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Take It Down allows anyone to anonymously generate a digital fingerprint of the image they want deleted, without uploading it“Once you send that photo, you can’t take it back,” goes the warning to teenagers, often ignoring the reality that many teens send explicit images of themselves under duress, or without understanding the consequences.A new online tool aims to give some control back to teens, or people who were once teens, and take down explicit images and videos of themselves from the internet. Continue reading...

Johnny Haught and his trainees volunteered when a restaurant canceled a brunch event after performers received threatsA group of West Virginia mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters are offering security to help a local drag show that canceled an event after receiving threats.MMA coach Johnny Haught and his trainees volunteered to provide security to the Primanti Bros restaurant in Wheeling, West Virginia, for the show it was set to host. Continue reading...

Democrats and Republicans in Senate and House have pledged to hold hearings on crash that has sparked major pollution fearsTreasury secretary Janet Yellen has made a surprise visit to Kyiv, where she’s underscoring Washington’s continued support for Ukraine one year after Russia invaded.We at the Guardian have a separate live blog with all the latest Ukraine news, which you can follow along here. Continue reading...

Large swaths of country face extreme conditions as more than 300,000 homes and businesses remain without powerMore than 304,000 US homes and businesses were still without power on Monday afternoon, following a weekend of wild winter weather that wreaked havoc from coast to coast – and the storms aren’t done yet. Millions of people across the US are bracing for more heavy snow and strong winds across the country as the threat of devastating tornadoes lingers through the midwest.“A busy weather pattern is expected to continue through midweek with impacts throughout many different regions of the country,” the National Weather Service (NWS) said in a Monday forecast, noting the continuation of frosty conditions and furious gusts. Some parts of California could see several feet of snow in the coming days, with winds of up to 60mph. Continue reading...

His opposition to the revised Northern Ireland protocol should be treated with the same contempt with which he ran the partyRishi Sunak has no alternative. The United Kingdom which Northern Ireland is part of is a democracy ruled by the Westminster parliament. In the matter of the Northern Ireland protocol, the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) is claiming the right of veto over a classic function of any union – foreign trade. The party is supported by the Tories’ recent leader and prime minister, Boris Johnson. This is intolerable.Polls show support for the DUP hovering between 20-25%. It does not represent most of Northern Ireland’s people. Nor does it command a majority of unionist opinion, with official unionists, the extreme TUV and the Alliance party together garnering close to 30%. It is only the power-sharing Good Friday agreement that keeps the DUP with a veto, which it is using to halt the devolved government at Stormont until it gets its way against the protocol.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Fox News, Trump and JD Vance claim Biden overlooked East Palestine’s plight, citing residents’ whiteness as the reason. Plus, what should New York do with its billion-dollar weed mountain?

Welcome to the ‘hungry gap’ – the time of year when salad days are months away, and there simply isn’t enough food. To confront this in 2023 forces a reckoningI don’t even like tomatoes, especially, but I seemed to have nine in a paper bag, and had picked them up with my own hands – this detail will be important later. I had a couple of other things – a single onion and some herb that I could have just as easily stolen from a front garden – and my plan was to make salsa for assorted teenage fusspots, as well as tomato soup. Fifteen quid? I thought the decimal point was in the wrong place. Then I thought it must be a language barrier, and “15” was Portuguese for £4.50. I didn’t really want to interrogate the shopkeeper, who I know by name, though she doesn’t know my name, so there’s a world in which I could have just dropped the lot and run. Obviously, I couldn’t just get fewer tomatoes, because I had handled them all. But now I was embarked on work that I could have outsourced to Doritos and Heinz at one seventh of the cost and a 70th of the time, and it felt mad, obscurely vain, like Marie Antoinette milking a goat on her fake farm, a spoilt pantomime of the simple life.I realise I’m not the only person to have noticed this, though I may be the first person to notice it only after I was locked in to a massive nine-tomato deal. Thérèse Coffey had already suggested we replace tomatoes with turnips, cue government cheerleaders suddenly full of enthusiasm for what we now call “winter salad” and previously called “coleslaw”. Restaurants have been experimenting with so-called white replacements on tomato-thirsty food, such as pizza and pasta, but the white is not turnip, it tends to be cheese. There is no known culinary circumstance in which tomatoes and turnips are interchangeable, no situation at all.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

A deadly shipwreck is just the latest result of Italy’s hardline stance, coupled with EU prevention of legal migration and closure of safer routesThe photograph of the body of two-year-old Alan Kurdi lying on Turkish shores made headlines in 2015. “Never again,” cried an outraged international press, after Kurdi and his Syrian family drowned attempting to reach safety in Europe.The latest tragedy in the Mediterranean, claiming the lives of at least 62 individuals, including children, is a stark reminder that nothing has changed. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, expressed “deep sorrow”. The Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, warned that the tragedy should leave “no one indifferent” and appealed to the European Union. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, promised to “redouble the efforts”. Continue reading...

