Former Ohio House speaker sentenced to 20 years over $60 million bribery plot

By Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Ohio House of Representatives Speaker Larry Householder was sentenced on Thursday to 20 years in prison after being convicted earlier this year of participating in a $60 million bribery scheme, prosecutors said. A federal jury convicted Householder and former Ohio Republican Party chair Mathew Borges in March. Householder…

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Jury acquits former Florida deputy of failing to protect students in Parkland school shooting

(Reuters) -A Florida jury on Thursday acquitted a former sheriff’s deputy accused of failing to protect students during the 2018 mass shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Scot Peterson, the school resource officer on duty when a gunman entered a building in Feb. 14, 2018 and opened fire, killing 17 and wounding another…

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Google to block news in Canada over law on paying publishers

By Ismail Shakil OTTAWA (Reuters) -Google said on Thursday it plans to block Canadian news on its platform in Canada, joining Facebook in escalating a campaign against a new law requiring payments to local news publishers. Alphabet-owned Google will remove links to Canadian news from search results and other products in Canada when the law…

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US conservative group led by billionaire Koch to spend big to beat Trump

By Alexandra Ulmer (Reuters) -The conservative U.S. political network led by billionaire Charles Koch has raised over $70 million to spend on political races, an official with the group said on Thursday, with a key goal of stopping former President Donald Trump from clinching the 2024 Republican nomination. The influential group, which pushes for tax…

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US colleges cautiously prep for end to race-conscious admissions amid enrollment gaps

By Gabriella Borter WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In 1998, the year a voter-approved measure barring the use of race-conscious admissions policies for public colleges and universities in California took effect, the percentage of Black, Hispanic and Native American students admitted at two of the state’s elite public schools plummeted by more than 50%. Those figures for…

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Blinken says hard work remains to reach peace deal as Armenia-Azerbaijan talks end

By Simon Lewis and Daphne Psaledakis WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said hard work remains to reach a final agreement to end the conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, as talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan’s foreign ministers hosted by Washington ended on Thursday. Blinken, who posed for a photograph with Armenian Foreign…

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S&P 500 ends higher, Treasury yields touch three-month high on solid US economic data

By Stephen Culp NEW YORK (Reuters) – The S&P 500 advanced on Thursday and benchmark Treasury yields hit their highest level since early March as robust economic data helped ease recession fears but increased the odds of the Fed keeping its restrictive policy in place for longer than expected. Financials led the gainers after the…

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Exclusive-Panama expects to be struck off financial crime watch list in October

By Valentine Hilaire (Reuters) – Panama expects international financial-crime watchdog FATF to remove it this October from a watch list for nations deemed to be doing too little to fight money laundering, the country’s deputy finance minister said, adding that other intergovernmental groups might follow suit. The Central American nation urgently needs to exit the…

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