by Victoria Bekiempis in New York, Richard Luscombe a on (#6M71T)
Florida resident in critical condition in hospital after images of incident carried live on televisionA man was in critical condition in a New York hospital on Friday after setting himself on fire outside the lower Manhattan courthouse where Donald Trump is on trial in a hush-money case.Pictures of the incident were carried live on television and spread on X, formerly Twitter. Continue reading...
Cases listed in federal documents raise alarms around emergency pregnancy care, especially in states with strict abortion lawsOne woman miscarried in the restroom lobby of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to admit her to the hospital.Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn't offer an ultrasound, and the baby later died. Continue reading...
California city sues neighbor after Oakland votes to rename airport to include San Francisco Bay', arguing consumers will be confusedSan Francisco and neighboring Oakland have long maintained a friendly rivalry, whether over sports or tacos. But a spat over an airport name is taking the feud to new heights.San Francisco on Thursday sued Oakland over that city's decision to change the name of its airport to the San Francisco Bay Oakland international airport. Continue reading...
Both Iran and Israel are calibrating their responses. That does not mean the region should breathe easyThe danger facing the Middle East is not from wild or impulsive action, but from the considered decisions ofmen who believe they know what they are doing andhow their opponents will respond. Their confidence is not reassuring when their judgment haspreviously fallen short.On Friday, Iran was quick to play down the overnight strike by Israel, suggesting that it was unclear who was responsible and indicating that there would not be immediate retaliation. Israel had chosen to launch a limited attack on Isfahan, the home of a major nuclear site, without targeting the facility itself. The aim was apparently to send a message about what it could do, not to cause significant damage now. If this is the extent of its response to Iran's weekend attack, it is far from the worst that many had predicted. The optimistic view is that both sides feel, or at least feel they can claim, that they have restored deterrence to some degree. A moment of respite is welcome. But relief would be premature. Continue reading...
by Joanna Walters in New York and agencies on (#6M6RJ)
Coalition of lawmakers helped legislation clear procedural hurdle to reach final votes, following opposition from rightwing RepublicansThe US House pushed ahead on Friday with a $95bn foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and humanitarian support after Democrats came to the rescue of Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker.A coalition of lawmakers helped the legislation clear a procedural hurdle to reach final votes this weekend, as Friday morning's vote followed a rare move late on Thursday for a House committee that normally votes along party lines. Continue reading...
The president of Columbia University testified about her administration's handling of campus unrest. Here's what I would have saidSurely I'm not the only person who has wondered what I would say if I were one of the college presidents who has been summoned to testify before the House committee on education and the workforce. How would I answer their unmistakably hostile questions about how the war in Gaza has been affecting campus life - and about how the university administration is dealing with the divisive and threatening atmosphere that the conflict has created among students and faculty?After two presidents - Harvard's Claudine Gay and the University of Pennsylvania's M Elizabeth Magill - lost their jobs this winter, at least partly because of their responses to the committee's interrogation, I imagined that I might have tried to sound more thoughtful, more human, less lawyered up, more cognizant of the difficulties and complexities inherent in these issues. But both women seemed to be repeating what they'd been instructed to say. They claimed that their response to an openly antisemitic statement would depend on context, a word that - they must have known - was wide open to the misinterpretation, dissatisfaction and mockery it almost instantly engendered. I even imagined appealing to the lawmakers' decency and intelligence, to their sense that we were all working to find a way to end this brutal war. But, as time has shown, that would have been an absurd idea.Francine Prose is a novelist. Her memoir, 1974: A Personal History, will be published in June Continue reading...
Both seem keen to limit hostilities, and key Arab states are ready to resist Tehran. But real change will require new Israeli leadershipWhen it comes to the Middle East, it's the pessimists who look smartest. Predict the worst and you'll rarely be proved wrong. If you are, it's usually because your forecast was insufficiently bleak.So put on your gloom-tinted spectacles and assess the events of the last week. You'll see the dawn of a grim new era, in which the region's two strongest powers, Israel and Iran, trade blows directly. Last weekend, Iran crossed what had previously been a red line, aiming a barrage of missiles and drones directly at Israeli territory for the first time. In the early hours of Friday morning, Israel responded with a series of drone strikes on targets inside Iran, including Isfahan, site of an airbase and the country's burgeoning nuclear programme. You don't have to be Clausewitz to know that two regional powers, one an aspirant nuclear state, the other already there, engaged in a tit-for-tat exchange of fire aimed at each other's sovereign terrain spells danger.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
New York are a talented but messy team. Instead it could be the Dallas Stars who come out on top in the Stanley Cup finalIn clinching the Presidents' Trophy - awarded to the team with the best regular season record - the New York Rangers now hope to break the curse that purportedly jinxes its holders to playoff failure. It's been a decade since a Presidents' Trophy-winning team, the 2013 Chicago Blackhawks, went on to win that year's Stanley Cup. Are the Rangers that kind of team? Continue reading...
