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A teacher told off a seven-year-old boy in the US for saying Jesus Christ'. Should we care?A big topic of conversation in our house is how much stricter English schools are than their American equivalents. What if, one of my children will say as we leave the house in the morning, I wore what I'm wearing to school in England? (You'd be sent home.) What if I wore my beanie in class? (You'd be told to take if off.) What if - the big one - I went to school in makeup and false nails, as some nine-year-olds in their school do? (I would probably get a call from the office and quite right, too.) What about self-expression?" they complain, like diligent Americans, and I explain that this is not a priority in the English school system, besides which, wearing Air Jordans because Ava does" isn't what self-expression means.These differences are, obviously, all uniform-based and elsewhere the two systems are clearly more aligned. In Mississippi this week, a news story to warm the heart as a seven-year-old was admonished by the teacher for unacceptable language", when, to quote the letter from the school his mother uploaded to Facebook, he said Jesus Christ when he dropped the Legos he was clearing up". The document the boy was sent home with fell under the rubric of parent notice of disciplinary incident", an over-reaction his family are objecting to in a post that has promptly gone viral. Continue reading...

The Kansas City Chiefs was given a mediocre receiving corps this season. He still made it to his sixth successive AFC Championship GameIt has become a routine in late January. A Super Bowl berth on the line. Tony Romo, sounding like a toddler three Mountain Dews deep, on the call. Patrick Mahomes leading the Kansas City Chiefs out into the AFC championship game.You cannot doubt No 15," Romo said after the Chiefs beat the Buffalo Bills in the divisional round last weekend. Who is? At this point, having the AFC title game without Mahomes would be like showing the Oscars without Martin Scorsese. Continue reading...

Cash-starved Bristol city council is not the real villain here, but its proposed strategy tells us some lives matter less than othersIf you want a symbol of this country's shredded safety net, look no further than Mark in Bristol.For the past 30 years Mark, who has cerebral palsy, has lived in his accessible bungalow with the support of personal assistants. That care package has enabled the 58-year-old to build a life at the heart of his community: from being a governor at the local school and training as a social worker, to holding a season ticket for his beloved Bristol City football club, It's more despair than joy," he smiles. Continue reading...

With a lot of good people leaving Twitter, it now apparently takes less for a tweet to find the recesses of the awfulTwitter/X began its death throes some time ago and is still thrashing about, slowly sinking into internet quicksand like Artax the horse in The NeverEnding Story (sorry to my fellow millennials for reminding you of this). It feels very small now - its reach is limited and engagement is noticeably down as more people jump submarine.So I was taken by surprise last week when a tweet of mine got me involved in an international incident. Continue reading...

Woman trying to cross rushing waters had climbed on top of overturned vehicle before she was rescued by helicopter teamA helicopter team rescued a woman Tuesday morning who was trapped for almost 15 hours atop her overturned pickup truck in rushing waters after she tried to traverse a swollen creek following recent rain in northern California.A helicopter of California highway patrol air operations airlifted the woman to shore as waters surged around her vehicle at a crossing in a park. Continue reading...

US regulator makes announcement hours after CEO says planemaker will only allow jets to fly when 100%' certain of safetyThe Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has approved an inspection and maintenance process to allow grounded Boeing 737 Max 9 planes to return to service, following a cabin panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight.The exhaustive, enhanced review our team completed after several weeks of information gathering gives me and the FAA confidence to proceed to the inspection and maintenance phase," FAA administrator Mike Whitaker said in a statement. Continue reading...

It was humiliating to watch,' civil rights leader tells MSNBC after senator appeared with ex-president in New HampshireThe South Carolina Republican senator Tim Scott's behaviour around Donald Trump is humiliating", the civil rights leader Rev Al Sharpton said.It was humiliating to watch what Tim Scott did as a sitting senator," Sharpton told MSNBC, for which he hosts a show, after Scott appeared with the former president in New Hampshire, where Trump won the Republican presidential primary on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Mike DeWine had vetoed a bill banning trans minors from getting gender-affirming care and playing on sports teamsOhio's state senate has voted to override the governor Mike DeWine's veto of a bill that bans transgender minors from receiving gender-affirming care, and their ability to play on sports teams, on Wednesday.The bill, HB68, prohibits doctors from providing gender-affirming care - such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy or surgeries - to trans youths. It also blocks transgender female student athletes from participating on girls' sports teams. Continue reading...

