. The semi-final version of the draft strategic agreemen

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange facing pivotal moment in his long fight

The host of a news conference about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's extradition fight wryly welcomed journalists last week to the millionth press briefing on his court case. Deborah Bonetti, director of the Foreign Press Association, was only half joking. Assange's legal saga has dragged on for well over a decade but it could come to an end in the UK as soon as Monday. Assange faces a hearing in London's High Court that could end with him being sent to the US to face espionage charges, or provide him another chance to appeal his extradition. The outcome will depend on how much weight judges give to reassurances US officials have provided that Assange's rights won't be trampled if he goes on trial. Here's a look at the case: WHAT ASSANGE IS CHARGED WITH Assange, 52, an Australian computer expert, has been indicted in the US on 18 charges over Wikileaks' publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010. Prosecutors say he conspired with US army intelligence

US NSA, Saudi's crown prince meet to discuss 'semi-final' security deal

President Joe Biden's national security adviser met early Sunday with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to discuss what the kingdom described as the semi-final version of a wide-ranging security agreement between the countries. The announcement by the state-run Saudi Press Agency comes as the strategic deal had been upended after Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage back to the Gaza Strip. In the time since, a punishing Israeli airstrike campaign and ground offensive there has killed over 35,000 Palestinians, endangering the security deal that had included Saudi Arabia diplomatically recognising Israel for the first time since its founding in 1948. Saudi state media released no images of Jake Sullivan and Prince Mohammed meeting in Dhahran, a city in the kingdom's far east that's home to its state-run oil giant, the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. known as Saudi Aramco. The semi-final version of the draft strategic agreemen

US issues statement calling on China to disclose Panchen Lama's whereabouts

The US has urged China to immediately account for the Panchen Lama's whereabouts and his well-being, coinciding with the 29th anniversary of the Tibetan spiritual leader's disappearance from the remote Himalayan region. The Panchen Lama is one of the most important religious figures in Tibetan Buddhism, second only to the Dalai Lama himself. Today marks 29 years since the People's Republic of China (PRC) abducted the 11th Panchen Lama, one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism, as a six-year-old child. Gedhun Choekyi Nyima remains missing and has not appeared in public since that day, a press statement from the US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Friday here. Titled Marking 29 Years Since the Panchen Lama's Disappearance,' the statement further said, The PRC government is denying members of the Tibetan community access to this important religious figure and instead continues to promote a state-selected proxy. According to a statement of the Central .

US Prez Biden signs sweeping aviation safety, reform bill into law

Biden has repeatedly clashed with air carriers, calling for new stricter consumer rules and harshly criticizing them for imposing fees

Michael Cohen pressed on his crimes, lies in Trump hush money trial

Donald Trump's lawyers accused the prosecution's star witness in his hush money trial of lying to jurors, portraying Trump fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen on Thursday as a serial fabulist who is bent on seeing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee behind bars. As Trump looked on, defence attorney Todd Blanche pressed Cohen for hours with questions that focused as much on his misdeeds as on the case's specific allegations and tried to sow doubt in jurors' minds about Cohen's crucial testimony implicating the former president. Blanche's voice rose as he interrogated Cohen with phone records and text messages over Cohen's claim that he spoke by phone to Trump about the hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels that is at the heart of the case, days before wiring her lawyer $130,000. Blanche said that was a lie, confronting Cohen with texts indicating that what was on his mind, at least initially, during the phone call were harassing calls he was getting from an apparent

Trump presidency to risk $1 trn in clean energy investment, says WoodMac

This election cycle will really influence the pace of energy investment, both in the next five years and through 2050

Huawei backed research at US institutions becomes subject of House probe

Huawei, which is blacklisted by the US government, secretly funded a research competition that has awarded millions of dollars through the Optica Foundation

Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping pledge new era, cast US as Cold War hegemon

Xi and Putin believe the post-Cold War era of extraordinary U.S. dominance is crumbling after perceived humiliations of the 1991 Soviet collapse and centuries of European colonial dominance of China

Ukraine risks dragging West into major war with Russia, says Putin ally

President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine has touched off the worst breakdown in relations between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis

Norway excludes Adani Ports from govt pension fund over ethical concerns

US defence contractor L3Harris Technologies and China's Weichai Power have also been excluded

Modi is changing image of India, hailed as global leader: Indian-American

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in last 10 years of his rule has changed the image of India abroad and has emerged as a true global leader, an eminent Indian-American community leader has said. Modi Ji is changing the image of Indians not just in India but in the world. He is now considered a global leader... I do believe Modi is reviving Indian pride, Indian culture, and ancient Indian knowledge of yoga, mindfulness and Ayurveda, Dr Bindukumar Kansupada, an Indian-American cardiologist from Philadelphia, told PTI in an interview on Wednesday. Dr Kansupada was here to attend the two-day annual summit Desis Decides of Indian-American Impact, which on Wednesday was addressed by Vice President Kamala Harris. An IIT alumni, he is on the Board of Directors of WHEELS Global Foundation. What Mr. Modi has done, from my perspective, first in education, when I went to med school, there were only four medical schools in Mumbai. Now in India, we have more than 700 medical schools. Every district

Biden admin must listen to youth voices on Gaza: Indian-American students

The Biden administration should listen to the voices of the youth over the war in Gaza, two Indian-American students have said, as they came out in support of the ongoing protests on college campuses across the US over demand to divest from Israel. Protests over the Israel-Hamas war have spread across US university and college campuses in recent weeks, leading to disruptions and arrests. A lot of students are currently protesting with various forms of sit-ins in order to try and demand the schools to divest from Israel, Aara Sampath, a rising freshman at the University of Pennsylvania told PTI in an interview. The term "rising freshman" refers to a student who is about to start their freshman year of high school. Since the 7 October attack by Hamas and Israel's retaliatory assault, students have launched rallies, sit-ins, fasts and, most recently, encampments against the war. They are demanding that their schools, many with massive endowments, financially divest from ...