Caden Cotnoir witnessed Trent Jarett crash a quad bike live on the app and called the phone number he was yelling outAn adventurous young off-roading enthusiast in West Virginia was saved by social media recently when a teenager more than 800 miles away noticed he was in need of help.Caden Cotnoir, 13, who lives in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, was watching 12-year-old Trent Jarrett riding a quad bike live via the TikTok app, when Caden witnessed Trent crash the four-wheeler right before his eyes, in the middle of the streaming broadcast. Continue reading...

Zachary Horwitz, who acted under the name Zach Avery, was arrested Tuesday and charged with wire fraudOn the surface Zachary Horwitz, 34, appeared to be the stereotypical wannabe actor, attempting to build his career in Hollywood by taking a series of low-impact roles.But while playing small parts in predominantly low-budget films, Horwitz was also running a $690m Ponzi scheme, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), using the ill-gotten money to buy a $5.7m Los Angeles mansion and fund a lavish lifestyle. Continue reading...

Board votes unanimously to reverse decision to rename 44 schools whose names it said honored figures linked to racism and sexismThe San Francisco school board formally suspended a much-criticized plan to strip the names of a third of the city’s public schools.The city’s Board of Education voted unanimously on Tuesday to reverse its decision to rename 44 schools whose names it said honored figures linked to racism, sexism and other injustices. Continue reading...

Plenty are immune to the Masters’ idiosyncratic charms, but I find myself in pandemic exile pining for the placeThe second weekend in April brings the Masters and with it all manner of pressing questions. Like whether Rory McIlroy just might, if Lee Westwood really could, or Bryson DeChambeau really should. Then: whether to go for egg salad or pimento cheese, take your ice tea sweet or not, and if you have any room left for another Georgia peach ice cream sandwich. These last are surely the greatest contribution Augusta National’s chairman emeritus, Billy Payne, made to the game during all his years in charge of the club, and ample justification for his somewhat incongruous presence in the World Golf Hall of Fame.Related: Rory McIlroy says visit to injured Tiger Woods gave him new focus on majors Continue reading...

Huge figures are often thrown around when it comes to the economic impact of sporting events. But many experts say the sums are usually wishful thinkingMajor League Baseball has found itself at the center of a maelstrom over its decision to relocate this year’s All-Star Game from Atlanta over a new law in Georgia that critics say is a form of voter suppression.Naturally, Donald Trump didn’t take long to pipe up. He released a statement calling for a boycott of baseball for “interfering with Free and Fair Elections”. Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp, who signed the bill into law, descried the “cancel culture and partisan activists” who are “coming for your business”. Continue reading...

Instigator of the 1972 Watergate office burglary that led to Richard Nixon’s downfall, he went on to become a rightwing shock jockAs co-leader of “the plumbers” unit in President Richard Nixon’s White House, G Gordon Liddy, who has died aged 90 of complications from Parkinson’s disease, was the instigator of the Watergate office burglary, the fallout from which eventually forced Nixon’s resignation in the face of impeachment.Liddy’s refusal to testify against his bosses, presented as falling on his sword for his prince, saw him serve the longest sentence of any of the Watergate conspirators, but upon his release from prison he capitalised on his notoriety for a remarkable second career in the public eye. Continue reading...

Jamie Dimon says in shareholder letter economy on edge of ‘Goldilocks moment’ but upbeat news came with caveatsThe US has been “torn and crippled by politics, as well as racial and income inequality” but is about to enter a post-pandemic boom, according to JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon.In his annual letter to shareholders Dimon, the US’s preeminent banker, said the economy was on the edge of a “Goldilocks moment” when expanding vaccinations, high savings rates and the Biden administration’s massive stimulus bill could trigger a strong recovery that could last well into 2023. Continue reading...

President touts success in accelerating vaccination effort but warns US still in ‘life-and-death race’ against virusThe US was in a hurry to vaccinate on Wednesday as Joe Biden announced the day before that all US adults would be eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine by 19 April, even as he warned that the nation was still in a “life-and-death race” against the virus. Continue reading...

Northern Wisconsin’s only Ojibwe immersion school built a successful program to revitalize its language. Then the pandemic upended the tribe’s life

Biden says vaccine rollout is ahead of schedule. Plus, Arkansas becomes first state to ban gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth

That we even have to ask if workers should be left alone by their employers when they are not being paid at work is offensive and weird

Hundreds of bills nationwide target people of color whose full participation in future elections is seen by Republicans as a threatAt campaign rallies, Donald Trump specialized in crafting political slogans whose catchiness obscured the lack of actual policy behind them: lock her up, America First, build the wall, drain the swamp.But there was one Trump slogan that turned out to have a shocking amount of policy behind it – hundreds of pieces of legislation nationwide in just the last three months, in fact, constituting the most coordinated, organized and determined Republican push on any political issue in recent memory. Continue reading...

