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State department source says balloon was carrying equipment capable of intercepting communicationsThe Chinese balloon that flew over North America for more than a week before being shot down over the Atlantic was carrying equipment capable of intercepting and geolocating communications, the US government has claimed.A senior state department official said on Thursday that equipment was identified by a U-2 spy plane sent up to scrutinise the balloon. Continue reading...

Alleva Dairy, on Grand Street in Little Italy in New York City, is set to close after sales plummeted due to the pandemicA cheese shop considered to be the oldest in the US is set to close, after its owners struggled to pay rent during the Covid-19 pandemic.Alleva Dairy, on Grand Street in Little Italy in New York City, has operated for 130 years. Its current owner, Karen King, bought the store a decade ago with her husband. Continue reading...

Democrat who suffered a stroke while campaigning last year is in good spirits, says spokespersonThe Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman was under observation in a Washington DC hospital on Thursday, after the Democrat, who suffered a stroke during his election campaign last year, was taken ill at a party event on Wednesday.Doctors at the George Washington university hospital said initial tests showed no evidence of a new stroke, Fetterman’s office said, adding that more testing was taking place. Continue reading...

Davion Irvin, charged with six counts of animal cruelty and two counts of burglary, remains jailed on $25,000 bondA 24-year-old man linked to an unusual string of crimes at the Dallas zoo told police that after he stole two monkeys he took them on to the city’s light rail system to make his getaway, court records show. Davion Irvin also said he loves animals and will steal more if released.Irvin, who remains jailed on $25,000 bond, was arrested last week after asking questions at a Dallas aquarium. He is charged with six counts of animal cruelty and two counts of burglary. An attorney did not comment. Continue reading...

Republican-led legislature rejects measure to prevent minors from carrying firearms in public without adult supervisionThe Republican-led Missouri state house on Wednesday voted against banning minors from openly carrying firearms on public land without adult supervision.The proposal to ban children from carrying guns without adult supervision in public failed by a 104-39 vote. Only one Republican voted in support. Continue reading...

Balentine, 54, was convicted of triple murder in what attorneys argued was a trial marred by racial biasA man convicted of killing three teenagers while they slept in a Texas home more than 25 years ago was executed on Wednesday, the sixth inmate to be put to death in the US this year and the second in as many days.John Balentine, 54, whose attorneys argued his trial was marred by racial bias, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, for the January 1998 deaths of Edward Mark Caylor, 17, Kai Brooke Geyer, 15, and Steven Watson, 15, in Amarillo. Prosecutors said all three were shot once in the head. Continue reading...

To grant Ukraine’s request carries a huge risk – better to help it gain battlefield advantage as a basis for peace talksHeroic rhetoric has its moment in every conflict. “We have freedom, give us wings to protect it,” cried Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in pleading support from the nations of Europe in Westminster Hall on Wednesday. He faces a renewed battle to drive Russian tanks off his land – all his land – in the spring. His cause is just and it is desperate. He now wants jets.At such a time, war has all the best tunes. It ridicules argument, honours danger and jeers at caution. Over the past year, the western powers under Nato auspices have struggled to contain the battles in Ukraine from escalating into precisely what cold war theorists most feared. That is a destabilisation of the balance of power in Europe, leading to a widespread and catastrophic conflict.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Yoel Roth testifies that Elon Musk’s release of records led to harassment. Plus, Shell directors face landmark lawsuitsGood morning.A former Twitter executive testified on Wednesday that he had been forced to leave and sell his home after a campaign of “homophobic and antisemitic” harassment over the company’s handling of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.But the disclosures sparked backlash against Roth. He said the release of the files by Musk led to a campaign of harassment against him and other employees. “And following the Daily Mail’s decision to publish where I live. I had to leave my home and sell it.”The spoils of war. Shell recently announced a record annual profit of $40bn, driven by the high energy prices resulting from Russia’s war in Ukraine, “but the writing is on the wall for fossil fuels long term”. Continue reading...

