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The SEC stresses its move does not mean it is endorsing the cryptocurrency, which is near-useless outside of speculationIt's off to the moon for bitcoin's price, then? That, at least, was the tone of advance opinion among the crypto crew if the US financial regulator approved the creation of exchange traded funds (ETFs) that track the value of the cryptocurrency. Now the Securities and Exchange Commission, grudgingly and with a heavy warning that it is not endorsing bitcoin itself, has given a thumbs up.Cue a fresh whoosh of demand, we are told, from US institutions and private punters who will be able to hitch themselves to the bitcoin wagon without having to go to the bother of opening a digital wallet or dealing with a crypto trading platform. The word watershed" has been used widely to describe the moment. Giant investment names such as BlackRock will be offering these new ETFs. Ease of access and mainstream respectability have arrived as a package. Continue reading...

Bruce Edward Bell, who has robbed four banks and spent more than half his life incarcerated, arrested in CaliforniaAn elderly serial bank robber who was recently released from prison has allegedly committed yet another heist.Bruce Edward Bell, 71, entered a Chase bank in Sun Valley, California, on 21 December. Upon entering, he grabbed an employee and pointed a gun at them, forcing them to grant him access to the teller's office, according to a statement released by the Los Angeles police department. Continue reading...

Local election-denying activists target Republican Robin Vos for removal from assembly speaker roleA far-right group in Wisconsin has launched a long-shot bid to oust the Wisconsin assembly speaker Robin Vos - the latest salvo in a running feud between the powerful Republican lawmaker and conspiracy-minded hardliners.The recall campaign is the newest attempt by election-denying activists to punish politicians and state officials who they view as insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Vos has become a particular target for refusing to accept their claims that 2020 was rigged. Continue reading...

Officials say materials - including encyclopedias and other books - violate state law signed by Governor Ron DeSantisA Florida school district is facing a federal lawsuit after it decided to remove copies of dictionaries, encyclopedia and other books because the works included descriptions of sexual conduct".The Escambia county school district, located in Pensacola, Florida, removed several dictionaries and encyclopedias from school libraries after school officials determined that the books violated Florida law HB 1069. Continue reading...

The most successful NFL coach of the 21st-century must find ways to innovate again if he is to thrive at a new team after his departure from New EnglandNo need for double takes. Yes, it has really, finally happened. Bill Belichick is leaving the New England Patriots after an unprecedented 24-season run as their head coach.He will leave the Patriots as the greatest to ever do it. Six Lombardi trophies, nine Super Bowl appearances, countless division titles and AFC championship games appearances. In an era with the salary cap, free agency, the draft and legislated parity, Belichick, in partnership with Tom Brady, lorded it up over the rest of the league for two decades. Continue reading...

Ian Dodd says in high court claim he developed heart problems and depression that made him suicidalThe former head of recruitment at Goldman Sachs is suing the investment bank for more than 1m alleging that demanding him to be working unreasonable and excessive hours" led to physical and psychiatric injuries" and wanting to take his own life".Ian Dodd, 55, who was Goldman's global head of recruiting in London between 2018 and 2021, says in a personal injury claim at the high court that he developed a major depressive disorder and heart issues as a result of the workload placed on him by the US bank. Continue reading...

We are living in a time when we are spoiled with immediately available access to queer artists of any genre. You don't have to hunt for clues

Investigation by city uncovered 60ft long tunnel under historic Jewish site, extending under several buildings in vicinityNew York building officials have issued emergency work orders to stabilize a historic synagogue and its neighboring structures after an illicit underground tunnel was discovered at the sanctuary earlier this week.An investigation by the city's department of buildings uncovered a tunnel that was 60ft-long (18.3 meters), 8ft-wide (2.4 meters) and 5ft-high (1.5 meters) located underneath the global headquarters of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, an important Jewish site. It extends under several buildings in the vicinity. Continue reading...

