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President's son argued he was being prosecuted for political purposes as he faces charges he lied about drug use to buy weaponA federal judge in Delaware refused Friday to throw out a federal gun case against Hunter Biden, rejecting the president's son's claim that he is being prosecuted for political purposes as well as other arguments.The US district judge Maryellen Noreika denied defense efforts to scuttle the prosecution charging Hunter Biden with lying about his drug use in October 2018 on a form to buy a gun that he kept for about 11 days. Continue reading...

Airline's Perth-to-London flights will now stop over in Singapore to avoid Iranian airspace amid fears Tehran will strike Israel

Republican presumptive nominee struggles to articulate position on divisive issue after meeting with House speakerFacing the press alongside the House speaker, fellow Republican Mike Johnson, Donald Trump bragged: We broke Roe v Wade."The former president made the stark admission about his dominant role in attacks on abortion rights at the end of a week in which the rightwing Arizona state supreme court ruled that an 1864 law imposing a near-total ban could go back into effect. Continue reading...

They've turned the clock to the 1800s', said the US vice-president as she excoriated ex-president as architect of healthcare crisis'Kamala Harris pinned the blame for Arizona's abortion ban squarely on Donald Trump, who she described as the architect of this healthcare crisis" in a speech at a campaign event in Tucson on Friday.The state was left reeling after the Arizona supreme court ruled earlier this week that a civil war-era law banning abortion in the state with almost no exceptions is now enforceable. Continue reading...

This live blog is now closedA vote to amend Fisa's section 702 to prohibit warrantless surveillance in the House has failed.The amendment, introduced by Arizona Republican representative Andy Biggs, failed after the yays and nays votes tied at 212-212. Continue reading...

The 48-year-old became the first player to make the cut on 24 consecutive occasions after playing 23 holes on day twoNo one around the 14th at Augusta National on Friday morning seemed to have had too much sleep. There was Caroline, 56, who had been kept awake by her knee. She had twisted it by slipping on a set of steps last week, and it was still aching after all the walking she'd done on the opening day. And there was Josh, 15, who had been so excited he'd woken up two hours before his family needed to leave for the course. And there was Simon, 31, who had a skinful the previous evening, and had been dragged out of bed by his housemates.And there were a few thousand others, too. At 48, Tiger Woods still draws a gallery three times the size of anyone else here. The sun was just up above the pines, the sky was clear and the day stretched ahead like an open road. So however restless they felt about it the moment they woke, they, and everyone else, enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing that, at this particular moment, there was nowhere else in the world they would rather have been than where they were: beside the teebox watching Woods get ready to hit his first shot of the second day of the 88th Masters. Continue reading...

Rule adds stronger requirements for cleaning up wells but does not ban leasing on public lands, as called for by environmentalistsOil and gas companies will have to pay more to drill on public lands and satisfy stronger requirements to clean up old or abandoned wells, according to a final rule issued on Friday by the Biden administration.The interior department's rule raises royalty rates for oil drilling by one-third, to 16.67%, in accordance with the sweeping 2002 climate law approved by Congress. Continue reading...

He's losing cash reserves and legal gambits, and his eponymous stock - DJT - took an embarrassing tumble this weekDonald Trump is doing his best Wizard of Oz imitation. These days, Trump is not looking like the winner" he needs voters to believe him to be. Like the title character in L Frank Baum's 1900 children's fantasy and the 1939 movie, there is less there than meets the eye. The 45th president's lead in the polls evaporates while his cash stash shrinks.His upcoming felony fraud trial in Manhattan looms. For the record, he is zero for three in his bids to adjourn the trial, and lawyers are expensive. Continue reading...

Representative Don Wilson forgot his handgun in bathroom before it was discovered and state police secured weaponA Colorado state legislator publicly apologized after leaving a loaded gun in the state's capitol building.Colorado state representative Don Wilson, a Republican, confirmed that he left a loaded 9mm Glock handgun in a capitol bathroom on Tuesday evening, according to a statement on X. Continue reading...