Florida’s Stop Woke Act and ban on African American studies will only deprive students of the right to think and learnFor some time now, conservative groups pressured libraries and classrooms to remove certain “controversial” books from their shelves and their syllabi. These are texts that tell uncomfortable or unpopular truths about our nation’s origins, including inequality, race, history, gender, sexuality, power and class – a range of subjects that a small but vocal group of Americans would prefer to ignore or deny.These efforts achieved one of their most notable successes last April when Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed the Stop Woke Act, which prohibits in-school discussions about racism, oppression, LBGTQ+ issues and economic inequity. Books that have not been officially vetted and approved must be hidden or covered, lest teachers unknowingly break an ill-defined law against distributing pornography – a felony. Continue reading...

The sports event generates a high volume of food waste that nonprofits hope to redistribute to the least well-offSuper Bowl Sunday is beloved for the sport, the party atmosphere, the extravagant half-time show and funny TV ads but also, undoubtedly, for being accompanied by snacks – lots of snacks.At the stadium where the football game itself is played, wherever that may be each winter, a lot of munching of wings, nachos, burgers – you name it – also leads to a lot of something else: leftovers. Continue reading...

New Yorkers delighted by sightings of Eurasian eagle owl, but staff at the zoo it fled worry about its prospects of survival in the wildDavid Barrett was at the gym on Thursday night when the first reports began to trickle in: there was an owl on the sidewalk of 5th Avenue, just south of Central Park.A longtime resident of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and an avid birder since 2010, Barrett, 59, is used to receiving breaking news tips about birds. As the proprietor of the popular Twitter account Manhattan Bird Alert, he receives and transmits a steady stream of information about bird sightings, as well as photos and videos taken by a network of contributors around the city. Continue reading...

The USA forward, Alex Morgan, has questioned the possible sponsorship deal between Fifa and Saudi Arabia’s tourism authority for the upcoming Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand this summer. “I think it’s bizarre that Fifa has looked to have a ‘Visit Saudi’ sponsorship for the Women’s World Cup when I, myself, Alex Morgan, would not even be supported and accepted in that country," she said.Both the Australian and New Zealand football federations have decried the move because of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, especially when it comes to women and LGBTQ individuals. Women’s rights in Saudi Arabia are restricted under strict male guardianship laws and homosexuality is illegal.

At Davos, a futurist spoke in glowing terms about ‘brain transparency’ – and downplayed the obvious dystopian risksThe reptilian annual World Economic Forum at Davos, where the masters of the universe meet to congratulate themselves on their benevolent dictatorship, is home to many sinister ideas. Sharing the latest sinister ideas with business leaders is, in essence, why the event exists. This year, one of the creepiest discussions of all was delivered under the guise of progress and productivity.Nita Farahany, a Duke University professor and futurist, gave a presentation at Davos about neurotechnology that is creating “brain transparency”, something I previously associated more with a bullet to the head. The new technologies, which Farahany says are being deployed in workplaces around the world, may prove to be nearly as destructive. They include a variety of wearable sensors that read the brain’s electrical impulses and can show how fatigued you are, whether you’re focused on the task at hand or if your attention is wandering. According to Farahany, thousands of companies have hooked workers ranging from train drivers to miners up to these devices already, in the name of workplace safety. But what we are really discussing is workplace surveillance. Continue reading...

Philadelphia are experts at getting Jalen Hurts over the line in short yardage situations. Should opposing teams look to rugby for a solution?The Eagles have turned the quarterback sneak into the least sneaky play in the playbook. There was no mystery about what Philadelphia were planning when Jalen Hurts lined up with nine teammates between the hashes on the San Francisco one-yard line in the NFC Championship game, half of the group in four-point stances.Nor did the call change after the 49ers stopped Hurts for no gain. One play later, from an identical formation, Philly’s quarterback took the snap and plunged forward to his left, forcing his way into the end zone with some help from tight end Dallas Goedert and running back Boston Scott behind him, shoving him over the line. Continue reading...

