Governor declared emergency in several counties, with near white-out snow conditions in parts of the Sierra NevadaA powerful winter storm swept across California on Wednesday, with heavy rain and gusty winds leading to evacuation warnings for mudslides in parts of the southern part of the state, bringing near white-out snow conditions in the mountains and hazardous travel for millions of holiday drivers.California's governor, Gavin Newsom, declared a state of emergency in several counties, including Los Angeles. Continue reading...
Joyce Beatty seeks to remove the president's name from the newly minted Trump-Kennedy Center'Democratic US representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio sued Donald Trump on Monday to seek the removal of his name from the John F Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington DC.The lawsuit from Beatty, an ex-officio trustee on the board, argued that the vote to rename the Kennedy Center is a flagrant violation" of law as congressional approval is required for such an action. Continue reading...
Judge said cuts were another example' of Trump administration tying state assistance to its immigration crackdownA federal judge has blocked the Trump administration's efforts to reduce federal homeland security funding, including for disasters, for states that do not comply with immigration enforcement policies.US district judge Mary McElroy of Rhode Island, a 2018 Trump appointee, ruled on Monday that the latest case was another example" of the Trump administration tying state and local government assistance to its immigration crackdown. Continue reading...
More than a year after the storm ripped apart families and farms, growers are bullish about strength of their industryChristmas tree farmers in western North Carolina are still rebuilding from last year's devastating Hurricane Helene, but growers are optimistic about business and the overall strength of their industry in the region.There's still a lot of recovery that needs to happen, but we're in much better shape than we were this time last year ... sales are good," Kevin Gray, owner of Hickory Creek Farm Christmas Trees in Greensboro, said earlier this month, while the buying season was in full swing. Continue reading...
The city is responding with strategized resistance' as masked men roam the streets carrying out immigration raids at traffic stops, supermarkets and courthousesAny Lucia Lopez Belloza will not be home for Christmas. The 19-year-old freshman was on a business scholarship at Babson College near Boston, when she decided to take a surprise flight home to Austin, Texas, to spend Thanksgiving with her parents and sisters.Just before she boarded her flight at Logan airport on 20 November, she was arrested by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and within 48 hours was deported back to Honduras, a country she left aged seven seeking asylum, with chains on her waist, ankles and wrists. Continue reading...
Tashkent Supermarket's new West Village location offers staples like plov and samsas hot and fresh - a taste of Central Asia for everyoneWhen I first stepped into the Tashkent Supermarket in Brighton Beach, I could barely get around. The store was bustling, packed with the familiar unsmiling faces of post-Soviet people eager to get their hands on foods like manty - intricately shaped dumplings filled with minced beef, onion and, depending on where you're from, pumpkin for the subtle sweetness. Or chak-chak, a dessert made of small pieces of fried golden dough held together by honey syrup. Kompot, too, a drink made by simmering seasonal or dried fruits.Growing up in Kazakhstan, these were staples in school cafeterias and at home. Manty was one of the first dishes my mom taught me to make - I thought she was a magician, the way she rolled the stretchy dough out so wide and thin, yet thick enough to hold the filling without tearing. I was rarely allowed to have soda or sugary drinks, but homemade kompot with fruits and berries from our garden was an exception. And though I never mastered chak-chak, the store-bought version was always a treat. As I got older and traveled across other former Soviet republics, I found comfort in knowing I would always find plov and samsas at eateries in Moscow, Baku and Tbilisi. Continue reading...
Water treatment and landfill companies given chance to make case that EPA rules should not apply to themRepublicans are attempting to exempt some major polluters from paying for Pfas forever chemical" cleanup. If successful, it could mark a major setback in US effort to rein in Pfas pollution.The Republican-led House energy and commerce committee recently held a hearing at which it invited representatives from the water treatment and landfill industries, among others, to make the case about why they should be exempted from rules that hold polluters financially accountable for the cleanup of two types of dangerous Pfas. Continue reading...
Critics compare offensive to Iraq war, citing familiar mix of regime-change rhetoric, security pretexts and oil interestsDonald Trump's recent claims that the US should keep Venezuelan oil from seized tankers are part of a broader belief in rightwing resource imperialism", experts say.In recent weeks, the Trump administration has escalated pressure on Venezuela, invoking drug-trafficking claims. This month, the US intercepted two tankers carrying Venezuelan oil and began pursuing a third, while intensifying its campaign against the country's president, Nicolas Maduro. Continue reading...