Poll released Wednesday shows divisions by age and political lines, with 35% overall saying campaign against Palestinians is genocideMore than one in three Americans believe Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, a poll published on Wednesday has found.According to the Economist/YouGov poll, roughly equal numbers of adults believe Israel's military campaign against Palestinians, which is estimated to have killed more than 25,000 people since 7 October, amounts to genocide: 35% say it is, 36% say it isn't, with 29% undecided. Continue reading...

Milestone is notable given the state regularly turns out a higher share of voters than others for presidential primaries

Audio clip appears to show Jeff DeWit offering Republican candidate Kari Lake money to stay out of US Senate raceThe leader of Arizona's Republican party resigned on Wednesday after leaked audio of him surfaced, appearing to show him offering a bribe to the Republican candidate Kari Lake by asking if there were a dollar amount she would take to stay out of the US Senate race there.Jeff DeWit, the chair of the state party, was captured in audio secretly recorded by Lake telling her there are very powerful people who want to keep you out" of the Senate race and that they're willing to put their money where their mouth is, in a big way". Continue reading...

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The former South Carolina governor insists she can challenge Trump for the nomination - but does she have a viable path?Nikki Haley was surprisingly peppy as she took the stage in New Hampshire on Tuesday, considering she had just suffered her second bruising defeat by Donald Trump. Trump beat Haley by 11 points in New Hampshire, a victory that came on the heels of the former president's 30-point win in the Iowa caucuses.Undaunted by the reality of her losses, the former UN ambassador pledged that she would continue on in the Republican presidential primary. Haley voiced confidence about her performance in her home state of South Carolina, which will hold its Republican primary on 24 February. Continue reading...

UAW formally backs president's re-election campaign after both Biden and Donald Trump courted the powerful groupThe powerful United Auto Workers (UAW) formally endorsed Joe Biden's re-election campaign on Wednesday at the union's national community action program conference in Washington DC.Both the US president and rival Donald Trump have courted the union and supported its successful strike action against the US's big three automakers last year. Biden became the first president to walk a picket line in support of the union. Continue reading...

Official says they can not say how the people died or if they had been shot after deputies responding to wellness check find bodiesDeputies found the bodies of six people at a remote dirt crossroads in the Mojave desert in southern California, in a scene described as so grisly that TV stations blurred some of the images captured by their helicopter overhead.San Bernardino county sheriff's deputies responding to a request for a wellness check reached the remote area off Highway 395 outside the community of El Mirage around 8.15pm and found five of the bodies. The sixth was found on Wednesday morning, a sheriff's spokesperson, Mara Rodriguez, said. Continue reading...

Lewis, 86, whose family trust controls majority of Tottenham Hotspur, apologises to judge in Manhattan plea-deal hearingThe British billionaire Joe Lewis pleaded guilty on Wednesday to charges he used an insider-trading scheme to enrich friends and associates, and apologized to a judge, saying he was embarrassed" by his conduct.The 86-year-old, whose family trust controls a majority of Tottenham Hotspur, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and two counts of securities fraud, as part of an agreement with the US attorney's office in Manhattan. As part of the plea deal, Lewis has the right to appeal in the event he is sentenced to prison time, his lawyer David Zornow said. Continue reading...

Comments made in response to Stefanik's statement calling House January 6 committee illegitimate and unconstitutional'Elise Stefanik of New York, a top House Republican and a leading contender to be Donald Trump's presidential running mate, is a total crackpot", the former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney said.Cheney threw the barb on Tuesday, in response to a statement in which Stefanik called the House January 6 committee on which Cheney was vice-chair illegitimate and unconstitutional" and claimed it illegally deleted records".Trump wins Republican primary in New HampshireKey dates for the 2024 electionWho's running for president? The full list of candidates Continue reading...