With her orgasm candles and vampire protection mist, the Goop entrepreneur is easy to laugh at. Yet she is the one laughing all the way to the bankLast year, Gwyneth Paltrow created a £58 candle called This Smells Like My Vagina. As soon as she put it on Goop, her lifestyle website, it attracted frenzied media coverage and sold out. “Huh,” Paltrow apparently thought. “Seems like I’m on to something.” A few months later, she launched a £68 candle called This Smells Like My Orgasm. This also sold out. Now the intrepid entrepreneur, who made a (business) name for herself with jade yoni eggs before wading into the incense business, has come out with a custom candle that smells like Kim Kardashian’s orgasm.You know what this whole thing smells like? Yes, yes, yes you do! It smells like shameless attention-seeking. Continue reading...

The film gets some things wrong, but it exposes the grim ecological destruction of the Earth’s oceansWhen the BBC made a film about the crisis in our oceans, it somehow managed to avoid naming the greatest cause of their ecological destruction: the fishing industry. The only significant sequence on fishing in 2017’s Blue Planet II was a heartwarming story about how kind Norwegian herring boats are to orcas. It presented industrial fishing not as the greatest threat to sealife, but as its saviour.It’s as if you were to make a film about climate breakdown without revealing the role of fossil fuel companies. Oh, hang on, the BBC did that too, in 2006. Its documentary The Truth about Climate Change mentioned fossil fuel companies only as part of the solution, because one of them was experimenting with carbon capture and storage. These films consisted of handwringing about a scarcely defined problem, followed by a suggestion that we should “do something”, while offering no hint of what this something might be. Continue reading...

Alessandro Bazzoni’s bank account was closed after he faced sanctions in a case of mistaken identityA small business owner in Italy is preparing to sue the US Treasury after accidentally being put on a sanctions blacklist before Donald Trump left the presidency.Alessandro Bazzoni, who owns a graphic design company in Sardinia, has been unable to trade since 19 January, when his business was slapped with sanctions as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on blacklisted Venezuelan crude oil. Continue reading...

While the richest got spectacularly richer during the pandemic, the ex-president plummeted nearly 300 places in the Forbes listIt’s been a glorious pandemic for the world’s richest people. Forbes annual billionaire poll includes a record-breaking 2,755 billionaires, with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once again topping the list, the media company said on Tuesday.The ranks of the super wealthy swelled as the coronavirus pandemic threatened the lives and livelihoods of millions across the planet but stock markets continued to hit new highs. Continue reading...

Shooting at Fort Detrick involved US navy sailors and the shooter was a hospital corpsman, US navy saysA suspect in a shooting at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, on Tuesday morning was shot and killed, officials said. The two victims in the shooting were in critical condition.The US navy said the shooting “involved US navy sailors. The shooter, a navy hospital corpsman, is deceased.” Continue reading...

The US Open champion has no plans to tone down his unique approach to Augusta National and will attack from the first teeAnd now for his next trick. Any notion of Bryson DeChambeau toning down his approach to Augusta National will be dismissed within one Masters shot. DeChambeau used pre-tournament media duties to deliver his unique plans for the 1st: the US Open champion intends to blast his drive over the trees protecting the right side, thereby leaving just a flick to a hole which is 445 yards long. The beast is not for taming.Related: Golf's outdated world ranking system on verge of major overhaul Continue reading...

Republican, who had his first vaccine shot last week, will self-isolate for 10 days, his office saidThe governor of Montana, Greg Gianforte, has tested positive for the coronavirus despite having a first vaccine shot last week.Related: Greg Gianforte kills black wolf in violation of Montana regulations Continue reading...

Plans hang on New York budget negotiations as Cuomo accused of attempting to railroad the state into allowing the developmentEyebrows have been raised over a proposal for a huge skyscraper in New York City, called Penn 15 and comparable in size to the Empire State Building.Related: 'Upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating into the sky' – do cities have to be so sexist? Continue reading...

After a tough couple of years, the firm has a new charity setup and a new look for the summerEthical shoe brand Toms hit the big time by making shoppers feel good about buying shoes as it donated a pair of its canvas espadrilles every time it banked a sale. But then consumers stopped buying.Now the US brand is on the comeback trail with a different profit-sharing setup and a new image. A chunky soled version of its slip-ons, aimed at Gen Z-ers cool enough to wear them with their socks pulled up, will hit the shops this summer. Continue reading...

