More than 230,000 people across US north-east without electricity as experts predict storm will move into the midwestIt may officially be spring, but wintry weather blanketed the US starting on Saturday and was slated to continue through Sunday, with New England and California seeing a mix of rain, heavy snow and gusty winds.Hardy souls across New England spent their Sunday shoveling out after a major storm dumped more than 2ft of snow in some areas, causing multiple road accidents, downing power lines and leaving hundreds of thousands across the north-east without electricity. Continue reading...

Top Democrats urge Netanyahu to abandon planned assault days after Israeli leader rejected similar request by Antony BlinkenSenior US Democrats on Sunday increased pressure on Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abandon a planned offensive into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians are sheltering.Two days after a similar call by US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was rejected by the Israeli leader, vice-president Kamala Harris said that the Joe Biden White House was ruling out nothing" in terms of consequences if Netanyahu moves ahead with the assault. Continue reading...

Henry Whitehorn, who won by a single vote in November, will be the first Black sheriff in Caddo countyMonths after his disputed one-vote victory in a Louisiana sheriff's race was tossed by a court, a Democrat was decisively elected over his Republican rival on his second try Saturday.Henry Whitehorn got 53% of the vote in Saturday's election in north-west Louisiana's Caddo parish. He'll be the first Black sheriff in the parish - which is the word Louisiana uses for county - after defeating John Nickelson, who is white. Continue reading...

His brutal, repressive regime is good at belated investigation and torture, but lacks the capability to stop attacks happeningWhen Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, he made one thing clear immediately: he would be different from his predecessors - Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union - in his response to terrorism.That difference would be manifested in his declared determination never to wilt under pressure. Like many officers trained in the KGB and traumatised by the collapse of the Soviet Union, Putin was convinced the Russian state was so fragile that it could collapse at any moment if its enemies were given an inch. To Putin and his KGB friends, the famous phone call made in 1995 by Yeltsin's prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, to a terrorist leader to save the lives of hostages in a hospital in Budyonnovsk, was the worst possible way of dealing with terrorists.Andrei Soldatov is author of The Compatriots: The Russian Exiles Who Fought Against the KremlinDo 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...

Fulton county district attorney says she doesn't feel like we have been slowed down' by Trump's efforts to disqualify herThe Georgia prosecutor overseeing Donald Trump's election interference case in that state promised Saturday that the train is coming" for him despite defense efforts to derail her office's pursuit of charges against the former president and nearly two dozen co-defendants.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis's remarks came after a court challenge centering on a romantic relationship that she had with a special prosecutor whom she appointed to the case, Nathan Wade. After the relationship was exposed, Wade stepped down from the prosecution to defuse any appearances of a potential conflict of interest and so Willis could stay on the case. Continue reading...

NPR host Steve Inskeep joins other authors of books on the 16th president at annual Ford's Theatre symposiumAsked what Abraham Lincoln might have to say to Americans in 2024, an election year in a country as divided as at any time since the civil war Lincoln won, the NPR host Steve Inskeep said the 16th president would advise that a big part of building a political majority is making alliances with people you believe to be wrong".One of the things that drew me to the topic of Lincoln was the present and the dilemmas and difficulties of democracy right now," Inskeep said on Saturday, appearing in connection with his book Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America, at the 27th Annual Abraham Lincoln Institute Symposium, at Ford's Theatre in Washington DC. Continue reading...

Controversy over the prosecutor's romantic ties, bound up in questions of race and gender, lays bare a city of contradictionsIt's not you, it's the appearance of impropriety.Add that breakup line to the regional lexicon now that the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has cut ties with Nathan Wade - the lawyer she picked to prosecute Donald Trump for allegedly subverting Georgia's 2020 election proceedings, and whom she says she later began dating. Last Friday, Judge Scott McAfee ruled that the county's case could move forward if either Willis or Wade stepped down to eliminate the appearance of impropriety". Within hours, Wade tendered his resignation. It's the end of an affair that had Atlanta written all over it. Continue reading...

Attorney general could face same problems as ex-president in trying to liquify assets to meet the $454m fine amountThe face off between Donald Trump and Letitia James, the New York attorney general, could reach a denouement as soon as Tuesday when James assumes the legal right to begin seizing the former US president's assets in lieu of a $454m fine Trump says he can't meet.But anyone expecting Anthony Miranda, sheriff of the city of New York, to show up at Trump's premiere property and home on 5th Avenue to cart off the faux-Louis XIV furniture, the golden cherubs, crystal chandeliers or chisel the 24-karat gold from the architraves and cornices, may be disappointed. Continue reading...

