US news | The Guardian

In the last week, I said it getting into a cab, brushing past people and when meeting someone out of my bubbleWe stood in line, on Sunday afternoon, in the vast atrium of the Javits convention centre, 30 blocks south of my house. It’s a Fema-run site, staffed by the military, giving it an air of the inevitable third act – roll out the army! – to this interminable movie. One of my six-year-olds was with me and, catching sight of her, a young soldier bumped us to the front of the line. Ten minutes later, along with 7,500 other people at Javits that day, I had my second jab. Continue reading...

The evidence is clear: a genocide against the Uighurs is in progress. Britain must not put trade before human rightsIt came as no surprise to me that I have been included on the list of those sanctioned by the Chinese government for vocal criticisms of the human rights abuses towards Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province. China is not big on freedom of speech.In the “tit-for-tat game that is part of foreign relations, this action is of little consequence. On a personal level, I will be sad not to visit China again, as I have great admiration for many Chinese academics and human rights advocates with whom I have had contact. However, I have no assets to freeze, no investments and no secret property, and my legal work seeking to protect human rights will go on as before. Continue reading...

Delray Beach fire rescue says woman sustained superficial injuries and had been reported missing three weeks earlierA woman rescued from a storm drain in Florida says she was lost for three weeks in tunnels and survived on a can of ginger ale. She was discovered by a woman who heard her screams while driving by the drain.The 43-year-old woman who was rescued is not officially being named because of concerns for her safety and mental health. The incident occurred in Delray Beach, southern Florida, on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Multiple twisters in Alabama sprang from ‘super cell’ of storms that moved into Georgia and may continue to TennesseeBlaring tornado sirens and howling winds roared across parts of western Georgia early on Friday as severe storms pounded southern states.In Alabama at least five people died, and at least one person has died in Georgia, in twisters that wrecked homes, splintered trees and crumpled businesses. Continue reading...

Dr George Tyndall faces 35 criminal counts of alleged sexual misconduct at University of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California (USC) has agreed to an $852m settlement with more than 700 women who have accused the college’s longtime campus gynecologist of sexual abuse.The victims’ lawyers and USC announced the settlement on Thursday. When combined with an earlier settlement of a separate class-action suit, the school has agreed to pay out more than $1bn for claims against Dr George Tyndall. Continue reading...

President pledges that 200m shots will be administered during his first 100 days in office. Plus, five people have been killed after tornadoes in Alabama

Exclusive: Investing in Cures Before Missiles Act would stop funding on ballistic missile and help develop a Covid vaccineCongressional Democrats are introducing legislation to transfer $1bn in funding from a controversial new intercontinental ballistic missile to the development of a universal Covid vaccine.The Investing in Cures Before Missiles (ICBM) Act, introduced in the House and Senate on Friday, would stop funding on the proposed new missile, known as the ground-based strategic deterrent (GBSD) which is projected to cost a total of $264bn over its projected lifespan, and discontinue spending on a linked warhead modification program. Continue reading...

Utility lines and trees downed in storm that hit small communities south of BirminghamAt least five people have been killed and multiple injuries reported after a string of up to seven deadly tornadoes tore through Alabama, toppling trees, demolishing homes and knocking out power to thousands.The confirmed deaths were in Calhoun county, in the eastern part of the state, where one of multiple twisters sprang from a “super cell” of storms that later moved into Georgia, said John De Block, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Birmingham. Continue reading...

Former president says rioters ‘shouldn’t have done it’ but they are now being ‘persecuted’Donald Trump has defended some of his supporters who rioted at the US Capitol on 6 January, saying they posed “zero threat” to the lawmakers who had assembled there to certify the electoral college vote that confirmed Joe Biden’s election victory.Trump complained to Fox News’s Laura Ingraham that law enforcement was “persecuting” the Capitol rioters, while “nothing happens” to leftwing protesters. Five people, including a police officer, died in the riot. Continue reading...

