by Joan E Greve in Washington and Nick Robins-Early on (#6N64Z)
Republican House speaker Mike Johnson bemoans shameful day' while Democrats praise strength of US justice systemDonald Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records set off a political firestorm in Washington on Thursday, with Republicans furiously lambasting the verdict as a miscarriage of justice while Democrats commended New York jurors for rendering a fair judgment in one of the most historic trials in US history.Republicans unsurprisingly rallied around Trump, reiterating their baseless allegations that the Biden administration had engaged in political persecution of the former US president. Continue reading...
Speaking after he was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, the former US president said the 'real verdict is going to be November 5, by the people'. Trump complained that his trial was 'a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who is corrupt'
Farm worker who had contact with sick cows tests positive for H5N1, making it the second case detected in MichiganA third person has now tested positive for H5N1 in the US, the second case to be detected in Michigan, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Thursday.A farm worker who had contact with sick cows tested positive for the virus. This new case does not seem to indicate human-to-human transmission of the highly pathogenic avian flu, as it was detected on a different farm from the previous Michigan case, officials said. Continue reading...
Prince King pleaded not guilty on Tuesday over what police said was nine-year reign of terror in Azusa, CaliforniaAn elderly California man accused of menacing his neighborhood for almost a decade with a slingshot and ball bearings has died a day after bonding out of jail.Prince King, 81, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to a number of vandalism charges relating to what authorities said was a nine-year reign of terror in which he would maliciously smash windows of homes and vehicles in his Azusa community. Continue reading...
William Knight, 37, of South Dakota, accused of being among first participants in Capitol attack, faces two felony chargesThe FBI has arrested a South Dakota man on charges that he stood among the first participants in the January 6 insurrection, allegedly breaking police lines and ramming a large sign toward officers during the riot.William Knight, 37, of Rapid City, faces two felony charges of obstructing law enforcement and resisting or impeding officers, the justice department announced on Thursday. He also faces five misdemeanor charges, including engaging in violence on the day supporters of Donald Trump tried to derail certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Continue reading...
Bill Pruitt also says the then reality TV star was incompetent and implied illicit trysts while engaged to MelaniaDonald Trump used a racial epithet to reject the prospect of a Black winner on the debut season of The Apprentice, the Emmy-nominated series that transformed the former president into a reality TV star and fuelled his political career.Trump rejected the views of close aides that Kwame Jackson, a broker who worked for Goldman Sachs, had been the most impressive contestant, saying, Would America buy a [N-word] winning?", according to a producer who worked on the NBC show's opening series in 2004, when it was called Meet the Billionaire. Continue reading...
India's prime minister encourages a belief in his divinity, leading followers to think it is God's purpose to spread fear and loathingNo party or candidate shall include in any activity which may aggravate existing differences or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic." So reads the rulebook for Indian elections. Has anyone told Narendra Modi? India's prime minister has resorted to overtly Islamophobic language during the two-month campaign, painting India's 200 million Muslims as an existential threat to the Hindu majority. Laughably, the body charged with conducting free and fair polls did issue a feeble call for restraint from star campaigners". With the Indian election results out next week, one commentator warned Mr Modi has put a target on Indian Muslims' backs, redirecting the anger of poor and marginalised Hindu communities away from crony capitalists and the privileged upper castes".Mr Modi's tirades are meant to distract an electorate suffering from high inflation and a lack of jobs despite rapid economic growth. His Bharatiya Janata party's political strategy is to emphasise threats to Hindu civilisation, and the need for a united Hindu nation against Muslims. However, Mr Modi has fused this Hindu nationalism with the idea that he was sent by God. The Congress party's Rahul Gandhi, his main opponent, suggested that anyone else making such a claim needed to see a psychiatrist.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...
Embattled senator reportedly procures 800 signatures needed before 4 June deadline to appear on November ballotSenator Bob Menendez has reportedly procured enough signatures to run for re-election as an independent, even while the incumbent Democrat faces bribery charges over his alleged work promoting the interests of the Egyptian government.NBC News reported on Thursday that Menendez secured the 800 signatures needed by 4 June to appear on the November ballot, although the senator's team hopes to collect as many as 10,000 signatures before the Tuesday deadline. Continue reading...
Panel asks to rehear judge's instructions as Trump rants about proceedings and compares himself to Mother TeresaDonald Trump's criminal hush-money case in New York enters its second day of jury deliberations on Thursday with panelists weighing whether a payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels was part of a plot to sway the 2016 election.The jurors deliberated for approximately four and a half hours on Wednesday after beginning their discussions at about 11.30am. Continue reading...
