US news | The Guardian

Pressure is mounting on Biden to strike the Houthis, but that could mean war across Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and IranSince 7 October the world has been horrified by the gruesome fighting between Israel and Gaza. But the war could still get much worse.Iran's proxy in Yemen, the Houthis, have been firing missiles and drones at commercial shipping and naval vessels and at southern Israel for weeks now. Global markets are spooked as the danger to shipping through the Bab al-Mandeb strait rises.Christopher S Chivvis is the director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Continue reading...

Mike Johnson's links to key leaders prompts alarm he might try to erode elements of constitution on separation of church and stateLinks between the new Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and key Christian nationalist leaders have sparked fears the devout Louisiana congressman might seek to erode elements of the first amendment, which protects key US civil liberties including freedom of religion and the separation of church and state.Long before th eevangelical conservative Johnson became speaker, he had forged close ties with Christian nationalists like David Barton, whose writings claiming the country's founders intended to create a Christian nation have been widely debunked by religion scholars. Continue reading...

US sportswear brand announces job cuts and simplification of product ranges in streamlining' of operationsNike is to cut hundreds of jobs, simplify its product ranges and increase its use of automation as part of attempts to save $2bn (1.6bn) in costs over the next three years amid poor sales.The US sportswear brand said it was taking steps to streamline the organisation" and would be spending up to $450m on the changes, mainly on payoffs for employees. Continue reading...

It was Diwali in New York and I was out of my comfort zone. But then two Carrie Bradshaws in saris made me feel at home

A pair of AFC contenders guided by second-string quarterbacks meet on Christmas Eve with massive ramifications for their playoff chancesAs the regular season draws to a close, we'll take a look each Friday at a game likely to affect the playoff race, along with the teams whose fortunes are rising and falling. And, so we don't neglect the also-rans, we'll see which teams are in the hunt for next year's No 1 pick. Continue reading...

The deleted social media post, which also called for the execution of Hunter Biden, led some to wonder if Schneider could be chargedActor John Schneider called for the executions of Joe Biden and the president's son Hunter in a now-deleted social media post that drew ridicule and questions about whether he should be criminally charged.Schneider, perhaps best known for his role as Bo Duke on the TV series Dukes of Hazzard as well as his recent runner-up finish on The Masked Singer, fired off the post on X at 2am local time on Thursday. Continue reading...

Los Angeles sheriff's deputy who killed Niani Finlayson, 27, previously had killed another civilian under similar circumstancesA Los Angeles county sheriff's deputy shot and killed a 27-year-old woman who had called 911 to report that she was under attack by a former boyfriend, police officials and lawyers for the victim's family said on Thursday. Records show the deputy had killed another person in similar circumstances three years ago.On 4 December, Niani Finlayson called police and reported that her boyfriend would not leave her alone and then screaming and sounds of a struggle could be heard", the LA sheriff's department (LASD) said in a statement. When deputies arrived at the apartment in Lancaster, a city in the northern region of LA county, they could hear screaming, LASD said. Continue reading...

Mayor turned Trump lawyer turned debtor has extensive list of claimants clamoring for his assets, which he valued at $1m-$10mPaperwork submitted in Rudy Giuliani's filing for bankruptcy protection reveal the daunting extent of debts faced by the former New York mayor turned Trump lawyer. It is a mountain added to this week by a $148m award to two former Georgia election workers.Giuliani, 79, claimed Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Shaye" Moss were involved in electoral fraud as part of Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump in 2020. Continue reading...

Torrents of rain on Wednesday night submerged streets and prompted rescues of people and petsA strong, slow-moving storm unleashed torrents of rain on southern California on Wednesday night, submerging streets and prompting water rescues, and residents across the region are bracing for more wet weather.Evacuation orders were issued in parts of Ventura county due to the extreme rainfall, where the deluge dumped more than 3in of rain in a single hour, and emergency responders were inundated with calls for help through the night. The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for Oxnard and the city of Ventura at 1.28am due to the high-intensity thunderstorm; it expired an hour later as the risks calmed. However, the rain continued. Continue reading...