by Erum Salam, Joanna Walters and agency on (#6M6ST)
Students had pitched tents on New York City campus, demanding ceasefire and for the school to financially divest from IsraelIsra Hirsi, the daughter of the Minnesota Democratic representative Ilhan Omar was among more than 100 protesters arrested on Thursday on Columbia University's campus in New York City, as police were called in to break up those who pitched tents to stage a pro-Palestinian protest.Further demonstrations protesting the arrests and the university's decision to call in outside law enforcement continued into the night at the private Ivy League school. Continue reading...
A compelling matchup between two of America's brightest young boxing talents has been overshadowed by questions about the the social-media superstar's state of mindOne of the most unusual build-ups to a major prizefight in recent memory came no closer to normalcy on Thursday afternoon when Devin Haney and Ryan Garcia came together for the final press conference ahead of their intriguing but unsettling world super lightweight title fight in Brooklyn.On paper it's the caliber of event that's all too rare in boxing today: a delicious matchup between two of America's brightest young stars, both 25 years old and at the front of their athletic primes with ample top-flight experience. But it's been almost entirely overshadowed by Garcia's erratic behavior both in person and on social media, calling into question the responsibility of the New York State Athletic Commission in assessing a fighter's mental fitness and whether Saturday's fight at Barclays Center should even take place. Continue reading...
Her cookery and lifestyle show looks like a sensible retreat from the abuse she's suffered simply for being a modern black womanMeghan Markle has bottled it. Or more precisely, she has been making jam. Branded jars of her strawberry preserves, adorned with one of those frilly caps you see at village fete produce stalls, were distributed this week to assorted celebrity friends to post on social media (though possibly not for actually eating, given the restrictions of a Hollywood diet). This housewifely offering marks the debut of American Riviera Orchard, which sounds like one of Jamie Oliver's children but is in fact the name of the Duchess of Sussex's new commercial venture, under which she plans to flog everything from tableware to yoga kit to her reinvented self.In a retro, sepia-tinted launch video, the woman we once hoped would put a rocket up the royal family is seen blissfully stirring a saucepan and arranging flowers. It's only three years since she wrote an open letter to US congressional leaders lobbying for paid family leave for working parents, sparking wild speculation about a run for political office, but suddenly that feels like a very long time ago. For now at least, it's goodbye to the much-mocked empowering feminist podcasts and hello to the safety of her Californian kitchen. Meghan is, it seems, entering her tradwife era. Continue reading...
Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is challenging incumbent Rick Scott and highlighting his unapologetic and proud' support for the state's six-week banA round table on abortion rights, hosted by Florida's Democratic Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, has only just begun, and already she finds herself comforting a woman in tears with a very personal story to tell.The woman is from Colombia, and speaks softly in Spanish as she tells the intimate gathering of the Miami-Dade Hispanic Democratic Caucus about the distressing decision her daughter had to make to terminate a pregnancy after learning the fetus was not developing. Continue reading...
Richard Nixon infected the modern Republican party with a sickness that would kill it - Donald Trump has finished the jobLast Sunday, on ABC's This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked Chris Sununu, New Hampshire's Republican governor, about his recent switch from supporting Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, for the Republican presidential nomination to supporting former president Donald Trump.Your words were very, very clear on January 11, 2021," Stephanopoulos reminded Sununu. You said that President Trump's rhetoric and actions contributed to the insurrection. No other president in history has contributed to an insurrection. So, please explain." Continue reading...
