Guns once owned by Al Capone, one of the most notorious gangsters in United States history, are among 174 lots to go under the hammer this week at a California auction, A Century of Notoriety: the Estate of Al Capone. Auctioneers are billing the sale as ‘one of the most important celebrity auctions in history’. Continue reading...
Those travelling to the sun-kissed islands have allegedly faked negative Covid test results or vaccine recordsIf you’re an unvaccinated American headed to Hawaii, and you want to avoid quarantine, you’ll need to provide the state with a negative Covid test.Alternatively, you could attempt to fake out authorities – and get arrested for it. Continue reading...
Frances Haugen’s animated remarks were a striking contrast to Mark Zuckerberg’s robotic testimony before CongressIt might, as one senator put it, be remembered as “the big tobacco jaw-dropping moment of truth”.The truth-teller was former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen, appearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to testify that the online platform knowingly harms children, just as cigarette makers did before they were brought to heel. Continue reading...
Offices of Sergeants Benevolent Association and Long Island home of Ed Mullins raided ‘in connection with an ongoing investigation’Federal agents on Tuesday raided the offices of a New York City police union, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, and the Long Island home of its leader, who has clashed repeatedly with officials over incendiary tweets and hard-line tactics.Ed Mullins is in disciplinary proceedings for tweeting NYPD paperwork pertaining to the arrest last year of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s daughter, during protests over the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. Continue reading...
Lindsey Graham pleads ‘I didn’t tell you to get it’ after receiving catcalls for asking local party members to ‘think about it’A Republican senator was booed and catcalled when he told a party audience in South Carolina to think about getting a vaccine against Covid-19.Lindsey Graham was speaking at the Summerville Country Club in Dorchester county. Video of his remarks was first published by the Daily Beast. Continue reading...
by Associated Press in Des Moines, Iowa on (#5QBWC)
Lucky winner stands to collect seventh largest jackpot in US history after matching all six numbersAfter 40 drawings without a big Powerball winner, a single ticket sold in California matched all six numbers and was the lucky winner of a nearly $700m jackpot, officials said.The winning numbers drawn on Monday night were 12, 22, 54, 66 and 69. The Powerball was 15. The $699.8m was the seventh largest in US lottery history. No one had won the game’s grand prize since 5 June. Continue reading...
The prevailing mood among Washington insiders is to fight if China attempts to conquer Taiwan. That would be a mistakeSince last Friday, the People’s Republic of China has launched a total of 155 warplanes – the most ever over four consecutive days – into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone; Ned Price said the state department was “very concerned”. There have been more than 500 such flights through nine months this year, as opposed to 300 all of last year.Before war comes to the Indo-Pacific and Washington faces pressure to fight a potentially existential war, American policymakers must face the cold, hard reality that fighting China over Taiwan risks an almost-certain military defeat – and gambles we won’t stumble into a nuclear war.Daniel L Davis is a senior fellow for defense priorities and a former lieutenant colonel in the US army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America Continue reading...
Union calls for industry leaders to grant workers ‘human necessities’ such as adequate sleep and breaksFilm and television production in North America is at risk of coming to a standstill after behind-the-scenes workers voted overwhelmingly to authorise a strike for the first time in its 128-year history.The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees said 99% of registered members who participated, or 52,706 people, voted in support of a strike over the weekend. Continue reading...
Tax bailouts would have paid for debt forgiveness many times over but instead companies left struggling households in the darkWhen the pandemic hit in early 2020 and music studios around Detroit closed, Oliver Owens, a producer and entrepreneur, saw his income dwindle and bills grow.By late April, the single father of three faced $243 in electric debt, and DTE Energy, Michigan’s largest utility, cut power to his east side townhome, leaving him “stressed” and scrambling for assistance from family members and local non-profits. Continue reading...
