The special counsel has put the president's memory in the spotlight, but if we're talking about amnesia: 6 January, anyone?To the US, where one likely candidate for the presidency delivers hour-long rambling speeches in which he explains that he's going to be a dictator, but all the chat is about whether the other candidate has lost his marbles. And yes, let me pre-emptively apologise, because I can already tell that we will only be on about the third paragraph of this column before I have exhausted the Guardian's approved list of euphemisms for being a couple of world leaders' names short of a full set.
Fifteen years after the release of Swag Surfin', Fast Life Yungstaz are embracing the moment: It's hard not to move when it comes on'It was no day at the beach when the Kansas City Chiefs played host to Miami Dolphins last month, the temperature at Arrowhead Stadium plunging to a frostbite-inducing -4F (-15.5C). The only thaw came late in the playoff game when the Fast Life Yungstaz (FLY) track Swag Surfin' filled Arrowhead.The rap song, a jock jam du jour that is likely to receive plenty of airplay on Super Bowl Sunday, starts off slow and brassy - but once the beat dropped, a rave kicked off that had the 71,492 in attendance swaying and lunging in unison. I'm swaggin', I'm surfin'," goes the sports jingle, I'm clean like dish detergent." Continue reading...
In a trade deadline without many clear winners, the Knicks became overnight contenders. The moribund Lakers? Not so muchIf most NBA trade deadlines storm in with a bang, Thursday's sort of limped through with a whimper. Only true NBA aficionados will have even heard of most of the names involved in transactions at the deadline this year, let alone have an opinion on the movement therein. But fear not, dear reader. That's what we're here for. Here's a summary of the presumed winners and losers of the sleepiest trade deadline in recent memory. Continue reading...
California doctors say growing number of patients have fractures all over their body' after falls from wall like a three-story building'Doctors at the University of California, San Diego's trauma center (UCSD) have treated 455 patients with serious injuries sustained while trying to cross the US-Mexico border in 2023, a marked increase from the year before.Ninety-seven per cent of the injuries, or 441 of them, occurred when people fell off the wall on the US side, said Alexander Tenorio, a resident neurosurgeon at UCSD who treats brain and spinal cord injuries. Continue reading...
Republican bills likely to reach Governor Ron DeSantis, who has railed against indoctrination of students by liberal elites'Kindergartners in Florida might soon be compelled to balance learning their ABCs with lectures on the history of communism, if a Republican proposal moving through the state's legislature becomes law.House bill 1349 would also create a history of communism taskforce", hand-picked by the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, to recommend how the subject is presented in classrooms from elementary to high school starting in 2026. Continue reading...
We talk of the dignity of the crown but this is anything but. We need a grown-up relationship with the royal familyMidway through the afternoon, all news organisations were informed by Buckingham Palace that a major royal story would be dropping at 6pm. The advance warning was to give everyone time to prepare. On the dot of six came the news that the king had cancer. It had been detected during his prostate treatment but was unrelated. The king was in good spirits and would start treatment very shortly. In the meantime he would cancel his public appearances but would attend to matters of state. That, you would have thought, just about covered it. Everything that needed to be said had been said. We could give the king some space to recover at home with his family. Continue reading...
Federalist Society co-chair has ties to the groups arguing in the US supreme court case that Trump should stay on the Colorado ballotThe man behind the conservative effort to move the judiciary to the right has ties to many of the groups and people arguing that Donald Trump should stay on the ballot in a case heard before the US supreme court this week.Leonard Leo's advocacy and financial network played a major role in Trump's judicial nominations and confirmation hearings as part of his years-long push to make the courts more friendly to conservatives and their causes. Justice Clarence Thomas once joked that Leo was the No 3 most powerful person in the world". Continue reading...
The wave of brutality and terror by gangsters in Ecuador represented a drug coup'. And we are complicit in this violence and mayhemWhat happened in Ecuador a few weeks ago, when the country descended into gang violence and TV journalists were seen by millions cowering in front of people pointing high-powered weapons at their heads, was described in many ways. With the benefit of hindsight, though, it can be defined as a drug coup". It had never happened in this form, on this scale, anywhere else. It was not comparable to the uprisings that came before. It did not resemble Gen Augosto Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973, and it had nothing to do with the rule of the Argentine colonels or the coup in Venezuela in 1992, because it did not aim to take power, or to occupy the government with ministers, or to replace formal control. The only goals of the drug-trafficking cartels are to force political and economic power to negotiate, to obtain impunity, to have room for manoeuvre to defend their own affairs and, ultimately, to remind politicians of any orientation that their legitimation is possible only by consent of the cartels.Something similar - but with different methods and timing - did take place in Jamaica in 2010, when the then US president, Barack Obama, called for the extradition of Christopher Dudus" Coke, a powerful Jamaican drug boss, and his gangs rose up to prevent it. There were at least 75 deaths, but it was a momentary insurgency of the ghettoes ruled by Dudus. In 2021, there was also the assassination of the Haitian president Jovenel Moise, who was working towards handing over traffickers to the US in exchange for economic aid, and was killed by plotters who hoped to supplant him. All of these incidents have one element in common: when governments disadvantage the interests of criminal groups or favour the extradition of bosses, the cartels intervene with the same methods that they would use if they were facing criminal rivals - as equals. Continue reading...