Critics say deployment is unwarranted and could cause fear in the city, which has seen a decrease in violent crime ratesThe Trump administration is deploying 350 national guard troops to New Orleans ahead of the new year, launching another federal deployment in the city at the same time that an immigration crackdown led by border patrol is under way.Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said on Tuesday that guard members, as they have in other deployments in large cities, will be tasked with supporting federal law enforcement partners, including the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Parnell added that the national guard troops will be deployed through February. Continue reading...
Trump has shown erratic and bizarre behavior throughout the year, leading to questions about his mental acuityIn an address from the White House in December, Donald Trump claimed that, over the past 11 months, his administration had brought more positive change" than any government in US history.There has never been anything like it," Trump added.America is respected again as a country. We were not respected with Biden. They looked at him falling down stairs every day. Every day, the guy's falling down stairs."I said: It's not our president. We can't have it.' I'm very careful, you know, when I walk downstairs for - like I'm on stairs, like these stairs, I'm very - I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record, just try not to fall because it doesn't work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy.We don't want that. Need to walk nice and easy. You not have - you don't have to set any record. Be cool, be cool when you walk down, but don't, don't bop down the stairs. That's the one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs, I've never seen - da da da da da da, bop, bop, bop, he'd go down the stairs, wouldn't hold on. I said, it's great, I don't want to do it. I guess I could do it, but eventually bad things are going to happen and it only takes once, but he did a lousy job as president." Continue reading...
Francisco Gaspar-Andres died in El Paso hospital after being detained at Fort Bliss - his wife was deported to Guatemala without a chance to see himA Guatemalan man has become the first person to die in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Fort Bliss army base in Texas. His wife of 25 years was deported from the same camp without a chance to see her dying husband.Francisco Gaspar-Andres, 48, died on 3 December at a hospital in El Paso, as Democratic lawmakers and immigration advocates were ramping up demands that the camp be closed down amid allegations of inhumane conditions there. The DHS has said such allegations are categorically false". Continue reading...
Americans are not paying high prices because of other western countries. Pharmaceutical companies are to blameWhen Donald Trump spoke about drug prices on 19 December, he struck a familiar note. Americans, he said, were paying far too much for medicines - and it was everyone else's fault.There would be no talk of reining in private insurers or pharmaceutical profits. Instead, Trump blamed foreign governments for getting a better deal. Countries like France, Germany and Japan, he argued, were piggybacking on the United States by keeping their drug prices low.Susi Geiger and Theo Bourgeron are the authors of Peak Pharma: Toward a New Political Economy of Health (Oxford University Press) Continue reading...
by Katharine Viner, Annie Kelly, Eleanor Biggs, Jem T on (#72CCQ)
It has been a year dominated by Donald Trump. It has not yet even been 12 full months since his return to the White House in January but already the changes he has wrought - both in the US and around the world - seemed scarcely conceivable in 2024.
From the Super Bowl to UFC cards to the US Open to the Ryder Cup, the US president has turned sport into his own personal stage. There's more to comeConsidering he's the self-declared hardest working president to ever hold the office, Donald Trump has spent a remarkable amount of the past year away from it. In 2025, he loomed over sports like no American politician before him, his visits to stadiums and arenas and golf courses and race tracks so frequent they began to feel like part of the job. But if Trump's presence on the sporting scene has seemed hard to escape, gird yourselves for 2026, when the American presidency no longer merely intersects with sport but threatens to subsume it. The World Cup is on the way, the Olympics are right behind it, a UFC card is coming to the White House lawn (not a joke) and the commander-in-chief's well-documented fondness for jumbotrons is becoming less of a habit than a dependency.Trump's grand tour sportif began less than three weeks after his second inauguration, when he become the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl. One week later he was at the Daytona 500, where Air Force One buzzed the speedway on arrival before his armored limousine, The Beast", paced the field for a couple of ceremonial laps. Continue reading...
Portland Fire are set for their debut season in the WNBA. Their coach has completed an unlikely journey to the top of his sportAs an aspiring basketball coach in his teens and early 20s, Alex Sarama was often met with snickers when he talked about the game he loved. For the British-born Sarama, who on 28 October was named the head coach of the WNBA's newest expansion team, the Portland Fire, people doubted him before he even put two sentences together.There was a lot of skepticism," he tells the Guardian. A lot of coaches heard the accent and they'd say straight away this Alex guy can't coach!" Continue reading...
