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The Michael Jackson musical, A Strange Loop and The Lehman Trilogy led the nominations this year. The show at Radio City Music Hall in New York has also featured a lifetime achievement award for 96-year-old Lansbury and a performance by Billy Crystal Continue reading...

‘I’d like to see DoJ investigate any credible allegation of criminal activity,’ says Adam Schiff as pressure builds on Merrick GarlandMembers of the House committee investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat called on Sunday for the US justice department to consider a criminal indictment for the former president and warned that “the danger is still out there”.Their comments on the eve of the second of the panel’s televised hearings into the January 6 2021 insurrection and deadly Capitol attack will add further pressure on attorney general Merrick Garland, who has angered some Democrats by so far taking no action despite growing evidence of Trump’s culpability. Continue reading...

Proposal does not ban assault weapons or raise age required to buy them to 21, but if enacted it would come after years of stalemateJoe Biden has urged US lawmakers to get a deal on gun reforms to his desk quickly as a group of senators announced a limited bipartisan framework Sunday responding to last month’s mass shootings.The proposed deal is a modest breakthrough offering measured gun curbs while bolstering efforts to improve school safety and mental health programs. Continue reading...

Congresswoman says she’s focused on trying to preserve Democrats’ congressional majority in November’s midtermsLeft-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday refused to endorse Joe Biden for another run at the White House, adding to growing anxiety in Democratic circles over the president’s ability to run in and win the 2024 election.The powerful progressive New Yorker said she could not commit to supporting Biden during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, saying she was more focused on trying to preserve Democrats’ congressional majority in November’s midterms. Continue reading...

US sees rise in travel after ‘two years of pent-up demand’ – but issues continue to cloud the industryOn a recent Friday night Laura Waring needed to fly from Newark, New Jersey, to San Diego to help set up her healthcare information technology company’s conference, which was scheduled to start the next Monday.But after her flight was repeatedly delayed and then canceled, Waring slept for about 45 minutes on a cot at Newark airport before she woke up cold and uncertain how she would get to California. Continue reading...

Run by former Republican vice-presidential candidate marks first bid since resigning as governor partway through her term in 2009Former Alaska governor and Republican ex-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin leads in early results from Saturday’s special primary for the state’s only US House seat in what could be a remarkable political re-emergence.Voters in the far north-western state are whittling down the list of 48 candidates running for the position that was held for 49 years by the late US Representative Don Young. Continue reading...

Like many women, I always felt as if my body was public property. Last year, I decided the two of us needed to work on our relationshipAs the pandemic eases, the hobbies and interests many of us developed during lockdown start to be forgotten. Half-finished crochet sweaters languish at the back of closets, while Zoom quiz nights have been shelved for in-person quiz nights, and who is still remembering to feed their sourdough starter (RIP my very own Barack O’Starter)? I – unexpectedly – started to exercise during the pandemic, but even more surprisingly, I’ve kept it up. For about a year now, I’ve been going on daily walks, riding my bike instead of taking the bus and heading to the gym to lift weights. I’ve even started to use the flexed bicep emoji without irony. Who even am I these days?For context, I’m 34, have weak ankles and always thought of exercise as something you tried to get out of doing at school by telling your male PE teacher you were on your period, just like in a sitcom. It was a punishment you endured in order to achieve a version of happiness categorised by being “healthy”. People often say you should treat your body like a temple – and I did! One of those old, forgotten hilltop temples that fall to ruins because of neglect. Continue reading...

Subchapter V was intended to help small businesses struggling to pay creditors – not toxic conspiracy theoristsAlex Jones is unquestionably a controversial figure. His Infowars media platform has been accused of spreading conspiracy theories that include suggesting that the Sandy Hook massacre was a staged event to ruminations that chemicals in our water supply were turning frogs gay. For a while – and even now – his business amassed millions of followers and made him rich. That didn’t last. Infowars, to the relief of many, is facing bankruptcy. But, no surprise, Jones is creating even more controversy. He’s doing this by attempting to subvert new bankruptcy laws that were enacted to help small businesses.The new bankruptcy law is commonly referred to as “subchapter V” because of its place under the chapter 11 rules of the US bankruptcy code. It was enacted by Congress as part of the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 and went into effect in February 2020. The purpose of the law was to make it easier for struggling businesses to get more affordable protection while reorganizing themselves. It applies to business owners who have debts of up to $2.75m (excluding debts owed to affiliates or insiders, a consideration that will be important to this story) and where less than 50% of the debts arose because of the commercial or business activities of the debtor, or business owner. Continue reading...