A shock ruling by the state's supreme court has barred him from its presidential ballotLike so many troubles, the legal cases dogging Donald Trump come not singly but in battalions. News of the bombshell ruling by the Colorado supreme court on Tuesday - barring him from the state's 2024 presidential ballot under the US constitution's insurrection clause - soon jostled for space with the latest wrangles over his indictment by the special counsel Jack Smith for attempting to overturn the last election.Until this year, no president or former president had ever been indicted. Mr Trump now faces 91 felony counts. But he also faces multiple cases directly challenging his candidacy under section 3 of the 14th amendment, which bars insurrectionists from holding office. The Colorado challenge is not only the first to be upheld against Mr Trump, after attempts in other states failed, but it is the first time that the clause has been used against a presidential candidate since its inception in the wake of the civil war. While Mr Trump does not need Colorado, a Democratic state, the case may encourage those bringing suits elsewhere. Continue reading...

Data shows 60,000 unhoused women in the state, among them domestic violence survivors, pregnant women and mothersLynda Reed loved her work in the research office of San Diego's Naval medical center, but when her mother's health began to falter she quit and became a full-time caregiver, moving in with her mother. She cooked her diabetic meals, administered medications, drove to medical appointments, and helped with housekeeping and daily living - full-time work with no pay at all.Then, in 2019, her mother died. Her mother's house was sold - and a combination of a family trust dispute and their inability to keep up with the mortgage payments left her with nowhere to live. At 55 years old, Reed found herself homeless, living in her truck. Continue reading...

Florida congressman Maxwell Frost, who introduced Fight Banned Books Act, says bans are baseless attack on our civil rights'The growing number of book bans in the US are using a so-called parental rights movement as cover for a wide-ranging attack on civil rights in America, a Democratic congressman has warned.Earlier this month, a new study by PEN America revealed that there had been at least 5,894 book bans in US public schools from July 2021 to June 2023, with more than 40% of them in Florida, birthplace of a rightwing parents group called Moms for Liberty. Continue reading...

City's new law guarantees some drivers nearly $30 an hour but bosses are trying to reassert their dominance. I got back on my delivery bike to find out moreI'm straddling my road bike, carrying two boxes of Chinese dumplings in a paper tote. The DoorDash app tells me I need to sprint my payload across Manhattan - cutting across the Holland Tunnel's on-ramp - in the next eight minutes.I'm trying out food delivery under New York City's new minimum wage law on a frigid December afternoon. Before - I was a part-time delivery worker between 2018 and 2020 - an order like this would have paid just a few dollars, making it a frantic rush to finish and move on to the next one. Now the new rules guarantee delivery workers nearly $30 an hour of trip time". So I stop at red lights, yield to pedestrians, and though I end up arriving a couple minutes late, I feel surprisingly relaxed. My customer seems pleased, too. Continue reading...

Jack Smith says court should make decision on whether former president is immune from criminal prosecution on federal chargesJack Smith has urged speed for the supreme court to take up the issue of whether Donald Trump is, as the former president claims, immune from criminal prosecution on federal charges over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.On Thursday the US special counsel submitted a new file to the supreme court in Washington DC, reiterating his argument for urgency in their consideration of such a key element of the federal election interference case, in response to Trump's latest move the day before. Continue reading...

Glynn Simmons, who served US's longest wrongful imprisonment for a 1974 murder, wins rare rulingThe man who served the US's longest wrongful imprisonment for a 1974 murder he has always denied committing has now won a rare ruling declaring him to be actually innocent of the crime.Glynn Simmons's murder conviction was dismissed in July after a judge in Oklahoma determined that prosecutors withheld some evidence in the case, including a police report that documented how a witness may have identified alternate suspects. The 71-year-old was freed from prison, and state prosecutors later said they would not retry him in the case because there was no longer any physical evidence. Continue reading...