The surprisingly strong growth reflected increases in consumer spending, exports and government spending', according to officials. Key US politics stories from Tuesday 23 DecemberThe US economy surged over the summer, the commerce department announced on Tuesday, with gross domestic product (GDP) - a broad measure of the value of goods and services - rising at an annualized rate of 4.3% over the third quarter, far higher than expected and its fastest rate in two years.The report comes as polls show Americans have soured on Donald Trump's handling of the economy and his tariffs. The supreme court is currently weighing legal challenges to those levies. Continue reading...
Kimberlee Singler was arrested in London in 2023, a week after her daughter, 9, and son, 7, found dead in ColoradoAn American woman accused of killing two of her children after a Colorado judge demanded she comply with a custody order has been extradited from Britain, where she was arrested, to the United States to face charges.Kimberlee Singler was arrested in Kensington, west London, by officers from the UK's National Crime Agency in December 2023, a week after her nine-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son were found dead in their home in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Continue reading...
Five additional people unaccounted for after partial building collapse at Silver Lake center in Bristol TownshipAn explosion at a nursing home just outside Philadelphia collapsed part of the building and has left at least two people dead, and five others unaccounted for. The exact number of those injured and trapped inside has yet to be announced, authorities said.The electric company Peco said in a statement that crews responded to reports of a gas odor at the site around 2pm. While crews were on site, an explosion occurred at the facility," the statement said. PECO crews shut off natural gas and electric service to the facility to ensure the safety of first responders and local residents." Continue reading...
Known as Tea Tyme, Tynesha McCarty-Wroten arrested over 3 November death of Darren Lucas in Zion, IllinoisThe social media creator who allegedly hit and killed a pedestrian as she hosted a livestream while simultaneously driving through a Chicago suburb has been arrested, according to authorities.Known best to her online followers as Tea Tyme, Tynesha McCarty-Wroten was arrested Tuesday for her role in the 3 November death of 59-year-old Darren Lucas, said Lt Paul Kehrli of the Zion, Illinois, police department. Continue reading...
In a 6-3 decision, the high court sided with a lower court ruling that blocked deployment of troops to the Illinois cityThe US supreme court refused on Tuesday to let Donald Trump send national guard troops to the Chicago area, in an important reining-in of the US president's efforts to expand the use of the military for domestic purposes in historic moves against a growing number of Democratic-led jurisdictions.The nation's highest court denied the US justice department's request to lift a judge's order in October that has blocked the deployment of hundreds of national guard personnel in a legal challenge brought by Illinois state officials and local leaders, who had opposed any federalization of those troops to offer backup to immigration enforcement. Continue reading...
Files also include details about Epstein's relationship with Larry Summers and apparently fake letter to Larry NassarA newly released batch of the so-called Epstein files on Tuesday includes many references to Donald Trump, including a claim by a senior US attorney that the US president was on a flight in the 1990s with the now-deceased convicted child sex offender and a 20-year-old woman.There is no indication of whether the woman was a victim of any crime, and being included in the files does not indicate any criminal wrongdoing. Continue reading...
Department of Veterans Affairs says justice department found procedure not to be legally soundThe Department of Veterans Affairs can no longer provide abortions to veterans, including in cases of rape or incest, following a Department of Justice memo that found last week that the practice was not legally sound.The ban follows months of efforts by the Trump administration to roll back a Biden-era policy that, for the first time, permitted the VA to counsel veterans and their families about abortion, as well as offer the procedure in cases of rape or incest, or when a veteran's pregnancy imperiled their health. In August, the administration filed paperwork to officially roll back the policy, which had helped the VA's network of 1,300-plus healthcare facilities - which treat nearly 10 million veterans each year - expand access to abortion, especially in the wake of the US supreme court's 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade. Continue reading...
A Drag Queen Christmas, featuring artists from RuPaul's Drag Race, will stop in Pensacola despite the state attorney general's efforts to stop itA drag queen Christmas tour has become an annual holiday tradition in Florida - and in recent years, so has the ensuing backlash.Now in its 11th year, A Drag Queen Christmas, featuring performers from RuPaul's Drag Race, will stop in the Florida Panhandle city of Pensacola on Tuesday night, despite state officials' best efforts to cancel the show for what they claim is an anti-Christian" performance at a city-owned theater. Continue reading...
Weiss ought to cut her losses, green-light the piece, and try to start acting like an editor - not like a cog in the machine of authoritarian politics and oligarchyOne tries to give people the benefit of the doubt. But now, when it comes to Bari Weiss as the editor in chief of CBS News, there is no longer any doubt.
