Trump's Pentagon pick accused of 2017 sexual assault after Republican women's conference in CaliforniaA woman told police that she was sexually assaulted in 2017 by Pete Hegseth after he took her phone, blocked the door to a California hotel room and refused to let her leave, according to a detailed investigative report made public late on Wednesday.Hegseth, a Fox News personality and Donald Trump's nominee to be defense secretary, told police at the time that the encounter had been consensual and denied any wrongdoing, the report said. Continue reading...
A deep and searching debate on the Democratic party's approach to foreign affairs is now urgentIn domestic political terms, the foreign policy of the Biden administration has proved almost unimaginably successful - for Donald Trump, whom it enabled to run for president as the representative, however mendaciously so, of foreign policy restraint. A deep and searching debate on the Democratic party's approach to foreign affairs is now essential.Since the second world war there has only rarely been a significant difference between the Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy. The most significant divergence around the time of the backlash against the Vietnam war (initiated by a Democratic administration) and Watergate. This, however, lasted barely a decade.Anatol Lieven is director of the Eurasia programme at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and author of Climate Change and the Nation State: The Realist Case Continue reading...
by Josh Toussaint-Strauss, Alex Healey , Francesca de on (#6SCV7)
The pronatalist movement in the US is gathering pace once again, rekindled by Silicon Valley personalities and hard-right conservatives who are becoming increasingly vocal about whether or not women are having enough babies. But it's not just in the US, some governments in other countries have launched marketing campaigns encouraging people to have more children, while others have offered financial incentives. But while many of these policies claim to be about halting population decline, there are other factors at play. Josh Toussaint-Strauss interrogates efforts around the world to boost birth rates, as well as the underlying political motivations, from bodily autonomy to immigration
From the early beatings, to failing to sign the QB's key weapons to long-term deals, to botching a defensive rebuild, Cinci have done most things wrongYou could be forgiven for getting a sense of deja vu watching the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Chargers last Sunday. For the second week in a row, Joe Burrow torched a defense. He hit one eye-popping throw after another. In the final accounting, he threw for 356 yards, three touchdowns and did not turn over the ball. And yet the result was the same: the Bengals lost by one score.What Burrow is doing this season is unprecedented. Never has a quarterback played at such a high level, with such a heavy workload, while being let down by almost everyone around him. Only Tony Romo in 2010 and Aaron Rodgers in 2018 have come close, but even that duo had the benefit of solid protection from their linemen. Burrow does not. Burrow is outpacing every quarterback in the league despite those around him flailing. Continue reading...
Experts warn assuming minority groups will reject a racist candidate ignores nuance, particularly on the economySince Donald Trump won the 2024 US presidential election, many have publicly speculated why people of color - with whom Trump made some gains - would vote for a racist candidate. Throughout his campaign, Trump and his supporters spouted a series of racist remarks aimed at Black and Latino people, immigrants at large, and other marginalized groups. He also promised to utilize the military to carry out mass deportations, ban sanctuary cities, and escalate attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts at the federal level.Swaths of non-white voters still supported Trump at the ballot box. And though this sort of data can vary in reliability, experts agree that Trump made inroads among some minorities despite his bigoted comments. Continue reading...
The two-time cross-country World Cup champion is widely considered the best Nordic skier in US history. This year she has bigger goalsEvery April, Jessie Diggins sits down with her longtime coach, Jason Cork, to discuss the upcoming year. After working together for the last 15 years, their trust allows for continual experimentation. We normally don't set outcome goals. It's usually about the process, testing something new," says Diggins, but last year was different."Without the Olympics or world championships overlapping the World Cup season, the two decided to call our shot", and set the sole goal of regaining the Crystal Globe, cross country's top annual honor. Soon after, Diggins relapsed with an eating disorder, nearly missing the start of the 2023-24 season. I had to put all of my goals in a closet and just take it one week at a time," she says. Continue reading...
