Pandemic job cuts have meant many people have no insurance to pay for dental work – and the poorest are hardest hitMaureen Haley, 66, lost her home in Florida in the wake of the 2008 recession. She now lives in a camper near Greensboro, North Carolina, relying on social security and Medicare to make ends meet and pay for healthcare.But Haley has problems with her teeth, and cannot afford to see a dentist to have them fixed. Continue reading...
by Carly Earl explains it to Naaman Zhou on (#5HDC8)
You don’t need special gear to create this optical trickery. If you have an iPhone 11 or 12 you too can loom large over a former US presidentHi Carly. As our resident photography expert, I have a question. Something about this photo featuring Joe and Jill Biden and former president Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter seems … off?It sure does. Where to begin … The scale of Biden v Rosalynn is very unusual – he looks three times the size of her and even though the natural physical changes during old age may be playing a role here, I don’t think ageing shrinks you that much. Also, the scale of Jimmy Carter’s feet compared to the rest of his body is weird – sort of like a reverse statue of David. Finally, notice the lounge chairs, they look like they are from a doll’s house. That seems unlikely. Continue reading...
Approval would bolster US vaccine drive and help ease parents’ worries over kids’ exposure to virusThe US Food and Drug Administration is preparing to authorize the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine for adolescents between ages 12 and 15 years by early next week, the New York Times reported on Monday, citing federal officials familiar with the agency’s plans.An approval is highly anticipated after the drugmakers said in March that the vaccine had been found to be safe, effective and produced robust antibody responses in 12- to 15-year-olds in a clinical trial. Continue reading...
Judge agrees to delay amid new charges and planning difficulties related to coronavirusA US judge has granted Ghislaine Maxwell’s request to delay her trial on charges she procured teenage girls for the late financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse, saying the trial will begin in the fall.The US district judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan said on Monday that a “short” postponement of the scheduled 12 July trial was appropriate because federal prosecutors had added new charges to the case, and Covid-19 protocols had made trial preparation harder. Continue reading...
President said last month he would leave Trump-era figure of 15,000 in place this yearJoe Biden has formally raised the US cap on refugee admissions to 62,500 this year, weeks after facing bipartisan blowback for his delay in replacing the record-low ceiling set by Donald Trump.Refugee resettlement agencies have waited for Biden to quadruple the number of refugees allowed into the United States this year since 12 February, when a presidential proposal was submitted to Congress saying he planned to do so. Continue reading...
Republican who voted to impeach Trump under increasing fire from members of her own party who are loyal to former presidentLiz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who voted to impeach Donald Trump, is coming under fire from members of her own party after her tweet that the former president did not lose the election unfairly. The spat illustrates the split between Republicans loyal to Trump and those willing to criticize the former president.“The 2020 presidential election was not stolen,” Cheney tweeted. “Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.” Continue reading...
Daniel Humm, owner of foodie haven with three Michelin stars, says modern food system ‘simply not sustainable’One of New York’s top fine dining restaurants is abandoning meat and going for a plant-based menu after its chef and owner posted a message on its website saying the modern food system was “simply not sustainable”.Daniel Humm is the driving force behind Eleven Madison Park, which has won three Michelin stars and is one of the top names in Manhattan’s elite foodie scene. Continue reading...
The Mexican fighter talks exclusively about his upcoming bout with Billy Joe Saunders, childhood bullies and the pitfalls of fame“I love this,” Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez says as he looks around the scattered debris of his gym in San Diego. His intense gaze scans the heavy bags and speed balls, the hand wraps and water bottles, the gloves and head guards, with an empty ring at its very heart. It’s just after 10 in the morning and the familiar clatter and din of his training camp has already begun for the day. Álvarez, the best boxer in the world, turns back to my Zoom screen and then, leaning forward, he speaks in Spanish with surprising ardour for a 30-year-old fighter who has been boxing professionally for more than half his life: “I love it. I’m always motivated because I love boxing.”It’s strangely moving as we reach the core of a rare one-to-one interview with Álvarez and he switches back to English to say two simple yet compelling sentences. “This is the reality of my life. No boxing, no life.” Continue reading...