Ex-president became so incensed with late-night host’s jabs that two calls were made in 2018 to top executives at network ownerDonald Trump is fond of telling interviewers that he has a “very thick skin”, but it now appears that it was insufficiently robust to prevent Jimmy Kimmel jokes from getting under it while he was in the White House.Rolling Stone has revealed that in early 2018, a year into Trump’s presidency, he became so incensed with the late-night host’s jabs that he ordered White House officials to complain. At least two calls were made, the magazine reports, to top executives at Disney, which owns ABC, the channel which broadcasts Jimmy Kimmel Live. Continue reading...

The senator’s relationship with Biden has proven constructive, with an ambitious agenda – but some Sanders aides and supporters offer a mixed verdictThe band played On The Road Again. The New York studio audience chanted: “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!” Senator Bernie Sanders was making his 16th appearance on CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert – tying the record set by comedian John Oliver.Colbert confronted his guest with a card bearing a provocative headline, “Joe Biden Is Bernie Sanders”, from a Wall Street Journal column that argued the president will effectively be running for a re-election as a democratic socialist. The host asked Sanders: “Was this news to you?” Continue reading...

A new scientific review of the efficacy of masks is deeply flawed. That hasn’t stopped some from touting itMasks have played a key role in keeping us all safe throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. At the start, masks helped flatten the curve to protect our hospital systems, and since, masks have helped make public spaces and essential services more open and accessible to everyone. Many studies show that masks work, and they work best when everyone wears a high-quality one to protect each other. Masks are magnificent.Yet, three years into the pandemic, we still see conflicting stories in the news about masks on a daily basis. The latest culprit powering the confounding headlines is a new scientific review published in Cochrane. The paper analyzes many different studies that assess how physical measures – including masks – fare against respiratory viruses.Dr Lucky Tran is a scientist and public health communicator who works at Columbia University. During the pandemic, he has led several efforts to provide the latest information about Covid-19 to the public and policymakers, and advocate for more equitable and just public health policies. He holds a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge Continue reading...

Republican leaders draw on Reagan-era nostalgia to unite their party, but a 21st-century cold war would not end well for anyoneEvents surrounding the first year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine have had a cold war-esque feel, with America and its allies lined up on one side and China and Russia on the other. Some politicians in Washington – and perhaps Beijing – seem comfortable with this. But they should be careful. There’s no reason to believe a cold war re-run in the 21st century would turn out well for anyone, above all the US.This past week, President Biden paid a dramatic visit to Kyiv and then addressed a crowd in Warsaw, pledging unwavering US support for Ukraine. President Putin gave a speech of his own in which he stubbornly insisted that Nato was to blame for the war and suspended Russia’s participation in a vital nuclear arms control treaty. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, meanwhile confronted his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Munich, warning China not to supply Russia with weapons. Yi then flew to Moscow and stood alongside President Putin for a photo opportunity. Continue reading...

Making changes to a classic novel is always questionable – but could there be a worse time to risk glorifying invaders?*This article contains spoilers for the book All Quiet on the Western Front, and the latest film versionHaving cleaned up at the Baftas last week, All Quiet on the Western Front is now one of the favourites to win best picture at the Oscars in a fortnight. That’s an exciting development for Edward Berger, who directed and co-wrote the film, but German critics may not be so thrilled.As Philip Oltermann noted in the Guardian, reviewers from Berger’s homeland have slated his first world war epic, with one key objection being that it strays so far from the source novel by Erich Maria Remarque. “One wonders whether Berger has even read Remarque’s novel,” said Hubert Wetzel in Süddeutsche Zeitung. “If the characters in the film didn’t have the same names as those in the book, it would be difficult to find significant parallels between the two works.”Nicholas Barber is a freelance writer on film and pop culture Continue reading...