Some liberals and leftwingers have joined conservatives in skepticism about the Colorado court decision. But the ruling is carefully consideredThe decision by the Colorado supreme court to ban Donald Trump from the Republican primary has received pushback from some predictable and some not-so-predictable quarters.The former president's supporters of course consider him the great Maga martyr, temporarily hindered by nefarious elites from his rightful return and revenge; in this morality play, the US supreme court, besieged with accusations of being undemocratic, can now play the savior by putting him back on the ballot and making the people Trump's ultimate judge.Jan-Werner Muller is a professor of politics at Princeton University. He is also a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

The official narrative has been that Hamas is weakened, but in reality the IDF's doctrine of massive force is failing

Report finds significant violent rhetoric' against justices and Democrats online after ruling to exclude Trump from ballotJustices on the Colorado supreme court are receiving a barrage of death threats after it ruled to exclude Donald Trump from the state's presidential ballot next year because of his attempts to cause insurrection.A report compiled by Advance Democracy, a non-partisan non-profit organization, said there was significant violent rhetoric" against the justices and Democrats on social media, according to NBC News. Continue reading...

The best broadcast in the US features a presenter with a mid-Atlantic accent, a Frenchman, an Englishman and a citizen of the people's republic of LiverpoolAnyone who's watched soccer live in the United States will be familiar with him: the English fan, always a male, who's tediously insistent that by right of birth he knows more than anyone else on the face of the earth about the sport.Lurching up from the bar or dropping into the group chat at the invitation of some naive administrator, he'll never miss a moment to remind everyone that the league leaders have benefited from an easy run, that Ben White's haircut should be the real talking point of the Premier League title race so far, that football has laws rather than rules, that many Manchester United fans are not from Manchester (this point must be emphasized with a grim relentlessness), that pre-relegation early 2000s West Ham was way better than the Moyesian vintage, that Graham Potter is better than Ange Postecoglou, that Seaman and James were better than Alisson and Ederson, that actually, Chelsea's back four in the 1998 Winners' Cup was the best that English football has ever seen". Continue reading...

Spokesman for Greg Abbott says flights are result of criticism over his operation of bussing migrants to Democratic-led citiesTexas sent a plane with more than 120 people who crossed the US-Mexico border to Chicago in an escalation of Greg Abbott's bussing operation, which has sent more than 80,000 people to Democratic-led cities across the country since last year.The first flight, which the Republican governor's office said left from El Paso and arrived Tuesday, was arranged a week after Chicago's city council took new action over the busloads of migrants that have drawn sharp criticism from Brandon Johnson, the city's mayor. The city has said bus operators began trying to drop off people in neighboring cities to avoid penalties that include fines, towing or impoundment. Continue reading...

Whatever strategy Biden pursues in congressional negotiations appears destined to alienate at least one wing of his partyJoe Biden has been left with only bad and worse options in his flagging campaign to send more aid to Ukraine amid its war with Russia and has now found that its fate is tied to one of the thorniest issues in US politics: immigration.In addition to the implications for Ukraine's fate in its fight against invasion, it could be a serious hit for Biden in a crucial election year. Biden's progressive base is already in uproar over his unwavering support for Israel in its war in Gaza, and if he is forced to adopt a hardline immigration policy, then that faction will likely be even more angered. Continue reading...

Hamas has said it will not discuss releasing more hostages until Israel ends its war, while Israel has vowed to continue to the end'. Plus, the women who fought back against a couch-surfing predator

The January 6 insurrection will have succeeded if Trump is re-elected and he avoids accountability for the crimes of his first termNo one is above the law. That's a familiar axiom of American life, and it's often been bent by the power of wealth and those possessing a wealth of power, but it has never been tested as it is being tested now. If it breaks, then something fundamental to the country's meaning and function breaks, and repair will not be easy.But as far as the Republican party and its leading candidate for the presidency, conservative members of the supreme court, and much of the Republican delegation in Congress - that is, parts of all three branches of the federal government - are concerned, someone should be above the law and all of the rest of us should be unequal under the law. It's part of their larger commitment to inequality as law and culture. Continue reading...

The president is never slow to recall his early years in the former Pennsylvania coal-mining town but still faces questions about his age and effectivenessLocal history buff Nick Petula has crossed paths with Kennedys, Clintons and pretty much any other president who came through his home town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, for the past 60 years. But there's one politician whose hand he never managed to shake, even though he is more closely tied to the city than any other: Joe Biden, the current president who spent the first 10 years of his life in the north-eastern Pennsylvania city.His visits have been, you know, pretty quick and pretty orchestrated," said Petula, 76, noting that the Covid-19 pandemic complicated campaigning three years ago and made interacting with Biden all the more difficult. Continue reading...