The US president, Joe Biden, has said it is time for corporations and the richest Americans to ‘start paying their fair share’ as he pitched his $4tn infrastructure and welfare plans at an event in Virginia.Speaking at a community college in Norfolk, Biden made the case for increasing taxes on the wealthiest in the US to fund his $1.8tn American families plan and $2tn infrastructure plan. The packages would provide funds for childcare, invest in free universal pre-schooling and rebuild America’s transport and public housing.‘I think it’s about time we started giving tax breaks and tax benefits to working class families and middle class families, instead of just the very wealthy,’ Biden said.
President hit the road on Monday to promote infrastructure and welfare spending plans totaling about $4tnJoe Biden said it is time for corporations and the richest Americans to “start paying their fair share” of taxes as he hit the road on Monday in a concerted effort to promote his administration’s huge new infrastructure and welfare spending plans totaling about $4tn.Speaking at a community college in Norfolk, Virginia, on Monday afternoon, the US president made the case for increasing taxes on the wealthiest in the US in order to help fund his ambitious $1.8tn American Families Plan and $2tn infrastructure plan. Continue reading...
Billionaire, 90, lets slip plan for vice-chairman to take over at $644bn investment groupBillionaire investor Warren Buffett has confirmed that the vice-chairman of his Berkshire Hathaway investment conglomerate, Greg Abel, will succeed him as chief executive.The 90-year-old’s succession plan was teased out of him – apparently by accident – by his longtime business partner, 97-year-old Charlie Munger, at the company’s annual meeting over the weekend. Buffett, speaking to CNBC in an interview broadcast on Monday, confirmed the choice. Continue reading...
Public confidence in the monarchy legitimises the institution. Will the Prince of Wales gain it on ascending to the throne?In last year’s “democracy rankings” by the Economist Intelligence Unit, four of the top five spots went to countries where the head of state wears a crown. Nobody with a modern democratic outlook would dream of putting a monarchy atop a democracy. In practice they seem to work rather well. The reasoning, perhaps, being that somebody has to possess the final power of decision and thus stamp a democratic regime with their own views. Why not an apolitical sovereign, born to power irrespective of ability and whose opinions are hidden? Only a constitutional monarch, the logic runs, could permit unimpeded public administration.This is one of the arguments in a lively, republican-leaning essay by Tom Clark in this month’s Prospect magazine. He argues persuasively for shrinking the crown to a continental-sized monarchy. Mr Clark, formerly one of this column’s writers and editors, says that it would be unwise to assume the institution “can – or should – just carry on as it has been after Elizabeth II”. He says that the crown could be sunk by a more divisive monarch. Royalty depends on popularity. YouGov polling in 2020 put Elizabeth II’s approval rating at 69%, way above her son and heir Prince Charles, at just 40%. Only 7% approve of Prince Andrew, who unwisely went on TV and defended his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Continue reading...
Rana Abdelhamid, the daughter of Egyptian immigrants, is seeking to oust a veteran congresswoman in a Democratic primarySteinway is a bustling and noisy street in the Queens neighborhood of Astoria. The area locally referred to as “Little Egypt” is brimming with people grocery shopping and bicyclists rushing in and out of shawarma shops to deliver their next order. It’s a north African, south-west Asian neighborhood made up of small businesses like halal butcher shops, hookah lounges and Middle Eastern restaurants.For Rana Abdelhamid, this neighborhood is home. On 14 April, Abdelhamid announced her run against the incumbent Democratic congresswoman Carolyn Maloney to represent New York’s 12th congressional district, a region made up of a significant portion of Manhattan’s East Side, Astoria and north Brooklyn. It ranges from the fantastically wealthy penthouse apartments that line Manhattan’s Central Park to the struggling working-class areas where Abdelhamid grew up. Continue reading...