Outdated filibuster rules allow a small minority of the US population to hold the rest of the country hostageAs everyone from President Joe Biden to the conservative Democratic senator Joe Manchin to liberal groups now push to reform the Senate’s rules, the defense of the filibuster goes something like this: by design, our nation is a republic, not a direct democracy, and therefore we must create institutional obstacles to empower a minority of Americans to prevent the whims of the majority from being too hastily enshrined in legislation. By this logic, we must keep the Senate’s cloture rule, which requires 60 of the Senate’s 100 members to end a filibuster and move a bill to a vote.Those who make this case seem to love sounding like erudite constitutional scholars steeped in the grandeur of American history, and they purport to be pluralists worrying about minority rights. Continue reading...

For six years, unrealistic US and Saudi demands for a Houthi surrender have been spurned – but peace talks can still succeed

Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the US, lays off employees after local ordinance on hazard pay passed in Los AngelesKroger, the largest supermarket chain in the US which makes hundred of millions of dollars in profits, is shutting down grocery stores and laying off scores of employees in response to local hazard pay rules for essential workers even as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage.Maria Hernandez has worked at Ralphs grocery stores for 25 years before she recently found out her store would be shutting down. She’s worked through the pandemic and caught the coronavirus in May 2020. She still experiences lingering, long-term effects from it, and has dealt with panic attacks and anxiety from the stress and pressures placed on essential workers. Continue reading...

Democrats and even some Republicans are keen to posit their party as one that backs the working class in high-profile labor fightA steady stream of federal lawmakers have been trickling into Alabama to cheer on workers hoping to unionize at an Amazon Inc warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, cementing the union drive as the highest profile American labor fight in recent memory.The labor push has seen a stream of Democrats but even won the support of some Republicans who are keen to posit their party as one that backs the working class – and whose top leaders are also hostile to Amazon owner Jeff Bezos. Continue reading...

The NBA’s most notorious father gave plenty of prophecies that failed to come true. But it’s hard to argue his plans for his youngest son haven’t worked outLate last Sunday, as we the punters were still smarting from the chaos of the NCAA tournament’s opening rounds, came more distressing news from the NBA: LaMelo Ball, the Charlotte Hornets’ dazzling young point guard, was in danger of missing the rest of the season after fracturing his wrist. As upsets go this was way worse than Florida falling to 15th-seeded Oral Roberts. This was like if WandaVision wrapped its season after the third episode. No! The full picture was only just coming into focus!The third overall selection in last year’s draft, Ball was the feelgood story of this NBA season: basketball’s enfant terrible made good. Great, even. Consider: He no-look passed his way off the bench in 20 games. He became the first player in 60 years to lead all rookies in points, rebounds, assists and steals heading into the All-Star break – at the tender age of 19 to boot. Since his promotion to the starting lineup in February, Ball had been averaging 19.5 points, 5.8 rebounds, 6.2 assists and 1.7 steals. That production didn’t just rate favorably among the league’s top floor generals; it had lifted Charlotte out of the Eastern Conference cellar and into postseason picture for the first time in years. Not since Muggsy Bogues was leading the fast break with Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson have the Hornets been this, well, buzz-worthy. Continue reading...

House agriculture committee hearing comes on the heels of $5bn being allocated to farmers of color earlier this monthFor the first time in US history, members of the House agriculture committee heard from Black farmers on the impact of systemic discrimination by the department of agriculture (USDA).Thursday’s hearing came on the heels of $5bn being allocated to socially disadvantaged farmers of color earlier this month as part of the coronavirus relief and economic stimulus package. The funding – $4bn for debt forgiveness, $1bn for other forms of support – is meant to account for generations of mistreatment of farmers of color by the USDA. Continue reading...

A US man has said 90,000 pennies covered in oil or grease were left at the end of his driveway after he pressed his former employer to pay the $915 he was owed in wages.Andreas Flaten said he left his job at A OK Walker Autoworks in Peachtree City, Georgia, in November but had difficulty getting his final payment, even turning to the Georgia department of labor to receive help.In mid-March, Flaten said as he left his house with his girlfriend he noticed the pile at the end of his driveway. He said the coins were covered with some sort of oily substance and an envelope containing his final pay slip and an explicit parting message.

