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Threats to blow up polling stations. Police protection. Ballot counters in hiding. A grim new reality.

WASHINGTON Banking group Citibank was subpoenaed on Thursday by Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chair Jim

China is close to unleashing its strongest ever guidance to push back yuan bears via its daily reference

The U.S. government says it is formally requesting a dispute settlement panel in its ongoing fight over Mexico's limits on genetically modified corn

Donald Trump is currently negotiating the terms of his voluntary surrender with the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office in Georgia after receiving his fourth criminal indictment of the year on Monday, according to CNN. Mr Trump and 18 co-conspirators – lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Jenna Ellis and ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows among them – were formally charged with racketeering by Atlanta prosecutor Fani Willis over their alleged attempts to alter the presidential election result in the swing state in 2020 after it turned blue for Joe Biden, sealing the Democrat’s win. The ousted former president, still the front-runner for the Republican 2024 nomination despite his array of legal problems, is charged with 13 of the 41 counts in Ms Willis’s indictment and faces up to 70 years in prison if convicted. He now has until noon on Friday 25 August to be booked at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta and arraigned at its courthouse before Judge Scott McAfee, where he is again expected to enter not guilty pleas to all charges, as he has at his three previous arraignments in New York, Miami and Washington DC. A bond agreement is likely to be forged to spare Mr Trump having to stay overnight in jail, as is the usual custom, and he is again unlikely to be seen in handcuffs or forced to pose for a mugshot, although county sheriff Pat Labat has previously insisted he intends to apply the same “normal practices” to the politician and his co-accused as he would any other defendants. It is just as well for Mr Trump, a well-known germaphobe, that he will not have to spend an evening at Fulton County Jail, also known by the nickname “Rice Street” as it is notoriously overcrowded and in poor repair, with a reputation for “unhygienic living conditions”. “It’s miserable. It’s cold. It smells. It’s just generally unpleasant,” veteran defence attorney Robert G Rubin told The New York Times this week. “Plus, there’s a high degree of anxiety for any defendant that’s in that position.” The facility was considered state of the art when it was built in 1985 to hold 1,300 inmates. In recent years, it has been forced to house closer to 3,000 people, with an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report from September 2022 observing that hundreds of people were being held at Fulton County Jail for longer than 90 days because they had not yet been formally charged or could not afford to pay off their bail bond. Another 117 had been held for more than a year because they had not been indicted and two more for over two years for the same reason, the report said. Fallon McClure, deputy director of policy and advocacy at the ACLU of Georgia, told the BBC the jail had “essentially been overcrowded since it was built”. “This has just been a perpetual cycle over and over for years,” she added, expressing pessimism that a long-touted $1.7bn replacement containment facility would ever be built. “There’s been a lot of talk of cleaning it up. We have not really seen or heard anything particularly significant. It seems like a lot of posturing.” Another recent report by the Southern Center for Human Rights recounted outbreaks of Covid-19, lice, scabies and cachexia, an affliction otherwise known as wasting syndrome, which hits those who are “significantly malnourished”. Six people have died in Fulton County custody this year, according to the BBC, including 19-year-old Noni Battiste-Kosoko in July (an autopsy report is still being carried out) and a 34-year-old man who was found unconscious in a medical unit cell last week. In September last year, another inmate, Lashawn Thompson, 35, died after being housed in a cell his lawyer likened to a “torture chamber”. The prisoner had spent three months in the jail’s psychiatric ward before he passed away and an independent medical review concluded that while his “untreated decompensated schizophrenia” had played a role in his death, so had dehydration, malnutrition and severe body infestation with insects, including lice and bed bugs. “We’re just letting people literally rot away there,” Sarah Flack, another local defence attorney, lamented to Insider. Read More Trump slammed for ‘racist’ Truth Social as he prepares to be booked into Fulton County Jail – live updates Trump attacks Fox News for using ‘worst’ photos of him: ‘Especially the big orange one’ Arrest, mugshot, cameras in court? What’s next for Donald Trump after his Georgia indictment Can Donald Trump still run for president after charges over 2020 election?

Hundreds of wildfires burning in Canada's Northwest Territories have prompted emergency declarations and the evacuation of the capital city of Yellowknife by road and air.

A district attorney in Tennessee has said his office has dropped 30 to 40 cases involving the five former officers who have been charged with second-degree murder in the January beating death of Tyre Nichols

State charges unsealed earlier this week against Donald Trump and 18 others in the Georgia election subversion probe opened a new chapter in the former president's post-White House legal saga and forced the nation to turn its attention to yet another complex criminal case concerning efforts to undermine Joe Biden's 2020 victory.

