Democratic congressman Dan Goldman names GOP leaders in calling for investigation into handling of Smirnov allegations in Biden inquiryRepublican ineptitude" in attempts to impeach Joe Biden left the party embarrassed when a key source was revealed this week not only to have lied to the FBI but to have links to Russian intelligence, a leading House Democrat has said.It demonstrates chairman Comer and chairman Jordan's ineptitude in dealing with an investigation that is really designed as a political ploy to help Donald Trump," said Dan Goldman of New York. Continue reading...
Ex-Democratic congresswoman praised Trump and turned on former friend Biden, saying he would crumble' under pressureOnce a prominent supporter of leftwing senator Bernie Sanders, on Thursday she was greeted by far right activists with a standing ovation and a group of supporters brandishing gold letters that spelled T-R-U-M-P.Such is the journey of Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate who has an entire Wikipedia page devoted to her political positions" and is now seen as a possible running mate for Donald Trump. Continue reading...
About 228m bets placed on Super Bowl LVIII were on illegal platforms despite legalization, according to a new analysisThis month's Super Bowl, in the neon glare of the Las Vegas Strip, capped online betting's extraordinary rise from pariah to the luxury box of top-flight sports. Tens of millions of Americans had money riding on the Kansas City Chiefs' clash with the San Francisco 49ers.In its fight to overturn a federal ban on sports betting, legalization's supporters argued it would critically weaken" illegal gambling platforms across the United States. And yet almost two in three wagers placed on Super Bowl LVIII were illegal, according to one estimate shared with the Guardian. Continue reading...
by Tik Root for Grist, part of the Guardian Environme on (#6JV5G)
As a warming world creates an existential threat for the ski industry, resorts are reducing how much energy they need to make it snowTrudging across the top of Bromley Mountain Ski Resort on a sunny afternoon in January, Matt Folts checks his smartwatch and smiles: 14 degrees fahrenheit. That is very nearly his favorite temperature for making snow. It's cold enough for water to quickly crystallize, but not so cold that his hourslong shifts on the mountain are miserable.Folts is the head snowmaker at Bromley, a small ski area on the southern end of Vermont's Green Mountains. The burly 35-year-old sports a handlebar moustache, an orange safety jacket, and thick winter boots that crunch in the snow as he walks. A blue hammer swings from his belt. Continue reading...
Twenty-five years ago, the Channel 4 drama revolutionised what it meant to be gay in the UK - mostly for the betterWhen Queer As Folk was first broadcast on Channel 4, 25 years ago this week, I knew immediately that I was witnessing something momentous. The first episode famously featured graphic images of rimming. Sexy and shameless, the series went on to show drug use, pornography and endless copping off". This was accompanied by a jolly theme tune, an uplifting soundtrack and a lot of humour - much of it directed at straight people. It was clearly unlike anything I'd seen on TV before. What I couldn't have realised is that it would change everything for gay men in the UK.Queer As Folk, written by Russell T Davies, told the story of two gay best friends and their wider circle - including families and found families, boyfriends and casual sexual partners - as they romped through a series of adventures on and around Manchester's Canal Street. As this had been the setting for my own sexual awakening just a few years earlier - like the character Nathan, as a schoolboy travelling in from the suburbs - for me it carried an extra charge.Matt Cain's latest novel, One Love, is out now Continue reading...
Every concert now features an auction to support the army. Two years into the invasion, they have become ever more inventive, surreal - and personalDay 636 of the full-scale invasion. Kyiv, the House of Cinema, the venue for many premieres of films that have become classics. I am on the stage in front of a packed house. Today's bill features the rock artist Anton Slepakov, who together with musician Andrii Sokolov has been keeping a poetic diary of the invasion. Now, they're presenting a full-length recording of the album and have invited friends to share the stage with them.Oleksandr Serdyuk, also known as Koulman, is one of them. Comedian, director, artistic director of the Horobchyk (Sparrow") Theatre of the Absurd - and now a professional auctioneer. In 2023, Koulman conducted more than 150 auctions. Since the invasion, there has been an charity auction at every concert, show or cultural event to raise money for our armed forces. Continue reading...