Maria Burns Oritz develops software for Indigenous communities - now she she wants to democratize game developmentLong before trumpeting the need to pair profit with progressive philosophies became a cornerstone of corporate America, Maria Burns Oritz believed in building the type of businesses that will do well and do good. Even before its official inception in 2015, her Minneapolis-based gaming company 7 Generation Games was a side hustle focused on developing software and gaming platforms that served the needs of underrepresented populations.We want to help close the education gap," says 41-year-old Burns Oritz, who co-founded the company with her mother, tech veteran and judo champion AnnMaria Waddell (Burns Ortiz's sister is wrestler, Olympian and video game aficionado Ronda Rousey). Many of the games from 7 Generation are made for members of Native American tribes that live within the company's surrounding communities across the midwest. We focus on more diverse voices and content both because they are absent from so many curricula and because no one else on the market was doing this," says Burns Ortiz. Continue reading...

Biden administration unveils $623m in funding amid concern that transition to zero-carbon transportation not keeping pace with climate crisis. Plus, Ai Weiwei on AI art

That Stefanik is a rising star - and Liz Cheney a pariah - says everything about Republican politics todayElise Stefanik is having a moment. If she were a song on the Billboard chart, she'd have a bullet next to her name to show the speed of her trajectory.In recent weeks, the New York congresswoman has claimed credit for the demise of two major university presidents (those at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania), after she led the bullying about campus antisemitism during a congressional hearing.Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture Continue reading...

During his captivity, my client Sharqawi Al Hajj has lost both parents and gone through his 30s and most of his 40s. He wonders what future he has leftSharqawi Al Hajj is a man detained at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I have been his lawyer for many years. This week marks 22 years since the prison was opened, and Sharqawi's 20th year inside. He is one of 30 men still detained there, down from nearly 800 ever held. This trajectory is because Guantanamo, though not singular among prisons in its harsh treatment and arbitrary detention, was at least for a time very overt in its extremeness, and what could be seen more plainly than usual caused a reaction.There are public records and images of an earlier period that people who are old enough remember. A news article from 2002, reporting on the first planeload of detainees arriving, sticks with me. Men chained to their seats for 8,000 miles were led off the plane because they wore goggles covered with black tape; some fell to the ground. A government report from 2008 described interrogations during those years, things like a man being found immobile on the floor of an interview room next to a pile of his own hair.Pardiss Kebriaei is Mr Sharqawi Al Hajj's lawyer and has represented men at Guantanamo since 2007. She is a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York Continue reading...

As the US men's national teams heads into a pivotal year, we take a look at the four items in Gregg Berhalter's in-trayFor a year without a major tournament (put your hand down, Concacaf Gold Cup), 2023 was startlingly significant for the US men's national team.Consider the blurry picture 12 months ago: the team had no permanent head coach while Gregg Berhalter was being investigated by US Soccer over an assault allegation, his relationship with the sullen starlet Gio Reyna was broken, and the sporting director Earnie Stewart was poised to exit. Continue reading...

The lack of condemnation of these appalling crimes is not only unjust - it is a sign of deeper biases that must be addressed

The postseason kicks off on Saturday. Our writers pick the dark horses, players to watch and make their tips for the NFL's championship gameSeattle Seahawks are not a good football team. But they are an entertaining one. They're capable of scoring in chunks, even with a woeful offensive line. Their defense cannot tackle anyone, but they're also liable to snag a couple of crucial turnovers in a half. Scan their record and they have (kind of) impressive wins against playoff opposition. They'd likely have been one-and-done - the team just had too many holes - but they have the kind of playoff formula (volatile offense; turnover-enforcing defense) that could have caused an upset. OC Continue reading...

An online quiz revealed my Euro-education came from sticker albums and obscure Uefa ties - and we all have our own versionHow come I, as a Briton, can name vast numbers of Dutch towns and cities, but struggle to think of more than a couple of Greek placenames? Why are the German cities I'm most aware of not always the most populous? And, most baffling of all, why is my 15-year-old son more familiar with a Swedish village with 6,000 inhabitants than he is with Gothenburg, Sweden's second city?As he and I completed an addictive online quiz that challenged us to list as many European placenames as we could, these were the questions that occupied me. Although to be honest, the first two were actually quite easy to answer: it was football's fault.Phil Mongredien is a deputy production editor for Guardian Opinion Continue reading...

