President faces pressure from Republican critics and Democratic allies as he struggles to address what both sides agree is a crisisHeading into the heat of the 2024 election season, Joe Biden is weighing major changes to US immigration policy that would toughen border enforcement and address an issue that has emerged as one of the president's biggest political vulnerabilities ahead of a likely rematch against his anti-immigration rival Donald Trump.But it is also a risk for Biden, who entered the White House in 2021 promising to restore humanity and American values to our immigration system" after Trump's four-year crackdown on immigration. Continue reading...
The conversation is stuck: you're either playing the race card' or in denial'. But here's a way to break throughThe national conversation on racism seems to be stuck in an endless loop. We all know the routine: a public debate is sparked by a news story that features a case of alleged bigotry. It might be reports that an Asian cricketer was nicknamed Bomber"; or that a member of the royal family is said to have questioned a baby's skin colour. Whatever it is, the inciting incident then sets the parameters of all the discussion to follow. An array of loud and angry voices appears on media panel shows or radio phone-ins, suggesting what might or might not have occurred (no one knows for certain), and whether or not any of it is racist (everyone is certain that it either is, or it isn't).And so, instead of the nuances of racial inequality being understood, the issue is portrayed as a simple matter of people saying or doing bad things to each other, and we get a tiresome to and fro between those playing the race card" and others in denial". Many of us just tune out, while the overall issue of racism in society - a real problem in need of an urgent solution - remains unaddressed. Continue reading...
Amid soaring rents, some are turning to the UK's many vacant properties for shelter. Could this be a return to the 70s and 80s?The postcode was an exclusive area of London and the four-storey, period building was something an estate agent might describe as magnificent" and imposing". A man escorted me to a side door in near darkness. The door opened and as soon as I was in, it closed quickly behind me.The inside of the property was vast, but there was barely any furniture and the walls and high ceilings had been graffitied. The inhabitants were initially suspicious of me, but seemed friendly enough. I had imagined them to be more disorderly, but instead some were busy with cordless drills, trying to make the cold, once palatial property more habitable. Continue reading...
Former president and frontrunner for Republican 2024 presidential nomination also expected to file own appealThe Colorado Republican Party has asked the US supreme court to intervene after Colorado's top court disqualified former president Donald Trump from appearing on the state's Republican primary ballot, an attorney for the Republican group said.The appeal comes after the Colorado supreme court last week disqualified Trump because of his role in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters. The court barred Trump under a US constitutional provision prohibiting anyone who engaged in insurrection or rebellion" from holding public office. Continue reading...
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said he wants US to reopen border crossings that were closed due to influx of arrivalsUS secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has met with Mexico's president, in an attempt to limit the surge of migrants reaching the US southwestern border.President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said he is willing to help, but he wants to see progress in US relations with Cuba and Venezuela, two of the top sources of migrants, along with more development aid for the region. Continue reading...
The 14-year-old was then allegedly shot and wounded by his 15-year-old brother in retaliation; both are now in custodyA Florida woman holding her 11-month-old son in a baby carrier was fatally shot by her 14-year-old brother while trying to defuse an argument over Christmas gifts he was having with a 15-year-old brother who also was armed, authorities said.The 15-year-old brother then shot his 14-year-old brother, though not fatally, for killing their sister on Sunday in Largo, Florida, which is located in the Tampa metro area, the Pinellas county sheriff's office said in a news release. Continue reading...
The controversy over Hasan Minhaj's onstage storytelling was a sign of the shifting demands placed on standup comicsNo one gets into standup comedy expecting a routine factcheck. But that's what happened when a September profile of Hasan Minhaj in the New Yorker called out the former host of the Netflix series Patriot Act for misrepresenting his truth in two Netflix standup specials. In one, Minhaj described a white FBI informant infiltrating his mosque and an anthrax scare involving his young daughter (neither happened as Minhaj described them, the magazine found). In another, he recalled a white high school crush who jilted him on prom night for seemingly no other reason than his being of Indian descent (she denied it went down like that). The magazine said Minhaj's stories blur the lines between entertainment and opinion journalism", triggering an intense public debate about whether the comedian had stooped to claiming race-based victimhood to advance his career. Bill Maher likened Minhaj, a peer, to Jussie Smollett.In a 21-minute video rebuttal, Minhaj made a case for punching up his biography while poking holes in the New Yorker's hallowed vetting process. With everything that's happening in the world," Minhaj intoned, I'm aware even talking about this now feels so trivial. But being accused of faking racism is not trivial. It is very serious, and it demands an explanation." Continue reading...
