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Casey Cole White, 38, being held on capital murder charge, and Vicki White left detention center on FridayThe US Marshals Service said on Sunday it was offering up to $10,000 for information about an escaped inmate and a “missing and endangered” correctional officer who disappeared on Friday after the two left a jail in north Alabama.Casey Cole White, 38, had been jailed on a capital murder charge in the Lauderdale county detention center in Florence, Alabama, about 75 miles west of Huntsville. Continue reading...

Members of Congress involved in attempt to overturn election have refused to testify voluntarily before June public hearings

Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas appears to have no problem with anti-LGBTQ+ policies but says private business should not be target

Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas forging ahead with plans to ease Covid-related immigration restrictionsJoe Biden’s top border official said on Sunday he was unconcerned by threats from the top House Republican that the GOP could impeach him if it regains the majority after the midterm elections, as the Biden administration forges ahead with plans to ease a coronavirus-related immigration restriction.Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, addressed the remarks from the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson’s ‘defining mission’ is nowhere to be seen. This is a huge opportunity for Labour to seize the initiativeAmid the scandal, farce and disarray enveloping Boris Johnson’s government, one sudden and glaring absence seems to have been rather overlooked. Levelling up was endlessly talked about between 2019 and early 2022. It was hailed as a daring Tory stride into Labour territory, honoured with a renamed ministry commanded by Michael Gove, and somewhat unconvincingly explained in the 330-page white paper that was finally published in February.Back then, Johnson insisted that levelling up remained his “defining mission”. But only three months on, ministers barely use the term. It received only the most glancing mention at the tail end of Rishi Sunak’s spring statement, and was entirely absent from the pre-Easter “government update” that Johnson gave to the House of Commons about a fortnight ago, assuring MPs of his regrets about Partygate and his determination to get on with the job, whatever that is. Though the idea is not quite dead, it now seems to have lost so much urgency and substance that it is quickly withering away. Continue reading...

Time will tell who got the best haul of players in Las Vegas this year, but there were encouraging signs from the Ravens, Jets and EaglesNew York Jets: Due to a slew of perplexing selections over the years, the New York Jets are often expected to fail on draft night. But on day one of this year’s draft, the Jets put the league on notice by selecting cornerback Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner (No 4), wide receiver Garrett Wilson (No 10), and defensive end Jermaine Johnson II (No 26). Continue reading...

The US president, Joe Biden, joked about his own low approval ratings and his predecessor Donald Trump, as he resumed a Washington tradition of speaking at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. The event had been cancelled for two years due to the Covid pandemic and was boycotted by Donald Trump during his presidency. 'This is the first time the president attended this dinner in six years. It's understandable: we had a horrible plague, followed by two years of Covid,' Biden quipped

Kentucky senator who has clashed publicly with Dr Anthony Fauci champions lab leak theory in remarks at rallyThe Kentucky senator Rand Paul promised on Saturday to wage a vigorous review into the origins of the coronavirus if Republicans retake the Senate and he lands a committee chairmanship.Speaking to supporters at a campaign rally, the senator denounced what he sees as government overreach in response to Covid-19. He applauded a recent judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs. Continue reading...

Manchin cites Biden Build Back Better spending plan he sank in ad for David McKinley, challenger to Trump-backed incumbent

Dan O’Dowd has bankrolled his own campaign to take a swing at what he calls Elon Musk’s ‘amazingly terrible’ technologyDan O’Dowd is hardly the first California tech titan to bankroll his own campaign for high political office. What makes him unusual is that he has no interest in winning the US Senate seat he is vying for, or even in challenging the other candidates competing in the 7 June primary.O’Dowd, a software entrepreneur with a 40-year history of working on military, aerospace and other commercial contracts, is running, rather, out of frustration at his fellow tech entrepreneur, Elon Musk, whom he accuses of endangering road safety with a driver assistance software package he’s put in his Tesla electric cars. Continue reading...

The few Republicans who rejected Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen have since embraced the Big Lie in order to avoid Trump’s wrathAs Trump’s big lie of a stolen election began ricocheting across America in November 2020, Arizona’s Republican attorney general, Mark Brnovich (pronounced “Burn-o-vich”), spoke out forcefully on national television. He told the public that Donald Trump was projected to lose the swing state, and “no facts” suggested otherwise. (At the time I thought to myself, “Good for him. Maybe more Republican attorneys general will show some spine.”)That was then. Recently, Brnovich – now running for US Senate from Arizona – came on to Steve Bannon’s far-right podcast with the opposite message: Brnovich said he was “investigating” the 2020 vote and had “serious concerns”. He went on: “It’s frustrating for all of us, because I think we all know what happened in 2020,” without explaining what he meant by “what happened.” (Bannon titled the podcast segment “AZ AG On Interim Report On Stealing The 2020 Election.”)Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...