Prosecutors had accused Trump of keeping documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that included information about the US nuclear programLawyers for Donald Trump have asked a federal judge to throw out the indictment charging him with retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club on grounds of presidential immunity, claiming they were his to keep because he designated them personal records while he was president.The decision to designate the documents as personal records under the Presidential Records Act meant it was an official act of his presidency for which he could not face prosecution, his lawyers wrote in the 22-page filing. Continue reading...
US to impose over 500 new sanctions on Russia after Navalny, main opposition leader to Putin, died after being imprisoned by KremlinJoe Biden met with Alexei Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, and the activist's daughter, Dasha Navalnaya, in California on Thursday.Navalny, the main opposition leader to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, died in an Arctic penal colony last Friday after being imprisoned by the Kremlin. Continue reading...
Hawking a book to many empty seats, former UK prime minister spoke at Maryland's Conservative Political Action ConferenceLiz Truss, the former British prime minister, has made a fresh bid for political relevance by addressing a far-right conference in the US, railing against Joe Biden, transgender rights and a so-called leftwing-run deep state.Truss was greeted by gentle applause and dozens of empty seats when she walked on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference at the National Harbor in Maryland. CPAC styles itself as the biggest and most influential gathering of conservatives in the world but is now widely seen as a glorified Donald Trump campaign rally, drawing speakers only from the populist right of the Republican party. Continue reading...
Alexander Smirnov, who claims to have Russian intelligence links, taken into custody after meeting at lawyers' offices in Las VegasThe former FBI informant who is charged with lying about a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving Joe Biden's family was again taken into custody in Las Vegas, two days after a judge released him, his attorneys said.Alexander Smirnov was arrested during a meeting on Thursday morning at his lawyers' offices in downtown Las Vegas. The arrest came after prosecutors appealed the judge's ruling allowing 43-year-old Smirnov, who holds dual US-Israeli citizenship, to be released with a GPS monitor ahead of trial. He is charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record. Continue reading...
Pramila Jayapal and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accuse president of behaving like Trump, saying we must not buckle on our principles'Progressive lawmakers and advocates on Thursday pushed back strongly against Joe Biden amid reports that the White House is weighing unilateral action to sharply restrict access to claim asylum at the US-Mexico border - comparing the move to the hardline strategies of Donald Trump when he was president.The leading progressive congressional representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal criticized the US president for considering such executive action, while legislative efforts are stalled on Capitol Hill amid Republican resistance, after CNN first reported that Biden was considering the unilateral move. Continue reading...
The independent candidate for president fronted a night of laughter' with Rob Schneider and others - were voters amused?Inside the Million Dollar Theatre in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday night, comedians cracked jokes about wokeness, the scamdemic", Joe Biden's age and stumbles - and Robert F Kennedy Jr made his pitch, of sorts, to voters.The 70-year-old, a member of the Kennedy political dynasty, with a long history of promoting conspiracy theories and vaccine skepticism, is running for president as an independent. Recent polling from Quinnipiac projected that in a race involving Biden and Trump, Kennedy, who has pledged to end the forever wars, clean up government [and] increase wealth for all", could receive as much as 15% of the vote. Continue reading...
Some analysts predict market could reach $100bn a year by end of decade with Eli Lilly and Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk leadingThe widespread use of powerful, relatively new weight-loss drugs in the United States could boost gross domestic product by 1% in the coming years as lower obesity-related health complications are likely to boost workplace efficiency, according to financial giant Goldman Sachs.Some analysts have predicted the market for weight-loss drugs could reach $100bn a year by the end of the decade, with Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk and Mounjaro producer Eli Lilly leading the race. Continue reading...