Amid fears of authoritarianism, oldest US president likely to face off against first president to be criminally chargedThe 60th US presidential election, which will unfold in 2024, will be quite unlike any that has gone before as the US, and the rest of the world, braces for a contest amid fears of eroding democracy and the looming threat of authoritarianism.It will be a fight marked by numerous unwanted firsts as the oldest president in the country's history is likely to face the first former US president to stand trial on criminal charges. A once aspirational nation will continue its plunge into anxiety and divisions about crime, immigration, race, foreign wars and the cost of living. Continue reading...
Two men stumbled across the wreck of Matthew Reum's vehicle - and were surprised to find the injured driver insideTwo fishers discovered an Indiana man - alive - inside the wreckage of his car after it crashed on 20 December, leaving the man stuck for six days.On Tuesday, Mario Garcia and his son-in-law Nivardo De La Torre had been looking for fishing holes when they discovered a vehicle in a shallow creek beneath an Interstate 94 bridge in Portage, Indiana, they said during a press conference on Tuesday evening. Continue reading...
Ex-president can participate in state primary despite accusations of insurrection stemming from the January 6 Capitol attackDonald Trump will remain on Michigan's state ballot after a ruling from the Michigan supreme court on Wednesday, which upheld a lower court order.The move sets the stage for the former president to participate in the Michigan primary despite accusations that he led an insurrection against the United States. Continue reading...
Republican presidential hopeful insists campaign is advertising on other media as Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary loomVivek Ramaswamy, the Republican presidential nomination contender and biotech billionaire, has stopped spending on TV ads, it was reported on Wednesday.According to his campaign and analysis from an ad-tracking firm obtained by NBC News, the candidate spent just $6,000 on TV ads last week compared with $200,000 in the first week of December. Continue reading...
The Chelsea co-owner walked into the Premier League talking of All-Star games and playoffs. His tenure has so far been defined by expensive misstepsRemember Todd Boehly? There was a time when Chelsea's chairman and co-owner was a near-omnipresent figure in English football. Not only were Chelsea spending $1bn of transfer money in record-breaking fashion while attempting to rewrite accounting principles, but Citizen Todd was only too happy to tell the world of his exciting plans for the Premier League.He hasn't disappeared completely. Baseball-capped, dressed for the cold, he attended Chelsea's match with Brighton in early December, but it has been some time since the football public heard from him. Club politics, wider football politics and perhaps most of all, Chelsea's rather embarrassing slide, have each served to reduce the need for the Marylander to hold forth in the manner that quickly made his name. Continue reading...
When she forgets words, or entire life events, I don't correct her. I try to enter her realityMy mum has got a lot nicer as she has got older. Growing up, she had an unpredictable temper. I tried not to give her reasons to be mad at me, but she was not rational in her rage, lashing out when she had a particularly bad day (she struggled with a gambling addiction), or when bills were (over)due.Now 87 years old, she is smiling whenever I visit her. Mum has been diagnosed with dementia and recently moved into an aged care facility. When I see her, I always tell her who I am. So far, she has always responded, I know." Continue reading...
