US news | The Guardian

Federal Aviation Administration looks into close call on Friday evening between American Airlines and Delta aircraftsThe Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a close call at JFK international airport on Friday evening in which two planes nearly collided on the runway.The incident took place between a Delta Air Lines aircraft bound for the Dominican Republic and an American Airlines flight. Continue reading...

Mayor says city’s strained care system can’t handle influx and blames government for lack of coordination during El Paso visitIn an unprecedented visit by a New York City mayor to the Mexico border, Eric Adams said his city doesn’t have enough “room” to host more migrants in its strained care system.He made his remarks on Sunday at a news conference during his trip to El Paso, Texas, the first visit of its kind by a New York mayor, after an ongoing crisis sparked by the controversial decision of some Republican governors in the south to send migrants to mostly Democratic-administered municipalities around the US. Continue reading...

The knees-up with old colleagues is like a time machine to the 90s, transporting me to an era when New Labour was new, Covid didn’t exist and I was youngIt was June 1997, politics had been renewed, the world was full of hope and the idea was born in my workplace that everyone should have a ceremonial lunch on Friday 13th. Well, not everyone – only 13 people. This was fine, because realistically 13 is the maximum number of people you are going to like in any office. Originally, it was male-only, but then I went wild – I think I threatened to take the lunch to a tribunal – and after that women were included.A few points of clarification. This was Fleet Street in the luxurious 90s (and not the Guardian). The world, especially the newspaper world, was swimming in money. It was not unusual to have to pay contributors with something other than money, because the fee for a single article would tip them into a new tax band. I distinctly remember an editor ducking into a side office to buy two grand’s worth of antiquarian books for some writer called Barry. It could have been Barry Norman, or Barry Humphries, or some completely different Barry, and it may have been three grand, because the other thing about the era was that we were all at lunch constantly, so after noon the details got a bit hazy and all the Barrys merged into one. Continue reading...

Keith Davis, 31, shot by police, was repeatedly charged over shooting at Pimlico race track in June 2015A Baltimore man who stood trial four times for the same killing had all charges against him dropped on Friday.In a statement, the Baltimore state attorney, Ivan J Bates, said his office had dismissed all charges against Keith Davis, 31, who was accused of the 2015 killing of Kevin Jones, a security guard at Pimlico Race Course, after police alleged Davis’s gun matched casings found at the scene of the shooting. Continue reading...

Even if disasters feel far away, we all live in the same planetary neighborhood. Can we unite in our response to the crisis?I live in the Bay Area, famous for its mild weather, a place where climate change feels a bit abstract – the problem of people residing in distant lands. It’s easy to scroll through images of the increasing weather disasters – cyclones, tornados, blizzards, floods, mud slides, rising seas and wildfires – feeling horror but also a little smug at the luck of living in the land of year-round shorts and relentless sunshine.But our luck changed on New Year’s Eve, when a line of killer storms began to assault California, soaking us with 24tn gallons of water, killing 19 people and causing more than 1bn dollars in damages. Continue reading...

Fewer precautions, recent holidays and subvariants have driven rise but boosters, masks and other measures still effective. Plus, will Donald Trump be allowed to return to Facebook?

The series of storms that have pummeled the state have killed at least 19 people and left swaths of land floodedAs more dangerous storms bear down on California, the state is only just beginning to grapple with the destruction and death left by weeks of extreme weather that wreaked havoc in nearly every region from the northern coast to Los Angeles.The series of storms that have pummeled California since late December have killed at least 19 people, brought hurricane force winds that toppled trees and power lines, cutting energy to thousands, and flooded roads and rivers, covering swaths of land in dense mud and debris that stretches for miles. Entire communities have been forced to evacuate while road closures and power disruptions left some rural regions isolated and almost cut off from the outside world. Continue reading...

Biden shifts toward political center as likely presidential rival Ron DeSantis calls out national guardAuthorities in Florida have been turning back growing numbers of undocumented Cubans and Haitians arriving by sea in recent weeks as more attempt to seek haven in the US.Local US residents on jet skis have been helping some of the migrants who attempted to swim ashore after making arduous and life-threatening, days-long journeys in makeshift vessels. Continue reading...

Members of an outreach program that provides housing and behavioral health services aim to tackle the issue at its rootLike millions of New Yorkers, Antoinette Wilson and Ciarah Richmond spend time on the subway system. One day last week, they were on a platform at 168th street in Washington Heights, where the 1 and A lines connect at one of the system’s warmest stations.That makes it a likely spot to meet people experiencing homelessness, an issue that appears to many to be observably worsening across the city. Continue reading...

The deals struck between Kevin McCarthy and the far-right House Freedom Caucus will give the most conservative figures considerable powerThe deals struck between the new House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and almost 20 members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus are already emboldening the most conservative figures in the Republican party with moves set to give the caucus considerable power in the months ahead.In order to secure the speakership McCarthy was forced into a humiliating series of defeats before his deal-making and concessions finally offered enough to bring rebel members of the Freedom Caucus onboard. Continue reading...

