All three people on board, including the pilot, a flight nurse and a paramedic, were killed on 20 January in western OklahomaA dead goose was found in part of the flight control system of a medical helicopter that crashed in western Oklahoma, killing all three people on board, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).While it highlights the goose's presence on board, the report stops short of specifying a suspected cause of the deadly crash. The report notes that other geese were found in the debris field left by the wreck. Continue reading...
by David Smith in Columbia, South Carolina on (#6JBWG)
After Biden urges turnout on X, voters cast ballots to stop Trump' and share thoughts on 2024 presidential electionAs predicted, South Carolina's Democratic primary Saturday is proving to be a low-key affair - but that hasn't stopped Joe Biden from trying to boost turnout.The president posted a video on the social media platform X in which he said simply: South Carolina, go vote today!" Biden also made a stop at his 2024 campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, alongside vice-president Kamala Harris. Continue reading...
Federal court documents filed Friday show Demetrio Trujillo, 42, said he was hired by Solomon Pena, who was arrested in 2023A New Mexico man has said he was hired by a failed Republican candidate for political office to carry out drive-by shootings targeting the homes of Democrats who would not abide by false election-rigging claims.Demetrio Trujillo, 42, indicated in federal court documents filed Friday that he had been hired for the spate of attacks by Solomon Pena, whose run for a seat in the New Mexico state legislature in November 2022 ended in defeat. Trujillo pleaded guilty to charges of election interference, criminal conspiracy and firearms-related offenses, and he could face several years in prison as he awaits a sentencing hearing that wasn't immediately scheduled, the US attorney's office in Albuquerque said in a statement. Continue reading...
by David Smith in Columbia, South Carolina on (#6JBR4)
Vice-president's trip to the state signals she is vital to the campaign because of her ability to galvanise Black voters and her abortion rights messagingJoe Biden's closing argument on Friday to South Carolina, the state that rescued his White House dreams four years ago, was not made by Joe Biden. Instead it was Kamala Harris who strode out under a brilliant blue sky to the thunderous cadence of South Carolina State University's drumline.It was because South Carolina's voters showed up in the middle of a historic pandemic that Biden became president, she told a modest but enthusiastic crowd in Orangeburg, and I am the first woman and first Black woman to be vice-president of the United States". Continue reading...
Initial earthquake followed by at least eight smaller ones as residents across state reported feeling shakingA 5.1 magnitude earthquake shook an area near Oklahoma's capital late Friday night, followed by smaller quakes during the next several hours, the US Geological Survey (USGS) reported.The agency said the earthquake struck at 11.24pm and was centered 8kms (5 miles) north-west of Prague, Oklahoma, about 57 miles(92km) east of Oklahoma City. Continue reading...
The billionaire is bankrolling a pro-drugs version of the Olympics, but does he care about the whole women-having-rights thing? NahHave you ever dreamed up a completely deranged business idea but lacked the cash to execute it? Peter Thiel, the secretive tech billionaire who co-founded Paypal, doesn't have that problem. He, along with a group of other venture capitalists, is currently deploying part of his vast fortune to help bankroll a pro-drugs version of the Olympics called the Enhanced Games. It's exactly what it sounds like: a sporting competition in which participants are encouraged to take as many performance-enhancing substances as they can get their steroid-enlarged hands on. All in the name of science and innovation, naturally. Continue reading...
During a routine day at the Port of Houston, four marine inspectors heard barking from amid 10,000 containersIt was just another routine day of inspecting shipping containers at the Port of Houston for US Coast Guard officer Ryan McMahon when he and his team thought they heard barking coming from inside one of the thousands of containers that surrounded them.Oh, it's scratching, dude," one of the inspectors said on a video they recorded Wednesday morning as the team looked up at the container, stacked about 25ft (8 metres) in the air. Continue reading...
From San Diego to Capitola, historic piers have taken a beating, and cities plan their rebuilds - strategicallyMore storms, rising seas and huge waves are taking their toll on California's iconic piers that have dotted the Pacific coast since the Gold Rush, posing the biggest threat yet to the beach landmarks that have become a quintessential part of the landscape.At least a half-dozen public piers are closed after being damaged repeatedly by storms, with multiple atmospheric river storms hitting the state over the past year. Repair costs have climbed into the millions of dollars. Continue reading...
