Ponca chief Standing Bear’s tomahawk is currently at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and EthnologyA descendant of a Native American chief and civil rights leader urges Harvard University to repatriate an ancestral heirloom. Ponca chief Standing Bear’s tomahawk – a single-handed axe, is currently displayed at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.“This is a morality and justice issue,” Brett Chapman, an attorney in Oklahoma with Ponca, Pawnee and Kiowa heritage, says. Chapman’s maternal great-great-great-grandfather, Chief White Eagle, and Standing Bear shared a common grandparent. Continue reading...
Bottoms, who was elected mayor in 2017 and is just the second Black woman to lead the city, did not provide a reasonThe mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was seen as a possible running mate for Joe Biden in last year’s presidential election, said late on Thursday she will not seek a second term in office.Bottoms, 51, who was elected mayor in 2017 and is just the second Black woman to lead the city, did not provide a specific reason for her decision and did not say what she would do next, when she announced the surprise news. Continue reading...
Anthony Antonio, who faces five charges over role in January riot, ‘started believing what was being fed to him’, lawyer saysThe lawyer for a Delaware man charged over the Capitol attack in January is floating a unique defense: Fox News made him do it.Anthony Antonio, who is facing five charges including violent entry, disorderly conduct and impeding law enforcement during civil disorder, fell prey to the persistent lies about the so-called “stolen election” being spread daily by Donald Trump and the rightwing network that served him, his attorney Joseph Hurley said during a video hearing on Thursday. Continue reading...
Victims expected to survive attack, which ended when teacher disarmed student, authorities sayA sixth-grade girl shot two students and a custodian at an Idaho middle school on Thursday before being disarmed by a teacher, authorities said.The Jefferson county sheriff, Steve Anderson, said the girl had fired multiple rounds inside and outside Rigby middle school in the small city of Rigby, about 95 miles south-west of Yellowstone national park. Continue reading...
Application for full approval will only include people 16 and older while over 170m doses have already been delivered across USThe Pfizer/BioNTech pharmaceutical partnership has started an application for full approval of its Covid-19 vaccine with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the companies announced Friday.More than 170m doses of the vaccine have been delivered across the US since it was approved for emergency use authorization in December, the first Covid-19 vaccine to receive the authorization from the FDA. Continue reading...
The I’m-done-with-it energy of Mare of Easttown has resonated because it reflects exactly how so many of us feelThere’s a scene in Mare of Easttown, the new crime drama on HBO/Sky Atlantic starring Kate Winslet, that with minimal fuss captures a mood rarely seen on TV. Winslet plays a detective in smalltown Pennsylvania, where – when she’s sitting on her sofa one night eating an enormous sandwich – a neighbour throws a gallon of milk through her window. She stops eating, briefly, to survey the wreckage, before returning with exquisite deliberation to the sandwich. Through Winslet’s character, Mare, Easttown nails that rarely excavated, beautifully enacted vibe of the fed-up middle-aged woman.It is hard to overstate how much excitement this and similar scenes have caused among women in the US since the show started airing, two weeks ago. It’s not merely that Mare reflects back at us the bombed-out, personal-grooming-gone-to-seed reality of life at the tail end of the pandemic. Nor is it a case of the overused trope of a movie star eschewing makeup as a shorthand for integrity. (I loved the movie Nomadland, recently bombarded with Oscars, but Frances McDormand has in recent years perhaps over-ploughed this furrow to the extent that it can have the opposite effect, making the act of appearing “ordinary” seem a little stagey and performative.) Continue reading...
Police chiefs and mayors from across US states have criticised the force for its handling of the siege, emails show. Plus, Florida and Texas wage a fresh attack on voting rights
US tax dollars helped create the Moderna vaccine – and 59% of Americans say Moderna share its vaccine technology with manufacturers worldwideOn 2 October – seven months and over 2,000,000 Covid-19 deaths ago – the governments of India and South Africa petitioned the World Trade Organization to issue a temporary waiver on the Trips Agreement and ensure the “unhindered global sharing of technology and know-how … for the handling of Covid-19”. Back then, no vaccine had been approved for the prevention of the spread of the virus. But the 100 countries that joined the October petition over the following months knew then what has become apparent to everyone now: the system of pharmaceutical patents is a killing machine.There is now broad and growing support for the Trips waiver – among doctors, Nobel laureates, senators and a large majority of the US public. On Wednesday, the Biden administration finally announced its intention to support some version of the proposal, changing course amidst a global surge of Covid-19 cases. “The extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” said US trade representative Katherine Tai, committing to “text-based negotiations at the World Trade Organization”. Continue reading...