Police hope tests may shed light on deaths of trio who went to watch NFL game at friend's home and died without him knowingAs an attorney for the HIV researcher Jordan Willis tells it, his client hosted four friends at his home on 7 January to watch their home town Kansas City Chiefs win a football game on television, said goodbye to them and went to sleep. Three of those men soon died in the backyard in freezing weather without him even realizing it, and their bodies were found days later - by someone other than Willis.Now Willis is grappling with public scrutiny and anxiously" awaiting the results of tests aiming to determine what substances may have been in his late friends' blood and whether any played a role in their seemingly mysterious deaths, according to his lawyer. Continue reading...

This year like every year, I'll be paying someone to handle my self-assessment. I know it's pathetic - but why aren't we taught about this stuff at school?What I understand about money could be scratched on the edge of a 2p piece. With a stick. As the self-assessment deadline rolls towards me like a driverless logging truck of administrative horror along the icy motorway of financial woe, I have been reminded once again just how poor my financial education has been.I have never met, let alone talked to, a financial advisor. I don't really understand how mortgages work. I don't have a pension. I'm terrified of my tax return. I don't know what other women doing comparable jobs earn. I didn't claim statutory maternity pay because, as a freelancer, I did not have any maternity leave. Until a few months ago, my mobile phone contract was still in my ex-boyfriend's name and coming out of his account despite the fact that we broke up more than 10 years ago and are both now married to other people (I was paying him back for it, but still). Two days before my 39th birthday I opened something called a lifetime Isa just because my friend Yasmin happened to tell me I should while I was peeling some potatoes, but I haven't managed to transfer any money into it because the website turns my brain into spat-out toothpaste. Continue reading...

Delta Air Lines jet was due to depart from Atlanta airport and none of six crew or 184 passengers were hurtA nose wheel fell off a Delta Air Lines Boeing 757 passenger jet and rolled away as the plane lined up for takeoff over the weekend from Atlanta's international airport in the US, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.According to a preliminary FAA notice, none of the 184 passengers or six crew onboard were hurt in the incident, which took place on Saturday at Hartsfield-Jackson airport. Continue reading...

Senator told grand jury in election subversion case Trump would have believed martians stole the election, per Find Me the VotesThe South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham threw Donald Trump under the bus" in testimony to a grand jury investigating election subversion in Georgia, a new book reportedly says, saying the former president would have believed martians came and stole the election" he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.After fighting a four-month legal battle all the way to the US supreme court to block his grand jury subpoena - and losing ... Graham turned on a dime and threw Trump under the bus'," Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman write in Find Me the Votes: A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election, Politico reported. Continue reading...

New bill would recriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs as a low-level misdemeanor in the stateDemocratic lawmakers in Oregon on Tuesday unveiled a sweeping new bill that would undo a key part of the state's first-in-the-nation drug decriminalization law, a recognition that public opinion has soured on the measure amid rising public drug use during the fentanyl crisis.The bill would recriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs as a low-level misdemeanor, enabling police to confiscate them and crack down on their use on sidewalks and in parks, its authors said. It also aims to make it easier to prosecute dealers, to access addiction treatment medication, and to obtain and keep housing without facing discrimination for using that medication. Continue reading...

Labour's plan to charge private schools VAT has caused predictable uproar and revealed skewed perceptions of wealthWhat does it mean to be wealthy"? It is perhaps this question more than any other that haunts British society. The public's definition can be glimpsed in the reaction to Labour's mansion tax idea for properties worth more than 2m in 2015, or its proposal for a 45p tax rate on earnings over 80,000 in 2019: a revolution of polite but pushy well-to-do Britons (and a Conservative election victory) never seemed to take long to follow.Like expensive Swiss clockwork, it's happening again. At the time of writing, more than 70,000 parents of private school pupils have signed a petition to stop Keir Starmer's plan to charge private schools VAT. Tony Perry, an NHS data analyst on a 60k salary and leader of the Education Not Taxation: Parents Against School Fee VAT campaign - who sends his 10-year-old son to a 21,000-a-year school in Berkshire - describes himself as a non-wealthy parent". Go through the comments on the petition and many others chime in to protest just how wealthy they aren't.Anoosh Chakelian is Britain editor of the New Statesman Continue reading...