Streaming of Linda Ronstadt’s Long Long Time rose by 4,900% the day after it featured on The Last of Us. It wasn’t all because of meI’ve been here before, but not for a while. The last attack, from memory, was Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time, but that was quick – I was in and out in two days. Same goes for Petula Clark’s Don’t Sleep in the Subway. There was a weird period when the needle stuck – no judgment – on Dan Stevens (Dan Stevens!) singing Evermore from the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack, which must have had to do with my then very young children and had to be borne with patience until it worked itself out. There was Macca doing Golden Slumbers. Which reminds me, oh God, of the week I lost to In My Life, except, crucially, it was the 1991 Bette Midler cover version not the Beatles’ 1965 original. All I can say is it made sense at the time.Last week, like the return of a fever dream, I fell into a deep, unfightable obsession with a single song, that in the last seven days I have played on a loop probably hundreds of times. I have listened to it while I’m stacking the dishwasher and making the kids’ lunches. It has taken me round the supermarket, and back and forth to a doctor’s appointment. My apartment has never been so tidy, tidying providing me with an excuse to put off work for another five minutes so I can get in two more revolutions. At night, I’ve warned my children that if they fall off the sofa and start screaming I won’t hear them because I’ve got my Pods in and, for reasons I can’t explain but that they may one day understand, I am compelled to listen to Linda Ronstadt over and over and over and over until suddenly, just as abruptly as it started, it stops.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Yahoo News/YouGov survey finds that an additional Republican candidate would split the vote in former president’s favorAs the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley prepares to announce a run for president, a new poll found that just one additional candidate in the 2024 Republican primary will be enough to split the vote and keep Donald Trump ahead of Ron DeSantis, his only current close rival.The Yahoo News/YouGov poll gave DeSantis, the Florida governor, a 45%-41% lead over Trump head-to-head. Similar scenarios in other polls have prompted increasing attacks on DeSantis by Trump – and deflections by DeSantis. Continue reading...

Animal spotted in the desert of southern Nevada likely to have been abandoned as a puppy, rescuers sayFor the last few months, a ghost has roamed the desert of southern Nevada near Las Vegas with a pack of coyotes. The apparent phantom is actually a white dog named Ghost, who observers say the animals accepted as one of their own.Residents in Henderson spotted the dog running through their neighborhood at night, sometimes with the coyotes as they played together, for at least six months, according to a fundraiser for the animal. But neighbors, who documented his movements on social media, grew concerned about an injury on Ghost’s leg that was causing a severe limp and tried unsuccessfully to catch him. Continue reading...

The key context of the word I coined in 2008 is that mansplaining is one part of a huge problem – of who gets listened to, and who gets believedI have a file on my desktop titled Mansplaining Olympic Tryouts, mostly screenshots of some of the most epic specimens I’ve come across on social media or that people have steered my way. They’re grimly hilarious: a man explaining vaginas to a noted female gynaecologist, a man telling Sinn Féin adviser Siobhán Fenton to read the Good Friday agreement (she replied with a picture of herself with the book she wrote on that agreement), and the famous incident with Dr Jessica McCarty, about which she tweeted: “At a Nasa Earth meeting 10 years ago, a white male postdoc interrupted me to tell me that I don’t understand human drivers of fire, that I def needed to read McCarty et al. I looked him in the eye, pulled my long hair back so he could read my name tag. ‘I’m McCarty et al.’”The word mansplaining was coined by an anonymous person in response to my 2008 essay Men Explain Things to Me and has had a lively time of it ever since. It was a New York Times word of the year in 2010, and entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018; versions of it exist in many other languages from French to Icelandic, and the essay itself has appeared in many languages including Korean and Swedish. People often recount the opening incident in that almost 15-year-old essay, in which a man explained a book to me, too busy holding forth to notice that I was its author, as my friend was trying to tell him.Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Guns have become the No 1 killer of children in the US. But they have little formal say in how – or whether – to confront the crisisGuns are now the No 1 killer of children and teens under 18 in the US, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was analyzed by University of Michigan researchers.While 2020 marked the first year that more children and teens of all races and ethnicities across the US were killed by guns than in car accidents, homicide has been the No 1 cause of death among Black teenage boys and young adults over 15 for at least a decade, according to CDC data, and the second leading cause of death among Hispanic teenage boys and men ages 15 to 34. The trend was underscored by the recent high-profile killings of an 18-year-old at a gas station in Oakland, California, and two boys, ages 14 and 15, at a high school in Des Moines, Iowa. Continue reading...

