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...
Washington state congresswoman has become key figure in the rise of the progressives during Biden’s presidencyIt seemed a throwaway line during a media scrum on Friday outside the House of Representatives. But no other comment by Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), highlighted her group’s growing prominence and leverage in Capitol Hill politics: “In the House,” she said, “everybody is a Joe Manchin.”The Democratic Washington state congresswoman’s point, as the delicate cat-and-mouse game with centrist Democrats over the fate of Joe Biden’s flagship domestic agenda, was clear. West Virginia senator Manchin and his fellow holdout Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona might hold the cards in the 50-50 US Senate, but in the lower chamber at least the progressives were in the driving seat. Continue reading...
The West Virginia and Arizona senators’ resistance threatens to upend Biden’s entire presidency – is self-preservation to blame?Donald Trump’s favorite insult for political opponents inside his own party is “Rino” – Republican in name only. By such logic, Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are the epitome of Dinos, two elected Democrats whose dogged resistance to Joe Biden’s social agenda threatens/threatened to upend his entire presidency.Their standoff with the party’s progressive wing over the price tag of Biden’s ambitious reform package has become almost more of a hazard to his legacy than anything the Republicans, currently in a narrow minority in both chambers of Congress, can throw at it. Continue reading...
Two massive economic and social packages have reached an impasse, threatening to derail Biden’s first term in officeWarring factions of the Democratic party are bracing themselves for a potentially bruising month of negotiations over the two massive economic and social packages that have reached an impasse in Congress threatening to derail Joe Biden’s first term in office.With Democratic leaders racing against a new 31 October deadline to pass the legislation, and with pressure building on the White House from both centrist and progressive wings of the party, the centerpiece of Biden’s agenda now hangs in the balance. Democratic prospects in next year’s midterm elections are also at stake. Continue reading...
The loss of the ‘uplift’will have awful results. But with even Tories supporting the backlash, could this be the moment things change?Here it comes. This Wednesday, the Department for Work and Pensions will finally end the £20-a-week “uplift” to universal credit introduced in March 2020. The cut will hit different households at different times, but it will formally arrive on the same day that Boris Johnson gives his big Conservative party conference speech in Manchester, which is sure to be full of boosterish talk about “levelling up”, the new global Britain – and, if recent announcements are anything to go by, the supposed prospect of a country that cannot currently feed itself becoming a major player in space exploration. On Earth, by contrast, millions of people’s sudden loss of £86.67 a month will inevitably trigger increases in debt, evictions and quiet, grinding want.The surrounding picture only makes the cut look more cruel. Last week, the government’s furlough scheme came to an end, triggering fears of new redundancies and even more people being loaded into a benefits system that makes basic subsistence all but impossible. We all know about rising energy prices and food inflation. What the cut in universal credit will mean for lives already upturned by the pandemic hardly needs explaining; among other issues, in the midst of a crisis of childhood mental health, a change predicted to increase child poverty by nearly 300,000 children looks both reckless and nasty.John Harris is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
He could resume his career as an entertainer and we might get a PM worthy of the officeAt the end of The Magnificent Seven, most delightful of all westerns, there is a scene in which the elderly Mexican village sage says to Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen: “Your work is done.” It was time for the farmers to take over again. Following which, the two gunfighters rode away, to massacre evildoers elsewhere.We shall dismiss scepticism about whether Boris Johnson can plausibly be compared to either Brynner or McQueen, but suggest that this is a good moment for the prime minister’s chums to put to him the old Mexican’s proposition: “Your work is done.” We might then return our governance to people willing to be interested not in farming, but instead boring stuff such as keeping the gas on and making sure children attend school. Continue reading...
A Texas restaurant has been ordered to pay $5.5m to a customer who got drunk and injured himself. Who’s to blame?Should a small business be responsible for their customers’ behavior? That’s the question the owners of La Fogata Mexican Grill wrestled with this summer. The Texas-based restaurant was ordered by a court to pay $5.5m to a customer after he filed a civil lawsuit saying he was given too much alcohol.According to the Houston Chronicle, the incident occurred in 2019 when Daniel Rawls visited La Fogata and knocked back one too many drinks. Rawls got into an altercation with another drunk customer in the restaurant’s parking lot and sustained a head injury. Continue reading...
As wildfires burn hotter and bigger due to dry conditions, scientists are afraid the species may not survive much longerIt is still unclear how the giant sequoias of California will fare as two fires – which together have scorched more than 140,000 acres in their namesake national park and national forest – continue to burn. Thick smoke and rugged inaccessible terrain has hindered efforts to assess destruction from the KNP Complex and Windy fires, and a full accounting may take weeks.Scientists on the ground say so far the news has been both good and bad. There are still pockets of lush greenery left within the footprints of two fast-moving fires, as well as areas where the flames left little in their wake. Continue reading...