Panel met but failed to reach decision on releasing report. Plus, Senate rejects Bernie Sanders' efforts to block arms sales to IsraelGood morning.The House ethics committee was deadlocked on releasing a report examining allegations of sexual misconduct against Matt Gaetz, the former Republican representative and Donald Trump's choice to lead the justice department, after the panel met behind closed doors on Wednesday.How did the committee split? Susan Wild, the top Democratic representative on the ethics committee, said the committee, which is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, broke along party lines and could not reach a decision.How many children in Gaza need support? According to the UN children's aid agency, Unicef, there are an estimated 2,500 children in Gaza in urgent need of medical treatment they cannot receive in the territory, where most health infrastructure has been destroyed over the past 14 months of war. It said children were being evacuated from Gaza at a rate of fewer than one a day. Continue reading...
by Callum Jones and Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi on (#6SCEF)
Indian chair of Adani Group, worth about $85bn, accused of agreeing to pay bribes to obtain solar energy contractsGautam Adani, one of the world's richest men, has been indicted in New York over an alleged multibillion-dollar scheme to pay $250m in bribes and conceal it from US investors.Prosecutors charged the chair of the Indian conglomerate Adani Group and two other executives of a renewable energy company with securities fraud and conspiring to commit securities and wire fraud. Continue reading...
In an extract from his new book, Ian Kennedy explains how female players adapted equipment that was suited for their male counterpartsGrowing up in New England, Kelly Dyer was a product of the Bobby Orr explosion. On the streets outside her house, neighborhood kids emulated their hero. Dyer pieced together a set of goalie pads from garbage she found in dumpsters, her sewing kit and shoe glue. Soon, Massachusetts began building more arenas and it was on one of these rinks that Dyer first stepped on the ice.I started as a figure skater because at the time that was the only way girls could get on the ice," Dyer recalls. But my brother David, who's two years older, was a hockey player so I would get off the figure skating rink and run over to the hockey rink to watch. I always wanted to play hockey and begged for two years until my father found Assabet in Concord, the next town over. My first day of skating with Assabet was in my brother's equipment with figure skates."The following is an excerpt from the new book, Ice In Their Veins: Women's Relentless Pursuit of the Puck, by Ian Kennedy. Continue reading...
For 90% of working Icelanders, a 36-hour week means less stress, more job satisfaction and time to enjoy life beyond workI like to walk around old cemeteries and read the headstones. Here in Iceland, it has been customary to engrave people's job titles below their names and as I age I find myself wondering if mine will say Teacher". Although I love my work, I kind of hope it will not.Through the centuries, women's headstones have rarely had titles other than Housewife" or perhaps Wife of [insert husband's job title]". Although today women in Iceland have all sorts of jobs, we have yet to reach full equality. But an important step on that journey has been the shortening of the 40-hour working week to 36 hours.Maria Hjalmtysdottir is an activist and a teacher at a secondary school in Kopavogur, Iceland Continue reading...
The progress' made at Cop29 has been on carbon markets: a world of magical thinking, over-claiming and distorted truthWe now face, on all fronts, a war not just against the living planet and the common good, but against material reality. Power in the United States will soon be shared between people who believe they will ascend to sit at the right hand of God, perhaps after a cleansing apocalypse; and people who believe their consciousness will be uploaded on to machines in a great Singularity.The Christian rapture and the tech rapture are essentially the same belief. Both are examples of substance dualism": the idea that the mind or soul can exist in a realm separate from the body. This idea often drives a desire to escape from the grubby immanence of life on Earth. Once the rapture is achieved, there will be no need for a living planet.George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Moves to advance three resolutions, which would have halted recent sale of $20bn in US weapons to Israel, all failedThe US Senate has blocked legislation that would have halted the sale of some US weapons to Israel, which had been introduced out of concern about the human rights catastrophe faced by Palestinians in Gaza.Senator Bernie Sanders had introduced what are called joint resolutions of disapproval, seeking to block the Biden administration's recent sale of $20bn in US weapons to Israel. Continue reading...
