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Texas lawmaker gave alcohol to intern, 19, and another young staffer, and had sex with intern when she was intoxicatedA Republican Texas state lawmaker who once proposed banning children from attending drag shows to supposedly shield them from being groomed for abuse has resigned after he was found to have engaged in inappopriate sexual conduct with a 19-year-old intern.Bryan Slaton, 45, resigned on Monday while facing mounting calls from the state’s Republican party and conservative groups to step down. A state house investigation last week determined that he supplied alcohol to the intern and another young staffer, had sex with the intern after she had become intoxicated, and later showed her a threatening email while saying everything would be fine if she kept quiet about the encounter.Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html. Continue reading...

Republicans are determined to link any increase in the ceiling with cuts to Biden’s signature climate legislationAmid warnings about looming fiscal catastrophe, the GOP is attempting to use Biden’s climate agenda as a bargaining chip over raising the debt ceiling – even if it could hurt Republican voters.Late last month, House Republicans narrowly passed speaker Kevin McCarthy’s proposal to raise the government’s debt ceiling in exchange for sweeping cuts to federal spending. Continue reading...

A Korean American family, a security guard and two young sisters are among those killed in Saturday attack near Dallas. Plus, how one man survived being struck by lightning

After a records request, the LAPD released the names and photos of 9,000 cops, including undercover officers in dangerous assignmentsThe Los Angeles police department has made many mistakes during its tumultuous history, but few may compete with an administrative error its own union officials are calling “a blunder that is just epic”: the inadvertent exposure of dozens of officers working undercover to investigate national security breaches, drug cartels and other dangerous criminal enterprises.The mistake arose when the city responded to a public records request by releasing the names, photographs and badge numbers of more than 9,000 officers – close to the entire force. The department assured the journalist who had fought and won a legal battle to obtain the records that “images of officers working in an undercover capacity … are not included”. Continue reading...

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The actor has enjoyed huge success with Wrexham and now he is interested in the NHL’s Senators. He will face competition from two music titans thoughJust a few months ago, the idea that multiple celebrities would be anxious to buy the Ottawa Senators might have seemed a tad ridiculous. Yet, here we are. Ryan Reynolds, Snoop Dogg and The Weeknd are each part of different offers being considered for the NHL team, which was recently valued at $800m by Forbes despite reaching the playoffs just twice in the last 10 seasons. The Senators are currently owned by the estate of Eugene Melnyk, who died in March 2022, and will only sell to a group willing to keep the team in Ottawa – although most likely in a stadium a bit closer to downtown.It’s hardly unheard of for celebrities to buy into sports teams. In fact, Reynolds and Snoop are both already heavily involved in sports. Reynolds has attracted huge amounts of publicity as part-owner of Welsh soccer club Wrexham FC, which he acquired alongside another actor, Rob McElhenney. For his part, Snoop has successfully launched youth football and basketball leagues. As for The Weeknd? He’s new to this. Continue reading...

Eventual outcome will have profound implications for Sunshine state overall and the regional economy in particularLucy Mends was very nervous about vacationing at Disney World in central Florida this spring. From her home in Elkridge, Maryland, the 46-year-old romance novelist had read about a law approved by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022 that banned discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in public school classrooms for children between kindergarten and the third grade.Mends became more alarmed over a series of bills introduced during the current session of the state legislature that would extend that ban to include high school students and prohibit transgender people from amending their birth certificates and receiving transition-related care such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers for minors. “They’re demonizing trans people, and it’s very scary,” she said. Continue reading...

Country is seeing an average of more than one mass killing weekly – amid little political prospect of meaningful gun controlAfter a series of shootings and other attacks, 2023 is on track to be the worst in recent history for mass killings in the US.Mass killings are defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed, not including the shooter or other type of perpetrator. According to data from the Gun Violence Archive, the US is on pace for 60 mass killings this year. There were 31 in 2019, 21 in 2020, 28 in 2021 and 36 in 2022. Continue reading...

Steven Spainhouer described rushing to the shopping center after his son called and trying to help a girl who ‘had no face’As an ex-police and US army officer, Steven Spainhouer is comfortable around firearms and goes so far as to describe himself as a “gun lover”.But Spainhouer is now passionately arguing in favor of meaningful gun control after witnessing a rifle-wielding man murder several people before being shot to death by police outside a suburban Dallas shopping mall Saturday. Continue reading...