It’s not the ‘woke’ who want to erase the past, but those who are determined that it should never be examinedIt seems that the government’s war on woke is box office gold, infinite spite fired at an endlessly replenished stream of targets, none of them moving very fast, since they totally weren’t expecting culture secretary Oliver Dowden to even be aware of their work.But, ask anyone who uses it pejoratively to describe another person what “woke” actually means, and it turns out to have a specific usage. In an academic or museum trustee, it means anyone who talks about decolonising the curriculum, as in the case of the academic whose reappointment to the board of the Museum of Greenwich was reportedly vetoed by Dowden. In the context of youth, it’s the ones on Black Lives Matter protests, unless it’s the ones posing a threat to a slave owner’s statue. Continue reading...
For most of those who turned their back on Labour, ideas of Britishness, pride and industry have nothing to do with the rightIn the wake of Labour’s terrible, soul-destroying election defeat in 2019, the need to “listen” to the red wall constituency voters who had deserted the party became an instant truism. In the trauma of the moment, there was a genuine desire to understand why so many of the places that had sustained the labour movement for so long had voted for the enemy.But the ability to listen well is a rare and difficult skill. The great German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer, who devoted his intellectual career to the art of understanding what others mean, defined it beautifully. The good listener, said Gadamer, “does not go about identifying the weaknesses of what another person says in order to prove that one is always right, but one seeks instead, as far as possible, to strengthen the other’s viewpoint so that what the other person has to say becomes illuminating”. Continue reading...
As one sociologist put it: ‘Other countries have social safety nets. The US has women.’ That needs to changeAt first glance, it seemed a bit odd that the Biden administration separated its economic agenda into two different bills. The first of these huge pieces of legislation was the American Jobs Plan, a $2tn infrastructure bill that would fix roads and bridges but also invest in clean drinking water and high-speed internet access. The second of the bills, unveiled on Wednesday, is the American Families Plan, a $1.8tn investment in education, paid leave and childcare. The bills are both framed as long-term, forward-thinking investments addressing a decades-long negligence in federal spending, and they’re both being pitched as tickets to greater American prosperity. “Jobs, jobs, jobs,” Biden repeated in his address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, touting the legislation.Related: Why are Republicans so threatened by universal daycare? | Arwa Mahdawi Continue reading...
Two years into office, Lori Lightfoot is accused of back-pedaling on reform while botching some high-profile cases involving police killing or misconductOn 20 May 2019, the freshly elected Chicago mayor, Lori Lightfoot, delivered her inauguration speech to a jubilant audience.It was imbued with promises of fundamental change – tailored care for blighted neighborhoods, solutions to government corruption and endemic violent crime, an ambitious agenda for tackling deep-rooted faults in the city. Continue reading...
By lifting the ban on Medicare negotiating prescription drugs prices we can expand benefits and lower the age of eligibilityWe are beginning to make progress in creating a government that works for all people, and not just the very wealthy. But we still have a very long way to go.By now you’ve heard the big headlines about the American Rescue Plan that Joe Biden signed into law in March: the $1,400 direct payments, the massive expansion of the child tax credit, the extension of unemployment benefits and the production and distribution of tens of millions of vaccine doses that are desperately needed if we are going to crush this pandemic. Continue reading...
Three drug firms due to go on trial over alleged role in opioid crisis in West Virginia, described as ‘ground zero’ of the epidemic. Plus, three people die after a boat capsized near San DiegoGood morning.The trial of three major US drug distributors over their alleged role in the opioid crisis in West Virginia is due to begin on Monday. The firms are accused of illegally pumping hundreds of millions of prescription opioid pills into the state, and with it, driving the highest overdose rate in the US. Continue reading...
For Americans juggling work with family responsibilities, a right already enjoyed in other wealthy nations can’t come too soonWhen Tameka Henry and her family members contracted coronavirus in December, she worried about whether they would recover. She worried about her 14-year-old daughter, who has asthma. She worried about her husband, who has a disability and requires her care.She also worried about the bills piling up as she took unpaid leave from her work. Continue reading...