Joe Biden quoted what he said were statements from Senators Rick Scott, Mike Lee and Ron Johnson on their views about federal legislation, including Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Nick LaLota is one of a growing number of people from both parties to call on Santos to quit over made-up résumé and investigationsGeorge Santos is a “sociopath” who thrives on negative attention, another New York Republican congressman said.“He’s a sociopath,” Nick LaLota told CNN on Wednesday, after Santos’s confrontation with Mitt Romney at Joe Biden’s State of the Union address made headlines the night before. Continue reading...

Demetrius Haley sent photographs of Nichols to other officers and a female acquaintanceNewly released documents in the case of the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police last month provide a scathing account of what authorities called the “blatantly unprofessional” conduct of five officers, and include new revelations about how one of them took and shared pictures of the bloodied victim.The officer, Demetrius Haley, stood over Nichols as he lay propped against a police car after the assault, and took photographs, which Haley sent to other officers and a female acquaintance, according to documents released by the Tennessee peace officers standards and training commission on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, calls proposed law ‘some of the most oppressive legislation in our city’s history’The Republican-dominated Mississippi house of representatives has passed a bill to create a separate, unelected court system in the city of Jackson that would fall outside the purview of the city’s voters, the majority of whom are Black.The bill, which local leaders have likened to apartheid-era laws and described as unconstitutional, would also expand a separate capitol police force, overseen by state authorities. The force would expand into all of the city’s white majority neighborhoods, according to Mississippi Today. Jackson’s population is over 80% Black. Continue reading...

President makes economic case to improve lives of working people while GOP opponents obsess over ‘hot-button’ social issuesJoe Biden was basking in positive reviews of his State of the Union address on Wednesday after a night that exposed the gulf between Democrats and Republicans heading into the 2024 race for the White House.The US president used his annual primetime speech to tout economic achievements and emphasise his appeal to working families, criticizing billionaires who pay lower tax rates than the middle class and airlines that treat their passengers like “suckers”. Continue reading...

Florida man Nathan Hart, 49, acquitted of illegal voting but found guilty of false registration in closely watched caseA Florida man on Tuesday was acquitted on charges of illegally voting but convicted of lying on his voter registration application in a closely watched voter fraud case.The split verdict in Hillsborough county was the first time a Florida jury weighed in on a case of one of the 19 people Ron DeSantis announced were being charged with voter fraud in August. Nearly all of the 19 have said they did not know they were ineligible to vote and believed they could do so because they received a voter registration card from the state. Continue reading...

Lawsuit accuses the officer, whose actions were caught on tape while working as a school guard, of an illegal chokeholdA white Wisconsin police officer, working as a school security guard while off duty, is facing a lawsuit from the family of a 12-year-old Black girl after he held his knee on her neck for more than 20 seconds while breaking up a fight at school.The lawsuit accuses the officer, whose actions were caught on tape, of using an illegal chokehold. Continue reading...

Legal team says Andrea Reeb’s position as elected state politician prohibits her from holding authority in judicial capacityDefense attorneys for actor Alec Baldwin are seeking to disqualify the special prosecutor in the criminal case against him stemming from the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a New Mexico film set.In a motion filed on Tuesday in a district court in Santa Fe, Baldwin’s legal team said Andrea Reeb’s position as a state politician prohibits her under state law from holding any authority in a judicial capacity. Continue reading...

