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Manuel Paez Terán’s family say other state agencies have also failed to release information about activist’s death. Plus, how the first Twitter-fuelled bank run played out• Don’t already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up hereGood morning.Attorneys for the family of Manuel Paez Terán, known as Tortuguita, have disclosed to the Guardian that a medical examiner’s office in Georgia has still not completed an autopsy of the environmental activist nearly two months after he was shot dead by the police.What did an independent autopsy reveal? A separate, family-ordered autopsy appeared to show that the activist was sitting cross-legged, with his hands in front of his face, when he was hit by a hail of bullets. “Manuel was looking death in the face, hands raised when killed,” the civil rights attorney Brian Spears said.What has the impact of the flood been like? Three water systems have been identified as potentially contaminated, according to county officials. Eleven schools have had to close, and hundreds of people are being housed in shelters where beds are mostly full. County officials are bracing for more evacuations and new damage from the next big rain. Continue reading...

It took decades to force banks to abandon racist redlining. We don’t have decades to avert catastrophic climate crisisThe collapse of Silicon Valley Bank will bring many forms of fallout. One of the most obvious consequences is that the biggest banks – Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, Bank of America – will probably get even bigger. That is why we’re joining protests across the United States outside hundreds of those banks’ branches on Tuesday, 21 March: if they’re going to hold that much power over the planet’s economy, we need them to recognize and help with our great crises. We need them not to do what they did last century, which is to ignore or exacerbate our deepest troubles.Beginning in the 1930s, the federal government mapped America, grading neighborhoods to decide which ones were worthy of investment, literally drawing red lines on maps to make it crystal clear. Many mainly Black and Brown neighborhoods ended up with low grades, and most US banks made sure money didn’t flow in their direction. Nearly a century later, these neighborhoods still suffer. Lacking trees and parks, they are degrees warmer than nearby leafy communities. Their residents are condemned to a myriad of health issues, from asthma to kidney stones.Ben Jealous is the executive director of the Sierra Club, the former executive director of the NAACP, and the author of Our People Have Always Been FreeBill McKibben is the founder of Third Act, which organizes Americans over the age of 60 for action on climate and democracy Continue reading...

A federal judge is poised to restrict mifepristone – even though the drug has been safely and effectively used in the US for more than 20 yearsThis week a Republican-appointed federal judge weighed whether to grant an injunction that could remove mifepristone, the drug used in most American abortions, from the market nationwide. And the hearing almost happened in secret.US district court judge Matthew Kacsmaryk had initially planned to keep Wednesday’s hearing in the case – in which a group of rightwing anti-abortion groups are suing the FDA to reverse its 20-year-old approval of mifepristone – quiet. In a conference call with lawyers for the anti-choice groups and the Department of Justice, Kacsmaryk asked attorneys not to disclose the existence of the hearing (“This is not a gag order,” he said repeatedly), and said that the event would only be made public late on Tuesday to minimize popular awareness. “It may even be after business hours.” The judge’s courtroom in Amarillo, Texas, is hours away from any major city. It was only because of a press leak that the hearing was known to the public at all.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Republicans in Cochise county who undermined midterm election gain control in critical swing state for 2024The 2022 election ended months ago, at least in most of the country.In a rural county on the US-Mexico border in Arizona, though, the election and its fallout linger, causing heated divisions and offering a view into how conspiracy theories could upend elections across the country. Continue reading...

Manuel Paez Terán’s family says several other state agencies have also failed to release information regarding the death of the activistAttorneys for the family of Manuel Paez Terán, known as “Tortuguita”, have disclosed to the Guardian that a local Georgia medical examiner’s office has still not completed an autopsy of the 26-year-old nearly two months after the environmental activist was shot and killed by the police.Among the issues at stake in the high-profile case is the question of whether Terán fired a gun first at officers, although it remains unclear if the autopsy would provide this information. Paez Terán died as police raided a camp in a forest near Atlanta, Georgia, near the construction site of a massive police and fire department training facility known as “Cop City”. Continue reading...