Hearings with homeland security secretary about the US-Mexico border also revealed rifts within Democrat ranksFour years after Republicans embraced Donald Trump’s nativist and often racist playbook in an attempt to keep control of Congress, the party is once again placing the volatile politics of immigration at the center of its midterm election strategy.From the US-Mexico border to the US Capitol, in hearing rooms and courtrooms, Republicans are hammering the issue. At the forefront of the debate is a once-obscure public health order invoked by the Trump administration in March 2020 ostensibly as a means for controlling the spread of the coronavirus along the south-western border. Continue reading...

White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is first attended by a sitting president in six years after Donald Trump’s snubs, then pandemicJoe Biden celebrated the return of a flashy annual gathering of Washington’s political and media elites on Saturday with some humorous jabs at Donald Trump – and himself.The US president, sporting a tuxedo and slightly askew bow tie, spoke at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, which was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic. Continue reading...

The urge to win at everything never left him, long after his sporting career was overLooking back on his young self, all that irrepressible boyish power, Boris Becker once observed: “When you are a teenager, you are looking for your own identity, and winning is a way of expressing yourself. And because I thought in victory I became somebody, in defeat, it followed I was nobody.”No doubt, as Becker negotiates his first weekend of a two-and-a-half year jail sentence in Wandsworth prison – just a couple of miles from his Wimbledon triumphs – he will have cause, at 54, to examine the true nature of those extremes. The highest level of sporting stardom is the closest contemporary life gets to Greek myth and fatal flaws never make easy viewing. Continue reading...

‘He’s been a huge danger to public health,’ says prominent medical ethicist Dr Arthur CaplanThe TV doctor Mehmet Oz’s move into politics appears to have been a step too far for administrators at Columbia University, who have quietly purged his presence from their website as the Republican seeks to represent Pennsylvania in the US Senate.For more than seven years, the private New York university has resisted calls to cut ties with Oz, a heart surgeon who has used his TV platform to push medicines ranging from ineffective diet pills to discredited Covid treatments. Continue reading...

Ditch the phone, ignore the emails, don’t touch the biscuit tin … and settle down for the recommended seven hours of zzzzzHow much do you get every night? There are people in this world – and I might have been one before I bedded more comfortably into middle age – who are attracted to headlines about how much sex we all have. These days, though, as I approach my half-century, nothing excites me as much as a juicy discussion about sleep.How to fall asleep, how to stay asleep and when we should wake up. I love it all, and the more granular detail on offer the better, so I was well stuck in last week to research that suggests that seven hours is the-optimal amount for cognitive wellbeing. The study had nearly 500,000 participants aged 38 to 73 and used brain imaging and genetic data on 40,000 of them. My own research methodology might not be so scientific – I start my diary every day with a reflection on the previous night – but my results tally. Seven hours is the sweet spot. Continue reading...

By many measures, Nato is already at war with Russia. The allies must now act decisively or stop stoking the fire

Shareholders reject proposals for independent chair and greater disclosure of company’s climate-related risksBerkshire Hathaway Inc shareholders on Saturday rejected proposals to have an independent chair replace Warren Buffett, and require his company to disclose more about its climate-related risks and efforts to improve diversity.Shareholders supported letting Buffett keep both the chairman and chief executive roles by a nearly 6-to-1 margin, Berkshire said at its annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. Buffett, 91, has run Berkshire since 1965. Continue reading...

What does it say that you can prettify to such levels and still be made paranoid about how you look?

Argument made in federal court filing in Washington, where Trump’s chief of staff sued to invalidate subpoenasDonald Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has accused the congressional committee investigating the US Capitol attack of leaking all the text messages he provided in what he says is an effort to vilify him publicly.The argument was made in a filing on Friday in federal court in Washington, where Meadows sued in December to invalidate subpoenas issued for his testimony and to Verizon for his cellphone records. Continue reading...

Teacher put on leave after allegedly telling class of mostly Black students to pick seeds out of cotton during lessons on slaverySchool officials in Rochester, New York are investigating allegations that a white teacher told his class of mostly Black students to pick seeds out of cotton and put on handcuffs during lessons on slavery in a seventh-grade social studies class.“It made me feel bad to be a Black person,” one School of the Arts student, Jahmiere O’Neal, told reporters. Continue reading...

