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...
Effort by illustrates the disparity with which the US and its northern neighbors are distributing dosesThe Blackfeet tribe in northern Montana has provided about 1,000 surplus vaccines to its First Nations relatives and others in Canada, in an illustration of the disparity in speed at which the US and its northern neighbor are distributing doses. While more than 30% of adults in the US are fully vaccinated, in Canada that figure is about 3%.Among those who received the vaccine at the Piegan-Carway border crossing were Sherry Cross Child and Shane Little Bear, of Stand Off, about 30 miles (50km ) north of the border. Continue reading...
Recall is a major reversal for company that insisted its treadmills were safe despite dozens of reported injuriesThe fitness company Peloton is recalling its two popular treadmills in the US over safety concerns after the death of a child and dozens of other injuries. Peloton has apologized for pushing back against federal safety officials who warned the public last month of the dangers of using them.The recall is a major reversal for a company that insisted its Tread and Tread+ treadmills were safe, despite reports by users. Continue reading...
One of the greatest sports photographers of all time, Walter Iooss Jr got his first commission for Sports Illustrated at 17 and went on to capture award-winning images of the sporting world’s biggest names, including Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant. His work is represented by The Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York Read: My best shot: Michael Jordan by Walter Iooss Jr Continue reading...
Analysis: Trump will try to have it both ways over the verdict – decrying censorship but also eyeing an eventual returnIt was not so much “Release the Kraken!” as “please tell the Kraken to pace around the room a few more times while we think about it”.Facebook’s oversight board ruled that Donald Trump should remain banned from the platform for incendiary posts on the day of the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol. But it also told the company that its “vague, standardless penalty” should be reviewed within six months. Continue reading...
Restrictions on attendance numbers will be lifted this month, but technology has enabled many to watch onlineAs I stood outside the cemetery chapel, waiting for the bearers to begin the journey inside, I felt more than a little invested. The woman whose funeral I was about to lead was almost the same age as me. I knew, from talking to her family on Zoom in the days beforehand, that her life had touched many people over the years. Friends, neighbours and colleagues should have been gathered there to show respect and support others grieving. Stories and memories should have been told, hugs and handshakes given. Instead, about 25 people gathered inside the church. The March snow showers began to fall outside. This was another funeral in the year of Covid-19.Related: Limit of 30 mourners at funerals in England to be lifted this month Continue reading...
DoJ attorneys ‘disingenuous’ in attempts to keep document at conclusion of Mueller investigation secret, judge saysA justice department memorandum explaining the decision not to charge Donald Trump with obstruction at the conclusion of the Mueller investigation must be made public, a federal judge has ruled.Attorneys for the department were “disingenuous” in their attempts to keep the document secret, district court judge Amy Berman Jackson said, according to CNN which reported the story on Wednesday. Continue reading...
‘We didn’t know which kit he’d show up wearing – so we painted one part of the parking lot blue and another red’It all stemmed from a German sports drink. I’d done some advertising work for a brand called Isostar and they’d had this idea where you take a tennis player, put them on a red clay court and shoot them serving from above to capture the shadow. I thought, that is one hell of an idea, but I need the right vehicle to really do it justice.Shortly afterwards Sports Illustrated called asking me to go and shoot Michael Jordan for them. I thought – well, there’s the vehicle! We’d never met but I knew he’d be perfect for it. Continue reading...
Federal documents uncovered by the Guardian reveal the potential for violence circulating through American politics. Plus, the Guardian is 200Good morning.Explosives and flamethrowers are among the objects discovered by law enforcement outside political conventions, public buildings and at protests during the course of 2020 and 2021, federal documents obtained by the Guardian show. Law enforcement agencies claim the danger posed to officers and the public at these political events is increasing. Continue reading...
Amid the calamitous second Covid wave, the ruling BJP party tried and failed to win the coveted West Bengal electionsIn the months leading up to the assembly elections in West Bengal, I began to realise that there was every chance that the state where I live, once a left stronghold, would soon be under the rule of the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP). The realisation came from talking to ordinary, working-class Bengalis. K, a man in his late 30s who had come to work for us, said tersely but firmly that he’d be voting BJP. The reason? “You need to throw out parties in power from time to time. It’s good for them.” He was invoking the Kerala model – in Kerala, voters periodically alternate between putting one of the two main parties in power. Electorates in all states – in fact, the whole country – would probably go Kerala’s way if they had a viable opposition to turn to.From K, I learned firsthand what I knew in theory: that the term “anti-incumbency” doesn’t capture the ground-level resentment people begin to feel towards parties that have been in power for too long. The resentment in a state like Bengal isn’t aimed so much at the party’s principal figureheads; it’s a reaction against the intolerable nature of a politics of local patronage and fiefdoms. Everywhere you go in West Bengal, you’re in a terrain where every inch – footpath, tea stall, shop, roadside “club” (that key political, social and sporting institution), festive celebration – is politicised. The ruling dispensation manifests itself through all-powerful, low-level functionaries who govern through bullying. K and others I spoke to thought it was time to teach these people a lesson. For them, a vote for the leading Hindu nationalist party wasn’t about temples and Islam. Continue reading...
Lotan Fisher was a star at tables across the world. A new documentary explores how one of his rivals started an online detective case into his methodsIsrael’s Lotan Fisher was once considered the greatest bridge player in the world, the card game’s very own Michael Jordan. Yet in 2015 he became the focus of a cheating scandal that resulted in bans imposed by numerous bridge bodies. The story is the subject of a new documentary, Dirty Tricks, that gives a rare look into the exclusive world of elite-level competitive bridge.“For me, it just sounded so quirky and strange to make a film about a bridge scandal,” the documentary’s director, Daniel Sivan, tells the Guardian over Zoom. “It’s not a cool sport, not a spectator sport.” Continue reading...
