America

    Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders held a fierce and substantive debate in Flint, Michigan, on Sunday night, disagreeing over trade, guns and the auto industry bailout while joining forces to call for the resignation of state governor Rick Snyder over the city’s water contamination crisis. Shortly after they took the stage, the Associated Press announced that Sanders had won the Democratic caucuses in Maine, his eighth victory in the 2016 presidential primary race. In a statement, the leftwing Vermont senator thanked Maine’s voters and claimed “momentum” heading into Tuesday’s primaries in Michigan and Mississippi. Onstage he and the former secretary of state had one of their sharpest exchanges yet when they were asked by a member of the audience about trade and job creati...

    Ray Tomlinson, the American programmer widely credited with inventing email, has died. He was 74. Before Tomlinson invented direct electronic messages between users on different machines on a certain network in 1971. Before then, users could only write messages to others using the same computer. "A true technology pioneer, Ray was the man who brought us email in the early days of networked computers," his employer, Raytheon, said in a statement. "His work changed the way the world communicates and yet, for all his accomplishments, he remained humble, kind and generous with his time and talents, He will be missed by one and all." A company spokesman said Tomlinson passed away on Saturday, and the cause of death was not yet confirmed. Tributes poured in from the online world...

    Bernie Sanders A ferocious week of attacks on Donald Trump appeared to loosen his grip on the Republican presidential race on “Super Saturday”, while Bernie Sanders showed there may also be some life left in the Democratic race. Conservative champion Ted Cruz won heavily in the Republican caucus in Kansas and won by a similar margin in Maine, before Trump underlined his national advantage with victories in Louisiana and Kentucky. With 47 delegates up for grabs, Louisiana was the biggest prize of the night and the only state using a primary rather than caucus system. Trump has tended to do better in primaries, where his support among first-time voters and independents can overwhelm the more determined activists who back Cruz. Trump’s victories – by 4.4% in Louisiana and 3.6...

    The deepest mystery in aviation history has taken another twist. As the relatives of those lost aboard flight MH370 prepare to mark two years since their loved ones disappeared, a piece of wreckage washed ashore on a sandbank off the coast of Mozambique is thought to be from the missing plane. A US official told CNN that the debris found in the Indian Ocean is probably a piece of horizontal stabiliser skin from a Boeing 777. If that proves correct, it is highly likely that the source is the missing Malaysia Airlines jet. MH370 disappeared on 8 March 2014 while on a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. The last contact with the plane took place at 1.19am, when the captain acknowledged air-traffic control with the words “Good Night Malaysian ...

    Europe on brink as thousands of refugees stuck at Greek-Macedonian border Top NATO General Philip Breedlove warned US lawmakers Tuesday that Russia is helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turn the refugee crisis into a "weapon" against the West. The supreme allied commander in Europe for the 28-member military alliance said the massive flow of migrants from war-torn Syria has had a destabilizing effect on European countries where they found refuge, and that worked to Moscow's advantage. "Together, Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve," Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Speaking of Russia's six-month air campaign in support of Assad, and the Syrian l...

    Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton each took a giant step toward securing the White House nominations of their parties Tuesday, thumping rivals in a slew of "Super Tuesday" primaries. Bellicose billionaire Trump weathered a barrage of attacks from fellow Republicans to win at least five of 11 states, according to projections, coming within striking distance of becoming the Republican nominee to replace President Barack Obama. Clinton bested rival Bernie Sanders handily across a host of southern US states -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, ennessee and Texas -- winning big among African-American voters in a vindication of her strategy of embracing Obama. She also reversed her 2008 primary loss in Virginia, bolstering her general election credentials. Super Tuesday is the most piv...

    Exactly a year ago today, Avijit Roy was hacked to death in the most public of places: Coming out of a crowded book fair in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His crime? He was an American blogger who wrote prominently about secular issues works that his misguided attackers viewed as blasphemous. In the months that followed, fundamentalists carried out several other attacks on secular writers. In the piece below, Roy's stepdaughter Trisha Ahmed, a second-year student at Johns Hopkins University, recounts the father she remembers and the attack she's trying to forget. 2008 For a while, it felt strange to call him "Dad" because he had the aura and wit of a fun uncle. When we moved into a new house in the summer after my sixth grade, he picked up two long sticks in the backyard, and passed o...

    Many ultra-Orthodox men see contact with woman as forbidden under a strict interpretation of Jewish law. An 81-year-old retired lawyer whose family came to Israel after fleeing the Nazis during the Second World War is suing Israel's national airline after staff moved her to another seat because an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man refused to sit next to her. Renee Rabinowitz was travelling on an El Al flight from Newark in the US to Tel Aviv when a Hasidic man objected to being assigned a seat next to a woman. Staff on the flight asked Ms Rabinowitz to move, saying they would find her a "better" seat closer to first class and, although she thought the request was sexist, she agreed. "Despite all my accomplishments - and my age is also an accomplishment - I felt minimized," she sai...

    Marco Rubio took the fight to Donald Trump on Thursday night. With assistance from Ted Cruz, the Florida senator unleashed an all-encompassing attack on Trump’s business record and policy acumen that has the potential to shake up the Republican presidential race. Trump, who has emerged as the Republican frontrunner with remarkably little vetting, was consistently attacked for employing foreign and illegal workers, over his business record and regarding his lack of policy specifics. Rubio gleefully mocked him: “You say the same thing every night.” The Florida senator then gave his own parody of Trump’s stump speech: “Everyone’s dumb, I’m going to make America great again, I’m winning in the polls, lines around the states, every night.” The exchanges were the first time riva...

    American warplanes struck multiple targets in Libya overnight, hitting an Islamic State training camp and a senior extremist leader, U.S. defense officials said Friday. One official described the strikes as being carried out against an ISIL training camp and said the attack near Sabratha, Libya, not far from the Tunisian border, likely killed ISIL operative Noureddine Chouchane, who is believed to be a Tunisian. The U.S. officials spoke on grounds of anonymity because they weren't authorized to be publicly identified discussing a military operation not yet formally announced. President Barack Obama earlier this year directed his national security team to bolster counterterrorism efforts in Libya while also pursuing diplomatic possibilities for solving its political crisis ...