by Dani Anguiano in Redding, California on (#743WR)
Jenny O'Connell-Nowain was put under house arrest, and her husband, Benjamin, lost his job after they protested at board of supervisors meetingsJenny O'Connell-Nowain was ready to go to jail.She had been prepared to spend six months in the custody of the Shasta county sheriff's office. One of the top prosecutors in this part of far northern California had presented the evidence against her in a weeklong trial, and a jury had delivered a guilty verdict. A judge offered probation, but O'Connell-Nowain did not agree to the terms. Continue reading...
As states scale back requirements for comprehensive sex ed, some parents and faith communities are stepping in to teach what schools won'tWhen Wendy Pfrenger's children started high school in the town of Oxford, Mississippi, she had the choice to enroll them in abstinence-only or abstinence-plus sex ed.Although the abstinence-plus option would include instruction on contraception, neither curriculum was required to provide medically accurate information. As a parent, she felt like the lessons her teens were receiving fell short of their reality. Continue reading...
Move could lead to escalation of war as Donald Trump has already called Mojtaba Khamenei an unacceptable' choice. Plus, stormy space weather may be garbling messages from aliens
ICE launched Operation Buckeye' and influencers' claimed Somalis are running fraudulent businesses after Trump repeatedly used racist language against group in DecemberThe men started showing up at around 6am in late December.In their cars, they circled the 161 Child Care facility in Columbus, before parking at the front of the building. Then they sat in their cars, opening their windows enough to tell the Somali Americans who own the daycare: We're exposing all of you. Every single one of you, you're all going back." Continue reading...
Exclusive: Bank Policy Institute, representing lenders such as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, argues that new licenses could harm US consumers and financial systemSome of the largest US banks are considering suing their financial regulator, arguing that a new raft of licenses for crypto, payment and fintech could put American consumers and the wider financial system at risk.The Bank Policy Institute (BPI), which represents 40 of the biggest US lenders including JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, is understood to be weighing its legal options after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) failed to heed repeated warnings from influential banking groups and state regulators over its reinterpretation of federal licensing rules. Continue reading...
Trump is choking off oil imports to the communist nation, plunging it into a crisis not seen since the fall of USSROn 29 January this year, after the kidnapping of Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro but before the assassination of Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei, President Trump turned his attention to another country. He issued an executive order declaring a national emergency against the government of Cuba, ruling it an unusual and extraordinary threat" to the United States and threatening to impose tariffs to stop ships from carrying petroleum to Cuba. It was an evident bid for regime change.The actions to deny oil to Cuba have severely exacerbated a growing crisis on the island, with even some US congressional representatives denouncing the measures. Cuba produces about one-third of its own oil needs and imports the rest - mostly from Venezuela and Mexico. After the US attack on Venezuela and the tariff threat, both countries completely halted oil exports to Cuba. Since early February, the length of daily power outages has doubled, lasting about 18 hours a day.Sara Kozameh is assistant professor in history at University of California San Diego Continue reading...
The company's clash with the Pentagon is a fight over the future of American privacyThe US military wants to use its state-of-the-art AI tools to supercharge surveillance against Americans, making it easier than ever to monitor our movements, our search history, and our private associations. That's one of the major takeaways from a dramatic dispute between the Department of Defense and some of the leading AI companies in America. What this clash highlights most of all, however, is just how easily AI surveillance systems can be turned against the people in this country, and the urgent need for Congress to intervene.Last week, the Pentagon and Donald Trump announced that the government would cease using Anthropic's AI products, asserting that the safety guardrails proposed by the company - no mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons - were unacceptable. The Trump administration went even further, claiming that these positions render Anthropic a supply chain risk", and prohibited anyone doing business with the US military from conducting commercial activity with Anthropic in their military work. Continue reading...
A new book traces how the Hall of Famer overcame humble beginnings in Indiana to take his place among basketball's greatest playersHow otherworldly was Larry Bird during his memorable season for Indiana State in 1978-79? At one point he made an assist while sprawled on the floor: From his end of the court, he made a one-armed throw to a teammate, who streaked coast-to-coast for a quick bucket.That season ended with an epic showdown in the NCAA championship game against Magic Johnson and Michigan State. Magic got the better of Bird in that game, but the contest had wider repercussions. Not only did it spark interest in the NCAA Tournament, but Bird and Magic would help revitalize the NBA, after Bird joined the Boston Celtics and Magic the Los Angeles Lakers. But none of this was preordained, especially Bird's trajectory. Continue reading...
Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE are finding their carefully projected image of stability has been blown awayThere is a tendency to think of the Gulf powers as static and unchanging. They are, after all, fortified by massive wealth and absolute monarchical rule, and secured with deep economic and military relationships with the US. The past week of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran, and Iran's retaliations, have brought into focus what these countries export (oil and gas) and what they import (tax avoiders and labour). But beyond thinking about energy-supply challenges to the global economy and engaging in the cheap and popular sport of smirking at influencers in war zones, we must remember that the current conflagration will have profound consequences for the entire region. This is not just about the US, Israel and Iran; it is about a complex, overlapping political order in the Middle East that is much more fragile than it looks.Amid all the ways the region has been changing over the past few years, the low-key evolution of three Gulf countries in particular has been the most significant. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have been rapidly making changes, the effects of which have been felt from Libya to Palestine. The 7 October attacks, which arguably set off the chain of events that led to this moment, were partly inspired by Hamas's desire to stop the normalisation process that Saudi Arabia was undertaking with Israel; this was following the UAE and others signing the 2020 Abraham accords with Israel. The three countries have been pursuing in different ways, often at odds with each other, ambitious global and regional agendas. And they are also much more unsteady than their decades-long familial rule suggests. Continue reading...
Lucia Osborne-Crowley has endured threats and sexual harassment to report on Jeffrey Epstein's chief enabler. Maxwell's conviction was only the start of the quest for justice, she saysOn 9 September 2022, Lucia Osborne-Crowley flew from London to Miami and caught a Greyhound bus north to West Palm Beach. The writer and journalist had arranged to meet Carolyn Andriano, who was abused by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell from the age of 14 until she was 17, starting in 2001. Andriano had been a crucial witness in the trial against Maxwell in 2021.When the two women met, Andriano said she had just been visited by a private investigator - a man in his 60s, who had heard she was talking to someone about a book. In a restaurant that afternoon, Osborne-Crowley was approached by a man in his 60s. What was she writing, he wanted to know. He offered her drugs, cash and a meeting with one of Epstein's pilots, then put his hands under her skirt. When the manager asked him to leave, he waited in the car park; Osborne-Crowley had to escape through a staff exit. Continue reading...
Sunday's attack brought death toll to at least 157 people since the Trump administration began targeting alleged narco-terrorists'The US military said it killed six men on Sunday in a strike on an alleged drug-smuggling vessel in the Eastern Pacific as part of the Trump administration's campaign against alleged traffickers.Sunday's attack brought the death toll to at least 157 people since the administration began targeting narco-terrorists" in small vessels in September. Continue reading...
Thom Tillis says he believes Miller has outsized influence' over operations of Trump's cabinet - key US politics stories from Sunday 8 March at a glanceThe Republican senator Thom Tillis said on Sunday that he believed the White House adviser Stephen Miller should go" and that his role in the Trump administration has been a big problem".The senior senator representing North Carolina, when asked on CNN's State of the Union if he thought Miller should go during a conversation about the administration's immigration crackdown, responded to the host Jake Tapper by stating: Oh, of course I do." Continue reading...
Conservative outlet aired footage of president saluting at similar ceremony in December for at least three broadcastsFox News used old video of Donald Trump in multiple reports on Saturday and Sunday, concealing from viewers that the commander-in-chief wore a golf hat throughout a ceremony on Saturday in which he saluted six flag-draped transfer cases carrying the remains of the first US troops to die in his war on Iran.The president had stirred outrage online by failing to remove his Trump-brand white hat during the ritual homecoming at Dover air force base in Delaware on Saturday for six army reserve soldiers killed in Kuwait. Continue reading...
by Edward Helmore and Associated Press on (#7439B)
Two men are in custody in connection with incident after anti-Islam demonstrators clashed with counterprotestersNew York police have confirmed that an improvised explosive device was thrown outside Zohran Mamdani's official residence on Saturday when anti-Islam demonstrators, led by rightwing influencer Jake Lang, clashed with counterprotesters.New York police commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed that a preliminary bomb squad analysis of the device that was ignited and thrown during the protest had determined that it is not a hoax device or a smoke bomb". Continue reading...
