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The adult film actor Stormy Daniels offered the most lurid, explosive testimony so far in the trial against the former president

The $130,000 hush-money payment to Daniels is at the center of the trial. Trump complained that he should've been given more notice about Tuesday's witness, Associated Press reports

Charged Lemonade drinks, which can contain 302mg of caffeine, are being eliminated after multiple lawsuitsPanera Bread will pull its infamous Charged Lemonade drinks after the highly caffeinated beverages were connected to at least two deaths and prompted lawsuits.The Charged Lemonades, which contain upwards of 178mg of caffeine for the regular size and 302mg for the large, are being eliminated by the restaurant chain amid a recent menu transformation", a Panera spokesperson told NBC News. Continue reading...

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Stormy Daniels undercuts some of Trump's defenses as his lawyer suggests Daniels has a propensity to embellishStormy Daniels, whose alleged sexual affair with Donald Trump prompted a hush-money scheme at the heart of the criminal case brought by the Manhattan district attorney, described in excruciating detail on Tuesday her encounters with the former US president.The testimony from Daniels appeared to be embarrassing for Trump, who shook his head at times, and was notably freewheeling - to the extent that the presiding judge sustained multiple objections, even as he denied a mistrial motion on the basis that key parts of her account were prejudicial. Continue reading...

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Organization will become Scouting America after decades of turmoil and flagging membership numbersThe Boy Scouts of America is changing its name for the first time in its 114-year history and will become Scouting America. It's a significant shift as the organization emerges from bankruptcy following a flood of sexual abuse claims and seeks to focus on inclusion.The organization steeped in tradition has made seismic changes after decades of turmoil, from finally allowing gay youth to welcoming girls throughout its ranks. With an eye on increasing flagging membership numbers, the Irving, Texas-based organization announced the name change Tuesday at its annual meeting in Florida. Continue reading...

It's a moment of truth for Biden's policy on Israel and the Palestinians - and at the least will make continued prevarication harder to disguiseWhen Israeli troops paraded through the Rafah crossing with an oversized star of David on Tuesday morning, they were making a point to Hamas - and at the same time driving up to the very edge of Joe Biden's red line".The Biden administration avoids that phrase at all costs. Its top officials also served Barack Obama, who drew a red line he did not enforce over Syria's chemical weapons. But there is no hiding from the fact that they have clearly and repeatedly stated US opposition to a Rafah offensive, absent proper humanitarian provision for the more than 1 million people sheltering there. Continue reading...

In a blow to reproductive rights advocates and Democrats, judge rules procedures were not followed for constitutional amendmentA New York judge on Tuesday blocked a politically important abortion rights amendment from appearing before voters on the November ballot, dealing Democrats a setback as the party moved to focus battleground races in the state around abortion access.State supreme court justice Daniel J Doyle found that state lawmakers failed to follow procedural rules around passing constitutional amendments, incorrectly approving the amendment before getting a written opinion on the language from the attorney general. Continue reading...

Trump's disgraced former attorney somehow frittered away almost $120,000 in January. As a cash-strapped millennial, I'm delighted to share some money-saving tipsBankruptcy" is a surprisingly amorphous term. For poor people, it means not having any money. For corporations and the super-wealthy it means a nifty legal strategy that can shield their riches from lawsuits. And for Rudy Giuliani, the disgraced former mayor of New York City and personal attorney of Donald Trump, it means being forced to try to subsist on a measly $43,000 (34,200) a month.Half a million dollars in spending money a year might seem a princely sum to the common man, but Sir" Rudy (recipient of an honorary knighthood) is anything but. We're talking about a gentleman with elevated tastes here: a bon vivant who, during a legal battle with his estranged third wife, was accused of spending $7,000 on fountain pens and $12,000 on cigars over a five-month period. In that same timeframe, his ex-wife's lawyer claimed he spent $286,000 on his alleged lover, $165,000 on personal travel and $447,938 for his own enjoyment". That's a lot of enjoyment. Continue reading...

When asked what advice an eminent surgeon might give other doctors, I brace myself for another mountain I can't climbWhat's a Festschrift?" my youngest asks.In German it means celebration writing'," I say, I'm going to an academic conference to honour a doctor." Continue reading...

