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Why I’m not hopeful that the Republican-led House investigation will stay grounded in realityYou can’t get Americans to agree on much these days – not on gas stoves, not on Chinese spy balloons, not on the books allowed in school libraries.But one thing they apparently can bond over is whether the Republicans in the House of Representatives are likely to spend the next two years responsibly serving as the loyal opposition to President Biden and the Democrats who control the Senate. Continue reading...

Joe Biden gave a forceful defence of his presidency in his second State of the Union address, delivered at the midpoint of his first term and just weeks after the Republicans retook control of the House. Some key moments included being heckled while accusing some Republicans of wanting to do away with popular government healthcare and retirement programs, announcing he would sign and executive order to aid in for police reform, a call to ban assault rifles, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the countries relationship with China.

Joe Salmon, 17, was ice fishing when he saw a Jeep driven by Thomas Lee, 83, drop through the ice under a highway bridgeA 17-year-old, three-sport athlete from Iowa has earned acclaim as a hero after jumping into an icy lake to save a man in his 80s and a dog who were trapped in a car that had fallen in the water over the weekend – a dramatic rescue caught on camera by a drone.The teen, Joe Salmon, was ice fishing with his mother and watching snowmobile races on East Okoboji Lake when he saw a Jeep driven by 83-year-old Thomas Lee drop through the ice under a highway bridge at about 3pm on Saturday, the local sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post. Continue reading...

The president touted many of his greatest achievements. But there are some areas he still needs to work onIt was President Biden’s first address to Congress since Republicans won control of the House, and unofficially, it was the start of his 2024 re-election campaign. Biden faced a newly adversarial audience at his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, a group of empowered Republicans clustered on the right side of the House chamber, each one eager to perform outrage for the cameras.The speech, a strictly choreographed bit of political theater, was as much a competition of affective performance between the president and his Republican rivals as it was a set of policy proposals. Mostly, Biden won. The Republicans heckled and booed. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon conspiracist from Florida, bellowed at Biden in a big, fluffy fur coat, like Cruella De Vil; Kevin McCarthy, newly elected speaker after a long and humiliating Republican leadership contest, sulked pointedly in a chair behind the president. But Biden countered their flustered outrage with a cool, almost irreverent indifference.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

The president hailed successes and even got the GOP cheering for entitlement programs in what looked like an unofficial re-election campaign launchNo cascade of lies. No speaker of the House of Representatives ripping up the speech of a recently impeached president. Almost no face masks or Covid restrictions or sad empty seats in the public gallery.Joe Biden’s State of the Union address in Washington was basically normal. If someone had built a time machine in 2010 and travelled forward to 2023, they would have felt in pretty familiar territory. It’s been quite a while since you could say that. Continue reading...

US president believes he has an economic success story to tell although polls indicate voters are skeptical

Speech covered China, abortion and the border while challenging Republicans on threats to Medicare and social securityIn his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Joe Biden presented a bullish picture of the achievements of his administration and Democrats in Congress since he entered the White House in 2021.The US president also took the battle to Republicans on some issues in what was a widely praised performance as the 2024 race for the White House starts to appear on the horizon. Continue reading...

Republican extremist appears to reference Chinese surveillance dirigible by parading halls of Congress with white balloonMarjorie Taylor Greene appeared to tee up a State of the Union stunt on Tuesday, patrolling the halls of Congress with a large white balloon in reference to Republican criticism of Joe Biden over his handling of a flight over US territory by a Chinese surveillance dirigible.“Just an innocent white balloon everybody,” the Georgia extremist said, hours before Biden’s address to Congress, attempting to keep aloft the balloon saga which ended when it was shot down off the Carolinas on Saturday. Continue reading...

Agreement with Equality and Human Rights Commission commits firm to number of measures to protect workersMcDonald’s has signed a legally binding pledge with the equality watchdog amid concerns over how it has handled sexual harassment complaints made by UK staff.The move came after allegations by workers at the fast-food chain’s US restaurants of sexual harassment in the workplace over several years and the company’s failure to deal with the issue. Continue reading...

Air force report details balloon while Pentagon officials say China had sent three over the US during Trump’s time in officeA Chinese spy balloon “drifted past Hawaii and across Florida” as it “circumnavigated the globe” in 2019, four years before the American military shot down another one this past weekend, according to a US air force intelligence report reviewed by CNN.China “launched and controlled” the high-altitude balloon, which was “capable of operating at “65,000ft to 328,000ft and for months at a time”, in 2019, according to the report seen by CNN. The report did not make clear when the US became aware of the 2019 balloon. Continue reading...