Brandon Durham was killed last week after reporting home break-in and trying to wrestle knife from hands of womanThe family of Brandon Durham, a Las Vegas man shot and killed in his home by Las Vegas police after contacting 911 report to a break-in, are calling for the officer's arrest.Durham, a 43-year-old realtor and father, called police after midnight on 12 November and said people had broken into his home and were shooting. Continue reading...
Johns Hopkins doctor touted protection from natural immunity and opposed Covid vaccine mandatesDonald Trump is likely to choose the Johns Hopkins surgeon and writer Martin Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.Makary raised concerns about a number of public health issues during the Covid pandemic, touting the protection from natural immunity and opposing Covid vaccine mandates. Continue reading...
Jury had convicted Hwang on criminal charges over Archegos collapse, which cost Wall Street more than $10bnThe former billionaire investor Sung Kook Bill" Hwang was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Wednesday over the collapse of Archegos Capital Management, which cost Wall Street banks more than $10bn.Hwang was sentenced by US district judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan, where a jury convicted Hwang in July on 10 criminal charges including wire fraud, securities fraud and market manipulation. Continue reading...
Members of Congress call on president to pardon or commute sentences before he leaves White HouseMore than 60 members of Congress have written to Joe Biden calling on him to use his presidential clemency powers to reunite families, address unfair sentencing policies, and begin to tackle the scourge of mass incarceration, which they said was eroding the soul of America".Biden has 61 days left before he leaves the White House in which he could pardon or commute the sentences of incarcerated Americans. The letter, signed by a number of prominent Democratic politicians and spearheaded by the progressive politician Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, urges Biden to act while he still can. Continue reading...
Jose Ibarra found guilty of murder in Riley's February death, which fueled a US debate over immigrationA Venezuelan man has been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole in the killing of the Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, a case that fueled the national debate over US immigration during this year's presidential race.Jose Ibarra was charged with murder and other crimes in Riley's death in February, and the guilty verdict was reached on Wednesday by the Athens-Clarke county superior court Judge H Patrick Haggard. Continue reading...
Lawyers for two women who won $148m defamation judgment make request after Trump lawyer's repeated liesRudy Giuliani should be held in civil contempt for continuing to lie about two election workers to whom he already owes $148m for defaming, lawyers for the two women wrote in a court filing Wednesday.The request comes months after Giuliani agreed in court to never again accuse Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss of election fraud. Despite that agreement earlier this year, Giuliani continued to spread lies about them on his live-streamed show. Continue reading...
The Republicans were always the party of big business, but Mr Trump is turning them into a playpen for oligarchsOne person turns up surprisingly often at Donald Trump's side. Not his No 2, JD Vance, nor his wife, Melania, but another man a quarter-century younger and about $300bn heavier: Elon Musk. The two hunkered down in Mar-a-Lago on the night of the election, celebrating the results. This week they were in Texas, watching Mr Musk's staff test-launch a spacecraft. During the campaign, Mr Musk personally chipped in $130m, made speeches at rallies and organised campaigns to get out the vote". Last week, the world's richest man was picked by the president-elect to run a new department of government efficiency". So close are the pair that Mr Musk dubs himself First Buddy".American politics has always been coiled around money, tight as a vine around a trunk. Nearly 25 years ago, George W Bush joked at a swanky white-tie dinner:Some people call you the elites; I call you my base." Nor is it confined to the right wing. Of the two main candidates in this month's election, more billionaires backed Kamala Harris. One result is a highly warped politics that works against the very people it urges to go out and vote.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...
Changes were tucked into hurricane relief bill and passed by statehouse on Tuesday hours after it was made publicNorth Carolina Republicans are on the verge of pushing through a bill that would give them more power over elections in the state.The changes were tucked into a bill dealing with Hurricane Helene relief aid at the last minute and passed by the state house of representatives on Tuesday, hours after it was made public. Continue reading...
