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Decades after I first glimpsed French Elle and dreamed of my future chicness, I have passed my citizenship exam. It feels like a genuine privilegeI have wanted to be French since I was 16 and found French Elle magazine in the school library, with its adolescent catnip combination of lipstick, serious books and films featuring Daniel Auteuil brooding alluringly. The celebrity “my day” feature provided me with highly specific visions of Frenchness to aspire to: one day, I, too, would rise at noon for an espresso and a marron glacé, dress in Chanel and work on my creative projects, only breaking to eat oysters and smoke on a cafe terrace with one or more of my lovers. Thirty-two years later, approaching five years back living in England, fatally unchic, addicted to tea, vegetarian stodge and lowbrow television, I am finally French.It feels unfair, like cheating. Married to a Frenchman, with the resources to pay for the translations, French test and trips from York down to London, the main obstacles I faced were Covid-related cancellations and my own administrative incompetence. But for most applicants, citizenship is – deliberately – arduous, an impenetrable, obstacle-strewn maze. It’s not me saying that, it’s the French Defender of Rights (an independent authority that “ensures respect for rights and freedoms”). Its 2022 report describes the process as “full of pitfalls”, with refugees, elderly people and those without a stable address (inevitably poorer people) left behind. Not just them: my sister, who has worked in a refuge for vulnerable people in Paris for years, had her application rejected on a technicality. She’s reapplying, but pessimistic. The situation for would-be citizens is much worse here in the UK (and the mere existence of a “defender of rights” holding the authorities to account is refreshing), but the égalité bit of the French national motto feels strained. Continue reading...

Top establishments such as Noma are closing. They were fun for a while but we’ve had our fillIn 2007, for a book on the world’s luxury restaurant economy, I undertook what I called the high-end Super Size Me. In the 2004 documentary, Morgan Spurlock ate McDonald’s every day for a month to see how it would affect his body. The high-end version involved me eating in a Parisian Michelin three-star restaurant every day for a week. Back then, talking about this stunt felt like a boast; now, it feels like a confession.I won’t pretend it was all terrible. There was an extraordinary pea dish at Restaurant Guy Savoy, which elevated the humble legume to god-tier status; at the tiny L’Astrance, there was the most spectacular chilled tomato soup. But for all these bright spots there were also disasters: langoustines on sticks wrapped in brackish sea-water foam at Ledoyen, an appalling artichoke creme brulee at Le Grand Véfour that was split. But what really stayed with me from my grotesque endurance feat was the unreality of this kind of high-end restaurant: it’s grim, preening, massively unenjoyable artifice. And if a meal out isn’t enjoyable, what’s the point of it? My love affair with the finest of fine dining began to crumble.Jay Rayner is the Observer’s restaurant critic Continue reading...

There is, however, a shortage of jobs paying sufficient wages to attract workers to fill job openingsWhen a public problem is wrongly described, the solutions posed often turn out to be irrelevant or inhumane.A current example: America’s so-called “labor shortage”.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...

Palm Springs had razed Section 14, a Black and Latino community, to make way for commercial developmentSix decades ago, hundreds of people in Palm Springs, California, came home to ashes. Their houses had burned, sometimes with their belongings inside – no time to evacuate or no place to go. It wasn’t the work of California’s notorious wildfires, but of the city itself, which razed the Black and Latino community known as Section 14 to make way for commercial development.Now, survivors are organizing to demand justice. While Palm Springs – a desert resort town about 100 miles east of Los Angeles – issued a formal apology in September 2021, little has happened since. To help spur action, survivors filed a new amended reparation claim with the city at the end of November, which details alleged legal violations and offers a preliminary harm assessment. According to a damage estimate by Julianne Malveaux, an economist and dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, families lost between $400m and $2bn in today’s dollars. Continue reading...

A woman showed up to Texas with her 10-year-old daughter – only to be bussed to Philadelphia, a city she had never heard ofNot long after being released by US immigration officials in Del Rio, Texas, Diana was told there was a bus service waiting and her hopes lifted that she would be taken to her intended destination, where she could get work to fund her young daughter’s healthcare needs.But when workers at the shelter near the US-Mexico border, where she and her daughter Danna, 10, were staying, showed the Colombian mother a map, she became worried. They were pointing to a city more than 80 miles (128km) away from Newark, New Jersey, where she hoped to join family members and wait for her immigration court hearing. Continue reading...