Ex-president tries to walk fine line on issue, saying Republicans with extreme positions have been decimated' in electionsDonald Trump, the former US president, boasted about the miracle" of ending the constitutional right to abortion but warned that Republicans who tout extreme bans are being decimated" in elections.Trump was put on the spot on Wednesday during a Fox News town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, his latest attempt at counter-programming a Republican debate that was being shown on CNN at the same time. Continue reading...

Ex-UN ambassador calls Florida governor a habitual liar as each tries to make up ground on absent Trump days before Iowa caucusThe fifth Republican presidential debate started and ended with barbed exchanges between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, with neither likely to have moved closer to eclipsing frontrunner Donald Trump in the Iowa caucus next week.The Florida governor slamming Haley for running to do her donors' bidding" and the former UN ambassador calling DeSantis a habitual liar. The tone early in the Iowa debate matched prior GOP debates, which were frequently hostile, with candidates hurling personal attacks at one another. Continue reading...

Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley clashed over the course of a two-hour debate which once again the former president skippedThe Republican debates have been anticlimactic since they started late last summer, with the broad pool of candidates winnowing over time and frontrunner Donald Trump refusing to attend.Tonight's event saw Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor, and Ron DeSantis, Florida governor, vying for second place in a head-to-head debate just days before the Iowa caucus, the first official election year contest. Here's what you need to know about the two-hour broadcast in Des Moines. Continue reading...

With less than a week to go before the first-in-the-country Iowa caucuses two challengers to Donald Trump make their caseFact checks: ImmigrationHaley said that millions of people who cross the border should be deported because they are jumping the line". This is a mischaracterization of how immigration policy works. Migrants at the border are allowed to just show up and ask for asylum, per US law. Continue reading...

On a holiday in Japan, instead of mourning the child version of him, I saw the adult he was becomingWhen my daughter went overseas on her gap-year adventure, my son and I found ourselves alone at home with the cat. Except for the odd Sunday morning at a local junk market and dinners with friends, we spent much of our time in separate rooms, coming together late in the day to eat dinner and maybe watch an episode of something, if we can agree. I know it's natural for teenagers to spend more time sequestered away in their bedrooms, but sometimes I find myself trying to think up ways to lure him out.As a single parent, much of our household communication involves me reminding him to clean his room or eat his vegetables or do his homework. Little time is spent on the fun stuff, like the random holidays we used to take. The rough and ready camping trips with a tent that slept all of us, road trips in the Subaru, hoping we wouldn't break down, or a weekend stay in a dingy motel in a country town. Continue reading...

Authorities say another person was injured as major snow and wind storm moved into the California regionAn avalanche roared through a section of expert trails at a California ski resort near Lake Tahoe on Wednesday, sweeping up four people and killing one, as a major storm with snow and gusty winds moved into the region, authorities said.The avalanche prompted Palisades Tahoe to close 30 minutes after it opened, and search crews combed the area to see if anyone was injured or trapped. Continue reading...

Ex-New Jersey governor, only candidate to attack Trump, heard on hot mic predicting Nikki Haley would get smoked' in primary raceThe former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he announced on Wednesday evening.It is clear to me tonight that there is not a path to win the nomination," he said at a town hall in Windham, New Hampshire. Continue reading...

Then president told European commissioners in 2020 that Nato is dead' and the US would never defend Europe if it were attackedDonald Trump told the president of the European Commission in 2020 that the US would never come help" if Europe was attacked and also said Nato is dead", a senior European commissioner said.Multiple news outlets said the exchange between Trump and Ursula von der Leyen at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020 was described in Brussels on Tuesday by Thierry Breton, a French European commissioner responsible for the internal market, with responsibilities including defence. Continue reading...