Move follows weeks of outrage amid revelations the Republican New York lawmaker fabricated large portions of his résuméDozens of George Santos’s constituents traveled from their New York district to the Capitol on Tuesday to call for the congressman to resign. The move follows weeks of outrage at the revelations that the Republican lawmaker fabricated large portions of his résumé in his successful quest for office.“On behalf of Concerned Citizens of NY-03, why are we here? Why did we come to Washington? We are here because Speaker McCarthy apparently cannot hear us when we speak from Long Island, so we had to come to Washington to make sure he hears us,” said Jody Kass Finkel, coordinator of the pressure group created in the past weeks with the sole goal of getting Santos “removed from squatting in our seat in the House of Representatives”. Continue reading...

Close relatives of Black people killed by police invited to Biden’s address by more than a dozen members of CongressFamilies of Black people killed by police in recent years, including George Floyd’s brother and Michael Brown’s father, will attend the State of the Union address on Tuesday night alongside lawmakers advocating for urgent police reform. The push in Congress comes after the recent beating death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police.The release of video footage, along with the charging of several Memphis police officers involved in Nichols’s death and the firing of several employees from the Memphis police and fire departments, reignited national outcry over police brutality and calls for reforms. This includes renewed efforts to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which was introduced after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. It was passed twice by the US House before failing to clear the Senate in 2021. Continue reading...

Harry Whittington spent week in intensive care after being inadvertently shot by then vice-president on quail-hunting tripA Texas attorney who was inadvertently shot by US vice-president Dick Cheney during a 2006 hunting trip – and then apologized to him for the attention the accident drew – has died.Harry Whittington was 95. Continue reading...

Jerome Powell says disinflationary process ‘has a long way to go' as Biden is set to tout economic record at State of Union addressThe Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, has said that more interest rates rise will be needed to cool inflation and the red-hot US jobs market.“We think we are going to need to do further rate increases,” Powell said on Tuesday at the Economic Club of Washington. “The labor market is extraordinarily strong.” Continue reading...

Officials released and burned chemicals from wreckage of derailed train in East Palestine near Pennsylvania borderIt is unclear when evacuated residents might be able to return home to the area where officials released and burned toxic chemicals from the wreckage of a derailed train, the Ohio governor, Mike DeWine, said on Tuesday.Residents near the site in East Palestine, close to the Pennsylvania state line, were ordered to leave because of the risk of death or serious injury from toxic fumes. Flames and black smoke billowed into the sky on Monday evening when crews released and burned vinyl chloride from five derailed tanker cars that were in danger of exploding. Continue reading...

Boy at center of Clinton-era US-Cuba feud called ‘most worthy of Cuban youth’ by government newspaperWhen he was six, his terrified face – photographed during a raid by armed immigration officers on his family’s Miami home – became one of the most memorable images of cold war tensions between the US and Cuba.Now 29, and more than two decades after he was forcibly deported from Florida to his homeland at the direction of the US supreme court, Elián González is poised to become one of Cuba’s most senior lawmakers. Continue reading...

Charging documents accuse Davion Irvin, 24, of taking monkeys from enclosure and say he intended to return to zooA man arrested on charges related to mysterious incidents at the Dallas zoo planned to return to the zoo and steal more animals if released from jail, according to arrest warrant records.The documents, obtained by the Dallas Morning News, revealed how 24-year-old Davion Irvin allegedly broke into the zoo and kidnapped two monkeys after breaking their enclosure. The emperor tamarin monkeys – Bella and Finn – were later found alive in a vacant house in nearby Lancaster on 1 February. Continue reading...

Prize is fifth-largest in Powerball history and the ninth-largest US lottery win everSomeone in Washington state has just won the fifth-largest jackpot in Powerball history – $754.6m – and the ninth-largest US lottery prize ever, according to officials.The Powerball player holding the single ticket which matched all of the winning numbers in Monday night’s drawing hasn’t been publicly identified. But that person can choose to receive the full prize through an annuity over 29 years or opt for a lump sum of $407.2m in cash paid immediately. Continue reading...

Lawsuit notice offers new details of student who wounded Abby Zwerner, including choking a teacher until she couldn’t breatheA lawyer for a Virginia teacher shot and wounded by a six-year-old in her class last month said the child had exhibited previous violent tendencies and once choked another educator until she could not breathe.An attorney for the teacher who was shot, Abby Zwerner, made the claims in a notice to the Newport News school district stating the teacher’s intention to sue over the attack on 6 January at Richneck elementary school.The Associated Press contributed reporting. Continue reading...