Thousands gather in Washington DC and other cities protesting against Texas law banning most abortionsThe first Women’s March of the Biden administration headed straight for the steps of the US supreme court on Saturday, part of nationwide protests that drew thousands to Washington to demand continued access to abortion in a year when conservative lawmakers and judges have put it in jeopardy.Demonstrators filled the streets surrounding the court, shouting “My body, my choice” and cheering loudly to the beat of drums. Continue reading...
With winter coming, health officials are now concerned that the arguments that have roiled Missouri will leave it vulnerable again when a next wave hitsThe boarded-up storefront of Rae’s Cafe in Blue Springs, Missouri, does not look much like a Covid-19 battleground – but it has become a cause célèbre of the anti-masking movement since owner Amanda Wohletz began a campaign in July to defy local Jackson county mask mandates imposed after Delta variant infections surged.Despite warnings, citations, the revocation of a food permit and a county health department’s order to close her doors, Wohletz persisted, claiming in court that the mandate ordering everyone five and up is required to wear a face covering when visiting indoor public spaces was “unconstitutionally created” and efforts to enforce it were “unlawful, nonsensical”. Continue reading...
Women travel long distances only to find they have arrived too late to qualify for the procedure under the draconian new lawOriginally published by the 19thKarla S knew she was pregnant almost right away. She could tell by the smells: “Everything was rancid,” Karla said. Continue reading...
The presidential election is his to lose. But the divisive forces of the far-right are on the march in a struggle that will resonate across EuropeGermany’s “watershed” election? Yawn. For a truly stimulating contest, Europe must look to France, where pre-poll noise levels are rising rapidly. Political debate ranges from the repulsive to the bizarre. Issues that matter most to EU and UK citizens – nationality, migration, climate, cost-of-living, place in the world – are under brutal examination. For floating voters angry about English fish wars, there is even, potentially, a President Poisson.In an age of predictable, managed and blatantly fixed elections, France’s looming democratic denouement is refreshingly rambunctious and emblematic. As April’s presidential contest comes into focus, the question of identity dominates. What does it mean, these days, to be French? Who belongs – and who doesn’t? Is France a global power or mere cultural theme park for Chinese tourists? Continue reading...
Former press secretary has decided to ‘break her silence’ but may find media less hospitable than to those who went beforeOn Monday, Stephanie Grisham will appear on Good Morning America. ABC is billing the interview as the former White House press secretary’s chance to “break her silence”.Donald Trump is unlikely to be watching. Grisham is not the first insider to break omertà on the Trumps, who rose from running a New York real estate empire to occupying the White House, but she may well be the politico who got closest of all. Continue reading...
Private equity business narrowly beats rival Fortress with offer that rises to £9.97bn when including debtThe US private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) is set to become the new owner of Morrisons after the grocer’s board backed its £7.1bn bid for the supermarket chain following a tense auction with a rival suitor.The 287p a share bid narrowly beat the 286p offer by a consortium led by Softbank-owned Fortress Investment Group on Saturday, in a showdown to settle Morrisons’ future. Continue reading...
Hundreds of hot air balloons are launched over Albuquerque as part of annual nine-day festivalHundreds of hot air balloons launched into the skies over Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the US on Saturday for the first time in two years, as the city’s balloon fiesta returned after a pause due to the coronavirus pandemic.Yoda, Smokey the Bear and the Creamland Cow were some of the notable balloons that took flight in the mass ascension that kicked off the 49th annual festival. Continue reading...
Speaker writes to House Democrats insisting that they will pass both bipartisan bill and wider social and environmental packageThe House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has set a new deadline for the House to pass a major infrastructure spending bill after a week of negotiations left Joe Biden’s social and environmental policy overhaul plan in a limbo.In a letter to House Democrats on Saturday, Pelosi said that the House will have until Sunday 31 October to pass the $1tn bipartisan infrastructure bill, which passed the Senate in August. Continue reading...
A woman in Kansas has had to recount her rape story to strangers and collect hundreds of signatures to get the legal system to take her seriouslyHere’s a fun fact about consent: once you say “yes”, you can change your mind! Saying “yes” at the beginning of a sexual encounter doesn’t mean you give blanket permission for someone to do whatever the hell they like to you. Consenting to sex with someone doesn’t mean you automatically consent to being violently choked.Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for pre-order. Continue reading...
As the Native American population grows to the largest in modern history, groups say it’s vital that they organize to make sure they’re not left out of the redistricting processIn a small unadorned conference room in the North Dakota state capitol, Collette Brown, a representative for the Spirit Lake Nation, stood up on 26 August to testify on behalf of the 7,559 members of her federally recognized tribe.Speaking to a largely white, male Republican committee of lawmakers, she explained what Native American communities stand to lose with redistricting if the legislature decides to draw legislative boundaries that split Native American communities or create areas that have at-large representation, instead of single-member districts. Continue reading...