Discontent in the community, especially in swing states such as Michigan, Arizona and Georgia, will hamper the president's re-election bidLast week, Muslim and Arab American leaders in Michigan refused an invitation to attend a listening session with Joe Biden's campaign. It was too late, they said, for the president to win their support after ignoring their communities' pleas for a ceasefire in Gaza for the past four months. Their dissatisfaction with the president could be detrimental to his success in crucial swing states, which he desperately needs to win in order to be reelected.The session was the first time that a delegation was sent to Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit where more than half of the 109,976 residents are of Middle Eastern or North African descent. Still, the Dearborn mayor Abdullah Hammoud, along with some 15 other leaders, declined the meeting, citing the US-backed Israel-Gaza war in which more than 25,000 Palestinans - most of them women and children - have been killed. Continue reading...
Prior authorization requires permission to be sought before prescribing critical drugs, which could cost lives, doctors sayIn the midst of the worst overdose epidemic in US history, addiction medicine specialists say a bureaucratic hurdle is adding to the difficulty of getting people in treatment: an insurance industry tactic called prior authorization".Loathed by doctors of all stripes, prior authorization requires healthcare providers to seek permission from insurance companies before they prescribe a treatment. Doctors in addiction medicine said the requirement is both unnecessarily burdensome and could cost lives. Continue reading...
The hip-hop pioneer was shot in a New York studio in 2002 but now a key witness is revealing what he says really happenedWho killed Jam Master Jay has been one of rap's most enduring mysteries. But this week a Brooklyn court heard from a witness who was in the New York recording studio when the Run-DMC hip-hop pioneer - born Jason Mizell - was gunned down in 2002.Across the courtroom, studio gofer Uriel Tony" Rincon dramatically pointed to the rap star's godson Karl Jordan Jr, also known as Little D, and told jurors: He kind of walked directly to Jay and gave, like, half a handshake, with an arm. And at the same time, that's when I hear a couple of shots." Continue reading...
The sanctions do not target Israeli officials who enable violence in the West Bank, nor affect the more urgent crisis in GazaPresident Joe Biden's executive order allowing financial and travel sanctions on Israelis involved in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank is a rare and positive step to address Israeli persecution of Palestinians. The Biden administration's rhetoric reveals growing frustration with the increasingly hard line of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his far-right government. The sanctions, coming on top of similar travel bans issued in December and imposed as Biden was about to visit the electoral swing-state Michigan, which has a large Arab American population, add some bite to the administration's words.But the West Bank violence, devastating as it is to its immediate victims, is a sideshow when compared with the extraordinary violence being unleashed against the people of Gaza. And even in the West Bank, the focus of the sanctions is limited. They can be understood as a shot across the bow - a warning that the Biden administration is willing to act - but their modest character and evasion of the Gaza debacle leave considerable room for more decisive action. Continue reading...
Born next to a frontier, I criss-cross the continent all the time. Our borderless network is a privilege we can't take for grantedI'm a French writer based nominally in Italy, but Europe is my homeland. My mobile-phone provider makes me pay dearly for this fact. In any given year, I spend nearly nine months on the road, travelling the length and breadth of the continent: doing research, speaking at conferences, or just because I want to. Contrary to the spirit of the age, my life is mobile and cosmopolitan.In 2023, I visited 18 European countries; five more than I did the year before. I'm a European citizen of no fixed abode, a hybrid supranational nomad, a kind of Homo europaeus, as Friedrich Nietzsche imagined in Human, All Too Human. Like Charles Baudelaire's flaneur, I take great pleasure in choosing a life of change, escape and endless movement across the European continent. Continue reading...
by David Smith in Columbia, South Carolina on (#6JBKG)
State holds party's first official primary under new schedule, with president polling at 70%Joe Biden aims to build on recent momentum on Saturday, when South Carolina officially launches the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.The US president received a boost last month when he won an unsanctioned primary election in New Hampshire without even appearing on the ballot. A grassroots write-in campaign ensured that he brushed aside his challengers Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson. Continue reading...
Through an Auschwitz commandant's family life, Jonathan Glazer's chilling new film reminds us of the banality of evilIn a letter to his former student Hannah Arendt about the Nazi war crimes trials, written in October 1946, philosopher Karl Jaspers told her that he was uneasy with her view that the very boundaries of crime had been exploded by the Holocaust: that line of thinking might offer a streak of satanic greatness" to the Nazis, a hint of myth and legend". It seems to me that we have to see these things in their total banality, in their prosaic triviality, because that's what truly characterises them," he wrote. Bacteria can cause epidemics that wipe out nations, but they remain merely bacteria." His letter had an obvious influence on Arendt, and on the way terrible human actions have been considered ever since. Everyone knows her phrase the banality of evil". It is, in its way, a cliche.It is also easily misunderstood. Banal" could be interpreted as exculpatory - as if ordinary activities such as filling out forms, organising logistics and attending to bureaucracy might somehow imply a lesser degree of guilt, even when attached to industrial-scale murder. Lyndsey Stonebridge, in her new book on the philosopher We Are Free to Change the World, defends Arendt's thinking on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief planners of the Holocaust. Arendt did think that Eichmann was banal. She also believed it was important to understand that Nazism had corrupted everyone it touched." That is, the crimes of the Holocaust were committed not just against individuals' bodies, but against everybody's morality; the mass murder of the 1940s could only have come about through a disabling of moral choices". Continue reading...
