After Congress ordered the US Marine Corps to fully integrate women into its west coast training battalions, the first 53 female recruits have become Marines Continue reading...

Under bill signed by the governor, doctors can in some cases face felony charges for performing the procedureArizona’s governor has signed a sweeping anti-abortion bill that bans the procedure if the woman is seeking it solely because a fetus has a genetic abnormality such as Down’s syndrome.Doctors who perform an abortion solely because the child has a survivable genetic issue can face felony charges. The proposal also contains a raft of other provisions sought by abortion opponents. Continue reading...

President signed an executive order that will provide a pay bump to thousands of workers, some who make as little as $10.95 an hourJoe Biden has signed an executive order that will raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour for federal contractors, providing a pay bump to hundreds of thousands of workers.Biden administration officials said that the higher wages would lead to greater worker productivity, offsetting any additional costs to taxpayers. Continue reading...

Company reports revenues up 64% in first quarter as shoppers seek comfort during the pandemic

Toronto FC players were greeted with an unexpected surprise during their training session in Florida as they prepare for their Concacaf Champions League match against Cruz Azul.Defender Chris Mavinga said it was the first time he had seen an alligator, adding: "It's good to be in Florida … I never see this in Toronto"

Recovery has allowed group to pay off debt and start its $500m share buyback scheme earlier than expected

Independent pathologist hired by Brown family examined his body and noted one wound to the head

Marine scientists say they have found what they believe to be as many as 25,000 barrels that possibly contain DDT dumped off the Southern California coast near Catalina Island, where a massive underwater toxic waste site dating back to the second world war has long been suspected.The 27,345 ‘barrel-like’ images were captured by researchers at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. They mapped more than 36,000 acres of seafloor between Santa Catalina Island and the Los Angeles coast in a region previously found to contain high levels of the toxic chemical in sediments and in the ecosystem.The scientists have been investigating the barrels dumped on the sea floor for years

Patients who have recovered from coronavirus yearn to be able to enjoy food again. Good cooking is a rare joy in these times

The daughter of civil rights activists says if you want to tackle Covid recovery, housing and racial justice, ‘pick a Black woman’When Maya Wiley announced her candidacy for New York mayor – known as the second hardest job in the US – it seemed like her résumé was tailored to the moment.It was early October last year, and the city was reeling from trauma. In the spring, New York City had been the center of the coronavirus pandemic, the city rife with ambulance sirens and hospitals erecting tents to house patients outside their overflowing doors. In the summer, thousands of New Yorkers flooded the streets to protest against the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and countless other Black Americans killed at the hands of police officers. Continue reading...

Jennifer Lopez and J Balvin among stars at performance to raise money for Covax

Karen Garner, who has dementia, reportedly fractured arm during arrest outside Walmart in Loveland last yearNew footage has been released that shows the disturbing aftermath of the violent arrest of a 73-year-old woman, believed to suffer from dementia, after she left a Walmart store in Colorado last June.Related: Police killings of Black Americans amount to crimes against humanity, international inquiry finds Continue reading...

Although the United States quickly accuses other nations of genocide, it hasn’t acknowledged its own genocide against Indigenous peopleLast week, Rick Santorum repeated a widely held myth of US exceptionalism. “We came here and created a blank slate, we birthed a nation from nothing,” the former US senator and CNN commentator told the rightwing Young America’s Foundation’s summit. “It was born of the people who came here.” His “we” doesn’t include Indigenous people who were already here or African people who were brought in chains. And that “blank slate” required the violent pillaging of two continents – Africa and North America. If the United States was “birthed from nothing”, then the land and enslaved labor that made the wealth of this nation must have fallen from the sky – because it surely didn’t come from Europe.It’s not the first time a CNN employee has espoused anti-Indigenous racism. Last November during live election night coverage, CNN labeled Native American voters as “something else”. The Native American Journalist Association (NAJA) asked CNN to issue an apology, which it refused to do. And just last week, CNN host Poppy Harlow misidentified the Minnesota lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, as “a white woman”. The network has yet to correct the error. NAJA (of which I’m a member) has since called for the firing of Rick Santorum and its membership to avoid working with CNN for its lack of ethics and accountability around various racist views among its staff. Continue reading...