Millions are displaced and starving as two generals fight for power and other countries pursue their own interestsEven before a communications blackout hit Sudan two weeks ago, few were watching a war that has killed thousands of people and displaced more - almost 8million - than any other current conflict. It's not a forgotten crisis. It's a wholly ignored crisis," Kitty van der Heijden of Unicef told a meeting at the Munich Security Conference last week.Eighteen million people in Sudan are acutely food insecure, and around 3.8 million children are malnourished. At the Zamzam camp in Darfur, a child dies every two hours. There have been widespread atrocities including massacres and sexual violence. JanEgeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, warns that textbook ethnic cleansing" in Darfur - by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied Arab militias - has forced almost 700,000 to flee. Yet while the region's genocidal violence became a global cause two decades ago, it barely registers now.Do 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...
by Sam Levin in Los Angeles and Will Craft in New Yor on (#6JT90)
More than 2,000 people died in 2023, with a decade of autopsy data uncovering escalating humanitarian catastropheMore than 2,000 unhoused people died in Los Angeles in 2023, meaning an average of nearly six deaths a day of people living on the street or in shelters in the nation's most populous county.The numbers reveal an escalating humanitarian emergency as the housing crisis and drug addiction epidemic collide, with victims found in tents, encampments, vehicles, parks, alleys, vacant lots, underpasses, bus stops and train stations. Continue reading...
by Ramon Antonio Vargas in New Orleans on (#6JT9G)
Anthony Odiong was removed in 2019 over allegations of inappropriate behavior, but he continued to minister in New Orleans despite the archdiocese knowing about the complaintsA Catholic priest removed from his role at a New Orleans-area church in December over allegations of misconduct with multiple women was prohibited from working in and around Texas's capital for identical reasons in 2019, a diocesan official revealed in a privately sent letter obtained by the Guardian.It is unclear why Anthony Odiong was permitted to continue ministering to parishioners who had no idea about his past. The Austin diocese, the first to suspend Odiong, said it notified the New Orleans archdiocese. The New Orleans archdiocese said it acted in accord with civil, criminal and canon law" in its handling of Odiong but didn't elaborate. Continue reading...
Kremlin earlier said US president's comments at a San Francisco fundraiser were a disgrace'Vladimir Putin has described as rude" Joe Biden's comments in which the American president called the Russian leader a crazy SOB".Biden was talking about the climate crisis on Wednesday when he said: We have a crazy SOB like Putin and others, and we always have to worry about nuclear conflict, but the existential threat to humanity is climate." Continue reading...
Good plays have the power to shake us out of our complacency. This recurring debate is a pointless skirmish in a culture warCONTENT WARNING: This column may include opinions with which you forcefully disagree along with big name actors wading into the breach and, quite possibly, unrestrained below-the-line rage or rebuttal.So we're back here again: the debate on trigger warnings has become so persistent and volatile that the discussion might require its own trigger warning these days (as per above). Is the act of alerting an audience to sensitive, potentially triggering, content such as sex, violence and suicide (and that's just in Romeo and Juliet) a helpful access aid or it is infantilising us and neutering the power of theatre? Continue reading...
Alabama Fertility halts new procedures due to the legal risk' after state supreme court says embryos are extrauterine children'A second Alabama provider announced that it will pause its in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments on Thursday, just days after the state supreme court ruled in a first-of-its-kind decision that embryos are extrauterine children".We have made the impossibly difficult decision to hold new IVF treatments due to the legal risk to our clinic and our embryologists," Alabama Fertility said in a post to its Instagram account. We are contacting patients that will be affected today to find solutions for them and we are working as hard as we can to alert our legislators as to the far-reaching negative impact of this ruling on the women of Alabama." Continue reading...
Activists decry anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric as they mourn Nex Benedict, 16, who died after altercation' in Oklahoma high school bathroomThe death of a non-binary 16-year-old in Oklahoma has left LGBTQ+ Americans overwhelmed by anger and grief this week.Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old non-binary student, died on 8 February after a physical altercation" with classmates in their high school bathroom, according to a statement by local law enforcement on 21 February. Continue reading...
