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The independent vote did not defeat Trump yet could prove crucial, and Williamson and Phillips couldn't stop BidenThe New Hampshire primary, even with its history of unpredictability and freethinking independents, produced a familiar result on Tuesday: Donald Trump v Joe Biden.After months of heavy campaigning in the state, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley came in second place in the Republican primary. Securing a double-digit win over Haley, Trump nabbed his second decisive victory after the Iowa caucuses a week before. Continue reading...

Minnesota's trade for Rudy Gobert was attacked as laughable by critics. But this season the team are making waves in the Western ConferenceIf you haven't been paying close attention to the NBA this year, the Western Conference standings may come as a bit of a shock. Sitting in the top two? None other than the long-suffering Minnesota Timberwolves who, as recently as last season, were taking heat for what was beginning to look like perhaps the worst NBA trade this millennium. Incredibly, their 67 straight days with a least a share of first place in the conference (they have a 30-13 record along with the Oklahoma City Thunder) are by far the most in club history; prior to this year, the Wolves had been in first a total of 20 non-consecutive days.It seems the Timberwolves didn't get the memo about being terrible and they're shaping up to be a true championship contender in a Western Conference that's as wide open as in recent memory. So what changed? How did the Timberwolves reverse course? Continue reading...

Trump heads to South Carolina with two crucial victories under his belt, while Biden wins Democratic primary through write-in ballots

Trump edges closer to Republican nomination, but Haley says this race is far from over'. Plus, nuclear power output expected to break records in 2025Good morning.A sweep of the first two nominating contests on the 2024 primary season left Donald Trump in a strong position to seize the Republican party nomination and made a rematch with Joe Biden even more inevitable.What did we learn in New Hampshire? The independent vote couldn't topple Trump, but it should still make him nervous. New Hampshire is known for its independent voting bloc - which comprises 40% of the electorate. Although independent voters were not able to lift Haley to victory, their support for her could create a problem down the road for Trump. Here are some other key takeaways from the day.What else is happening in the Middle East? The US has carried out strikes in Iraq against three facilities linked to Iran-backed militia, the Pentagon has said, after a weekend attack on an Iraqi airbase that wounded US forces. Continue reading...

TikTok has given us a new trending beverage featuring the irresistible taste of ... magnesium. I want no part of itIt's still dry January, and if you're running out of ideas for alcohol-free alternatives, TikTok has some ... erm, curious offerings. Introducing the sleepy girl mocktail", a beverage enjoying viral fame. It may sound like an old-fashioned euphemism for a valium and a Diet Coke, but it is, in fact, a juice-based concoction that looks like red wine and is supposed to help you sleep better.The recipe is simple: tart cherry juice, some fizz such as sparkling water and magnesium powder. It was popularised by the wellness influencer Gracie Norton, who last year hyped the drink as a cure for poor sleep brought about by her menstrual cycle. Since then, countless videos from fans have featured variations such as cranberry juice instead of cherry, lemonade instead of soda water, and - my favourite - just magnesium pills with cherry juice, in a kind of extreme deconstruction of the drink where the mixing happens in your bloodstream. Continue reading...

I missed my chance to talk to him - but what would I say now? There are no words for my sorrow at what Palestine has lostOn 7 December, a dark cloud floated across my computer screen: a photograph of a man's face. I wouldn't have noticed it if it didn't look like me.An Israeli missile kills Palestinian poet and author Saleem Al-Naffar and his family members in their home in Gaza," I read on Arabic Wikipedia.Tamer Nafar is a Palestinian rapper, actor, writer and columnist based in LodDo 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...

The league and the streaming giant agreed to a 10-year partnership that will include a Drive To Survive style docuseriesThe sight of Formula One cars racing down Las Vegas Boulevard two months ago proved the power of streaming. More specifically, it highlighted the popularity of Drive To Survive, the Netflix docuseries that has transformed F1, particularly in the United States. November's Las Vegas Grand Prix was attended by almost every celebrity and public figure with a Wikipedia page - and Major League Soccer was clearly watching.MLS will be the subject of its own Drive To Survive-style show - produced by the same film-makers (Box To Box Films) - in 2024 with an eight-part series promising to offer a definitive, never-before-seen insider's view into the league." MLS players and coaches can now look forward to becoming reality TV stars. Continue reading...