In her willingness to unleash state violence against student protestors, Minouche Shafik proved herself to be a willing ally to extremistsThe students sat on the ground and sang as police in riot gear approached them. Eventually, more than 100 of them would be arrested; their tents, protest signs and Palestinian flags were gathered into trash bags by the police and thrown away. One video showed officers and university maintenance workers destroying food that had been donated to the encampment, making sure it would be inedible. According to student journalists reporting from WKCR, Columbia University's student radio station, one arrested student protestor asked the police to be allowed to go to their dorm to collect medication and was denied; as a result, they went into shock. The arrested students were charged with trespassing" on the campus that they are charged more than $60,000 a year to attend.The day before her administration asked the New York police department to storm their campus and arrest their students, Minouche Shafik, the Columbia University president, testified before Congress, saying that she wanted her university to be a safe and welcoming environment for everyone. But Shafik, who was called to testify after missing a hearing last year where the presidents of Penn and Harvard were each grilled on their insufficient hostility to pro-Palestinian students, appeared eager to please the Republican-controlled committee. The Penn and Harvard presidents who had testified each lost their jobs soon thereafter; Shafik clearly entered the hearing room determined to keep her own.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
San Jose have goalkeeping problems, the Whitecaps are defending in a unique way and Miami are given a helping handWelcome back to the Guardian's MLS Power Rankings, where I have a beef with your specific team and your specific team alone.MLS roster rules might be changing in the middle of the season, but as for this column? It's following the same format as it has all season. We're still ranking teams from worst to first. But along with the rankings, we're diving deep into a handful of teams from around the league who are doing particularly interesting things. Continue reading...
Bad actors know that factchecking sites are a vital democratic tool - that's why they've launched their own dishonest versionsAsked by sociologists about his views on the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a Russian in his early 70s shifted the conversation to the massacre in Bucha - one of the worst atrocities committed by the Russian military in Ukraine. Evidence of Russian war crimes was fake, he said: Take Busha or Bucha or wherever it may be. The way they filmed it, the way the bodies were arranged: it was clearly a fake!"Two things stand out from this. He parroted, word for word, statements of Russian propaganda about bodies being actors arranged on the ground", echoing the claims of War on Fakes, the Kremlin's imitation of a factchecking organisation. Yet despite his certainty, he did not know anything about the town, to the extent that he could not pronounce its name correctly. Relying on an anti-fake" outlet modelled on western factchecking, he was not interested in facts but rather in shielding Russia from accusations.Maxim Alyukov is a political sociologist Continue reading...
by Claire de Lune, Andrew Lawrence, David Lengel and on (#6M6KQ)
Our writers pick the winner, key players and dark horses as the NBA postseason gets into full swingGolden State Warriors. It feels flat-out wrong to have a postseason without Stephen Curry, but regardless of how good he still is, that's the way the cookie crumbles when you don't give him an adequate supporting cast. Hopefully the Warriors will take the summer to retool a clearly insufficient roster. CDL Continue reading...
I fear we are forgetting lessons from that terrible historyI don't usually talk about my great-uncle Walter. Gen Walter Warlimont, as my grandfather's brother was formally known, was head of the national defence department in the high command of the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany. Only two people were between him and the Fuhrer in the chain of command. Walter worked so closely with Hitler that the failed assassination attempt in July 1944 injured his arm. The orders he signed during wartime - about who to shoot to kill, about how to treat prisoners - meant he had hundreds of thousands of lives on his conscience.Not that Uncle Walter was the only one in the family who facilitated the Third Reich and the Holocaust. My paternal grandparents were very proud to have been among the very earliest members of Hitler's party. My maternal grandfather - Walter's brother - was the head of a factory in Vienna that made the guidance systems for the V2 rocket, a factory that was staffed by Russian and Ukrainian slave labourers. Continue reading...
by Rebecca Ratcliffe and Bethanie Harriman on (#6M6ES)
President's suggestion that his Uncle Bosie' was eaten by cannibals harms US efforts to build Pacific ties, say local expertsJoe Biden's suggestion that his uncle may have been eaten by cannibals in Papua New Guinea during world war two has been met with a mixture of bemusement and criticism in the country.Biden spoke about his uncle, 2nd Lt Ambrose J Finnegan Jr, while campaigning in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, describing how Uncle Bosie" had flown single engine planes as reconnaissance flights during the war. Biden said he got shot down in New Guinea", adding they never found the body because there used to be a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea." Continue reading...
Seven men and five women have been chosen to sit on the jury in the ex-president's hush-money trial. Here's what we knowThe difficult process of selecting a jury in the case against Donald Trump neared its conclusion on Thursday, with a jury of 12 people empaneled for the first criminal trial of a former president in US history.The jury is made up of seven men and five women who live in different parts of Manhattan, including the Upper East Side, Harlem, Hell's Kitchen and the West Village. They come from a range of personal backgrounds and employment histories. Several jurors said they had no strong opinions on Trump, and a few said that they do not closely follow the news. The exact racial makeup of the jury, and the ages of the jurors, is unclear. Continue reading...
