#government-officials

#government-officials

The government looks set for unprecedented legal battle with officials in charge of the Covid public inquiry over the release of unredacted WhatsApp messages and diaries belonging to Boris Johnson.In a showdown over the ex-PM's communications with 40 top officials, the Cabinet Office has until 4pm on Thursday to respond to the demand from Lady Hallett's public inquiry into the Covid crisis.

(Raul Roa / Los Angeles Times en Espanol)

A month and a half ago, Miguel Ángel got off a bus in Los Angeles.He had been detained in an immigration center since January, after Border Patrol officers caught him and the four other people he was traveling with in the Sonoran Desert.When Miguel Ángel was released from the center in late April, he said he was moved around various cities in Arizona and Central California, before he was given a bus ticket for L.A.
"Getting here was a surprise.

A federal agency said Tuesday that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre violated the Hatch Act when she used the term mega MAGA from the briefing podium.But Jean-Pierre is far from the first person in a high-profile role to violate the law, which limits certain political activities of government workers.

Pakistan remained tense on Friday as former Prime Minister Imran Khan refused to allow police to search his house, laying out his terms for any such operation.Hundreds of police officers were deployed around Khan's home in eastern Lahore ahead of the planned search for suspects said to be involved in attacks on state and army buildings earlier this month.

The son of jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai has called the UK government incredibly weak after it failed to condemn and act against the crackdown on dissent in mainland China.The 75-year-old founder of the now-shut Apple Daily newspaper is behind bars in a high-profile case filed by Hong Kong's authorities after a crackdown on the pro-democracy movement.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

A California tribe has signed agreements with state and federal agencies to work together on efforts to return endangered Chinook salmon to their traditional spawning areas upstream of Shasta Dam, a deal that could advance the long-standing goal of tribal leaders to reintroduce fish that were transplanted from California to New Zealand more than a century ago and still thrive there.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Illinois will try to make sure preventive health care services - such as cancer screenings, vision tests and certain medications - continue to be covered by insurance, despite a Thursday ruling by a federal judge that throws such coverage into question nationally.A federal judge in Texas on Thursday struck down a part of the Affordable Care Act that requires most insurers to cover preventive services that include screenings for cancer, diabetes and mental health.

Walt Nauta, the only other person indicted along with former President Donald J. Trump, has been serving as his personal aide after previously working for him in the White House.A native of Guam, Mr. Nauta enlisted in the military at some point and was a military aide working as a White House valet while Mr. Trump was president.

The Biden administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials accused of plotting assassinations abroad, including against former national security adviser John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.Thursday's sanctions target Mohammad Reza Ansari, an official with a unit of the IRGC-Qods Force tasked with undertaking covert operations abroad, including planning and conducting intelligence and lethal operations against Iranian dissidents and other non-Iranian nationals in the United States, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, according to a release from the US Treasury Department.

The Moscow-based cybersecurity company Kaspersky says iOS devices are being targeted by a previously unknown malware.The firm discovered the threat while monitoring the network traffic of its own corporate Wi-Fi.Kaspersky is calling the new campaign Operation Triangulation.The campaign report reveals how the attack works and details the exploitation's technical properties.

A chemical weapons expert has been disinvited from giving a keynote speech at a UK-run expert conference after civil servants discovered social media posts he wrote criticising Conservative ministers and government migration policy.Dan Kaszeta is one of at least eight speakers banned from government events by an opaque vetting scheme introduced by Jacob Rees-Mogg in 2022, a policy that the banned expert described as an attack on free speech.

No sooner did ChatGPT get unleashed than hackers started "jailbreaking" the artificial intelligence chatbot - trying to override its safeguards so it could blurt out something unhinged or obscene.But now its maker, OpenAI, and other major AI providers such as Google and Microsoft, are coordinating with the Biden administration to let thousands of hackers take a shot at testing the limits of their technology.

Thousands of people across the island of Guam remained without power, water and cellphone service on Friday, more than a week after the U.S. territory was pummeled by the strongest typhoon in at least two decades, which flooded homes, downed coconut and mango trees, and disrupted basic services.Losing water has been the hardest part, said Melinda Sanchez, 50, whose family lives in central Guam.

The top federal auto safety regulator on Wednesday proposed requiring all new cars and trucks to have automatic braking systems that reduce the likelihood of collisions.The proposal comes after traffic fatalities and pedestrian deaths soared in recent years, topping 40,000 a year.The plan from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would require car companies to expand the use of more advanced and powerful systems than those currently installed in some vehicles on the market.