At least 16,000 without power after 17 tornadoes struck plains region on Monday with 40 homes damaged in Sooner stateMore than 10 million people in parts of Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky have been warned that they face severe thunderstorms on Tuesday, including some strong tornadoes, as the southern plains continue to be battered by extreme weather.As many as 17 tornadoes struck the plains region on Monday night, leaving at least 16,000 homes and businesses without power and bringing destruction to small towns across the area. Continue reading...

The Israeli PM has rejected the latest deal. Both he and Hamas's leadership must stop playing politics with people's livesThe latest twists and turns in negotiations to end the war in Gaza appear labyrinthine and confusing. But it's really not that complicated. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, must compromise on the outstanding details of the proposed ceasefire deal and Hamas's weekend counter-offer - and immediately halt Israel's criminal bombing of Gaza and reckless military incursions into refugee-populated areas around Rafah.For its part, Hamas must honour previous understandings about the staged release of Israeli hostages and cease its crude, last-minute haggling, especially about exactly how many Palestinian detainees, and which ones, are freed in return. Its priority should be alleviating the plight of Gaza's civilians, not scoring points. Its demands that Israel agree a permanent" end to the war at this stage were always unrealistic.Simon Tisdall is the Observer's foreign affairs commentatorDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Roll up for a buffet of baffling outfits, celebs scared stiff of Anna Wintour and an utter refusal to acknowledge the outside worldTuesday is officially the morning after the Met Gala of the night before, when we civilians get to press our noses up against the glass of our phone screens and pass unsparing judgment on dresses whose trains alone cost more than HS2.If you haven't sat in mismatched pyjamas huffing toast while remarking what an unacceptable misstep Lana Del Rey's mosquito net was, and how Chanel seems to be going tits up, then you have simply failed to capitalise on the digital banquet spread out for you. These are dark times, and nothing but ... gratitude, I think? ... should be shown for film director Taika Waititi's decision to come dressed as a brown pleather three-piece suite, while his wife, Rita Ora, presented as the ribbon curtain tacked over their back door to keep the flies off it.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Ronnie Wiggs strangled his wife as she was in a hospital for a procedure related to her ongoing kidney dialysis treatmentA 75-year-old Missouri man strangled his wife to death in a hospital bed while claiming that he could no longer afford to pay for her ongoing kidney dialysis treatment, according to authorities.Ronnie Wiggs has been jailed on a count of second-degree murder in connection with a femicide that starkly demonstrates how US women in general face disproportionately high levels of violence at the hands of intimate partners and family caregivers. Continue reading...

Kathy Hochul made comment at California conference to showcase upstate AI center before apologizing on Monday nightThe governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, has rapidly backtracked on remarks she made on Monday after she came under a blizzard of criticism for saying that Black children in the Bronx did not know the word computer".Hochul had intended her appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference in California on Monday to showcase Empire AI, the $400m consortium she is leading to create an artificial intelligence computing center in upstate New York. Instead, she dug herself into a hole with an utterance she quickly regretted. Continue reading...

US labor department announced that Fayette Janitorial Service agreed to $650,000 fine and mandate to no longer employ minorsA Tennessee-based sanitation company has agreed to pay more than half a million dollars after a federal investigation found it illegally hired at least two dozen children to clean dangerous meat processing facilities in Iowa and Virginia.The US labor department announced on Monday that Fayette Janitorial Service LLC entered into a consent judgment, in which the company agrees to nearly $650,000 in civil penalties and the court-ordered mandate that it no longer employ minors. The February filing indicated federal investigators believed at least four children had still been working at one Iowa slaughterhouse as of 12 December. Continue reading...

FAA examining whether employees may have falsified records after firm said it might not have properly carried out checks

Israel takes control of only gateway for aid between Egypt and Gaza. Plus, Trump threatened with jail over gag order breaches

Prosecutors, witnesses, jurors - all are in the ex-president's sights and it could lead to violence, former federal prosecutors and judges sayDonald Trump's verbal assaults on judges, prosecutors, witnesses, jurors and the broader US justice system, are undermining the rule of law and American democracy while fueling threats and potential violence against individuals involved with the legal cases against him and egging on his extremist allies, former federal prosecutors and judges say.In his campaign to win the presidency again, and in the midst of various criminal and civil trials, Trump has launched multiple attacks on the American legal system on his Truth Social platform to counter the 88 federal and state criminal charges he faces. Continue reading...

