Author: Johnny King

The United States competing with China in the Indo-Pacific region has “consequences” for Australia, according to Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie. “In the Defence Strategic Review, it makes that very clear that the government is choosing to deepen its relationship with the United States through AUKUS, but more broadly as well,” he told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “Of course, the Opposition supports this given that we have a long-standing partnership with the United States.” Source : SkyNews

Samuel Alito said the decision he wrote removing the federal right to abortion made him and other US supreme court justices “targets of assassination” but denied claims he was responsible for its leak in draft form. “Those of us who were thought to be in the majority, thought to have approved my draft opinion, were really targets of assassination,” Alito told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Friday. “It was rational for people to believe they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us.” Alito wrote the ruling in Dobbs v Jackson, the Mississippi case that…

The US economy slowed in the first three months of the year, as businesses reduced investments in the face of higher borrowing costs. The economy grew 1.1% on an annualised basis, the Commerce Department said. That was down from a rate of 2.6% in the prior quarter, despite strong consumer spending. Analysts are watching nervously to see how the world’s largest economy handles a mix of higher interest rates and rising prices. The latest report on gross domestic product – the widest measure of economic activity – showed the economy has now grown for three quarters in a row. The…

Shawn Fain on Saturday won the race for United Auto Workers president, narrowly defeating incumbent head Ray Curry in a shakeup for the Detroit-based labor union. Curry and a court-appointed monitor said Fain will be sworn in Sunday, a day ahead of the start of the union’s bargaining convention. Fain’s election comes at a critical time for the union. Labor contracts with Detroit’s Big Three automakers expire in September and Fain has vowed to take a tough line with them. Fain said in a statement Saturday the “election was not just a race between two candidates, it was a referendum on the direction…

The two Russian men from Chukotka arrived in a 16-foot fishing boat in the St. Lawrence Island village of Gambell in October, hoping to avoid being drafted to fight in Ukraine. They spent three months in detention, then bailed out earlier this month in Washington state, and that’s where Charlie McCann, a feature writer for The Economist’s long-form magazine “1843” caught up with them. McCann has written a detailed account of why – and how – the men escaped Russia to seek asylum and new lives in the United States. In her story, she also describes two men with lives…