Plaintiffs claim schools conspired to restrict aid by violating pledge not to consider students' finances in admissions decisionsBrown, Yale and Columbia universities have agreed to pay a combined $62m to resolve a lawsuit that accused them and others of favoring wealthy applicants, pushing total settlements in the case to $118m.Lawyers for a proposed class of hundreds of thousands of current and former US college students disclosed the latest settlements, which also include Emory and Duke, in a filing late Tuesday in Chicago federal court. Continue reading...

New York federal appeals court rules pharma bro', 40, who went to prison for fraud, cannot return to pharmaceutical industryMartin Shkreli, the pharma bro" entrepreneur who astronomically increased the price of a life-saving drug by more than 4,000% and became a symbol of corporate Wall Street greed, cannot return to the pharmaceutical industry, a court has ruled.A federal appeals court in New York upheld his lifetime ban from the business. Continue reading...

Ex-president in strong position to seize Republican nomination after sweeping first two contests of 2024 primary seasonA sweep of the first two nominating contests in the 2024 primary season left Donald Trump in a strong position to seize the Republican party nomination, and made a rematch with Joe Biden even more inevitable.Trump's Republican rival, Nikki Haley, vowed to fight on despite her second place finish in New Hampshire, a state where she had hoped for an upset, and her third place finish in the Iowa caucuses. But she faces long odds. There is no precedent for a candidate winning the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary and losing their party's nomination. Continue reading...

Annual study from Match Group of 5,000 single people finds shift in behavior since supreme court ruling on abortionMore than one in 10 single people under 50 say they are having less sex because the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, according to a new study.On Wednesday, Match Group, which operates Tinder, Hinge and a slew of other matchmaking platforms, released the latest findings from its long-running Singles in America survey, a snapshot of more than 5,000 single Americans' thoughts and experiences around dating and sex. For the second year in a row, Match has found that the demolition of the national right to abortion is affecting how Americans say they date and have sex with one another. Continue reading...

The independent vote did not defeat Trump yet could prove crucial, and Williamson and Phillips couldn't stop BidenThe New Hampshire primary, even with its history of unpredictability and freethinking independents, produced a familiar result on Tuesday: Donald Trump v Joe Biden.After months of heavy campaigning in the state, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley came in second place in the Republican primary. Securing a double-digit win over Haley, Trump nabbed his second decisive victory after the Iowa caucuses a week before. Continue reading...

Minnesota's trade for Rudy Gobert was attacked as laughable by critics. But this season the team are making waves in the Western ConferenceIf you haven't been paying close attention to the NBA this year, the Western Conference standings may come as a bit of a shock. Sitting in the top two? None other than the long-suffering Minnesota Timberwolves who, as recently as last season, were taking heat for what was beginning to look like perhaps the worst NBA trade this millennium. Incredibly, their 67 straight days with a least a share of first place in the conference (they have a 30-13 record along with the Oklahoma City Thunder) are by far the most in club history; prior to this year, the Wolves had been in first a total of 20 non-consecutive days.It seems the Timberwolves didn't get the memo about being terrible and they're shaping up to be a true championship contender in a Western Conference that's as wide open as in recent memory. So what changed? How did the Timberwolves reverse course? Continue reading...