In contrast to the stereotype of the union worker as a white man in a hard hat, today’s labor movement skews black, brown and femaleWhile many of us are mourning the outcome of the unionization vote among Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, we must not confuse the failure of this specific campaign with the wants and aspirations of workers on the ground. The Amazon drive is only one part of a larger tide of multiracial labor activism incubated in workplaces during the Covid-19 pandemic – activism that will undoubtedly grow as the lockdowns recede. Now is a time for reflection on recent union campaigns that have captured the imagination of workers of color and the communities in which they live. At the dawn of the Biden presidency, the most vital sector of the labor movement is in dialogue with the Movement for Black Lives’ call for reinvestment in communities of color. From the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) fighting for the rights of homeless students during the pandemic, to public sector unions at Rutgers University demanding layoff protections for the most vulnerable, a new generation of labor activists see workplace struggle as an essential staging ground for racial and gender justice. The turn toward intersectional unionism matters, because it is the new face of labor militancy in the United States.Related: In space, no one will hear Bezos and Musk’s workers call for basic rights | Robert Reich Continue reading...

The systematic killing and disproportionate targeting of unarmed Black people by US police breaks human rights commitments, experts have said. Plus, California’s governor will face a recall electionGood morning.The systematic police killings of unarmed Black Americans amount to crimes against humanity, and should be prosecuted under international law, a global human rights inquiry has found. Continue reading...

Donald Trump and his allies piled on the NBA star for a recent tweet about police killings. But their complaints reek of hypocrisyConservatives threw a collective hissy fit over a familiar target last week: LeBron James. The NBA star had tweeted – then deleted – a post about the police killing of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant in Ohio. The context of the tweet is important.People around the world were on pins and needles, hoping that the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin didn’t go the same way as so many before. Officers such as Sean Williams (John Crawford), Timothy Loehmann (Tamir Rice), Daniel Pantaleo (Eric Garner), Betty Shelby (Terence Crutcher), Jarrett Tonn (Sean Monterrosa), and the six officers who killed Willie McCoy either have not faced charges or were found not guilty after killing Black and Latino men, despite video footage of the shootings. Qualified immunity, the police bill of rights and law enforcement unions dedicated to defending officers right or wrong, means it is a near impossibility to achieve a conviction in such cases. But Chauvin’s killing of George Floyd was different. For the first time in Minnesota state history, a white police officer was found guilty of murdering a Black man. The world let out a collective exhale of relief with the hope that the verdict could be the first step towards complete accountability for police officers. Continue reading...

Trump continues to exert a massive gravitational pull on the party while the president forges ahead with ambitious agendaFor Democrats it has been a hundred days of sweeping legislation, barrier-breaking appointments and daring to dream big. For Republicans, a hundred days in the political wilderness.The party that just four years ago controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress now finds itself shut out of power and struggling to find its feet. As Joe Biden forges ahead with ambitions to shift the political paradigm, Republicans still have a Donald Trump problem. Continue reading...

In devastating report, human rights experts call on International Criminal Court prosecutor to open an immediate investigationThe systematic killing and maiming of unarmed African Americans by police amount to crimes against humanity that should be investigated and prosecuted under international law, an inquiry into US police brutality by leading human rights lawyers from around the globe has found.A week after the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder in George Floyd’s death, the unabated epidemic of police killings of Black men and women in the US has now attracted scorching international attention. Continue reading...

Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says department will explore ways to detect and prevent domestic violent extremist action

More than 1.6m signatures have been verified by the California secretary of state, making an election likely in the fallCalifornia’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is set to face a recall election after organizers of the effort collected enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.The California secretary of state’s office announced Monday that more than 1.6m signatures had been verified, about 100,000 more than needed to force a vote on the first-term Democrat. Continue reading...

