by Chris McGreal in St Charles, Virginia on (#6J6HE)
Dr Art Van Zee set out in the early 2000s to tell anyone who would listen how a powerful opioid was destroying lives. Two decades later, he's still in disbeliefWhen Dr Art Van Zee finally understood the scale of the disaster looming over his corner of rural Virginia, he naively imagined the drug industry would be just as alarmed.So the longest serving doctor in the struggling former mining town of St Charles set out in the early 2000s to tell pharmaceutical executives, federal regulators, Congress and anyone else who would listen that the arrival of a powerful new opioid painkiller was destroying lives and families, and laying the ground for a much bigger catastrophe. Continue reading...
Twenty-five civil war and Reconstruction scholars support invoking 14th amendment to bar Trump from ballot over January 6Twenty-five historians of the civil war and Reconstruction filed a US supreme court brief in support of the attempt by Colorado to remove Donald Trump from the ballot under the 14th amendment, which bars insurrectionists from running for office.For historians," the group wrote, contemporary evidence from the decision-makers who sponsored, backed, and voted for the 14th amendment [ratified in 1868] is most probative. Analysis of this evidence demonstrates that decision-makers crafted section three to cover the president and to create an enduring check on insurrection, requiring no additional action from Congress." Continue reading...
Prosecutors allege Rebecca Grossman, 60, was speeding when she hit brothers Mark Iskander, 11, and Jakob Iskander, eightMore than three years ago, a Los Angeles socialite allegedly fatally struck two young boys as they were crossing the street. Now a jury will decide whether Rebecca Grossman is guilty of second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run driving.This week jurors heard opening statements in the long-awaited trial of Grossman for the deaths of brothers Mark Iskander, 11, and Jacob Iskander, eight. Continue reading...
At issue is whether potential vice-presidents, from Elise Stefanik to Tim Scott, could assume control - and whether Trump caresThe last person who occupied the job of US vice-president ended up the target of a violent mob calling for him to be hanged. Even so, as Donald Trump closes in on the Republican nomination for 2024, there is no shortage of contenders eager to be his deputy.It is safe to assume that Mike Pence, who was Trump's running mate in 2016 and 2020, will not get the job this time. His refusal to comply with his boss's demand to overturn the last election caused a permanent rift and made Pence a perceived traitor and target of the January 6 insurrectionists. Continue reading...
British politicians are deluding themselves if they think that the so-called special relationship' will protect usA spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Donald Trump. In London, Paris, Berlin and every other significant European capital, bar Moscow, the horror sequel no one sane wants to see is Trump - The Return: No more Mr Nice Guy".Having spent the last three years being much too nonchalant about the threat of him recapturing the White House, British politicians and their counterparts elsewhere in Europe can no longer deny to themselves that a Trump second coming is terrifyingly possible. The shock is the sharper for having been preceded by so much complacency. His defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 was greeted with a huge exhalation of relief that the United States was back under the leadership of an Atlanticist who believed in the US's traditional alliances with other democracies and didn't deny the existence of the climate crisis. Welcome back America!" whooped the mayor of Paris in a typically euphoric reaction. It didn't occur to enough people in Europe's leadership that all Biden's victory promised was a four-year breather, not a guarantee that we would never see Trumpism empowered again. Time that might have been spent preparing for that possibility by making the UK and the rest of Europe less dependent on America for the security of our continent has been woefully wasted. Continue reading...
A tribunal has attacked Open University staff for waging a campaign of harassment against herSometimes the people around you scramble reality to turn up into down, black into white and open into closed. That's how ProfJoPhoenix must have felt when she was subjected to what the courts described last week as a targeted campaign of harassment" from her colleagues that was facilitated by her employer, the Open University, in a way that shut down her academic freedom and caused a judge to find she was constructively dismissed.What put a mark on her back was her view, shared by a majority of people and enshrined in law, that whether someone is male or female is a matter of reality, not belief, and that someone's gender identity, or belief about their sex, cannot supersede their actual sex for all purposes in society. That's what paved the way for her fellow academics to miscast the harassed as harasser, and for her university's management to delude themselves that by turning a blind eye to bullying they were protecting free expression, when they were really undermining Phoenix's ability to exercise just that. Continue reading...