Inmates cook together, eat together - and sometimes even forage together. It puts Britain's rat-infested facilities to shameI spent three weeks visiting prisons across Scandinavia to find out how they feed their prisoners. You may ask why any of us should be concerned with what people in prison eat. But research suggests that good nutrition not only improves wellbeing, security and safety in prisons, it may have an effect on rehabilitation and keep people from returning to prison.So does a region with one of the lowest reoffending rates in the world - only about 30% of Nordic prisoners end up back inside within two years - and a humane approach to incarceration treat prison food differently from countries with higher recidivism and a more punitive culture? As the founder of a charity dedicated to improving prison food in the UK, I wanted to find out.Lucy Vincent is the founder and chief executive of Food Behind Bars Continue reading...

As a patient, it's frustrating to know a solution may be just around the corner but that you probably won't be there in time to benefitI'm kneeling on the hard, cold tiles of my bathroom floor retching into the toilet bowl, and I've been here for some time. The colour has drained from my skin and I'm clammy and delirious from a pain so intense, it is simply indescribable. Something is squeezing me from the inside so ferociously that I can barely catch my breath. All I can do is retch, unproductively, and writhe. This must be what labour feels like," I think, in a surreal, out-of-body way.Ten years on, and one difficult childbirth later, I can confirm with some authority that this unrelenting, all-consuming pain was so much worse than giving birth. The bathroom floor episode was my first major inkling that something wasn't right in my body. It was so frightening that I couldn't dismiss it (even if A&E staff told me there was nothing wrong when I dragged myself there, and a GP explained it away as probably just a stomach bug). In reality, I had always been in pain to some degree. I had always bled through my PE shorts at school, swelled two dress sizes during my period - didn't everyone? But even when my symptoms were at their worst, no one mentioned endometriosis. Continue reading...

Dashcam footage captured the moment a tornado tore through a building in Lincoln, Nebraska, in late April. The state was hit by more than a dozen tornadoes that destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses, according to the National Weather Service. The building in the video, which belonged to Garner Industries, was bit by a tornado with wind speeds of 158mph Continue reading...

What the two laws have in common is desire to silence Israel-Gaza war criticsThe White House rightly said it was concerning" when Israel's parliament laid the groundwork to shut down Al Jazeera within its borders in April. On Sunday, Israel made its move. The Foreign Press Association called it a dark day for democracy".If the White House remains concerned, it has a strange way of showing it. Joe Biden and his administration have supported and encouraged recent censorial laws and court cases that virtually ensure that dark days" are ahead at home as well.Seth Stern is the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation and a first amendment lawyer Continue reading...

Early season disappointments put the Argentinian coach on the hot seat, but a resurgent Lionel Messi has shown the value of experienceRiding a six-game unbeaten streak in MLS, leading the race for the Supporters' Shield and with their star players featuring at the top of the goals and assists charts, all is well in the world of Inter Miami.Yet little over a month ago, head coach Gerardo Tata' Martino was on the hot seat. A humiliating 4-0 defeat to New York Red Bulls in late March was followed by elimination from the Concacaf Champions Cup at the hands of Mexican side Monterrey in early April. Continue reading...

Police officers arrested multiple pro-Palestinian demonstrators who were attempting to disrupt the Met Gala in New York City.Law enforcement clashed with protesters who came within a block of disrupting the event, which is held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Celebrities often wear extravagant outfits to the invitation-only gala.

Stars and celebrities from the worlds of film, fashion, music, sport and politics acended the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the 2024 Met Gala. Zendaya and Cardi B were the talk of the event, which took JG Ballard's 1962 short story, The Garden of Time, as its theme

The Israeli army launched targeted airstrikes against Hamas targets in eastern Rafah. The attacks came as Hamas announced its acceptance of an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal, but Israel said the deal did not meet its 'core demands' and that it was pushing ahead with an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Israel said it would continue negotiations.

Dramatic conjunction of forces with aim to crash gala separated only by New York police and metal barricadesDozens of pro-Palestinian protesters came within a block of disrupting celebrity fashion's biggest night out - the Met Gala - on Monday evening in a dramatic conjunction of forces that was separated only by New York police and metal barricades.Some protesters, chanting Rafah!, Gaza!", said it was their intention to crash the gala. Others said they didn't know about it. At times, a roughly equal number of police were guiding the winding protest through New York's Upper East Side as they were preventing fashion fans from getting a glimpse of their favorite celebrities. Continue reading...

