The US will officially recognize Juneteenth as a federal holiday on 19 June after Joe Biden signed a bill into law which commemorates the end of slavery in the country. The president described a day to remember the moral stain of slavery but also to celebrate the capacity to heal. Before signing the bill, Biden said: 'I’ve only been president for several months, but I think this will go down for me as one of the greatest honors I will have had as president'

Biden signs bill at jubilant ceremony as US takes steps to confront shameful historyThe US will officially recognize Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in America, as a federal holiday after Joe Biden signed a bill into law on Thursday.At a jubilant White House ceremony, the president emphasized the need for the US to reckon with its history, even when that history is shameful. Continue reading...

The commemoration marks when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached Texas on 19 June 1865, ending slaveryThe United States will soon have a new federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the nation.Congress has approved a bill that would make Juneteenth, or 19 June, a holiday – a bill Joe Biden is expected to sign into law. Continue reading...

Michael Fanone said on Wednesday he was ‘very cordial’ in interaction with Andrew Clyde in Capitol elevator earlier that dayA Republican congressman “ran as quickly as he could, like a coward” when a police officer injured in the attack on Congress on 6 January saw him and tried to shake his hand, the officer said.“I was very cordial,” Michael Fanone told CNN on Wednesday of his interaction with Andrew Clyde, in a Capitol elevator earlier that day. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

• Lawyer tried to extort millions of dollars from Nike• Avenatti represented Stormy Daniels against Donald TrumpProsecutors have urged a judge to impose a “very substantial” prison sentence on Michael Avenatti for trying to extort millions of dollars from the sports giant Nike.Prosecutors noted in a Manhattan federal court submission on Wednesday that probation office officials recommend an eight-year prison term for the California attorney who gained fame three years ago through his representation of the adult-film producer and actor Stormy Daniels against the then president, Donald Trump. Continue reading...

Coalition emerged because medical marijuana users are barred from holding firearms permitsGun rights and medical marijuana legal reform advocates are seeking to join forces in Minnesota, where they hope to petition the federal government to drop its severe classification of marijuana.The coalition of strange political bedfellows has emerged because medical marijuana users are barred from holding firearms permits, as the federal government designates marijuana a schedule I illegal drug – on a par with heroin, LSD and ecstasy – unsafe and without medicinal benefit. Continue reading...

Heatwave blankets US south-west as officials call on residents to avoid putting ‘undue stress on the electric grid’California and Texas urged residents to conserve energy to reduce stress on the grid and avoid outages as homes and businesses crank up air conditioners to escape a scorching heatwave blanketing the US south-west.Related: US supreme court upholds Obamacare, preserving healthcare for millions – live Continue reading...

Some members of Congress were given advanced details about Pentagon report, which is scheduled to be released before 25 JuneA group of senior American politicians have warned that UFOs pose “national security concerns” after getting a confidential briefing on a highly anticipated report on unidentified aerial phenomena that is set to be released later this month.Some members of Congress were given advanced details about the contents of the Pentagon report, which is scheduled to be released before 25 June, and several said they are deeply worried about the findings. Continue reading...

Author of Fire and Fury’s final book on Trump, Landslide, will cover his ‘tumultuous last months at the helm of the country’Michael Wolff’s third book about Donald Trump, focusing on the final days of his presidency, will be published in July under a provocative title: Landslide.Related: Trump tells Fox News he ‘didn’t win’ election but doesn’t drop fraud lie Continue reading...

Justices affirm constitutionality of Affordable Care Act amid Republican attacks on key provisionThe US supreme court has upheld the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, after Republicans attempted to gut an important provision of the law during the Trump era.In a 7-2 decision, the court ruled Republican states ultimately did not have “standing” or the right to sue. The ruling avoided the issue of whether the tax provision of the law called the “individual mandate”, and therefore the entire law, was unconstitutional. Continue reading...

Ex-president says ‘We got 75m votes and we didn’t win but let’s see what happens’ seven months after election calledDonald Trump has told Fox News he “didn’t win” the 2020 presidential election, and wishes Joe Biden well.Related: New York grand jury stores up trouble for Trump Organization executives Continue reading...

Election officials were the target of rage after Trump’s baseless claims – and a new report details how many workers feel unsafeHappy Thursday,In the United States, a quiet army of people work in towns, cities, and states across the country to make sure that elections hum along smoothly. They’re responsible for all the mechanics that ensure Americans can exercise their right to vote – like keeping track of complex data files, making sure that mail-in ballots get printed and go out on time, ensuring that polling places have enough workers, and making sure that every valid vote gets counted. Continue reading...