I first wondered if Dad wouldn’t mind sharing the urn with a roomie, but decided to empty it in my garden insteadI bought a brass urn for my dad’s ashes eight years after he died.It was secondhand and a bargain at 30 bucks. As I went to leave the shop and picked it up off the counter it was heavier than anticipated. There was someone still in there.Amber Cunningham is a freelance radio producer Continue reading...

Police chief Brian Harvey declined to answer questions Sunday evening after a gunman killed eight people at a shopping mallThe victims of a mass shooting have been named as law enforcement officials in Allen, Texas, are still trying to piece together the events of the Saturday afternoon attack at a suburban shopping mall in which a gunman killed eight people and injured seven others, before being killed himself by police.Brian Harvey, the Allen police chief, declined to answer questions Sunday evening, saying of the investigation, “we actually don’t have a lot”. Continue reading...

George Alvarez accused after SUV drove into migrant crowd in Brownsville, as investigators work to determine if crash was intentionalAn SUV driver who killed eight people when he slammed into a group waiting at a bus stop in Brownsville, Texas, was charged with manslaughter, police said on Monday as investigators tried to determine if the crash was intentional.Authorities believe the driver, George Alvarez, 34, of Brownsville, lost control after running a red light on Sunday morning and plowed into a crowd outside a migrant center in the city, which has long been an epicenter for migration across the US-Mexico border. Continue reading...

Advice columnist’s lawyer says in closing arguments jurors can believe 10 witnesses or ex-president who declined to testifyDonald Trump is a habitual liar and sexual abuser who destroyed E Jean Carroll’s reputation in order to protect his own after she accused him of rape, a New York jury heard on Monday.In closing arguments in Carroll’s civil lawsuit against Trump for sexual battery and defamation, the advice columnist’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, told jurors they could believe the evidence of 10 witnesses for her client or the former president who declined to testify. Continue reading...

On Europe Day, we say great strides have been made towards a new relationship. We all want a strong EU and a strong UK

Korean American family and security guard also among those killed in Saturday attack near DallasDetails are emerging about those who were killed in a mass shooting at a shopping center in Allen, Texas, near Dallas, on Saturday afternoon. Nine people were killed, including the gunman, and at least seven others were injured.Authorities have yet to provide details about the exact series of events and publicly release the identities of the victims, but families, friends and organizations have released some information. Those killed include an engineer from India, a security guard, a Korean American family and two young children. Here is what we know so far: Continue reading...

Police in Brownsville, Texas named George Alvarez, 34, a resident of the city on the US-Mexico border, as a suspect in the incident on Sunday morning in which a car ploughed into a group of people waiting at a bus stop outside a migrant shelter. They put up his mugshot and an image of what they described as an extensive rap sheet – details of a long criminal history including assault and burglary. Alvarez was arraigned in court on Monday on eight counts of manslaughter and 10 counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He is being detained on bail of $3.6m

Statement issued by attorneys for Daniel Penny was ‘a character assassination’, Neely’s family saysThe family of Jordan Neely, the Black man who died on a New York subway train after being placed in a chokehold by another passenger, criticised the rider for offering neither “an apology nor an expression of regret” in a statement released through lawyers.The statement issued by attorneys for Daniel Penny, a white 24-year-old former US marine from Long Island, was “a character assassination and a clear example of why he believed he was entitled to take Jordan’s life”, the Neely family said in their own press release on Monday. Continue reading...

First-of-its-kind committee gives final approval to long list of proposals including cash to descendants of enslaved peopleA California taskforce on reparations voted this weekend to approve recommendations on how the state may compensate and apologize to Black residents for generations of harm caused by discriminatory policies.The committee, the first of its kind in the United States, gave final approval to a hefty list of proposals, including cash payments to descendants of enslaved people. Continue reading...

Airlines would have to offer cash compensation and accommodation vouchers for cancellations and delaysAhead of what promises to be a busy summer for the travel industry, the US Department of Transportation is proposing new rules that would require airlines to compensate passengers for cancellations and disruptions caused by the airlines.Airlines for now are required to issue refunds to passengers if flights are canceled or significantly delayed due to factors within an airline’s control, including staffing shortages and maintenance issues. But the proposed rules, if approved, would require airlines to offer cash compensation and accommodation vouchers in addition to those refunds. Continue reading...

Witnesses says a driver yelled slurs towards those outside the shelter after driving into a group of people, killing eightNeighbors held a small vigil Sunday night on a dirt path along a busy road in Brownsville, at the eastern end of the US-Mexico border, where eight people were killed and 10 were injured at a bus stop that morning.A small display of flowers and a row of candles grew as shaken people visited the dimly lit curb where the appalling crash occurred. Continue reading...