The tennis great is entitled to be prickly about what is written about him - but social media pile-ons do him no favoursIn an Edinburgh park, shortly before shooting an unsuspecting dog in the backside with an air rifle, Sick Boy imparts his philosophy to Renton. At one point you've got it. Then you lose it and it's gone for ever. All walks of life. George Best, for example. Had it, lost it. Or David Bowie, Lou Reed. Charlie Nicholas, David Niven, Malcolm McLaren, Elvis Presley."So, we all get old, we cannae hack it any more and that's it? That's your theory?" Continue reading...
The actor, whose credits include Rocky and Predator, has died at 76. His family released a statement through his agent to announce that he died 'peacefully in his sleep' on 1 February
Judge Tanya Chutkan orders delay in former president's trial, which was due to start in Washington on 4 MarchA US judge has formally postponed Donald Trump's trial on federal charges that the former president sought to overturn the 2020 election results.The trial was due to start on 4 March in Washington before the delay ordered from the federal judge Tanya Chutkan. Continue reading...
Roberta Kaplan says ex-president directed See you next Tuesday' remark at her after deposition in unrelated case at Mar-a-LagoE Jean Carroll's attorney says Donald Trump used a coded expression to call her the C-word during a deposition before she helped the magazine columnist win an $83.3m verdict in her defamation case against the former president.Roberta Kaplan shared the anecdote during an appearance Friday on the George Conway Explains It All podcast, saying it happened while Trump was deposed at his Mar-a-Lago resort as part of an unrelated, since-dismissed case in which he faced accusations of collaborating with a fraudulent marketing company. Continue reading...
Tagging stretches across a large portion of a $1bn unfinished project across from venue of Grammy awards on SundayLos Angeles police arrested two people this week in connection with a spate of graffiti on nearly 30 floors of an unoccupied and unfinished downtown skyscraper.The tagging stretches across a large portion of a tower in the $1bn Oceanwide Plaza, a stalled mixed-use retail and residential project that has sat unfinished since 2019. The site is located just across from the Crypto.com Arena, where this year's Grammy awards will be held on Sunday. Continue reading...
Her murder by two other children was motivated in part by her transgender identity. As a society, we have questions to answerBrianna Ghey's father, Peter Spooner, had no wish for his daughter's killers to be named in the media. He wanted them forgotten about and locked up", he said. They're nothing." Frances Crook, former head of the Howard League for Penal Reform, commented on X (formerly Twitter): As soon as the children who killed Brianna Ghey are named they will be the entire prurient focus of the media. The victim is passed over," and that was borne out: immediately after the names dropped, images of the killers were all over social and mainstream media, described as the faces of evil".Explaining her decision to lift the reporting ban, Mrs Justice Amanda Yip said last year that the shock generated by Brianna's murder and the circumstances of it has spread well beyond the local community, across the nation and indeed internationally". She accepted that to name the killers would cause distress for their families, but said the purpose of an anonymity order was not to protect the relatives of the convicted. But exactly what is the point of anonymity orders for under-18s? Why did a government review of the youth justice system recommend lifelong anonymity for children in 2016 (it is currently lifted when they turn 18)? And conversely, what social purpose does it now serve to know the identities of Ghey's killers? What conversation does it start, and what other conversations does it shut down?Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Potential deal with Manhattan prosecutors could see Allen Weisselberg admit to lying on stand, New York Times reportsA longtime Trump Organization executive is said to be negotiating with Manhattan prosecutors over a potential guilty plea for lying on the witness stand in Donald Trump's fraud trial.Allen Weisselberg, Trump's former chief financial officer, who oversaw the company's finances, is in the early stages of working on a perjury plea with the office of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, the New York Times reported on Thursday. Continue reading...
Some see the US president's executive order imposing sanctions on settlers who violently attack Palestinians as a bid to win supportWas Joe Biden's announcement of unprecedented US sanctions against Israeli settlers in occupied Palestine a sign of political weakness at home, or of a newly found willingness to assert American influence over Israel?The president signed the executive order imposing financial and travel sanctions on settlers who violently attack Palestinians shortly before a campaign rally in the swing state of Michigan, where the largest Arab American population in the country has rounded on Biden over his largely blanket support for Israel's assault on Gaza. Continue reading...