The real reason Republicans want to ban schools from teaching CRTWhatever Republican politicians and rightwing media are referring to when they talk about “critical race theory”, it has little to do with critical race theory as an actual discipline. Developed in the 1970s and 80s by law professors – notably Derrick Bell and his acolyte, Kimberlé Crenshaw, at Harvard – the real CRT is analytic framework through which academics can discern the ways that racial disparities are reproduced by the law, and how the legacies of historical racism can persist even after discriminatory policies are revised.Related: Idaho governor signs bill to ban critical race theory from being taught in schools Continue reading...

Critics say senator is indicative of the Democratic party in a state where marginalized people have been shut outThe West Virginia senator Joe Manchin has emerged as one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the passing of Joe Biden’s ambitious domestic agenda, declaring he will vote against a key voting rights bill and also blocking reform of the filibuster – a rule that at the moment allows Republicans to kill Democrat legislation.Yet Manchin is no Republican. He is a key member of Biden’s party, and in a 50-50 Senate his vote is the linchpin of political power and crucial for passing Biden’s plans. Yet Manchin is seen by many Democrats as sabotaging his own president’s efforts to be a transformational leader who can help the US recover from the pandemic in the same way Roosevelt helped America recover from the Great Depression. Continue reading...

• Nicholas Kraus, 35, was allegedly drunk at the time• Deona Knajdek, 31, was killed and two other protesters injuredA St Paul man accused of speeding up and driving into a group of protesters in Minneapolis while he was drunk, killing one person, will appear in court on Thursday after being charged late on Wednesday with intentional second-degree murder.Prosecutors say Nicholas Kraus, 35, was visibly intoxicated on Sunday night when he sped up and tried to “jump” a car that was being used as a barricade by protesters in the city’s Uptown neighborhood. Deona Knajdek, 31, also known as Deona Erickson, was killed. Continue reading...

UK and US agree to suspend retaliatory tariffs on goods also including cashmere and stiltonWhisky makers are raising a glass after the UK and US agreed to suspend retaliatory tariffs on goods including Scottish malts for five years, in the de-escalation of a transatlantic trade dispute stretching back almost two decades.Liz Truss, the UK international trade secretary, said a “historic deal” had been reached with Washington to ensure tariffs, which affected UK exports to the US worth £550m, remain suspended. Continue reading...

Wimbledon 1984 found John McEnroe at the absolute peak of his powers, yet he was only the second most dominant force in the sportOn its face, it was a benign American summer. Big budget movies filled the theaters. Sugary pop songs wafted from the radio. An elderly woman asking “Where’s the Beef?” was a national laugh line. Ronald Reagan Era was in full free-market, take-cutting bloom, a few months before his resounding re-election. Continue reading...

An investigation found that popular baby food products are tainted with dangerous levels of chemicals. Yet not enough is being done about itNo parent would intentionally feed their baby arsenic. Yet a disturbing number of parents may be unknowingly doing just that.An investigation by the US Congress earlier this year found that commercial baby foods sold under the brands Gerber, Beech-Nut, Earth’s Best Organic, and HappyBABY are tainted with up to 91 times more inorganic arsenic, 117 times more lead, and 69 times more cadmium than the Food and Drug Administration’s maximum allowable levels in bottled water. (The current FDA standard recommends inorganic arsenic in baby food not exceed 100 parts per billion – ten times its recommended limit for bottled water – and the standard is not legally binding.) Of the four, only HappyBABY’s parent company, Nurture, routinely tested its products for mercury – which it found. Continue reading...

Public officials have taken the idea of affordable college from something everyone should have to a luxury item only for the super-rich and super luckyBernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Chuck Schumer have spent months asking Joe Biden to use his authority to eliminate or reduce crushing student debt. Biden promised to do so, and all he has to do is sign this piece of paper. But he has refused, despite new Roosevelt Institute research showing that educational debt relief “would provide more benefits to those with fewer economic resources and could play a critical role in addressing the racial wealth gap and building the Black middle class”.As student debt crushes the elderly and people of color, into this vacuum comes a rescue … for a lucky few. Public officials have taken the idea of affordable college from something the world’s wealthiest nation should be able to provide to everyone, and converted it into an expensive luxury item only for the super-rich, those unfortunate enough to be the victim of a terrorist attack, or those lucky enough to win the lottery. Continue reading...

We must develop a common plan to produce and distribute vaccines for all. That’s the only way to end this pandemicWe have the power to end this pandemic. We have the technology, materials and productive capacity to vaccinate the world against Covid-19 this year. We can save millions of lives, protect billions of livelihoods and reclaim trillions of dollars worth of economic activity along the way.But instead, our countries are now moving into the pandemic’s deadliest phase. Mutant strains are spreading into regions where the vaccines are not only scarce; they have barely arrived. At present rates of vaccination, the pandemic will continue to rage until at least 2024. Continue reading...