Number of people seeking permanent contraception increased after 2022 decision, in particular among women, research revealsRates of people seeking permanent contraception - such as tubal ligation or vasectomies - shot up after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, in the Dobbs decision.Although both procedures increased, the rate of increase was double for tubal ligations, commonly known as a woman getting her tubes tied". Continue reading...

Thirty years after I covered the trial of the century', its themes of race, misogyny, policing and celebrity still affect and define the nationIt wasn't the Kennedy assassination, but I remember exactly where I was on 3 October 1995 when a Los Angeles jury delivered its verdict in the OJ Simpson trial. A novice US correspondent for this newspaper, I was hunched over a primitive laptop, ready to press send on the piece that I had already drafted, confidently explaining to UK readers why the jurors had convicted an American sporting legend of double murder and the likely impact of their decision. The button I had to press was delete".The adrenaline-fuelled hour as I scrambled to write an entirely new commentary on the shock acquittal" was repeated in newsrooms across the US and around the world. As it turned out, the verdict was not a shock to everyone - but we'll get to that. Continue reading...

High school students don ski masks and target each other with water guns that look like firearms in senior assassins' gameMultiple police departments across Illinois are warning residents about the potential risks of a game called senior assassins" in which high school students don ski masks and target each other with water guns that look like firearms.In a Facebook post, the Gurnee police department said that on Tuesday a group of high school students from a neighboring community entered a local restaurant wearing ski masks and displayed water guns resembling firearms. Continue reading...

President's campaign has attacked Trump for using donations to pay his numerous legal bills - but Biden used funds similarlyCampaign donations to Joe Biden were used to help pay legal bills during the special counsel investigation of his retention of classified information when out of office, Axios reported on Friday.Citing a review of campaign finance records and two unnamed sources familiar with the matter", the site said filings by the Democratic National Committee showed it paid more than $1.5m to lawyers or firms representing Biden during Robert Hur's investigation. Continue reading...

Athletes paid $1m to take enough performance-enhancing drugs to win records? Truly we get the TV sports we deserveHow encouraging to learn of another shot in the arm for the Enhanced Games. If you're not familiar with it, this is the sporting event scheduled for inauguration next year in which openly drug-taking athletes will be able to take part in a better version of the Olympic Games". I know - imagine being able to watch track and field but with athletes who dope. Who among us can even picture it?None of which is to sound as offhand as World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe did a few weeks ago when he was asked about the Enhanced Games, and judged: It's bollocks, isn't it? ... I really don't get sleepless nights over it, it's not going to be a page turner is it?" I wouldn't bank on that. By way of background, the project is the brainchild of Aron D'Souza, some weirdo businessman who doesn't even drink coffee (of course), and is partly funded by biohacking Palantir horseman Peter Thiel and AI/psychedelics/crypto investor Christian Angermayer (double of course). Continue reading...

Family of man killed alongside Nicole Brown Simpson says the hope for true accountability has ended' with OJ Simpson's deathOJ Simpson's death did not bring closure to the family of Ronald Goldman, who was killed alongside Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson in Los Angeles in 1994.The only thing that is important today are the victims, and it's just a reminder for myself and my family that Ron has been gone all these years - and that we continue to miss him, all these years," Fred Goldman, Ron's father, told the Daily Beast. He also said there's no such thing" as closure for him. Continue reading...

Ex-president could not get his head around the idea that Ukraine was an independent state', former adviser Fiona Hill tells authorAs president, Donald Trump made it very clear" that he thought Ukraine must be part of Russia", his former adviser Fiona Hill says in a new book about US national security under threat from Russia and China.Trump made it very clear that he thought, you know, that Ukraine, and certainly Crimea, must be part of Russia," Hill, senior director for European and Russian affairs on the US National Security Council between 2017 and 2019, tells David Sanger, a New York Times reporter and author of New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West. Continue reading...