Congresswoman who quit amid scandal over ‘revenge porn’ says ‘if reports are true, he engaged in the practice he defended me from’The Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz insisted on Monday he would not resign, amid a scandal over alleged sex trafficking.Related: Ex-congresswoman Katie Hill is ‘still here’ – and she wants the world to know it Continue reading...

Board voted to strip schools of names it said were linked to racism and sexism but critics said effort was hasty and flawedThe San Francisco school board is poised to reverse a much-criticized decision to purge 44 schools of names it said were linked to racism, sexism or other injustices, among them Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Louis Stevenson and Dianne Feinstein, a longtime Democratic senator from California.Related: California scrambles as maskless crowds flood vacation hotspots Continue reading...

Growth forecast upgraded amid US and UK vaccine programmes and stimulus packagesStronger recoveries from the Covid-19 pandemic in the US, the UK and other rich western countries will result in faster than expected growth for the global economy this year, the International Monetary Fund has predicted.The Washington-based IMF’s half-yearly World Economic Outlook (WEO) said successful vaccine programmes, businesses adapting to the challenges of lockdown and Joe Biden’s $1.9tn (£1.4tn) stimulus package had been key factors in the upgrade. Continue reading...

Our ‘infrastructure’ isn’t just steel and concrete. It is the millions of people who provide care services and the millions who rely on them

Republicans in the two states are advancing restrictions while nationally lawmakers have introduced 361 bills to limit access to the ballot in some wayAs Georgia Republicans face backlash over new sweeping voting restrictions, activists in other states are escalating efforts to oppose similar restrictions advancing in other states. Continue reading...

Medaria Arradondo said Chauvin’s force was unnecessary, in a rare testimonial from a police chief against a former officer. Plus, Mitch McConnell tells businesses to ‘stay out of politics’

Supporters and family of the rapper DMX have held a prayer vigil outside the New York hospital where he remains on life support after being admitted on Friday after a heart attack Continue reading...

Washington Spirit forward may have got her sporting genes from her father but it is her mother who she credits as her role modelTrinity Rodman is a rarity in soccer.Almost all American women her age take a well-traveled path: They play soccer in college and then, after graduation, they join the National Women’s Soccer League via the draft or sign in Europe. Continue reading...

During a period of extreme stress, I went bald, and I am regularly contacted by women going through this wrenching loss. But there may be light on the horizonA new Harvard study has confirmed the link between stress and hair loss, giving hope it could be halted or reversed. The researchers identified that the release of stress hormones suppresses a molecule, Gas6, involved in hair production, while adding Gas6 promoted regrowth. Does this mean a cure for baldness is finally a possibility? As the perpetually weary Twitter account @justsaysinmice cautions when scientific findings are dramatically reported, the research only relates to rodents, but it’s an important breakthrough.As someone who went bald 26 years ago after an exceptionally savage period of stress, it’s interesting to have the anecdotal confirmed by science. But does a cure matter for me or other baldies? Continue reading...

Revealed: online chats indicate some members are threatening to unleash harassment tactics on officials and government workersA national online network of thousands of rightwing self-described “Oath Enforcers” is threatening to unleash harassment tactics on elected officials and government workers around the country, the Guardian can reveal.While the network’s founder insists that the group is neither violent nor a militia, internal chats indicate that some members are planning for confrontations with law enforcement and their perceived political enemies. Continue reading...

Group travels to chalet after spending weekend trapped on a glacier on Denali, North America’s highest peakFive people had to ski through a heavy Alaska snowstorm to a mountain chalet after abandoning their airplanes on a glacier on North America’s tallest peak, where they were stranded for the weekend, officials said on Monday.The five landed Friday in three separate small airplanes – a Cessna 180 and two Piper PA18s – on Ruth Glacier on Denali, said Maureen Gualtieri, a spokesperson for Denali national park and preserve. Continue reading...

Republicans’ standing in corporate America appears under threat as Senate minority leader warns: ‘Don’t pick sides in the big fights’Republicans’ standing as the party of corporate America appears to be under threat after Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the Senate, told chief executives critical of voting restrictions to “stay out of politics”.Last week Coca-Cola, Delta and dozens of other companies condemned a new election law in Georgia while Major League Baseball announced it would move the All-Star Game from the state in protest. Continue reading...

Medaria Arradondo says on sixth day of trial that ex-officer’s treatment of George Floyd breached regulations