Documents released in relation to Jeffrey Epstein contain emails between Maxwell and an individual signing off as A' and The Invisible Man'Emails between Ghislaine Maxwell and an individual signing off as A" are among the largest dump yet of documents released by the US Department of Justice in relation to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.While A" - who also refers to themselves as The Invisible Man" - is not explicitly identified in the emails, they include key details that corroborate the suggestion that they are Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was then still a working royal known as Prince Andrew. Continue reading...
Un-redacted text from released documents began circulating on social media on Monday eveningPeople examining documents released by the Department of Justice in the Jeffrey Epstein case discovered that some of the file redaction can be undone with Photoshop techniques, or by simply highlighting text to paste into a word processing file.Un-redacted text from these documents began circulating through social media on Monday evening. An exhibit in a civil case in the Virgin Islands against Darren K Indyke and Richard D Kahn, two executors of Epstein's estate, contains redacted allegations explaining how Epstein and his associates had facilitated the sexual abuse of children. The exhibit was the second amended complaint in the state case against Indyke and Kahn. Continue reading...
Tips include flushing rat, squirt soap into toilet or if the rat is too large close toilet lid and call pest control expertsResidents in Washington state have been told to be aware of unwanted festive visitors before Santa comes down the chimney - rats coming up from the toilet.Health officials in Washington warned that recent flooding in the state may sweep rodents into the sewer systems". In a Facebook post, the Seattle and King county public health department wrote: If a rat visits your toilet, take a deep breath and follow these tips," before outlining the steps to take if a rodent emerges from your commode. Continue reading...
by Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent on (#72BWC)
Former Barclays boss and ex-US Treasury secretary named in versions of will of convicted child sex offenderThe former Barclays chief executive Jes Staley and the ex-US Treasury secretary Larry Summers were appointed as executors of Jeffrey Epstein's estate, according to a newly released tranche of documents linked to the deceased child sex offender.Filings published on Tuesday by the US Department of Justice included various versions of Epstein's last will and testament, which showed the financier intended to hand responsibility of managing his affairs to associates including the two high-profile men in the event of his death. Continue reading...
Inmates' escape from DeKalb county jail discovered during routine security check early MondayThree inmates who escaped from a jail east of Atlanta, including one who was being held on a murder charge, have been apprehended in Florida, a member of a federal fugitive taskforce confirmed.Eric Heinze, assistant chief inspector with the US Marshals Service Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force, declined to share further details ahead of a news conference planned in Atlanta later on Tuesday. Continue reading...
by Andrew Lawrence in Gainesville, Georgia on (#72BWJ)
After years of fatalities and bizarre incidents, the Georgia reservoir has spawned countless ghost stories. Are they merely legend or the after-effects of a history steeped in racial trauma?Kile Glover was the entertainer in the family, the pride of his stepfather, the R&B superstar Usher. He sang, he danced - he burned CDs of his own music, styled the covers with self-made art and was otherwise expressing his creativity in internet videos before it was trendy. He would've been a YouTube sensation by now," says his mother, the celebrity stylist Tameka Foster. But that future was thwarted on a family trip to Lake Lanier, just outside his Atlanta home town, in July 2012.Kile was only 11 when he was struck by a speeding jetski while tubing and knocked unconscious. Foster, on the island of Saint Martin at the time, managed to get to Kile's hospital bedside within hours thanks to Usher sending a private plane - an olive branch that came amid a bitterly public custody battle over their two younger sons. As Kile lay on life support, Foster passed the time Googling for information about Lake Lanier. She is still horrified by what she learned. Continue reading...
The very same immigrants welcomed to the US after risking their lives to fight the Taliban now fear detention or worseAli was 25 and a pilot for the Afghan air force, just like his father before him; he arrived at the special mission wing 777 airbase in Kabul around 11am one day in August 2021.The moment he stepped through the gates, he sensed something was wrong. Continue reading...
As chief of staff, she has stifled her temptation to intervene time and time againSusie Wiles has the gimlet eye of an alcoholic's daughter. She is always on edge, vigilant to the slightest movement, fearful of sudden danger, and has learned to withdraw herself from the chaos in order to survive. She is keenly observant, sees through people around her who are not drinkers to decipher their underlying motives that might flare into unexpected menace, and practiced in passive aggression of which her interview with Vanity Fair is a classic case study.
A growing group has found community around Cincinnati. Trump's ICE crackdown threatens to send them back to Mauritania, rife with human rights issuesMusician Khalidou Sy recalls the night his concert was shut down before he was taken away by the Mauritanian police and jailed for five days.While he was never given a reason for his detention, in his show Sy criticized the lack of electricity available to the Mauritanian public and called on the authorities to make a change. Continue reading...