The case was big news when it was filed last year, but it's been overshadowed by a litany of other alleged crimes by the ex-presidentAs the criminal cases mounted against Donald Trump last year, one could be forgiven for not giving much thought to the New York case that charged him with 34 felony counts for falsifying business records.The episode was a bombshell when the Wall Street Journal first reported it in January 2018. Trump paid the adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 on the eve of the 2016 election to keep quiet about an affair. He funneled the payment through his lawyer, Michael Cohen, and then lied about the purpose of the payment in his business records. By the time the case was filed last year, it had largely faded in the public psyche - buried under Trump's efforts to steal the 2020 election and an avalanche of other lies. Continue reading...

The racist abuse directed at Francesca Amewudah-Rivers shows how casting decisions have been hijacked by the culture warsIt's a young actor's worst nightmare: to land the role of a lifetime and then find yourself thrown into a media frenzy of vitriol. Over the past two weeks, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers has been the target of an intense and hateful backlash after she was cast in an upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet, opposite Tom Holland's Romeo. The critical comments made about her casting are unquestionably racist, colourist and misogynistic, and they have highlighted how difficult it can be to be a dark-skinned black woman in the public eye.This past summer I played Rosalind in a production of As You Like It, a dream role. It came with huge responsibility, and I can't imagine also being faced with what Francesca has had to go through recently. Nor have I, as a mixed race, light-skinned woman, suffered these same experiences. Casting has become a political act in film, theatre and TV, and the online discussions that follow casting announcements can become seedbeds of hate that primarily benefit social media companies, driving comments and clicks. Actors become the faces of these online controversies, and while they suffer the consequences, social media companies are never held responsible for the abhorrent comments fuelled by their sites. Continue reading...

Progressive groups hail long-brewed move against influential donor but protest lack of summons for Harlan CrowThe big-money rightwing donor Leonard Leo said he would not comply with a subpoena issued by the US Senate judiciary committee, as it investigates undisclosed gifts to conservative supreme court justices that have stoked an ethics crisis at a court already held in historically low public esteem.Referring to Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who chairs the committee, Leo said: I am not capitulating to his lawless support of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse [a Democrat from Rhode Island] and the left's dark money effort to silence and cancel political opposition." Continue reading...

Ca-Maine Foods, largest fresh egg producer in US, temporarily halts production at one Texas facility after discovering virusAvian influenza has been detected among chickens in Texas and Michigan, following news of the virus infecting livestock and then a person for the first time in the US and potentially leading to supply chain issues.The developments have led to a heightened focus on the potential risks of the virus, especially in the wake of the devastating coronavirus pandemic. But experts are saying that there is little chance of transmission between humans at this point. Continue reading...

Campaign toils to convince Republicans to vote early, crucial to winning the election, while ensuring they don't annoy TrumpDonald Trump's attacks on mail-in voting have increasingly caused heartburn for the Trump 2024 campaign as they attempt to undo the self-sabotage by ramping up operations in key battleground states encouraging Republicans to vote early and by mail ahead of the presidential election.The former US president has continued his crusade in recent months: in December he called for the end of mail-in voting entirely, before claiming in an interview last month that any time the mail is involved, you're going to have cheating". Continue reading...

Aid workers say very little' change after Israeli promises to allow more aid into besieged strip. Plus, OJ Simpson's death prompts varying reactions Don't already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up hereGood morning,A promised increase of aid into Gaza has so far failed to materialise, say aid workers, as the US's aid chief, Samantha Power, confirmed that famine was beginning to take hold in parts of the besieged coastal strip.What is the latest with the Hamas-Israel ceasefire negotiations? Hamas has indicated it does not have 40 captives who are still alive who meet the humanitarian" criteria for a proposed hostages-for-prisoners ceasefire agreement with Israel.What about Iran's potential retaliatory strike on Israel? The US is seeking to deter Iran from carrying out a strike against Israel, by reiterating US commitments to Israeli security. It comes after Israel's bombing of an Iranian consular building in Damascus on 1 April, which killed an Islamic Revolutionary Guards general and six officers.The death toll continues to rise: After Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 200 hostage on 7 October, Israeli military actions have killed about 33,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.How did people react to his death on Thursday? The sports world reacted to OJ Simpson's death with silence and derision, with the NFL using agency copy and former teams not mentioning Simpson on social media. Elsewhere, people used his passing to talk about domestic violence, race relations, the media and more. Continue reading...