President Joe Biden delivers a speech during his visit at Lockheed Martin facility which manufactures weapon systems such as Javelin anti-tank missiles, which the Biden-Harris Administration is providing Ukraine in Troy, Alabama, on May 3, 2022.Peter Zay / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images As the annual U.S. defense budget creeps closer to $1 trillion, an explosive interview with a former top Pentagon official has exposed private defense contractors' brazen plot to price gouge the government on weapons and equipment - and reap billions upon billions of dollars of profits from taxpayers' pockets in the process.

TikTok Chief Executive Shou Chew's appearance in Congress on Thursday did little to calm the bipartisan fury directed at the viral video-sharing service.If anything, his more than four hours of testimony gave critics more fuel to insist the app be banned in the U.S. We came here hoping to hear some action that would alleviate our concerns, said Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Delaware Democrat.

The A's stadium drama has been one of MLB's biggest storylines of the past couple months.The franchise has already expressed its hope for getting a deal done in Las Vegas that'd allow them to relocate out of Oakland within the next couple years.They've entered into a pair of land purchase agreements for potential stadium sites in recent months, but the franchise's biggest hurdle - a public financing agreement with the Nevada legislature - has yet to get off the ground.

The depth of the infighting inside the Russian government appears broader and deeper than previously understood, judging from a newly discovered cache of classified intelligence documents that has been leaked online.The additional documents, which did not surface in a 53-page set that came to wide public attention online last week, paint a picture of the Russian government feuding over the count of the dead and wounded in the Ukraine war, with the domestic intelligence agency accusing the military of obscuring the scale of casualties that Russia has suffered.

Two men accused of planning an extremist attack on a Jewish restaurant in central Athens and possibly other targets that would produce mass civilian casualties have been arrested on terrorism charges in Greece, police said on Tuesday.
he suspects were charged with membership of a terrorist organisation and were being held at police headquarters in the Greek capital, authorities said.

Montana has become the first American state to ban downloads of TikTok in its jurisdiction.Governor Greg Gianforte (R) on Thursday signed a bill into law that prohibits the downloading of the app by Montana residents.Senate Bill 410 prohibits mobile application marketplaces - such as Google Play and the Apple App Store - from offering TikTok within the state.

Hallucinations, psychosis, involuntary body movements and Hulk-like strength.Those are just some of the reported effects of monkey dust - a relatively new and dangerous drug linked to a range of crime and health problems.The Class B drug, already banned in the US, could soon face tougher penalties in the UK, following reports some users have jumped off buildings or tried to eat glass.

For the first time in more than three years, Donald Trump took questions from a mainstream journalist before a national audience.It went about how you would expect.The former president spread disinformation about the 2020 election, praised the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and mocked a woman who accused him of rape.

Gov. Hochul said Monday that Jordan Neely's death in Manhattan a week ago offered a "wake-up call" to government officials on the urgency of the mental health crisis gripping New York and the nation.Hochul said the fate of the homeless 30-year-old - who found himself in a Marine veteran's deadly chokehold on an F train's floor last Monday - underscored that people like Neely need more help.

Most Illinois public schools that tested samples from sinks and fountains for lead as required by a 2017 state law found traces of the toxic metal lurking in children's drinking water, a Tribune investigation has found.But although the testing identified thousands of potentially problematic fixtures in schools, flaws in the law and weak state oversight have interfered with the goal of protecting children from the brain-damaging metal, the Tribune found.

Ratings agencies are like pub bores.They state the obvious.Bank collapses arrive out of the blue but the ratings agency, Fitch, is troubled by the fact that France is 3,000 billion in debt.Didn't we know that already?Isn't that one of the reasons why President Emmanuel Macron wants the French to retire later and stop piling up deficits in their state pension system?

Ratings agencies are like pub bores.They state the obvious.Bank collapses arrive out of the blue but the ratings agency, Fitch, is troubled by the fact that France is 3,000 billion in debt.Didn't we know that already?Isn't that one of the reasons why President Emmanuel Macron wants the French to retire later and stop piling up deficits in their state pension system?

Say hello to the US government's latest attempt to force antitrust regulations on the digital advertising industry.It might sound familiar.This week, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) is reintroducing an antitrust bill called the Advertising Middlemen Endangering Rigorous Internet Competition Accountability Act, or AMERICA Act for short.