Party calls for generational shift and looks to younger governors after Harris's defeat in presidential electionJoe Biden marked his 82nd birthday on Wednesday as Democrats began searching for a younger generation of party leaders following Kamala Harris's morale-sapping defeat in this month's presidential election.Any birthday celebrations planned by the US president will probably be muted as he returned to Washington from the G20 summit in Brazil a seemingly diminished figure, awaiting the return to power of Donald Trump, who is expected to dismantle many of his achievements in the past four years. Continue reading...
State narrowly votes against measure that would have benefited 2 million workersVoters in California have rejected a ballot measure that would have made the state minimum wage the highest in the US by 2026, at $18 an hour.The current minimum wage rates are $16 an hour for most workers and $20 in the fast-food sector. The state's healthcare sector will eventually see its minimum wage reach $25 an hour. Continue reading...
Bill to strip groups deemed to support terrorism' of non-profit status seen as threat to Palestinian advocacy groupsHouse Republicans have renewed a push to pass a bill that would allow the treasury department to strip non-profit groups it deems to be supporting terrorism" of their tax-exempt status.The so-called non-profit killer" bill would give the government broad powers to sanction civil society organizations. Progressive groups have rallied in opposition to the bill in recent days, arguing that Donald Trump's administration could invoke it to punish his political opponents. Continue reading...
The president-elect proposed an archaic method to install people such as RFK Jr and Matt Gaetz - here's what to knowSenate Republicans must soon consider several of Donald Trump's cabinet picks whose nominations were met with intense criticism: Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, Matt Gaetz as attorney general, Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense and Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of health and human services.Each of those cabinet announcements landed with somewhat of a thud on Capitol Hill, raising questions about whether the nominees will be able to muster the majority-level support needed in the Senate to get confirmed. Continue reading...
I don't spend every night in my local. But even when I'm home, the knowledge that it exists makes life betterA closed pub is a sad, sad sight. Where once was life, people talking and laughing, now there is none. OK, bad stuff would have gone on too. I get that. Every pub has a drinker or two who needs the drink they're holding more than they should. These places are, after all, potential vectors for dependence on a highly addictive substance, with all the misery that entails. But I think - hope - that pubs do more good than harm, that they're more of a blessing than a curse.Like most drinkers, I'm inclined to imagine that most of the population drink about the same as me, if not more, and in similar places. When the first lockdown was announced, including, unthinkably, the closing of pubs, Boris Johnson said he found it wrenching to be taking away the ancient, inalienable right of free-born people of the United Kingdom to go to the pub". I happened to watch him make that speech on a TV in my local pub - it was my birthday. I'm sure I nodded in agreement, though even then I thought it was a bit of a stretch to make the right to go to the pub sound like it was enshrined in Magna Carta. And when I checked, I found that only about half of adults regularly frequent pubs and bars. So not everyone, by a long shot, exercises their inalienable right, although that leaves no small number who do.Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...
I too suffered this repression. The harsh sentences handed down to democracy activists cannot go unchallengedJoshua Wong, one of Hong Kong's best-known pro-democracy activists, was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison on Tuesday. He received a one-third sentencing cut to that period by pleading guilty. Even so, coupled with other charges he faced for his peaceful participation in the 2019 democratic protests, he will be in prison until at least 2027.I spent my formative years with Wong. We were both student leaders in the 2014 Umbrella Movement, and co-founded the now-dissolved youth-led political party Demosist in 2016. He gave everything he had to support me in my bid to become the youngest legislator in Hong Kong the same year. In 2020, I departed the city; he remains. The pain of survivor's guilt hits me every night. Continue reading...
Proposition 314 makes crossing the US-Mexico border a state crime, as Trump threatens widespread deportationsThe news that Arizona voters on 5 November had approved the so-called secure our border" initiative hit Reyna Montoya like a gut punch.The measure - proposition 314 on the ballot - makes crossing the US-Mexico border without authorization a state crime, empowering local officials to arrest and deport border-crossers and enhancing criminal penalties for unauthorised immigrants who apply for public benefits. Continue reading...