Both families, fictional and real, give off the same sad vibe. In the game of succession, the winners end up bored and overwhelmed by their wealth while the losers are lit up by an inferno of injusticePoor King Charles. And yet, on the other hand, daft King Charles: he’s served a 50-year apprenticeship for this gig. You’d think he’d have learned, sometime between the invention of the moving image and now, that when all eyes are upon you, if you tell your wife you’re bored, people are going to notice. “But I’m in my gold coach!” he must have thought. “In my gold coach, no one can hear me whinge.” And so, fatefully, he said to his queen: “This is boring.”He spoke for the nation. There was his grandson, yawning his damn head off outside Westminster Abbey. There was his wife, on the balcony for the historic wave, unable to really focus on the crowds in front of her because she was too busy shepherding her swarm of ceremonial minions, probably more grandchildren, plainly too bored to remember where they were supposed to stand. People in the crowd – and these, you had to assume, were the most fervent royalists the nation could produce – did not seem that wild. A small group of protesters on their way out of Trafalgar Square seemed more exercised about the arrests that had been made earlier in the day than they were about the monarchy itself. I agreed with them; the anti-protest bill probably is more consequential than the existence of a working royal family, but still.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

In conservative towns like Allen, where a shooter killed eight people Saturday, guns are handed down from generation to generationFour years ago, the city council governing Allen, Texas, was asked to approve construction of a large gun range in the town. Only one member of the council, Lauren Doherty, voted against it.Doherty said that vote cost her seat on the municipal body when she ran for re-election two years later. Continue reading...

Ashok Kolla, with the Telugu Association of North America, had the grim task of calling relatives thousands of miles awayAshok Kolla walked past the news cameras at the Allen Premium Outlets on Sunday, phone to his ear, trying to find the woman from Hyderabad who was unaccounted for after the deadly mass shooting at the mall a day earlier.“Can you tell me which hospital she is at?” Kolla said into the phone. Continue reading...

Senator ‘should advocate for gun controls rather than invoking prayer after mass shootings’. Plus, King Charles’s ‘moans’

Former president, who has declined to testify, denies rape of advice columnist in Bergdorf Goodman department store in 1996The jury in E Jean Carroll’s civil lawsuit accusing Donald Trump of rape and defamation is to hear closing arguments in New York on Monday.The three women and six men who have listened to seven days of testimony, including three by Carroll herself, will then retire to consider whether they believe the advice columnist’s account of the alleged sexual assault in a New York department store dressing room in 1996. Continue reading...

Government leaders are advancing hardline policies to keep migrants out as pandemic-era Title 42 restrictions are expected to liftThe right to seek asylum in the United States is in the balance as migrants fleeing violence and instability at home anxiously await a chance at safety – amid a major policy shift at the US’s southern border.The Title 42 public health order – which has allowed officials to quickly expel migrants without giving them access to asylum for years now – is expected to finally end on 11 May. What does this mean for the US’s historic commitment as a beacon for freedom from persecution?Alexandra Villarreal is a policy and advocacy associate at the National Immigration Forum. Continue reading...

Drivers call for federal action to address what they say are decreasing pay and rampant fraudUS truck drivers are pushing for federal action to address what they say are deteriorating working conditions, decreasing pay and rampant fraud.Caleb Fernandez, a long-distance truck driver since 2017, said he often spends hours waiting to load or unload his truck’s cargo without getting paid for the time. It can be drawn out to several hours, which will often disrupt his entire schedule for the week and he doesn’t receive any compensation for those hours. Continue reading...

The small, agricultural town of Planada was inundated amid a wave of intense storms this winter. Residents, many of whom are undocumented, say they have been neglectedNearly four months after the waters washed through Planada, most of Samuel Gomez’s one-bedroom house has been stripped back to the studs. He was still sleeping in a small room at the back of the house – the only one that hadn’t been completely wrecked.“Yeah, I’ll get sick from all this,” said Gomez, 80, gesturing at the mould-marred corners and sludge-soaked floorboards. “But where do I go?” Continue reading...

Years ago, Putin lifted much of the censorship that haunted the Soviet Union. Now it’s back with a vengeance, and Russia’s artists are fleeingAs much as Russia is the country of Tolstoy and Rachmaninov, it is also the country of Stalin and the Lubyanka prison – a nation built as much on beauty as it is on the blood of its people. Russians cherish their cultural history just as strongly as people cherish ours in Britain. And yet historically, to be creative in Russia is to incur a significant risk, for an act of creation is also an act of freedom.In the years of the Soviet Union, speaking one’s mind might mean being taken to a windowless room and then to Siberia. Today, Russians can – and do – face the same kind of danger for speaking out against Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. In the words of Pyotr Stolypin: “In Russia, every 10 years everything changes, and nothing changes in 200 years.”William Fear is a writer based in London Continue reading...