Long-lived member of the vulnerable species was coaxed into reproducing by her zookeeper and eventually hatched eight chicksA great, but odd, love story has come to an end.Walnut, a white-naped crane and internet celebrity, has died at the age of 42. She is survived by eight chicks, the loving staff at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, and by Chris Crowe - a human zookeeper whom Walnut regarded as her proxy mate for nearly 20 years. Continue reading...
Conflict escalates between Trump defender Jim Jordan and Willis, whose office is charging ex-president over election interferenceThe US House judiciary committee has subpoenaed Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, for records related to the use of federal grant money in prosecutions and the potential misuse of those funds.The subpoena escalates the conflict between Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican congressman, judiciary committee chair and ardent defender of Donald Trump, and Willis, whose office charged the former president and 18 others with 41 counts over interfering with a Georgia election and illegally attempting to undo Biden's victory in Georgia. Continue reading...
Tech CEOs who've ruined people's lives or politicians who back misery and mayhem? That's a low bar and a tough choiceDid you catch a clip of the tech CEOs in Washington this week? The Senate judiciary committee had summoned five CEOs to a hearing titled Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis. There was Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok's Shou Zi Chew, Snapchat's Evan Spiegel, Discord's Jason Citron and X's Linda Yaccarino - and a predictable vibe of Senator, I'm a parent myself ..." Listen, these moguls simply want to provide the tools to help families and friends connect with each other. Why must human misery and untold, tax-avoidant billions attend them at every turn?If you did see footage from the hearing, it was probably one of two moments of deliberately clippable news content. Ranking committee member Lindsey Graham addressed Zuckerberg with the words: I know you don't mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands." Well, ditto, Senator. You have a product that is killing people," continued Graham, who strangely has yet to make the same point to the makers of whichever brand of AR-15 he proudly owns, or indeed to the makers of the assault rifles responsible for another record high of US school shootings last year. Firearms fatalities are the number one cause of death among US children and teenagers, a fact the tech CEOs at this hearing politely declined to mention, because no one likes a whatabouterist. And after all, the point of these things is to just get through the posturing of politicians infinitely less powerful than you, then scoot back to behaving precisely as you were before. Zuckerberg was out of there in time to report bumper results and announce Meta's first ever dividend on Thursday. At time of writing, its shares were soaring.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
The pilot of the Beechcraft Bonanza V35 had radioed airport reporting engine failure before the plane crashed into a homeA small plane crashed at a Florida mobile home park on Thursday, killing the pilot of the aircraft and two people on the ground, fire officials said.The pilot of the single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza V35 reported an engine failure shortly before the aircraft went down at about 7pm local time, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported. Continue reading...
A small plane crashed at a Florida mobile home park on Thursday, killing the pilot of the aircraft and two people on the ground, fire officials said. The pilot of the single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza V35 reported an engine failure shortly before the aircraft went down at about 7pm local time, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported
Thief stole seven of the cakes that are popular during carnival season but business has been better because of it'A New Orleans bakery has had a sweet few days after a thief stole seven of its king cakes as Mardi Gras celebrations continue in the city.A thief entered Bittersweet Confections last Wednesday and stole the cakes - and a case of vodka and cash - during a break-in, the New Orleans police department said. Continue reading...
By continuing to focus the conversation around our appearance, all the body positivity movement does is reinforce that how we look is the most important thing about usThere was a time when a woman reaching the age of 28 may have been considered to be approaching her middle years. That time was probably in the early 1900s, when the average life expectancy for women (in England) was around 50.Surely in 2024 though, a 28-year-old is still considered young, right? Wrong! According to a recent social media trend and the feral comments it has produced, the only thing more depressing than being almost 30 is looking like you're almost 30. Continue reading...