Detainee, identified as Ana, mocked and leered at by male guards after they strapped her almost naked to a chairA female migrant in mental distress was kept in solitary confinement for a month at a Florida detention center, then mocked and leered at by male guards after they strapped her almost naked to a restraint chair, a federal civil rights complaint alleges.The reported sexual and mental abuse of the detainee, identified solely as Ana, took place at the Baker county detention facility, a rural camp 30 miles west of Jacksonville with a long history of allegations of mistreatment, harassment, retaliation and cruelty to detainees. Continue reading...
Video of arrest of Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, tenured professor at University of California, Irvine, went viralAs riot police arrested 50 people during a May 2024 pro-Palestinian demonstration at the University of California, Irvine, Tiffany Willoughby-Herard was escorted away by riot police, her hands zip-tied behind her back.A video of the tenured professor speaking passionately to reporters as she was arrested circulated widely on social media. We cannot have a genocidal foreign policy in a democracy," she says in the video. These police officers out here today - that's thousands of students' scholarships." Continue reading...
Brazil legend features in Saturday's big Championship game between Orlando Pride and Washington SpiritThe 2024 NWSL Championship between Orlando Pride and Washington Spirit on Saturday will be a historic contest and caps off a memorable year. Hosted at CPKC Stadium in Kansas City, it already celebrates a massive milestone in yet another year of growth. The Kansas City Current's home is the first stadium built specifically for an NWSL club and was deservedly awarded the Championship game.As the NWSL commissioner, Jessica Berman, said: It was a natural choice to stage the league's marquee event in a venue that exemplifies the profound impact of infrastructure, investment and community support on the continued development and success of our sport." The 11,500 capacity stadium sold out every game and is on course to do the same in the final. Continue reading...
With them, Trump will tear down any person or institution that tried to restrain his worst impulses or hold him accountableShock" suddenly became the most commonly uttered word in habitually nonplussed Washington DC. After Donald Trump had attempted to subvert the certification of a presidential election, incited a mob, absconded with national security secrets, was convicted as a felon, and waged his Nazi-esque poison in the blood" campaign, his brazen cabinet appointments are so mind-boggling that even hard-bitten cynics gasp.Sheer hypocrisy would have drawn a yawn. But Trump's cabinet selections would have startled even the character of Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca, who feigned surprise at discovering gambling in the backroom of Rick's Cafe before pocketing his winnings: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" Continue reading...
Meta's awkward dork' boss has updated his haircut and his wardrobe - and shown the world how much family means to him. He's still a billionaire with skeletons in the cupboardDo they hand out Nobel prizes for PR? Because the team behind Mark Zuckerberg's recent metamorphosis deserves one immediately. Not so long ago, Zuck was widely known as an awkward dork with an unflattering haircut, whose corporate empire did evil things such as fuelling genocidal violence in Myanmar, spreading misinformation and harvesting people's personal information.Now, however, the tech mogul keeps making headlines for far fluffier reasons. This has been the year of the Zucknaissance, with people marvelling over his jazzy new wardrobe and far more flattering hair. In what may be an effort to seem more relatable, he has made his private life a lot more public. It's not clear whether Zuckerberg, who has been married to Priscilla Chan for 12 years, has always been a fan of the big romantic gesture, but he certainly now seems to want to be known as a major wife guy".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...
The Harris campaign dumped Biden's FDR-style ambitions for boring neoliberal policy planks that were an electoral dead-endThe post-mortems of Kamala Harris's loss to Donald Trump all agree on one thing: that Harris stuck too close to Biden. It was deliberate, pundits charge, pointing to the now infamous October appearance on ABC's The View, where Harris said There is not a thing that comes close to mind" that she would have done differently. But the pundits are wrong.Harris did distance herself from Biden where it hurt her most. She dumped his Rooseveltian transformative ambitions to bring back big government. Instead, she returned to the Obama-Clinton of a small or neoliberal state that highly influential Democrats like Jake Sullivan had already known was an electoral dead end during the first Trump administration.Daniela Gabor is professor of economics and macrofinance at SOAS, University of London. She is working on The Wall Street Consensus, a book on the return of the transformative state Continue reading...