Detroit have lost a league-record 27 consecutive games. With no offense, defense or sense of direction, they're on pace to win only five games this seasonThe Detroit Pistons finally, formally made history on Tuesday night. Detroit lost their single-season record 27th consecutive game, the latest coming at home by a 118-112 score against the Brooklyn Nets. By falling to 2-28, the Pistons built more cushion in a perhaps inexorable quest to become the worst team in league history.To put their woeful run in context: The 2011-12 Charlotte Bobcats won 10.6% of their games, netting out to 7-59 record in a lockout-shortened season. The 1972-73 Philadelphia Sixers won an even 11%, setting the standard for terribleness over a typical 82-game slate at 9-73. The Pistons, with a 6.6% win rate, are pacing to go 5-77. Whether it's possible for an NBA team in the modern era to be that bad for so long remains to be seen, but the Pistons seem intent on giving the sporting world a definitive answer. Continue reading...
Strikes by autoworkers, actors and writers brought wins in 2023, but analysts worry labor laws could undo progressLabor experts see more wins ahead in 2024 for US unions after a year of attention-grabbing strikes and surging public support but worry gains may be stymied by the US's broken" labor laws.Strikes by autoworkers, writers, actors and nurses and a threatened strike by UPS workers all led to significant wins in 2023. The big challenge for labor in 2024 will be to take that momentum and turn it into new organizing and getting first contracts where workers have organized," said Ken Jacobs, the co-director of the UC Berkeley Labor Center. That's going to be a real challenge because labor law in the US is broken." Continue reading...
We have more than enough to go round, yet large proportions of the population lack the basic necessities of lifeWhat causes a famine? It isn't a lack of food. Nor does lack of food cause the kind of food insecurity, just short of a famine, that Britain is facing. In analyses of specific famines, the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen showed that social organisation and a lack of access to food for socially deprived people were the real causes of starvation.As 2023 ends, Britain may not be facing a famine, as people are in north-eastern Nigeria, South Sudan, Yemen or Somalia, but that is a low bar. The UK's current levels of food insecurity will damage physical and mental health and increase health inequalities for years to come.Michael Marmot is professor of epidemiology at University College London, director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity, and past president of the World Medical Association Continue reading...
Hard to keep track of all the racist, unhinged, authoritarian comments by the former president? Don't worry, we've got you coveredIn 2015, the man who coined Godwin's law, a famous maxim about argument on the internet, wrote a column for the Washington Post. Its headline: Sure, call Trump a Nazi. Just make sure you know what you're talking about."By the lawyer and author Mike Godwin's own definition, his law reads thus: As an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or Nazis approaches one." Since Republicans fell under Trump's thrall, the law has often been invoked. Why? See our list of the 10 worst things Trump said in 2023:We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.Nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now ... It's poisoning the blood of our country.I love this guy. He says, You're not gonna be a dictator, are you?' I say, No, no, no - other than day one.' We're closing the border. And we're drilling, drilling, drilling. After that I'm not a dictator, OK?In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.... an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!If you go after me, I'm coming after you!If I happen to be president and I see somebody who's doing well and beating me very badly, I say go down and indict them, mostly they would be out of business. They'd be out. They'd be out of the election.He is a Soros-backed animal who just doesn't care about right or wrong.And I swear and I've never done that ... I have no idea who the hell - she's a whack job.That's why it was one of the great presidencies, they say. Even the opponents sometimes say he did very well ... but we've been waging an all-out war on American democracy. Continue reading...
A new male pill is about to begin UK trials - while women are rethinking the long dismissed side-effects of oral contraceptionI feel the same about the pill as I do about the Beatles," one woman in her 30s told the Times earlier this year. If I'd been around at the time they first came out, maybe I'd appreciate them more." This distils so much about the dynamic between doctors, pharma, patients and society in constructing the acceptable trade-offs of contraception: when the pill became available on the NHS in 1961, side-effects simply weren't relevant. The calamity of unwanted pregnancy, which had beset the species since the dawn of time, had been solved, by raw ingenuity. In terms of the difference it made to the human experience, and this was very much framed as the female experience, the pill was considered one of medicine's most seismic advances. So what if it gave you mood swings, headaches, acne, or caused you to gain weight? That would be like complaining you were travel sick on the Apollo 13.Scrolling forward 60 years, the pill is still the most popular form of birth control in the UK (in 2018, 28% of women took it; 27% used a condom) and the progestogen-only pill is now available over the counter. Yet those early assumptions, that no amount of adverse effects couldn't be weathered, appear to be increasingly rejected by young women. Earlier this year, Davina McCall continued her crusade for more openness around women's health with a documentary about the pill, in which she surveyed 4,000 women who were on it. An incredible 77% of them had experienced some side-effects, including depression and loss of libido, and one third had stopped taking it as a result. That polling data has not been replicated, and a new mood of distrust towards oral contraception has yet to show up in the data. It reveals itself instead in TikTok content, where women decry the paucity of research into hormonal contraceptives: there were 20 to 25 clinical trials between 2017 and 2020, set against more than 3,000 for cancer drugs in 2019 alone. Continue reading...