The Aussie dog cartoon expertly mirrors aspects of children’s internal life, its language is silly and divine, and it’s just so soothingFor British people of a certain generation (mine), it may be the Australian accents that soothe us into a state of pure happiness. It may be the quality of the animation, or the gentle, low-stress storylines. Or it may be that it just caught us at a particularly vulnerable time.Whatever it is, whenever my children ask what we should watch on TV, I lobby hard to veto Nailed It!, (cake reality show), shouty cartoon Teen Titans, or tween sitcom, Bunk’d, in favour of one of my top viewing pleasures of the moment. My kids lightly protest; at eight, they have almost outgrown Bluey, the Aussie cartoon about a blue dog and her little sister. But I, apparently, have not.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

In rural northern California, residents feel neglected by officers – especially after they canceled daytime patrolsIn Rancho Tehama Reserve, residents are used to getting by without everything they need. The price, or the perk, of living among the oak trees and rolling hills where cattle graze in this rural northern California community is its isolation.People typically come to the Ranch, as residents call it, looking for space and quiet – they only got proper cellphone and internet service three years ago. The settlement is at the end of a two-lane road that meanders through the hillsides of California’s Sacramento Valley and offers glimpses of the snow-capped peaks of Mounts Lassen and Shasta. The gas station has snacks, propane and phone chargers, and the hardware store carries alfalfa pellets, kerosene and bolts, but most anything else requires at least a 30-minute drive. Continue reading...

An anti-woke commentator short-circuited when asked to define the term, which the right has turned into a catch-allTired of hearing conservatives go on and on about “wokeness”? Me too. So I have a cunning plan: let’s establish a moratorium on people throwing around the word “woke”, one of the most used and abused terms in recent memory, until we have all agreed on a precise definition of it.Before the right co-opted the term and used it to describe everything from BlackRock to Disney World, “woke” had an actual meaning. The term comes from African American Vernacular English and, originally, was broadly defined as being “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination”. Americans who aren’t suffering from Fox News-induced brain worms still understand that to be its meaning. According to a recent USA Today/Ipsos Poll, 56% of Americans surveyed say they think that being woke means “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices”. Thirty-nine per cent of people surveyed (and 56% of people who identified as Republican), meanwhile, said it meant “to be overly politically correct and police others’ words”. Continue reading...

Lawyers understood to have argued that payments would have been made regardless of presidential run and did not use campaign fundsDonald Trump’s legal team recently urged the Manhattan district attorney’s office not to indict the former president over his role in paying hush money to a porn star, arguing that the payments would have been made irrespective of his 2016 presidential candidacy, sources familiar with the matter have said.The lawyer who represented the Trump team at the meeting with the district attorney’s office, Susan Necheles, also argued that campaign funds had not been used for the payments to the porn star, known as Stormy Daniels, and were therefore not a violation of campaign finance laws. Continue reading...

Mayor and city council agreed to partnership with nonexistent nation invented by Indian fugitive Swami NithyanandaThe city of Newark, New Jersey, has confirmed that it was duped over five days in January when Mayor Ras Baraka invited what he believed to be a delegation from the Hindu nation of Kailasa to join into a sister city partnership.A signing ceremony was held at which Baraka told a Kailasa delegate: “I pray that our relationship helps us to understand cultural, social and political development and improves the lives of everybody in both places.” Continue reading...

Sidney Holmes, who served 30 years, released after new inquiry found eyewitness identification was likely ‘misidentification’A man who served more than 30 years of a 400-year prison sentence has been freed after he was exonerated for armed robbery charges.On Monday, 57-year-old Sidney Holmes was released from prison in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after the state decided to reinvestigate a 1988 armed robbery in which Holmes was accused of being the getaway driver. Continue reading...

Adult film star was paid $130,000 in hush money to keep her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with the ex-president under wrapsThe adult film star Stormy Daniels met with investigators on Wednesday to discuss the former president’s role in a hush money payment made ahead of the 2016 election in exchange for her silence about claims of a sexual liaison.The news emerged as Michael Cohen, a former Trump attorney who orchestrated the payment, was giving a second day of testimony before a New York grand jury looking into the matter. Continue reading...