Although lacrosse is a Native American game, its participants are primarily white. Then the Cass Tech girls team stepped upFew things in sports are purer than youth athletes celebrating a hard-earned win. The athletes are not famous, and millions of dollars are not on the line.The purest, most unbridled victory celebration in Detroit high school sports history may have occurred on a lacrosse field in Auburn Hills, Michigan, on 26 April 2021. It was not a rivalry game, and no championship was won. Continue reading...
Privacy advocates warn retail pharmacies in particular are blurring the line between public health and commerceData rights organizations have warned that patients lack a clear understanding of how information about their health, employment, contact or location details may be used if it is collected by private entities during the Covid-19 vaccine drive.Some advocates have already expressed concerns that the information could be used for marketing, targeted advertising or de-identified and sold into the multibillion-dollar health data industry. Continue reading...
US employees are concerned about safety, others have caregiving responsibilities and some are using their job loss as an opportunity to find other work
Boss of New York-based Sherborne Investors gives up campaign to overhaul British bankThe activist investor Edward Bramson has sold his 6% stake in Barclays, abandoning a three-year battle to overhaul the British bank.Sherborne Investors, Bramson’s New York-based investment vehicle, said it was selling the stake to focus on a new unnamed investment target instead. Continue reading...
The United owners are not as reviled in Florida as they are in Manchester. But US fans rarely erupt into mass protest - especially if the team is successfulNot that this will make Manchester United fans feel any better, but the Glazers are barely visible in the Tampa Bay too, even though the family has owned the local NFL team since 1995 and won the Super Bowl three months ago (thanks mostly to Tom Brady and a turbocharged defense).The family front man, if he can be called that, is Joel Glazer, one of six children of the late Malcolm Glazer. Joel Glazer typically makes himself available to Tampa media just once a year, and although he has a pleasant demeanor, he is hardly expansive on his family’s dealings with the club. Continue reading...
Meeting of mayors and police chiefs criticized ‘failed leadership’ as documents reveal insurrection sent ripples through state agenciesA January meeting of mayors and police chiefs of large American cities criticized “failed leadership by Capitol police and a failure to plan” over the rightwing insurrection in Washington on 6 January, according to emails reviewed by the Guardian.Related: Explosives and weaponry found at US far-right protests, documents reveal Continue reading...
A sixth-grade girl shot two students and a custodian at a middle school in Rigby, Idaho, on Thursday before being disarmed by a teacher, local authorities said. The Jefferson county sheriff, Steve Anderson, said the girl had fired multiple rounds inside and outside the school. The three victims were shot in their extremities and are expected to survive
Republicans widely expected to remove congresswoman from leadership as she resists ex-president’s election lieDonald Trump is poised to tighten his grip on the Republican party with the ousting of one of his most prominent critics in Congress.Liz Cheney, the only woman in Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, is widely expected to be voted out next week by members loyal to Trump. Continue reading...
Governor Henry McMaster says he will sign bill that officials argued was necessary because of shortage of lethal injection drugsSouth Carolina state lawmakers have voted to allow firing squads to be implemented as a method of capital punishment in the state.The Republican governor, Henry McMaster, has said he will approve the bill when it arrives at his desk, making South Carolina only the fourth state in the US that allows death by firing squad. Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah already allow the execution method, according to the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center. Continue reading...
A simple fish pie has held the stories of my family for nearly 50 years and the care and connection of recipes handed down from one generation to the nextOne of my kids’ favourite meals is our family’s traditional “fishie pie”. It’s a simple dish of tuna, celery, onions, boiled eggs in a bechamel sauce, with a crusty roast mashed potato top. It’s best served hot out of the oven with no fuss and a touch of tomato sauce.My kids have eaten it their whole lives, often made as a Sunday night gift by one of their grandparents. Continue reading...
Among the conspiracy theories driving the exercise in Maricopa county is one that suggests 40,000 ballots were flown in from AsiaArizona Republicans are examining whether there is bamboo fiber in ballots that were used in the 2020 election, an activist assisting with the ongoing audit of the ballots told reporters this week. The latest claim underscores how rightwing conspiracy theories continue to fuel doubt about the results of the results.“There’s accusation that 40,000 ballots were flown in to Arizona and it was stuffed into the box and it came from the south-east part of the world, Asia, and what they’re doing is to find out whether there’s bamboo in the paper,” John Brakey, a longtime election audit advocate, told reporters. Continue reading...
Current law requires fingerprints, four hours of training and the passing of a written exam and shooting proficiency testTexans will soon be able to openly carry a handgun without a license after the state’s legislature passed a bill that repeals requirements for carrying a handgun.Though some Republicans voiced hesitancy over the bill, it ultimately passed the Texas senate on Wednesday in an 18-13 vote along party lines. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, said he supports the bill and will sign it into law once it reaches his desk. Continue reading...