Jason Miller signed secret deal to stay with DC-based Teneo after ‘resigning’ and then appeared to misrepresent employment statusA top aide to Donald Trump was secretly re-engaged by a leading political strategy firm after being forced to step down following a social media scandal, the Guardian can reveal. The company, Washington-based Teneo, wanted access to top Republicans in the then president’s inner circle, and to conceal his ongoing work.Jason Miller – who remains close to Trump, and who today serves as a senior adviser to the former president – also later appears to have misled a Florida court about this employment status, asserting in a sworn statement that he could no longer comply with a court order requiring him to pay child-support payments because of an alleged “major financial setback” and was effectively out of work. Continue reading...

Echo Park Lake site has become a battleground in the city’s worsening housing and homelessness crisis during the pandemicLos Angeles officials have moved to evict a large homeless encampment from a major city park, sending police in riot gear to face off with unhoused residents and protesters supporting them.Late Wednesday night, hundreds of demonstrators gathered at Echo Park Lake, a public park in central LA, to denounce the planned expulsion of hundreds of people who have been camping out there. Continue reading...

The fact that the president didn’t receive a single question about his handling of the pandemic shows he must be doing something rightHas the fever in American politics finally broken? After a sickness that lasted four long years, it seems the patient is on the road to recovery. Continue reading...

Push to get major corporations to oppose significant voting restrictions Republicans in the state are on the verge of approvingGeorgia activists are calling for a statewide boycott of Coca-Cola as part of an escalating effort to get major corporations to oppose significant voting restrictions Republicans in the state legislature are on the verge of approving. Continue reading...

Gun belonging to president’s son was dumped in a trash can behind a grocery store then found to be missing, Politico reportsThe US Secret Service became involved in a bizarre incident in which a gun belonging to Hunter Biden was dumped in a trash can behind a grocery store then found to be missing, the website Politico reported on Thursday.Delaware police were concerned the gun, a .38 revolver, could be found and used in a crime, the website said, adding that it was eventually found by a man searching the trash for recycling. Continue reading...

Researching the global shipping industry, I saw how modern mega-vessels offer the efficiency consumers demand, at a priceHowever grim and difficult life these days is, I’d still prefer to be sitting on dry land in lockdown than trying to do a three-point turn on the Suez canal with a 400-metre cargo ship under my control. Wouldn’t you? The grounding of the Ever Given container vessel in the Suez canal has provoked both hilarity and genuine concern. Vessels have got stuck before in the canal: at its narrowest, the “ditch in the desert”, as crew on the container vessel I travelled with in 2010 told me, is only 300 metres wide. It’s tight. That’s why ships must wait at either end to be sent through in a slow convoy. But the Ever Given is longer than the canal is wide, and it is stuck sideways. A simple shunt off the banks will not work.The blockage is costly in all sorts of ways, as well as embarrassing for the Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine, the company that operates the ship. The Suez canal was opened in 1869, after the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps employed forced labour to improve rudimentary pre-existing canals (that had been in existence probably since the time of Pharaoh Senusret III) and created an essential thoroughfare for marine traffic, expending many lives in the process and taking 10 years. Continue reading...

We’ve been reporting on gun violence for years. The mass shooting debate is not just biased; it is actively harmful and racistWe write about gun violence in America as our full-time jobs. Between the two of us, we’ve been doing that for over a decade.We see that America’s endless gun debate does not treat shooting victims and their families equitably. It is not driven by a focus on what actually works to save lives. It rarely includes the voices of the majority of the victims or any of the people who have a track record of successfully preventing shootings. It is not just biased; it is actively harmful and racist. And it will never make us safer. Continue reading...

Over the last few months, there’s been ‘no attempt to pretend that the intention is not to restrict votes’, says Stacey AbramsHappy Thursday, Continue reading...

District judge ordered Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa to appear before him in court unless he waves his right to appear in person in writingHundreds of mourners gathered on Wednesday night at a candlelight vigil to remember the 10 people gunned down at a supermarket in a Colorado college town, while the 21-year-old man suspected of carrying out the rampage prepared for his first court appearance on Thursday morning.Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa has been jailed for investigation of murder since he was arrested inside the King Soopers supermarket in Boulder on Monday and treated at a hospital for a leg wound. He was to hear the pending charges he faces and his rights as a defendant, and he would not be asked for a plea until later in the judicial process. Continue reading...