Inside Gambling Anonymous, the 12-step program offering compulsive gamblers help, and hopeEach man enters the room, one by one, escaping the dark night outside. Before long some two dozen are sitting in a horseshoe. They hail from different worlds and different generations, but have been united by the same problem.For decades, Gamblers Anonymous (GA) has offered compulsive gamblers a place to share their stories, and listen to others, in the hope of turning their lives around. Veterans of the 12-step program say it is now experiencing a sharp rise in interest from troubled young addicts.Find out more about Gamblers Anonymous at gamblersanonymous.org.In the US, call the National Council on Problem Gambling at 800-GAMBLER or text 800GAM. In the UK, support for problem gambling can be found via the NHS National Problem Gambling Clinic on 020 7381 7722, or GamCare on 0808 8020 133. In Australia, Gambling Help Online is available on 1800 858 858 and the National Debt Helpline is at 1800 007 007. Continue reading...

A powerful group has agreed to a rule change on how real estate agents are compensated - which could be a big deal for homebuyersA major shift in how Americans buy homes could come this summer after a powerful real estate group settled an antitrust lawsuit, agreeing to change a rule that dictates how real estate agents are compensated.If the settlement is approved by a judge, the rule change will start in mid-July, leaving the real estate industry scrambling over what the future of buying or selling a home will look like. Continue reading...

Keir Starmer will need to make it affordable to be an artist, because the value of art is beyond financial metricsNineteen years ago now, I was asked to perform my standup high in the Colorado Rockies at the Aspen comedy festival, a trade fair for the American comedy industry patronised by wealthy locals. In super-affluent Aspen, I discovered, to my horror, economically uncompetitive service industry workers were homed in special employee housing projects", like castrated catering cyborgs from a Russian science fiction novel, sleeping in pods, dreaming of electric sheep. But today that system seems benign compared with the housing poverty of Sunak island.In Aspen, the famous comedians were domiciled in luxury hotels. I was in a cheap motel on the edge of town, where I breakfasted daily with a quartet of equally undervalued underground comic book writers, regarded as witless savants nonetheless capable of providing content by the predatory industry vampires. Daniel Clowes told me the contents of his Oscar ceremony goody bag - the film of his Ghost World comic was nominated - were worth more than everything he had earned as a writer to that point.Stewart Lee's Basic Lee is at Cambridge Arts theatre 15-16 AprilDo 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...

She is truly an inspiration to us allLately when I visit my mother, she's always out. At rehearsal!" she'll text. Come back after 5pm. Or another day." She's fallen in with a community choir, and is off the rails. Often they take her to the pub, and she doesn't know when she'll be back. Sometimes she leaves out a plate of falafel, in case I drop by to empty the fridge, like a reverse Santa Claus. But it's unacceptable. And often dry.At 80, she's started going to Laban dance classes. She still plays in a drum circle, and now this, singing in an urban opera. For her, art is a reflex. She does things for their own joy, while still holding down a job. I'm the opposite. I made writing and performing my job; yet something in a creative identity can squash itself. Without the stamp of an agent, an audience, a platform or a deal, nothing I make would feel valid. I never wrote a word until I was paid, and I dream of retirement. Continue reading...

Forty years ago, a US historian claimed that social changes were severing communal bonds. He was rightThe hope that political action will gradually humanise industrial society has given way to a determination to survive the general wreckage or, more modestly, to hold one's own life together in the face of mounting pressures." American historian and cultural critic Christopher Lasch's pessimistic prognosis of the shifting relationship of individuals to societyand to each other in The Minimal Self was published 40 yearsago. It might have been written yesterday.From the late 1970s, Lasch published a series of books, most notably The Culture of Narcissism, The Minimal Self and The Revolt of the Elites, that prefigured many contemporary debates, about culture wars, the rise of a liberal elite", the corrosiveness of individualism, the encroachment of the market into social life, the creation of a celebrityculture, the rise of a therapeutic" mindset. Continue reading...