My dad died of cancer, then my brother, and there’s a high chance I’ll get it too. It’s taught me to stop hesitating – and live my life in full colourIn recent years, I have realised how excellent life can be when I stop putting things off. So many perfect todays are usurped by the promise of “more time tomorrow”, “when you’re old enough”, “when we have more money”. There is never a guarantee of more time, but we always have now.Learning to use my time with purpose has been bittersweet. It wasn’t exactly a choice – it comes from knowing that my old age is not guaranteed. But the perspective it has offered me has been worth the pain.Michelle Brasier will perform Average Bear at the Soho theatre in London from Mon 6 to Sat 11 Mar 2023 Continue reading...

Norfolk Southern, the company behind the Ohio train crash, and other rail firms spent millions on marketing and lobbyingSix children, smiling and laughing, sit at a table with lunch boxes open in front of them. “Hey guys! My dad can stop a train with his finger,” one brags. “My mom can see into the future,” another says, holding up her hands as binoculars. “My mom? She speaks train,” a third claims.Just then, her mom walks into the room. Another child asks if it’s true that she can talk to trains. “You betcha,” she says with a wink, as she stands in front of a sky-blue sign emblazoned with the logo of the Norfolk Southern Corporation. Continue reading...

All of my family keep it brief. Most messages are just ‘k’. So when an expression of affection finally arrives, it elicits a genuine thrillHow dry is your text life? I’ve recently become aware of the phenomenon of dry texting: the terse, single-word responses (Yes, No, OK, Lol) to chatty messages that are viewed as inadequate, hostile or hurtful.Our family chat is arid, a veritable Atacama Desert. Most messages are “k” or “OK”. Interesting titbits sent by those of us keen to maintain a skein of connection (yes, fine, mainly me) go uncommented on; often unopened. My husband recently circulated a link to a news article about the local repair cafe where he volunteers, which, thrillingly, featured a picture of him failing to repair a woman’s kettle and telling her “I am sorry for your loss”; neither of our sons responded. Continue reading...

President of Los Angeles-based nonprofit Kidsave says Americans need to be made aware that Ukrainian needs go beyond military aidSince Russian troops invaded Ukraine a little more than a year ago, some in the US have shown their support for the encroached country by volunteering to fight for it while others have called on politicians to equip the defenders with munitions and weapons.Randi Thompson is calling on Americans to ponder another way: aiding efforts to place Ukrainian children orphaned by the Russian invasion in new families within their country. Continue reading...

Kissing couples and snoozing subway kids feature in a major retrospective of street photographer Richard Sandler’s work – along with previously unseen shots Continue reading...

Homicide ‘clearance rates’ have plummeted over the past four decades, compounding relatives’ traumaEvery night since May, two-year-old Nylah Cheese has slept with a crocheted doll wearing a white tee, black pants and a silver chain. The toddler’s aunt, Silvia Lopez, had the figurine made in the likeness of Nylah’s father, Brandon Cheese, who was shot and killed at a park in San Francisco the month before.“She instantly knew it was him and screamed, ‘It’s Dada!’” Lopez, Brandon Cheese’s older sister, said. The toddler has since named it “Dada doll”. Continue reading...

Group speaks out after hospitals refused to offer treatment for a woman who had a near deadly miscarriage citing ambiguous lawAn influential group in Louisiana that has long opposed abortion access is calling out medical providers and their legal advisers who – for an apparent fear of liability – have cited the state’s ban on most abortions to deny treatments that remain legal.The group spoke out after hospitals in the state’s capital, Baton Rouge, refused to provide treatments for a woman who had a near deadly miscarriage. Continue reading...

Ronna McDaniel says loyalty pledge by primary candidates should be a ‘no-brainer’ for party’s presidential hopefulsThe Republican National Committee’s chairperson has said that all GOP primary candidates should sign a pledge promising to support the eventual party nominee if they wish to participate in the presidential debates.Ronna McDaniel, the RNC’s leader since 2017, told CNN in an interview Sunday that even though the debate criteria have not yet been released, the loyalty pledge should nevertheless be a “no-brainer” for the party’s presidential hopefuls. Continue reading...