In this extract from his new book, Bloodbath Nation, the novelist details the chilling murder his family hid for five decades – and why fixing the US’s deadly relationship with firearms will take gut-wrenching honesty

As our health service collapses, the government have taken cover – behind the Duke of Sussex’s penisI have tried to avoid knowing anything about the revelations in Prince Harry’s book, so that I could use the privilege of these column-inch opportunities to ridicule something more significant. But the Harry headlines snigger from the newsagent shelves, elegant sirens shouting about sex and drugs but in the gruff tones of high-street newspaper vendors. Readallabahtit!“Prince Harry admits he had frostbitten penis when he was best man at William and Kate’s wedding,” exclaims the Daily Record. The topical radio comedy hack writer I was 33 years ago kicks in. “Frostbitten penis. Wow! That was an extravagant wedding menu! Were the gangrenous testicles off? Was there no sunburned anus?” But of course, a quick search of social media reveals that the infinite number of monkeys of the general public have already made an infinite number of monkey variations on this joke, and with far greater speed than we professional satirists, still tilling the arid soil of legacy media, winding up the letterpress to hand-crank out our already irrelevant opinion guano.Stewart Lee’s shows Snowflake and Tornado are available on BBC iPlayer. Basic Lee tour dates are booking now. Stewart will appear in Stand Up for Ukraine at the Leicester Square theatre, London, on 28 January Continue reading...

The hard-right religious coalition is attacking civil liberties at home and becoming an unreliable partner abroad. Its leader is endangering western support for his countrySamir Aslan did what any father would do. When Israeli soldiers broke into his home at Qalandiya refugee camp last week to arrest his son, he rushed to protect him. The 41-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed. His death received scant notice, so frequent are such incidents. A reported 224 Palestinians were killed last year in the occupied West Bank, which suffered almost daily army raids. 2023 is shaping up to be even worse.The main reason is a new ultranationalist, hard-right religious coalition government in Jerusalem that includes racist, anti-Arab ministers determined to annex all the Palestinian territories. Yet the response to this alarming, destabilising development from Israel’s western allies has been strangely muted. A few have issued veiled warnings. None has imposed the sort of sanctions or boycotts levelled in the past on political extremists in other countries. Continue reading...

State-level victories such as those Illinois and New York likely to become crucial in the battle against gun violenceThe Illinois capitol was a site of celebration on Tuesday, as state legislators passed a ban on military-style firearms. The legislation made Illinois the ninth US state to enact a ban on such weapons, which have been used in many of the country’s most devastating mass shootings.“Illinois now officially prohibits the sale and distribution of these mass killing machines and rapid-fire devices,” the Democratic governor JB Pritzker said as he signed the bill. He added: “We must keep fighting, voting and protesting to ensure that future generations will only have to read about massacres.” Continue reading...

After Trump’s pick for speaker narrowly won, what sway will the former president hold over Congress’s Republican majority?Like an exhausted marathon runner, Kevin McCarthy had just about staggered across the finish line. But even at 2.11am, with tempers frayed and eyes bleary, the newly elected speaker of the US House of Representatives wanted to single out one person for praise.“I do want to especially thank President Trump,” McCarthy told reporters after prevailing in the longest election for speaker since before the civil war. “I don’t think anyone should doubt his influence. He was with me from the beginning.” Continue reading...

Biden’s retention of classified papers is different from the Mar-a-Lago case, but it is a big setback for his administrationThe discovery of government secrets at two locations associated with Joe Biden appears to have produced one big political winner: Donald Trump.The White House was in rare crisis mode last week as it emerged that lawyers for Biden had found classified material at his thinktank in Washington DC and home in Delaware. At an unusually contentious press briefing, one TV correspondent dubbed the affair “garage-gate”. Continue reading...

Storms are expected to follow into next week, with some dry weather predicted by TuesdayStorm-battered California got more wind, rain and snow on Saturday, raising flooding concerns, causing power outages and making travel dangerous.Bands of rain and wind started in the north and spread south, with more storms expected to follow into early next week, the National Weather Service said. Continue reading...

Storms took five lives in Sacramento county, where a year of heatwave and drought was followed by record rainThe water was waist-high as Bobby Lewis rushed through the darkness trying to get equipment and animals to higher ground. Just hours into the new year, torrential downpours had engorged the Consumnes River that lines the rancher’s Elk Grove property south of Sacramento, California, until it burst through the embankments designed to contain it.The Lewis family has owned this land for decades and weathered many storms, but this one wouldn’t be easily forgotten. Two of Lewis’s cows drowned during the deluge as they tried to swim to safety, last seen as tangles of legs caught between the barren branches of a submerged tree. Continue reading...