by Pablo Iglesias Maurer at M&T Bank Stadium on (#743CP)
DC United sought to use the occasion to woo Charm City, but another flat loss put Miami's quality in sharp reliefThe pregame scene outside Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium on Saturday likely felt familiar to anybody who has followed Lionel Messi's time in Major League Soccer. Fans milled about, forming a colorful patchwork of Inter Miami pink, the light blue and white of Argentina's national team, and in this case, the purple of the NFL's Baltimore Ravens. Others simply came in whatever soccer jersey they happened to own, all the way down to indoor soccer's Baltimore Blast, the closest thing the city normally gets to top-flight soccer.What there wasn't a lot of was DC United black and red. Despite its proximity to the nation's capital, Baltimore isn't exactly DC United country, and as far as decision-makers at United are concerned, that was an opportunity. The club moved the Miami match away from their usual home, the 20,000-capacity Audi Field, to maximize ticket sales, but also to put themselves on display to potential fans in Charm City, a market they've badly wanted to engage for years. DC are in the process of starting an MLS Next Pro team in the city, and they've partnered with Baltimore's local government to construct a stadium here for that club. Continue reading...
Chris Wright says price increase would last weeks, not months, and that US would not target Iran's energy industryChris Wright, the US Department of Energy secretary, said on Sunday that the spike in energy prices would last weeks, at the worst, not months, and that the US would not target Iran's energy industry.His comments come amid rising anxiety that Iran's response to the US-Israel strikes, which caused a reduction in shipping through the strait of Hormuz and production slowdowns in some oil and gas producing states in the Middle East, may cause broad economic turbulence and higher inflation. Continue reading...
Lake, whom Trump appointed without Senate confirmation to run Voice of America parent agency, cut over 1,000 jobsA federal judge ruled Saturday that Kari Lake unlawfully led the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) for several months last year and voided mass layoffs and other actions taken during that period to dismantle the agency.The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is an independent federal agency that oversees the Voice of America (VOA), the US's largest and oldest international broadcaster, and provides grants to Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other news agencies. Continue reading...
Thom Tillis, who called for the resignation or firing of DHS secretary Kristi Noem, says White House adviser should go'Republican Senator Thom Tillis said on Sunday he believes White House adviser Stephen Miller should go" and that his role in the Trump administration has been a big problem".The senior senator representing North Carolina, when asked on CNN's State of the Union if he thinks Miller should go, during a conversation about the administration's immigration crackdown, responded to host Jake Tapper stating Oh, of course I do." Continue reading...
On Thursday, a 22-year-old from Iowa was arrested in the murders of three women he had no connection toAt a trailhead not far from the sprawling red cliffs and canyons of Utah's Capitol Reef national park, two men went looking for their wives who were overdue to return from a hike on Wednesday afternoon.They came upon a grisly scene. Natalie Graves, 34, and her aunt, 65-year-old Linda Dewey, had been killed and left in a parched creek bed, according to court documents. A Bureau of Land Management ranger responding to the area noted spent shell casings near their bodies. The white Subaru they had come in was missing. Continue reading...
The US head coach has built a deep and talented pool of players as next summer's tournament in Brazil approachesThe US women's national team won the SheBelieves Cup on Saturday, capping the three-game friendly tournament with a 1-0 win over Colombia. Alyssa Thompson finally broke the deadlock in a game largely dominated by the hosts.The Chelsea winger sent an inch-perfect shot into the upper corner in the 81st minute to notch her fourth international goal. Continue reading...
As the Iran disaster escalates, Starmer should treat the US president as someone whose actions threaten the lawful, democratic way of life everywhereNine days in, the conduct of the unjustified, illegal US-Israel war against Iran grows ever-more disproportionate, dishonourable and deranged. The torpedoing of an Iranian navy ship off Sri Lanka by a US submarine demonstrated that for reckless Donald Trump, the whole world is his battlefield. Diplomacy, treacherously sabotaged by Washington, has been replaced by unceasing airstrikes that are murdering and maiming hundreds of Iranian civilians. Trump's White House increasingly resembles a madhouse. War aims shift daily. A clueless, rambling president insists he must help pick Iran's next ayatollah. Meanwhile, his secretary for war", Pete Hegseth, rants manically about killing without mercy.Nine days in, it's clear Iran's leaders, those who survive, are not going to roll over in a repeat of Trump's Venezuela coup. Their forces, though drastically outgunned, are succeeding in spreading pain across the Middle East, inundating defences with waves of drones and missiles. That's no surprise. Iran warned of a region-wide conflict if attacked again. Trump is now at war with US allies, too, having adopted George W Bush's crude Iraq war for us or against us" maxim. The Gulf Arabs - and cruelly battered Lebanon - just want it to stop. Britain and Europe mostly want no part of it, but are being sucked in anyway. The global economy is tumbling into crisis. In Trump's war on the world, there are no heroes, only victims. Spain's defiant leader, Pedro Sanchez, is one exception. Continue reading...