Vicki White disappeared while escorting an inmate being held on capital murder charges, and inmate Casey White also missingA prison official from Alabama was missing after escorting an inmate to a courthouse for a hearing.The Lauderdale county sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post on Saturday that Vicki White, an assistant director of corrections, disappeared while escorting an inmate being held on capital murder charges. The inmate was also missing. Continue reading...

New state law makes it a felony to provide transgender children with certain kinds of medical careThe US justice department has joined an effort to strike down a new Alabama law that makes it a felony to provide transgender children with certain kinds of medical care.The ban is discriminatory, violating the equal protection clause embedded in the 14th amendment to the US constitution, the federal government argued in a court filing on Friday. Continue reading...

The hedge fund billionaire helped rebuild the Dodgers in one of the most dramatic turnarounds in North American sportsIt was announced on Friday that a consortium led by Los Angeles Dodgers part-owner Todd Boehly has been selected as the preferred bidder in the race to buy Chelsea from Roman Abramovich. If the 46-year-old hedge fund billionaire can repeat the rescue job he has pulled off with the Dodgers over the past decade, it is an outcome that will suit Blues supporters just fine.In 2011, the Dodgers were among the most badly mismanaged teams in North American sports under Frank McCourt, the Boston real estate developer who had bought the franchise and the surrounding Chavez Ravine land from Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Entertainment Group seven years earlier. Continue reading...

Recently proposed 9% hikes for rent stabilized apartments stoke panic as residents call on Eric Adams to roll it backAt 64, Chen Renping has lived in New York City’s Chinatown neighborhood for more than 20 years.But after a back injury forced him to retire from construction work in 2018, Renping can only afford rent if he works multiple part-time jobs – and that’s with his unit being rent stabilized. Continue reading...

Endorsement for Congress comes after Mike Pence rejected Trump’s claim that he could have reversed his election defeatEven though Donald Trump recently sparred with Mike Pence over whether the former vice-president could have done more to overturn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race, Trump on Friday handed an endorsement to Pence’s brother in an Indiana congressional race.Trump’s endorsement of Greg Pence, who is seeking a third term as the US House representative for Indiana’s sixth congressional district, is politically intriguing for a couple of reasons. Continue reading...

The streaming service’s stumble could also show that the fight for everyone’s attention is going to be much tougher in futureIn the early 1930s, when Claud Cockburn worked on the Times, the subeditors had a competition to see who could compose the dullest headline. Cockburn claimed that he won with “Small earthquake in Chile. Not many dead”. Alas, subsequent factcheckers have failed to unearth such a headline in the archives, but it came to mind last week when Netflix announced, in a quarterly earnings report, that for the first time in a decade it had lost subscribers – 200,000 of them, to be exact. In North America, it had lost 640,000 and suffered additional losses in every other region except for Asia-Pacific area, where it added a million.This didn’t seem very interesting to this columnist, especially as it included the period when Netflix had pulled out of Russia, where it had 700,000 subscribers, which to my mind meant that the reported loss would have been a gain of half a million had Putin not invaded Ukraine. Continue reading...

Only 5% of reported sexual assaults in the US result in arrest, according to Rainn, and just 2.8% result in felony convictionsThe rape conviction of the Republican Idaho lawmaker Aaron von Ehlinger on Friday was a rare victory for prosecutors in a criminal justice system that can be fraught for victims of sexual assault, experts said.When a legislative intern accused von Ehlinger of rape last year, she was subjected to online harassment and abuse. When she testified at an ethics hearing, some Von Ehlinger supporters filmed her and chased her through the statehouse. This week, when the young woman took the stand to testify in her attacker’s criminal trial, she became so distraught she fled.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 802 9999. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html Continue reading...

Lawyers for groups challenging Republican say text Greene sent to Meadows, released by House panel, shows she lied in testimonyLawyers for voters seeking to bar the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress over her support for the January 6 insurrection have accused her of lying in a hearing in the case.In a filing Friday, lawyers for groups challenging Greene said a text from the Georgia congresswoman to then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, released by the House committee investigating January 6, shows she lied in testimony. Continue reading...

Infection comes amid worst outbreak of the virus in seven years but CDC says health risk to general public remains lowAn inmate in Colorado has become the first human in the US to test positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu, amid the worst outbreak of the virus in seven years and a cull of millions of poultry in dozens of states.The unnamed prisoner contracted the infection during a work release assignment at a farm in Montrose county where workers were euthanising an infected flock, the Colorado department of public health and environment said. Continue reading...