US president's son sat in front row as House oversight committee debated his refusal to comply with subpoena for testimonyHunter Biden made a surprise appearance at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, as Republicans on the US House oversight committee convened to consider a resolution to hold the president's son in contempt of Congress over his refusal to comply with a subpoena for testimony.Appearing with his attorney Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden sat silently in the front row as the committee chair and vice-chair delivered opening statements to a hearing that would be dominated by partisan bickering. Continue reading...

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Ruling clears way for Kenneth Smith, convicted of 1988 murder, to be put to death via method his lawyers say is cruel and unusualAlabama will be allowed to put a prisoner to death with nitrogen gas later this month, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday, clearing the way for what would be the nation's first execution under a new method the inmate's lawyers criticize as cruel and experimental.The US district judge Austin Huffaker rejected Kenneth Smith's request for an injunction to stop his scheduled 25 January execution by nitrogen hypoxia. Smith's attorneys have said the state is trying to make him the test subject" for an untried execution method, and are expected to appeal the decision. Continue reading...

Arthur Engoron said over email Trump could address court if he agreed to certain terms but ex-president's lawyers fail to agreeDonald Trump's plans to deliver closing arguments on Thursday in his New York civil business fraud trial were dashed on Wednesday by the judge overseeing the case.Trump had planned to give his own speech in addition to his legal team's summations, according to two people familiar with the highly unusual plan. But judge Arthur Engoron rescinded permission for the speech. Continue reading...

Lawmakers hold hearing on Alejandro Mayorkas, who they say has encouraged illegal immigration across US-Mexico borderHouse Republicans barreled ahead with their effort to impeach the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, for his handling of the US's southern border, as their party attempts to make immigration a defining issue of this year's presidential election.The House homeland security committee launched the impeachment proceedings on Wednesday, with Republicans charging that Mayorkas has been derelict in his duty to secure the US-Mexico border amid a sharp rise in migration while Democrats and administration officials assailed the inquiry as a sham" and a political stunt". Continue reading...

The Latin American nation, once relatively safe, is now in the grip of organised crime. There are no swift or easy solutionsAll I know is that it's time to leave this country, and go very far away." Those words, from a staff member at the TV station attacked by masked gunmen live on air on Tuesday, encapsulate the shock and despair that many in Ecuador now feel. The assault on TC Television in Guayaquil, Ecuador's most dangerous city, was one of multiple spectacular and coordinated attacks by gangs, in which at least 10 people were killed.Murderous crime has soared over recent years. But this was not just about gangs running rampant and battling each other with a sense of impunity, while brutalising anyone who got in their way. The invasion of a university and hospitals, the kidnapping and killing of police and prison guards, the torching of cars in residential areas, attacks in the Amazon region and looting in the capital, Quito - all these showed gangs operating well outside their usual fiefdoms, banding together, and turning on national institutions and civilians to try to force political leaders to back off. This strategic brutality, which has been described as violent lobbying", has been used elsewhere in Latin America, but is new to Ecuador. For many, it feels as if the fate of the country itself is at stake. Continue reading...

Roxanne Doucette charged with attempted murder after someone pretending to be soap star told her to get rid' of husbandA Massachusetts woman has found herself in hot water after she allegedly poisoned her husband's soup because someone pretending to be soap opera star told her to.Roxanne Doucette of Townsend, Massachusetts, has been charged with attempted murder, resisting arrest, and assaulting a police officer. Continue reading...

Joan Littlejohn, 84, and Glennwood Fowler, 82, were discovered in house with interior temperature exceeding 120FAn elderly couple in South Carolina was found dead in their house over the weekend after their heater measured over 1,000F, according to authorities.On Saturday evening, police in South Carolina's northern city of Spartanburg performed a welfare check on a house on Woodview Avenue following concerns from family members who had not heard from their parents since last Wednesday, according to a police report reviewed by the Guardian. Continue reading...