The Washington defensive end on the physical costs of the NFL, the joy of sacks and why he is a fan of flag footballEfe Obada knows the joy of sacks, the most disruptive play in American football. He has tackled Jalen Hurts, quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles who play the Kansas City Chiefs in Sunday’s Super Bowl. He has brought down Tom Brady, the recently retired seven-time winner of the National Football League’s greatest prize. They are victims to make any player proud.For Obada, the Nigeria-born Washington Commanders defensive end raised in foster care in London after being abandoned on the streets aged 10 by a woman his mother paid to move him and his sister from the Netherlands, they also chart a remarkable rise. But Obada, now a veteran of five NFL seasons, is frank about the costs of this most brutal, but tactically intricate of sports. Continue reading...

Styles’ clumsy Grammy remarks surely don’t deserve all the vitriol they have attractedHarry Edward Styles is a middle-class white man with a nice face and an enormous bank account. “People like him” are not usually considered an oppressed minority. And yet the 29-year-old pop star has been widely accused of claiming to be a member of an underclass during the Grammy awards on Sunday night. “This doesn’t happen to people like me very often,” Styles said as he scooped up best pop vocal album and album of the year. Cue confusion and uproar as people pointed out that white men win awards rather often. Meanwhile, a black woman hasn’t won album of the year since Lauryn Hill in 1999.Brace yourself, because this article is about to go in one direction you may have thought I would never head. I am going to defend a rich white man! Continue reading...

World Health Organization official warns that number killed could quadruple. Plus, efforts to save the pink river dolphinGood morning.Dozens of powerful aftershocks continued to jolt southern Turkey and northern Syria on Tuesday, a day after an earthquake struck the region killing more than 5,000 people and destroying thousands of buildings, as difficult conditions and freezing temperatures hampered rescue efforts.‘There is a family I know under the rubble’. Amid freezing rain and an unprecedented disaster, survivors dig in the rubble and listen for screams in the hope of reaching trapped loved ones.Earthquakes add to suffering in war-torn Syria. The 7.8-magnitude quake that struck the region in the early hours of Monday, and the strong second shock hours later, is adding to already intolerable suffering for people who mostly survive thanks to aid. Continue reading...

The hierarchy of racial terror has never been enforced only by white people. Nor has it harmed only Black peopleOn Wednesday 1 February, family and friends of Tyre Nichols, along with Vice-President Kamala Harris and other representatives from the White House, gathered at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian church in Memphis, Tennessee to grieve the brutal murder of a young Black man. Such public grief on the first day of Black History Month echoes the moans of millions of Black Americans who have mourned the incomprehensible violence of the Middle Passage and auction blocks, slave patrols and lynch mobs, Klan assaults and police beatings. God only knows the name of every person who has been brutalized by the racial caste system that America’s plantation economy created.But in this moment we must mourn and cry another pain. The men who killed Tyre Nichols were Black, as he was. This is not a case of individual racists, but another example of a policing system rabid with brutality and death. This kind of death is not new, and a true remembering of Black history must address this too. This most recent atrocity that the world witnessed in the video from Memphis is a symptom of a deeper social sickness that must be confronted before we as a nation can be whole.The Rev William Barber is president of Repairers of the Breach and founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale UniversityJonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is assistant director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale University Continue reading...

Salaam, who was falsely accused at age 15 of gang rape and incarcerated for seven years, is hoping to use his experience to create a positive changeDr Yusef Salaam was in his family home in Harlem, gearing up for the next fight of his life: a daring run for political office.“It’s been a long time coming,” said Salaam, whose story of false accusations and wrongful imprisonment as one of the Central Park Five has become a watchword for everything wrong with America’s justice system. Continue reading...

Employees say they want to improve both working conditions and patient care but ‘the companies are not doing anything’For 29 years, Guadalupe Tellez, a registered nurse, has worked in the kidney dialysis industry and currently works for the Fresenius Kidney Care in the city of Ventura one of several dialysis clinics where workers are currently pushing to unionize in California.“We want to improve our wages, benefits and patient care overall. There’s a lot of issues in dialysis that need improvement and it’s been years and years and years, and it seems like the companies are not doing anything to improve any of it,” said Tellez. Continue reading...