In the UK and around the world, those who challenge rich corporations are being hounded and crushed with ever-more inventive penaltiesWhy are peaceful protesters treated like terrorists, while actual terrorists (especially on the far right, and especially in the US) often remain unmolested by the law? Why, in the UK, can you now potentially receive a longer sentence for public nuisance" - non-violent civil disobedience - than for rape or manslaughter? Why are ordinary criminals being released early to make space in overcrowded prisons, only for the space to be refilled with political prisoners: people trying peacefully to defend the habitable planet?There's a simple explanation. It was clearly expressed by a former analyst at the US Department of Homeland Security. You don't have a bunch of companies coming forward saying: I wish you'd do something about these rightwing extremists.'" The disproportionate policing of environmental protest, the new offences and extreme sentences, the campaigns of extrajudicial persecution by governments around the world are not, as politicians constantly assure us, designed to protect society. They're a response to corporate lobbying.George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Democrats will award their first delegates in the state that transformed Biden's fortunes in 2020 while Republican Nikki Haley has an uphill struggle in her home stateThe 2024 Democratic nominating contest in the 2024 presidential election officially begins in South Carolina on 3 February, with the result all but a foregone conclusion. Joe Biden is expected to secure an easy victory in the state that resurrected his foundering presidential campaign four years ago.Despite a lack of suspense, Saturday's contest will offer some clues about Biden's standing with his party's base. Here's what to know. Continue reading...
The senator is writing a book about his mental health. That's hard to celebrate while he shrugs off the suffering of millionsJohn Fetterman is a workwear icon. The Democratic senator from Pennsylvania has made a national name for himself by wearing baggy basketball shorts and a scruffy hoodie in any and every situation. And his penchant for sportswear makes sense: he needs it for all the vigorous political flip-flopping he does. While progressives helped Fetterman into power, it only took a few months in office before he started giving them the middle finger. Republicans once mocked Fetterman for his slobby presentation and his health problems (the senator had a stroke while running for office). Now, however, he's getting admiring comments from the right and hosts of Fox News are cheering him on for his hawkish pro-Israel stance and his anti-immigration comments.When he's not yelling about how we need to be softer on Israel and tougher on immigrants, Fetterman likes to talk about his mental health. Last February, the senator checked into a hospital for clinical depression and spent six weeks there as an inpatient. After he left, he wasn't shy about talking about his health problems. He gave an emotional interview on MSNBC and was on the cover of Time. Now it's been reported that he's writing a memoir about his experiences with depression. The book is going to be called Unfettered. Continue reading...
Republicans have perfected the art of gerrymandering - like in Ohio, where they're using their state legislature supermajority to override the governorIn June, 2022, Nick Zingarelli and his family packed their bags and left St Louis.His daughter had come out as transgender just two years earlier, and Missouri lawmakers were in the midst of passing a raft of anti-trans bills, including a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Continue reading...
The startup publication blew through $50m in less than a year - money that could sustain some newsrooms for decadesThe new journalism outlet began less than a year ago to considerable fanfare. Claiming it would be unbiased and indispensable, the Messenger recruited hundreds of journalists, paid its executives lavishly and confidently forecast $100m in annual revenue this year.It would be like the good old days when the media was beloved, its founder predicted. Continue reading...
Providers working in federal programs will be required to expedite patients' prior authorizations for medications and/or surgeryA new set of rules from the Biden administration seeks to rein in private health insurance companies' use of prior authorization - a byzantine practice that requires people to seek insurance company permission before obtaining medication or having a procedure.The cost-containment strategy often delays care and forces patients, or their doctors, to navigate opaque and labyrinthine appeals. Continue reading...
Greg Abbott is using the same quasi-legal arguments once used by the Confederacy. Some of the supreme court is listeningOver the past few weeks, a quiet legal crisis has been unfolding on the US-Mexico border. Texas has seized control of part of the border and claimed the right to prevent federal authorities from exercising jurisdiction there. After the US supreme court ruled that the federal government could tear down razor wire erected by Texas authorities, the state vowed to erect more - and Governor Greg Abbott claimed that because the federal government had failed to protect his state from an invasion" of refugees, it has broken the compact between the United States and the States" and lost the right to exercise authority over the border altogether.To understand why this is so alarming, you need to see it in two historical contexts. The first is the notion of a compact" between the states. This idea holds that the constitution is not the supreme law of the land but rather a mere agreement between independently sovereign states. Those states hence retain the right to decide when certain actions by the federal government break the compact - and to reclaim their independence accordingly. Continue reading...
by Oliver Laughland for the Guardian and Delaney Nola on (#6JATY)
Deep south state escalates its fight against environmental protection with rare' use of public record lawsLouisiana's far-right government has quietly obtained hundreds of pages of communications between the Environmental Protection Agency and journalists, legal advocates and community groups focused on environmental justice. The rare use of public records law to target citizens is a new escalation in the state's battle with the EPA over its examination of alleged civil rights violations in the heavily polluted region known as Cancer Alley".Louisiana sued the EPA on 19 December, alleging that the federal agency had failed to properly respond to the state's sprawling Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request sent by former state attorney general Jeff Landry. Continue reading...
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