The really exciting part was the number of people who didn't wear protective eyewear. Plus: Liz Truss fails to pace herself'Two days out from the earthquake that rocked New York City and the aftershocks continue in the form of everyone's incredibly boring anecdotes about where they were and what they thought was going on when it happened. Was it a washing machine? Was it construction? Would you like to hear from a woman who didn't feel it at all?! Oh, boy, I was in the parking lot and ..." says a man from a storage facility in New Jersey when I call for a quote. Per advice from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in the face of catastrophically dull earthquake stories you should drop, cover, and hold your hands over your ears. Continue reading...

Thinking of Rafah as a final red line' is a mistake' - the situation in Gaza is already beyond the bitter edges of human crueltyIs an Israeli invasion of Gaza's southern city of Rafah about to commence? Perhaps. On Monday, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, proclaimed that Israel had set a date to invade the city, where an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians have sought refuge from six months of relentless bombing and incalculable destruction.Leaks to the Israeli media are also pointing ominously to an Israeli government procurement of 40,000 12-person tents, suggesting a repugnant plan of further displacing almost half a million Palestinians, this time into government-issued tents that will probably be plopped down in the middle of nowhere.Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

The 1994 murders of Simpson's ex and her friend Ron Goldman are inextricable from society's failure of domestic abuse victimsOJ Simpson is dead, and Nicole Brown should still be alive. Simpson, the longtime batterer and stalker of Nicole Brown Simpson, and the man who all but confessed to her gruesome stabbing murder in June of 1994, died on Wednesday of cancer. He passed at his home in Las Vegas, surrounded by his children and grandchildren", according to a statement issued by his family. He was 76.Simpson died in bed, receiving medical care to make him comfortable, at the end of his natural life. He had reached old age; we can infer that when he took his last breaths, he was surrounded by well wishes and love. His was a very different death from the one he allegedly inflicted on his former wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman. They did not die in bed; they probably died screaming. And for Nicole, at least, her death was the culmination of a years-long campaign of terrorism that OJ had waged against her since they met; it was the moment their whole relationship had been leading to.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

A judge signed off on Stanley Burkhardt, who was investigated for a series of Louisiana killings, to transfer to a halfway houseA former child sex crimes detective who admitted to molesting children during his New Orleans policing career, has been in and out of prison for images depicting the sexual abuse of minors, and has been investigated in connection with a series of killings, has gotten another opportunity at relative freedom.After a parole violation caused him to spend the last few years in intensive therapy at a federal prison in North Carolina for people who, like him, have been deemed sexually dangerous, Stanley Burkhardt was recently transferred to a halfway house, according to records reviewed on Thursday by the Guardian. Continue reading...

The Frenchman arrived in the NBA amid a storm of hype. But a year on, those who came up against him in Europe are surprised by how good he has becomeHailed as the best prospect since LeBron James, labelled an all-time great in the making and distinctive for his 7ft 4in frame, expectations were high from the outset when Victor Wembanyama was drafted No 1 overall by the San Antonio Spurs last year.He arrived in the United States to a maelstrom of hype, aided by eye-catching performances in a pair of showcase exhibition games against the G League Ignite in Las Vegas the previous October for Parisian club Metropolitans 92. Concerns were raised over the durability of his slender frame and projections were tempered by calls for patience with a young player not only taking his first steps in the NBA but moving to a new continent. Continue reading...