A new survey says Britons are quick to lose patience with a date who is rude. That’s to their credit – but sometimes a connection is worth waiting forFifty-one minutes. It’s too long for a meeting, close to perfect for an album, and a solid result for a 10km run – but a date? You can only hope that it’s not a personal best.A new study suggests that 51 minutes is all the average person can manage of a date that has started to go downhill. The survey of 2,000 adults (carried out by the breakdown provider Britannia Rescue – used to facilitating hasty getaways, I suppose) found that a fifth had departed a date midway through, with commonly used exit strategies including sudden headaches and getting a friend to fake an emergency.Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist Continue reading...

Dallas Goedert and Travis Kelce will be important parts of Sunday’s Super Bowl. They also embody the changing nature of their positionWhen it comes to staffing the tight end position, NFL teams definitely have a type. A standout player combines ox-like strength with deer-like speed and hops. He excels at blocking and catching. He seems like the kind of guy who would judge another man by his calf size, or babble on about his crypto killing when he’s not swilling beer upside down from a keg. With his shirt off. You know the type: A real bro.This weekend’s Super Bowl pits two of the league’s best tight ends against each other. On one side there’s Philadelphia’s Dallas Goedert – a labradoodle of a man with charisma and retrieving knack for days. On the other, there’s Kansas City’s Travis Kelce, a probable Hall of Fame who is the standard-bearer in stats and swagger. It’s no surprise that either man could be the x-factor in this matchup, nor is it a coincidence that either man could reasonably be described as a bro. Continue reading...

Three skaters address their own experiences, activism and the police response to their communitiesIt has been nearly a month since Tyre Nichols died after a beating by Memphis police. Even by the standards of a country with a long legacy of police violence, his death was breathtaking in its brutality – both in the severity of the beating by the police officers, and the negligence shown by the EMTs who stood around for 19 minutes while he fought for his life on the ground.Nichols, 29, was a lot of things: a father, photographer, lover of sunsets and a skater. Due to its public image as a nuisance to polite society, skateboarding is a hobby intimately familiar with skirmishes with law enforcement; for Black skaters, who are often seen as outsiders in a world of outsiders, these interactions can be particularly fraught. Continue reading...

Across the world there were 57 unprovoked shark bites in 2022, most of which occurred in the US and AustraliaFlorida has retained its title as the shark bite capital of the world, according to new figures, but globally the number of such attacks on humans is at its joint lowest level for a decade.Across the world there were 57 unprovoked shark bites in 2022, most of which occurred in the United States and Australia, said the University of Florida’s international shark attack file, a renowned resource that published its annual data on Monday. Continue reading...

White House has said Biden will discuss issue after ceiling is lifted, while Republicans insist on cuts firstKevin McCarthy, the House speaker, called on Joe Biden to agree to compromises and spending cuts, as the two remain deadlocked over raising the nation’s $31.4tn debt ceiling.McCarthy spoke on Monday before Biden gives the annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, aiming to get ahead of the president and reinforce his role as the leading congressional negotiator. Continue reading...

Albanese will need to explain how Australia’s investment in more lethal defence capabilities will make the Indo-Pacific safer – and ensure conflict never occursAs spy stories go, the recent foray and ultimate demise of China’s surveillance balloon across the United States is not very promising. Beijing probably did not learn any state secrets, and the eventual downing of the unmanned aerial system once it was safely over water is hardly the stuff of Le Carré.Yet the balloon incident is a powerful illustration of why Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has been calling for the US and China to put in place “guardrails” to manage their competition responsibly. Continue reading...

Suits that say beauty companies knew products contained dangerous chemicals to be consolidated in Chicago courtNearly 60 lawsuits claiming hair relaxer products sold by L’Oréal USA Inc and other companies cause cancer and other health problems will be consolidated in a Chicago federal court, according to a Monday order from the US judicial panel on multidistrict litigation.At least 57 lawsuits have been filed in federal courts across the country over the products, which use chemicals to permanently straighten textured hair, court records show. The lawsuits allege the companies knew their products contained dangerous chemicals but marketed and sold them anyway. Continue reading...

Eurasian eagle owl spotted in midtown since escape as zoo staff try to lure Flaco back by leaving food out for himA Eurasian eagle owl named Flaco escaped New York’s Central Park zoo on Thursday night after his enclosure was vandalized and is still on the loose in Manhattan.Flaco was spotted at different times since fleeing by various onlookers, once on a sidewalk on Fifth Avenue, across from the Plaza Hotel, and perched on trees around Central Park. Continue reading...