The coolest person on earth is a 65-year-old woman, without whom life might be very different and definitely not as funThere's a moment in the Celebration tour when Madonna participates in a simulated orgy. Wearing a red-and-black teddy and high leather boots, she sits with her legs spread wide as half-naked dancers of different genders attend to her in a writhing huddle, to the strains of Justify My Love.Watching this, it was interesting to think about how, 40 years ago, when Madonna was just starting her career, having something like this in a pop concert would have been considered incredibly shocking, offensive or downright illegal. In fact, in 1990, during Madonna's Blond Ambition world tour, the same sort of moves almost got her arrested, and Pope John Paul II denounced the show as one of the most satanic shows in the history of humanity". Continue reading...
After years of reliance on alcohol, going sober was terrifying. But losing my addiction has brought unimaginable rewardsIt is an unusually cold December morning. The thermometer says it is -21C. The sky is dark blue. Here and there a star flickers. It has been more than 16 years since my last drink - my wife and three children have never seen me touch alcohol - but still I remind myself every morning that waking up refreshed, relaxed and with the people I love is not something to take for granted.Everything is white. The trees seem to be covered in icing. I hold my five-year-old boy's hand and lead him to the car. We are on our way to preschool. This is all perfectly ordinary to him. The snow squeaks under our feet. It sounds like we are walking on potato starch.Gunnar Ardelius is a Swedish author Continue reading...
For fluent speakers, there are clear benefits - for others, there are huge costs. Here are some ways to boost linguistic justiceAnyone spending their Christmas holidays on the European mainland will likely have observed that it is quite common to meet staff in shops and hotels who can hold a conversation in English, and to read signs and menus in the language. This fact should come as no surprise, and it is no accident: the spread of English skills in Europe is largely the result of educational policies that have intensively promoted its teaching in public schools over the past decades.The reasons are diverse and well known. English is a major language of culture, and it is the third most spoken language in the world as a native language, after Chinese and Spanish. Native speakers of English number about 373m (roughly 5% of the world population), mostly concentrated in six advanced industrialised democracies (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and the US), which together produce 33% of the world's gross domestic product in nominal terms. As a result of the colonial legacy, English is an official or co-official language in many countries of the world, mainly in Africa.Michele Gazzola is a lecturer in public policy and administration at Ulster University, Belfast, and editor of the journal Language Problems & Language Planning Continue reading...
Court voted 4-3 last week that ex-president was ineligible to run for White House again under US constitution's insurrection clauseColorado police are working with the FBI to investigate threats directed at justices of the state's supreme court after its decision to remove Donald Trump from the presidential primary ballot.The court voted 4-3 last week that the former president was ineligible to run for the White House again, citing a rarely used clause in the US constitution and his role in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. Continue reading...
Republican convicted over false statements about payment from billionaire should not have been tried in Los Angeles, court saysAn appellate court on Tuesday reversed a 2022 federal conviction against former Nebraska congressman Jeff Fortenberry, ruling that the Republican should not have been tried in Los Angeles.Fortenberry was convicted in March 2022 on charges that he lied to federal authorities about an illegal $30,000 contribution to his campaign from a foreign billionaire at a 2016 Los Angeles fundraiser. He resigned his seat days later after pressure from congressional leaders and Nebraska's Republican governor. Continue reading...