Detroit are one win away from their first ever Super Bowl appearance. There are signs it could go better than the last time they were hereMy assignment on that unseasonably warm January afternoon was to write about the losing team, which is why I found myself in a windowless room in the bowels at RFK Stadium in Washington DC, watching a portly football coach clamber atop a platform for a news conference.Writing about losing teams is never much fun, let alone about a team that had just been routed in their first (and, until this Sunday, only) appearance in an NFC championship game. But Wayne Fontes was that portly coach. He was fun, ebullient, always with something interesting to say. Continue reading...

Donald Trump's victory in New Hampshire's Republican presidential primary election moves him closer to a November rematch with US president Joe Biden. His only remaining rival, former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, vowed to continue her 2024 campaign and attempted to coax Trump into a debate

The war hawks and ultrarich don't need the democracy Trump imperils. If offered running mate, Haley will make her peace tooCan we stop pretending now? After weeks of speculating by the media that perhaps Nikki Haley might eke out a win in New Hampshire - or at least lose by a percentage small enough to make continuing in the race reasonable - she lost by a wide margin.Before we had been offered various rationales for why, just maybe, this wouldn't happen. Haley, after all, had recently come into a flush of donor money at the end of 2023, as the field dwindled and she was left alone as the last almost-plausible non-Trump candidate. She'd put much of that money into New Hampshire, a state whose Republicans tend to hew more moderate. (Haley, a rabid conservative but one who does not seem to oppose the rule of law outright, is what passes for moderate" in today's Republican party.) Continue reading...

Hitching rides and hopping trains offers an escape from misery for many young people in the US. But, as Michael Joseph's photographs and the stories behind them attest, the freedom of the road can come at a cost Continue reading...

Ex-president follows up his Iowa win with victory over Nikki Haley - and makes threats against his last Republican primary rivalThe cruelty is the point.As Joe Biden acknowledged on Tuesday night, Donald Trump now has the Republican presidential nomination sewn up. But like a Roman emperor or mob boss, Trump used his victory speech in New Hampshire to humiliate his former opponents - and make sinister threats against his last primary rival. Continue reading...

Incumbent refused to campaign in the state and had to rely on write-in campaign powered by his allies and surrogates

Despite DeSantis's obvious flaws, he was promoted by conservative elites eager to create Trumpism without Trump'So long, Ron. After a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses, Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the Republican presidential primary and endorsed Donald Trump. This outcome has looked inevitable ever since the campaign's botched launch announcement on Twitter, but it was surprising how quickly and totally DeSantis surrendered after losing just a single contest. Many people had heralded DeSantis as the man who could take down Trump, but it was not to be. His campaign began with a whimper - then ended with one too.The political flaws of DeSantis and his campaign have been so numerous that it's amazing the Florida governor ever generated so much buzz. He looked politically impressive operating in the safely conservative state of Florida, but he was completely unprepared for the intensity of competitive national politics. He lacked the empathy and personal warmth necessary to connect with voters and donors alike. He proved a poor administrator. He tried to run on his management of the Covid-19 pandemic when voters had moved on. Worst of all, he could offer no plausible reason why Trump voters should opt for him rather than for the real thing.Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and the creator of America Explained, a podcast and newsletter Continue reading...

Growing private wealth, combined with public austerity, is undermining the health of western democraciesIn an intriguing study about to be published, the Dutch political philosopher Ingrid Robeyns poses a question that very rarely gets asked in mainstream politics. When it comes to the personal income and assets of the super-rich, how much is too much? The answer, she suggests in Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth, should be anything above 10m. At that point, taxation should intervene, redeploying the surplus for the common good.Ms Robeyns is not naive. She thinks of her 10m figure as a guiding ideal to be striven for, but one that is unlikely ever to become a reality given the current way of the world. Quite. Nevertheless, her provocative intervention is valuable, because it draws attention to a curious disjunction: as the wealthy have got steadily richer in recent times, soaking up the benefits of free capital movement, share price surges and rising asset values, political talk about wealth taxes has diminished to a barely audible murmur. Continue reading...

Students protesting Israel's bombardment of Gaza reported being sprayed with a chemical that caused nausea and headachesThe New York police department announced on Tuesday it was investigating an alleged chemical attack on students protesting in support of Palestine on Columbia University's campus last week.Students protesting Israel's bombardment of Gaza - which has killed more than 25,000 people, according to Palestinian health officials - reported being sprayed with a chemical that left many with symptoms such as nausea, abdominal pain, headaches and irritated eyes. Continue reading...

Decision by US court of appeals to deny Trump a rehearing paves the way for potential final challenge to US supreme courtA federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump's request that it reconsider his appeal against a gag order imposed against him in the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The move paves the way for a potential final challenge to the US supreme court. Continue reading...