House speaker plans far-reaching bill including tax cuts and border security to make Trump the most consequential president'Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, is planning a sweeping ideological legislative drive that aims to make Donald Trump the most consequential president of the modern era" if the Republicans win power in November.A far-reaching bill containing a range of policy priorities at once - including tax cuts worth trillions, border security and rolling back Obamacare - is being prepared to avoid the mistakes the GOP believed happened early in Trump's first term, when Johnson says the party wasted time because its victory over Hillary Clinton took it by surprise. Continue reading...
The backlash to the Bridgerton star's very normal-sized body is not just because she appears on screen - but because she dares to be desirable and sexual on screenEvery so often a celebrity goes on a publicity tour that is so undeniably charming that it ends up all over the internet. Right now it is Nicola Coughlan, who is travelling around the world talking to people about her saucy starring role in the new season of Bridgerton.I (queer, fat, middle-aged, horny) am the exact demographic to receive this content. Her turn as straight-edged lesbian Clare in Derry Girls is an incredible component of one of my favourite comedies.There's nothing wrong with fat - it's hardly a moral shortcoming - but a zest for equality and diversity (and in this case good acting) just isn't enough to make a fat girl who wins the prince remotely plausible. Continue reading...
Jamie Ray Mills, 50, is scheduled to be put to death after he was convicted of bludgeoning an elderly couple 20 years agoAlabama is set to execute a man on Thursday evening who was convicted of bludgeoning an elderly couple to death 20 years ago to steal prescription drugs and $140 from their home.Jamie Ray Mills, 50, is scheduled to be put to death on Thursday evening at a south Alabama prison. It will be Alabama's first execution since the state conducted the US's first execution using nitrogen gas in January. Lethal injection remains the state's main execution method unless an inmate has requested nitrogen. Continue reading...
Critics fear law could stop bystanders from holding police accountable by preventing them from filming officersCritics of a new Louisiana law that makes it a crime to approach within 25ft (7.6 meters) of a police officer under certain circumstances fear the measure could hinder the public's ability to film officers - a tool that has increasingly been used to hold police accountable.Under the law, anyone who is convicted of knowingly or intentionally" approaching an officer who is lawfully engaged in the execution of his official duties", and after being ordered to stop approaching or retreat", faces a fine up to $500, as many as 60 days in jail or both. The law was signed by Governor Jeff Landry, a Republican, on Tuesday and goes into effect on 1 August. Continue reading...
One of this summer's hosts is represented by a multinational, multicultural team that embodies the American dreamOne summer night in Centerville, Ohio, in 2010, a scattered band of club cricketers gathered for their regular Wednesday practice session in Stubbs Park. One had brought a new recruit, his 19-year-old nephew Ali Khan, who had only just come over from his village in Attock, Pakistan. Khan had only ever played with a tape ball, but after his first over with a real one all the other players stopped to watch his second. Everyone," Khan remembers, was like: Wait, who's this kid? Where's he from again?'" They put him in the first team that very same weekend.Over a decade later, Khan, now 33, has just finished the second of three games against Bangladesh at the Prairie View ground in Houston, a warm-up series for the World Cup. USA were one-nil up and one win away from their first-ever series victory against a Test-playing nation, but the game was getting away from them. Bangladesh only needed 21 runs from the last 18 balls. They had four wickets left, and one of them was Shakib Al Hasan, one of the world's very best all-round cricketers, who was 30 not out off just 22 balls. Continue reading...
The officials accuse the administration of not telling the truth about Israel's obstruction of aid to Palestinians in GazaTwo more US officials have resigned over the Gaza war, saying that the Biden administration is not telling the truth about Israeli obstruction of humanitarian assistance to more than two million Palestinians trapped and starving in the tiny coastal strip.Alexander Smith, a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said he was given a choice between resignation and dismissal after preparing a presentation on maternal and child mortality among Palestinians, which was cancelled at the last minute by USAID leadership last week. Continue reading...