Seniors with gambling addictions are often boomers who have attained the American dream and then lostI have been a psychotherapist for 40 years and I still remember the first time, back in 1984, that I led an in-patient addiction therapy group. Joe, a retired marketing executive in his 60s and a compulsive gambler, abruptly exited the room and disappeared into the dark snowy Long Island evening in his pajamas and slippers.Devastated, I thought I had done something wrong. No," my clinical supervisor explained, it's just post time at the Belmont racetrack." Continue reading...
The justices, wanting to restore Trump to the ballot, didn't address the underlying question of if he incited an insurrectionElena Kagan once referred to Jonathan Mitchell sarcastically as some genius". That was in oral arguments surrounding SB8, the bounty-hunter abortion ban that Texas succeeded in passing before the overturn of Roe v Wade, which Mitchell wrote, pioneering a cockamamie scheme for evading judicial review.Mitchell, a far-right lawyer currently vying for a spot in the second Trump administration, is a fan of this kind of bald, legal bad faith: you can't quite call him duplicitous, because he never quite pretends that the law really leads him to the conclusions he'd like to reach. He's more about coming up with novel legal schemes to get to his desired outcome and trusting that the federal judiciary, captured as it is by Federalist Society acolytes and wingnut cranks, will go along with him because they share his political proclivities. Continue reading...
She's just won best album at the Grammys; he may well win the Super Bowl. Is their romance a political conspiracy, money-making enterprise or just as simple as true love?
The Los Angeles Lakers have honoured Kobe Bryant with a 19ft bronze statue outside their downtown arena. The 4,000lb statue portrays the late superstar in his white No 8 jersey with his right index finger raised, depicting his pose as he walked off the court after his 81-point performance against the Toronto Raptors in January 2006.Bryant's widow, Vanessa, said during the dedication ceremony that the statue is the first of three that will be created to honour the five-time NBA champion and top scorer in Lakers history. Another statue will feature Bryant in his No 24 jersey, which he wore for the second half of his career, while a third will depict Bryant and his daughter Gianna, who died with him and seven others in a helicopter crash in January 2020.
As Liverpool prepares to look for a new manager, and its owners look to expand their portfolio, both parties may be racing toward a reckoningWhenever Fenway Sports Group has added to its sprawling global portfolio of sports franchises, now valued at more than $10bn, the story it has told about its intentions has been the same: respect tradition, build the brand, leave the team on a more sustainable footing for future growth, and above all, win. Reflecting on the two-year anniversary of the group's 2021 acquisition of the Pittsburgh Penguins ice hockey team late last year, FSG chairman Tom Werner told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: We feel a certain responsibility as stewards to make sure we're not only preserving the legacy of the Penguins, but that we are trying to bring more Stanley Cups to Pittsburgh."In the mouth of any other sports investor, words like these would seem like standard-issue corporate smarm. But FSG has the track record, built up over more than two decades, to back them up: from Boston to Liverpool and beyond, FSG's arrival has heralded success on the field and renewal off it, bringing trophies and a fresh sense of connection between the teams it has taken over and the communities those teams represent. Continue reading...
Joe Biden on Thursday mistakenly referred to Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as the leader of Mexico. The comment came as he was making remarks on a special counsel report concerning his handling of classified documents, and that referred to his memory as 'poor', which he denied in an angry rebuttal. The US president also said Israel's offensive on Gaza has been 'over the top' - his sharpest criticism yet of Tel Aviv's conduct during the war.