A new study suggests a fashionable hobby could help with hot flushes and other symptomsIn a climate that often feels hostile to middle-aged women, maybe it's a sign of progress that an only faintly convincing contribution on menopause management can become, as one did last week, a cause for national rejoicing.That's if it doesn't just confirm suspicions that, where women's health is concerned, any visionary, antique or drug-repudiating theory can still become mainstream. So long as NHS clinicians congratulate women for enduring, say, medieval-style childbirth, maybe it isn't surprising to find an appreciative audience for a new study advocating, for hot flushes and othermenopausal symptoms, cold-water swimming: therapy not strikingly advanced from the cold-bathing regime propounded by a SirJohn Floyer in 1702. Continue reading...
by Ramon Antonio Vargas in New Orleans on (#6J630)
The verdict in the manslaughter trial over the 2016 death of Saints star Will Smith brings to a close a turbulent eight years of legal wranglingEver since the New Orleans tow-truck company owner Cardell Hayes shot the retired local pro-football champion Will Smith to death and wounded the former athlete's wife on a city street late on the night of 9 April 2016, people on all sides of the case have made it as complicated as possible in their fight for what they consider to be justice.It is a case that has gripped south-eastern Louisiana - where football players are huge celebrities - and also involved dark, if unsupported, allegations of another deep south staple: police corruption. Competing theories and narratives have vied for supremacy, with almost as many different ideas of what happened as people willing to voice them.Ramon Antonio Vargas covered the New Orleans Saints in 2013 and 2014 at the New Orleans Advocate and also covered the case of Hayes and Smith before joining the Guardian in 2022. Continue reading...
by George Chidi in Columbia, South Carolina on (#6J6EJ)
In the state that is now first on the Democratic primaries calendar, the president offers fresh assurances he would be willing to close down the US-Mexico borderFour years ago, Democrats in South Carolina - and Black Democrats in particular - effectively cleared the field for President Joe Biden's nomination, ending what might have otherwise been a rowdy primary campaign for the right to face Donald Trump.At a Democratic Party dinner Saturday in Columbia, SC, celebrating South Carolina's new status as the first Democratic primary state, Biden returned to thank them for it, one week before voters head to the polls. Continue reading...
More than 40 vehicles involved in collisions on Chesapeake Bay Bridge starting at 8am, says local transportation authoritySeveral crashes involving more than 40 vehicles occurred on Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland on Saturday, injuring 13 people and forcing temporary closures.In several announcements on X throughout Saturday morning, the Maryland transportation authority said that all lanes had been closed following a multivehicle crash on westbound lanes and warned of major delays. According to the MDTA, its police dispatch received initial calls of the crash at 8am. Continue reading...
An anonymous person gave Haley's address in South Carolina after calling 911 and reporting a fake killingNewly reviewed records show that presidential hopeful Nikki Haley was the target of a swatting incident in late December when an anonymous person called 911 claiming to have killed his girlfriend at Haley's South Carolina home.Authorities responded to a call on 30 December from a person who said he had shot his girlfriend and was threatening to harm himself, giving Haley's address to the operator. It was shortly deemed a fake emergency, Reuters reported. Haley and her son were not at home during the time of the call; her husband was overseas. Continue reading...
Lucas Bellamy, 40, died from a perforated bowel after repeatedly being denied medical treatment by jail staffA Minnesota family is suing a county jail alleging their son died in prison after staff refused to provide him with medical attention.Lucas Bellamy, 40, died in July 2022 three days after he had been arrested by the Hennepin county sheriff's department. Bellamy's family says that jail staff ignored their son's desperate pleas for medical attention and signs that he was in agonizing pain. Continue reading...
Cardell Hayes faces up to 40 years in prison for the shooting after a traffic altercation that left Will Smith deadA jury found a New Orleans man guilty of manslaughter after he shot and killed former NFL player Will Smith in 2016.Cardell Hayes, 36, could face up to 40 years in prison after the guilty conviction. Hayes' lawyers tried to argue that he shot Smith out of self-defense following a traffic accident that escalated to an altercation in April 2016. But prosecutors for the Orleans parish district attorney's office said that Hayes had fired needlessly, according to ESPN. Continue reading...