US government continues holding on to massive amounts of seized personal property, from diaries to cellphonesGeorgia's historic racketeering case in connection with opposition to the police training center known as Cop City continues hanging over the heads of 61 defendants, drawing into focus the state's continuing possession of hundreds of cellphones, laptops and personal items.The state's case is believed to be the largest ever leveled against a protest or social movement using Rico, a law created to go after the mafia and usually associated with organized crime but here deployed against a largely environmental and criminal justice-focused movement. Continue reading...
by Tiago Rogero South America correspondent on (#72BTP)
Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro warns Trump administration may destabilise the entire region' amid rising tensionsWhile all eyes are on the four-month-long US military campaign against Venezuela, the White House has been quietly striking security agreements with other countries to deploy US troops across Latin America and the Caribbean.As Donald Trump announced a blockade on oil tankers under sanctions and ordered the seizure of vessels amid airstrikes that have killed more than 100 people in the Caribbean and the Pacific, the US secured military deals with Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru and Trinidad and Tobago in the past week alone. Continue reading...
Across the US, people have been carrying their passports amid reports of citizens being detained. Five people explain what living this reality is likeAcross the United States, citizens say they have started carrying their passports with them through their daily activities as widespread immigration raids create a pervasive climate of fear, and reports of citizens being detained circulate in the media.The Guardian talked to people living this reality. Continue reading...
By representing its region's distinct culture and players, the Canadian Premier League team aims to boost the province's undoubted soccer potentialBoulevard Saint-Laurent is one of Montreal's great arteries, a throughway for gourmands coveting smoked meat sandwiches or proper pizza at one of a dozen different joints in Little Italy. It's also home to Evangelista Sports, a shop that has doubled as a shrine to the city's soccer-obsessed for more than 40 years and is every bit a part of Montreal's cultural fabric as poutine or lamenting the cold.It's also where FC Supra du Quebec opted to announce their first-ever signings last week. The Canadian Premier League (CPL) expansion team is looking to become part of the city and province's cultural identity, hoping their commitment to recruiting a full roster of Quebec-born or raised players, inspired by European clubs like Athletic Bilbao, will go a long way in helping to build a pathway which has so often seen talent slip through the cracks. Continue reading...
This normalization of gun violence in the US - who is it serving? Why can we not collectively make this not normal again?On her first day of fourth grade, wearing her magenta spectacles, my daughter Anna arrived to the Big School where she couldn't reach the drinking fountains. She was small for her age, in terms of stature, though she had big ideas.I went to pick her up that afternoon, the first day of school, and I looked eagerly at all the young faces streaming out the door, but no Anna. The high schoolers flooded out, then the middle schoolers. Still no Anna. I started to get that mother panic vibration thing in my belly and I called the lower middle school office.Sarah Ruhl is a playwright, essayist, teacher, mother of three and Brown University graduate. Her most recent book is Lessons from my Teachers, from preschool to the present. Her collaboration with A Great Big World, the musical Wonder, is at American Repertory Theater in Boston through February Continue reading...
Liberal democracies view Putin's Russia as a bully - and Trump's US as an angry drunk with a bazooka. The response is pure venomThere are people who argue that Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine is not motivated by fears or imperial ambitions, but by other countries' disrespect. Russia once commanded authority as one of the world's two superpowers, but it has since forfeited that status. It knows it has lost the respect of other countries (Barack Obama famously dismissed Russia as just a regional power"), and the Ukraine war is its way of winning it back.What is perhaps surprising is that Donald Trump's turn against Europe has similar motivations. Putin knows his aggressive revanchism won't win Russia any love among countries whose respect he craves. But if he can't be loved, he hopes at least to be feared. If you are in a social order that regards you as inferior, you have every incentive to turn spoiler.Henry Farrell is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University. Sergey Radchenko is Wilson E Schmidt distinguished professor at the Henry A Kissinger Center, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies Continue reading...
Decision comes amid growing public support for Guan Heng - who secretly filmed detention facilities in China - after he illegally entered US by boatThe Department of Homeland Security has dropped its plan to deport a Chinese national who entered the country illegally, two rights activists have said, after his plight raised public concerns that if deported the man would be punished by Beijing for helping expose human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang region.Rayhan Asat, a human rights lawyer who assisted in the case, said Guan Heng's lawyer received a letter from the department stating its decision to withdraw its request to send Guan to Uganda. Asat said she now expected Guan's asylum case to proceed smoothly and favourably". Continue reading...
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