Outrage among Native Americans after ex-senator tells rightwing students’ conference that colonists ‘birthed nation from nothing’The former US senator and CNN political commentator Rick Santorum has sparked outrage among Native Americans, and prompted calls for his dismissal, by telling a rightwing students’ conference that European colonists who came to America “birthed a nation from nothing”.“There was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture,” Santorum told the ultra-conservative Young America’s Foundation’s summit, entitled standing up for faith and freedom, and shared by the group to YouTube. Continue reading...

Mayor says investigation, which comes a year after Taylor was shot by police during a raid at her home, is an ‘opportunity’ for city ‘to get it right’

New York will lose a congressional seat, which it would have kept had the state counted just 89 additional peopleSix states will gain additional seats in the US House of Representatives because of population shifts over the last decade, the US Census Bureau announced on Monday. Seven states will lose one congressional seat. Continue reading...

In new book, Hawley defends his actions over the Capitol riot but doesn’t mention raising his fist in solidarity with pro-Trump mob

Sir Anthony Hopkins posted a video from Wales the morning after winning this year’s best actor Oscar for his performance in the film The Father. At 83 years of age, Hopkins has become the oldest recipient of the award. In his video message, he paid tribute to actor and fellow nominee Chadwick Boseman, ‘who was taken from us far too early’. Boseman, who died in August, was nominated for his role in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Tory MPs fear the prime minister stands to lose far more than his opponent in a public row over leaksBoris Johnson once cited his favourite movie scene as the multiple retribution killings at the end of The Godfather. But it’s a line from the film’s sequel that best explains the events that have led to the row between the prime minister and his former adviser Dominic Cummings that is currently engulfing Downing Street: “Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.”On Thursday, Downing Street briefed several newspapers that Johnson believed his one-time right-hand man had been behind a number of damaging government leaks. These leaks were wide-ranging – from the recent publication of messages between Johnson and James Dyson over ventilators, to the leaked news of England’s second lockdown, when Johnson was forced to bring forward plans for a circuit breaker. Continue reading...

Stock unloaded by Robert G Kramer would now be worth only $5.5m while FDA report found unsanitary conditions at plant

New York case could lead to the most consequential ruling on the scope of the second amendment in more than a decade

The government may ride out all the embarrassing inquiries, but at what cost?Vain, mendacious, inattentive, conflicts of interest, unfaithful with wives and incapable of keeping his staff. And that is just the last US president. When Boris Johnson should be attending to the nation’s affairs, he mimics Donald Trump as a daily fount of salaciousness and scandal. Most of it is his fault, if not all.Related: Tories are wrong to think that they will never face a day of reckoning for sleaze | Andrew Rawnsley Continue reading...

The 33-year-old was an eye witness to a murder than shook America. His testimony – and knowledge of wrestling – proved important at trialWhen Donald Williams II saw the police car, he debated continuing on his way. He’d snuck out of his place on 25 May 2020 for a few minutes’ break from his family – just a quick hop to Cup Foods for an energy drink, something Williams had done countless times before. It had been a productive day of fishing on Valentine Lake with his 13-year-old son. They planned to fillet and cook the three bass they had caught for dinner; Williams didn’t want to keep his son waiting. He’d haphazardly thrown on his navy blue Northside Boxing hoodie and two mismatched socks that peaked conspicuously out of his flip-flops. He wasn’t dressed for a serious interaction.Williams made it to the convenience store door before he stopped in his tracks. Continue reading...