Bill vetoed by Republican Mark Gordon, who expressed concerns about separation of powers, also covers government meetingsThe Republican governor of Wyoming, Mark Gordon, has vetoed a bill that would have allowed people to carry concealed guns in public schools and government meetings.In his veto letter Friday night, Gordon said he had concerns the bill would exceed the separation-of-powers provision in the state constitution since any policy, further regulation or clarification of the law could only be implemented by the Wyoming legislature. Continue reading...

Yoav Gallant will leave Israel for the US on Sunday amid growing tensions between the alliesIsraeli defence minister Yoav Gallant will leave on Sunday for talks in the United States, the Israeli government said, amid growing tensions between the allies over the war in Gaza.Gallant will meet with US counterpart Lloyd Austin, US secretary of state Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and additional senior officials", a statement said. Continue reading...

Vice-president launches national resource center at site of 2018 Florida school shooting where 17 were killedThe White House has announced a new national office to support states implementing red flag" laws to combat gun violence, an initiative funded by the justice department.Kamala Harris made the announcement on Saturday during a visit to Parkland, Florida, where she toured the site of the nation's worst high school shooting, the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas massacre that killed 17. Continue reading...

Package passed Senate late Friday night by vote of 74-24, narrowly averting shutdown and banning Gaza aid through March 2025President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a $1.2tn budget bill to keep the US government funded through a fiscal year that began six months ago and to avert a partial shutdown, according to a statement released by the White House.The bipartisan funding bill I just signed keeps the government open, invests in the American people, and strengthens our economy and national security," Biden said in the statement. Continue reading...

The former British territory was a flawed success. Xi Jinping has ended that with the punitive and hastily passed article 23So farewell, Hong Kong. The vibrant, pulsating city-state that grew, under British rule, into one of the world's great financial, business, cultural and tourism hubs has finally been brought to heel. Browbeaten, abused, silenced. Trust Xi Jinping, China's dementor president, to suck out all the joy. Last Wednesday was the UN's International Day of Happiness. But it was a sad, bad day for Hong Kong.That was the moment residents woke up to the news that Hong Kong's puppet legislature, acting on Beijing's orders, had unanimously abolished its right to think, speak and act freely. Eating noodles is a seditious act now, if the noodles have secret foreign connections. Under new security laws, known as article 23, life imprisonment awaits those who defy the behemoth to thenorth. Continue reading...

The progressive congresswoman also called on the White House to suspend aid to the Israeli military in House speechProgressive US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the Israeli military campaign in Gaza an unfolding genocide" in a scathing speech that demanded the Joe Biden White House suspend aid to Israel's armed forces.As we speak, in this moment, 1.1 million innocents in Gaza are at famine's door," Ocasio-Cortez said in a speech on the House floor on Friday. Continue reading...

Like Kate, parents with the disease face a big decision - how and when to tell the childrenThink about how shocked you felt after hearing the Princess of Wales's cancer news on Friday, multiply that by a thousand, and you go some way to knowing how it feels to get a diagnosis. Even if you've rehearsed hearing bad news while you wait for test results, you cannot be prepared for being told you have the disease.When I got my breast cancer diagnosis in the summer of 2022 I was stunned. I hadn't imagined that I would be leaving the hospital and having to tell my family and friends that I was ill. I hadn't rehearsed those conversations in my head. Continue reading...

James L Mauney was walking his dogs when he was shot and killed, and Gerald Don Henderson was found dead outside his cabinAuthorities said on Friday that they believe the deaths in Idaho of an 83-year-old man who was walking his dogs and a 72-year-old man who lived in a remote cabin are connected to the escape of an Idaho white supremacist prison gang member and an accomplice after a Boise hospital ambush.The escaped prisoner, Skylar Meade, and the accomplice, a recently released inmate named Nicholas Umphenour - both members of the Aryan Knights gang - were arrested in Twin Falls, Idaho, on Thursday afternoon. Their arrests came 36 hours after Umphenour shot and wounded two Idaho corrections officers while they were preparing to return Meade to prison from a hospital, police said. Continue reading...

A 12-year-old Palestinian boy was shot while lighting a firework. Cases like these happen quite regularly, but no one's hearing about them,' according to the Israeli rights group B'TselemThe depth of the horror surpasses our ability to describe it," James Elder, a spokesperson with the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), said after travelling the length of Gaza this week. There is nothing left: Republicans who called for Gaza to be turned into a parking lot" have got their wish. Amid the ruins, a traumatized and trapped population are being starved to death; an entire generation is seeing their future destroyed. Starvation is used as a weapon of war," the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said this week. Israel is provoking famine." Continue reading...