Politicians parroted untrue rumors that Hamas had beheaded Israeli babies. When the children are Palestinian, they shrugEarlier this week, I sat down to write a piece about a campus safety officer at a public college in New York who told pro-Palestinian protesters that he supports genocide. Yes I do, I support genocide," the officer said, after a protester accused him of this at a graduation event at the College of Staten Island, part of the public City University of New York (CUNY) system, last Thursday. I support killing all you guys, how about that?"It's possible that you didn't hear about this incident: while it was covered by a few outlets, including the Associated Press, it didn't get a huge amount of press. It certainly wasn't splashed all over the front page of the New York Post the way it would have been if that guard had made the same comment about Israelis. The New York Times, which has written a lot about safety on college campuses - and published a piece on anti-Israel speeches at CUNY just a couple of days before this incident - didn't seem to deem it newsworthy. And the White House didn't chime in with a horrified statement about anti-Palestinian bias on campuses. After all, this wasn't a big deal, right? It was just a security guard saying he supports genocide. Which, it should be clear now, is essentially the same position as the US government.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
New documentary tells story of woman emotionally and physically abused by husband OJ Simpson, who was acquitted of her murderNicole Brown Simpson's sisters hope an upcoming documentary on the victim who was battered and stalked by her ex-husband OJ Simpson sheds new light on resources for domestic violence victims, they said on Wednesday.I asked Nicole all the wrong questions," Denise Brown told CBS Mornings. I said, Why? Why are you with him?' And those are the questions you don't want to ask a victim of domestic violence. You want to be supportive. You want to listen." Continue reading...
Calls, notes and witness testimony appear to fit with prosecutors' case that Trump falsified records as part of plot to influence 2016 electionAs the jury began deliberations on Wednesday, Donald Trump appeared to have little room to extricate himself from the mass of evidence presented in the weeks-long case.A recording of Trump directing hush money to be paid in cash. Handwritten notes by Trump's ex-chief financial officer about how to reimburse Cohen. A parade of witnesses who testified the Trump campaign was desperate to suppress the story of his affair with the adult film star Stormy Daniels.by violating the Federal Election and Campaign Act, which in 2016 made it a crime for any person to make contributions to a campaign in excess of $2,700 per year, or for a corporation to make a contribution of any amount to any candidate's campaign in a federal election.by causing the falsification of other business records, including bank records for the shell companies that Cohen established on false pretenses to pay the hush-money to Daniels.by violating federal tax and New York state tax law 1801(a)3 and 1802 since Cohen's reimbursement for the hush money was grossed up" to compensate him for taxes he would have to pay on the $130,000 when he recorded it as income on his tax returns. Continue reading...
by Alice Herman in Madison, Wisconsin and George Chid on (#6N5HW)
Many seem ambivalent on whether the ex-president will be found guilty - and some think it will only deepen polarizationFor Josh Ellis, a refrigerator technician from southern Wisconsin, Donald Trump's trial in New York is a sideshow. He's not convinced of the prosecution's narrative, or the former president's - and the verdict will not likely affect his vote in November, anyway.Biden's running this country into the ground," said Ellis, who said the economy is his main concern. At 49, Ellis has long viewed politicians as out-of-touch on economic issues; he used to vote for Democrats, but switched in 2016 to vote for Trump, who he saw as possibly offering a change. Continue reading...
World's largest coffee chain agrees framework with Workers United as push to increase unionization continues apaceStarbucks has resumed bargaining with union leaders amid a fresh wave of organized stores after the world's largest coffee chain agreed to open talks over labor agreements.After a long, embittered campaign, the Seattle-based coffee giant jointly announced a new framework with Workers United in February to reach contracts with unionized stores. Continue reading...
DeHart Hubbard was intent on making history. That he did so while injured made his achievements even more remarkableDeHart Hubbard knew about the jinx waiting for him.Hubbard was a student at the University of Michigan and regarded as one of the best long jumpers in the world. Heading into the 1924 Paris Olympics, he was America's best hope for gold in the long jump and favored to become the first Black athlete to win an individual Olympic gold medal. Continue reading...
Blame the gig economy or just sheer laziness, but fewer of us stopping for lunch in the working day can surely only be a bad thingA long time ago, when I worked in an office, we used to take lunch quite seriously. This meant getting up from our desks, walking on our legs, and eating with another human being for the purposes of chat. Sometimes this even happened outside, or at a restaurant. It seems absurd now. Who has the time to hang out in the middle of the day or drop $20 on a sandwich when you could be sitting at your desk, staring at the internet, grazing leftovers from a plastic container from home? (Or, if you're already at home, let's be honest, taking a nap.)If this killjoy reflex is a side-effect of age - for most people, time becomes less their own as they get older - it is also, it seems, a sign of the times. Two recent pieces of research in the US indicate that, over the past four or five years, Americans have been spending less money at lunchtime - 3.3% less, according to a payments app, Square - and also moving around less in the middle of the day. Continue reading...