A new book by Chanda Minor-Brigance, the wife of Super Bowl winner OJ Brigance, celebrates the importance of the caregiverSeven years after OJ Brigance played on the Baltimore Ravens’ Super Bowl-winning team during the 2000 season, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Knowing that the disease would take his mobility, he and his wife, Chanda Minor-Brigance, had to figure out how to adjust to a new normal.“When OJ was first diagnosed, we knew nothing about ALS,” Minor-Brigance said. “How you prepare for something like that – a life-changing thing – I don’t know. But we were not prepared.” Continue reading...
Activists hope that with Democrats controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress, DC can finally join the union – but challenges remainThousands of miles from the US capital, a group of progressive protesters recently marched to the office of their senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski, to demand that she support statehood for Washington DC.The protest was notable because of its setting of Anchorage, Alaska, and similar demonstrations have recently been popping up all across America. Progressives from Arizona to New York have taken pictures with 51-star flags to show their support for making DC the first new state to join the union since Hawaii in 1959. Continue reading...
Chicago made an aggressive – and impressive move – for the talented Justin Fields while Pittsburgh overreached to take a running backChicago Bears: Chicago had the most to shout about after the dust settled in Cleveland. The Bears executed the finest move of the weekend when they traded up to snag Justin Fields at the expense of first- and fifth-round picks this year, and a first- and fourth-rounder in 2022. Aggressive decisions like this are often a desperate reach but getting such an all-round talented quarterback at No 11 feels like an unmitigated steal. Continue reading...
In 1977, Stephen Shore went to New York State, Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio – in what later became known as the rust belt – to photograph factories, workers and their families Continue reading...
A series of federal cases over the pharmaceutical industry’s push to sell narcotic painkillers which created the worst drug epidemic in US historyThe trial of the three biggest US drug distributors for illegally flooding West Virginia with hundreds of millions of prescription opioid pills, and driving the highest overdose rate in the country, is due to open on Monday.Related: Empire of Pain review: the Sacklers, opioids and the sickening of America Continue reading...
Only Republican to twice vote to impeach Trump gets hostile reception as censure motion narrowly failsMitt Romney was loudly booed at the Utah Republican party convention on Saturday – and called a “traitor” and a “communist” as he tried to speak.Related: Bush: ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ideals show pro-Trump Republicans ‘want to be extinct’ Continue reading...
In new book, Massachusetts senator reflects on why she lost the presidential nominationIn a new book, the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren suggests part of the reason for her failure in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination lay in the party’s reluctance to nominate another woman.Related: Mitt Romney booed and called ‘traitor’ at Utah Republican convention Continue reading...
Legendary investor also warns about share-trading apps and investment Spacs while partner calls cryptocurrencies ‘disgusting’The billionaire investor Warren Buffett has warned of inflation hitting the US economy amid a “red hot” recovery from the worst of the coronavirus pandemic.Buffett said his portfolio companies were “seeing very substantial inflation” in a range of sectors amid shortages of raw materials and high savings among those who kept jobs but were barred from spending on things such as holidays during lockdowns. Continue reading...
Community and advocates in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, say police escalating peaceful protests and ‘trying to antagonize city’Perched on a ladder, Ulysses “Bones” Edwards reached for another can of spray paint, adding a few deft strokes to the mural of Andrew Brown Jr that was slowly starting to take shape on the side of the house where Brown lived in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, a stone’s throw from where he was killed by law enforcement last week.A crowd of marchers passed Edwards as he worked on Thursday. Dozens also gathered over the weekend, ahead of Brown’s funeral on Monday, with demonstrations on Saturday marking the eleventh straight day of peaceful protests in the coastal city. At least 16 people have been arrested since the city enacted a curfew earlier in the week. Continue reading...