Students link arms around tents on campus and block local thoroughfare as they call for end to killings in GazaPro-Palestinian protesters who had been blocked by police from accessing an encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday broke through fencing, linked arms and encircled tents that remained there, as Columbia University canceled its university-wide commencement ceremony following weeks of pro-Palestinian protests.Sam Ihns, a graduate student at MIT studying mechanical engineering and a member of MIT Jews for a Ceasefire, said the group had been at the encampment for the past two weeks and that they were calling for an end to the killing of thousands of people in Gaza. Continue reading...

University and police denounced as masked group marched on campus and attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators last weekThe University of California, Los Angeles, said that it would create a new office dedicated to campus safety following mounting criticism of authorities' slow response to a brutal attack on pro-Palestinian protesters by a mob of instigators".The school's chancellor, Gene Block, said on Sunday that urgent changes were needed to better protect our community moving forward" and announced that a new office of campus safety would oversee the university police department and the UCLA office of emergency management, effective immediately". Continue reading...

Officials say Staff Sgt Gordon Black, 34, was stationed in South Korea and was in the process of returning home to TexasAn American soldier has been arrested in Russia and accused of stealing, according to two US officials.US officials said the soldier, Staff Sgt Gordon Black, 34, was stationed in South Korea and was in the process of returning home to Fort Cavazos in Texas. Instead, officials said, he traveled to Russia. Continue reading...

Prosecutors pressed witnesses on the alleged falsification of business records to cover up the payments to Stormy DanielsDonald Trump's criminal trial in New York entered a new phase on Monday, as prosecutors moved on to the alleged falsification of business records to cover up the hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, after previously calling witnesses who described the conspiracy to kill the story.The prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney's started with the former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney, the number two in the accounts department, who processed the former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's invoices seeking reimbursement for the hush money. Continue reading...

Heartbeat International, affiliated with more than 2,000 facilities, aims to convince people to continue their pregnanciesThe organization behind an international network of anti-abortion facilities is misleading people with claims that abortions can be reversed", a lawsuit filed Monday by Letitia James, the New York attorney general, alleges.The organization, Heartbeat International, is affiliated with more than 2,000 facilities that aim to convince people to continue their pregnancies. In recent years, many such centers, which are often Christian and sometimes known as crisis pregnancy centers, have started to promote a controversial practice known as abortion pill reversal", which claims that people can halt a medication abortion midway through. Continue reading...

After weeks of testimony, Trump's trial turned to much drier - but arguably more crucial - details on Monday

Lawmakers pass bill to regulate industry after 190 decomposing bodies found in bug-infested facility and another found in hearseAfter the discovery of nearly 200 decaying bodies in a Colorado funeral home in October, lawmakers saw the need to tighten the state's lax funeral home oversight and on Monday passed a bill that - in combination with a second bill that passed last week - would help to regulate the industry.A series of cases that include sold ashes and fake body parts have devastated hundreds of already grieving families and shed a glaring spotlight on the state's funeral home regulations, some of the weakest in the US. The bill passed on Monday will head to Governor Jared Polis's desk after the state house considers a minor change by the senate. Continue reading...

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UCLA watched the chaos unfold in the middle of the night and did nothing until it was far too lateThings had been tense at the University of California, Los Angeles, with some ugly jibes and the occasional shove exchanged between students who support Israel's war on Gaza and those who have set up encampments to call for a permanent ceasefire and the university's divestment from companies that arm and otherwise profit from Israel's occupation and military incursions in the Palestinian territories.But what happened in the middle of the night last Tuesday was no scuffle. It was not even one more of the outsized, excessively brutal raids that college administrations have invited the police to inflict on their students.Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept, and the author of five books Continue reading...

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National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center issued a rare high risk for central Oklahoma and southern KansasMillions of people in the central US could see powerful storms on Monday including long-track tornadoes, hurricane-force winds and baseball-sized hail, forecasters said.Much of Oklahoma and parts of Kansas are at the greatest risk of bad weather - including areas in Oklahoma, such as Sulphur and Holdenville, still recovering from a tornado that killed four people and left thousands without power last week. Continue reading...