Once-popular cartoon scrapped from hundreds of papers after Scott Adams calls Black people a ‘hate group’ on his YouTube showThe comic strip Dilbert has been dropped from multiple US newspapers in response to racist comments by its creator, Scott Adams, who called Black Americans a “hate group” and urged white people to “get the hell away” from Black people in a YouTube video.Adams’s comments on 22 February came in response to a conservative organization’s poll which appeared to show that 26% of Black respondents said they disagreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white”. Another 21% said they were not sure.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting Continue reading...

Hailed as ‘a trailblazer’, Flemister experienced widespread racism and discrimination during her tenure at the federal agencyThe first Black woman to have been hired by the US Secret Service, Zandra Flemister, has died at the age of 71, leaving behind as her legacy a rich political career, her fight with Alzheimer’s, and a lawsuit that details the widespread racism and discrimination she suffered during her tenure at the federal agency known for protecting presidents.Flemister, who died Tuesday, was “a trailblazer” and “inspired a future generation of agents,” the Secret Service’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, said in a statement about her death. Continue reading...

Experts fear this moment of agreement in Washington could escalate tensions with Beijing and increase the risk of conflictIn the weeks since the US military shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have spoken passionately about the need to more effectively compete with Beijing. A resolution condemning China for the balloon incident passed the House in an unanimous vote of 419 to 0.Joe Biden has similarly expressed hope that efforts to strengthen America’s global competitiveness in response to a rising China can unite Democrats and Republicans in an era defined by bitter partisanship. Continue reading...

The gathering of conservatives returns to Washington and could prove to be a crystal ball into the GOP’s 2024 outlookIts impresario is facing allegations of sexual assault. Its headline act is a twice impeached former US president under criminal investigation. And its after-dinner speaker is a local news anchor turned far-right election denier.Welcome to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which claims to be the biggest and most influential gathering of conservatives in the world. It is also a perennial window to the soul of the Republican party. Continue reading...

Rewriting the children’s author is about profit not ‘wokeness’ – part of the endless recycling and exploitation of old ideasGood news for me: the series of ITV’s Endeavour that starts airing tonight will be the last. Hooray! I hate Endeavour. A lot. In fact, I would have italicised the word “hate” to emphasise the fact, if I hadn’t worried that it would look weird next to the italicised title of the programme. But please imagine it was italicised.Just to qualify my hatred: I have never watched Endeavour and, having heard only positive reports, am convinced I would enjoy it. I haven’t watched it as a point of principle because, in my view, it shouldn’t exist. It shouldn’t exist because it spoils Inspector Morse. Continue reading...

The US president won rave reviews in Kyiv and Warsaw. But his old, cold war mindset is out of step with a changing worldIt was Joe Biden’s week. His energised performance in Kyiv and Warsaw recalled the campaigning style of a much younger man. Russian media sniped that the US president was warming up for his 2024 re-election campaign. They missed the point. He almost certainly intends to run again. Yet last week’s adrenaline rush had a different cause.Biden has cast himself as a latter-day Lionheart, leading a global crusade against the bad guys – what he calls “a test for the ages”. He’s on a high. He believes he, and the cause of democracy, are winning hands down. Sadly, he’s wrong. Continue reading...

Victories at several companies energized organizers, but hostile corporations – and an impotent labor board – stymie negotiationsUS corporations have mounted a fierce counterattack against the union drives at Starbucks, Amazon and other companies, and in response, federal officials are working overtime to crack down on those corporations’ illegal anti-union tactics – maneuvers that labor leaders fear could significantly drain the momentum behind today’s surge of unionization.The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that polices labor-management relations, has accused Starbucks and Amazon of a slew of illegal anti-union practices, among them firing many workers in retaliation for backing a union. Nonetheless, many workplace experts question whether the NLRB’s efforts, no matter how vigorous, can assure that workers have a fair shot at unionizing. Continue reading...

The Lehman Trilogy is an enthralling and acclaimed play. But, as it returns to London, we should discuss the profound problem at its coreOf all the stereotypes about Jews in the lexicon of antisemitism, none is as commonplace or enduring as the one about Jews and money. From Shylock and Fagin to Joe Rogan’s podcast and TikTok videos about the Rothschilds, the idea that Jews have a unique taste for acquiring wealth is the one thing that people think they “know” about them. Yet this historic anti-Jewish trope seems able to hide in plain sight, in the most surprising of places.The Lehman Trilogy, which has returned to the London stage, tells the story of the Lehman Brothers bank from its origins as a fabric store in Alabama to its collapse in the 2008 financial crash, the ultimate symbol of unregulated and uncontrollable banking. This award-winning, acclaimed play is an enthralling piece of theatre with five star reviews and a clutch of Tony awards. Unfortunately, it is also profoundly antisemitic. Not in a crude way – a clumsy turn of phrase here, a jarring stereotype there – but in its innermost essence, connecting a modern audience to malevolent beliefs about Jews and money that are buried deep within western thought. Most striking of all, none of the people responsible for writing, acting, directing or producing this play seem remotely aware, and most reviews have missed it entirely. I’m happy to accept that none of them are antisemitic, but it is as if the idea that Jews love money and power is – to use an appropriate phrase – priced in.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