The NBA’s failure to get ahead of its vaccination crisis shows that the ostensibly progressive league still has work to doIn October 2020, more than a month before the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines would receive emergency-use authorization from the FDA, the Women’s National Basketball Players Association got to work.The WNBPA understood that misinformation in regards to the virus and vaccine had been ramping up, and it seemed to be getting harder and harder to seek reliable guidance. They also likely considered that professional athletes represented a relatively easy target for misinformation and conspiracy theories as highly impressionable young people with a lot of free time on their hands – time often spent on their phones scrolling social media – and relatively little contact with the outside world. So they came together with league commissioner Cathy Engelbert and set out a plan to educate WNBA players about the Covid-19 vaccine so that they could make educated choices when the time came. Continue reading...
The Royal Ballet dancer Colin Jones became one of the most celebrated photojournalists of postwar Britain, covering subjects as diverse as working life in the industrial north-east, the English National Ballet, the Alabama race riots and African-Caribbean youth in 1970s London with an empathetic eye. Jones also documented arts and youth culture with his iconic portraits of the Who, Julie Christie, Tom Waits and mods and rockers in Brighton in 1964Words by Peter Crookston Continue reading...
Once an asset that secured a comfortable retirement, the medallion’s worth has plummeted, leaving drivers financially ruined. Here are some of their storiesFor more than a century, taxi drivers have transported busy New Yorkers to their jobs, to brunch, or home from a late night out. A symbol of the city made globally famous in countless Hollywood films, the drivers of these yellow cabs are majority immigrants and people of color.Driving a New York City cab has been a vital path for immigrants, and their families, to make a decent living. But in recent years all that has changed. Now, many are struggling under the burden of life-altering debt after investing in a taxi medallion. Continue reading...
My brother, mother and father all died before I was 30. I didn’t cope well at first, but then I had an epiphanyOn my 30th birthday I realised I was totally alone.My father had died five days earlier. My mother had died nine years previously, and my brother 21 years before. Continue reading...
by Adam Gabbattin Upper Marlboro, Maryland on (#5Q8D6)
Five black-and-white quadrupeds who escaped from a farm last month should be easy to spot around town … shouldn’t they?Many interesting things have happened in Upper Marlboro in recent years.In 2014, the Frederick Douglass high school football team recorded a perfect season. In 2019, to celebrate National Pie Day, a local museum hosted a lecture on the “history of pie”. This May, the town bought an electric car. Continue reading...
After years of sexual abuse allegations, the R&B singer has finally had to face punishment for his crimes but will a wider reckoning follow?Activist Oronike Odeleye was at her desk, knee-deep in another 12-hour day of working from home, when the news hit. A friend called. The R&B performer and producer R Kelly had been found guilty on all nine counts in his sex trafficking case, he said. Initially, Odeleye felt “a bit stunned, but also really relieved”, she says, thinking first of the survivors who had bravely shared their testimony.Together with Kenyette Tisha Barnes, Odeleye had founded the #MuteRKelly movement in 2017. The goal: a financial boycott of Kelly, given the years of child sexual abuse and sexual misconduct allegations made against the star. At the time, she had hoped to soon “step in the name of justice at his trial”. On Monday 27 September, that day arrived. But as the week wore on, she wasn’t convinced the industry was ready to examine itself more closely. Continue reading...
The request follows the former president suing Twitter, Facebook and Google in July accusing them of censoring conservative voicesDonald Trump, the former US president, has asked a federal judge in Florida to force Twitter to reinstate his account.In July Trump sued Twitter, Facebook and Google, as well as their chief executives, alleging they unlawfully silence conservative viewpoints. Continue reading...
by David Smith and Lauren Gambino in Washington on (#5Q7A9)
President meets Democrats for talks and insists ‘it doesn’t matter whether it’s six minutes or six weeks – we’re going to get it done’Democrats returned to the Capitol on Friday deeply divided but determined to make progress on Joe Biden’s ambitious economic vision, after an embarrassing setback delayed a planned vote on a related $1tn measure to improve the nation’s infrastructure.Biden on Friday made a rare visit to Capitol Hill to meet privately with House Democrats amid a stalemate that has put his sprawling domestic agenda in jeopardy. The visit comes after after the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, delayed a vote on part of his economic agenda, a bipartisan $1tn public works measure, on Thursday night after a frantic day of negotiations failed to produce a deal. Continue reading...
Judge orders prison for indigenous rights campaigner despite UN experts’ opinion that his treatment broke international lawSteven Donziger, the US indigenous rights campaigner and lawyer who spent decades battling the energy firm Chevron over pollution in the Ecuadorian rainforest, was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment on Friday for criminal contempt charges arising from a lawsuit brought by the oil giant.Donziger, who was disbarred from practicing law in New York last year, was found guilty in May of defying court orders, including by failing to turn over his computer and other electronic devices. Continue reading...
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