The USMNT star has been a key figure for the Italian giants, earning the trust of coach Stefano Pioli on and off the fieldChristian Pulisic is still half a decade too young to serve in the US Senate, but no such age restrictions apply to the Italian sporting lexicon. As Milan prepared to face Newcastle in a do-or-die Champions League group game last month, the Gazzetta dello Sport named him together with Olivier Giroud as the two players who teammates would look to for leadership. Milan must trust in experience," wrote journalist Marco Passotto, it must trust its senators."Aged 25, Pulisic is 12 years Giroud's junior. Yet he had already made 53 Champions League appearances - only 13 fewer than the Frenchman, and 18 more than any Newcastle player. Continue reading...

Not only are more runners doing ultramarathons in their seventies and eighties, they're also going fasterOn a bone-cold morning in November, Wally Hesseltine, far from his cozy California home, was lying prone in southern Illinois - beside a trail of crushed gravel - his right knee bruised and bloodied. The initial 95 miles of the Tunnel Hill 100 footrace had unfolded with the swiftness of a fleeting breeze. Brisk, beautiful miles under a collage of crisp autumn foliage. The 80-year-old hadn't fallen once. But the last five miles presented a particular problem. They were all downhill.He couldn't feel it, but he could see it - his upper body drooping like a glove without a hand - his hunched shadow sinking into itself until he finally dove into the soft grass. Little is known about the leans", a temporary but debilitating condition that can crop up in older ultrarunners. The phenomenon is oft observed but poorly understood. The same is true of Hesseltine. Continue reading...

Bulgarian workers far from home make Europe's wreaths and jumpers. What if we chose another way to celebrate?The wreath is made from real pine branches. It is attractive and cheap. I can smell the pine. But the label confirms what I already know: made in Germany and shipped across the sea then loaded on to lorries along recently expanded motorways, to this supermarket in Scotland. And it so happens that I know the people who made this and the million other wreaths that sit in the warehouses of Europe's supermarket chains. They are unskilled" workers from the mountains of southern Bulgaria. I can hear their voices, humorous and philosophical. They know it's absurd, and many of them are Muslims, too.You plant the saplings and next season you cut the branches and make Christmas wreaths for the Germans."Kapka Kassabova is a Bulgarian writer based in Scotland. She is the author of Elixir and Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe Continue reading...

First mass thefts, then fossil fuel sponsorship and claims of Soviet-style management. This is how an incredible institution lost its wayThere are six floors in the British Museum, three above ground and three below. In terms of the crisis that has exploded into public view since the summer - the alleged theft of up to 1,500 artefacts - it has felt, a curator recently told me, as if the institution's standing had finally risen above the very lowest possible level, and was moving slowly upwards. But, the staffer added, it had not yet risen to the ground floor.This week it feels as if the lift has hurtled back down to the adamantine depths. The British Museum's decision to accept 50m from BP is, aside from the profound ethical objections to receiving support from one of the world's biggest polluters, a decision remarkable in its tone-deafness. It has already been widely condemned, and, in practical terms, this will lead to years of protests by campaigners. To many who love the museum, it feels like a betrayal.Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian's chief culture writerDo 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...

Fiona Hill, a former White House Russia expert, argues in a podcast why Moscow is eager for the ex-president to returnVladimir Putin has had Donald Trump's number for some time ... knows how to manipulate him" and still sees him as an asset", the former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill said, discussing the Russian leader and the Republican presidential frontrunner.That's literally [Putin's] trump card," Hill told the One Decision Podcast, hosted by the reporter Jane Ferguson and Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6, when asked if she thought the Russian president, bogged down in war in Ukraine, was betting on Trump beating Joe Biden next year and returning to power. Continue reading...

At church, we feel our fragile hopes, together. Raising your voice along with others somehow redirects the gloom, even redeems it a littleI tell myself I'm not a crier, but Christmas carols always prove me wrong.I'm old school. By carols", I don't mean the jolly background tunes to your Christmas shop, still less the shiny, happy singalong that is Carols in the Domain. It sounds bah humbug but I'm a purist who's stingy with my limited tears. Those songs won't make me weep. Trad carols, however, will. Continue reading...