Former Los Angeles mayor takes diplomatic post after weathering doubts about his truthfulness in a sexual harassment scandalEric Garcetti, the former mayor of Los Angeles, was confirmed on Wednesday as the nation’s next ambassador to India, 20 months after he was first nominated by Joe Biden and after weathering doubts about his truthfulness in a sexual harassment scandal involving a top adviser during his time at City Hall.The 52-42 vote in a divided Senate gave the administration a long-sought victory in filling one of the country’s highest-profile diplomatic posts. Continue reading...

Federal judge in Texas holds hearing on status of mifepristone, which a far-right group claims is unsafe despite FDA approval

US attorney says Wengui, also known as Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok, used stolen money to buy a $3.5m Ferrari and finance a $37m yachtGuo Wengui, a self-exiled Chinese tycoon with close links to prominent Trumpist Republicans including Steve Bannon, has been indicted on 12 counts relating to an alleged $1bn fraud.The charges announced by the US attorney for the southern district of New York on Wednesday include wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. Continue reading...

US says any recovery operation in such deep water would be difficult and unlikely to yield useful intelligenceMoscow has said it intends to recover the wreckage of a US drone brought down on Tuesday following an interception by Russian fighter jets, but US officials said the debris could be in such deep water that recovery is impossible, and would have no real intelligence value.“I don’t know if we can recover [it] or not, but we will certainly have to do that, and we will deal with it,” said Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s security council, on Wednesday. “I certainly hope for success.” Continue reading...

Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator, revealed the ex-president’s state of mind after 2020 loss to the Georgia grand jurySuch was Donald Trump’s troubled state of mind after the 2020 election that he would have believed aliens had stolen his ballots if anyone had told him so, a leading Republican senator said, according to a member of the special grand jury in the investigation of the former president’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in Georgia.According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, an unnamed juror described Senator Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina and a close Trump ally, as saying: “During that time, if somebody had told Trump that aliens came down and stole Trump ballots … Trump would’ve believed it.” Continue reading...

Stallion zebra, which was behaving ‘erratically’, shot dead by police after attacking Ronald Clifton, 72A midwestern farmer called emergency services, shouting: “Come before it gets me again!” after he was attacked by his pet zebra at a farm in Circleville, Ohio.The zebra, which bit Ronald Clifton, 72, on the arm, partially severing it, was the only stallion in a small herd of four or five mares. Continue reading...

Proposal also calls for gender neutral language at women’s college whose alumni include Hillary Clinton and Madeleine AlbrightStudents at the famed Wellesley College for women voted this week to extend admission to trans men and non-binary students, though campus administrators have said there is “no plan” to immediately change school policy.In a non-binding election on Tuesday, students at the liberal arts college in Massachusetts voted to open admission to all non-binary and transgender students, including trans men, reported Wellesley News, the college’s student newspaper. Continue reading...

I am fed up of solo flyers – usually women – having to give up their seats just because other passengers have kids in towAfter nearly a decade working as cabin crew for an international airline, I have a sixth sense for when a passenger is about to ask me a question. On a flight last month, two parents stand in the aisle before takeoff, laden with baby gear, huffing and puffing. I clock them gesturing towards a woman seated in an aisle seat, travelling alone.The man calls me over, looking exasperated. He wants to be able to sit with his partner and two young children, but his family’s seats are spread across a row, with an aisle in between them, he tells me. He wants me to ask the woman to move so the family can sit together.Meryl Love is the pseudonym of a crew member working for an international airlineDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Larry Fink tells investors more ‘shutdowns and seizures’ in US possible and predicts inflation and interest rates to rise