Students set up encampments to demand Columbia divest from Israel while those at USC gathered in support of Asna TabassumTensions on Columbia University's campus continued to rise on Thursday as the New York police department began breaking up student protests over Israel's war on Gaza, at the direction of the school's president, and arrests were made.Hundreds of students pitched tents and began camping out in the center of the famous central campus from early morning on Wednesday in protest, demanding a ceasefire and for the university to financially divest from Israel, prompting Columbia's president, Minouche Shafik, to issue a stark warning. Continue reading...
by David Hammer of WWL Louisiana and Ramon Antonio Va on (#6M64S)
Lawrence Hecker is charged with raping teenager after strangling him in 1975 in a New Orleans churchA mental competency hearing has been delayed again for a 92-year-old retired Catholic priest faced with charges of raping a teenager after strangling him unconscious in 1975 in a New Orleans church.Lawrence Hecker's trial on state charges of aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft has been delayed several times since January. Continue reading...
This was not Donald Trump the business mogul or Donald Trump the 45th president - it was Donald Trump the defendantWith Donald Trump just a few feet away, a potential juror in the criminal case against him summed up the experience in just three words. This is bizarre," she said, with just a slight hint of a seasoned New York accent.Bizarre it was. There was a potential juror who once spent the night at one of Trump's lawyers' homes more than a decade ago (Trump's team used one of its peremptory strikes to remove the juror). The microphones didn't work. The proceedings had to start over when Judge Juan Merchan realized that a court reporter hadn't been present first thing. And the temperature in the courthouse was so frigid that Todd Blanche, one of Trump's lawyers, asked Merchan if it would be possible to turn up the temperature just one degree". Continue reading...
Siblings appear on stage with president at campaign event in Philadelphia and offer full-throated support of White House runProminent members of the Kennedy political dynasty delivered a full-throated endorsement of Joe Biden's re-election campaign on Thursday, a pointed message that was in equal measure a stinging repudiation of their relative Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is making an independent run for the White House.Kerry Kennedy, one of six siblings of the controversial candidate on stage at a Biden campaign event in Philadelphia, called the US president my hero" as she celebrated a litany of his achievements she said would have pleased her father, the late former US attorney general Robert F Kennedy and late uncle and president John F Kennedy. Continue reading...
Bridget Thorne, a Republican elected in Fulton county in 2022, has spread election fraud lies and accused county employees of crimesA Fulton county commissioner in Georgia has been operating a private Telegram channel for years, propagating debunked claims about the 2020 election, and spreading accusations of crimes by county employees, including Ruby Freeman, an election worker defamed by Rudy Giuliani in the wake of Donald Trump's 2020 loss.Bridget Thorne, a Republican representing the relatively conservative cities of Fulton county north of Atlanta, indirectly identifies herself as the creator and administrator of the Fulton County Elections channel on Telegram, a mobile messaging platform, in multiple posts to its page. The channel uses the official logo of the Fulton county board of registration and elections. Continue reading...
Panel urged denial of Israel funds because of serious human rights violations but state department has not yet acted, report saysThe US state department has failed to act on internal reports of human rights abuses by Israeli army and police units, according to a new report, raising new questions over whether Washington's continued supply of arms to Israel is breaking US law.The ProPublica investigative journalism site quoted officials as saying that a special panel set up by the Biden administration had recommended that multiple Israeli military and police units be denied US funding because of serious human rights abuses. But the state department has yet to act on the recommendations. Continue reading...
Hopes of a ceasefire have ebbed, concerns about an assault on Rafah endure, and aid remains wholly insufficientThe Middle East is on the precipice" and one miscalculation, one miscommunication, one mistake, could lead to the unthinkable," the UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, warned on Thursday. Israel has vowed to retaliate to Iran's weekend barrage of missiles and drones - itself a response to Israel's killing of two generals at an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus. It is hard to have confidence in either's ability to calibrate their actions when both have misjudged already.Yet the spectre of full-scale regional conflict, and themany deaths that could result, must not draw attention away from the almost 34,000 Palestinians already killed in Gaza, according to its health authorities, and the many more who will soon diewithout an immediate ceasefire and massive increase in aid in what Mr Guterres called a humanitarian hellscape".Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
Sean Patrick Palmer, of Oklahoma, arrested after explosive device found last week near porch of Satanic Temple in MassachusettsAn Oklahoma man was arrested on Thursday morning in last week's bombing attempt of a Satanic Temple in Massachusetts.Sean Patrick Palmer, 49, of Perkins, Oklahoma, was arrested on charges of using an explosive to cause damage to a building used in interstate or foreign commerce", the United States' attorney office for the district of Massachusetts said in a statement. Continue reading...