Freezing weather affecting more than a million people expected in parts of South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and ColoradoSnow, freezing rain and high winds are hitting the northern plains and upper midwest states, with the National Weather Service warning that blizzard conditions for central South Dakota into parts of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado [are] resulting in difficult to near impossible travel" soon after Christmas.Parts of South Dakota were expected to receive up to 13in of snow, with wind gusts as high as 55 mph, according to the weather forecasting agency. The conditions affecting more than a million people could last through early Wednesday, forecasters said. Continue reading...
Becky Hill, who Murdaugh's lawyers accuse of jury-tampering, alleged to have plagiarized passages in memoir from BBC articleThe court clerk who helped steer the murder trial of South Carolina's Alex Murdaugh and has since been hit with accusations of jury-tampering - potentially leading to a retrial - is now embroiled in a plagiarism controversy.Soon after the trial, in which Murdaugh was convicted of killing his wife and son near a dog kennel at their Low Country home, Becky Hill published a book named Behind the Doors of Justice: the Murdaugh Murders. Continue reading...
Legalization advocates say reclassifying drug to schedule III from schedule I doesn't resolve state and federal law conflictsThe US government appears poised to announce next year the most sweeping changes in decades to how it handles marijuana, the psychoactive drug dozens of states allow to be sold from storefronts, but which federal law considers among the most dangerous substances.Evidence suggests that Joe Biden's administration, responding to a policy the president announced last year, is working on moving marijuana to schedule III of the Controlled Substance Act (CSA), a change from its current listing on the maximally restrictive schedule I. That would lessen the tax burden on businesses selling the drug in states where it is legal, and potentially change how police agencies view enforcement of marijuana laws. Continue reading...
Congresswoman said hoaxer tried to trigger police response while Colorado justices who ruled against Trump face threatsThe political became personal over the Christmas holiday as the homes of politicos and judges were targeted by threats, protests and swatting" hoaxes by pranksters who call in fake emergencies to authorities in the hopes of prompting a forceful police response.A swatting hoax targeted the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Authorities said they were investigating threats against the Colorado supreme court justices who ruled that Trump could not appear on the state's ballots in the 2024 presidential election because he incited an insurrection on the day of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Continue reading...
Setting up is a pain, packing up is even worse - while there are moments of exploration and relaxation to be found, you really have to earn themEven if you're sure you'd hate camping, I recommend you try it at least once. Because after camping, you'll notice aspects of every other holiday will have elements of luxury, from packing and unpacking to showering and sleeping.I can't remember my first camping trip. I grew up with a mother committed to ensuring her children saw as much of their home state as possible, even if this involved excessively long drives to the middle of nowhere. I was also a Brownie then a girl guide. I liked camping, I had friends who liked it, later I married a guy who liked it, and we had kids who did too.Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...
Lamar Jackson reclaimed his standing as the league's best player and bolstered his MVP case with 252 passing yards and two touchdown passes in 18 seconds as the Baltimore Ravens emerged victorious over the San Francisco 49ers 33-19 in a clash between the NFL's top teams Continue reading...
Even if nobody reads them, I'll always be drawn to the freedom blogs offer. I can ramble about any subject I chooseI started blogging in 2002. Prior to that, I'd operated a website for about six years, but what grabbed me about blogging was the speed and the responsiveness - the way blogs picked up on what other blogs posted, and responded almost in real time. I wanted to jump right into the midst of this crackling synergy between blogs. So I did.The blogging circuit I joined was only one corner of an ever-growing blogosphere. Even within music, my blog's primary focus, there was a whole other - and larger - network of MP3 blogs. Still, my particular neighbourhood was bustling all through the 2000s. Out of its fractious ferment emerged cult figures such as K-punk, aka Mark Fisher, one of the most widely read and revered leftwing thinkers of our time, and the prolific cultural critic and author Owen Hatherley. Then there were those like me, who fit a different archetype: already a professional writer but someone who relished the freedom of style and tone offered by blogging.Simon Reynolds is a music journalist and author Continue reading...