The owner of the house decided to offer it to the university, which in turn plans to break it down as ‘a healing step’The house in which four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death last November in a case that stunned the US is fated for demolition, the school has announced.In a statement on Friday, university officials said that the owner of the King Street house in Moscow, Idaho, where Xana Kernodle, 20; Ethan Chapin, 20; Maddie Mogen, 21; and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, were killed has offered to give the house to the school. Continue reading...

Patients using Adderall, OxyContin and other medicines with ‘high potential for abuse’ will be required to physically visit a doctorThe US Drug Enforcement Administration has proposed rules that would again require patients to visit doctors in-person to obtain prescriptions for certain medications that are frequently abused.The announcement seeks to reverse policy changes made during the Covid-19 pandemic which allowed doctors to prescribe controlled drugs such as Adderall and OxyContin through virtual tele-health appointments. Continue reading...

Some view the decline in marriage rates as a crisis, yet cohabitation has much to recommend itNanny knows worst, English literature tells us, when she meddles in matters of the heart. If Juliet’s nurse and Wuthering Heights’ Nelly hadn’t freelanced quite so enthusiastically as relationship therapists, lives might have been saved and indeed lived happily ever after. Had Mrs Danvers thought to take a few deep breaths and detach herself from her late charge, Rebecca, some prime Cornish real estate might still be standing too.It is a strange quirk of rightwing discourse that those who rail hardest against the “nanny state” tend also to worry most about “the marriage crisis” and suggest, Sebastian Flyte style, that nanny after all has the answer. Marriage is a social good, they say,– citing benefits to children and to health – and should be treated that way by the state, through tax incentives or other financial and cultural nudges. The starched and joyless figure who is not to interfere in our eating, drinking or smoking is suddenly to be given a free hand in one of life’s biggest decisions. Romantic decisions are just too important to be trusted to the couple in question. Continue reading...

A drug-filled beast and an ennui-prone alligator sum up 21st-century life, but at least Flaco the owl is a positive role modelI’ll be first in line to watch Cocaine Bear, the new film based on a 1985 true story about a bear in Tennessee who snuffled a stash of drug smugglers’ cocaine and went into a deep-fried southern frenzy. Why Hollywood waited nearly 40 years to dramatise this is beyond me, but come 2023, Cocaine Bear is all of us: nihilistic, crazed, hypervigilant and doomed.Other animals are role-modelling alternative attitudes to these end times. Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl who escaped from New York’s Central Park zoo, is living his best life. Despite being raised in captivity, he’s been hunting by night and visiting the park’s skating rink like a sanguine Manhattan flaneur. Continue reading...

The object cannot be removed from the reptile, named ‘Godzilla’, due to her weakened state, said the Wildlife Conservation SocietyThe alligator discovered in a New York City park reportedly has a bathtub stopper stuck in her body, and her caretakers have been unable to remove it because of her poor state of health.The 4ft-long female reptile, rescued from a lake in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on 19 February, was named “Godzilla” because of her size. However, her health was in a dire state when she was recovered, and she was “extremely emaciated”, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said in a statement on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Richard Ward, 32, was shot thrice at close range by Charles McWhorter, who received a purple heart awardA Colorado sheriff’s office has given one of its deputies a medal after he fatally shot a man who mistakenly tried to get into the wrong car while picking his brother up from a local middle school.Charles McWhorter earned the Pueblo county sheriff’s office’s purple heart award for purportedly enduring injuries to his nose, forefinger, back, knee and neck as he shot Richard Ward three times at close range and killed him on 22 February 2022. McWhorter received the purple heart medal during a sheriff’s office award ceremony on 17 February, four days before Ward’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court against him and his agency. Continue reading...

