Tag Archives: WorldNews

Ocasio-Cortez calls conditions at border facility ‘horrifying’

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Congresswoman said people were ‘drinking out of toilets’ and denounced alleged sexual threats by CBP officers towards her

Following a visit to a migrant detention center in Texas on Monday, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called conditions “horrifying” and denounced sexualized threats against her – allegedly made by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers – in the lead-up to the visit.

Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic colleagues were en route to a facility in Clint, Texas, when ProPublica revealed the existence of a secret Facebook group, branded as a forum for CBP officers, with 9,500 members, some of whom ProPublica linked to public Facebook pages for verified officers.

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US arms control office critically understaffed under Trump, experts say

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State department office whittled down in staff numbers from 14 at start of administration to four as Trump shifts approach, experts say

A state department office tasked with negotiating and implementing nuclear disarmament treaties has lost more than 70% of its staff over the past two years, as the Trump administration moves towards a world without arms control for the first time in nearly half a century.

Related: Nuclear weapons: experts alarmed by new Pentagon ‘war-fighting’ doctrine

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Jeremy Hunt: I would tell bust businesses no-deal Brexit was worth it

And Labour is not offering an alternative – Putin wins!

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Tory hopeful ramps up rhetoric on EU exit and says he is most likely to make it happen

Jeremy Hunt has said he would willingly tell businesses that go bust because of a no-deal Brexit that their sacrifice was a necessary one, and that he will actively pursue such a course if a new departure plan looks impossible at the start of October.

In a marked escalation of his rhetoric over Brexit, the foreign secretary said that while he did not seek no deal, or believe it would happen if he became prime minister, he would push for it if required to guarantee a timely departure.

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Heatwave cooks mussels in their shells on California shore

Oops

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Temperatures lead to what appears to be largest local die-off in 15 years, raising fears for broader ecosystem

In all her years working at Bodega Bay, the marine reserve research coordinator Jackie Sones had never seen anything like it: scores of dead mussels on the rocks, their shells gaping and scorched, their meats thoroughly cooked.

A record-breaking June heatwave apparently caused the largest die-off of mussels in at least 15 years at Bodega Head, a small headland on the northern California bay. And Sones received reports from other researchers of similar mass mussel deaths at various beaches across roughly 140 miles of coastline.

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When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: ‘Hope is contagious’

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One is America’s youngest-ever congresswoman, the other a Swedish schoolgirl. Two of the most powerful voices on the climate speak for the first time

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez enters a boardroom at her constituency office in Queens, New York, after a short delay which, a political aide hopes, hasn’t been caused by a constituent waylaying her in the corridor. (“They can get really excited to meet her.”) Greta Thunberg is in her home in Sweden, her father testing the technology for the video link while the teenager waits in the background. The activists have never met nor spoken but, as two of the most visible climate campaigners in the world, they are keenly aware of each other.

Thunberg, now 16, catapulted to fame last year for skipping school every Friday to stand outside the Swedish parliament, protesting against political inaction over the climate crisis and sparking an international movement, the school strike for climate, in which millions of other children followed suit. Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district is, at 29, the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress, whose election over a well-funded incumbent in 2018 was a huge upset to politics-as-usual. She has been in office for less than a year, which seems extraordinary given the amount of coverage she has generated. In February, Ocasio-Cortez submitted the Green New Deal to the US House of Representatives, calling for, among other things, the achievement of “net-zero” greenhouse gases within a decade and “a full transition off fossil fuels”, as well as retrofitting all buildings in the US to meet new energy efficient standards.

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Saudi crown prince doing ‘spectacular job’: Trump

A friend who murders journalists – Loser Trump US President Donald Trump Saturday praised Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “You have done a spectacular job,” Trump told the powerful crown prince, referring to him as “a friend of mine”. The young royal has faced international pressure after US-based dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul last year.