Congress should investigate case of Alexander Smirnov, who has been linked with Russian intelligence, leading lawyer arguesCongress should publicly investigate the case of Alexander Smirnov, the FBI informant charged with lying about corruption involving Joe Biden and linked to Russian intelligence, a leading lawyer said, adding that senior Republicans who pushed Smirnov's claims should be forced to testify.The Senate should open an immediate investigation into the Alexander Smirnov scandal - with public hearings, said Tristan Snell, formerly a prosecutor on the Trump University fraud case, now author of Taking Down Trump, a book on the former president's many legal challenges. Continue reading...
European Stoxx 600 index also reaches record close as strong Nvidia results fuel optimism about tech stocksJapan's main stock index, European shares and Wall Street's S&P 500 have hit all-time highs as strong results from the chipmaker Nvidia stoke investor exuberance over an artificial intelligence investment boom.The Nikkei increased 2.19% to end the day at 39,098.68. On the final trading day of 1989, it had closed at 38,915.87. The 34 years it has taken to regain its footing is a decade longer than it took Wall Street to recoup losses from the 1929 crash and Great Depression. Continue reading...
Earlier this week, Crowe said he kept shooting Robin Hood despite two broken legs. Now, Stallone has upped the ante with a horrific litany of bodily abuses. Who will share their medical notes next?One repeated theme in director Edward Zwick's very good new autobiography Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions is the importance of practical effects. For example, when he made The Siege, Zwick managed to shut down both Times Square and Brooklyn Bridge for a few hours to deliver a palpable sense of verisimilitude. If it had been made today, it will all be CGI and something ineffable will have been lost," he says.Zwick couldn't have possibly predicted this, but by chance he happened to make his claim in the midst of a glut of actors admitting that they are so dedicated to preserving the ineffable that they managed to bugger up their bodies beyond all comprehension in the name of audience satisfaction. Continue reading...
It is said that a mother who radiates self-acceptance vaccinates her daughter against low self-esteemHold your mum's hand and call an ambulance."Should I give her extra morphine?" Continue reading...
Republican Rachel Mitchell claims it's safer' not to send back Raad Almansoori, in custody pending charges for stabbing two womenA Republican prosecutor in Arizona has refused to extradite a murder suspect to New York, claiming it is safer" not to send him back because of the state's supposed treatment of violent criminals".Rachel Mitchell, attorney for Maricopa county - which includes most of the city of Phoenix - is holding the suspect, 26-year-old Raad Almansoori, in custody pending charges for stabbing two women. Continue reading...
The latest slate of knockout games featured a standout performance from Porto against Arsenal and the Diego Maradona Derby in NaplesThe second week of ties in the staggered Champions League last-16 was just as cagey as the first, and left plenty to play for in each of the second legs. Here's the prime performers from a week in which no team was able to gain more than a one-goal lead.Goalkeeper: Only two goalkeepers kept clean sheets, though Porto's Diogo Costa was not asked to make a save from Arsenal, and neither was Inter's Yann Sommer asked to face a shot on target from an Atletico player, so the week's most attacking game - PSV 1-1 Dortmund - threw up two contenders, both keepers facing plenty of shots. Alexander Meyer beats Walter Benitez to the crown, being only beaten by Luuk de Jong's canny penalty. Continue reading...
Comments by Israeli war cabinet member come as Israel continues to threaten ground invasion of Rafah. Plus, how monitoring nature from space could keep Earth healthy
Major League Soccer referees protested outside the league's headquarters after being locked out ahead of the beginning of the 2024 season. The lockout, a denial of employment by an employer during a labor dispute, was imposed on the referees after they overwhelmingly voted to reject a tentative new union contract agreement in a 95.8% vote, with 97.8% of the 260 union members voting. The union has also alleged unfair labor practices against the MLS and the Professional Referee Organization. The union cited members rejected the deal in part due to an attempt by the MLS and PRO to add a no strike and no lockout deal for the 2024 season and would have frozen wages, rolled back job security protections, and not addressed issues such as high workloads and travel for referees.