Many of MLB's most talented stars are falling to injury as their elbows buckle under the stress of throwing max-effort on nearly every pitchBe warned: by the time you finish reading this piece, yet another Major League Baseball pitcher may have gone down with a significant arm injury. Unlikely? Well, consider this: just as I began jotting down this piece, news came in that 26-year-old Nationals hurler Josiah Gray is out for who knows how long with a right forearm/flexor strain. A little later we learned that Red Sox pitcher Nick Pivetta landed on the shelf with a similar injury. They join the ever-expanding list of baseball's injured pitching stock: Gerrit Cole, Spencer Strider and Shane Bieber are just a few of the big names who have made cross-country trips getting their MRIs evaluated and their arms examined.Of course, we all want to know exactly why this is happening. Of course, it's hard to nail it down. And yes, there's lot's of competing theories out there, including some from a pair of the oldest rivals in the sport: players and owners. Continue reading...

MPs on all sides pay homage, while her failures - which lie behind many of the crises we face today - are forgottenAn old spectre is haunting Britain yet again - the spectre of Thatcherism. Although she became Tory leader almost half a century ago and was sacked by her party in 1990, since when this country has changed hugely, Margaret Thatcher still obsesses the Tories. Rishi Sunak says he is a Thatcherite, and so do almost all those jostling to replace him: Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt, Priti Patel, James Cleverly, Grant Shapps and Suella Braverman.Most other Conservative MPs remain Thatcherite in their basic assumptions: about the need to deregulate markets, regulate the lives of the poor, pursue aggressively nationalistic policies abroad and fight domestic culture wars. This outlook is shared by many Tory members and voters, most rightwing thinktanks and almost the entire rightwing media. Meanwhile the party's strengthening rival, Reform UK, sounds increasingly Thatcherite, campaigning against record taxes, wasteful government spending and nanny state regulations". Arguably, her hegemony is more complete now in conservative parts of Britain than it ever was during her contentious leadership, about which the right was often divided. Continue reading...

This failed policy was sold as a defence of French secularism. Instead it has opened the floodgates of intolerance and become a tool for exclusionIn the early 2000s, I decided to commit to feminism, so I joined a feminist campaigning group, convinced I had found an organisation that would defend the rights of every woman equally. At the time, a national debate was raging: in the name of laicite - or secularism - France was questioning Muslim schoolgirls' right to wear head coverings in secular state schools. In March 2004, after months of debate, the French parliament voted through a ban on headscarves in schools, outlawing symbols or clothing that conspicuously demonstrate a pupil's religious affiliation".That is when I realised that the decision was quite popular in feminist circles, including the predominantly white group I was part of. Many white feminists thought it was their mission to help emancipate Muslim women and girls from a particular type of patriarchy tied to Islam. I quit the group. If Muslim women were enduring a specific form of patriarchal oppression, and really had no agency or free will when it came to wearing the hijab - a view I don't share - how would it help them to exclude them from schools and access to emancipatory knowledge? Continue reading...

Investigators say data from electric Mustang Mach E shows Blue Cruise' was in use when SUV struck a stopped car in San AntonioThe driver of a Ford electric SUV involved in a February fatal crash in Texas was using the company's partially automated driving system before the wreck, federal investigators said Thursday.Data from the 2022 Mustang Mach E SUV showed that Ford's Blue Cruise" driver-assist system was in use ahead of the 24 February crash, according to a preliminary report released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Continue reading...

World No 1 offers enviable consistency while Rory McIlroy risks the week getting away from him after only one roundRory McIlroy can talk boring, no doubt he could make you an anagram of it, find a rhyme for it, and give you a couple of pretty good definitions of it too. But hard as he tries, the one thing he can't do is play that way. Good golf at Augusta feels like boring golf," he said the week before the tournament, before promising, again, that he was going to try and play it that way this year. His approach lasted all of one hole, which he covered in par after missing a putt from 10 feet, and failed him as soon as he reached the 2nd tee, where he blazed a ferocious drive 340 yards into the trees beyond the dogleg.McIlroy's ball fetched up closer to the 4th green than the 2nd fairway, and he had to thread his second shot back through a little sliver of a gap under the branches of a dogwood and the bough of a loblolly pine. It fetched up on the far left of the fairway. Then he hit his third over the back of the green, and took three putts to get in. One of the secrets to playing Augusta National is picking up shots on the par-5s, McIlroy had just dropped one on the first he had come to this week. Continue reading...