White House acknowledges six pages of classified documents had been found in a search of private libraryLawyers for Joe Biden found more classified documents at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, than previously known, the White House acknowledged on Saturday.The White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement that a total of six pages of classified documents were found during a search of Biden’s private library. The White House had said previously that only a single page had been found there. Continue reading...

Accused of trying to destroy the monarchy, he’s merely revealing the appalling conditions they are forced to live underEarly signs are that Prince Harry’s revelations may not, frustratingly for experts and republicans alike, seriously threaten the monarchy. Even if he’d wanted to, he probably picked the wrong moment, the public still being in an exceptionally forgiving mood.For all his divulging, to seriously “stain” or “trash”, as alleged, the royal brand, Harry needed to produce something meatier than, say, Charles’s well-documented self-pity, his teen bride, protracted infidelity, black spider memos, choice of valet, honour-seeking donors, magical thinking, property empire, political interference and dreadful taste in mentors, all of which faults were instantly forgiven the day he succeeded. It’s one of the historic bonuses of a hereditary monarchy that sound personal references are not a condition of employment. Even GB News is more demanding than this. With just a little care for appearances, a royal idler, boor, sex addict or fool can enjoy the exact same benefits as a more deserving predecessor.Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnistDo 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...

Lawyer for writer who accused him of rape asked if ex-president was admitting to it, unsealed testimony showsDonald Trump called the writer E Jean Carroll a “nut job” in video testimony last year and falsely claimed she had enjoyed being sexually assaulted – prompting her lawyer to ask if he was admitting he had raped her, according to freshly unsealed testimony.Questioned for a lawsuit, Trump, the former US president, angrily hurled insults and threatened to sue the columnist who accused him of raping her in the New York upscale department store Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s, according to excerpts of his videotaped testimony. The tapes were recorded last October and unsealed by a court on Friday. Continue reading...

Prize was second largest in Mega Millions history and the fourth time the game has had a billion-dollar winFriday the 13th proved lucky for one – someone who won the estimated $1.35bn lottery jackpot after a period of three months and 25 drawings that had seen no one across the US win the grand prize.The winner, whose name is not yet known, overcame steep odds of 1 in 302.6 million and had bought their ticket in Maine, the first time the state has scored the Mega Millions lottery jackpot. Continue reading...

The Republican-controlled state house decided to debate what sort of clothes female legislators should wear, to the dismay of Missouri DemocratsThe right to bear arms is sacred in Missouri: the state has some of the weakest gun laws in the US. The right to bare arms, however? Well that’s a little more complicated. On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives decided to spend its time debating what sort of clothes female legislators should wear in the chamber. Did they also review the current dress code for male legislators? No, of course not. After some deliberation on this important issue, the lawmakers decided that women were allowed to wear cardigans and jackets but must conceal their arms. Can’t have ladies flashing a naughty bit of elbow when men are trying to get important stuff done! Continue reading...

The congressman’s many lies are the product of a political system that incentivizes dishonesty and punishes sincerityIt’s hard to keep track of what, exactly, the newly elected Republican congressman George Santos has said about his own life. His story changes and contradicts itself; his lies seem indiscriminate, and largely ad hoc. He says he worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, which he didn’t. He said he graduated from Baruch College – he didn’t do that, either. Some of his fabrications are so trivial and specific that it’s impossible to ascribe a nefarious motive to them.What could Santos possibly have to gain, for instance, by claiming, as he apparently did to a local Republican party leader, to have been a college volleyball champion? Others are transparently self-serving, his attempts to cover them up so brazen as to be frankly hilarious. On the campaign trail, running in the heavily Jewish third district of New York, on suburban Long Island, Santos claimed that he was “a member of the Jewish community”, and descended from Ukrainian refugees. When this turned out to be untrue, he later tried to claim that he merely meant that he was “Jew-ish”. It was like a line from Seinfeld; punning, implausible, shameless. At times like this, it’s hard to take Santos’s dishonesty seriously. It seems less like an affront to the dignity of the democratic process and more like some kind of durational satire, a piece of performance art. Continue reading...