New York governor secured tests for certain people when most people could not get them in the early days of the pandemicAndrew Cuomo set up friends and family members with scarce coronavirus tests when most New Yorkers did not have access to them in the early days of the pandemic, according to multiple reports Wednesday.In March 2020, the New York governor provided tests – and in some cases repeated rounds of testing – to his brother, the CNN anchor Chris Cuomo; to a sister; to their mother; to multiple top government officials and their spouses; to state legislators and staffers; and to other friends of the administration, the Albany Times Union first reported. Continue reading...

The US president and first lady hosted members of the US women's national soccer team at the White House to recognise equal pay day, which symbolises how far into the year women must work on average to make up their pay disparity with men over the year. Earlier in the day, Megan Rapinoe testified in front of a congressional committee examining the economic harm caused by longstanding gender inequalities

As mass shootings bring fresh attention to US gun violence, figures reveal 4,000 more murders took place in 2020 than the year before. Plus: attempts to shift a ship stuck in the Suez canal enter third dayGood morning.Despite a huge drop in the number of high-profile mass shootings, there was a rise in daily gun violence in the US last year. Roughly 4,000 more murders were recorded in 2020 than 2019, which experts say is likely to make it the worst single-year increase on record. Continue reading...

There’s surprising solace in the wisdom of agony aunts – that life doesn’t always work out as we might hopeI read about five or six advice columns a week. Sometimes more. I don’t think I need this much advice (I doubt anyone does), but I have an enduring fondness for the format. I love the small window into a stranger’s life, and how those who write in tend to frame their problems in a way that is, if not unbiased (because who can truly appraise themselves objectively?), then at least not totally self-flattering. I like to read things that aren’t written by writers, and therefore not coaxed into a conventional narrative, and of course I like the replies, too.Over the past year, as contact with other people (especially acquaintances and new people) has been limited, I have found the snippets of family and relationship trouble, bad bosses, nightmare colleagues and irksome friends serve as a sort of replacement for the stories you hear when you have regular spontaneous interactions. And in a year when everyone has been through a lot, advice columns can serve as a reminder that there is always someone out there dealing with something worse. Continue reading...

Andreas Flaten says he found thousands of coins on his driveway months after leaving job at garageA US man has said 90,000 pennies covered in oil or grease were left at the end of his driveway after he pressed his former employer to pay the $915 he was owed in wages.Andreas Flaten said he left his job at A OK Walker Autoworks in Peachtree City, Georgia in November but had difficulty getting his final payment, even turning to the Georgia Department of Labor to receive help. Continue reading...

For decades senators blocked civil rights legislation but allowed democracy to function elsewhere – now next to nothing passesPresident Obama chooses his words carefully. So last July, when he punctuated his eulogy to the civil rights legend John Lewis by calling the Senate filibuster “another relic of Jim Crow”, he wasn’t messing around.Many others (myself included) had written about the historical link between the Senate rule allowing a minority of lawmakers to kill a bill and the preservation of white supremacy. But Obama’s speech sparked a wholesale rebranding. Today, among progressive politicians and activists alike, “End the filibuster” is out. “End the Jim Crow filibuster” is in. Continue reading...

Deep job losses and benefits lags have meant an increase in homeless Americans, and shelters have struggled to keep upRick Temple and his 15-year-old son were living in a room in his work office in Bakersfield, California, before the coronavirus hit in March last year, where Temple, 51, worked as an independent contractor as a dispatcher for freight cargo. But he quickly lost his job and the room, and has relied on unemployment benefits ever since.Related: What I learned about the meaning of home from moving in to my car | AJ Gnuse Continue reading...

The Sandy Hook shooting failed to convince Congress to enact more regulations. In the wake of recent shootings, calls for reform have begunWithin hours of 10 people being gunned down at the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado on Monday – the second such bloody rampage in seven days – the calls had begun for Congress to tighten up America’s notoriously slack firearms laws.John Hickenlooper, a Democratic US senator from Colorado who was governor of the state at the time of the Aurora cinema shooting that killed 12 people in 2012, opined that “our country has a horrific problem with gun violence. We need federal action. Now.” Continue reading...