Shayne Sutherland, 29, died in California after being held face down, a year before a law banned maneuvers that lead to asphyxiaThe city of Stockton, California, has agreed to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Shayne Sutherland, a 29-year-old who died after being held face down by police officers in 2020, for $6m, the family's attorneys announced Thursday.Sutherland's mother, Karen Sutherland, said that nothing can replace her son, but that the settlement feels like an acknowledgement of responsibility from Stockton police, which she had been hoping for. Continue reading...

Proposal sails through, with one vocal opponent saying gay first cousins do not risk having a child with birth defectsThe Republican-led Tennessee legislature has overwhelmingly voted to send the Republican governor, Bill Lee, a proposal that would ban marriage between first cousins.The statehouse cast a 75-2 vote on Thursday on the bill after the senate previously approved it without any opposition. Continue reading...

The death of the once-loved NFL star and actor leaves a trail of wreckage from his tabloid notoriety as double murder suspect

Kyle Benjamin Douglas Calvert, 26, allegedly put stickers on state buildings with antifa, anti-police and anti-Ice sentimentsAn Alabama man has been charged with detonating an explosive device outside the state attorney general's office.In a statement on Wednesday, the justice department announced that authorities had arrested 26-year-old Kyle Benjamin Douglas Calvert of Irondale on charges of malicious use of an explosive and possession of an unregistered destructive device. Continue reading...

Ex-CEO and former crypto mogul, 32, was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy to launder money in NovemberSam Bankman-Fried appealed his fraud convictions and 25-year prison sentence on Thursday.The ex-CEO of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange was found guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy to launder money in November and sentenced to more than two decades in federal prison in late March. The former crypto mogul, 32, had signaled he would contest the court's rulings shortly after he learned of his sentence. It's not yet clear on what grounds Bankman-Fried will argue for an appeal, which could take years. Continue reading...

Planned bill to ban already illegal practice is latest Republican step to spread falsehoods about immigration and voter fraudDonald Trump and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, plan to push for a bill to ban non-citizens from voting, the latest step by Republicans to falsely claim migrants are coming to the country and casting ballots.Voting when a person is not eligible - for instance if they lack US citizenship - is already illegal under federal law. It is unclear what the bill Johnson and the former president will discuss in their Friday press conference at Mar-a-Lago will do to alter that. But it is one more way for the former president to focus on election security and to ding the Biden administration over the situation at the US-Mexico border, a key issue for likely Republican voters this November. Continue reading...

The 88-year-old held court on the secret to a long life and his political heroes while insisting humans will soon live to 140The start was running just a little behind time at the Masters this year, made three hours late by the storm that blew through early in the morning. It was 10am already when Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson made it to the practice range, and just gone 10.15 when they walked from the clubhouse through the gallery to the 1st tee. Player stopped to press a ball into the palm of a lady waiting by the ropes. Her name was Barbara, and she was 88. We're the very same age," she says, smiling like a little kid who'd just discovered the big presents tucked around the back ofthe Christmas tree.Player gives her a kiss on the cheek on his way back in, too. Turns out this is one of his Masters traditions. It's the third time he's done it," Barbara says. My husband said if he did it again this year then I shouldn't come back home afterwards." Continue reading...

Complaint claims officials violated state law by not contacting eligible Republicans nominated by their party to work the pollsWisconsin Republicans have hit the state election commission with complaints alleging that officials in the state's two largest cities illegally rejected Republican applicants for poll worker positions for the primary election.The complaints, filed by the Milwaukee county Republican party and Dane county Republican party, claim officials in Milwaukee and Madison violated state law by not contacting eligible Republicans nominated by their party to work the polls. The move furthers the GOP strategy of questioning election processes in key battleground states. Continue reading...