La June Montgomery Tabron speaks about the National Day of Racial Healing and her effort to build a cohort of companies striving for equityAmerican companies should be “champions” of racial healing and avoid the “leaky bucket” scenario in which people of color are hired only to quickly depart rather than be promoted, a leading Black philanthropist has urged.La June Montgomery Tabron is the first female and first Black president and chief executive of the WK Kellogg Foundation, one of the world’s biggest philanthropic organisations, which on Tuesday holds its seventh annual National Day of Racial Healing. Continue reading...

An apology only counts when there is a genuine process of reparation and reform. The people of the Dutch Caribbean are still waiting• Jermain Ostiana is a writer and poet from CuracaoElis Juliana, a poet, artist and intellectual from the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao, who died in 2013, once said: “The scars of my people’s feet from Dutch enslavement are still bawling pus.” It’s a vivid statement that captures the dominance of Dutch political and economic power over the Black people of Curaçao and its sister islands, including Saba, Statia, Bonaire, Aruba and St Maarten. And it still holds true – even after the surprising apology from the Netherlands last month for the atrocities of Dutch slavery in the region.In that apology, the prime minister, Mark Rutte, said: “On behalf of the Dutch government, I apologise for the past actions of the Dutch state: to enslaved people in the past, everywhere in the world, who suffered as a consequence of those actions, as well as to their daughters and sons, and to all their descendants, up to the present day.”Jermain Ostiana is a writer and poet from Curacao Continue reading...

The US home retailer, once worth $17bn, looks destined to enter chapter 11 despite a market rally this week. What went wrong?Bed Bath & Beyond, the pioneering home goods retailer, appears to be heading for bankruptcy. But you wouldn’t necessarily know it from visiting its flagship store in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood – or by looking at its share price this week.Last year Bed Bath & Beyond was one of the so-called “meme stocks”, including Gamestop, an ailing video games retailer, and cinema chain AMC, whose share prices were driven to dizzying heights by a new generation of online traders. Continue reading...

Scandal and despair hit the romance community when Susan Meachen was purportedly bullied into suicide. Was it a hoax?In 2020 the tightly knit and passionate world of self-published romance literature was shocked by the news that the novelist Susan Meachen, following bullying by other writers, had taken her own life.Meachen’s grieving fans funded her funeral costs, according to members of the romance community, and helped edit and promote her final book. Fellow authors released an anthology dedicated to Meachen, with the dedication page calling plaintively, or pointedly, to “keep bullying where it belongs – in fiction”. Continue reading...

As Republicans threaten to ensnare the president in investigations and legislative brinkmanship, Biden is touting bipartisanshipAfter a bruising fight over the House speakership, newly empowered Republicans officially set to work this week on what they say is a mandate to hold Joe Biden and his administration to account.Several of the president’s chief antagonists took control of powerful committees, eager to use their subpoena power to frustrate and undermine the president, his administration and his family. Continue reading...

Panel that considered whether ex-president committed crimes in trying to overturn 2020 election defeat could recommend prosecutionEven as Donald Trump prepares to dial up his campaign to take back the White House, the former US president’s political and personal fate may already have been decided by the secret workings of a grand jury in Georgia.The 23-member panel, convened to consider whether Trump and others committed crimes in trying to overturn his defeat in Georgia when it appeared the state might decide the outcome of the entire 2020 presidential election, was dissolved on Monday after submitting its conclusions and asking that they be made public. Continue reading...

American Cancer Society calculates that 3.8m lives have been saved, highlighting HPV’s role in tackling cervical cancerAmerican cancer deaths have declined by 33% since 1991, according to a new report – saving an estimated 3.8m lives.The report by the American Cancer Society attributed the three-decade trend largely to better early detection, lower rates of smoking, and improvements in treatment. Researchers also credited the human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV). Continue reading...

Hundreds of mermaids work in aquariums across the world – from Texas to Denmark – and I need you to listen to what they have to say

The big cat, Nova, weighs about 25lbs and zoo officials speculate is probably still on the grounds and hiding in the treesThe Dallas zoo was closed on Friday as staff searched for a clouded leopard that escaped its enclosure.The zoo issued a “code blue”, signaling a non-dangerous animal was not in its habitat. Continue reading...

House judiciary committee makes announcement after special counsel appointed to look into the caseRepublicans on the House judiciary committee on Friday announced an investigation into the discovery of classified documents at Joe Biden’s Delaware home and former office in Washington DC.The GOP representatives, newly in control of committees after their party took the House last November, made their move a day after the attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the matter. Continue reading...