Parnas, who worked with Rudy Giuliani to find or manufacture dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine, says he woke up'Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian American businessman who served a 20-month sentence for campaign contributions to Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, that secretly came from a Russian oligarch, has announced a bid to unseat Maria Elvira Salazar, a Cuban American Republican who is in her third term as representative for Florida's 27th congressional district.Parnas rose to national attention during Trump's first impeachment trial in 2019, when it emerged that he had been the first to ask Trump to remove the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and then worked with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani to press Ukrainian officials to make false claims about corruption by Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Continue reading...
A huge column of fire and smoke could be seen rising from an oil depot in the Iranian capital in video shared on social media.Footage from central Tehran shows fires across the skyline as the US and Israel hit five oil facilities in overnight strikes in and near the city, an official told state TV.A fresh wave of Iranian strikes hit the Gulf on Sunday, with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait all reporting attacks
The US was an oligarchy well before Trump's first term. Recognizing this reality is essential to building a true democracySince Donald Trump returned to the White House, American political life has taken on a familiar rhythm. Each week brings another court ruling framed as a breaking point, another election cast as the last real one, another executive order described as the moment it all finally tips over the edge, another person murdered by a government that's finally gone too far. Democratic party fundraising emails promise to save the Republic". Commentators warn that the guardrails are giving way. Anxious citizens refresh their screens, waiting for the collapse of American democracy.This state of permanent panic rests on what Sigmund Freud called an illusion: a belief embraced not because it reflects reality, but because it satisfies a psychological need. The illusion in this case is that the United States still has a democracy to lose. The more unsettling truth is that Americans are not living under threat of future democratic breakdown; we are living inside the aftermath of one that has already occurred.Eric Reinhart is a political anthropologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Continue reading...
As political depression' enters public discourse, therapists are encouraging people to engage with their communitiesWhen Rebecca McFaul woke up in her small farmhouse in Logan, Utah, on a cold January day, she felt the same way she'd been feeling for months: A certain kind of terror and horror at it all." Most of her family lives in Minnesota, and for weeks, she'd watched from afar as families were taken by agents, activists were shot and tear gas hung in the air.A music professor at Utah State University, she'd spent the day with her students, but struggled to focus. Then she came home and read more bad news, this time, a piece in the newspaper about two Maga influencers railing against the dangers of compassion in response to the detainment of 5-year-old Liam Ramos in Minneapolis. It was such a betrayal on every level," McFaul said. Of sisterhood, of motherhood, of decency." Continue reading...
Critics say brash, bombastic Fox News host out of his depth to guide US military through murky new Middle East conflictBrash and bellicose, he sounded more like a cartoon bully than a sombre statesman. Death and destruction from the sky all day long," Pete Hegseth, wearing a red, white and and blue tie and pocket square, bragged to reporters at the Pentagon near Washington. This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they're down, which is exactly how it should be."Hegseth, 45, a former Fox News TV host who now commands the world's most powerful military, has this week become the face of Donald Trump's war in Iran. That has set off for alarm bells for critics who warn that the Secretary of Defense - pointedly rebranded Secretary of War" - has rapidly transformed the Pentagon into the staging ground for an ideological and religious crusade. Continue reading...
Founder of family-owned firm says it will pause acquisitions after takeover of 15 Compass Coffee stores in USCaffe Nero will continue opening new shops in the UK and overseas, but has warned coffee prices are likely to keep rising as the war in Iran and higher staffing costs feed through.The family-owned business, which has just bought the 15-store Compass Coffee based in Washington DC to convert to its main brand, is aiming to open as many as 30 UK stores and between 50 and 70 more this year across the 10 other countries it operates in. Continue reading...
