List of All Articles with Tag 'b'

President Joe Biden said the fate of democracy would be determined by decisions made by the US and

This weird post-pandemic, inflation-addled economy has been scrambling preconceived notions for years. And it is with that background that anyone should read this unquestionably good economic news: Inflation is unquestionably cooling.

Floodwaters receded in Vermont cities and towns pummeled by a storm that delivered two months of rain in two days, allowing officials to focus on recovering from a disaster that trapped residents in homes, closed roadways and choked streets and businesses with mud and debris. In the capital city of Montpelier, where streets were flooded Tuesday by the swollen Winooski River, officials said that water levels at a dam just upstream appeared to be stable. “It looks like it won’t breach. That is good. That is one less thing we have to have on our front burner," Montpelier Town Manager Bill Fraser said. Fraser said the dam remains a lingering concern but with the water receding the city was shifting to recovery mode. Public works employees were expected out Wednesday to start removing mud and debris downtown and building inspections will start as businesses begin cleaning up their properties. The slow-moving storm reached New England after hitting parts of New York and Connecticut on Sunday. Some communities received between 7 and 9 inches (18 centimeters and 23 centimeters) of rain. Towns in southwest New Hampshire had heavy flooding and road washouts, and the Connecticut River was expected to crest above flood stage Wednesday in Hartford and towns to the south. In Vermont's capital, brown water from the Winooski had obscured vehicles and all but the tops of parking meters along picturesque streets lined with brick storefronts whose basements and lower floors were flooded. Some residents of the city of 8,000 slogged their way through waist-high water Tuesday; others canoed and kayaked along main streets to survey the scene. Bryan Pfeiffer canoed around downtown to check out the damage and was appalled by what he saw. The basement of every building — including the one where he works — and the lower levels of most were inundated. Even the city’s fire station was flooded. “It’s really troubling when your fire station is under water,” Pfeiffer said. Similar scenes played out in neighboring Barre and in Bridgewater, where the Ottauquechee River spilled its banks. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said floodwaters surpassed levels seen during Tropical Storm Irene. Irene killed six people in Vermont in August 2011, washing homes off their foundations and damaging or destroying more than 200 bridges and 500 miles (805 kilometers) of highway. The flooding has already caused tens of millions of dollars in damage throughout the state. There have been no reports of injuries or deaths related to the flooding in Vermont, where swift-water rescue teams aided by National Guard helicopter crews performed more than 100 rescues, Vermont Emergency Management said Tuesday. One of the worst-hit places was New York’s Hudson Valley, where a woman identified by police as Pamela Nugent, 43, died as she tried to escape her flooded home with her dog in the hamlet of Fort Montgomery. Atmospheric scientists say destructive flooding events happen more frequently as storms form in a warmer atmosphere, and the planet’s rising temperatures will only make it worse. In Vermont, more rain was forecast Thursday and Friday, but Peter Banacos, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said the state will be spared any further torrential downpours. Much of the focus turned to reopening roadways, checking on isolated homeowners and cleaning out mud and debris from water-logged businesses. “We sustained catastrophic damage. We just really took the brunt of the storm,” Ludlow Municipal Manager Brendan McNamara said as he assessed the flood's impact around the town of 1,500 people. Among the losses was the town’s water treatment plant. Its main supermarket remained closed. The main roadway through town had yet to be fully reopened and McNamara couldn’t begin to estimate how many houses had been damaged. The town’s Little League field and a new skate park were destroyed, and scores of businesses were damaged. “Thankfully we got through it with no loss of life,” McNamara said. “Ludlow will be fine. People are coming together and taking care of each other." Colleen Dooley returned to her condominium complex in Ludlow on Tuesday to find the grounds covered in silt and mud and the pool filled with muddy river water. “I don’t know when we’ll move back, but it will certainly be awhile,” said Dooley, a retired teacher. President Joe Biden, attending the annual NATO summit in Lithuania, declared an emergency for Vermont and authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help coordinate disaster relief efforts and provide assistance. FEMA sent a team to Vermont, along with emergency communications equipment, and was prepared to keep shelters supplied if the state requests it. The agency also monitored flooding in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire, regional spokesperson Dennis Pinkham said. ___ Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; Michael Hill in Albany, New York; and Mark Pratt, Michael Casey and Steve LeBlanc in Boston contributed. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Drone footage captures Vermont’s ‘catastrophic’ flooding AP News Digest 3:10 a.m. Rescuers brace for more rain as relentless storms flood Northeast, Vermont hit hard

Attorney Ben Crump said the lawsuit targets those who he alleges helped the gunman "load that gun".

Sheila E will celebrate her star with a concert at The Bourbon Room in Hollywood on Wednesday night, titled 'Sheila E and Friends'

There are demonstrations around the country over the rising cost of living and tax hikes.