Trump heads to South Carolina with two crucial victories under his belt, while Biden wins Democratic primary through write-in ballots

Trump edges closer to Republican nomination, but Haley says this race is far from over'. Plus, nuclear power output expected to break records in 2025Good morning.A sweep of the first two nominating contests on the 2024 primary season left Donald Trump in a strong position to seize the Republican party nomination and made a rematch with Joe Biden even more inevitable.What did we learn in New Hampshire? The independent vote couldn't topple Trump, but it should still make him nervous. New Hampshire is known for its independent voting bloc - which comprises 40% of the electorate. Although independent voters were not able to lift Haley to victory, their support for her could create a problem down the road for Trump. Here are some other key takeaways from the day.What else is happening in the Middle East? The US has carried out strikes in Iraq against three facilities linked to Iran-backed militia, the Pentagon has said, after a weekend attack on an Iraqi airbase that wounded US forces. Continue reading...

TikTok has given us a new trending beverage featuring the irresistible taste of ... magnesium. I want no part of itIt's still dry January, and if you're running out of ideas for alcohol-free alternatives, TikTok has some ... erm, curious offerings. Introducing the sleepy girl mocktail", a beverage enjoying viral fame. It may sound like an old-fashioned euphemism for a valium and a Diet Coke, but it is, in fact, a juice-based concoction that looks like red wine and is supposed to help you sleep better.The recipe is simple: tart cherry juice, some fizz such as sparkling water and magnesium powder. It was popularised by the wellness influencer Gracie Norton, who last year hyped the drink as a cure for poor sleep brought about by her menstrual cycle. Since then, countless videos from fans have featured variations such as cranberry juice instead of cherry, lemonade instead of soda water, and - my favourite - just magnesium pills with cherry juice, in a kind of extreme deconstruction of the drink where the mixing happens in your bloodstream. Continue reading...

I missed my chance to talk to him - but what would I say now? There are no words for my sorrow at what Palestine has lostOn 7 December, a dark cloud floated across my computer screen: a photograph of a man's face. I wouldn't have noticed it if it didn't look like me.An Israeli missile kills Palestinian poet and author Saleem Al-Naffar and his family members in their home in Gaza," I read on Arabic Wikipedia.Tamer Nafar is a Palestinian rapper, actor, writer and columnist based in LodDo 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...

The league and the streaming giant agreed to a 10-year partnership that will include a Drive To Survive style docuseriesThe sight of Formula One cars racing down Las Vegas Boulevard two months ago proved the power of streaming. More specifically, it highlighted the popularity of Drive To Survive, the Netflix docuseries that has transformed F1, particularly in the United States. November's Las Vegas Grand Prix was attended by almost every celebrity and public figure with a Wikipedia page - and Major League Soccer was clearly watching.MLS will be the subject of its own Drive To Survive-style show - produced by the same film-makers (Box To Box Films) - in 2024 with an eight-part series promising to offer a definitive, never-before-seen insider's view into the league." MLS players and coaches can now look forward to becoming reality TV stars. Continue reading...

Detroit are one win away from their first ever Super Bowl appearance. There are signs it could go better than the last time they were hereMy assignment on that unseasonably warm January afternoon was to write about the losing team, which is why I found myself in a windowless room in the bowels at RFK Stadium in Washington DC, watching a portly football coach clamber atop a platform for a news conference.Writing about losing teams is never much fun, let alone about a team that had just been routed in their first (and, until this Sunday, only) appearance in an NFC championship game. But Wayne Fontes was that portly coach. He was fun, ebullient, always with something interesting to say. Continue reading...

Donald Trump's victory in New Hampshire's Republican presidential primary election moves him closer to a November rematch with US president Joe Biden. His only remaining rival, former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, vowed to continue her 2024 campaign and attempted to coax Trump into a debate

The war hawks and ultrarich don't need the democracy Trump imperils. If offered running mate, Haley will make her peace tooCan we stop pretending now? After weeks of speculating by the media that perhaps Nikki Haley might eke out a win in New Hampshire - or at least lose by a percentage small enough to make continuing in the race reasonable - she lost by a wide margin.Before we had been offered various rationales for why, just maybe, this wouldn't happen. Haley, after all, had recently come into a flush of donor money at the end of 2023, as the field dwindled and she was left alone as the last almost-plausible non-Trump candidate. She'd put much of that money into New Hampshire, a state whose Republicans tend to hew more moderate. (Haley, a rabid conservative but one who does not seem to oppose the rule of law outright, is what passes for moderate" in today's Republican party.) Continue reading...