Ohio state representative Jean Schmidt said a baby created from rape could grow up to cure cancer – during a debate on abortion, naturallyLike a deranged game of limbo, Republicans seem to be in competition to see just how low they can go. A couple of weeks ago a Republican in Tennessee was lecturing homeless people on how they should look at Hitler (who spent some time living on the streets) as an inspiration. This week, a Republican in Ohio is both-sidesing rape. On the one hand, Ohio state representative Jean Schmidt mused during an Ohio house government oversight committee meeting on Wednesday, rape is bad. On the other hand, you’ve also got to find the silver linings.Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for order Continue reading...

Native students who aren’t a member of a federally recognized tribe are dismayed that they are left out of the free tuition programLast week the University of California announced that the higher education system would waive tuition and student services fees for California residents who are members of federally recognized tribes.The announcement elated some Native people in California, who viewed it as a potentially life changing initiative. But it garnered harsh criticism from many others who are members of nations that aren’t federally recognized and are deeply disappointed that an institution that stresses acknowledging historical wrongs suffered by Indigenous people can in the same breath leave so many out of such an important resource. Continue reading...

Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby fought back tears and said it was 'difficult to look at some of the images' of Vladimir Putin's 'cruel' and 'depraved' invasion of Ukraine.Kirby stated that the US had underestimated the level of 'violence and cruelty' that Russian forces would undertake, and described it as 'brutality of the coldest and most depraved sort'

Angel City FC made their NWSL debut on Friday night, winning 2-1 over the North Carolina Courage before a star-studded Banc of California Stadium crowd

The gala comes amid a surge of Covid cases in Washington, with many journalists skipping the would-be super spreaderIt is a sign that political life in Washington is getting back to something like normal. It is the return of “nerd prom”.On Saturday the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) will host its annual dinner for the first time since 2019 after a coronavirus-enforced hiatus, and Joe Biden will become the first US president to address the gala since Barack Obama in 2016 following a boycott by Donald Trump, who made little secret of his contempt of the media. Continue reading...

Trump’s primary endorsement has split voters and the party in Ohio in a race already defined by ‘meanness and pettiness and just plain craziness’“America’s Hitler.” “A total fraud.” “A moral disaster.” Those were a few of the descriptions that JD Vance, bestselling author of the memoir Hillbilly Elegy, once offered for Donald Trump. But none of that past criticism was evident here last Saturday night, as Vance shared a stage with Trump to accept the former president’s endorsement in the Ohio Senate Republican primary.“He’s the guy that said some bad shit about me,” Trump said of Vance during his rally at the Delaware county fairgrounds. “If I went by that standard, I don’t think I would have ever endorsed anybody in the country.” Continue reading...

Mark B Allen faces 22 counts of misdemeanor for mistreating remains of 11 people, including infantsA Los Angeles funeral home owner illegally left the remains of 11 people, including infants, in stages of decay and mummification and faces more than a decade in jail, prosecutors said Friday.Authorities opened an investigation into the Mark B Allen Mortuary and Cremations Services Inc., after receiving complaints from families. The mortuary, owned by Mark B Allen, is now closed and phone numbers listed for the business were disconnected. Continue reading...

Socialite was convicted in December of five counts for bringing teenage girls to the disgraced financier Jeffrey EpsteinThe judge in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking case has upheld her conviction, according to a ruling issued Friday. In rejecting Maxwell’s request for acquittal, Judge Alison Nathan said the guilty verdict was “readily supported by the extensive witness testimony and documentary evidence admitted at trial”.“Further, those counts of conviction matched the core of criminality charged in the Indictment, presented by the Government at trial, and on which the jury was accurately instructed,” Nathan said. Continue reading...

Brian Ulrich is the second person to plead guilty to the charge and could face up to six years in prisonA member of the far-right Oath Keepers militia on Friday became the second participant in the 6 January 2021 Capitol insurrection to plead guilty to seditious conspiracy for his actions in advance of that day.Brian Ulrich, 44, of Guyton, Georgia, faces five to six years in prison after pleading guilty in federal district court in Washington DC, according to sentencing guidelines. He also pleaded guilty to obstructing an official proceeding, which in this case was the hours-long delay in the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election over Donald Trump. Continue reading...

Late-night talkshow hosts juice former president’s testimony to attorneys representing a group of protesters suing over 2015 rallyDonald Trump has been mocked for fearing protesters would throw “dangerous” fruit at him, with late-night talkshow host Trevor Noah calling it “one of the most crazy defenses I’ve ever heard”.The revelation came during the former president’s testimony to attorneys representing a group of protesters suing over their violent removal from a Trump campaign rally in 2015. Continue reading...