Prosecutors say parents made gun accessible to Ethan Crumbley and ignored his mental health needsJury selection began on Tuesday in the trial of the mother of a teenager who carried out a deadly mass shooting at his school on involuntary manslaughter charges in an unusual effort to pin criminal responsibility on the shooter's parents for the deaths of four students.Jennifer and James Crumbley are not accused of knowing their son planned to kill fellow students at Oxford high school in 2021. But prosecutors said they made a gun accessible to Ethan Crumbley, ignored his mental health needs and declined to take him home when confronted with his violent drawings at school on the day of the attack. Continue reading...

With 13 nods, Christopher Nolan looks almost certain to win best director, but fiercely divided fanbases mean best picture could still produce a real surprise

Couple are charged with creating and selling their cryptocurrency, known as INDXcoin', to Christian community in Denver, ColoradoA Colorado pastor who is charged with stealing more than $1m from his Christian community in a cryptocurrency scheme has admitted to the fraud but argued that God instructed him to carry it out.Eli Regalado and his wife, Kaitlyn, are charged with creating and selling their cryptocurrency, known as INDXcoin", to Christians based in their home town of Denver, Colorado, allegedly telling would-be investors that the Lord had told him people would become rich if they invested, the state's division of securities announced in a press release on Thursday. Continue reading...

Union members to return to work on Tuesday after week-long walkout ended by tentative deal between faculty and managementCalifornia State University faculty members reached a tentative contract agreement with the university system, after nearly 30,000 professors, librarians, coaches and other workers struck at the nation's largest public university system.Members of the California Faculty Association will return to work Tuesday instead of continuing their planned week-long walkout to demand higher wages, the California Faculty Association said in a statement. Continue reading...

Megadonors and media coalesce around Trump as challengers fall by the wayside - and Nikki Haley faces pressure to drop outVivek Ramaswamy urged the crowd to end the primary right here. Doug Burgum told them to think of safety and prosperity. Tim Scott posed a series of questions that culminated with: How many y'all want me to stop talking so you can hear from your next president, Donald J Trump?"As the three failed US presidential candidates turned endorsers stood alongside Trump on stage in Laconia, New Hampshire, on Monday, the crowd chanted Four more years!" and the message to Republicans was clear: join us now or be cast into the political wilderness. Continue reading...

Kayak customers can exclude Max 9 aircraft after cabin panel blowout on Alaska Airlines flightA leading online travel agent has added filters to let users exclude flights that use Boeing's troubled 737 Max planes, after a piece of fuselage falling off an Alaska Airlines flight led to a surge of user interest in avoiding the airliners.Kayak first introduced an aircraft filter in March 2019, to add and exclude specific models of plane, but the company says it saw little use compared with the more prominent filters of the number of stops or airports. Continue reading...

Coco Gauff beat Marta Kostyuk and Aryna Sabalenka annihilated Barbora Krejcikova - they meet in the last four - before Jannik Sinner dispatched Andrey Rublev, setting up a semi against Novak DjokovicGauff breaks back to stay in the set.Another slow start to her service game from Kostyuk gives Gauff hope as the American edges in front at 15-30. Continue reading...

With box office takings down and viewing figures in freefall, the awards are consciously uncoupling from the film industryI call it the holy slap' now," purred Jada Pinkett Smith of her husband's decision to lamp Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars two years ago, because so many positive things came after it." God love 'em and everything, but aren't celebrities incredible? There really is nothing - no incident too blatantly ghastly and embarrassing - that cannot be folded into some kind of aspirational narrative of personal growth. Just as Gwyneth Paltrow's conscious uncoupling" offered an opportunity for Her Vajesty to get gorgeously divorced in a way normies could never, so Jada would have you believe that public assault lies on the other side of the glass against which the likes of us can only press our envious snotty noses.But look, the Oscar nominations are out today! The whole pageant is about to crank up once more, though the obvious sadness is that Will Smith was formally banned from the ceremony for 10 years, meaning attenders at the 10 March event will have to sit through approximately 27 hours of it, miserably safe in the knowledge that no outbreak of holy" low-level violence could occur.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Business Insider reports employees let go for purchasing limited-edition mugs apparently in violation of company policySome Target workers have been fired for using their status as employees to buy highly popular limited-edition Stanley mugs, according to Business Insider.Earlier this year, Target sold a limited-edition pink quencher" that was a collaboration between Starbucks and Stanley. The $45 cups sold out almost immediately, causing stampedes at several stores and were resold online for hundreds of dollars. Target has since announced they are not restocking the cups. Continue reading...