‘No-kill’ meals offer environmental and ethical benefits. They could also give a few companies control over what we eatThe salad looks relatively normal: fried chicken, leafy greens, red cabbage, slices of mandarin, a mango-sesame dressing on the side. But this is no ordinary salad. Getting hold of this particular lunchbox involved staking out a hotel lobby and quick fingers on a delivery app. The prize? Not tickets to a K-pop concert, but one of the world’s first servings of cell-cultured meat.Our modest serving has been breaded and fried and tastes like a diced chicken schnitzel. With some poking and prodding, the nugget reveals none of the long muscle fibers you would expect to find in a chicken breast. This is perhaps responsible for a slight hint of rubber-ball bounciness, but overall the texture is impressively avian. We’d eat it again. Continue reading...

President says he told Russian leader that the US would retaliate if cyber-attacks continued. Plus, California plane mystery solvedGood morningJoe Biden warned that the US would retaliate if Russia continued with cyber-attacks on American targets after “good and positive” talks in Geneva with Vladimir Putin. Continue reading...

A transformed global context and the rise of China put any decisions made at Biden’s meeting with Putin into perspectiveJoe Biden’s meeting with Vladimir Putin in Geneva looked like a summit, sounded like a summit, and in some genuine senses really was a summit. But it was not an east-west superpower summit in the 20th-century sense. It was a bilateral meeting between the leaders of two important countries whose relations are possibly more difficult today than they were in the cold war. Yet life on Earth did not seem to hang in the balance yesterday, as it sometimes could do back then.Throughout its history Russia has often been simultaneously strong and weak, at home and abroad. Now, in a century marked by growing Chinese power and the deep polarisation of its domestic politics, something similar can be said of the United States, too. Relative decline has not made either country less suspicious of the other. Perhaps the most significant thing about their meeting was therefore that it occurred at all. But these two countries no longer bestride the globe. Continue reading...

A recently released report found that Indigenous people in California have experienced sexual assault at high ratesThe last time Fochik Hashtali* spoke with her close friend Poe Jackson, he was telling her about his plans to start a mental health group for transgender people in Slab City, a section of southern California known for its community of squatters.

Glimpses of the deliberations behind closed doors suggest a case is being built against Trump’s CFO, Allen Weisselberg, which could be bad news for his bossFollowing a deluge of bombshell news about Donald Trump-related criminal investigations in New York, including the Manhattan district attorney’s convening of a special grand jury, more details have emerged that might suggest intensifying legal woes for one of the former president’s business lieutenants.The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the Manhattan district attorney’s office has apparently “entered the final stages of a criminal tax investigation” of Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer. Continue reading...

This summer, I can once again observe strangers in real life, instead of through my window and on social media• Chibundu Onuzo is author of The Spider King’s Daughter and Welcome to LagosLast week, I made a trip into central London, and spent the day gloriously, nosily, watching strangers. In no particular order, here are some of the things I observed. A sartorially bold man in a matching print shirt and face mask. Three women walking abreast, refusing to yield the pavement to anyone. Four teenagers shouting out rap lyrics on the underground concourse. As they walked past, an elderly man flinched and clutched his belongings. They’re not dangerous, I wanted to reassure him. Annoying, yes, and very bad rappers, but not dangerous.I’ve missed traditional people-watching during the lockdown. Of course, we all watched people from our windows. The delivery drivers who always seemed to go to the wrong address. The mothers (and it was mostly mothers in my neighbourhood) on their school runs, herding children to the school gates. And of course, the righteous runners, cyclists and power walkers, refusing to let a global pandemic stand in the way of their fitness goals. Continue reading...

It started 40 years ago, at school, when I was telling a story and saw a yawn begin stirring on my teacher’s face. I’ve been on red alert for stifled yawns ever sinceI have a visceral fear of boredom, not on my own account but on everyone else’s. I never get bored myself. This isn’t because I’m always super busy doing lots of interesting things. I’m not. It’s just that I can always fill the quieter minutes, hours and days, which could be boring, with dark thoughts of fury, anxiety, regret, sadness or outright panic about something or other. There’s so much rich material to draw on. I’m resourceful in these matters. It’s enervating, distressing and even crippling, but it has this much going for it: it’s never boring.My fear of boredom comes from a horror of being the source of anyone else’s boredom. I believe this started 40 years ago during a conversation with my history teacher, Miss Finney. I was banging on about something rather clever, I thought, when I saw the beginnings of a yawn stirring on her face. These stirrings soon hardened into a firm setting of her jaw. She had plainly resolved, bless her, to do everything in her power not to let this yawn out. I heard tedious words continue to tumble out of my mouth while I watched her face spasm in an ecstasy of desperate, tiny contortions. I wanted to scream: “Just yawn!” but I was too scared of her. Continue reading...