The disgraced former president faces a range of possible charges – including conspiracy and election fraudDonald Trump is facing increasing legal scrutiny in the crucial battleground state of Georgia over his attempt to sway the 2020 election there, and that heat is now overlapping with investigations in Congress looking at the former president’s efforts to subvert American democracy.A criminal investigation into Trump’s 2 January call prodding Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “just find” him 11,780 votes to block Joe Biden’s win in the state is making headway. The Georgia district attorney running the inquiry is now also sharing information with the House committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol in Washington DC. Continue reading...
The Australian guard was compared to LeBron James when the 76ers drafted him No 1 overall in 2016. But an ugly divorce between team and player awaitsPhiladelphia woke up on Monday to the grim news of another homicide, this one a fatal shooting of a nurse at a hospital. The shooting raised the number of homicides in the city to 418, the most by this point of the year since 1986. Philadelphia, in short, has much more important things to worry about than its status as the city where Ben Simmons shoots, or refuses to shoot, a basketball.And yet he remains headline news. The 25-year-old Philadelphia 76ers guard is not reporting to the team until he gets traded – and Philadelphia’s notoriously passionate fans are not happy. Just two years ago, he signed a five-year, $177m contract extension, tweeting at the time, “Philly means so much to me.” Continue reading...
‘Shoppers’ across the US cite falling pay rates and unsafe working conditions ahead of company’s rumored IPOFor Jason Schaal, 43, working in Minnesota as a personal shopper for grocery delivery company Instacart in 2019 was, at first, attractive.The freedom to work on his own schedule, hours that could accommodate his personal health issues and caregiving responsibilities as a single father, combined with a decent wage made the gig work solid. Continue reading...
Analysis: the fallout from a conflict triggered by miscalculation or accident could be catastrophicA surge of Chinese aerial sorties over the sea separating mainland China and Taiwan has served as a reminder that the strait has the potential to be one of the most dangerous places on Earth.According to Taiwan’s defence ministry, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) made a total of 149 sorties in four days over the southern section of the Taiwan Strait, including flights by a dozen bombers and many jet fighters. Continue reading...
Between 1978 and 1981, Jill Freedman tagged along with the NYPD as they arrested burglars, picked up stray kids and kicked down doors Continue reading...
The old ways of doing business will not deliver change – suppliers, retailers and consumers must all take responsibilityThe global fight against the impacts of climate change is a generational challenge like no other. This is a shared mission, but it is increasingly clear that levels of distrust and scepticism are running high.The strident campaign by youth activists – such as Greta Thunberg – has challenged the status quo and highlighted the collective responsibility on current leaders to deliver change.Grant Reid is the CEO of Mars Continue reading...
Without a dramatic change in New Zealand’s vaccination rates, Covid-19 risks becoming a disease for brown peopleAnd so with that, a confusing 20-minute monologue in the Beehive theatrette, New Zealand’s virus-beating elimination strategy is over. As the Delta variant’s “tentacles”, to borrow the prime minister’s description, creep past the Auckland border, potentially wrapping themselves around parts of the Waikato, the government will no longer aim to cut the monster off at its head with tough alert level four restrictions. Instead public health officials will move to a suppression strategy aiming “to contain and control the virus” while we vaccinate our way out of the pandemic. At its simplest, Jacinda Ardern’s message from the threatrette was vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate.For 18 months New Zealanders were living life as if there were no pandemic. We were gathering outdoors and indoors in the thousands, mask mandates were literally a foreign concept, and business and public services were operating more or less as normal. We were watching governments that let the virus rip with a good dose of horror and, if we’re honest, a modest dose of smugness. And so yesterday’s announcement – that the virus will remain resident in this country – feels like a form of whiplash. Only two weeks ago the prime minister stood in that familiar theatrette and told the country returning to zero cases was still the goal. Continue reading...