Violent crimes in 2024 have been used as political tool', and law enforcement response does not solve root issues, critics sayA high-profile string of violent crimes on New York City's subway in 2024 has been used as a political tool" by pundits and politicians, transit advocates say, leading to a false perception of spiraling underground crime, which could create more danger in the future.Crime in the subway system, one of the world's most used rapid transit systems, declined in 2022 and decreased again in 2023, according to police. But subway crime is up so far in 2024, and it is the nature and violence of the incidents that has captured public attention. Continue reading...

As the ex-president fans the flames of violence, experts and insiders say November will be a brutal test for US democracyA bloodbath. The end of democracy. Riots in the streets. Bedlam in the country. Donald Trump has made apocalyptic imagery a defining feature of his presidential election campaign, warning supporters that if he does not win - and avoid criminal prosecution - America will enter its death throes.The prophecies of doom, repeated ad nauseam at rallies and on social media, have raised fears that the former president is making an electoral tinderbox that could explode in November. While there has been much commentary assessing the implications of a Trump win, some experts warn that a Trump defeat could provide an equally severe stress test of American democracy. Continue reading...

The city says evicting migrants will make them self-sufficient - but some say it's a tool to deter people from seeking asylumOn 25 January at 10am, Jhoann Reyes carried his family's belongings - several suitcases, a jumbo plastic checkered bag, three backpacks, and two baby strollers - from their room at the Stewart Hotel to the sidewalk. The New York City hotel-turned-emergency-migrant-shelter had been their home for a year.Originally from Venezuela, Reyes first moved to Ecuador fleeing political persecution. There he met his wife Katherine. Over a year ago, the Reyeses and their kids left Ecuador because of gang violence, and came to New York through Colombia, Mexico and Texas. That misty day in January was their eviction date. Continue reading...

Ex-special counsel speaks to New Yorker about stunning criticism he's received for doing a duty he felt he owed to the USThe former special counsel who investigated Joe Biden's handling of classified documents has said he is stunned at the level of vitriol" that greeted him across the US's political spectrum after he declined to prosecute the president yet portrayed him in a report as an elderly man with a poor memory".I knew it was going to be unpleasant" taking on the investigation, Robert Hur told The New Yorker in a lengthy interview Friday, more than a week after he appeared at a congressional hearing in which both Democrats and Republicans heavily criticized him. But the level of vitriol - it's hard to know exactly how intense that's going to be until the rotten fruit is being thrown at you." Continue reading...

Red-boxing' allows candidates to coordinate with outside spending groups, Election Law Journal researchers sayA new study published in Election Law Journal reveals politicians' widespread exploitation of a loophole to skirt the law barring campaigns from coordinating with outside spending groups.It's a strategy that takes place not in smoke-filled rooms or encrypted chats, but out in the open. Continue reading...

Pennsylvania's Luzerne county has experienced high-profile mistakes exacerbated by high staff turnover that have been seized on by conspiracy theoristsEmily Cook remembers that she never ate her blueberry muffin.It was election day in November 2022, and Cook was the deputy director in the election office in Luzerne county, an industrial swath of north-east Pennsylvania. Soon after voting started, Cook started to hear piecemeal reports of a problem at the polls: some locations didn't have enough paper. When she got to her office, multiple phones were thrust into her hands, each with a crisis. By the time election day was over, she had forgotten about the muffin. Continue reading...

Veo Kelly, 20, turns himself in and is charged with killing of Samyia Spain and three counts of assault and weapon possessionA 20-year-old man accused of stabbing two teenage twin sisters - one fatally - outside of a deli in Brooklyn turned himself into police on Friday. A video posted to social media shows Veo Kelly being led into a police car to the sound of jeers and curse words from onlookers outraged by the crime.What if somebody did that to your sister?" one woman yelled as Kelly was put in the back of a police car. Continue reading...