Many agricultural laborers are parched at home and in the field, which can lead to serious health effects like kidney diseaseIt's easy to identify the residences of the farm workers who tend crops in the San Joaquin Valley, one of California's agricultural hubs. They tend to be small homes. Sometimes, location is a giveaway - a trailer set between a dust-choked highway and groves of pistachio trees. Sometimes, the tell is water.I see the difference between the green yards in east Fresno [a city in California] and the yellow yards in west Fresno," said Leticia Compan. The farm equipment operator is referring to the divide between the tonier, whiter part of the city on one side of Route 41 and the largely Latino, lower-income population on the other, where she lives with her family. Continue reading...

Governor, who ended White House bid on Sunday, vows to veto bill from state senator seeking $5m to help ex-president cover costsA day after ending his campaign for the White House and tepidly endorsing Donald Trump, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, sank an effort to use his state's funds to pay off the former president's legal expenses.DeSantis promised to veto a bill from the state senator Ileana Garcia, a Republican who sought to effectively dedicate up to $5m from Florida's state budget to help Trump cover his legal costs. The former president faces 91 criminal charges and assorted lawsuits in various jurisdictions. Continue reading...

After Javier Milei was elected president, threats to my safety forced me into exile. I fear the rise of anti-feminist extremismThe femicide of 14-year-old Chiara Paez, by her boyfriend, in May 2015 provoked national outrage in Argentina. Are we not going to do anything?" asked journalist Marcela Ojeda. And we did something. On 3 June, the first Ni Una Menos (Not One Less) women's march against femicide took place.

After Trump's victory in Iowa, his top rival Nikki Haley hopes to make a splash in the critical primaryNew Hampshire voters are headed to the polls on Tuesday. After Donald Trump's landslide victory in the Iowa caucus last week, his top rival for the Republican nomination - the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley - hopes to make a splash in the critical primary state.But the Republican primary is not the only contest being held in New Hampshire on Tuesday. New Hampshire Democrats are moving forward with their own primary, one with a major asterisk: Joe Biden's name will not appear on the ballot as the Democratic National Committee has said that the New Hampshire primary is meaningless" after party officials moved to make South Carolina the first voting state. Continue reading...

Democrats have stripped the state of its first-in-the-nation status, potentially jeopardizing its influence over US politicsEvery four years, for the past five decades, New Hampshire has found itself the center of both the media's and would-be presidents' attention.Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are among the Democrats who have committed weeks to campaigning in the state, which has long held the country's first presidential primary. Over the years, national and international media have spent tens of millions of dollars on hotel rooms, rental cars, food and booze. Continue reading...

From Ivan Toney's dramatic return to Alexis Mac Allister's impact on Liverpool, we hand out honours (and dishonours) from the Premier League weekend.After a month without victory, Arsenal bounced back with a 5-0 thrashing of a limp and uninspired Crystal Palace. Gabriel Magalhaes steered Arsenal into an early lead (and effectively ended the game in the 11th minute) when he nodded home Declan Rice's inswinging corner. It was almost as if the centre-back had enough of his team's strikers failing to find the net, so he took the goalscoring role upon himself. Why should Mikel Arteta bother to look for a new striker when he's got Gabriel to get the job done? Continue reading...

The granite state's primary may be the last chance Donald Trump's opponents within the Republican ranks have to stop the former president from securing the nomination again. Plus, the link between hypochondria and early death

Trump didn't do those bad things, according to GOP legislators, bankers, and Trump himself. And if he did, they didn't countOJ Simpson decided he could make some blood money", as he called it, by writing a hypothetical" book on the murders of his estranged wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman entitled If I Did It. When it was announced in 2006, the outrage was so overwhelming that the publisher, HarperCollins, owned by Rupert Murdoch, fired the editor, Judith Regan, and cancelled a scheduled Fox network special. The OJ book fiasco appeared to be a rare moment of Murdoch sensitivity, but he was concerned that the association besmirched his own reputation.A week after Donald Trump's attorney argued in the DC district court that he could not be prosecuted for his attempted coup culminating in the January 6 assault on the Capitol and could order the assassination of any opponent, Trump took to his Truth Social account on 18 January to insist that he MUST HAVE COMPLETE & TOTAL PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY" even for EVENTS THAT CROSS THE LINE'". If the glove fits, you must still acquit. Continue reading...

Why is the media making such a big deal of this? Trump will be the nominee, but the general election is a different matterThe mainstream media is flabbergasted at Trump's success in sweeping the Iowa caucuses, dominating the polls, and destroying all his rivals but Nikki Haley before Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.CNN is awestruck, calling Trump's landslide victory in Iowa" a stunning show of strength".Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a 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 newest 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...