Republican former congressman - and one of the most prominent Trump critics - sounds the alarm ahead of the presidential electionA second Donald Trump presidency could spell the end of democracy in America and prove devastating for the world order", Adam Kinzinger, a Republican former congressman, has warned in an interview with the Guardian.Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, is vowing retribution against his political enemies in a second-term agenda more radical than his first, including mass deportations and a purge of the justice department. Kinzinger, one of the most prominent Trump critics in America, is sounding the alarm. Continue reading...
For 40 years, I've spent half an hour lying around doing nothing each day after waking up. It's scandalous behaviour that must be stoppedI thought I would get up early to write this, like I think I'll get up early to do something every morning. I set the alarm, full of sincere intentions, but when it goes off I just lie there for about half an hour. It has been this way every morning for 40 years. I'm not resting, I'm not rising, I'm not doing anything worthwhile, unless you consider doomscrolling while listening to the radio worthwhile.What an appalling waste of time. Forty years multiplied by 365 days multiplied by 30 minutes comes to 438,000 minutes, which is 7,300 hours, or 304 days. Scandalous. Nigh-on a year of my life thrown away neither sleeping nor doing anything useful. Continue reading...
The call centre for my insurer is in Scotland but the system is all-American. When the bills arrive, the hurt begins all over againI have lived for long enough in the US to be acclimated to most of the cultural differences, starting with 20% tipping and ending with the customary address of strangers as sir", or ma'am", as opposed to the dithery British er, excuse me?". The exception to this, of course, is US healthcare, which will never strike me as less than outlandish. So it was, last week, when I had cause to call 911 in the middle of the night, but only after putting in a call to my insurers to request pre-authorisation.If you take the narrowest view, there are aspects of US healthcare that are superior to the UK and European models. In the early hours of last Thursday morning, I knew, for example, that an ambulance would arrive at my door within 10 minutes and probably sooner, no questions asked. I knew that, once I'd been discharged from the ER, I would be able to choose my own doctor for follow-up care, and have some say in how, where and when I was treated. I also knew, with a certainty that I suspect deepened the back spasms that kicked off the whole thing in the first place, that if I didn't take the necessary steps, I would be receiving a $3,000 invoice from my insurers for the cost of the ride - and that even if I did everything right, there was no guarantee.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Nick Saban's departure from Alabama shocked me as a football fan. But as an anthropologist and ethnographer, I was more concerned with what the news meant for the playersOnly a few days after the 2024 College Football Playoff National Championship game, head coach Nick Saban announced his retirement from his post at the University of Alabama. Saban's successor was announced the next day when the public learned University of Washington's Kalen DeBoer, fresh off a loss in the national title game, would lead the Crimson Tide.As someone who follows college football, I was shocked by the announcement. After almost two decades and six national championships in Tuscaloosa, Saban seemed a rock-solid fixture. But as an anthropologist and ethnographer who specializes in the intersection of race and sport, I was more concerned with what the news meant for the players, given how the timing of and secrecy surrounding these hires highlight a striking disconnect in football's focus on family. Continue reading...
Former Conservative PM, whose tenure lasted 50 days, tells CPAC she fell victim to UK's establishment ... its bureaucrats and lawyers'Liz Truss, the former British prime minister, spoke at a far-right conference in America on Wednesday, styling herself as a populist who took on America's equivalent of the deep state" in her own country.Truss was among the headline speakers at this week's Conservative Political Action Conference at the National Harbor in Maryland. CPAC is billed as the biggest annual gathering of conservatives in the US but has in recent years embraced Donald Trump's brand of nativist-populism. Continue reading...