While the long-term risk from a current infection is 10 times less than it was in 2020-21, a lot of people are still suffering after getting Covid early in the pandemic

Court rules 4-3 to overturn law that had allowed victims to file civil suits over sexual abuse that took place decades agoIn a split ruling that has major implications for hundreds of child sexual abuse victims, the Louisiana state supreme court has struck down a law that had allowed victims to file civil lawsuits over molestation that happened decades ago.Child molestation victims and their advocates were devastated by the 4-3 ruling from a court whose members are elected. Continue reading...

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby has said the 'images of the attack were just horrible and just hard to watch'.At least 40 people have been killed and more than 140 wounded, according to unofficial reports, in the worst terror attack in Russia in years, as gunmen in combat fatigues opened fire and detonated explosives in a major concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow.

New Jersey executive testified that the UK company Autonomy made millions of dollars' worth of deals offering to fund purchasesThe British technology firm Autonomy struck millions of dollars' worth of handshake deals" through which it paid customers to buy its software, the jury in the fraud trial of its co-founder Mike Lynch has heard.Lynch, who co-founded and led Autonomy, has pleaded not guilty to 16 counts of wire fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy. He stands accused of orchestrating a huge fraud before Hewlett-Packard's blockbuster takeover of the company in 2011. Continue reading...

Far-right Republican says motion intended as more of a warning than a pink slip' and stops short of forcing vote to eject himThe far-right Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor-Greene filed a motion to remove Mike Johnson as House speaker on Friday but did not pull the trigger on a move that would probably pitch Congress into a repeat of chaos seen last October, when the right ejected Kevin McCarthy.Speaking after Johnson relied on Democratic votes to pass a $1.2tn spending bill and avoid a government shutdown, Greene said her motion was meant as more of a warning than a pink slip" because she did not want to throw the House into chaos". Continue reading...

Plan approved by vote of shareholders in Digital World Acquisition, with which Trump's business sought to combine

This live blog is now closed. For more on Mike Gallagher's early departure from Congress, you can read our full report:

Congressman once considered a rising Republican star to leave in April, further weakening party's slim majorityThe Republican majority in the US House of Representatives is set to dwindle further with the early exit of Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, once a rising star of the party.A former US marine who twice deployed to Iraq, Gallagher, 40, is a relatively moderate voice in party at the mercy of the far right. Continue reading...

Wire barrier installed under governor's border security program breached as migrants say they were forcefully pushed backA group of migrants clashed with Texas national guard troops over a breach of barbed wire fencing in El Paso on Thursday as they waited to turn themselves in to federal border agents - underscoring the power struggle between the state and federal government over immigration law enforcement.Video posted on social media showed migrants dragging away a temporary concertina wire barrier which was installed as part of Texas governor Greg Abbott's controversial Operation Lone Star publicly-funded state border security program. Continue reading...

The Israeli PM's refusal to heed US demands on food aid for Gaza is morally indefensible, hurting the president - and opening the door to Donald TrumpThe pictures out of Gaza get more harrowing with each passing day. After months of witnessing civilians grieving for loved ones killed by bombs, now we see children desperate to eat - victims of what the aid agencies and experts are united in calling an imminent man-made" famine. What matters most about these images is their depiction of a continuing horror inflicted on the people of Gaza. But they also reveal something that could have lasting implications for Israelis and Palestinians, for Americans and for the entire world. What they show, indeed what they advertise, is the weakness of the president of the United States.Joe Biden and his most senior lieutenants have been urging Israel to increase the flow of food aid into Gaza for months, in ever more insistent terms. This week the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, cited the finding of a UN-backed agency that the threat of hunger now confronted 100% of the population of Gaza", adding that this was the first time that body had issued such a warning. Earlier this month, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, told Israel it needed to do whatever it took to get humanitarian aid into Gaza: No excuses." The Biden administration is all but banging the table and demanding Israel act. Continue reading...

Senate must act quickly to keep government open while Marjorie Taylor Greene moves to oust House speaker Mike Johnson

Ex-president makes claim on Truth Social while RNC fundraising deal sees donations going to committee paying his legal billsDonald Trump claimed on Friday to have at his disposal almost $500m in cash", despite having complained about a $454m bond his lawyers say he cannot pay as he appeals a New York civil fraud judgment.In an all-capitals, early morning post to his Truth Social platform, the former president said: Through hard work, talent, and luck, I currently have almost $500m in cash, a substantial amount of which I intended to use in my campaign for president." Continue reading...