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...
by Reverend William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgr on (#68KTE)
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
Cryptocurrency exchange and its debtors seek refund of money donated by company’s founder Sam Bankman-FriedThe bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange firm founded by disgraced entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried is demanding refunds of donations made to politicians before its spectacular collapse last year.In “confidential messages” sent to numerous political figures and action groups, FTX and its debtors are backing up their demand for the return of money donated by Bankman-Fried prior to the company’s bankruptcy in November with the threat of legal action. Continue reading...
Quake hit early on Monday, leveling buildings while many slept and trapping people under rubble. Plus, the Chinese ‘spy balloon’ rowGood morning.At least 1,500 people have been killed as they slept in Turkey and Syria after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit in the early hours of Monday – one of the most powerful quakes in the region for at least a century.Turkey is one of the world’s most active earthquake zones. It stretches over the Anatolian fault line in the north of the country that has caused large and destructive events. An area close to Istanbul was rocked by a 7.4-magnitude earthquake in 1999, the worst to hit Turkey in decades. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Peltier, 78, convicted of murdering two FBI agents in 1975, tells Guardian of desire to return home to tribal landLeonard Peltier, the Indigenous rights activist held for almost five decades in maximum security for crimes he has always denied, has made a plea for clemency so that he can wander freely and hug his grandchildren for the first time.In an exclusive interview with the Guardian to mark the start of his 48th year in prison, Peltier spoke about the pain of being deprived of his liberty, and his yearning to be reunited with his homeland and community after so many years. Continue reading...
The former PM’s confidence in her ‘small state’ formula remains undented. And her flailing party is all-too ready to share in the delusion“This soul-searching has not been easy,” she writes. But though she looked everywhere, Liz Truss never found it. Instead, she found blame to scatter on everyone but herself for the havoc left by her 49 days: even ChatGPT would have written her 4,000-word non-apologia with more humanity and humility. Truss’s attempt at resurrection would be easily dismissed, except that her hallucinations are rampant across her party: ideas not cauterised by searing confrontation with reality.Though Truss was outlasted by a lettuce, let’s reprise how she did such damage in so short a time: her mini-budget was more of a mini H-bomb. Within hours the pound plummeted and borrowing costs soared. When her chancellor proclaimed more was to come, gilt markets plunged and the Bank of England rushed in with a monster £65bn bailout. That has left some highly exposed defined benefit pensions missing billions and people with mortgages paying the price. Continue reading...
‘We need to get that bill passed,’ Tyre Nichols’s mother said at his funeral – but what is it, and will Congress ever act?As RowVaughn Wells addressed the hundreds of mourners gathered to grieve the loss of her son, Tyre Nichols, she delivered an impassioned plea to Congress: pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.“We need to get that bill passed,” Wells said at Nichols’s funeral on Wednesday. “Because if we don’t, the next child that dies – that blood is going to be on their hands.” Continue reading...
Nick Sirianni has an awesome array of defensive and offensive talent at his disposal. But his players say his critics have sold him shortA cheeky 24-year-old New York Giants safety named Julian Love stirred things up last week by saying pretty much anyone could coach the Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles have amassed so much talent, Love said, that Nick Sirianni, Philadelphia’s actual head coach, had “a free ride” all the way to the Super Bowl.“You know what, man? People always got something to say when they’re at home,” Brandon Graham, the Eagles’ veteran linebacker, would respond just hours later. “They got time to think about it. So I ain’t going to touch too much on it.” Continue reading...
Experts remain concerned about virus as Biden administration says it will let the public health emergency expire in MayDavid Rosner, who studies public health and social history at Columbia University, spent 10 days in a hospital in November because he contracted respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which worsened due to his asthma, and he developed pneumonia.“It’s all over now, but there were a few moments where it was kind of touchy, and I wish people were more aware generally that this can happen,” said Rosner, 76, who has not had Covid-19. Continue reading...
I want the language I use to describe myself to celebrate all the things my neurological difference has given me• Nick Ransom is a journalist and founder of the Neurodiverse Media CommunityI don’t see being autistic as “having” a disorder. Instead, I look at it as a very positive thing. From a young age, it has helped me direct a laser-like focus on achieving my goals. My obsessive mindset and lack of real motivation to socialise accelerated my career in a way that would not have been possible if I had other interests. Achieving my ambitions would have been so much harder if I had not been autistic.But there is an increasing tendency to use language that demonises this neurological difference. Phrases such as “Nick has autism” or “Nick’s autism” make me cringe as they suggest an ailment that controls and burdens, which feeds into a narrative of struggle, disability and a lack of agency.Nick Ransom is a journalist and founder of the Neurodiverse Media CommunityDo 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...