His mutability has let him straddle political divides, but now he must settle on an identity if he is to tackle the country’s crisesIn the autumn of 2018, as the gilets jaunes movement took off, Emmanuel Macron faced a crisis in France that also represented a personal political failure. A little more than a year previously, he had arrived at the Elysée, elected on a centrist, social-liberal, pro-Europe agenda. He embodied fierce opposition to national populism, yet now seemed the president on whose watch populism in France was growing. At the time, I wrote an article for the Guardian asking if centrist and anti-populist leaders were creating breeding grounds for the populists they had sworn to defeat. Barack Obama, after all, had been followed by Donald Trump. In Italy, Matteo Renzi produced Matteo Salvini. In the UK, a post-Blairite Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government had produced Brexit. So after Macron, what?The answer came on 24 April of this year: after Macron, Macron. But which Macron? And at what cost? After five years in power and embarking on a second term, the president who pledged in 2017 to “do everything to make sure you never have reason again to vote for extremes” faces the first round of legislative elections on 12 June in a political landscape more divided and extreme than ever. Continue reading...

Rallies to call for gun reform were held in Washington, New York, other US cities and around the world on Saturday, seeking to increase pressure on Congress to act after a spate of mass shootings. In Washington, the son of an 86-year-old victim in the Buffalo supermarket shooting said: ‘Stop the slaughter of our most precious commodity: people.’ The March for Our Lives rallies come less than a month after 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas

Thousands of municipal workers have won the right to form unions but law stops short of allowing them to strikeLabor unions have been fighting to secure the right to unionize and collectively bargain for more than 250,000 public sector workers at cities, schools, colleges and counties in Colorado.Today, 24 US states, including Colorado, prohibit or limit collective bargaining rights for public sector workers, resulting in significant discrepancies in union density and wages among public sector workers in these states compared with states that mandate public employers to bargain with workers. Continue reading...

Miscalculations by the west opened the way for Russia’s invasion. As Kyiv’s outgunned forces fight for survival, the alliance risks another catastrophic failure

Disclosure that many House Republicans sought presidential pardon may show they believed election fraud claim was falseThe House select committee investigating the Capitol attack revealed at its inaugural hearing that Donald Trump’s top Republican allies in Congress sought pardons after the January 6 insurrection, a major disclosure that bolstered the claim that the event amounted to a coup and is likely to cause serious scrutiny for those implicated.The news that multiple House Republicans asked the Trump White House for pardons – an apparent consciousness of guilt – was one of three revelations portending potentially perilous legal and political moments to come for Trump and his allies. Continue reading...

The sport’s arbiters, the R&A and USGA, must find a solution so the Saudi-backed LIV Series can coexist with established toursThe return this week of the US Open to the Country Club in Brookline for the first time since 1988 would ordinarily be a cause for reflection. The 1999 Ryder Cup there was laced with controversy after a ferocious European reaction to premature US celebrations.There will be only passing reference to Curtis Strange’s playoff success over Nick Faldo. Sam Torrance and his famous broadside – “Tom Lehman calls himself a man of God. That was not the behaviour of a man of God” – likewise. Even the course setup presided over by the United States Golf Association, an annual debating point, feels irrelevant. Civil war dominates golf; it will dominate the US Open. It will dominate next month’s Open at St Andrews despite the R&A’s screams about the significance of a 150th anniversary celebration. Continue reading...

The Florida governor has beaten the former president in recent polls of activists and could offer a younger version of Trumpism without TrumpAs Donald Trump continues to prevaricate over a further run for the White House in 2024, another name has emerged as a possible candidate for the Republican party’s presidential nomination: Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.The rising star of the conservative Maga movement – named for Trump’s “make America great again” campaign slogan – has beaten the former president in several recent polls of party activists, some of whom appear to finally be growing weary of Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. Continue reading...