Seven sheriff’s office employees charged with second-degree murder after man died during intake process at mental hospitalSeven Virginia sheriff’s office employees have been charged with second-degree murder in connection with the death of a 28-year-old man at a state hospital for mental health last week, a local prosecutor said.Henrico county sheriff’s office personnel took the victim, Irvo Otieno, to Central State hospital on 6 March to admit him as a patient, said Dinwiddie county commonwealth’s attorney, Ann Cabell Baskervill, late on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Rail company faces 58-count civil lawsuit over chemical-releasing derailment and ‘long string’ of other hazardous incidentsThe state of Ohio is suing the rail giant Norfolk Southern over the derailment of a freight train carrying toxic chemicals through the village of East Palestine last month, calling it one of a “long string” of derailments and hazardous material incidents involving the company.The 58-count civil lawsuit, filed in federal court, seeks to hold the rail company financially responsible for the derailment that caused the release of over 1m gallons of chemicals, calling it “recklessly endangering” to the residents of East Palestine and the state’s natural resources. Continue reading...

Will this be Alabama’s year to cut down the nets? Who is this season’s Cinderella team? Our writers break down the bracket for the NCAA tournamentIt is. Alabama were named the tournament’s top overall seed despite losing five games, two more than fellow No 1 seed Houston. The West region is widely considered a gauntlet that could produce an unlikely Final Four side and pundits can’t even agree on a favorite Cinderella team. Get ready for it to get weird. Gabriel Baumgaertner Continue reading...

UK defence secretary responds after US denounces crash as ‘unsafe and unprofessional’. Plus, inside the controversial world of Pornhub

Police swarmed camp on Saturday, detained activists and confiscated property; one person arrested, for a traffic ticketA police helicopter circled so close to a house in the leafy Atlanta neighborhood called Lakewood late on Saturday night that a resident said he could “damn near see the pilot”.The resident, who asked for anonymity in order to speak with the Guardian, decided to go to a nearby friend’s house. Others were not so lucky. Several dozen other people, including members of a medical crew, were then rousted from campsites on the resident’s property during a post-dawn police raid that followed. Continue reading...

With fewer add-on goodies to offer staff, big firms may have to think about workplace culture and a better work-life balance

The world’s richest man is building a libertarian utopia in Texas. But when there are no rules or regulations, there can be unexpected problems

Letting our children watch TV can feel like a shameful secret. Let’s throw off the guilt and embrace the benefits of CBeebiesAs the baby turns one, I’ve been looking back at the past year – which seems somehow to have been both the longest and shortest of my life – and reflecting on what I’ve learned. I embarked upon parenthood thinking I was at least a little bit prepared in terms of what it involved, only for it to be made swiftly apparent that I am utterly clueless. In fact, one of the sharpest, most humbling lessons so far has been the dawning understanding that no one actually really knows what they are doing most of the time.I suspect that before a baby arrives we all have some ideas about the sort of parents we are going to be, only to guiltily dispense with those “principles” one by one as the child grows. This has never been more apparent to me than when thinking about screen time. How I laugh now at the sweet summer child who obnoxiously recommended the CBeebies Prom to my fellow National Childbirth Trust (NCT) mums, keen to stress that of course I turned his bouncer to face away from the screen. I’m surprised the poor baby didn’t get a crick in his neck from craning to see what was going on. Continue reading...

New York prosecutors expanded criminal inquiry of company last year and examined acceptance of $8m with suspected Russian tiesFederal prosecutors in New York involved in the criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s social media company last year started examining whether it violated money laundering statutes in connection with the acceptance of $8m with suspected Russian ties, according to sources familiar with the matter.The company – Trump Media, which owns Trump’s Truth Social platform – initially came under criminal investigation over its preparations for a potential merger with a blank check company called Digital World that was also the subject of an earlier probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Continue reading...

Merrick Garland, the attorney general, tasked with moving the country ‘as close to universal background checks as possible’Joe Biden announced Tuesday a new slate of executive actions that are aimed at reducing gun violence and the proliferation of guns that are sold to prohibited people.The president spoke at a community center in Monterey Park, California, meeting victims’ families and community members devastated by a mass shooting that claimed 11 lives and injured nine other people in January following a large lunar new year festival in the city’s downtown. Continue reading...