A songwriter and model who co-wrote one of Katy Perry’s hit songs has mysteriously vanished and her loved ones fear someone is holding her captive. Swedish-born Camela Leierth-Segura, 48, was last seen in the Beverly Hills area back on 29 June, according to the California Department of Justice’s missing persons page. Her longtime friend Cecilia Foss told The Independent that it’s not like her to just vanish without a trace and the fact that her beloved 19-year-old cat Morris is also missing has made it even more of a mystery. “My worst fear is that someone has her, and is hurting her,” Ms Foss said, adding that Ms Leierth-Segura is not someone who would just disappear for seven weeks without responding to anyone. “If she was going for a drive to clear her head, I get it,” Ms Foss said. “But it’s been seven weeks. And no one has heard from her. Nobody goes for a seven-week drive.” Ms Leierth-Segura had already been missing for several weeks before her friends and family put the pieces together. “She was always so busy with projects but when 10, 20, 50 of us discovered none of us had heard from her, we got really worried,” Foss said. She said their friend Liz Montgomery called for a welfare check and Beverly Hills police responded to her apartment where the landlord informed them she had been evicted. Neighbours have told local news they hadn’t seen her in weeks, pointing out that the usually well-tended plants on her balcony are now dead. Ms Montgomery filed a missing person report and has been in contact with her family. Beverly Hills Police have alerts out for Camela, her black cat Morris and her car. It’s not known if the cat is with Camela. Ms Foss and their friend Liz Montgomery are in close contact with Camela’s family in Sweden. “They are devastated and overwhelmed,” Ms Foss said. “With them there and Camela here, I think it’s just very hard for her family to even comprehend that she is missing.” Ms Leierth-Segura’s last text message was sent on 29 June, and her Ford Fusion car was last seen on police cameras leaving Beverly Hills the following afternoon, 30 June. But it’s not clear who was driving the vehicle. “She had mentioned it to all of us that she was having trouble; Covid definitely was not helpful for her because she’s a musician, model, actress, all that stuff,” Ms Montgomery told The Los Angeles Times. “And there was no money coming in.” It is not clear when exactly she was evicted or where she was staying afterwards. In an Instagram post, Ms Montgomery also urged for help in tracking down the missing woman. “This is a personal friend of mine. A best friend. People are asking so, YES! PLEASE SHARE - HELP NEEDED! My dear friend of over 25 years is missing. LAST SEEN IN BEVERLY HILLS ON JUNE 29,2023,” she wrote. “We are extremely worried about her safety, and despite our best efforts, the local authorities have not been able to locate her. If you have any information, even the smallest detail can help, please reach out immediately.” She added: “She means the world to us and time is of the essence. Her family in Sweden is pleading for your assistance. PLEASE spread the word, SHARE this post, and help us bring Camela home safely. Thank you for your support and assistance in this critical matter.” “I’d like to think that nothing bad happened, but do I think something bad happened? Yeah,” she said. A GoFundMe has been created by her sister Lisa and loved ones are hoping money will help bring in information to find her. Read More Maryland police to announce ‘potential suspect’ in Rachel Morin murder investigation Camela Leierth-Segura – update: Search for missing Katy Perry songwriter after mysterious disappearance Musician who wrote Katy Perry hit song mysteriously vanishes from Beverly Hills

On the night of 29 July, 2016, a 911 operator near Houston received a call from a concerned teenager. The young man told the operator that he heard gunshots at his home. When police arrived to check on the teenager, they found that both of his parents had been shot in the head while sleeping in their beds. The boy's mother, Dawn Armstrong, was pronounced dead at the scene. His father, former NFL linebacker Antonio Armstrong Sr, was rushed to a hospital where he died from his wounds. When police searched the house, they found the murder weapon — a .22 calibre pistol belonging to Mr Armstrong Sr — and a terrifying note. "I have been watching you for a long time. Come get me," the note read. But there was no shadowy killer waiting to play cat and mouse with the Houston police. Instead — at least so far as a Texas grand jury is concerned — the teenager who made the call, Antonio "AJ" Armstrong Jr, pulled the trigger, planted the gun, and wrote the threatening note on the night of his parents' deaths, according to the New York Post. Armstrong Jr, now 23, was found guilty on Wednesday and was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his parents when he was 16 years old. He stood quietly in the courtroom when his verdict and sentencing were read out. His wife — who was dating him at the time of the murders — sobbed. Jurors spent approximately 10-and-a-half hours deliberating before ultimately deciding Armstrong Jr was guilty. It was his third time at trial; the first two ended with hung juries, resulting in the need for retrials. Armstrong Jr has been wearing an ankle monitor since 2017 as a result. Since the night of the murders in 2016, Armstrong Jr has married his high-school sweetheart, Katie, and became a father. Now he will spend the rest of his life interacting with them through prison glass. During the trial, prosecutors revealed that a week before the murders, Armstrong Jr had used the murder weapon to shoot a pillow and a blanket inside his bedroom. The bullet lodged in his bedroom floor. They said he also lit a fire outside his parents' bedroom door two nights before he killed them. The evidence against Armstrong Jr did not end there; prosecutors revealed the teenager had searched for instructions on building a car bomb using his iPad. Investigators also doubted a story he told them about a masked intruder entering his home on the night of the murders. He reportedly told investigators that he saw a 6-foot-tall man in a mask flee his home on the night his parents were killed. However, he did not include that information in his initial reports, and data pulled from the home's security system showed no records of anyone entering the house on the night of the murders. Prosecutors argued that the teenager was lashing out after his parents scolded him for getting kicked out of his high school. The defence rejected that argument, and pointed to his mental health issues, which included paranoia and schizophrenia. After killing his parents, Armstrong Jr was placed in psychiatric hospitals, where a doctor testified for the defence that the teenager believed he was both a god and a devil. His defence plans to appeal the verdict. Read More Jared Bridegan: Prosecutors to announce major break in case of murdered Microsoft executive US Army soldier accused of killing his wife in Alaska faces court hearing Mississippi judge declares mistrial for two white men charged with shooting at Black FedEx worker

LOS ANGELES Sam Asghari, the husband of pop superstar Britney Spears, is seeking to divorce the singer he

North Carolina's Republican-controlled legislature passed a bill Wednesday that would make major changes to the state's election laws, the latest in efforts by GOP-led jurisdictions across the country to rewrite election procedures and impose restrictions on voting practices.