A recent book about the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic details a ‘collective forgetting’ of the period. Our lack of Covid reckoning suggests history is repeating itselfMy best friend has been ill and it’s taken both of us back to March 2020. For her, it’s reawakening the real trauma of getting very poorly and waiting, struggling to breathe, for an ambulance that never came. I was far luckier, but it’s revived memories of trying to keep in touch with her, waking each morning terrified she wouldn’t answer my messages, as our robustly fit and healthy neighbour died in hospital, his partner unable to visit.Covid was so bad for so many – why aren’t we talking about it more? My friend, who suffers badly from long Covid, struggles to understand the refusal of many people to think or talk about the pandemic; their reluctance to understand what it has taken from her and from so many others. She’s baffled by the apparent desire to pretend it never happened, or that it wasn’t a big deal. Continue reading...
Despite the history of breast cancer in my family, I chose to be blithely ignorant. Now I have the disease, I realise that knowledge is powerThe results of the genetic test didn’t really come as a surprise. My mum died of breast cancer in her mid-30s, and I’d recently had it confirmed that my great-grandma on her side had it on her death certificate too.Yet when I was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer last year – the most likely to be linked to a gene mutation – I hoped against hope that it wasn’t inherited. In part because of what it means for my relatives, in part because of what it means for my children and their children, and in part because I didn’t like to think that what I was going through now had been pretty much inevitable from the minute I’d been conceived, and I’d made no effort to find out about it. Continue reading...
The president’s domestic successes offer a rebuke to disciples of Reagan: the ‘free market’ has never existedHow can inflation be dropping at the same time job creation is soaring?It has taken one of the oldest presidents in American history, who has been in politics for over half a century, to return the nation to an economic paradigm that dominated public life between 1933 and 1980, and is far superior to the one that has dominated it since.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...
In an unusual moment for the US economy, analysts look for hidden signals of consumers’ worriesReversecowgirl69 has been dancing for six years in clubs from Texas to New York. The graduate student and stripper tracks her income carefully, and in May 2022 she noticed it dropping: “I was noticing that there were just fewer higher-earning people coming into the club, and when that happens, you know something bad is going to happen.” She tweeted a warning: “The strip club is sadly a leading indicator and i can promise y’all we r in a recession lmao.”The tweet went viral, and at least within her club, it seemed to be correct. Over the next few months, her earnings continued to plunge, and the other workers at the club said the same. By December – usually an excellent month for strip clubs – business “was abysmal”, and, she says, her income that month was down by half compared with the same time last year. “It was bad for everybody. I know girls who dance in Vegas and even they weren’t making money. They’re like the oracles we consult, and if Vegas girls aren’t making money, no one’s making money.” Continue reading...
by Martin Pengelly in New York, Maya Yang and agencie on (#68HY0)
Pete Buttigieg says president ‘considered safety of American people’ but Marco Rubio criticizes eight-day waitThe US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, rejected Republican criticism of Joe Biden over the eight-day wait to shoot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon which flew over military sites.“The president gave instructions to have it shot down in a way that was safe,” Buttigieg told CNN’s State of the Union, of the operation off the Carolina coast on Saturday.Associated Press contributed to this report Continue reading...
Closed-door session could provide insight into the sensitivity of the documents Trump retained and possibility of indictmentsUS officials have offered to provide a closed-door briefing to congressional leaders about their review of about 300 classified-marked documents retrieved from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last year, sources familiar with the matter said.The precise nature of the briefing remains unclear. The offer from the justice department and the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (ODNI) was described as unofficial on Sunday and no date had yet been set, though the briefing could come as soon as this week. Continue reading...
Dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills dropped as low as -45 to -50F across the rest of the regionArctic air in the US north-east on Saturday brought dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills including a record-setting -108F (-78C) on the summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire.Authorities in Massachusetts took the unusual step of keeping the South Station transit hub open so homeless people had a place to sleep. High winds brought down a tree branch on a car in western Massachusetts, killing an infant. Continue reading...
Texas senator says he ‘never said I’m going to unilaterally comply’ with his own proposed restrictionTed Cruz has introduced a bill to limit US senators to two terms in office, thereby removing from Washington what he calls “permanently entrenched politicians … totally unaccountable to the American people”.On Sunday, however, he said he saw no problem with running for a third term himself. Continue reading...
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