Harold Koh, a legal adviser and Obama administration veteran, criticises use of health protocol to expel thousands of migrantsA senior legal adviser in the state department has accused the Biden administration of deporting Haitians illegally through the use of a public health law.Harold Koh, a veteran of the Obama administration, had been due to leave government service to take up a teaching position at Oxford University. He wrote a letter to the state department leadership, lambasting the expulsions of thousands of Haitians in recent weeks. Continue reading...
Rural north and Central Valley have case rates three or four times higher than the rest of the state, exposing stark disparitiesThe national guard has been deployed to hospitals in rural north and central California, where short-staffed hospitals have been overwhelmed with coronavirus patients – exposing stark disparities within the most populous US state.Although California has the lowest coronavirus case rate in the country, its agricultural heartland in the Central Valley and its sparse, rural north have case rates that are three or four times higher. National guard medical teams have been deployed to several hospitals in the valley’s Bakersfield and Kern counties, and to two hospitals in Shasta county in the far north. Continue reading...
In his address today on the need to raise the debt limit on Monday, US President Joe Biden lambasted the Republicans and their use of the filibuster to stymie the Democrats.'So let’s be clear — not only are Republicans refusing to do their job, they’re threatening to use their power to prevent us from doing our job: saving the economy from a catastrophic event,' Biden said. 'I think, quite frankly, it’s hypocritical, dangerous and disgraceful'
Bethann Kierczak, was responsible for administering vaccines at Veterans Affairs hospital, sold cards for $150-$200A nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Michigan has been charged with stealing and selling Covid-19 vaccination cards.According to court records, Bethann Kierczak, 37, was responsible for administering vaccination doses and had access to immunization records at her hospital in Southgate, Michigan. Continue reading...
by Associated Press in College Park, Maryland on (#5QAKX)
Lacks’s estate is asking Thermo Fisher to pay back the full profits gained over 70 years of using her cells without consentThe estate of Henrietta Lacks sued a pharmaceutical company on Monday, accusing it of selling cells that doctors at Johns Hopkins hospital took in 1951 without her knowledge or consent.The cells taken from Lacks, a Black woman who died of cervical cancer, are known has HeLa cells and have been reproduced ever since, used in scientific and medical innovations including the development of the polio vaccine and gene mapping. Continue reading...
2018 award was shared by New York Times and Washington Post for exposing interference and links between Trump and MoscowDonald Trump has again demanded the Pulitzer prize board rescind the prize for national reporting awarded to the New York Times and Washington Post in 2018, for exposing Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.The award was shared by the two organisations for “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest” which judges said “dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election”. Continue reading...
Samsara Duffey spends months scouring the horizon for blazes as a fire lookout while her husband, Mark, who is based about 280 miles away, parachutes out of planes to fight fires as a member of an elite squad of smokejumpers. In the western United States, the climate crisis is raising temperatures and exacerbating drought, helping to create a hellish fire season Continue reading...
Missouri Democrats Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver II join Pope in calls to governor for sentence to be set asidePleas for clemency on behalf of Ernest Lee Johnson, who was convicted of a 1994 murder, are growing more frantic ahead of his scheduled execution by lethal injection in Missouri on Tuesday after the Pope and two members of the US Congress issued calls for the sentence to be set aside.In a statement last week, Pope Francis requested clemency for Johnson in a letter to Missouri governor Michael Parson. The letter did not deny that “grave crimes such as his deserve grave punishment” but called on Parson to consider “the simple fact of Mr Johnson’s humanity and the sacredness of all human life.” If carried out it will be the first execution by Missouri since May 2020. Continue reading...
Coverage of Gabby Petito’s death highlights deep-seated beliefs about gender, race, patriarchy and who deserves protectionGabby Petito was eulogized last week, her father celebrating the adventurous spirit who took her final road trip. To the many people who followed her story in the news, she was Gabby. Like a daughter, a sister, a niece. Someone who should be cared for.Petito was also white, young, blond, pretty and valued by society for everything that that implies, say advocates for missing women of color who watched conflicted as her story spread from social media to major newscasts. While the 22-year-old’s death is helping spotlight other missing person cases, they say being white is a social currency that women of color don’t have, which is painfully clear when they disappear. Continue reading...