A change is no guarantee of success. But a wider pool of talent could help improve the game for players, fans and even the officials themselvesThe modern Premier League, in its self-mythology, is all about flow: the flow of the game (technically sophisticated, end to end", heavy on goals and improbable acts of attacking wizardry); the flow of players from country to country and club to club; the flow of managers, who have become the new football economy's ultimate mercenaries amid a murderous churn of coaching staff hirings and firings; the flow of owners, a multiplying collection of asset strippers, money launderers, nation states grasping at global status and power, and venture capitalists out to make a quick buck; the flow of supporters, as old loyalties have loosened and allegiances have become more transactional, more revisable; and the flow, above all, of money, prodigious amounts of money, without which none of the weekly somersaulting, knee-sliding, corner-flag-slapping extravaganza of the Premier League would be possible.Continuous movement is the league's mantra, both on and off the pitch. Footballs, pounds, dollars, people: all of them must be kept in a constant state of motion, ready for action whenever and wherever opportunity arises. Removal of restrictions on the circulation of labor and capital has been a key part of the English top flight's emergence as a truly international league over the past three decades. The Premier League now stands uncontested as the world's most powerful advertisement for sporting globalization, and its journey from parochial stronghold of the English game - all mud, tackling, team spirit, and British grit - to central clearing house of the world's footballing passions can be told in a single statistical pair. On the first weekend of the inaugural Premier League season, in 1992, there were only 13 foreign players among the 22 starting lineups; of the 533 players registered at the start of the 2023-24 season, 360 - more than two-thirds - were from outside the UK. Continue reading...
British footwear brand does not rule out job losses, while profits fall by 43% to 97mDr Martens has not ruled out another round of job cuts after revealing plans to slash up to 25m worth of costs to help counter weak US sales.The British footwear brand said its latest cost-cutting programme will aim to save 20m to 25m by streamlining its operations and securing better supply contracts. Bosses will also boost organisational efficiency", signalling that the company may consider job cuts across its 3,600 global workforce. Continue reading...
The National Spelling Bee, which began Tuesday and will conclude with Thursday's nationally televised championship finals, invited 245 spellers to compete for a $50,000 cash prize and orthographic immortality
The sad decline of this nearly 200-year-old institution has culminated with a decision to end the daily print editionThey could as well have felled Big Ben, drained the Serpentine or butchered the ravens in the Tower. No more daily print edition of the Evening Standard. No headlines to greet us at every tube station. No cockney cries of: Read all aba'it!" No news of what celebrity was where last night and with whom.The Evening Standard, which has announced plans to shutter its daily newspaper in favour of a digital service and weekly magazine, was truly a London institution. Its tabloid rivals, the Star and Evening News, merged in 1960 and closed in 1980, but there was always a touch of class to the Standard. For journalists told to start their careers working local", it was a golden step to a proper Fleet Street job. Londoners needed to read the Standard.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Photos of otter 841, who gave birth to a pup last year, show her floating over holiday weekend in popular Santa Cruz surfing spotOtter 841, who shot to international fame last year for her surfboard-stealing interactions with northern California surfers and kayakers, has been spotted recently after disappearing for several months. Over Memorial day weekend, photos of the now six-year-old otter posted to social media showed her floating on her back at Steamer Lane, a popular surfing spot in Santa Cruz. She was identified by her signature blue tag attached to one of her flippers.Otter 841 began making waves last summer after Mark Woodward, a local photographer, began posting images and videos to social media of her biting and commandeering surfboards. People were captivated by her fearlessness when interacting with humans and quickly projected human motivations to her behavior. Continue reading...
President and vice-president gear up for 2024 election with Black Voters for Biden-Harris' rally at majority Black Philadelphia schoolGearing up for the 2024 election, the Biden-Harris campaign launched its Black voters initiative on Wednesday at Philadelphia's Girard College, a majority Black boarding school.Around 2pm in an auditorium filled with hundreds of Black Philly residents, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris approached the podium to applause and an audience shouting four more years". Continue reading...
Justice tells Congress controversy over two extremist flags flown at his houses does not merit recusal from casesJustice Samuel Alito is rejecting calls to step aside from supreme court cases involving the former president Donald Trump and January 6 defendants because of the controversy over flags that flew over his homes.In letters to members of Congress on Wednesday, Alito says his wife was responsible for flying an upside-down US flag over his home in 2021 and an Appeal to Heaven" flag at his New Jersey beach house last year. Continue reading...
by Alex Reid, Daniel Harris and Yara El-Shaboury on (#6N4K5)
The defending champion had to save a match point to defeat a resurgent Naomi Osaka in three setsWe're still on serve on Court 7, Shelton and Nishikori locked at 4-4. It's Shelton looking the likelier, but if the set - and the match - come down to a point here and there, the wily veteran will fancy himself.Vondrousova is on the board, holding in the first game of set two, while Tsitsipas takes the first set of Altmaier 6-3. Continue reading...