The US national security spokesperson has warned Israel against conducting an offensive against Rafah, the last refuge of Palestinians fleeing the Israeli army's assault on Gaza. John Kirby said the US would not support an attack on the southern town. He added that the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had expressed his concern to Israeli officials during his recent visit
His plan for demographic rearmament' shifts the blame to women, while his policies make life harder for parentsAccording to the French government, France is facing a huge challenge. The birthrate has been in decline for a decade now, but in 2023 it was down by 7% on the previous year. In response, the president, Emmanuel Macron, has announced a plan for what he calls demographic rearmament" including fertility testing for those aged 25. Beside the war-like rhetoric that treats a high birthrate as a way for France to compete internationally, this discussion of people's bodies as part of a national plan makes me queasy.Such a utilitarian view of the birthrate not only puts an unhelpful burden on the shoulders of all French people of childbearing age, but is an offensive intrusion in to our intimate lives and personal choices. At 46, Macron himself has chosen not to be a father - why can't he let everyone else make their own choices?Rokhaya Diallo is a Guardian Europe columnist Continue reading...
Rambling two-hour talk with Tucker Carlson, a Trump-supporting rightwing commentator, was Russian president's first with a western media outlet since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. 'If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons. It will be over within a few weeks,' Putin said. He accused the US and the west of prolonging the war and singled out Boris Johnson, claiming that as British prime minister he dissuaded Zelenskiy from signing a peace deal in the early stages of the war
Unknown Ryan Binkley was only other candidate running, two days after Nikki Haley came second in state Republican primaryDonald Trump was anointed the victor of Nevada Republican caucuses, after staunch loyalists in the state helped maneuver the election process to assure his success.Shortly after the caucuses concluded, the AP confirmed Trump, who was the only major candidate participating, as the winner, capping off a perplexing election week in a key battleground state. Ryan Binkley, a little-known pastor and businessman from Texas, was the only other candidate running. Continue reading...
The president insisted he put the country back on his feet', but a last-minute fumble provided more fodder to his detractorsIt came out of the blue. The White House announced that Joe Biden would deliver remarks at 7.45pm - giving the press just 23 minutes to prepare. What the sudden speech would be about, no one knew. The element of surprise and uncertainty was reminiscent of the Donald Trump era.As it happened, many White House correspondents were at a meeting near the Watergate building about a mile and a half way. The Guardian was among four who jumped in a car, raced across town and sprinted up sedate Pennsylvania Avenue, greeting the Secret Service in a breathless and disheveled state. Continue reading...
The US president, Joe Biden, defended his memory in a short speech after a report from the justice department questioned his ability to remember key events and facts. The report also exonerated Biden over his handling of classified materials. Biden disputed some press reporting that he had 'wilfully retained documents' and said the special counsel report's descriptions concerning the date of his son's death were 'extraneous commentary' that 'had no place' there. Biden's remarks came after an earlier statement in which the US president welcomed the finding that he should not face criminal charges
NBA team presents the first of three statues of the late superstar, with his No 8 jersey and a signature pose after a 2006 gameThe Los Angeles Lakers revealed a statue of Kobe Bryant on Thursday, honoring their late superstar with a 19ft bronze likeness outside their downtown arena.The 4,000lb statue depicts Bryant in his white No 8 jersey with his right index finger raised as he walked off the court following his 81-point performance against the Toronto Raptors in January 2006. Continue reading...
President Joe Biden welcomed the finding of a special counsel report that he would not face criminal charges in his handling of classified documents. Biden said he was 'pleased' the special counsel had 'reached the conclusion I believed and knew all along they would'. The US Department of Justice special counsel investigating Biden's handling of classified documents after his vice-presidency released a report concluding that he 'willfully' kept and shared classified information including 'classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan' and handwritten notes about national security and foreign policy 'implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods'.
The president won't face criminal charges in classified documents case, but the line he is an elderly man with a poor memory' will lingerThe president is not a crook. But there may be something more unforgivable in the court of public opinion. The president is old.That is what will linger from Joe Biden's pyrrhic victory at the hands of the justice department on Thursday. True, he will not face criminal charges over his handling of highly classified documents when a private citizen, despite an awkward photo revealing papers stashed in a broken cardboard box in his garage, according to special counsel Robert Hur. Continue reading...
The US supreme court heard arguments on whether former president Donald Trump should be removed from the ballot on Thursday after Colorado voters filed a lawsuit last year alleging he was ineligible to run for president under a little-used provision of the constitution's 14th amendment.Most justices, liberal and conservative, seemed skeptical of Colorado's arguments and seemed to agree that states could not act without action from Congress
by Chris Stein in Washington and Kari Paul in Oakland on (#6JG43)
No charges despite willfull' retention of material but Robert Hur stresses president's age and allegedly faulty memoryThe US Department of Justice special counsel investigating Joe Biden's handling of classified documents after his vice-presidency released a report on Thursday concluding that he willfully" kept and shared classified information - but that the now US president will not face criminal charges. Biden was declared pleased" but his team criticized inappropriate" comments in the report and investigative excess".Here are the key points: Continue reading...