I have reached the age my father was when I first heard him described as ‘old’. What can I say? Except it’s better than the alternativeOf all the things to find triggering, T-shirts are a funny one. I mean the T-shirts bearing daft or clever – clever-dick? – slogans, maxims, aphorisms, puns and so on. You know the kind of thing: I might be wrong (but it’s highly unlikely); Football is my second favourite F word; Right wing. Left wing. Chicken wing. Etc. You see, I had a beautiful, troubled friend, my age, from Birmingham, who died too young. He had countless T-shirts of this kind, but his were always really good – annoyingly so. I said they made him look a smartarse. He said he didn’t mind because he was a bit of a smartarse. Now, whenever I see a T-shirt like that, I ask myself if it’s good enough for Guy to have worn. I’ve heard it said that people can have trouble recalling the faces of loved ones they have lost. I don’t have that problem with Guy; I see his face most days. But for some reason I can’t remember what was on any of his T-shirts. Odd that.Today, I find myself doubly triggered by a T-shirt, an ad for which popped up on my social media. This one brings another loved one into the picture – my dad. It reads: “It’s weird being the same age as old people.” Ain’t that the truth? This garment would have made it to Guy’s wardrobe, no question.Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Activists disappointed with lack of focus on abortion rights in first address since reversal of Roe v Wade in June last yearJoe Biden is facing criticism for making only a late, brief mention of abortion rights in his first State of the Union address since the reversal of Roe v Wade by a conservative-led supreme court last year removed the federal right to the procedure in the US.During Tuesday’s State of the Union speech, Biden used the word abortion exactly once, making remarks about statewide abortions bans almost an hour into the speech. Continue reading...

Vice-president plays down concerns about Biden’s age as expectation builds that he will run again next yearKamala Harris talked up a “bold and vibrant” Joe Biden when asked on Wednesday morning about his age in relation to his fitness to be president – as expectation builds that the 80-year-old will run for the White House again in 2024.The US vice-president attacked Republican “theatrics” during the president’s strong performance at his state of the union speech on Tuesday night. Biden has yet to declare if he will run for a second term – or whether Harris will be his companion on the ticket again if he does – but his speech appeared to strengthen the chances of that, as did her upbeat interview. Continue reading...

Surveillance balloons have appeared over US soil before – the president’s reaction is a sign of how boxed in he is by RepublicansThe gigantic spy balloon that flew from China to the US lies punctured, shot down by an F-22 jet. Similarly in tatters is any optimism that Beijing and Washington might be able to salvage their relationship – and the alarming high stakes of global economic and geopolitical turmoil will be shared by the rest of the world, if their febrile bilateral tie is to unravel.The incident left Chinese diplomats red-faced and US politicians fuming, and has led to a war of words across the Pacific, reports of previous sightings of Chinese balloons above US soil and the postponing of a highly anticipated visit to China by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken. Continue reading...

President also calls on Republicans to help him ‘finish the job’ of rebuilding the economy and restoring faith in democracyJoe Biden called on Republicans to help him “finish the job” of rebuilding the economy and restoring faith in American democracy in his second State of the Union address on Tuesday night, as he delivered urgent calls to action on police reform, gun control and the climate crisis.Speaking to a divided Congress for the first time, a relentlessly optimistic Biden made the case that the nation was stronger and more stable than when he assumed office two years ago. Continue reading...

The Australian rugby league convert will play in one of the world’s most-watched sporting events after earning his place in Philadelphia and the leagueNearly five years into his NFL odyssey, Jordan Mailata is still full of surprises. The rugby-league convert from Bankstown in Sydney’s south-west, along with two Philadelphia Eagles teammates, were the stars of a seven-track Christmas charity album in December. The 6ft 8in, 165kg Australian had already appeared last March in the US version of The Masked Singer, but the beautiful, crisp falsetto he delivered on a version of White Christmas stunned listeners.Now Mailata, 25, has moved onto a bigger stage: Super Bowl LVII in Arizona, where he will help the favoured Eagles in their bid to beat the Kansas City Chiefs. The left tackle said he used to skip school back home to watch the big game on Mondays, but the football was secondary. When asked who he enjoyed watching, he smiled and said: “Queen Bee: Beyonce.” Continue reading...