But the House speaker said deal involving border security and aid to Ukraine is dead on arrival' in its current formJoe Biden said on Friday that the border deal being negotiated in the US Senate was the toughest and fairest" set of reforms possible and vowed to shut down the border" the day he signs the bill.The bipartisan talks have hit a critical point amid mounting Republican opposition. Some Republicans have set a deal on border security as a condition for further Ukraine aid. Continue reading...
Thousands of hotel workers in southern California have gone on strike over 100 times since last July, with some still fighting for new union contractsLast year was a big year for the US labor movement with historic wins and gains for workers at UPS, automakers, and for writers and actors in Hollywood. But for thousands of hotel workers, the majority of whom are Latina women from immigrant communities, their fight has continued into 2024 without garnering the same amount of public attention.California's hotel workers have led one of the biggest strike waves to ever hit the US hotel industry to secure wage increases they say they need to afford to live in the areas where they work. Their actions coincided with the hot labor summer" that saw ultimately successful union campaigns from Hollywood writers, actors and others. Continue reading...
Their collective anger over AI-generated sexually explicit images of Taylor Swift may help spur changes to federal law when it comes to deepfake pornSexually explicit photographs of Taylor Swift are all over the internet. Except they are not actually pictures of Swift: they are deepfakes created with AI technology. Still, the fact they are computer generated doesn't mean the photos don't look horrifyingly realistic - and it certainly hasn't stopped people from gawking at them. One of the images shared by a user on X (Twitter) was viewed more than 45m times in the 17 hours before it was taken down. Continue reading...
Nearly half of all officials have been insulted, a third harassed, and nearly one in five threatened, according to CivicPulseOn a quiet day, home alone with the windows open at her Michigan home, Tina Barton thought she heard a voice saying: Hello."Her heart started beating quickly, as she believed someone uninvited might be outside her rural house. She slammed the windows shut. She called her husband and had him check the security cameras. He saw no one. Continue reading...
Biden's unqualified support for Israel has exposed the US to potential complicity in war crimes and global condemnationThe international court of justice on Friday ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide by its troops in Gaza, and to allow more aid into the besieged territory. The court, which is the UN's highest judicial body, stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire. But it was a victory for the Palestinians, and for the global south in general, in that Israel is being held accountable for its military actions for the first time, and by one of the world's most important courts.By allowing the case brought by South Africa to go forward and calling on Israel to comply with the genocide convention - and to report back to the court within a month - the ruling raises the stakes on Israel's western backers to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu's government to rein in its devastating invasion and bombardment of Gaza. The ruling is embarrassing to Joe Biden and his top aides, especially the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who described South Africa's case as meritless" a few weeks ago. Continue reading...
A surprisingly disciplined campaign risks derailment as Trump lashes out at his former UN ambassador for staying in raceIt was a moment for Donald Trump to be gracious, magnanimous, perhaps even presidential. Instead he lashed out at his opponent's clothes. When I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn't so fancy, I said, What's she doing? We won,'" he said of rival Nikki Haley in New Hampshire on Tuesday night.Trump had just won the first primary election of 2024 and all but clinched the Republican nomination for US president. Party leaders and campaign surrogates are now eager to banish Haley to irrelevance, move on from the primary and unify against Democrats. They want Trump to pivot to an almost inevitable rematch with Democrat Joe Biden in November. Continue reading...
Andrea Salinas warns of upstream problem' in US mental health crisis and proposes tax revenue be used for treatmentAmerica's unchecked" gambling boom risks exacerbating a nationwide mental health crisis, according to a congresswoman pushing for federal government support. The industry is pushing back hard.Operators must be held accountable" for rising addiction rates, Andrea Salinas told the Guardian, after lawmakers proposed legislation that - if approved - would provide tens of millions of dollars in funding to help those affected. Continue reading...