New research found that poorest fifth pay a tax rate 60% higher, on average, than the top 1% of householdsA total of 44 of the 50 US states worsen inequality by making the wealthy pay a lesser share of their income in taxes than lower income people, a new analysis has found.State and local tax regimes are upside-down", the new research finds, with weak or non-existent personal income taxes in many states allowing richer Americans to avoid tax. A reliance on sales and excise taxes, considered regressive because they disproportionately impact the poor, has helped fuel this inequality, according to the report. Continue reading...

Even to hardened New Yorkers, a tale of renegade religious diggers pursued by shovel-wielding police officers is irresistibleWith storms battering the US and Donald Trump back in court claiming immunity this week, light relief comes in the form of a news story we didn't know we needed: the discovery in Brooklyn of a secret tunnel, apparently dug by a faction within the ultra-religious Chabad-Lubavitch community. The tunnel, which runs for 15m (50ft), starts under the synagogue and peters out beneath a ritual bath house several buildings along. When cops arrived on Monday to fill it with concrete, they met with strong resistance from the tunnellers. What can only be described as a melee ensued.There's a lot to unpack here, but let's start with illegal tunnelling", which, with all due deference to a group of worshippers in distress, triggers in the abstract a bolt of joy at the sheer range and eccentricity of human behaviour. The tunnel in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighbourhood was reportedly dug by a group of young male students, characterised by Hassidic leaders as extremist", for purposes that remain obscure. What is known is that residents in homes neighbouring the synagogue reported suspicious sounds coming from beneath the floor. When city officials turned up to investigate, they unearthed some kind of religious take on The Shawshank Redemption that contravened - big New York obsession, up there with homicide - various building regulations and codes. It's not a prohibition many of us have had cause to test, but I guess you need a permit to dig a tunnel in the city?Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The US autoworkers' union plans to bring more employees under its protection after record deals with automakers last yearOver 30% of workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant outside of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, have signed union authorization cards, the United Auto Workers (UAW) announced on Tuesday.The news is another significant boost to the UAW's plans to unionize non-union auto workers throughout the US after securing historic contracts for workers at the big three US automakers last year. Continue reading...

Golden age of the lucrative partnership overlapped with the final days of the American monocultureThe announcement that Tiger Woods and Nike have called time on their 27-year commercial partnership came as no surprise to anyone who has been paying close attention. It has been nearly a decade since Nike, which said in a recent earnings call it will seek $2bn in cost savings over the next three years, stopped making golf equipment, including balls, clubs and bags. Woods's limited schedule after his exhaustive litany of surgeries, before and after his career-threatening car accident in February 2021, have made the 15-time major champion less visible than ever.But there is a specific finality to Monday's conscious uncoupling, which came one week after Woods's 48th birthday, that signals the end of an era in the business of sport: the death of the sort of all-encompassing athlete-brand marriage that truly flooded the cultural mainstream. The obvious template is Nike's union with Michael Jordan, a leviathan deal whose modest origins were playfully dramatised for the screen last year. Indeed, Phil Knight spent three years aggressively recruiting Woods based on the Jordan proof of concept: that a single charismatic sportsperson touched with divine gifts could shoulder an entire sports-entertainment empire. Everybody has been looking for the next Michael Jordan and they were looking on the basketball court," the Nike chairman said at the time. And he was walking down the fairway all the time." Continue reading...