Federal prosecutors’ investigation into possible crimes involving taxes and gun purchase appears near completionThe White House is bracing for political fallout from a looming decision by federal prosecutors over whether to charge Joe Biden’s son Hunter with tax crimes and lying about his drug use when he bought a handgun.In a signal that the investigation is nearing completion, Hunter’s lawyers last month held a meeting with David Weiss, the top federal prosecutor in Delaware, at the justice department in Washington, the Washington Post said. A separate report by CNN noted that Hunter’s longtime lawyer Chris Clark was among those entering the department headquarters. Continue reading...

Abdullah al-Derazi and Youssef al-Manasif have appealed to secretary of state Antony Blinken as their cases are being reviewedTwo Saudis who were arrested and allegedly tortured for crimes they were accused of committing as minors are facing an imminent threat of execution, in what human rights experts say is a sign of the kingdom’s violation of its own promise to end death penalty cases against child defendants.In a letter to US secretary of state Antony Blinken, a family member of one defendant, Abdullah al-Derazi, describes how Abdullah was swept off the street and disappeared for three months in August 2014 for protest crimes he is alleged to have committed when he was 17 years old. Continue reading...

Authorities are stumped after seven cows are mutilated in three counties within weeksTheir tongues were cut off, but there was no spilled blood. No signs of struggle. No footprints or tire tracks were found. Investigators were stumped: who is going on a murderous rampage of cows in Texas, and how are there no clues surrounding their deaths?It seemed a scene straight out of The Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch, the reality TV show on the History Channel about the Utah ranch that is supposedly the site of unexplained supernatural phenomena. Continue reading...

Tech CEOs want us to believe that generative AI will benefit humanity. They are kidding themselvesInside the many debates swirling around the rapid rollout of so-called artificial intelligence, there is a relatively obscure skirmish focused on the choice of the word “hallucinate”.This is the term that architects and boosters of generative AI have settled on to characterize responses served up by chatbots that are wholly manufactured, or flat-out wrong. Like, for instance, when you ask a bot for a definition of something that doesn’t exist and it, rather convincingly, gives you one, complete with made-up footnotes. “No one in the field has yet solved the hallucination problems,” Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet, told an interviewer recently.Naomi Klein is a Guardian US columnist and contributing writer. She is the bestselling author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine and Professor of Climate Justice and Co-director of the Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia Continue reading...

There is no other mainstream sport where carnage and indifference occur so regularly – and are as toleratedI was 18 when I first saw a racehorse break down. It was the late 1990s and I was an exercise rider galloping horses at Del Mar racetrack, the Pacific Ocean glistening in the distance. Seared into my memory is the image of a petite dark bay horse on the inside rail just by the wire in the bleached light of a southern California morning. The rider, who had escaped injury, stood tugging at the reins fighting to keep the horse still. The horse had suffered a clean break of the right front ankle and his foot dangled and swung from the bottom of his leg. He turned and staggered on the stump in panic – euthanasia would soon follow. I averted my eyes and felt instantly sick as I jogged my filly by, the siren that blares across the backside when there is an accident ringing through my head. At that time I could not have known it would be the first of many such scenes I would see over the years of my life on the track.Decades later the deaths roll on. Seven racehorses lost their lives in the days leading up to this year’s Kentucky Derby. Four breakdowns, a broken neck in the paddock, and two yet-to-be-explained collapses paint a grim picture of horse racing in America. Continue reading...

Rightwing lawyer Cleta Mitchell faces criticism after comments to GOP donors urging new rules to make voting harder for studentsRightwing election lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a key ally of Donald Trump as he pushed bogus claims of fraud to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 win, is facing intense fire from voting watchdogs and bipartisan criticism for urging curbs on college student voting, same day voter registration and absentee voting.The scrutiny of Mitchell, who runs the Election Integrity Network at the pro-Trump Conservative Partnership Institute to which a Trump Pac donated $1m dollars, was sparked by recent comments Mitchell made to Republican donors, and a watchdog report criticizing her advisory role with a federal election panel. Continue reading...