Police in Jacksonville draw confession from Billy Mansfield, sentenced to life in prison for five other murders decades agoAfter confessing to the murder of an Ohio high schooler on her spring break outside Jacksonville, Florida, in 1980, a jailed serial killer is continuing to talk to detectives investigating other homicides whose clue trails have gone cold, according to authorities.Billy Mansfield's confession of the killing of 18-year-old Carol Ann Barrett of Zanesville, Ohio, means officials have now confirmed that he has committed at least six murders. He had previously been handed life sentences in five of the killings, four of which were in California and one of which was in Florida, though officials investigating Barrett's death made clear in a statement on Thursday that those numbers could grow. Continue reading...
Snoop plays a former sports star who takes on losing pee-wee outfit in a charming comedy that has more than a passing resemblance to Bad News BearsWhen laconic rapper-turned-actor Snoop Dogg is called on to appear in a film, he more often than not plays himself or a version thereof - and so it goes again in this salty but ultimately very wholesome sports movie. There's even a sly parallel between the character Snoop plays and the efforts he's made in the real world setting up an American football league for kids. Yes, his thespian range may be pretty limited, but there's no denying Snoop has a palpable onscreen charisma and a good sense of comic timing that director Charles Stone III skilfully directs around.The plot, as old as time - or at least as old as vintage 1976 comedy The Bad New Bears - posits Snoop as JJ, a once-feted professional football player best known for his mildly disappointing career despite early promise and lack of loyalty to anyone one team. Struggling to make a comeback as a commentator, JJ hits rock bottom when his reckless driving causes an accident and a judge he knew from the old days sentences him to 30 days of community service, picking up dog poop in a city park in Long Beach, California. There, JJ notices Cerise (Tika Sumpter), an ex-girlfriend from high school who is now a hard-working single mom trying to support her pre-pubescent son Tre (Jonigan Booth, a find) while he plays ball with a team that is, of course, bottom of the league. Before you can remember how to spell Walter Matthau, JJ has signed on to coach the team, aiming to turn these Underdoggs" into a viral success story he can hype on his own podcast and thus parlay into better career prospects for himself. Continue reading...
Inaction threatens the continent's security over Trump, Ukraine, the rise of the far right and the crisis in the Middle EastDemocrats fear Joe Biden is sleepwalking to disaster in a November rematch with Donald Trump. Tories level similar criticism at dozy Rishi Sunak as Labour dreams of an autumn landslide. Butfor a truly world-beating slumber party, EU leaders take the bedtime biscuit.The way it's going, 2024 could turn into a nightmare for the 27-country bloc - an all-time annus horribilis. A daunting slew of international and internal challenges is coming to a head. Is the EU ready to meet them? Definitely not. Continue reading...
Identifying those who died has been arduous, with forensic experts and cadaver dogs sifting through ashHawaii officials said Friday that they had identified the last of the 100 known victims of the wildfire that destroyed Lahaina in August.The victim was Lydia Coloma, 70, Maui police said. Continue reading...
Former president calls verdict absolutely ridiculous' and accuses Biden of directing witch-hunt' against him and RepublicansThe $83.3m verdict against Donald Trump in the defamation case brought by the writer E Jean Carroll over her allegation of sexual assault was celebrated by opponents of the former president, analysed by legal experts and excoriated by the presumptive 2024 Republican White House nominee and his loyal supporters.Trump called the verdict absolutely ridiculous" and claimed it was part of a Joe Biden-directed witch hunt" against me and the Republican party". Continue reading...
Gloria Serge, 85, died in February 2023 after the animal sprang from a retention pond and dragged her back into the waterThe family of an elderly woman killed by an alligator as she walked her dog near her Florida home is suing the retirement community where she lived for wrongful death.Gloria Serge, 85, died in February 2023 after the 11ft alligator, known to residents as Henry, sprang from a retention pond at Spanish Lakes Fairways in Fort Pierce and dragged her back into the water. Continue reading...