House judiciary committee Republicans announce their own investigation into president’s classified documents

Police say a school employee was notified of a possible gun and searched the student’s backpack but did not find itAdministrators at the Virginia school where a six-year-old boy shot his teacher learned the child may have had a weapon before the shooting but did not find the 9mm handgun despite searching his bag, the school system’s superintendent said.The teacher, Abigail Zwerner, 25, was shot in the chest, suffering injuries that were initially considered to be life-threatening. Her condition has improved and she has been reported in stable condition. Continue reading...

Former president’s business empire fined $1.6m after being convicted last month on 17 charges including falsifying recordsDonald Trump’s business empire, the Trump Organization, was sentenced in a New York court on Friday to the maximum allowable fine of $1.6m for a tax fraud scheme going back at least 10 years.Despite the fine itself being relatively small for a huge business, the symbolism of a criminal conviction for an entity so close to the former president is significant. Continue reading...

Georgia and Alabama ravaged by tornadoes that ripped up trees, destroyed houses and caused injury and deathThe death toll from tornadoes that tore through parts of Georgia and Alabama rose to at least nine on Friday afternoon as rescue crews continued to search for trapped survivors and additional victims.Authorities were beginning to get a better picture of the damage caused by a twister that wrecked buildings and tossed cars in the streets of historic downtown Selma, Alabama, late on Thursday. Houses were torn off their foundations and property was smashed up and flattened by flying debris and ripped up trees. Continue reading...

As Republicans push for anti-abortion measures, a Florida congresswoman shared her experience with the House of Representatives of being forced to carry a dead baby decades earlier. Frederica Wilson, 80, said she was finally ready to tell her story publicly, having previously not wanted to 'relive the most painful time in my entire life'. Wilson said her baby was pronounced dead seven months into her pregnancy in the late 1960s. Doctors were prohibited from inducing labor as her pregnancy predated Roe v Wade and the legalisation of abortion nationwide – a decision dismantled by the conservative-controlled court last June

New Mexico officers followed a trail of blood and found the uninjured cub in a crate, and took him to the local zooPolice in New Mexico investigating reports of a shooting followed a trail of blood to a mobile home, and discovered a young tiger cub inside a crate.The uninjured cub was not, officials said, the same illegally kept tiger that investigators were searching for last summer when they raided a nearby house in Albuquerque and found instead a stash of guns, cash, drugs and a 3ft alligator. Continue reading...

Florida’s Frederica Wilson relives experience of being forced to carry a dead baby as Republicans push for anti-abortion measuresIt was a moment of raw humanity in Washington amid federal policy discussions that were largely devoid of it.During a week when Republicans, newly in control of the House of Representatives, discussed whether pharmacy workers should be allowed to refuse to fill abortion medication prescriptions due to religious objections, the Florida congresswoman Frederica Wilson rose to break a silence she had held. Continue reading...

Name of malware and criminal group behind it, LockBit has been blamed for attack on Royal MailLockBit has emerged as the most prolific name in ransomware attacks and has now been blamed for an incident that has hit Royal Mail’s international operations. Here is what we know about LockBit and how it operates. Continue reading...

At least six people were killed in Alabama on Thursday as thunderstorms and at least one tornado swept through the region, local officials have said.Trees were uprooted and homes destroyed by the tornado in Selma, with high winds and heavy rain leaving thousands without power. Parts of Georgia and Mississippi were also affected by the extreme weather Continue reading...

In Alabama, pregnant women are subjected to a work around law in the name of protecting the fetus: chemical endangerment of a childThis week, Steve Marshall, Alabama’s Republican attorney general said he sees a path to prosecuting women for having abortions in his state. This was a bit of a faux pas: a moment of letting slip the mask that the anti-abortion movement always tries to keep on.Alabama’s total abortion ban, which has only limited exemptions for women’s lives, makes providing an abortion a felony, punishable by up to 99 years in prison. But like nearly all of the abortion bans that have sprung into effect since the US supreme court’s ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health overturned Roe v Wade last June, the law has no mechanism to prosecute women who receive abortions. But that doesn’t mean that patients are safe from criminal charges, according to the state’s top prosecutor.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