An economic populism for the majority - irrespective of gender, race, religion, sexual or gender - is the way forwardDid the Democrats really lose because they were too woke", too obsessed with minorities, too radical? After defeat, there always comes the battle for the narrative about why the party lost. As the US left is rediscovering, the most influential voices tend to be those platformed by corporate media outlets whose siren cry is always to march rightwards. And yet even the New York Times concluded that one of the main problems was in fact Kamala Harris's Wall Street-approved economic pitch", which her brother-in-law - chief legal officer at Uber - reportedly helped craft, and which fell flat".The liberal order, always riddled with hypocrisies and illusions, is collapsing, partly because mainstream liberals cannot be trusted to defend liberalism: they are set to conclude that Trumpism must be defeated through imitation. But here's a polling fact that cannot be ignored. In the past 50 years, the number of Americans who believe the Democrats represent the working class" has plummeted, while the numbers who believe they stand up for marginalised groups" has dramatically risen, now exceeding the former.Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Amid the normalization of gambling, betting companies are resembling broadcasters and vice versa - and coverage is rapidly becoming a tangled web of vested interestsIn sports broadcasting's equivalent of a team changing its colors from red to blue in mid-season, the Diamond Sports Group, a bankrupt operator of 16 regional sports networks, last month rebranded its channels as the FanDuel Sports Network.The prior name was already linked to gambling - Bally's held the branding rights for three years. But FanDuel is a higher-profile new partner with a much larger parent company. Flutter, headquartered in New York and originating from the Irish-British merger of Paddy Power and Betfair, is the world's largest online betting business. Continue reading...
As the two-point try celebrates 30 years in the NFL rule book, teams are converting a scant 31.3% of them this season, down from 55.1% last yearThe Baltimore Ravens were hardly having the best of days, but they'd successfully negotiated a last-ditch journey Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers by driving 69 yards in nine plays for a touchdown. The Steelers suddenly led by just 18-16 with 66 seconds left.No doubt the Ravens would try a two-point conversion to tie the score and send the game into overtime. But the Steelers, expecting a Tim Tebow-like pop pass, called time out as quarterback Lamar Jackson got ready to take the snap. So the Ravens called another play. Continue reading...
Three years after Halyna Hutchins was killed on set, Olga Solovey says there has been no justice for my daughter' and claims Baldwin has not apologisedThe mother of Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer who was fatally shot on the set of the film Rust by actor Alec Baldwin, has refused to attend the film's world premiere on Wednesday, alleging the star has still not apologised to her over her daughter's death.Rust will premiere at the Camerimage festival in Poland, an event focusing on achievements in cinematography, three years after the prop gun Baldwin was holding went off and fatally injured Hutchins, the film's cinematographer, on the set of the western in New Mexico. Tickets to the premiere sold out quickly on Tuesday. Continue reading...
Dr Oz, best known for his daytime talkshow, leaned heavily into Trumpism during his failed 2022 run for US SenateDonald Trump has chosen Mehmet Oz, best known for starring in his eponymous daytime talkshow for more than a decade and leaning heavily into Trumpism during his failed 2022 run for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The cardiothoracic surgeon, who faced immense backlash from the medical and scientific communities for pushing misinformation at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, will oversee the agency that operates on a $2.6tn annual budget and provides healthcare to more than 100 million people.I am honored to be nominated by [Donald Trump] to lead CMS," Oz posted on X on Tuesday. I look forward to serving my country to Make America Healthy Again under the leadership of HHS Secretary [Robert F Kennedy Jr]." Continue reading...
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