The capital may have fallen on hard times. But it still offers a defiantly different version of EnglishnessLondon feels like a city that might be in trouble. The usual tourist crowds are gone. New towers of offices and overpriced flats stand empty. Recently extended railway stations are deserted for much of the day. Hundreds of shops have not survived lockdown. Thanks to Brexit and the pandemic, 700,000 foreign-born residents may have left the city since 2019: almost one Londoner in 13.Politically, London has also fallen on hard times. Many of the government’s priorities – restricting immigration, “levelling up”, culture wars against urban liberalism, Brexit itself – are either implicitly or explicitly against the interests and values of the capital. The likely winner of this week’s London mayoral election, the Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan, is already quite a lonely figure: he is one of his party’s few holders of high-profile office, yet with limited powers, such as overseeing public transport, which the Conservatives are constantly trying to weaken further. Continue reading...
Datasets consistently show racial disparities, from the healthcare system to the criminal justice system. Those gaps are wide and persistentHis choice of words was categorical. When Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, responded to Joe Biden’s speech to Congress last week, he said: “America is not a racist country.”But racial disparities exist in the US healthcare system, its criminal justice system, its educational system and its economic system. Those gaps are wide. They are persistent. And, in some cases, racial disparities have grown over time rather than narrowed. Continue reading...
Theory states that racism is embedded in US history and modern American law, and that legal institutions are inherently racistIdaho governor Brad Little has a bill signed into law that aims to restrict critical race theory from being taught as a subject in schools and universities.The bill, H 377, prevents teachers from “indoctrinating” students into belief systems that claim that members of any race, sex, religion, ethnicity or national origin are inferior or superior to other groups. Signed into law last week, H 377 also makes it illegal to make students “affirm, adopt or adhere to” beliefs that members of these groups are today responsible for past actions of the groups to which they claim to belong. Continue reading...
Actors and crew need better protection from abuse and bullying on set. Too many powerful people get away with itIt started with comments on my first day of shooting, from one of the actors I was co-starring with: suggesting we have a drink, saying he was attracted to me, hugging me out of the blue and finally commenting on my physique while shooting a scene.It felt uncomfortable; I laughed it off. I was still getting into my stride on the production, which I had joined a little late, and I wanted to get on with this actor. We had several scenes that we were shooting together. Continue reading...
Greg Gianforte says the financial assistance program is doing more harm than good. You know, Governor, Covid isn’t over yet?The coronavirus pandemic – heard of it? It’s famously still going on! Though national case numbers are finally starting to drop and recent regional outbreaks in the midwest have begun to subside, there were still about 50,000 new Covid-19 infections recorded in the US on Tuesday and just over 700 new virus-related deaths.But Greg Gianforte, Montana’s governor, has other priorities: he’s been talking about a “labor shortage” in a cynical attempt to cut public assistance. The Republican governor released a statement on Tuesday announcing his state will stop participating in the federal program that has given unemployed workers additional unemployment payments since the start of the pandemic – in an apparent attempt to get Montanans back to work, and he plans to give those who choose to do so something he calls a “return-to-work bonus”. Continue reading...
Modi’s government had a choice between saving lives and saving face. It has chosen the latterA few years ago, as Narendra Modi came into power, I worked on an investigative report about India hiding its malaria deaths. In traveling from tribal Odisha to the Indian national health ministry in New Delhi, my colleague and I watched thousands of cases disappear: some malaria deaths, first noted in handwritten local health ledgers, never appeared in central government reports; other malaria deaths were magically transformed into deaths of heart attack or fever. The discrepancy was massive: India reported 561 malaria deaths that year. Experts predicted the actual number was as high as 200,000.Related: India’s neighbours close borders as Covid wave spreads across region Continue reading...
The waiver could improve access to coronavirus vaccines around the world. Plus, two American students found guilty of murdering an Italian police officer
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Amanda Holpuch on (#5HGMJ)
Lobby group is trying to change language in the bill, which would allow victims to remove themselves from family phone plansThe top lobby group for the US wireless industry is quietly seeking to weaken proposed legislation that has been designed to protect victims of domestic violence by allowing them to remove themselves from family phone plans.Companies including Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T Wireless are seeking to protect themselves from possible future liability and enforcement in the event that they do not adequately comply with the new proposed legislation. Advocates say the bill would help prevent abusers from surveilling and stalking their victims after leaving the relationship. Continue reading...
Since 2015, police in the Albuquerque metro area have shot 44 people, 42 of whom have died. For residents dealing with the trauma, hope is still far awayVeronica Ajanel had not heard from her father for several days. Under normal circumstances she would have gone to visit him to check in, but this was late March 2020, the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the New Mexico governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, had just implemented a shelter-in-place order for all of New Mexico.Ajanel was worried about her fathers health, so she called the Albuquerque police department (APD) to perform a welfare check on the 52-year-old Valente Acosta-Bustillos. APD had performed these check ins on Valente before. His family was routinely calling in for support as the Mexican native had been experiencing manic episodes. Continue reading...
