List of All Articles with Tag 'u'

Nearly five decades after he was wrongfully convicted of rape, a New York judge has overturned the conviction of Leonard Mack following new DNA testing that eliminated him as the perpetrator and identified a different man who has since confessed to the crime, prosecutors announced.

Russian mercenary group Wagner will be declared a terrorist organisation and a draft order against the private militia will be laid in parliament on Wednesday, the Home Office said. Once cleared, the order will make it illegal to be a member of the group or to support it. The group, formerly led by now-dead Yevgeny Prigozhin, is known to carry out Russia’s dirty work in Syria and Africa, and has also handed Vladimir Putin Russia’s biggest victory of capturing Bakhmut against Ukraine in the continuing invasion. Assets belonging to Wagner, primarily consisting of contractors and prison convicts, will be declared as terrorist property and will be seized after the draft order is cleared. It will also render certain proscription offences punishable by up to 14 years in jail. Home secretary Suella Braverman called the group a “violent and destructive organisation which has acted as a military tool of Vladimir Putin’s Russia overseas”. “While Putin’s regime decides what to do with the monster it created, Wagner’s continuing destabilising activities only continue to serve the Kremlin’s political goals,” she said in a statement. “They are terrorists, plain and simple – and this proscription order makes that clear in UK law. Wagner has been involved in looting, torture and barbarous murders. Its operations in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa are a threat to global security,” the home secretary said. “That is why we are proscribing this terrorist organisation and continuing to aid Ukraine wherever we can in its fight against Russia.” Once declared illegal, Wagner will join other organisations on the proscribed list like the Islamic State, al-Qaida and neo-Nazi group National Action. The Home Office said proscription of the group comes after consideration of the nature and scale of the organisation’s activities as well as the threat they pose to British nationals abroad. In May this year, a government source said the move to declare the group illegal was “imminent” and the administration was working on building a legal case. The push came after a government department reportedly helped its millionaire owner Prigozhin to circumvent UK sanctions to take a British journalist to court in 2021. The Treasury commissioned an internal review of its processes after it was reported that licences had been issued to allow lawyers to help Prigozhin launch legal action against a reporter of investigative website Bellingcat in the UK while the Russian oligarch was subjected to sanctions. As a result of the review, the department said the government was committed to “further targeted changes to the process for issuing legal fees licences that safeguard the sanctions regime against the risk of manipulation and ensure ministers are accountable for OFSI Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation) decision-making”. Wagner’s fate as Russia’s trusted brutal force in private capacity has been hanging by a thread after its leader Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash last month. The crash occurred exactly two months after Prigozhin mounted a short-lived armed rebellion against Russia’s military leadership, posing the biggest challenge to Mr Putin’s authority in his 23-year rule. Read More With its leader dead, can the Wagner group rise and ride again? Russians are convinced Wagner warlord Prigozhin is still alive as conspiracy spreads that Putin killed body double Kremlin says 'Deliberate wrongdoing' among possible causes of plane crash that killed Prigozhin The Kremlin says Putin is not planning to attend Wagner chief Prigozhin's burial White House says Kremlin has ‘long history’ of killing its opponents following Prigozhin death

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear has pushed his opposition to Kentucky’s abortion ban to the forefront of his reelection campaign

The federal budget deficit is expected to balloon to about $2 trillion for fiscal year 2023, roughly double what it was in the previous fiscal year, according to a government watchdog group.

Recent court rulings in some southern states could affect the battle for control of Congress in the 2024 election

A Russian attack on port facilities in the Izmail area killed one person, the local governor says.

The Environmental Protection Agency is delaying plans to tighten air quality standards for ground-level ozone — better known as smog — despite a recommendation by a scientific advisory panel to lower air pollution limits to protect public health

Lawyers for residents and business owners of the Hawaiian town devastated by last month’s fires on Maui told a court that cable TV and telephone companies share in responsibility for the disaster

The Biden administration has taken mixed positions on its policies involving Haiti -- with one federal agency warning that the Caribbean country is too dangerous for US citizens, while another agency deports Haitians back to the violence-torn country.

Moscow's forces have started covering some of their attack aircraft with car tires, in what experts say could be a makeshift attempt to protect them from Ukrainian drone strikes that have had increased recent success in targeting Russian military airports.

China’s Great Wall has been pierced by Genghis Khan, the Manchus, and now, allegedly, a couple of construction workers named Zheng and Wang who wanted a shortcut

A senior UN official says the humanitarian situation in conflict-wracked eastern Congo has deteriorated alarmingly in the past 18 months with 8 million people in urgent need of assistance and women and girls subjected to sexual violence on a massive scale -- just in three provinces