The mogul has taken these hacking allegations out of the public arena. Use this moment to craft reforms that can be trustedTrue crime dramas, in which nobody wins but the lawyers, are not the kind of films that made Hugh Grant famous. His starring role in the long-running legal action against the Sun newspaper for phone hacking instead proves that real life is far more flawed and frustrating than film.After more than a decade of leading a campaign against what he called the worst excesses of the oligarch-owned press", Grant settled with Rupert Murdoch when offered such an enormous" sum of money that to proceed would have seen him liable for even bigger costs. Continue reading...
by Alisa Solomon, Marianne Hirsch, Sarah Haley and He on (#6M5Y9)
In a congressional hearing, Republicans used specious charges of rampant antisemitism to advance an illiberal agenda on campusesAs Jewish faculty at Columbia University, we watched with alarm as our president, Minouche Shafik, appeared before the House education and workforce committee on Wednesday to answer questions about antisemitism on our campus. While we are deeply concerned about antisemitism, we are also disturbed by the ways the hearing - like those in December, and surely those to follow - used specious charges of rampant antisemitism to advance an illiberal agenda.We were shocked that President Shafik capitulated to its mendacious premises and failed to stand up for fundamental academic principles of honest intellectual inquiry and free expression. Most galling was the absence of any acknowledgment of the relentless devastation in Gaza: the urgent reason for the student protests that the committee caricatures and condemns as antisemitic.Alisa Solomon is a writer, professor of journalism, and the director of the arts and culture concentration at the Columbia Journalism School. Marianne Hirsch is the William Peterfield Trent professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Sarah Haley is associate professor of history at Columbia University. Helen Benedict is a novelist and professor at Columbia Journalism School. Continue reading...
Fifa is considering a policy change that would allow leagues to play domestic matches overseas, reopening one of football's most squalid ideasThe dream - or nightmare - of a 39th Premier League match in America has drawn a little closer. After reaching a settlement with US promoter Relevent Sports, Fifa last week signaled it will consider changes to its policy of blocking league matches from being played outside the league's home country. The indication that Fifa's thinking on the issue may be evolving in a more flexible direction will be welcomed by Europe's top clubs and deplored by football traditionalists.For clubs, the commercial case is clear. This is an argument anchored not in culture but money. The work of evangelizing soccer is already done; the sport is not like American football, say, or rugby league, or basketball, or even cricket, which are still trawling the globe for converts and regularly hold matches overseas. In the world of professional sport, football is No 1 and probably always will be. Taking chunks of the European domestic season on the road represents a juicy financial opportunity, potentially unlocking valuable revenue to help weather the storm of a newly restrictive regulatory environment and bringing teams closer to the millions of football fans who live outside Europe. Continue reading...
Mike Gallagher, a representative from Wisconsin, is stepping down on 19 April, before the end of his termMike Gallagher has suggested that he is resigning from his seat in Congress because of death threats and swatting targeted at his family.The Republican US representative for Wisconsin shared more insight into his decision to vacate his seat while talking with reporters on Tuesday, the NBC affiliate WLUK reported. Continue reading...
Gigantic bill apparently reflected using 9.5 gigabytes of data on a phone that had not been set up for international roamingA Florida man was stunned to come back from a European trip and - upon checking his phone bill - realize that he had been charged a staggering $143,000 by his phone company for using his device while overseas.ABC Action News reported that Rene Remund and his wife had toured Switzerland last September and had even gone to a T-Mobile store to share his travel plan with his phone provider before leaving. Continue reading...
Measures including background checks on private sales and waiting periods for purchases follow deadly shooting last yearMaine's state legislature approved sweeping gun safety legislation including background checks on private gun sales, waiting periods for gun purchases and criminalizing gun sales to prohibited people before adjourning on Thursday morning, nearly six months after the deadliest shooting in state history.The Democratic governor, Janet Mills, and the Democratic-led legislature pressed for a number of gun and mental health proposals after the shooting that claimed 18 lives and injured another 13 people, despite the state's strong hunting tradition and support for gun owners. Continue reading...
A round packed with goals brought us a smiling Ousmane Dembele, a frustrated Bukayo Saka and match-winning performance from a goalkeeperIf Tuesday night's Champions League second legs tipped one way and then the other with attacking flair, then Wednesday was a night for grit to win the day - and English football to be the loser. It also brought a restoration of the old order, with Bayern and Real Madrid to meet in the semi-finals.Goalkeeper: Andriy Lunin, Real Madrid Continue reading...