President hails post-lockdown economy reboot. Plus, former Twitter execs to testify over Hunter Biden laptop story

It’s not often that athletes are still active, let alone still dominant, while receiving their flowers. Let us now praise the NBA’s newly minted scoring kingThere are numerous factors that make it difficult to appreciate that which is special in real time. For starters, valuing the finite nature of anything brings into sharper focus the fleetingness of our own existence, and for obvious reasons, that’s something we’d generally rather not dwell upon. Beyond that, life passes by at a frenetic pace, and most days are spent just trying to weather the storm. Most special, resonant, or important people or events, for that reason, are more easily appreciated in retrospect: the rose-colored glass of the rear-view mirror highlighting everything that was once muddled by the chaos of life.But it’s a worthy exercise in mindfulness to take stock of that which is here now. Such an opportunity arises this week after LeBron James broke a record on Tuesday night that was long believed to be unbreakable: passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to become the league’s all-time leading scorer. Continue reading...

Short of murder, there is nothing a friend could do that would make me say, ‘I feel like you’re a little toxic. Goodbye.’I lost a friend today, physically. She didn’t die. Worse, she moved to LA. I’m having a hard time with the idea of not seeing her every week, of not being in the same city, of no longer knowing that she is close by.I asked another friend if this was normal, this sad heaviness I’m carrying around just because a friend of mine is moving away. “I’ll still see her sometimes, when she’s back in New York,” I explained miserably, “and we’re going to talk on FaceTime and all of that.” This friend said maybe I was sad because when a friend does something, like moving across the country, it makes you question your own choices in life. Absolutely not, I said to myself, realizing at once that it was not that deep. The reason I was crying on the subway platform, that public/private tunnel of tears, was because my friend is leaving. Continue reading...

No experienced supervisors attended the scene of Nichols’s deadly arrest and Memphis’s police department is hundreds of officers short of its target strengthBeyond the beating, kicking, cursing and pepper-spraying, the video of Tyre Nichols’s deadly arrest at the hands of young Memphis police officers is just as notable for what’s missing – any experienced supervisors showing up to stop them.That points to a dangerous confluence of trends that Memphis’s police chief acknowledged have dogged the department as the city became one of the nation’s murder hotspots: a chronic shortage of officers, especially supervisors, increasing numbers of police quitting and a struggle to bring in qualified recruits. Continue reading...

Migrants from Africa and Haiti reportedly cannot utilize app to accept their photos, which is now required to apply for asylumThe US government’s new mobile app for migrants to apply for asylum at the US-Mexico border is blocking many Black people from being able to file their claims because of facial recognition bias in the tech, immigration advocates say.Non-profits that assist Black asylum seekers are finding that the app, CBP One, is failing to register many people with darker skin tones, effectively barring them from their right to request entry into the US. Continue reading...

The Republican senator Mitt Romney appeared to confront congressman George Santos before Joe Biden was due to deliver his State of Union address on Tuesday. Though his remarks were not audible, Romney clearly told Santos that he 'ought to be embarrassed' several times. Later Romney told reporters that Santos did not 'belong here [in Congress]' and called him a 'sick puppy'

The Trans Teen Survival Guide was motivated by my own struggles. Removing it from libraries is part of the historic erasure of books about identityI check Twitter and nearly spit out my coffee. I’m tagged in a post by the Florida Freedom To Read Project, stating that a number of library books have been taken off the shelves, including mine.I stare at a photograph of a trolley full of banned books, rounded up in one day, in one library, and locate the black spine of the Trans Teen Survival Guide – a book that I wrote with my partner, Owl. It is sitting next to a book called This Book Is Anti-Racist, and I think to myself that you can’t get much more explicit than that in your agenda to ban books that are meant to support people.Fox Fisher is an author, artist and co-director of My Genderation films Continue reading...

The Kansas City Chiefs quarterback’s appetite for the big play used to be a weakness. But now he has eliminated even that blemishThe Philadelphia Eagles will try to do the impossible on Sunday: expose a flaw in the seemingly flawless.Even the greatest usually have some shortcomings in their game that the opposition can expose. Tom Brady was slow. Brett Favre was reckless – in more ways than one. Drew Brees was small. John Elway was accurate, but not always precise. Continue reading...

When the rains came last autumn, I was among the millions made homeless in Sindh province. Here is why – months later – I am still helping to patch up ruined lives