Watch live as Joe Biden holds a news conference following talks at the Nato summit on Wednesday, 12 July. The US president met with world leaders in Lithuania as G7 countries announced an international framework that paves the way for long-term security assurances for Ukraine to boost its defences against Russia. On Tuesday, Volodymyr Zelensky slammed the military alliance’s leaders for not extending membership to Ukraine, calling the inaction “absurd” Mr Biden has previously said that he thinks Ukraine is “not ready” for membership. His remarks came after US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that Nato would be at war with Russia if Ukraine were to join the alliance now. Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary

Milan Kundera, whose dissident writings in communist Czechoslovakia transformed him into an exiled satirist of totalitarianism, has died in Paris

House Republican leaders are scrambling to find a path forward on a critical defense policy bill that faces an uncertain future as hardline conservatives push for amendments on controversial social issues that threaten to derail the must-pass legislation.

An eight-count indictment against Israeli professor and think tank co-founder Gal Luft appeared in a small, 137-word item on page 10 of the New York Post. Under the headline “Anti-Biden witness indicted”, it described Mr Luft, 57, as “a key figure in House Republicans' investigation of the Biden family” and said the charges against him are for “arms trafficking and conspiring to flout US sanctions on Iran”. It ended with a line about how Mr Luft claims the case is an attempt to stop him “testifying to Congress about allegations the first family received payments from individuals with ties to Chinese military intelligence and that the Bidens had an FBI mole who shared classified information with their Chinese benefactors”. The low-key treatment was a far cry from how the anti-Biden tabloid covered Mr Luft just days earlier, when Post columnist Miranda Devine – a frequent purveyor of conspiracy theories about President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter – wrote a column exclusively on a video on which Mr Luft claims he is being “hunted” by the FBI and facing “the rest of his life on the run”. Mr Luft’s dispatch to the Post came from parts unknown – as he has been a fugitive since February. He disappeared shortly after posting bail following his arrest by Cypriot authorities pursuant to an Interpol warrant on suspicion of arms trafficking. At the time, he tweeted that the arrest was part of a “politically motivated extradition request” by the US. “I've been arrested in Cyprus on a politically motivated extradition request by the US … claiming I'm an arms dealer. It would be funny if it weren't tragic. I've never been an arms dealer. DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim [and] Hunter Biden,” he said. Mr Luft’s Israeli lawyer, Mordechai Tzivin, told Ynet that his client was being targeted because he provided derogatory information about the Bidens to the FBI in 2019. The accusations "would be a good way to shut him up," Mr Tzivin said, “because he knows a lot of information on Hunter”. He added that it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that prominent Democrats would try to have his client killed. “If this would have happened in Russia, they would have carried out a 'diplomatic car crash,' but luckily, he is in a safe location where no one can hurt him,” he said. Despite Mr Luft’s claim that the arms charges coincide with his emergence as a figure in the Republican-led crusade to tar the Bidens with corruption allegations, it’s not clear from the public record that he ever said a word about Mr Biden or his son prior to his arrest. But the Israeli-American academic – who was once a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces and more recently served as co-director of the DC-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security – has been critical of US foreign policy since Mr Biden took office with the aim of restoring relations with America’s democratic allies. In January, his think tank released a report that accused the US of “pursuing illegal economic policies” by way of an "extremely trigger-happy" use of sanctions, most notably against Russia. And last year, he appeared on CNBC to criticise the Biden administration’s efforts to impose a worldwide oil price cap on Russian oil to keep Moscow from using petrodollars to finance the war in Ukraine. “It's kind of a ridiculous idea in my view,” Mr Luft said. "That's not how the oil market works," he said. "This is a very sophisticated market, you cannot force the prices down." He also spoke to the South China Morning Post in August last year about who the Chinese government would tap to lead its foreign ministry after that year’s Communist Party Congress and last September penned an op-ed for the same publication in which he complained that the Ukraine war had become “a quagmire” and ridiculed Mr Biden’s prediction that US sanctions would have an effect on Moscow’s economy. “To date, Russia’s economy has contracted by 4 per cent – a far cry from President Biden’s suggestion at the beginning of the war that it would halve. If anyone is nearing implosion, it is probably Europe’s heavily indebted economies, facing an unprecedented pre-winter energy crisis, inflation, deindustrialisation and a growing social unrest already causing fissures in the Western alliance,” he said. Indeed, the first mention of Mr Luft’s claims against the Bidens came in his February post-arrest tweet. And though Republicans have now embraced his claims to have been speaking out against the president and his family since 2019, there’s no evidence he voiced his alleged concerns to anyone, even though unproven claims about the Bidens have been a fast-track to stardom in GOP media circles since Donald Trump’s first impeachment. Based on that pattern, it might be reasonable to conclude that Mr Luft is hoping to garner himself enough goodwill in the GOP that, should he remain a fugitive, a future Republican president — perhaps Mr Trump — will pardon him. Read More ‘Whistleblower’ who accused Bidens of corruption is charged with arms trafficking and violating Iran sanctions GOP cries foul over spy charges for Biden ‘whistleblower’ Top Republicans are gearing up to investigate the Hunter Biden case. Here's what to know. Dems call for probe into whether Gal Luft made claims about Biden to help China Biden and Zelenskyy praise each other despite divisions over Ukraine war Finland's new finance minister apologizes for racist comments in 2008 blog post

HBO dominated the Emmy nominations, with the elite trio of “Succession,” “The White Lotus” and “The Last of Us” combining for a whopping 74 nods

By Steve Holland VILNIUS U.S. President Joe Biden told President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Wednesday that he looks forward