In the aftermath of Buffalo and Uvalde, those who lived through the Orlando attack six years ago join calls for actionOn 12 June 2016, in one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history, 49 people were killed and more than 50 wounded in the Pulse LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando, Florida.Ahead of the sixth anniversary of the shooting, survivors decried lawmakers’ failure to pass meaningful federal gun law reform. Continue reading...

The Cambridges’ heir and the two spares certainly put in the hours for the jubileeWith the Queen absent and her immediate heirs scarcely a novelty, Britain’s child royals emerged as a precious asset over the jubilee – and were still generating loyal clicks and content days after being temporarily discharged from duty.An earlier warning from William that his son would enjoy a “normal” upbringing has proved to be, if not exactly baseless, capable of delightfully media-friendly expression. Not only George, but all three apprentice royals, aged four, seven and eight, contributed extended service through the jubilee weekend, displayed in eye-catching outfits ranging from smart casual to – perfectly normally – a historic sailor suit. Continue reading...

Ukraine war and oil company price gouging among factors contributing to surge as president mulls Riyadh rapprochementUS gasoline prices, a key driver of the highest inflation seen in the US in 40 years, hit a record $5 a gallon on Saturday. There was little to suggest they would drop anytime soon but, also on Saturday, Joe Biden said he had “not yet” decided if he will travel to Saudi Arabia, a week after opening the door to a possible trip.Any such visit would be aimed at bolstering relations with the country at a time when Biden is trying to find ways to lower gasoline prices. Continue reading...

The march kicked off at Cadman Park Plaza, where a memorial honors Brooklynites who served in the second world warHundreds of people crossed the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan on Saturday, in support of March for Our Lives. It was one of dozens of rallies across the US to protest political inertia on gun control.The New York march kicked off at Cadman Park Plaza, where a huge memorial honors Brooklynites who served in the second world war. Some marchers said they felt they were in a war, to protect themselves and their families from gun violence. Continue reading...

The March for Our Lives rallies come after mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York

Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, 10, was among the 19 children killed in the 24 May shooting at Robb elementary schoolAlexandria Aniyah Rubio, a victim of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, was remembered at her funeral on Saturday as opinionated like her mother and athletic like her father.The funeral took place on the same day as nationwide protests for meaningful gun reform. Her family asked mourners to wear bright colors to the funeral at First Baptist Church in Uvalde, because Lexi loved them. Continue reading...

Daily Beast says rightwing host saw pardon for Joe Biden’s son as way to ‘smooth things over’ after Capitol attackThe Fox News host Sean Hannity tried to sell Donald Trump on a novel way to heal the wounds of his presidency and the deadly Capitol attack: a pardon for Hunter Biden.The bizarre idea was referred to in texts released by the House January 6 committee, which on Thursday held its first primetime televised hearing. Continue reading...

Actress promises a paranormal romp in a queer space, whatever that might meanHappy Pride month to all who observe it, particularly the massive construction corporation building several housing estates at the end of my road, which has proudly displayed the rainbow flag outside its showroom and from which I assume LGBTQ+ applications for mortgages will be fast-tracked and discounted. Thanks, guys!This is the month of rainbow packaging on your favourite products, gay-friendly for June only, though it should let us know whether the NHS gets to keep the rainbow as a thank you for all of its hard work during Covid, or whether the rainbow will return to its rightful place on a lettuce, guacamole, bacon and tomato sandwich. The first brick was thrown at Stonewall so that guacamole could stand for “gay”. Continue reading...

The fire at the Gresham Pregnancy Resource Center comes days after a similar attack at another clinic in New YorkOfficials were investigating a fire that damaged a Christian “pregnancy crisis center” in Gresham, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, early on Friday morning.The Seattle field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) said it was helping police and fire departments investigate the blaze, which happened inside the Gresham Pregnancy Resource Center around 3am. No injuries were reported. Continue reading...