There have been more ‘Title 42’ expulsions in the space of a few weeks than during an entire year of Trump’s administration, report saysThe Biden administration has so far deported more Haitians in a few weeks than the Trump administration did in a whole year, with the use of a highly controversial Trump-era public health order denying asylum seekers basic legal rights, according to a new report.The report, The Invisible Wall, due to be published on Thursday by a coalition of immigrant rights groups, focuses on Title 42, part of the 1944 Public Health Service Act invoked a year ago by the Trump administration as grounds for summary expulsion of migrants because of the supposed health risk they posed during the Covid pandemic. Continue reading...

Bill Belichick turned his team into a winning machine by exploiting the NFL’s market inefficiencies. But he appears to have abandoned a winning formulaBill Belichick’s response to the New England Patriots’ first losing season in two decades was always going to be bold.Maybe he would move up in the draft to grab his preferred quarterback. Perhaps he could engineer a trade for Russell Wilson, Deshaun Watson, or Matthew Stafford. But this? Handing out more than $160m in free agency in order to conjure up a competitive roster? It feels antithetical to everything Belichick has practiced and preached over the course of the Patriots’ dynastic run. Continue reading...

Companies are snapping up office space because despite Covid-induced working from home, bustling cities will be backA strange thing is happening, thanks to the pandemic. While everyone is stuck working from home, some of the country’s largest tech companies are snapping up real estate like nobody’s business.Google, for example, announced just last week that it was investing more than $7bn to open new offices and expand data centers across the country. The tech giant is opening offices and data centers in Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as Portland, Oregon, Houston, Reston, Virginia, and South Haven, Mississippi. It will expand data centers and workspaces in Nevada and Nebraska, Washington state, Detroit, Chicago, Ann Arbor and Austin. Continue reading...

What’s left for a world titleholder across seven divisions to accomplish? Becoming Puerto Rico’s first four-belt champion and a pound-for-pound showdown with Katie Taylor

Plus: collectors’ items from Portugal and Spain, Hagler takes on hair rock, and Danica Patrick’s historic IndyCar moment1) This week Frank Worthington died, leaving us with a glorious rabbit hole to delve into. His masterpiece came for Bolton against Ipswich in April 1979, leaving four defenders in his wake and departing the frame with one of the all-time great quickfire swivels. Here’s Frank on a horse, picking out some niche Raul de Souza vinyl and scoring a series of stormers during his lengthy spell at Leicester. He scored two England goals, including another piece of quick thinking against Argentina in 1974. And here’s some latter-day Frank, in action for Guiseley in 1990.Good morning, #BWFC fans. On this day in day in 1979, Frank Worthington scored this stunner against @Official_ITFC... pic.twitter.com/JHrMqLgDaa Continue reading...

Eight hours each for work, leisure and sleep feels a sensible balance – yet with home working, and long-hours culture, it can seem like an unachievable goalA woman who grew up in the former Yugoslavia told me how they used to live their days by the three eights: eight hours of work, eight hours of free time and eight hours of sleep. Nice. I assume weekends were free. It’s odd how quaint this 8-8-8 notion sounds, but eight-hour working days add up to 40 hours a week, which was once standard here, wasn’t it?I suppose there are two reasons you would work for longer than that. It could be that you need to do so to put food on your table, which is fair enough – or most unfair, if you see what I mean. On the other hand, you could be doing punishing hours because your employer, or your industry, demands it, in the interests of making the company as much money as possible and, in some cases, enriching yourself along the way. Either way, it’s no good. You need non-working waking hours for your own sanity, your family’s sanity and the good of the community. Continue reading...

Ban comes after a yearslong battle by Democrats in the state, which previously had US’s second-highest number of executionsVirginia has become the 23rd US state and the first in the south to abolish the death penalty, a dramatic shift for the commonwealth which previously had the nation’s second-highest number of executions. Continue reading...

State assemblyman and advocate for criminal justice reform is expected to be confirmed by legislatureCalifornia’s governor has nominated Rob Bonta, a progressive state assemblyman known for pushing criminal justice reform, to be the state’s next attorney general.Bonta, a Democrat, would replace Xavier Becerra, who was confirmed last week as Joe Biden’s health and human services secretary. Pending likely confirmation by the state’s Democratic legislature, Bonta would hold the job through 2022, when he would have to run for election. Continue reading...