Mispronouncing locations is something we’ve all done and heard, but which of our cities and towns do we garble the most?A suburb in Melbourne’s north has been giving Victoria’s top health officials some difficulty. It’s not Wollert, where the current outbreak originated, or Craigieburn, home to one of the most worrying exposure sites.It’s Reservoir. Keen watchers of Victoria’s daily coronavirus press conferences will have noticed that the state’s health officials, able to confidently rattle off extremely long updates about the latest cases and exposure sites, keep tripping over the pronunciation of this suburb by making it too fancy. The actual name is pronounced Res-er-vore, rhymes with door, with the -voir pronounced like the Latin term voir dire. It’s not Res-er-vwah – like the dam containing drinking water. Continue reading...

Joe Biden warned Russian president Vladimir Putin that the US has significant cyber capability as he looked to pressure his counterpart over cyberattacks. The US leader says Putin wasn't seeking to intensify confrontation with the west after the two held "good and positive" talks. "I think that the last thing he wants now is a Cold War,” Biden said

As preseason emerges on the horizon, we take a look at the most fascinating players coming into the new campaignThe NFL’s annual summer minicamps are underway and training camps are right around the corner. Now is as good a time as any to look ahead to the most fascinating players heading into the 2021 season, non-Aaron Rodgers division. Continue reading...

Workers initially thought the recovered plane was one involved in a 1965 crash in which the pilot and three passengers were killedThree bodies and a Piper Comanche 250 airplane remain missing in a California lake, despite hope that underwater surveyors had found the remains that have now evaded searchers for over half a century.Last week, Seafloor Systems workers came upon a mystery plane sitting at the bottom of Folsom Lake near Sacramento. They thought the plane matched the description of the one that crashed on New Year’s Day 1965, killing the pilot and three passengers onboard. Continue reading...

Advocates celebrated the move, which could facilitate those facing domestic or gang violence to be granted humanitarian protection

Moscow may not play fair, but observers can take solace in reaffirmed declaration against nuclear warOn the day that Joe Biden met Vladimir Putin in Geneva, the Russians held war games moving their nuclear missiles around, while Nato warplanes were scrambled to intercept Russian fighters over the Baltic.If Biden had wanted to illustrate his emphasis on the need for stability and dialogue between Washington and Moscow, he could not have arranged it better. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Joe Biden has responded to Vladimir Putin comparing his jailing of political opponents such as Alexei Navalny with the charges filed against those who carried out the Capitol Hill riots. 'I think that’s a ridiculous comparison,' Biden told reporters after meeting with the Russian president in Geneva. During his own press conference after the summit, Putin used that comparison to deflect a question about why so many of his critics are either imprisoned or dead

Speaking to reporters by Air Force One in Geneva, Joe Biden has expressed regret for some sharp words to a journalist who questioned him about the success of his summit with Vladimir Putin. Frustrated by a question from CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins at the end of his press conference, he told her she was 'in the wrong business'. Biden later apologised for being 'short', adding: 'To be a good reporter, you’ve got to be negative. You’ve got to have a negative view of life ... you never ask a positive question'

US president hails ‘good and positive’ talks but added ‘proof of the pudding is in the eating’The US will retaliate if Russia continues to carry out malicious cyber-attacks against American targets, Joe Biden said on Wednesday, after holding “good and positive” talks in Geneva with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.Speaking after their first face-to-face summit, Biden said he had made clear the Kremlin had to “abide by the rules of the road” or face unspecified consequences. Putin was aware the US possessed “unrivalled” cyber capacities, Biden stressed. Continue reading...

Meeting goes as well as could be expected as Biden and Putin speak language of diplomacy – but hardly one of affectionJoe Biden and Vladimir Putin hadn’t even sat down before tensions boiled over at the 18th-century Villa La Grange, a fine Swiss manor house besieged on Wednesday by a 21st-century press pool. The two men looked cordial enough as they shook hands for the first time as leaders. But the sun-struck journalists behind them pushed and shouted, some knocked to the floor, as they fought to get in to the leaders’ only joint appearance of the day.“The media scuffle was the most chaotic your pooler has seen at a presidential event in nine years,” wrote a US reporter from inside the melee, which erupted as the press pack tried to follow the two leaders into the villa. “Russian security yelled at journalists to get out and began pushing journalists. Journalists and White House officials screamed back that the Russian security should stop touching us.” Continue reading...