Where does the responsibility lie in the recent shooting in Newport News, Virginia, for a country so inured to gun violence?The shooting of a Virginia teacher by her six-year-old student last week left the town of Newport News and the rest of the US shaken and shocked.Even in a country long used to the sort of school shootings that are rare in much of the rest of the world, the astonishingly young age of the shooter prompted a bout of public agonizing in the US about its gun violence problem. Continue reading...

The far-right Republican congresswoman was served with a cease-and-desist letter after she soundtracked a promotional video with his 1999 hit Still DreDr Dre has successfully blocked Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from using his music in any context to do with her political career after she used his 1999 hit Still Dre to soundtrack a promotional video.In the nearly two-minute video, posted on 9 January with the caption, “It’s time to begin … and they can’t stop what’s coming”, the far-right Georgia lawmaker walks out of her office in slow motion to the familiar first notes of the song, which features Snoop Dogg. Continue reading...

Before this season, the New York Giants QB was best known for tripping over his own feet. Now he is a formidable dual threatThe NFL boasts quarterbacks with signature styles. There’s Patrick Mahomes and his bag of tricks. Joe Burrow oozing with confidence on the field while donning fur and smoking stogies off it. Lamar Jackson, the ultimate offensive threat. Then there’s Daniel Jones who doesn’t look like anything remarkable, has almost no swagger, and prior to this season was best known as the guy who tripped over himself on an 80-yard run during the 2020 season.That was then. This is now. Jones showed glimpses of his talent before Brian Daboll arrived as head coach of the New York Giants. With limited offensive help, Jones put up 400 yards and shepherded a comeback win over the Saints in 2021, he’s dominated Washington, and that run in which he stumbled over himself … it had a top speed of 21.23mph, one of the fastest for any quarterback in history. But Jones also made a number of mistakes and collected too many losses in his first few years in New York. The Giants declined Jones’s fifth-year option, and his future had been talkshow fodder in the Big Apple. Continue reading...

The ex-president was banned after the Capitol riots in 2021. Will his return rile social media’s ‘cauldron of extremism’?It’s been a little more than two years since Meta suspended Donald Trump from Facebook and Instagram over his actions during the January 6 Capitol riots. Now, a major decision looms – reinstate Trump’s account, or keep him off the platform for good?It’s a widely-watched decision that will set a new precedent for how social media firms balance free speech with content moderation, especially when it comes to world leaders and other newsworthy individuals. Continue reading...

Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson grilled on why Jared Kushner should escape scrutiny for profiting from proximity to presidencyThe Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson refused to say Republicans planning investigations of Hunter Biden for profiting from his connection to the presidency should also investigate Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser who secured a $1.2bn loan from Qatar while working in the White House.“I’m concerned about getting to the truth,” Johnson insisted. “I don’t target individuals.” Continue reading...

New York congressman’s résumé is largely fiction and campaign finance questions abide but support is vital for speaker McCarthyThe New York Republican congressman George Santos, whose résumé has been shown to be largely fictional, whose campaign finances are the subject of increasing scrutiny and who is under local, federal and international investigation, is a “bad guy” who has done “really bad” things, the new House oversight committee chairman said on Sunday.But Santos should not be forced to quit, James Comer said. Continue reading...

Death toll at 19 after prolonged spell of rain and snow caused by atmospheric rivers set to continue until TuesdayJoe Biden has declared a major disaster in California following devastating winter storms leading to flooding and mudslides and the deaths of at least 19 people.On Saturday, Biden ordered federal aid to supplement state, tribal and local recovery efforts in areas affected by storms since late December. Continue reading...

President gave sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and spoke about the need to protect democracyJoe Biden marked what would have been Martin Luther King Jr’s 94th birthday with a sermon on Sunday at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, celebrating the legacy of the civil rights leader while speaking about the urgent need to protect US democracy.Biden said he was “humbled” to become the first sitting president to give the Sunday sermon at King’s church, also describing the experience as “intimidating”. Continue reading...

Sarah Sanders, a former Trump press secretary, says move is preventative and ‘to make sure we’re not indoctrinating our kids’The new Republican governor of Arkansas, Sarah Sanders, said the move to ban critical race theory in public schools in her state was a preventative measure.“It’s incredibly important that we do things to protect the students in our state,” she told Fox News Sunday. “We have to make sure that we are not indoctrinating our kids and that these policies and these ideas never see the light of day.” Continue reading...

House oversight chair requests Delaware visitor logs as Democrats stress difference from Trump classified records caseRepublicans pounced on the discovery on Saturday of more classified documents at Joe Biden’s residence, accusing the president of hypocrisy and questioning why the records were not brought to light earlier.Biden lawyers have discovered at least 20 classified documents at his residence outside Wilmington, Delaware, and at an office in Washington used after he left the Obama administration, in which he was vice-president. Continue reading...

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...