Ex-president has endorsed Republican secretary of state candidates who would wield enormous power over electionsDonald Trump and allies are seeding one of their most dangerous efforts to undermine US elections to date, seeking to elevate candidates who refuse to accept Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 to crucial offices where they could do significant damage in overturning the 2024 elections.The former president has endorsed several Republican candidates running to be the secretary of state, the chief election official, in their respective states. If elected, these candidates would wield enormous power over elections, and could both implement policies that would make it harder for Americans to cast a ballot and block the official certification of election results afterwards. Ten of the 15 candidates running for secretary of state in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada have either said the 2020 results were stolen or that they need to be further investigated, Reuters reported earlier this month. Continue reading...
We weren’t used to being back in a crowd – until Martha Wainwright’s music let us forget about the pandemicWe are all returning from the restrictions of the pandemic at different speeds. To seeing friends, to seeing art, to the office, to obligations. We may put those priorities in different orders, but it is a constant weighing: is this venture into crowds worth the risk? Is this? In my life, live music looms large. Now it is worth it again.On a recent Monday evening, a mere 557 days since I had last been to a concert, I returned to gigs. Finally I was back where I am most content: in this case, London’s Union Chapel, waiting for the voice of Canadian singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright to shatter the tedium of a Covid-era evening.Rick Burin is a writer and senior press manager at the Royal Albert Hall Continue reading...
A Boston legend returned to New England on Sunday but was outplayed by the man drafted to be his long-term replacementEven on a weekend when the Red Sox clinched a ticket to face the hated New York Yankees in the MLB playoffs, there was only one storyline that really mattered in Boston on Sunday: Tom Brady returning to the New England Patriots with his new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.The game began as a lovefest. The crowd cheered an introductory video starring the man who led them to six Super Bowls over 20 years, and broke out into “BRA-DY” chants when he ran on to the field. There were boos too, but they were all but drowned out by the cheers. Continue reading...
A large oil spill off the coast of Southern California has killed wildlife and fouled beaches along the Orange county coast. At least 126,000 gallons (572,807 litres) spilled into the waters after oil leaked from a broken pipeline connected to an offshore rig
Party locked in a bitter struggle over two massive legislative bills that could make or break the Biden presidencyBernie Sanders, the leftwing firebrand who has drawn the fight against poverty and inequality into the mainstream of American politics, issued a call to arms on Sunday for fellow progressives to stand firm in the intensifying battle over the future of Joe Biden’s economic and social policy agenda.With the Democratic party locked in a bitter struggle over two massive legislative bills that could make or break the Biden presidency, Sanders said the outcome of the next few weeks would be critical not just for the future of American working families but also for the country’s political future. Continue reading...
Staring at their own face in video meetings has people fretting over imagined flaws: ‘Zoom has made me want to be invisible’Jane, a 40-year-old mental health professional from Cork, never worried too much about how she looked. But when her job went fully virtual, she found herself dreading Microsoft Teams meetings. Her face looked rounder, her nose looked bigger, and her top lip looked thinner than she’d ever noticed in the mirror.“I’ve always thought I was attractive, and people would always compliment my looks in person,” she says. “But on video, nobody was saying how nice it was to see my pretty face.” Continue reading...
Voting is underway at Katmai National Park and Preserve of bears who have feasted on salmon running through the Brooks RiverAmerica may feel like a divided society but one thing is guaranteed to unite the nation each year: Fat Bear Week, a seven-year-old competition held in October to choose the fattest, most gorged and hibernation-prepared bear in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska.Fat Bear Week, which closes Tuesday and gathered 650,000 voting participants last year, is the creation of Explore.org, an online showcase for wildlife webcam videos, nature films and photographs that, it says, “creates a portal into the soul of humanity”. Continue reading...
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