Brittany Watts's water broke prematurely and she miscarried at home; when she went to the hospital a nurse called the policeA grand jury is set to decide whether an Ohio woman who miscarried a nonviable fetus should face criminal consequences.Brittany Watts, who was reportedly turned into the police after her September miscarriage, has been charged with the fifth-degree felony of abuse of a corpse" in Trumbull county, Ohio. Her case has been held up as evidence of how easily pregnant people can find themselves in law enforcement's crosshairs - especially since the overturning of Roe v Wade and amid tightening abortion restrictions in the US. Continue reading...
I was impressed as his stories grew ever more inventive and responsive to our kids' demands. Then I learned his secretThe other night, from the hallway outside my second-grader's bedroom, I heard her ask my husband for a very specific bedtime story - so specific I could have sworn she was choosing prompts just to screw with him. She wanted one that was about mowing lawns in a place called Bananaland, and a festival, and monkeys, but make it funny".G'luck, I thought, as I started to tiptoe away, having completed my read-aloud portion from The Swiss Family Robinson, which we're making our way through together each night. Continue reading...
The court can only rescue Trump from the Colorado ruling by shredding originalism and textualism. Will it?Donald Trump's packing of the supreme court, to which he appointed three members, to create a reliable conservative majority, has been hailed by the right as his greatest achievement. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has stated that the most important prospect of a second Trump term would be his appointment of federal judges in their mold. But Trump's candidacy for that second term now poses an existential threat to the legitimacy of the court's conservative majority.The decision earlier this week by the Colorado supreme court disqualifying Trump from the state ballot strikes at more than Trump's eligibility. It cuts to the core of the ideological doctrines of originalism and textualism that underpin the conservative majority's entire jurisprudence. Originalism claims to divine the original intent of the country's founders and interprets the constitution along those lines. Using cherry-picked, false and bad-faith history, originalism has been the pure pretext for overturning Roe, dismantling commonsense gun regulations, ending environmental regulation, gutting consumer protection and voiding voting and civil rights. Continue reading...
With the baffling logic of a five-year-old, I concocted two versions of myself - and tried to stop anyone glimpsing the wrong oneAged five and a quarter, I was facing a conundrum. One term into my British school, where I knew everybody, I was moving thousands of miles across the world to the US, where I knew nobody. The school year was already well under way, which meant everyone would already have made friends with someone who wasn't the weird expat kid. My odds of fitting in were, to put it mildly, not great.And so I took action. When school started, I kept quiet as I furiously learned how to speak just like the American kids - to say flashlight" and trunk", buddon" instead of button, use round northwestern vowels, and uptalk. By the beginning of first grade, I sounded just like everyone else. Unfortunately, with the baffling logic of the under-10s, I had decided that my parents would feel betrayed if I lost my English accent. On top of that, we'd be moving home in a few years' time - if I sounded American, I'd be the odd one out all over again. So I landed on my genius plan: I'd be Yankee at school and English at home, and neither side would be any the wiser. Continue reading...
By laying waste to the in-form 49ers on Christmas night, the mighty Ravens emerged as the NFL's best team with Lamar Jackson reclaiming his standing as the league's top playerDon't be fooled that the margin of victory was just 14 points. By annihilating the San Francisco 49ers on the road on Christmas night, the Baltimore Ravens emerged as the best team in the NFL, and their quarterback, Lamar Jackson, reclaimed his standing as the league's best player.Monday's bold step forward by the swashbuckling Ravens (12-3), who have won nine of their last 10 games and now have the NFL's best record, may come as a bit of a surprise to folks who have paid more attention this season to the Chiefs, Eagles, Cowboys and 49ers. Continue reading...
The west's equivocation on Gaza exposes a global order facing mutiny over its domination of the international discourseRichard Haass, the distinguished global analyst, once wrote: Consistency in foreign policy is a luxury policymakers cannot always afford."But, equally, glaring national hypocrisy can come with a high price tag, in terms of lost credibility, damaged global prestige and diminished self-respect. Continue reading...
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