Independent presidential candidate alleges network is colluding with Trump and Biden to exclude him from 27 June debateThe independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr filed an election complaint on Wednesday alleging CNN is colluding with Joe Biden and the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, to exclude him from a debate the network is hosting next month.Kennedy alleges the requirements to participate in the 27 June debate were designed to ensure only Biden and Trump would qualify and Kennedy claims he is being held to a higher standard. Continue reading...
I was shocked to learn of the brazenness of Israel's intimidation effort. It is to the credit of the ICC prosecutors that it has failedI should not be surprised at the lawlessness of a government that bombs and starves Palestinian civilians in Gaza, but I was still shocked by the brazenness of Israel's efforts to subvert the international criminal court's investigation of its war crimes. As exposed by the Guardian along with the Israeli media outlets +972 and Local Call, the Israeli government over the course of nine years deployed its intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court's inquiries".The effort was brazen. Mysterious men visited the former chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, outside her private home and handed her an envelope of cash, which the ICC believed was likely [Israel] signalling to the prosecutor that it knew where she lived", the Guardian has reported. They allegedly threatened her and her family, saying: You should help us and let us take care of you. You don't want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family." They mounted an apparent sting operation against her husband and a smear campaign" against her. They also extensively monitored her and her staff's communications with Palestinians, according to this reporting.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...
Barbara Balmaseda, 23, charged with five counts after FBI investigation identifies her at riot alongside Proud BoysA Republican activist with links to Florida's Republican senator, Marco Rubio, and its governor, Ron DeSantis, has been indicted on charges relating to the 6 January 2021 storming of the US Capitol in a bid to overturn Joe Biden's presidential election victory.Barbara Balmaseda, 23, has been charged with five counts of being involved in the riot, including obstructing an official proceeding, knowingly entering and remaining in a restricted building, and engaging in disorderly conduct with intent to impede a session of Congress. Continue reading...
Mother of Michael Fanone, officer attacked during US Capitol riot, targeted by unnamed person who claimed to have killed herThe home of the mother of Michael Fanone, a Washington DC police officer who nearly died in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol, was swatted" on Tuesday night.An unnamed person who had written a manifesto seen by NBC falsely claimed they had killed Fanone's mother and would go to Fanone's old high school on Wednesday and shoot people. The manifesto listed Fanone's mother's address in Virginia. Continue reading...
Lawsuit alleges airline representative approached three Black men individually and asked them to leave without explanationThree Black men have filed a federal lawsuit against American Airlines for racial discrimination, alleging that the airline forced them to deboard a plane after a complaint that an unidentified passenger had body odor.On Wednesday, lawyers of Alvin Jackson, Emmanuel Jean Joseph and Xavier Veal filed a lawsuit in the US district court for the eastern district of New York against the airline. The lawsuit follows a flight the men took on 5 January from Phoenix, Arizona to New York, New York. Continue reading...
Haley writing finish them' on an Israeli bomb is everything horrific about the US elite's morally empty foreign policyThis past Sunday night, an Israeli assault struck displaced Palestinians sheltering in tents outside of Rafah, in northern Gaza. The barrage killed at least 45 people in a hellish blaze, according to medics and witnesses, with many of the dead children charred or dismembered beyond recognition. We pulled out children who were in pieces," Mohammed Abuassa, who rushed to the scene, told the Associated Press. The fire in the camp was unreal," he said. The strike provoked another round of international outrage at Israel's actions in Gaza. (Israel says it's investigating.)Not long after, on Tuesday, former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was all over social media for a picture taken of her during a visit to Israel. In the picture, Haley - the one Republican who had been frequently lauded for her smarts on foreign policy - is seen squatting down in front of a row of Israeli artillery shells, likely provided by the United States, with pen in hand. Finish them," she wrote on one of the shells.Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
Trend is especially pronounced among Black, Hispanic and Asian participants, and those who report lower socioeconomic statusGirls in the United States had their first periods earlier over the last five decades and it took longer to experience regular cycles, a new study has found.The study, published in JAMA Network Open, found the trend is especially pronounced among Black, Hispanic, Asian and mixed race participants, and among those who reported lower socioeconomic status. Continue reading...
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