Those who opposed it must be portrayed as radical, or the whole rotten system it represents might come crashing downThe biggest illusion – and utility – of royal events such as the coronation is that we are somehow a part of them. We are, of course, in a way; we need to be for the institution of monarchy to have any meaning at all. But not as equals. We have the worst of both worlds: the royal family gives us nothing, and we in turn legitimise it, give it meaning and audience and pay, through subsidies and tax exemptions, for its ability to wow us. The monarchy does provide a service, but not to us. It is to an entire system of political decline and economic inequality that cannot withstand closer scrutiny, and so it must be embellished and cloaked in ceremony.And it was ever thus. The historian David Cannadine, in an essay on the “invented traditions” of royal ceremonies, wrote: “in a period of change, conflict or crisis”, unchanging ritual “might be deliberately unaltered so as to give an impression of continuity, community and comfort, despite overwhelming contextual evidence to the contrary.” That evidence to the contrary cannot be more overwhelming than reports that money for food banks has been diverted to pay for coronation events. What those funds bought was a coronation, much like the screens assembled to hide King Charles as he derobed, that for a moment erected an ornate cover that hid the nation’s hunger. Continue reading...

Senate majority whip and judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin ups pressure on chief justice Roberts to impose new ethics rulesUS supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s ties to conservative political figures is an American embarrassment, and the question is whether that is shameful enough to the country’s highest-ranking judge to do something about it, the Senate judiciary committee’s chairperson said on Sunday.“This tangled web around justice … Thomas just gets worse and worse by the day,” Illinois’s senior Democratic senator, Dick Durbin, said on CNN’s State of the Union. “I don’t know what is going to come up next. I thought I heard it all, but disclosures about his activities just embarrass me.” Continue reading...

Police say crash may have been intentional, and driver was arrested for reckless driving and could face other chargesEight people have been killed and 10 others were injured after a car plowed into a crowd outside a shelter serving migrants and homeless people in Brownsville, Texas, on Sunday, and investigators believe it may have been intentional, according to authorities.The car careened into the crowd of people who were sitting on the curb at a bus stop near the Ozanam Center at about 8.30am, the police department in Brownsville, which is near Texas’s border with Mexico, said. That came four days before the scheduled expiration of Title 42, the Covid-19 era policy that allows border patrol agents to swiftly expel migrants at the US’s southern border. Continue reading...

An SUV has slammed into a crowd, killing at least seven people and injuring at least 10 who were waiting at a bus stop outside a migrant shelter in the border city of Brownsville, Texas, police said. The driver was taken to the hospital for injuries sustained when the car rolled over and police also retrieved a blood sample and sent it to a Texas Department of Public Safety lab to test for intoxicants.

Federal agents reportedly examining social media history of alleged shooter Mauricio GarciaUS federal officials are looking into whether the gunman who killed eight people at a Dallas-area mall expressed an interest in white supremacist ideology, as they work to try to discern a motive for the attack, a law enforcement official has told the Associated Press.The official cautioned that the investigation was in its early stages. Continue reading...

The Dutchman started ninth on the grid but still came away with victory in Florida as his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez finished secondLap 2/57: Miami-area native Logan Sargeant is already in the pit, and it’s a long stop of nearly 30 seconds.Lap 1/57: Verstappen is playing the long game, opting for hard tires, but he’s already up one place to eighth. Continue reading...

The former Democrat says she speaks frequently with White House but ‘rejects party politics’ and stays mum on re-electionUS senator Kyrsten Sinema has vowed to never join the Republican party after she changed her party affiliation from Democrat to independent late last year.In an interview aired on Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Arizona senator said that she is “absolutely” done with the country’s two-party political system. Continue reading...

Critics say the Republican senator should advocate for meaningful gun control rather than invoke prayer after mass, deadly violenceTexas US senator Ted Cruz’s comment that he was “praying” for families of the eight victims killed in a shooting at a shopping mall in his state has sparked outrage as many critics say the Republican should advocate for meaningful gun control rather than repeatedly invoke prayer after mass, deadly violence.The backlash came as President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass gun control bills in the wake of Saturday’s attack, in which the gunman was also killed, in Allen, Texas. Continue reading...

Shoppers flee in panic after gunman steps out of silver sedan and opens fire at Premium Outlets mallWitnesses have described a scene of terror and chaos after a gunman killed eight people and wounded seven others at a shopping mall outside Dallas, Texas on Saturday.Hundreds of terrified shoppers fled in panic after a man stepped out of a silver sedan and opened fire at the Premium Outlets mall, a sprawling outdoor shopping centre in Allen, a community of about 100,000 people. Continue reading...