The reckless disdain of Boris Johnson and David Cameron is evidence of the institutional elitism blighting our politicsOver the past fortnight, the news from Westminster has rather resembled a weird play about pre-revolutionary France, or Tsarist Russia circa 1916.In some parts of the country, the rate of unemployment runs at 15%. Six million people are now reckoned to be on universal credit. I was in Birmingham this week, where I heard lots of talk about the impossibility of finding work, and local businesses hanging on by their fingernails. But every time I switched on the radio, I heard a twisted soap opera about money, taste (or the lack of it) and a prime minister who is reportedly having difficulty getting by on £150,000 a year. Boris Johnson’s alleged insistence that he was minded to “let the bodies pile high in their thousands” rather than impose another lockdown suggests a Bourbon or Romanov driven to exasperation by the necessity of difficult choices. There is something similarly monarchical about the swift binning of the £2.6m Downing Street briefing room – further proof, it seems, that austerity need only worry the plebs. Continue reading...
Mitt Romney was loudly booed at the Utah Republican party convention on Saturday, and called a 'traitor' and a 'communist' as he tried to speak. 'Aren’t you embarrassed?' the Utah senator asked the crowd of 2,100 delegates at the Maverik Center in West Valley City. 'I’m a man who says what he means, and you know I was not a fan of our last president’s character issues.'
We think of payday as a rigid date, but ‘pay on the day’ is becoming more popular. Here’s how to navigate on-demand benefitsAs employers – especially small employers – are struggling to bring back workers to their jobs, a relatively new benefit is becoming more attractive: on-demand pay.Yes, that’s right: an employee gets paid on the day the work is performed. Think about it: your babysitter already gets paid right away, and so does the high-school kid who mows your lawn. So why not your employees? Continue reading...
The US president has challenged the idea that the ‘east is rising, the west declining’. Instead, he insists that America’s day is far from doneFinally, we have arrived, not at a clash of civilisations, but at the clash of civilisations. Or so President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress would have you believe. The US versus China. The west versus the east. Democracy versus autocracy. Biden’s speech last week was rich in laying down markers for Washington in the contest of the century.“They’re going to write about this point in history,” Biden told a gathering of US television news anchors before his speech, in remarks later released by the White House. “Not about any of us in here, but about whether or not democracy can function in the 21st century.” Continue reading...
The president’s decision to set up a taskforce to boost union membership is of a piece with other efforts in his first 100 daysJust over 100 days into his presidency Joe Biden is showing that he is one of the most pro-union presidents in American history, declaring the “unions built the middle class” in his address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.Union membership has declined precipitously in the US and accounted for about 10.8% of US employees last year, just over half the rate in 1983. Unions have also suffered notable setbacks in recent years, mostly recently failing to get the votes to unionize at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama. Continue reading...
With less than one-third of Americans fully vaccinated, health authorities switch from mass vaccination clinics to outreach campaignsA decline in daily Covid-19 vaccination rates has left US public health authorities with a new problem – how to effectively shrink operations.In the campaign to immunize all American adults against the coronavirus, most of the difficulties to date have involved overwhelming demand and restricted supply. Now, with less than one-third of Americans fully vaccinated, local public health authorities described a sense of whiplash as they pivot from mass vaccination clinics to outreach campaigns, all within a couple of weeks. Continue reading...
Shooter was also killed after opening fire at random when he was unable to find his intended target at gaming venueTwo people have been shot dead at a casino in Wisconsin, police said, in the latest shooting incident to hit the United States.The suspected gunman was also shot dead by police after he opened fire on Saturday evening in the dining room of the Radisson hotel section of the Oneida casino, near Green Bay in the northern part of the state. Continue reading...
The new president is benefiting not just from bold proposals and actions but from his predecessor’s catastrophic recordBy almost any measure, Joe Biden’s first 100 days have been hugely successful. Getting millions of Americans inoculated against Covid-19 and beginning to revive the economy are central to that success.Related: In his first 100 days, how has Biden handled the four crises he outlined? Continue reading...
The 147th Kentucky Derby, won by Medina Spirit, capped a day of near-perfect weather and masked spectators milling around Churchill Downs again after not being allowed for last fall’s delayed race because of the coronavirus pandemic
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