She can fit months' worth of essentials into the tiniest of bags. I go big - and still always forget somethingI'm rubbish at packing. Be it for a night away or for several months, I'm hopeless. I never, but never, fail to forget something essential. A toothbrush, medication, pants, the suitcase itself - you name it. And always, but always, more than half of what I take isn't needed. I've given up worrying about this. When I was a younger man I was foolish enough to harbour hopes of one day wanting for nothing while I was away. Never happened; never will.But I'd rather be me than one of those clever dicks who fits enough for a month in the tiniest, piddliest little cases which, notwithstanding their laughable smallness, are nevertheless equipped with no fewer than four wheels. Four! You see them in airports, these things, their smug owners wheeling them around like they're walking prim little poodles off to the shops.Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Former president promotes racist conspiracy theory that Haley, born in South Carolina and a US citizen, is not qualified for officeA leading professor of US constitutional law condemned Donald Trump for playing the race card" by propagating the totally baseless" claim that Nikki Haley, his surging rival for the Republican presidential nomination, is not qualified because her parents were not US citizens when she was born.The birther claims against Nikki Haley are totally baseless as a legal and constitutional matter," Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, told NBC. Continue reading...

South Africa's lawsuit alleging genocide is a fitting call for the right of an oppressed people to self-determinationA spectre has long haunted Israel: the spectre of South Africa. Specifically, Israeli leaders have feared that a world recognising their oppression of Palestinians as an apartheid system might be moved to impose on Israel the same international isolation that helped end South Africa's system of white minority rule. However, few Israeli leaders would have expected that impetus to come in the form of a South African lawsuit in The Hague alleging genocide.Recent UN general assembly votes show that most of the international community is appalled by Israel's brutalisation of Gaza, yet appears unable to act. It's as if Israel is shielded by an unspoken but commonly accepted US prerogative to set the terms of any international interventions in the Middle East. Indeed, what makes the South African action all the more remarkable is the reality that when you indict Israel for genocide, you're effectively accusing its armourer and diplomatic enabler - the US - of being an accomplice to the crime of all crimes. Continue reading...

The broadcaster has given the quarterback free rein to spread misinformation on the Pat McAfee Show. And now he is taking aim at the network itselfJust as when he drops back to pass, Aaron Rodgers scans the world around him and sees enemies everywhere. Over the past four years, The Pat McAfee Show, a streaming sensation that's recently found a home on ESPN, has provided a forum for the New York Jets quarterback to settle scores and single out other targets for offense - not least his grudge against Jimmy Kimmel.Rodgers's three-year-old feud with Kimmel - which began with the talkshow host slamming Rodgers, a stubborn vaccine skeptic, after he tested positive for Covid - reached a troubling inflection point last week when Rodgers appeared on McAfee's show and implied the comedian was nervous" about being linked to Jeffrey Epstein. The quarterback pledged to pop a bottle of something" if Kimmel's name surfaced in the recent release of documents related to the disgraced financier. Continue reading...

Several years of sustained harassment of election workers and judges have led to security concerns and high a high turnoverThe judge overseeing the election interference case against Donald Trump in Washington DC had her home visited by police after a fake emergency call, and attempts were made to do the same to prosecutor Jack Smith.The Maine secretary of state was swatted", too, after she ruled that the former president could not appear on the ballot there because of the 14th amendment. The Colorado judges who ruled similarly have faced threats, leading to increased security. Continue reading...

Special session comes after surprise veto from governor, whose proposed new rules go well beyond' scope of original billOhio lawmakers will return to the statehouse on Wednesday as house Republicans attempt to revive HB 68, a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for trans youth.The special session comes after Governor Mike DeWine surprised fellow Republicans by vetoing HB 68 late last month, a move celebrated by LGBTQ+ advocates and parents of transgender children in the state. Continue reading...

Even sham elections need to be conducted effectively - get them wrong and they can jeopardise a whole regimeIn December, Vladimir Putin finally ended any suspense by announcing his candidacy for a fifth term as Russia's president. With a blend of resignation and cynicism, the world will watch as the country gears up for another presidential election" - a term I employ with the heaviest of quotation marks.In the lead-up to the election, Russia will undergo a cosmetic transformation. Streets will be cleaned, buildings given a fresh coat of paint and pensioners handed their electoral encouragement: a free meal. On the day of the election, students and state employees will be herded to polling stations to perform their most important job: voting in an orchestrated display of fealty to Putin.Olga Chyzh researches political violence and repressive regimes. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto Continue reading...