Former White House trade adviser sentenced to four months for contempt of Congress's January 6 investigation but is appealingA federal judge on Thursday denied Trump White House official Peter Navarro's bid to remain out of prison while he appeals his contempt of Congress conviction for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.Navarro was sentenced last month to four months behind bars after being found guilty of defying a subpoena for documents and a deposition from the House January 6 committee. The former White House trade adviser under President Donald Trump had asked to be free while he fights that conviction and sentence in higher courts. Continue reading...
Search under way for Lifei Huang, who was reported missing on Sunday night after not returning from Mount Baldy areaAuthorities in southern California are searching for a 22-year-old woman who was reported missing after going hiking alone on Sunday as an atmospheric river drenched the region.Lifei Huang was reported missing around 11pm on Sunday night after not returning from the Mount Baldy area of the San Gabriel mountains, the San Bernardino county sheriff's department said in a statement. She had set out around 2pm that day and was last heard from around 4pm. Continue reading...
by Joan E Greve and Lauren Gambino in Washington on (#6JFG1)
Previous bill that also included border security measures failed amid Republican oppositionThe Senate on Thursday advanced a wartime aid package for Ukraine and Israel, reviving an effort that had stalled amid Republican opposition to a border security bill they demanded and later abandoned.A day after blocking a measure that would have paired harsh new border restrictions with security assistance for Ukraine, Israel and other US allies, the Senate voted 67 to 32 to begin consideration of the $95bn emergency aid bill. Several Republicans who voted to block the broader border package agreed to open debate on the foreign policy-only version of the measure after securing the opportunity to propose changes, including the immigration enforcement measures that were stripped out. Continue reading...
The chief justice of the US supreme court, John Roberts, argued that removing Donald Trump from states' primary ballots for the presidential election could mean some states would remove the Democratic candidate, some states would remove the Republican candidate, leaving the presidential election to just a few states.A majority of justices, including some from the court's liberal wing, voiced concern about the chaos that would ensue if they allowed states to decide whether to disqualify candidates when they debated Colorado's decision to rule Trump ineligible to run for office for inciting insurrection
It is hard to believe that life could get worse for Palestinians there - but there is every sign that it willThe last refuge is no longer a refuge. Around half of Gaza's 2.3 million people have found some kind of shelter in Rafah, often under canvas, raising the border city's population fivefold. Now, though desperate, traumatised and exhausted, many are readying to flee again.Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israeli troops will soon enter, despite warnings from Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary general, that it would increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences". Strikes on the city appeared to be intensifying on Thursday.Do 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...
House majority leader received autologous stem cell treatment after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma in AugustThe Republican House majority leader, Steve Scalise, will return to work in Washington after receiving autologous stem cell treatment for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer.Scalise announced he was diagnosed with the disease in August. His cancer treatment represents the second serious health scare for the representative since he took office to represent Louisiana in 2008. In 2017, Scalise was one of four people shot during practice for a congressional baseball game. Continue reading...
Austin police say attack was bias-motivated' when Zacharia Doar was attacked after attending a pro-Palestinian protest with friendsThe recent stabbing of a 23-year-old Palestinian American in Texas meets the standard for a hate crime, police announced on Wednesday.Bert James Baker, 36, was arrested on Sunday for allegedly attacking 23-year-old Zacharia Doar after Doar and friends were returning from a pro-Palestinian protest on Sunday near the University of Texas at Austin. Continue reading...
Small radio station forced to go silent after unbelievable' theft of giant tower, which would cost over $100,000 to replaceAn Alabama radio station has been forced to temporarily shut down after thieves stole a 200ft radio tower.WJLX, a station in Jasper, Alabama, was ordered to go off air by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after thieves took the station's AM tower last week, the Guardian first learned. Continue reading...
Led by Native people, an Oklahoma program provides life-saving supplies and addiction care to remote tribal areasTwice a week, Coleman Cox drives a white sprinter van full of life-saving supplies along winding rural Oklahoma roads from Tahlequah, the capital of the Cherokee Nation, to Vinita, a town of 5,000 about 70 miles (113km) north. It's a hot spot for drug use in the northern part of the reservation.Cox, who's 38, is the director of the Cherokee Nation harm reduction program, an evidence-based public health strategy designed to mitigate the adverse effects of drug use, such as infectious diseases, overdose and death. The mobile unit was launched in September 2023 to bring harm-reduction supplies to remote areas of the reservation. Vinita is its first distribution site. Continue reading...
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