Process server allegedly approached adult film star at Brooklyn nightclub seeking information related to recent documentaryDonald Trump's legal team says it tried serving Stormy Daniels a subpoena as she arrived for an event at a bar in Brooklyn last month, but the adult movie actor, who is expected to be a witness at the former president's criminal trial, refused to take it and walked away.A process server working for Trump's lawyers said he approached Daniels with papers demanding information related to a documentary recently released about her life and involvement with Trump, but was forced to leave them at her feet", according to a court filing made public on Wednesday. Continue reading...
Elizabeth Hanna says she was fired by the American Diabetes Association after refusing to approve recipes heaped with the additive made by a major donorElizabeth Hanna had a simple job: help people with diabetes figure out what to eat. Anyone with common sense knows this should probably not entail foods that might increase people's risk of getting diabetes. But that's not necessarily the thinking at the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the world's leading diabetes research and patient advocacy group, which also receives millions of dollars from sponsors in the pharmaceutical, food and agricultural industries.According to a lawsuit Hanna recently filed against the ADA, the organization - which endorses recipes and food plans on its website and on the websites of partner" food brands - tried to get her to greenlight recipes that she believed flew in the face of the ADA's mission. These included recipes like a cucumber and onion salad" made with a third of a cup of Splenda granulated artificial sweetener, autumnal sheet-pan veggies" with a quarter cup of Splenda monk fruit sweetener and a cranberry almond spinach salad" with a quarter cup of Splenda monkfruit sweetener.Neil Barsky, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and investment manager, is the founder of The Marshall Project Continue reading...
Caleb Williams will almost certainly be the No 1 overall pick this month. But there are plenty of interesting players lower down the boardIn recent drafts, we've seen players selected from Australia. We've had a tight end with no experience picked out of Germany in the sixth-round, thanks to Mike Mayock demanding it on the draft broadcast - that really happened! What we haven't seen is an American-born player selected out of Canada. And we haven't seen an American-born player drafted who played no college football. Continue reading...
With Donald Trump and the Capitol Hill riots in court, the studiously apolitical vibe of this dystopia feels like a cop-outAs the supreme court heard arguments relating to the 6 January riot and Donald Trump sat in a criminal court in Manhattan, cinemas across America have been showing scenes from an imagined world after the end of democracy. The movie Civil War, written and directed by Alex Garland, depicts a conflict-ridden US in which rebel forces battle to overthrow the government. As a thought experiment, this would be a lot more fun in a year in which a man with 91 felony charges wasn't standing for his second term as president. As it is, the film currently at No 1 at the US box office is under some pressure to say something meaningful about where we are now.Civil War does have things to say: about how war is bad, and violence corrupts, and once things get under way people exploit the chaos for all sorts of reasons - which explains the presence of Florida in the film's imagined secessionist uprising. It's a gripping ride that, depending on your view, is either shrewdly non-partisan in a way that assumes the audience can fill in the gaps for themselves (the New York Times), an empty but entertaining romp with lots of explosions (the New Yorker) or a provocation to liberals who don't understand what movies are for (the Hollywood Reporter). Meanwhile, in court this week, prospective jurors in the former president's hush money trial were warned to keep details of themselves confidential, to preserve against the possibility of juror intimidation - the kind of deep background detail in which the film has no interest. Continue reading...
Officer shot and killed both a man who was attacking customers and Valentina Orellana-Peralta, who was hiding in a dressing roomA Los Angeles police officer who fatally shot a 14-year-old girl inside a clothing store in 2021 will not face charges, the California attorney general announced on Wednesday.Valentina Orellana-Peralta was shopping with her mother at a north Hollywood Burlington Coat Factory on 23 December 2021 when the LAPD entered to apprehend a man suspected of attacking customers in the store. When officer William Dorsey Jones Jr fired three rounds at the man, Valentina was in a nearby dressing room with her mother praying and was killed by Jones's gunfire. Continue reading...
Western fire chiefs association details challenges faced by first responders during blazes that killed 101 peopleAs wildfires ripped across Maui last August, the head of the emergency management agency dragged his heels on returning to the island amid the unfolding crisis, while a broad communications breakdown left authorities in the dark and residents without emergency alerts, according to a report released Wednesday.Communications problems were also encountered by Hawaiian Electric, with officials unable to confirm that power lines had been de-energized until well after flames had caused widespread damage, the report from the Hawaii attorney general said. Continue reading...
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