Two leaks of anhydrous ammonia were reported at La Quesera Mexicana in Greeneville on Wednesday morningTwenty-nine workers at a Tennessee cheese factory were sent to the hospital on Wednesday morning after a leak of anhydrous ammonia, the Greeneville city manager, Todd Smith, said at a news conference.The Greeneville fire department was first called to La Quesera Mexicana at 7.15am when a leak occurred during maintenance on a valve. Six people were hospitalized at the time. Continue reading...

Colorado's supreme court concluded the ex-president could not hold office. Alas, the US supreme court will likely not agreeThis is how dictatorships are born." Such was Donald Trump's response to news that the Colorado supreme court had ruled that the former president is disqualified from holding office and so should be removed from the state's Republican primary ballot.Anytime Trump speaks of dictatorships" these days we should pay attention. He has all but declared his intention to engage in dictatorial rule should he win in 2024. It isn't clear, then, whether his statement, in a fund-raising missive fired off minutes after the news broke, was meant as a condemnation of the ruling or a prediction of how he would handle such legal setbacks should he be returned to the White House.Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. He is a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US and teaches at Amherst College Continue reading...

Worden Butler and Alexis Hartnett charged after FBI search house in Horry county following alleged racially motivated campaignThe FBI has searched a house in South Carolina after a white couple allegedly put up a cross that faced their Black neighbors and set it on fire.On Wednesday morning, federal agents searched the house of 28-year-old Worden Butler and 27-year-old Alexis Hartnett in Horry county for a civil rights investigation involving allegations of racial discrimination", WBTW reports the agency saying. Continue reading...

Complaint details human rights violations, including lack of food, water and shelter and denial of emergency careTheresa Cheng was volunteering with mutual aid groups at the US-Mexico border when she learned of a migrant on the US side of the wall with severe injuries. Cheng, an emergency physician, rushed to an encampment where asylum seekers wait to be processed by border patrol and pumped frantically on the chest of a 13-year-old boy bleeding on the ground while volunteers dialed 911.It took 60 minutes - nearly as much time as Cheng and another migrant did CPR on the teen - for an ambulance and emergency medical services to arrive at the scene in eastern San Diego county. The boy, whom local media identified as Dario Zamudio, had suffered traumatic injuries in a car collision on the Mexican side of the border and had been taken to the border wall to receive quicker treatment. Continue reading...

Federal 2020 election interference trial is currently set for 4 March, the day before Super TuesdayLawyers for Donald Trump on Wednesday urged the US supreme court to reject a request from the special counsel to expeditiously decide whether he was immune from prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, contending prosecutors lacked standing to bring the petition.The argument from the ex-president was that prosecutors had no basis to appeal a lower court ruling that was favorable to them, and should instead defer intervening in the case until a federal appeals court issued its own judgment first. Continue reading...

The US president, Joe Biden, said Israel and Hamas were no closer to reaching a deal that would pause fighting, allowing humanitarian aid to Gaza to be facilitated and Israeli hostages to be released.Biden was also asked for a response on the number of casualties in Gaza passing 20,000 people. 'I think it's tragic,' he said

Wolves are the first part of a plan to reintroduce the endangered species into the state after it was eradicated in the regionIn an effort to restore an endangered species, Colorado just released five gray wolves in the western part of the state.On Monday, Colorado parks and wildlife released two female and three male wolves on to remote public land. The predators were captured and brought over from Oregon, after Wyoming, Idaho and Montana refused to share their wolves citing interstate migration and financial concerns. Continue reading...

The shoes - which debuted as Lee's footwear at the 2019 Academy Awards - were found in a clothing donation bin in Portland, OregonA pair of rare Nike Air Jordan 3s made for Spike Lee have sold for more than $50,000 at Sotheby's after they were discovered earlier this year in the donation chute of a homeless charity in Portland, Oregon.On Monday, the gold shoes, one of only four to five pairs custom-made for the film director Spike Lee and his inner circle, were auctioned off at Sotheby's for $50,800. The shoes were originally discovered in April by a participant in Portland Rescue Mission's long-term shelter program who was sorting through several clothing and shoe donations. Continue reading...