Deployment of US ground troops could be discussed later on and would be a great thing' says president Trump. Key US politics stories from 7 March at a glanceAs the war in the Middle East rages on, US president Donald Trump has acknowledged that deploying ground troops in Iran in future is not off the table.Pressed by the Guardian on whether he would send in troops to secure the enriched uranium, believed to be stored at Iranian nuclear sites that the United States bombed in Operation Midnight Hammer last year, Trump suggested that was a possibility. Continue reading...
US president attends dignified transfer' of remains of soldiers killed in Kuwait drone strike wearing USA' golf capDonald Trump on Saturday joined the families of six US soldiers killed in the war in the Middle East during a dignified transfer ritual at Dover air force base.A dignified transfer" is when the remains of US service members killed in action are returned to the US. Continue reading...
In Miami, president calls for regional cooperation to counter Chinese economic and political interestsDonald Trump changed the channel from Iran to the western hemisphere on Saturday, convening a gathering of Latin American leaders at his Miami-area golf club to discuss regional interests and establishing what he called a counter-cartel coalition".Just as we formed a coalition to eradicate Isis, we now need a coalition to eradicate the cartels," he told 12 regional leaders gathered at what the White House called the Shield of the Americas" summit. Continue reading...
California state superintendent says mother and sons arrested during ICE check-in and deported to ColombiaCalifornia's superintendent is calling for the return of a hearing-impaired six-year-old after he, his mother and his five-year-old sibling were detained on Tuesday while reporting for their check-in at an ICE office in San Francisco and deported to Colombia.Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez and her sons were arrested during their visit to ICE's Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (Isap), said Alameda County Immigration Legal and Education Partnership (ACILEP). A relative who was waiting outside for Gutierrez and her sons was unable to hand off the assistive devices necessary for the six-year-old, who is deaf and has a cochlear implant. Continue reading...
The attorney general faces a subpoena over the Epstein files. She won't say much - but Democrats are calling for her ousterAfter spending $220m of taxpayer money on an advertising campaign in which she demanded migrants self-deport, Kristi Noem is now being forced to make a hasty exit of her own. On Thursday, Donald Trump announced that his luxury-jet-loving homeland security secretary was being shipped off to become special envoy for the Shield of the Americas", a new security" summit that Trump has dreamed up. Markwayne Mullin, a former mixed-martial artist and Republican senator, will replace her.Noem's ouster was a long time coming. But it's worth stressing that she doesn't seem to have lost her job because of the many controversies that have plagued her tenure, including the killing of two US citizens by immigration agents. Rather, she committed the cardinal sin of making Trump look stupid. Which, to be fair, isn't hard.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
The Guardian spoke to adults now in their 20s, 30s, and 40s to reflect on the lasting impact of family separation in the USJesus usually came home from school to a raucous scene: the family TV blaring, his mom loudly cooking dinner and his two young sisters fighting about nothing in particular. When his dad came home from work, they'd all gather around the kitchen table for dinner.But this day was different. Continue reading...
Review of FDA records by the Environmental Working Group reveals firms are exploiting rule to send new chemicals in food systemMore than 100 substances widely used in common US foods, supplements and beverages underwent no health and safety review by the US Food and Drug Administration, a new analysis of federal records finds.The review of FDA records by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) non-profit reveals that diverse products across the food pyramid, such as Capri Sun drinks, Kettle and Fire organic broth, Acme smoked fish, and Quaker Oats snack bars, use a range of substances that have not undergone review by regulators. Continue reading...
Takeshi Ebisawa, sentenced to 20 years in prison last week, believed he was selling weapons-grade plutonium to IranA plot to supply Iran's nuclear weapons program, heroin from the Golden Triangle, Burmese ethnic insurgents and rocket launchers were the subject in courtroom 24A in New York's federal courthouse last week when a man described as a leader in Japan's Yakuza organized crime syndicate was sentenced to 20 years in prison.The transnational plot, which the US Drug Enforcement Administration had been investigating since 2019, involved Japanese organised crime leader Takeshi Ebisawa, who along with three Thai men, had been arrested in New York in 2022. Continue reading...
The administration has been accused of failing to comply with hundreds of orders. The courts must not be paper tigersLate last month, a Minnesota federal court judge, Patrick Schiltz, issued an opinion detailing hundreds of instances in which the Trump administration has failed to comply with court orders. He threatened to find it in contempt and to impose penalties.Schiltz and other federal judges have made such threats before, but they have not followed through. It is time they did, lest they turn their courts into paper tigers. Continue reading...
US news | The Guardian