Those aboard the flight included the pilot, nurse, paramedic, patient and the patient’s family memberFive people – including a patient, a relative of the patient and medical personnel – were killed in a plane crash Friday in Nevada, according to an air ambulance company.The sheriff’s office in Lyon county said it began receiving calls about a possible plane crash near the community of Stagecoach – about 25 miles south-east of Reno – about 9.15pm and found the wreckage two hours later. Continue reading...

Men aren’t naturally stoic: they’re just taught from a young age that emotions are for girls – and then people wonder why young men are so lonelySex, numerous studies show, is going out of fashion. Young people aren’t shagging much any more, a phenomenon that has been widely blamed on technology and online porn. And it’s not just sexual activity that’s declining – young men in the US appear to have fallen out of love with romantic relationships. A recent Pew Research study has found that 63% of men under 30 describe themselves as single, compared with 34% of women in the same age bracket. Cue a lot of dramatic headlines about, as the Hill put it, the “larger breakdown in the social, romantic and sexual life of the American male”. I imagine the Hill is referring to the heterosexual American male here, but Pew also looked at people who identify as LGB and found 62% of LGB men report being single compared to 37% of LGB women. Continue reading...

Like all abusive men, dictators seek to control who can speak and which narratives are believed. The only difference is scaleAs the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolded, I was reminded over and over again of the behaviour of abusive ex-husbands and boyfriends. At first he thinks that he can simply bully her into returning. When it turns out she has no desire to return, he shifts to vengeance.Putin insisted that Ukraine was rightfully part of Russia and didn’t have a separate existence. He expected his army to grab and subjugate with ease, even be welcomed. Now his regime seems bent on punitive destruction – of energy infrastructure, dwellings, historic sites, whole cities – and rape, torture and mass murder. This too is typical of abusers: domestic-violence homicides are often punishment for daring to leave. Continue reading...

A slow-moving winter storm intensified over California on Friday, triggering the first blizzard warning in parts of the Los Angeles area in more than 30 years and creating the extraordinary sight of snowflakes swirling around the iconic Hollywood sign.Snow and freezing rain pushed into the Golden State from the north, where Portland, Oregon, was affected earlier in the week. California's snow was heaviest in the Cascades, Sierra Nevada and coastal mountains.In the northern part of Los Angeles County, children and residents enjoyed about a foot of snow and the snowfall covered several roadways creating hazardous conditions for some commuters

The modern-day uptick in team-switching has made for less of the classic rivalries that defined previous eras. But matchups like Zion v Ja and Celtics v Bucks are bursting with promiseThe NBA’s ever-changing nature means that rivalries are fickle. When Philadelphia traded picks with Boston to take Markelle Fultz with the No 1 overall pick in the 2017 NBA draft, and the Celtics selected Jayson Tatum third, the teams’ proximity and prior history had all the makings of a classic. But while Tatum is a perennial All-Star, Fultz soon developed the shooting yips and was quickly shipped to the Magic.The modern-day uptick in team-switching has made for less of the classic rivalries that defined previous eras, such as Magic Johnson’s Lakers v Larry Bird’s Celtics and Michael Jordan’s Bulls v the Bad Boys’ Pistons. But when the stars do align, these marquee matchups make for gripping theater. Continue reading...

The Hollywood sign was dusted in white as arctic air blew across the state, triggering blizzard warnings for the first time since 1989Swaths of the Golden State were doused in white this week as a historic storm cast much of the US in a bitter chill – and forecasters say there’s more frosty weather in store.The snowstorm hovering over the southern part of California could end up becoming one for the record books as typically balmy areas brace for a barrage of more blizzard conditions and blustery winds. Across the state this week, the snowline has already crept far downslope from its winter territory atop high-elevation peaks, dusting foothills and valleys closer to the coast, and even some beaches. Continue reading...

‘Thrilling’ discovery on Fire Island could have come from a historic steam vessel that ran aground in 1821A chunk of flotsam that washed up on a New York shoreline after Tropical Storm Ian last year has piqued the interest of experts who say it is likely part of the SS Savannah, which ran aground and broke apart in 1821, two years after becoming the first vessel to cross the Atlantic partly under steam power.The roughly 13ft (four-meter) square piece of wreckage was spotted in October off Fire Island, a barrier island that hugs Long Island’s southern shore, and is now in the custody of the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society. It will work with National Park Service officials to identify the wreckage and put it on public display. Continue reading...