I don’t think anyone should be going around calling themselves Duke or Duchess in 2023. Unless they are a stripper or a dogI’m afraid it’s the law now, OK? I’ve valiantly resisted for as long as I could, but the time has come: I simply have to write about Harry and Meghan. It is basically illegal not to have at least one opinion about the royals who apparently hate being royals but are still milking their royal connections for all they’re worth. And don’t roll your eyes, you’re a glutton for this stuff too. Everyone loves to see obscenely privileged people airing their dirty laundry. There is a reason that Harry’s memoir has become the UK’s fastest-selling nonfiction book and that reason is not the quality of the writing.Don’t worry I’m not going to pull a Piers Morgan or Jeremy Clarkson here and start seething with unhinged rage about Harry and Meghan. I’m not the Sussexes biggest fan but the only royal I can muster up enough energy to get really outraged about is Prince Andrew. You remember him? He hasn’t been in the news very much lately since Harry’s been hogging all the headlines but he’s the guy that got stripped of royal duties over his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He’s the guy that Ghislaine Maxwell recently called her “dear friend.” He’s a nasty piece of work and yet Britain is now so caught up in Harry hatred that a recent YouGov poll has found that Brits over the age of 65 dislike the Sussexes more than disgraced Prince Andrew.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist and the author of Strong Female Lead Continue reading...

Missouri Democrat mounting a second bid for US Senate hammers the Republican incumbent over his actions on January 6Announcing his second bid for US Senate in Missouri, Lucas Kunce needed to hit the ground running. He did so by running an ad targeting the Republican he hopes to defeat, Josh Hawley, for running away from the January 6 rioters he encouraged.The ad appeared on the second anniversary of the deadly attack on the US Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters. On 6 January 2021, before the mob broke in, Hawley was photographed raising his fist in its direction. The House January 6 committee showed what happened after rioters breached the walls: the senator ran for cover. Continue reading...

Tax filings reveal advocacy arm of Heritage Foundation spent $5m on lobbying in 2021 to block voting rights in battleground statesThe advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, the powerful conservative thinktank based in Washington, spent more than $5m on lobbying in 2021 as it worked to block federal voting rights legislation and advance an ambitious plan to spread its far-right agenda calling for aggressive voter suppression measures in battleground states.Previously unreported 2021 tax filings from Heritage Action for America, which operates as the foundation’s activist wing, shows that it spent $5.1m on contracting outside lobbying services. The outlay comes on top of $560,000 the group invested in its own in-house federal lobbying efforts that year, as well as registered lobbying by Heritage Action staffers in at least 24 states. Continue reading...

Events aim at giving ex-president a narrative reset after being criticized for his ‘low energy’ and inactivity, sources say. Plus, how menopause can destroy mental healthGood morning.Donald Trump is scheduled to venture out of his Mar-a-Lago resort and conduct a swing of presidential campaign events later this month, ramping up efforts to secure the Republican nomination after facing criticism around the slow start to his 2024 White House bid, according to sources familiar with the matter.What else is happening? The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed a special counsel on Thursday to investigate Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents from his time as vice-president. The move to name Robert Hur, a former Trump-appointed federal prosecutor and former top justice department official, was a rapid decision from Garland to insulate the department from possible accusations of political conflicts or interference.How do the Trump and Biden cases regarding classified documents differ? While Trump appears to have wilfully obstructed efforts to recover them, leading to the FBI raid, Biden’s team said they cooperated fully and immediately returned the documents to the National Archives as soon as they were discovered. Read more here.What tributes have been paid to Presley? John Travolta said on Instagram: “Lisa baby girl, I’m so sorry. I’ll miss you but I know I’ll see you again.” Meanwhile, Bette Midler said: “I’m in shock. So beautiful and only 54 years old; I can’t actually comprehend it.” Continue reading...

There are plenty of intriguing match-ups as the playoffs kick-off. Who will survive and book a spot in the NFL’s last eight?It will not be business as usual in the NFL playoffs this weekend. Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s on-field cardiac arrest earlier this month will haunt proceedings, despite his near-miraculous recovery. How could it not? If there’s one thing we should take away from the last few weeks, it’s that the league is populated by human beings, not abstract figures on stats sheets. The playoffs will continue as scheduled but expect the atmosphere to be more subdued than in years past. And let’s hope that the drama remains entirely football-related. Continue reading...

Events aim at giving ex-president a narrative reset after being criticized for his ‘low energy’ and inactivity, sources sayDonald Trump is scheduled to venture out of his Mar-a-Lago resort and conduct a swing of presidential campaign events later this month, ramping up efforts to secure the Republican nomination after facing hefty criticism around the slow start to his 2024 White House bid, according to sources familiar with the matter.The former US president is expected to travel to a number of early voting states for the Republican nomination – the specific states have not been finalized – around the final weekend of January, the sources said, where he is slated to announce his state level teams. Continue reading...