Caron McBride discovered criminal record for felony embezzlement over 1999 rental when applying for driver’s license

Larry Kudlow grumbles that Biden’s climate policies would force Americans to drink ‘plant-based beer’ – instead of meat-based?The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has joined a flood of social media users gleefully trolling Larry Kudlow after the former economic adviser to Donald Trump complained that Joe Biden wanted Americans to drink “plant-based beer”.Kudlow made the indignant claim on his Fox Business show on Friday, saying Biden’s climate policies and attempt to slash emissions would force Americans to “stop eating meat, stop eating poultry and fish, seafood, eggs, dairy and animal-based fats”. Continue reading...

House minority leader sheds light on refusal to answer question about conversation with ex-president during Capitol attackThe House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, has said his job involves walking “the tightest tightrope anyone has to walk” – shedding light on his very public refusal to answer a question about a conversation with Donald Trump during the Capitol attack.Related: McCarthy dodges questions about what Trump said as Capitol riot raged Continue reading...

The Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, is likely to veto bills to curb voter access, but Republicans are hinting they will use a loophole to implement the measuresOn the surface, the Republican effort to roll back voting rights in Michigan looks similar to what’s happening in states around the country: after Donald Trump narrowly lost a key battleground state where there was record turnout, Republicans are moving swiftly to implement sweeping restrictions to curtail access to the ballot box. Continue reading...

Chloé Zhao makes history as first woman of colour to win best director – and only the second woman ever. Plus, Biden’s first 100 days in officeGood morning.The film director Chloé Zhao made history at the Oscars last night, becoming the first woman of colour – and only the second woman ever – to be named best director. Zhao won for Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand as a woman who lives out of her van, as she interacts with real-life nomads. McDormand took home her third best actress Oscar for the role. Continue reading...

There are few who see the passing of meaningful new laws as a guaranteed outcome – but people are still talkingIn the aftermath of former police officer Derek Chauvin being convicted of murdering George Floyd, it seems like there is momentum for the US Congress to pass some kind of police reform bill.Hearings on policing have been held and point people on both the Democratic and Republican sides are in ongoing talks. By most metrics, Congress is in a comfortable position to pass some kind of bill meant to deter police brutality and prevent another George Floyd or Eric Garner. Continue reading...

Many routine measures are being skipped, such as childhood vaccinations and lead screenings, as experts warn pandemic is likely to widen health inequalitiesHealth resources diverted to fight the Covid-19 pandemic have caused a major drop in critical preventative care including childhood vaccinations and lead screenings, sexually transmitted disease testing and substance abuse services.Related: ‘My city is on fire’: pandemic wreaks renewed havoc in Flint after water crisis Continue reading...

While the scaled-back Oscars in Los Angeles on Sunday made for a more subdued and intimate affair than usual, the evening was not without its moments.Picking up his award for best supporting actor, the British actor Daniel Kaluuya managed to embarrass his proud mother. ‘It's incredible. My mum met my dad, they had sex. It's amazing, you understand. I'm here, you know what I mean?’Glenn Close twerked and Frances McDormand howled like a wolf. Making history as the first Korean actor to win an Oscar, Youn Yuh-jung took a moment to appreciate Brad Pitt, who handed her the award. 'Oh, Mr Brad Pitt, finally, nice to meet you. Where were you while we were filming, in person?' she joked, to laughter

Biden’s quiet almost boring approach, compared with Trump’s sound and fury, could allow him to be far more consequential“Just imagine,” tweeted Pete Buttigieg last October, “turning on the TV, seeing your president, and feeling your blood pressure go down instead of up”.Related: Biden’s 100 days: bold action and broad vision amid grief and turmoil Continue reading...

Biden’s solution to the myriad crises is an ambitious economic agenda that promises to ‘own the future’ by expanding the role of government in American lifeOn the 50th day of his presidency, Joe Biden marched into the Oval Office and took a seat behind the Resolute desk, where the massive, 628-page American Rescue Plan awaited his signature. Across the room hung a portrait of Franklin D Roosevelt, a nod to the transformative presidency Biden envisions for a nation tormented by disease, strife and division.Related: Biden presidency: return to ‘normal’ belies an audacious agenda Continue reading...