In Munich I heard both Ukrainians and Alexei Navalny's widow tell us why Putin must be defeatedAs we approach the second anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine this Saturday, ask yourself a simple question: is Europe at war? When I put this to a room full of participants at the Munich security conference last Sunday, most of them raised their hands to say yes, Europe is at war. But then I asked a second question: do you think most people in your own country have woken up to this? Very few hands went up.This was a Munich of painful contrasts. Here, at the conference, were badly wounded Ukrainian soldiers giving us stories from a frontline hell. Yuliia Paievska, a veteran military medic, told us she had seen streams of blood, rivers of suffering", and that children have died in my arms". We are the dogs of war," she said, recalling how she herself was captured in Mariupol, imprisoned for three months and tortured by the Russians. Give us the weapons," she concluded, to kill this war."Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Biden administration considering using immigration law used by Trump after Republicans rejected a negotiated immigration billThe White House is considering using provisions of federal immigration law repeatedly tapped by Donald Trump to unilaterally enact a sweeping crackdown at the southern border, according to three people familiar with the deliberations.The administration, stymied by Republican lawmakers who rejected a negotiated border bill earlier this month, has been exploring options that Joe Biden could deploy on his own without congressional approval, multiple officials and others familiar with the talks said. But the plans are nowhere near finalized and it's unclear how the administration would draft any such executive actions in a way that would survive the inevitable legal challenges. The officials and those familiar with the talks spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to comment on private White House discussions. Continue reading...
Denver police investigating if racial bias was involved in disappearance of pieces including panel depicting Black veteransA large Martin Luther King Jr memorial in Denver's City park was vandalized, and police are trying to determine if racial bias was involved.Several pieces of the marble and bronze I Have a Dream memorial were stolen sometime Tuesday. The missing pieces include a bronze torch and angel, as well as a bronze panel that depicted Black military veterans, the Denver Post reported. Continue reading...
Five-year-old Sloan Mattingly of Indiana was buried in a rare but deadly event unknown to many AmericansThe collapse of sand holes, like the one that killed a five-year-old Indiana girl who was digging with her brother on a Florida beach, is an under-recognized danger that kills and injures several children a year around the country.Sloan Mattingly died Tuesday afternoon at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea's beach when a 4-5ft-deep (1-1.5-metre) hole collapsed on her and her seven-year-old brother, Maddox. The boy was buried up to his chest, but the girl was fully covered. Video taken by a bystander shows about 20 adults trying to dig her out using their hands and plastic pails, but the hole kept collapsing on itself. Continue reading...
Death of Jaahnavi Kandula, 23, from India, ignited outrage after fellow officer was recorded making appalling' remarks about caseProsecutors in Washington state said on Wednesday they will not file felony charges against a Seattle police officer who struck and killed a graduate student from India while responding to an overdose call - a case that attracted widespread attention after another officer was recorded making callous remarks about it.Officer Kevin Dave was driving 74mph (119km/h) on a street with a 25mph (40km/h) speed limit in a police SUV before he hit 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk on 23 January 2023. Continue reading...
Former UN ambassador and Republican presidential candidate expresses support for Alabama supreme court rulingThe Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has spoken in response to the recent supreme court ruling out of Alabama, revealing that she believes embryos created through IVF are babies".In a new interview with NBC, the former UN ambassador expressed support for the Friday ruling by Alabama's supreme court that deemed that frozen embryos are children". Continue reading...
by Martin Pengelly in Washington and agencies on (#6JSJG)
James Biden appears before House oversight and judiciary panels as key Democrat says investigation is really over at this point'A top Democrat urged Republicans to fold up the tent to this circus show" and stop attempting to impeach Joe Biden, after the president's youngest brother, James Biden, testified to the House oversight and judiciary committees.The closed-door session was held after the revelation that a former FBI informant, charged with making up a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving the Bidens and a Ukrainian energy company, had contacts with officials affiliated with Russian intelligence. Continue reading...
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