The strategy behind this Republican battle is to fight off the federal state until they have re-established federal power themselvesFlorida governor Ron DeSantis has been grabbing national headlines with his relentless attacks on so-called “woke”. In addition to his Stop-Woke (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act, which prohibits educational institutions and businesses from teaching students and employees anything that would cause anyone to “feel guilt, anguish or any form of psychological distress” due to their race, color, sex or national origin, he has barred University of Florida professors from giving evidence against the state’s voting law, claimed that professors at public colleges have no right to freedom of speech, and organizing a “hostile takeover” of the New College of Florida, one of the best liberal arts colleges in the country. But he is far from the only Republican politicians to attack the education system.UCLA Law School’s CRT Forward Tracking Project has tracked 567 anti-critical race theory (CRT) efforts introduced at the local, state, and federal levels. According to the World Population Review, there are currently seven states that have banned CRT, while another 16 states are in the process of banning it. That constitutes almost all states with a Republican governor. While CRT is a highly specific academic theory that is almost exclusively taught at some law schools, the anti-CRT laws are incredibly broad and vague and target all levels of education. In my state, Georgia, House bill 1084 bans the use of so-called “divisive concepts” (eg race and gender) from teaching and, although it includes several exceptions and stipulations, these are so broad and vague that many teachers will simply stay away from these “divisive concepts”.Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist and the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor in the school of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia Continue reading...

The 82-year-old was pronounced dead at a Long Island nursing home, only to be discovered alive and then taken to a hospitalAn 82-year-old woman was pronounced dead at a New York nursing home only to be found breathing three hours later at the funeral home where she had been taken, authorities said.It was the second time in about a month something of the sort has happened in the US, according to officials. Continue reading...

Officials urge anyone within 1-mile radius of site in north-eastern Ohio to leave amid ‘potential of a catastrophic tanker failure’Authorities in Ohio say they plan to release toxic chemicals from five cars of a derailed train in Ohio to reduce the threat of an explosion.Governor Mike DeWine says a “controlled release” of vinyl chloride will take place on Monday at 3.30pm local time. Continue reading...

Mark Pomerantz writes of frustration of attempt to make hush money to Stormy Daniels a money-laundering caseDonald Trump’s hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels is a “zombie case” that keeps coming back from the dead, a former New York prosecutor writes in a new book published as his former office once again considers filing criminal charges against the former president over the matter.People vs Donald Trump: An Inside Account, will be published in the US on Tuesday. It has been extensively reported. The Guardian received a copy. Continue reading...

Sarah Beth Clendaniel allegedly conspired with Brandon Russell to attack electrical substations in the Baltimore areaA Maryland woman conspired with a Florida neo-Nazi leader to carry out an attack on several electrical substations in the Baltimore area, officials said on Monday.The arrest of Sarah Beth Clendaniel, of Baltimore county, was the latest in a series across the country as authorities warn that electrical infrastructure could be a vulnerable target for domestic terrorists. It wasn’t immediately clear on Monday whether she had a lawyer to speak on her behalf. Continue reading...

Opposition groups push Modi to investigate allegations by US short-seller as firm suffers market routThe crisis engulfing the Adani Group has intensified as hundreds of members of India’s opposition parties took to the streets to press for an investigation into allegations by a US short-seller against India’s second-biggest business group which triggered its market rout.The Adani Group said on Monday that its major investors, known in India as “promoters”, had pledged to prepay $1.1bn (£916m) in share-backed loans due for repayment by September 2024. The repayments include shares in Adani’s ports business, Adani Green Energy and Adani Transmission. Continue reading...

Nothing, Forever, a 24/7 show based on popular sitcom, will be offline for 14 days as makers blame technical glitchAn AI-generated Seinfeld show has been banned from the streaming platform Twitch for at least 14 days after a transphobic and homophobic standup bit aired during the show.Nothing, Forever, a 24/7 version and AI-generated parody of the popular Seinfeld sitcom, had been available on Twitch since mid-December. Continue reading...

Nyack middle school in New York apologizes for lunch playing off racist tropes in last-minute menu change by vendorOfficials at a New York middle school have apologized after serving students fried chicken, watermelon and waffles on the first day of Black History Month.In a letter to parents, officials at Nyack middle school, an hour outside New York City, apologized for the “inexcusably insensitive” meal, which played off historically racist stereotypes. Continue reading...

Drivers are cast as anti-woke and cyclists as the opposite, when the reality is often quite different. But I would have enjoyed an apology from the driver who turned suddenly into my cycle path