A bargain in which southern border security would be beefed up in exchange for foreign aid is looking increasingly unlikelyThe prospects for the US Congress approving new aid to Ukraine as well as military assistance to Israel worsened on Friday after the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said he was unlikely to support a deal under negotiation in the Senate that is considered crucial to unlocking the funds.A bipartisan group of senators have for weeks been looking for an agreement to implement stricter immigration policies and curtail migrant arrivals at the southern border with Mexico, which have surged during Joe Biden's presidency. Republicans have named passing that legislation as their price for approving aid to Ukraine, whose cause rightwing lawmakers have soured on as the war has dragged on and Donald Trump, who has been ambivalent about sending arms to Kyiv, draws closer to winning the Republican presidential nomination. Continue reading...
US DoJ reaches agreement with New York state executive chamber over workplace conduct of former governor, 66, who quit in 2021The former New York governor Andrew Cuomo subjected at least 13 female government employees to a sexually hostile work environment" and retaliated against four who complained, a formal agreement between the state executive chamber and the US justice department said.Governor Cuomo repeatedly subjected these female employees to unwelcome, non-consensual sexual contact; ogling; unwelcome sexual comments; gender-based nicknames; comments on their physical appearances; and/or preferential treatment based on their physical appearances," read the agreement, which was released on Friday. Continue reading...
Officials didn't document medical necessity in two cases, homeland security's inspector general says in reportImmigration officials did not document the medical necessity of at least two hysterectomies they authorized for women in their custody, according to a new report by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general.Investigators contracted with an OB-GYN to review six hysterectomies performed on migrant women who were in federal custody. The doctor found that in two of the cases, officials had failed to document whether it was medically necessary, the watchdog report states. Continue reading...
White House calls death of Kenneth Smith, executed via untested method lawyers say was cruel and unusual, very troubling'Alabama has carried out the first execution of a death row prisoner in the US using nitrogen gas, an untested procedure which the prisoner's lawyers had argued amounted to a form of cruel and unusual punishment banned under the US constitution.Kenneth Smith, 58, was pronounced dead at 8.25pm on Thursday evening at an Alabama prison after breathing pure nitrogen gas through a face mask to cause oxygen deprivation. The execution took about 22 minutes. Continue reading...
Public safety concerns about shelter housing more than 2,500 prompted in December after five-year-old boy diedAppalling conditions have been uncovered at a Chicago warehouse turned migrant shelter where more than 2,500 asylum seekers are staying.Complaints about cockroaches, rats, rotten food, exposed pipes, sewage issues, illnesses spreading and inadequate food and water provision have been made to the city authorities, in emails first reported by WTTW, the PBS member station in Chicago. Continue reading...
Greg Abbott says he will defy Biden and US supreme court and install more concertina wire to try to prevent migrant crossingsThe fight between Texas and the federal government over the control of the US-Mexico border has further intensified after state governor Greg Abbott announced he will defy the Biden administration and US supreme court by ordering the installation of even more razor wire to deter migration.On Monday, the supreme court voted 5-4 in favor of the federal government's power to remove the controversial concertina wire installed along stretches of the border in Texas, at Abbott's direction. Despite this, Abbott, a hard-right Republican, is intensifying his plans to try and fence off parts of the US border with Mexico. Continue reading...
States that respect international law must ensure that the measures demanded by the world court are implementedIt is a bitter twist of history that 75 years after the horrors of the Holocaust saw the UN adopt the genocide convention, Israel is likely to find itself in the dock of the international court of justice accused of being intent on destroying the Palestinians in whole or in part". Hundreds of people - mainly women and children - are dying every day under Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, a death rate reckoned to be the worst of any major conflict this century.South Africa filed an application instituting genocide proceedings against Israel at The Hague a month ago. On Friday, the world court said it had established that at least some of the acts alleged by South Africa fell within the provisions of the convention. While a final judgment is years away, this was a historic decision by the court. It was not made lightly by jurists in the middle of a war that was sparked by a horrific Hamas attack last October that left 1,200 Israelis dead.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...