Hitching rides and hopping trains offers an escape from misery for many young people in the US. But, as Michael Joseph's photographs and the stories behind them attest, the freedom of the road can come at a cost Continue reading...

Ex-president follows up his Iowa win with victory over Nikki Haley - and makes threats against his last Republican primary rivalThe cruelty is the point.As Joe Biden acknowledged on Tuesday night, Donald Trump now has the Republican presidential nomination sewn up. But like a Roman emperor or mob boss, Trump used his victory speech in New Hampshire to humiliate his former opponents - and make sinister threats against his last primary rival. Continue reading...

Incumbent refused to campaign in the state and had to rely on write-in campaign powered by his allies and surrogates

Despite DeSantis's obvious flaws, he was promoted by conservative elites eager to create Trumpism without Trump'So long, Ron. After a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses, Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the Republican presidential primary and endorsed Donald Trump. This outcome has looked inevitable ever since the campaign's botched launch announcement on Twitter, but it was surprising how quickly and totally DeSantis surrendered after losing just a single contest. Many people had heralded DeSantis as the man who could take down Trump, but it was not to be. His campaign began with a whimper - then ended with one too.The political flaws of DeSantis and his campaign have been so numerous that it's amazing the Florida governor ever generated so much buzz. He looked politically impressive operating in the safely conservative state of Florida, but he was completely unprepared for the intensity of competitive national politics. He lacked the empathy and personal warmth necessary to connect with voters and donors alike. He proved a poor administrator. He tried to run on his management of the Covid-19 pandemic when voters had moved on. Worst of all, he could offer no plausible reason why Trump voters should opt for him rather than for the real thing.Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and the creator of America Explained, a podcast and newsletter Continue reading...

Growing private wealth, combined with public austerity, is undermining the health of western democraciesIn an intriguing study about to be published, the Dutch political philosopher Ingrid Robeyns poses a question that very rarely gets asked in mainstream politics. When it comes to the personal income and assets of the super-rich, how much is too much? The answer, she suggests in Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth, should be anything above 10m. At that point, taxation should intervene, redeploying the surplus for the common good.Ms Robeyns is not naive. She thinks of her 10m figure as a guiding ideal to be striven for, but one that is unlikely ever to become a reality given the current way of the world. Quite. Nevertheless, her provocative intervention is valuable, because it draws attention to a curious disjunction: as the wealthy have got steadily richer in recent times, soaking up the benefits of free capital movement, share price surges and rising asset values, political talk about wealth taxes has diminished to a barely audible murmur. Continue reading...

Students protesting Israel's bombardment of Gaza reported being sprayed with a chemical that caused nausea and headachesThe New York police department announced on Tuesday it was investigating an alleged chemical attack on students protesting in support of Palestine on Columbia University's campus last week.Students protesting Israel's bombardment of Gaza - which has killed more than 25,000 people, according to Palestinian health officials - reported being sprayed with a chemical that left many with symptoms such as nausea, abdominal pain, headaches and irritated eyes. Continue reading...

Decision by US court of appeals to deny Trump a rehearing paves the way for potential final challenge to US supreme courtA federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump's request that it reconsider his appeal against a gag order imposed against him in the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The move paves the way for a potential final challenge to the US supreme court. Continue reading...

Prosecutors say parents made gun accessible to Ethan Crumbley and ignored his mental health needsJury selection began on Tuesday in the trial of the mother of a teenager who carried out a deadly mass shooting at his school on involuntary manslaughter charges in an unusual effort to pin criminal responsibility on the shooter's parents for the deaths of four students.Jennifer and James Crumbley are not accused of knowing their son planned to kill fellow students at Oxford high school in 2021. But prosecutors said they made a gun accessible to Ethan Crumbley, ignored his mental health needs and declined to take him home when confronted with his violent drawings at school on the day of the attack. Continue reading...