Mayor appoints Paulina Gutierrez to lead election commission, replacing Claire Woodall, in key battleground state's biggest cityMilwaukee will replace its top election official with just under six months until the presidential election, the city's mayor announced on Monday.Mayor Cavalier Johnson appointed Paulina Gutierrez to take over as executive director of the Milwaukee election commission, replacing Claire Woodall who had served as the director since July 2020. Continue reading...

Workers say tentative agreement was reached for first union contract after threats of walkout during gala, a major fashion eventWorkers at Conde Nast, the media empire behind Vogue, Vanity Fair and GQ, announced a tentative agreement has been reached for a first union contract after threatening to stage a walkout during the Met Gala on Monday evening.The Conde Nast Union, which represents about 540 editorial workers, has been bargaining for a union contract since September 2022. It is affiliated with the NewsGuild of New York. Continue reading...

Flooding in parts ofTexasafter days of heavy rain has displaced thousands of people. Around Houston there were more than 400 rescues from homes, rooftops and roads covered in murky water. Rangers used boats in waist-deep water to rescue people and pets who had not left there homes in time Continue reading...

I have trespassed in peaceful protest. I have shutdown government offices in civil disobedience. I have made the powerful uncomfortable. That's the pointIn America, the student movement has been seriously radicalized wherever police and police brutality intervened in essentially nonviolent demonstrations: occupations of administration buildings, sit-ins, et cetera." - Hannah Arendt, observing Columbia University protests in 1968.When you've been in the midst of a demonstration that devolves into chaos and violence, you find out in a hurry if you're able to put aside your own terror to still uphold the needs of the many and to maintain the discipline of your values. This has happened to me more than once. That tension has always been a reminder to me that democracy is a choice and that citizenship is a full-contact sport. Continue reading...

Donald Trump's would-be running mate has already outraged the US by shooting her own pet. This is no time to double downWhen Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor being vetted as a candidate for Donald Trump's vice-president, admitted in her memoir to having shot and killed her 14-month-old puppy, I have to admit I thought it was a play. She was just testing the waters: how much could she insult human decency without making a dent in her numbers? As the battle rages on, I'm coming to accept that the benighted wire-haired pointer did, for a short time, exist, and was executed for a real crime: chicken killing. It seems a tiny bit unfair, given the two centuries of wire-haired pointer breeding that have gone into creating exactly this fixation with upland (which is to say, non-waterfowl) bird work. But that's exactly what you'd expect a liberal to say. Next I'll be on about the death penalty.Digging in, Noem has gone on to say that not only was she right to execute her pointer, but also that Joe Biden has been remiss in pardoning Major and Commander, both German shepherds inveterately hostile to secret service agents. Commander, with a charge sheet of 24 biting incidents, should have been put down ages ago, according to Noem. He is no longer at the White House, though history doesn't relate his new address. Major, meanwhile, was sent to live with friends in Delaware after a biting incident involving a National Park employee. No excuses for that - public servants ought to be able to go about their duties bite-free - but to have a thing for guys in parks is less bad, I would contend, than having an aversive fear response to armed secret service agents when you're the dog of the US president. It's possible, of course, that both dogs have been destroyed - and gone to live with friends in Delaware" is what they say to Joe Biden when they mean gone to live on a farm". Continue reading...

School announced it will switch to smaller celebrations in its 19 colleges, almost three weeks after pro-Palestinian protests beganColumbia University has announced that it will be cancelling its university-wide commencement ceremony this month and switching to smaller celebrations in its 19 colleges, almost three weeks after pro-Palestinian protests erupted at the Ivy League institution.A university official told the Guardian that the decision to scrap a large commencement ceremony was driven in part by security concerns. Most of the events will be shifted from the main lawn of the Morningside campus, which became the center of students protests calling for the university to divest from Israel, and moved to an athletics center further north in Manhattan. Continue reading...

South Dakota governor and Trump VP hopeful refuses to back down amid scandal over animal killings and North Korea claimTuesday will see publication of No Going Back, a campaign book by the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, that generated unusual buzz after the Guardian revealed how Noem describes in detail the day she shot dead her dog, Cricket, which she deemed untrainable and dangerous, and an unnamed goat.The revelation sparked a political firestorm, widely held to have incinerated Noem's chances of being named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Continue reading...