After eight years of populist chaos, Donald Tusk must rebuild trust in the state and resist the urge to simply turn the tablesEvolution or revolution?" The question being asked in Poland today captures the dilemma of trying to restore liberal democracy after eight years of populist state capture. Must one, for instance, break the letter of a specific law in order to restore the rule of law as an overall condition? The Polish experience will tell us something important about the future of democracy inside EU member states. It also prefigures a challenge the United States could face at the end of a second Donald Trump presidency.The last few weeks in Polish politics have been dramatic, angry and sometimes bizarre. Two former ministers of the previously ruling Law and Justice (PiS) government, convicted of the falsification of documents while in public office, take refuge in the palace of the president, their party comrade Andrzej Duda. While Duda is away at another meeting, the police arrest them in the palace and carry them off to prison. The president says they are political prisoners", talks of rule of law terror", and even makes a comparison with Bereza Kartuska, a notorious concentration camp in 1930s Poland. PiS launches a protest demo in the snow, deploying the iconography of the Solidarity movement that led Poland to freedom in the 1980s. PiS leader Jarosaw Kaczyski says the arrested politicians are heroes who should be awarded the country's highest honours. Poland's genuinely tragic and inspiring past is recycled as grotesque parody.Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Romeo Nance, 23, believed to have fatally shot himself after confrontation' with police, officials sayA man suspected of shooting and killing eight people at three locations in the Chicago suburbs fatally shot himself after a confrontation" with police in Texas, authorities have said.Police in the city of Joliet, Illinois said 23-year-old Romeo Nance had been located by US Marshals near Natalia, Texas on Monday evening at which time it is believed that Nance took his own life with a handgun following a confrontation with Texas law enforcement officials". Continue reading...

The Canadian director of In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof and Moonstruck has died aged 97. We look back on his career

The US and the UK have carried out another round of strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen in an attempt to stop the rebel group targeting shipping in the Red Sea. US defence officials confirmed the strikes, the second time in a month the US and UK have conducted joint strikes against the Houthis

Shawn Fain, the United Auto Workers president, reaffirms general strike on 1 May 2028, saying members need to come together'Shawn Fain, the United Auto Workers president, criticized Donald Trump on Monday but declined to back Joe Biden as he reaffirmed plans to lead a general strike in the US in 2028.Speaking to union members at the UAW national political conference in Washington DC, Fain said it was time for union members to come together.Reuters contributed reporting Continue reading...

Justices grant emergency appeal from Biden administration in 5-4 vote while lawsuit over wire on US-Mexico border continuesThe Biden administration is allowed to cut the razor wire deployed by Texas at the border with Mexico, the US supreme court ruled on Monday.The concertina wire, deployed at the direction of the Republican Texas governor, Greg Abbott, runs roughly 30 miles (48km) along the Rio Grande river, near the border city of Eagle Pass. It is part of Abbott's broader fight with the Biden administration over immigration enforcement and what he calls Biden's reckless open-border policies".The Associated Press contributed to this report Continue reading...

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Congresswoman Nancy Mace announces support of ex-president despite saying we've got to start over' after Capitol attack in 2021The Republican South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace faced widespread accusations of hypocrisy after she endorsed Donald Trump - the presidential candidate she previously said she held accountable" for the January 6 attack on Congress.On Monday, Mace announced her endorsement, a day before the New Hampshire primary, in which Trump enjoys comfortable polling leads over the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, his only remaining opponent. Continue reading...

Coast Guard helicopter, airboats, local fire department and Ottawa sheriff's office assist people stuck on mile-long sheet of floating iceTwenty people were rescued from an ice floe in Lake Erie, the Coast Guard said Monday.The Coast Guard's ninth district Great Lakes station said it received a report at approximately 10.20am that the people were stuck on a mile-long floe about a half-mile off Catawba Island state park near Port Clinton in Ohio. Continue reading...

Fake robocall beginning What a bunch of malarkey' encourages Democrats to not vote in New Hampshire primaryA prominent New Hampshire Democrat said the makers of a robocall mimicking the voice of Joe Biden and encouraging Democrats not to vote in the primary on Tuesday should be prosecuted to the fullest extent" for attempting an attack on democracy" itself.I want them to be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible because this is an attack on democracy," Kathy Sullivan, a former state party chair, told NBC News, adding that as an attorney, she believes the call could break several laws. Continue reading...