Barbenheimer hogs the headlines, but the two big hitters do not have a monopoly on the conversationThe sums of money involved in making and selling films are so colossal that it's often hard to see beyond them to the value of the movies themselves. It was no surprise to find the odd couple of last summer making the headlines for both the Bafta and Oscar shortlists - Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer for meeting expectations with multiple nominations and Greta Gerwig's Barbie for disappointing them, even though it is ahead at the box office.Few who witnessed the excitable swirls of pink outside cinemas, or have dwelt on the fortuitous weirdness of a movie about a Mattel doll being fused into a double header with a biopic of a nuclear physicist, could grudge their success at a time when cinemas all over the country were on their knees in the aftermath of the pandemic. Opinions may differ about their merits, but they have brought people out and been widely discussed. Continue reading...
Will Israel's allies urge Israel to comply with the court's ruling? It would do enormous damage to the rules-based order' if they make an exception for IsraelThe international court of justice's (ICJ) ruling in South Africa's genocide case was a powerful repudiation of Israel's denialism. By an overwhelming majority, the court found a plausible" case that provisional measures were needed to avoid irreparable prejudice" from further Israeli acts in Gaza that could jeopardize Palestinian rights under the genocide convention.The public posture of various Israeli officials was in essence, how dare anyone accuse us of genocide. After all, they pointed out, Israel was founded after the Holocaust to protect the Jewish people from genocide, Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, and many of Hamas's statements seem genocidal in intent.Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs Continue reading...
I found his devotees fervent, but many Americans can't stand the man - and that gives Joe Biden a way to winYou'd think a week spent in the snow and ice of New Hampshire, watching Donald Trump stroll to a double-digit victory over his last remaining Republican rival, would have left me filled with angst about the presidential election in November. Sure enough, given that a second Trump presidency would have a truly disastrous impact on the US and the world, the fact that the now near-certain rematch of Trump and Joe Biden remains a coin flip", in the private assessment of one of America's foremost electoral analysts, still makes my palms go clammy.But to my surprise, I left the frozen American north-east not hopeful, exactly, but lifted by the thought that Trump is weaker, and Biden stronger, than this week's headlines - or the latest polls showing the current president six points behind the previous one - might suggest. Now when I hear the words coin flip", I react like Jim Carrey's character in Dumb and Dumber, when told that the odds of him winning over the woman of his dreams are one in a million: So you're telling me there's a chance."Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Ex-president's departure came as Carroll's lead attorney noted he had continued to defame former Elle writer during trialAs E Jean Carroll's second defamation trial against Donald Trump neared its final stage Friday morning in New York, proceedings quickly took a turn for the absurd with the judge threatening his lawyer with lockup" and the ex-president leaving about 10 minutes into the former Elle writer's closing argument. Trump returned to court for his defense's closing.Trump's abrupt departure came as Carroll's lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan, was delivering her closing argument - shortly after she noted that he had continued to defame the former Elle writer during this very trial. Trump left. Continue reading...
Board of education replaces course at 12 public universities with own US history curriculum, in latest anti-woke' attackEducators are warning that college enrollment in Florida will plummet after the state removed sociology as a core class from campuses in the latest round of Ron DeSantis's war on woke ideology".The Republican governor's hand-picked board of education voted on Wednesday to replace the established course on the principles of sociology at its 12 public universities with its own US history curriculum, incorporating an historically accurate account of America's founding [and] the horrors of slavery". Continue reading...
Critics condemn decision by governing board to delay proposed student work plan over what it says is not viable' legal pathwayThe University of California's governing board on Thursday punted a decision of whether to allow immigrant students without legal status to apply for jobs on its 10 campuses, with the system's president warning doing so would carry significant risk" for the institution and students, including possible criminal prosecution.The Board of Regents voted 9-6 to delay considering the plan until 2025 amid shouts of Cowards!" from some in the audience. Continue reading...
If this judgment is not heeded, how can Putin ever be held to account? Justice with double standards is no justice at allIsrael will no doubt continue to pour scorn on the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague in the days and weeks to come. Hague Shmague" was the first response from the justice minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir. But the provisional measures ordered by the world court today are historic, by any measure.The requirement that Israel must take steps to prevent genocidal acts, prevent and punish incitement to genocide, and report back on its actions within a month will all have rippling implications - not just in the weeks but in the years to come. Continue reading...
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