Milbank Memorial Fund, which covered funeral expenses, to say sorry 50 years after study revealed and haltedFifty years after the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study was revealed and halted, an organization that made funeral payments which facilitated the study, the Milbank Memorial Fund, will say sorry in public.For almost 40 years, government researchers let hundreds of Black men die of syphilis in Alabama so they could study the disease. The fund in New York covered funeral expenses. Continue reading...

The ex-White House adviser told the January 6 panel she didn’t believe her father’s election fraud claim – get ready for the Javanka rehabilitation tour!The writing has been on the wall for a while now, but it seems Ivanka Trump finally did it: she turned against her daddy. On Thursday we learned that the former White House adviser told the congressional panel investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, that she doesn’t believe her father’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. In a video deposition that was shown during the first hearing of the panel, Ivanka states that she accepted the explanations of the then attorney general, Bill Barr, to Donald Trump that there wasn’t any evidence of voter fraud, and he’d lost the election fair and square. Continue reading...

Tom Rice of South Carolina says of his vote to impeach ‘I have a duty to uphold the constitution’ as he faces tough primaryOne of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump over the deadly Capitol attack insisted the former president should be consigned to the political past, even as Trump attracted headlines with a Senate race endorsement, in his continued attempt to control the GOP.“Bring on the circus,” Tom Rice of South Carolina told the New York Times. “You know, some people are afraid of clowns. I’m not afraid of clowns. Continue reading...

Their use is linked to the rise in whale strandings on British beaches, but partial bans keeps letting industry off the hookIn the aftermath of 9/11, scientists noticed a curious impact on the stress hormones of North Atlantic right whales. Ships are ubiquitous in our oceans but, for a brief window, immediately after the planes flew into the twin towers, there was a dramatic drop in traffic along the North Atlantic eastern seaboard, reducing underwater noise. While the world above ground was reeling, our underwater neighbours were thriving.So often we think of the golden age of whaling as being over. Japanese and Icelandic whaling ships are now pariahs in the international community. But too often, out of sight is out of mind, and it remains easy to ignore the impact of our actions above ground on marine life. However, whales are increasingly forcing us to take note, as more of them than ever are beaching on our shores. Continue reading...

Golf can offer sublime entertainment but is not a sport with any deep sense of social conscience. Why pretend otherwise?The centre cannot hold. All that is pure is gone. They’re shaving Aslan’s mane up there at the Centurion Club in Hemel Hempstead. And it has, of course, been genuinely shocking to see the grand old community game of professional golf, with its deep social ties, the beating heart of our post-industrial towns, reduced so easily to a row of shrugging men in leisure wear doing stuff on their own for money.This is after all the people’s game, or at least the People Like Us game, still played on every cobbled street and in every playground, providing that playground is at least 300 yards wide and fenced from public access; a place where all you need is the ball, the green grass, hundreds of pounds of equipment and not to be in the inner city. Who could have guessed that professional golf would be so vulnerable to greed and self-interest? Continue reading...

The neo-Nazi founder of the banned terror group National Action was jailed this week. Sadly, there are more like himAlex Davies, the co-founder of the proscribed far-right terror group National Action, was sentenced to more than eight years in prison this week, bringing the total number of people convicted of membership of the group to 19. Formed in 2013, National Action espouses extreme antisemitic and anti-immigrant views, and presented itself as better organised and more disciplined than other groups in a British neo-Nazi scene previously on the verge of collapse.When it was banned by the then-home secretary, Amber Rudd, in December 2016, National Action was the first far-right organisation to be proscribed since the second world war. But it wasn’t the first such group in that period to espouse extreme neo-Nazi beliefs or promote the ideology of terror and violence – nor will it be the last.Matthew Collins is head of intelligence at Hope Not Hate and author of Nazi Terrorist: The Story of National Action Continue reading...

If Merrick Garland acts on revelations and decides to prosecute, Trump will play the victim of a deep state conspiracyDonald Trump achieved another first in US presidential history on Thursday night. He was, in front of millions of people, accused by a congressional panel of attempting to overthrow the US government.“January 6th was the culmination of an attempted coup,” said Bennie Thompson, chair of the House of Representative’s select committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol. “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack,” added his vice-chair, Liz Cheney. Continue reading...

Wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas accused of ‘undermining democracy’ after Washington Post revelationGinni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, was accused of “undermining democracy” after it emerged that she emailed 29 Republican lawmakers in Arizona in her effort to overturn Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.The Washington Post had previously reported that Ginni Thomas sent emails pressuring two Arizona Republicans to reject Biden’s win and choose their own electors. Continue reading...

The complaint marks the second time a bar office has taken action against the former New York mayorRudy Giuliani has been hit with ethics charges over baseless claims he made about the 2020 presidential election being stolen while serving as an attorney for Donald Trump.The charges were filed on Friday by the District of Columbia office that polices attorneys for ethical misconduct.The DC office of disciplinary counsel alleges that Giuliani, who is a member of the DC bar, made baseless claims in federal court filings about the results of the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania. The charges were filed with the District of Columbia court of appeals board on professional responsibility. Continue reading...

The pair were carrying out maintenance work on the partially filled tank at the plant in PennsylvaniaTwo people were rescued after they fell into a partially filled chocolate tank while doing maintenance work at a candy factory in Pennsylvania.The sticky situation unfolded on Thursday at the Mars Wrigley plant in Elizabethtown. Continue reading...

Missouri appellate court rules Geico must cover ‘injuries and losses’ from disease after 2014 incident in Hyundai GenesisThe insurance giant Geico must give more than $5m to a woman who had sex with a motorist in his car and contracted a sexually transmitted disease, a Missouri appellate court ruled.The ruling represents a preliminary legal victory for the plaintiff over the company best known for commercials starring an anthropomorphized gecko which speaks with a British accent. Continue reading...

Big-hitting American defects to LIV Golf but the opening event fails to deliver on promise of ‘pushing the boundaries’Day two of the golfing revolution and the headlines kept coming. Bryson DeChambeau, the biggest hitter in the sport, was confirmed as the latest star signing to LIV golf.This was not a shock. DeChambeau had been expected to join the Saudi-funded competition since earlier in the week, but it was still confirmed with the now-customary hoopla. Greg Norman, the LIV figurehead, welcomed DeChambeau as an athlete “pushing the boundaries” of his sport. Continue reading...

Pete Arredondo says he intentionally left behind radios before entering school, as two more funerals are held for victims of the attackThe Texas school police chief criticized for his actions during one of the deadliest classroom shootings in US history said in his first extensive comments that he did not consider himself the person in charge as the massacre unfolded and assumed someone else was.Pete Arredondo, the police chief of the Uvalde school district, also told the Texas Tribune in an interview published on Thursday that he intentionally left behind both his police and campus radios before entering Robb elementary school. Continue reading...

Vivid evidence around Capitol attack laid out by committee, but Republicans dismiss first primetime hearing as political theatreThe jagged divide in American politics was on full display on Friday, in the wake of the first primetime hearing staged by the House January 6 committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol.Democrats responded to the dramatic presentation of new evidence and stark testimony about the deadly insurrection in Washington with promises of more to come, especially around the role of Donald Trump. Continue reading...

The danger to US democracy didn’t end on 6 January – his followers are now ripping up the safeguards that foiled themThe pictures are appalling, the words terrifying. If Thursday’s opening session is anything to go by, the primetime televised hearings into the storming of Capitol Hill on 6 January 2021 will be both revealing and disturbing. But though their focus is on a winter’s day 18 months ago, they are not about America’s past. They are a warning about its future.Make no mistake, the revelations of what exactly took place when a violent mob broke into the halls of the US Congress, seeking to overturn a democratic election by preventing the formal certification of Joe Biden’s victory, are a valuable, and shocking, addition to the historical record. The House committee that has been investigating the attempted insurrection for the past year – gathering in excess of 140,000 documents and speaking to more than 1,000 witnesses – discovered that Donald Trump’s response, on learning that the rioters were chanting “Hang Mike Pence”, was to say that his vice-president “deserves” it.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist. To listen to his podcast Politics Weekly America, search “Politics Weekly America” wherever you get your podcasts Continue reading...