The former non-profit executive, who would be the city’s first female mayor, goes the furthest of her competitors in wanting to defund the policeIt’s a blustery day in the New York city neighborhood of Astoria, Queens, where the mayoral candidate Dianne Morales is due to speak to the crowd.By the time she arrives, the pitching of Morales’ tent, branded in her colors of purple, pink and orange, has already been abandoned due to the wind, and volunteers have been sent sprinting across Astoria park to retrieve hundreds of white campaign pamphlets sent flying across the grass. Continue reading...
The American photographer Robert Houston, who memorably documented the civil rights movement, poverty and homelessness in the United States, has died aged 86. Born in East Baltimore in 1935, he was inspired by his friend and fellow photographer Gordon Parks to start work for the Black Star agency and then at Life magazine, for which he notably covered the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968. Here is a selection of his photographs mainly from those years Continue reading...
Whether it’s putting up scaffolding or playing with Lego, I have no manual skills whatsoeverThere are jobs that use the head, those that need a heart and those for which you have to use your hands. The trouble is that you will normally be far more amply rewarded for one than for the other two put together. Jobs using your head will usually bring home more bacon than those using your heart or hands. The relative pay packets of most people working with their hands must have been shrinking since the iron age.Apart, possibly, from cooking, I’m not blessed with “hand” skills. I was crap at Lego and never moved on from that. I tell a lie. I had a go at being a scaffolder when I left school, and was hopeless at that, too, which could have had far graver consequences for myself and others than playing Lego. So, I’m not blowing my own trumpet when I say it’s a crying shame that most jobs using hands don’t pay more. It seems so unfair. I looked on, slack-jawed in admiration, the other day as a plumber took apart my oil-fired boiler, reassembled it and, lo, there was heat. It’s the same with sparks, chippies and builders of all shapes and sizes. I observe them at work knowing you could leave me with the same materials and the best tools until the end of time, and I would contrive to create nothing of any use or value. Continue reading...
The former secretary of state warns of the danger to democracy of lies flourishing online – and says big tech’s wings must be clippedHer bid for the White House was engulfed by a tidal wave of fabricated news and false conspiracy theories. Now Hillary Clinton is calling for a “global reckoning” with disinformation that includes reining in the power of big tech.The former secretary of state and first lady warns that the breakdown of a shared truth, and the divisiveness that surely follows, poses a danger to democracy at a moment when China is selling the conceit that autocracy works. Continue reading...
High-profile nature of search highlights inquiry’s seriousness and suggests officials may have new Ukraine-related leads to followThe extraordinary FBI raid on Rudy Giuliani’s New York apartment and office has sparked debate about what criminal charges Giuliani may face, and signals a widening criminal investigation into his Ukraine drive to help Trump in 2020 by sullying Joe Biden, former prosecutors say.The high-profile nature of the raid meant it required senior Department of Justice signoff, and underscored the investigation’s seriousness and progress. It also obtained several of Giuliani’s electronic devices and thus may have harvested a rich trove of new evidence and leads for investigators to follow. Continue reading...
Jenner, who has no experience in elected office, sought to appeal to Trump Republicans in interview with Sean HannityIn her first major interview as a candidate for California governor, Caitlyn Jenner sought to appeal to Trump Republicans – telling Fox News’ Sean Hannity she’s an “outsider” looking to “disrupt” politics as usual.The former Olympian and reality TV star sat down with Hannity at her private airplane hangar in Malibu, a wealthy, celebrity enclave west of Los Angeles, to introduce herself as a candidate to replace Democrat Gavin Newsom in the forthcoming recall election. Continue reading...
In op-ed, third-ranking House Republican says party must decide whether it will choose Trump or truthLiz Cheney, the third-most-powerful House Republican, has warned that her party is “at a turning point” as it prepares to try to remove her from leadership for rejecting Donald Trump’s false claims about the election.Writing in a defiant op-ed, published by the Washington Post on Wednesday, the Wyoming Republican told her party that standing with Trump meant undermining the rule of law and risking continued violence. Continue reading...
Skilled shooters are needed to kill the 2,000-pound animals that have been trampling archaeological and other resourcesMore than 45,000 people are vying for one of a dozen spots to help thin a herd of bison at Grand Canyon national park.The odds aren’t as good as drawing a state tag to hunt the massive animals beyond the boundaries of the Grand Canyon, but they’re far better than getting struck by lightning or winning the Powerball. Continue reading...