President makes first public comment since Colorado ruled to remove Trump from state's 2024 ballotJoe Biden has said it is self-evident" that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist in his first public comments since Colorado's supreme court removed the former president from the state's 2024 ballot.The president was speaking before boarding Air Force One to an afternoon engagement in Milwaukee, and said he would not comment on the legal premise cited by the Colorado panel for its majority decision, or the likely intervention of the US supreme court. Continue reading...

The smokescreen generated by recent carbon-offset setbacks should not blind us to the simple truth that we must protect our intact forests and bring back those we have lostSome have recently questioned whether forests really are the climate solution they have long been held to be. This is because some emit great quantities of carbon, while the markets set up to finance them have stumbled. But there is no pathway to a livable climate without saving our intact forests, regrowing some, and finding a more straightforward way to pay for them than carbon offset projects.A 2021 study led by Brazilian scientists established that the Amazon was emitting more carbon dioxide than it was absorbing. The great carbon sink had seemingly become a smokestack. The paper mirrored a 2019 analysis of Canadian forests, which showed they had been net emitters since 2001. Continue reading...

Metropolitan Museum of Art's survey of more than 70 female designers celebrates overlooked brilliance. It is long overdue - but still won me overThere weren't many men visiting Women Dressing Women, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new exhibit on female designers through modern history. It was as if all the ladies who attended had checked their boyfriends or husbands at the door, where they huddled together like dads outside a Forever 21 dressing room during back-to-school shopping season.We were better off for it. It felt like a screening of the Barbie movie inside the Met's Costume Institute on an early afternoon last week. I saw people of various races, ages and body types let out collective shrieks at an original Chanel little black dress. As I stood in front of a sexy, see-through, white Tory Burch gown, I nodded emphatically when a woman turned to me and said, I need that for my wedding." Nearby, one twentysomething complimented another on her Telfar loafers. When two elderly women admired a Norma Kamali parachute dress, a young mother offered to take their photo in front of it. Continue reading...

Predictably, the ex-president took to his social media site to condemn the decision - and to raise fundsThe Colorado supreme court ruling on Tuesday that bars Donald Trump from the state's presidential ballot has kicked off a firestorm among Republicans and legal scholars, and fury from Trump himself.Though the former president did not address the decision during a rally on Tuesday night in Iowa - where he went on abusive rants against immigration - he posted on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday. What a shame for our country!!!" Trump wrote. A sad day for America!!!" Continue reading...

Justices in the US state say the ex-president isn't fit to stand. But no matter what the courts say, he may still be a winner with votersTen days out from the end of the year, and who could have foreseen the latest Trump plot twist? On Wednesday morning, Americans woke to absorb the fallout from the previous day's news that Colorado - of all places - had ruled via its supreme court to ban Donald Trump from the ballot in the run-up to next year's presidential election. There are many sober things to say about this, but in the first instance let's give way to an unseemly squeal. How completely thrilling!Colorado leans Democrat - both its senators are blue - but it's a western state with large conservative enclaves that is not exactly Massachusetts or Vermont. The decision by the state's top justices is unprecedented in US electoral history. According to their ruling, Trump is in breach of section 3 of the 14th amendment, the so-called insurrectionist ban", in light of his behaviour during the 6 Januarystorming of the Capitol. Continue reading...

Local police chief describes horrific tragedy' after four boys aged two to 13 and a four-year-old girl die trapped in duplexFive children died in a house fire in Arizona while their father was out shopping for Christmas.Four boys - aged two, five, 11 and 13 - and a four-year-old girl were home alone in Bullhead City, Arizona, when a fire broke out just before 5pm on Saturday. Within five minutes firefighters were on the scene and reported the blaze was out at 5.03pm. But by then it was too late. Continue reading...

Driver reportedly said he was trying to avoid hitting a dog at first, then trying to avoid a parked car, before crashing into Bar:PMAn LGBTQ+ bar owner in Missouri who was jailed after police accidentally crashed a cruiser into his establishment is facing charges filed against him by prosecutors - albeit ones that were quickly reduced amid a public outcry over the case's circumstances.Nobody should have to go through this - going from being a victim to going to have to defend yourself, your family and your business," James Pence, whose husband, Chad Morris, was arrested and charged, told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday in their home town of St Louis. That's not what the police are here to do." Continue reading...