The rare event is the result of the region experiencing its snowiest season in 70 years, with more storms expected to hit the stateAmid an onslaught of intense winter storms that have hit California in recent weeks and sent record snow across the Sierra Nevada, Lake Tahoe’s Emerald Bay has frozen over for the first time in decades.The bay, a treasured landmark on the lake’s south-west shore and popular destination, regularly gets icy during Tahoe’s chilly winters, but has not frozen completely in 30 years. Last week, as temperatures in the region fell below freezing, California state parks staff snowshoed in and found a thin layer of ice covering the bay. Continue reading...

Major rivers were overflowing in 16 locations in the state, including in central California where a levee on the Pajaro River failedA powerful atmospheric river pummeling California could cause even more flooding and mudslides in regions already waterlogged after weeks of back-to-back storms.The National Weather Service declared a high risk of excessive rainfall across the state, in both coastal and mountainous communities. “Lives and property are in great danger from Tuesday into Wednesday,” the agency warned. Continue reading...

US accuses Russia of ‘unsafe and unprofessional’ intercept of MQ-9 Reaper drone over waters west of Crimea• See all our Ukraine coverageA Russian fighter has collided with a US Reaper drone, forcing it down into the Black Sea, in what US forces called an “unsafe and unprofessional” intercept.A US European Command statement said the collision happened just after 7am on Tuesday morning, when two Russian Su-27 fighter jets flew up to the MQ-9 Reaper drone over international waters west of Crimea. The statement said the Russian pilots sought to disrupt the US aircraft before the collision. Continue reading...

The senator, a leading force in the Democratic push for gun control, warns the US is ‘headed towards a very dangerous place’A Democratic US senator at the forefront of a push to enact new gun control measures has said Republicans “don’t give a crap” about children or gun violence.Connecticut’s Chris Murphy – who has been a leading force for Democrat gun control efforts since the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting killed 26 people in his state, 20 of them children – made the comment in a wide-ranging interview with Salon that was published on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Company will move to synthetic materials but conservationists say culling bans could leave kangaroo populations worse off

One of her biggest victories was signing a family leave bill in 1993, providing job protection for care of a newborn, sick child or parentPat Schroeder, a pioneer for women’s and family rights in Congress who confronted and angered conservatives, has died. She was 82.Schroeder’s former press secretary, Andrea Camp, said the former congresswoman suffered a stroke recently and died on Monday in Celebration, Florida. Continue reading...

State supreme court previously struck down GOP-drawn congressional map that favored RepublicansThe North Carolina supreme court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a major gerrymandering case that could have significant implications for US voting rights.In a highly unusual move, the North Carolina court appears poised to overrule itself and get rid of congressional and state legislative districts it approved last year. The GOP-drawn map that was struck down could have produced a 11-3 advantage for Republicans in the congressional delegation. The one that replaced it was far less advantageous to the GOP and wound up producing a 7-7 split in the 2022 midterm elections. The court’s decision would likely allow Republicans to get a more advantageous map back in place. Continue reading...

Former president promotes book of correspondence with mournful claim that ‘only half’ of those included still like himQueen Elizabeth II, Diana, Princess of Wales, Richard Nixon, Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton and other correspondents will be shown to have “kissed my ass”, Donald Trump said on Tuesday, promoting a forthcoming book of their letters.Letters to Trump will contain 150 missives from figures also including Kim Jong-un and Ronald Reagan. Drawn from Trump’s life before and after he ran for president, the book is due to be published next month. Continue reading...

Proposals also include financing debt forgiveness, guaranteed annual incomes for families and homes in the city for $1San Francisco lawmakers will consider a range of options on Tuesday to provide reparations to Black people for decades of racist treatment by the city government, from providing reparation tax credits to helping finance debt forgiveness for Black families.The proposals will be presented at a city meeting today, though there is no immediate timeline for action. The most prominent and controversial proposal is a “one time lump sum payment” of $5m to all eligible Black people, a number that the chair of the city’s reparations committee called “actually low when you consider the harm”. Continue reading...

Florida senator disagrees with governor over characterization of Russia’s invasion as ‘territorial dispute’