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Play was briefly interrupted in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings when fans ran on to the field during the World Baseball Classic semi-final between the USA and Cuba in Miami.

Robert J Costello, scheduled to appear before New York grand jury on Monday, likely to question Trump accuser’s credibility• Trump calls on supporters to protest as potential indictment loomsDonald Trump has cheered the news that a former adviser to Michael Cohen will testify before a Manhattan grand jury investigating the ex-president’s alleged role in a hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.Robert J Costello, a one-time legal adviser to former Trump attorney Cohen, was scheduled to appear before the grand jury on Monday and expected to give testimony “attacking the credibility of Cohen’s statements”, the Associated Press reported. Continue reading...

Global banking system is under pressure amid row over who should lose out first when a bank struggles

Former Texas governor urged Middle Eastern leaders to convince Iran not to release hostages before 1980 electionA former Texas governor met Middle Eastern leaders in 1980 to convince Iran to delay releasing American hostages as part of a Republican effort to sabotage Jimmy Carter’s re-election campaign, according to a news report.The New York Times reported on Sunday that John Connally, who served as Texas’s Democratic governor from 1963 to 1969 and ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, traveled to a number of countries in the summer leading up to the 1980 election. Continue reading...

Police in Florida city implement midnight-to-six ban after two fatal shootings and could do likewise next weekendTwo deadly shootings and unruly crowds which police have struggled to control during spring break prompted officials in the Florida city of Miami Beach to impose a curfew late on Sunday – and there could be a similar one next weekend.City officials said in a news release that they implemented a curfew from 11.59pm Sunday until 6am Monday, and another is likely to be put in place on Thursday through next Monday, 27 March. The curfew mainly affected South Beach, spring breakers’ most popular party spot. Continue reading...

Spanish tennis player Carlos Alcaraz has regained his No 1 ranking, beating Daniil Medvedev 6-3, 6-2 to win the men's singles title at Indian Wells.With his third career Masters 1000 title and eighth overall, Alcaraz will regain the ATP’s top ranking, rising above Novak Djokovic, who is absent from Indian Wells and the Miami Open due to his vaccination status. This was the first time that Alcaraz has won a Masters 1000 title without dropping a set.

No 15 and No 16 seeds are winning in the NCAA tournament more than ever before and by some distance. Is it a statistical anomaly or the outcome of a broader trend?Upsets have always been a defining element of March Madness and this year has been no different. The 2023 tournament had barely tipped off when No 13 seed Furman, the smallest school in the field by enrollment making their first appearance in 43 years, sent fourth-seeded Virginia packing. By the end of opening weekend, half of the four No 1 seeds were already out. But none of this is terribly unusual in an event where fans have come to expect the unexpected.What is unusual is the teams who are springing the upsets. Continue reading...

Democrats must throw everything they have into this race – and not neglect potentially pivotal voters of colorThe Wisconsin supreme court election – which has been described as the most important election this year – takes place on 4 April, in less than three weeks, and is already the most expensive of its kind in US history. In this race, voters of color will once again be the key to electing a candidate who can safeguard our democracy.

What do we make of a nation that has made giving birth so dangerous – yet forces more and more women to do it?America is in a maternal health crisis. According to new CDC data released this week, the rate of maternal mortality – defined as deaths during pregnancy or within 42 days of giving birth – rose by 40% in 2021. At a rate of 33 deaths for every 100,000 live births, 1,205 women died of maternal causes that year. That rate was more than twice as high for Black women, whose maternal mortality rate was 70 deaths for every 100,000 live births. The latest federal compilation of data from reviews of maternal deaths suggests that 84% were preventable.Experts believe that 2021’s spike in maternal mortality can be attributed at least partly to the Covid-19 pandemic, though it’s not clear exactly how. Perhaps infection and exposure to the virus made pregnant women more vulnerable; perhaps the pandemic caused some women to delay or forgo prenatal care as hospitals strained to treat the surge of virus patients and shutdowns made all kinds of care harder and riskier to get.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Washington’s power is suddenly threatened by a newly confident China and disquiet among leaders in the global southIt’s a useful coincidence that the 20th anniversary of George W Bush and Tony Blair’s illegal attack on Iraq falls only a matter of weeks after the anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s illegal attack on Ukraine. Neither war was authorised by the UN. Both are marked by massive destruction and huge loss of life.The Bush/Blair invasion and occupation of Iraq, and its chaotic consequences, have taken the lives of more than a million Iraqi civilians, according to one survey. US forces committed innumerable war crimes, not least the torture of captured soldiers. At the Abu Ghraib detention centre near Baghdad, US officers humiliated Iraqi prisoners in violation of the Geneva conventions. The invasion provoked widespread resistance, but US counter-insurgency tactics involved raids on villages that led to massacres of unarmed civilians. Continue reading...

The strictest abortion law in the US doesn’t allow exceptions for medical emergencies – and efforts to change it face powerful opposition from the rightMonths after the implementation of the most stringent abortion ban in the country, conservative lawmakers in Tennessee have publicly acknowledged that the state’s ban poses grave risks to the lives of women.Now a political debate over how to change the law is centered on questions that would have been considered unthinkable before last June’s reversal of Roe v Wade: like how close to death a woman must be before a doctor may legally treat her if it means terminating her pregnancy, and whether women should be forced to carry embryos with fatal anomalies to term. Continue reading...

Planned Parenthood advocates say the ‘absurd’ draft legislation regarding periods would present a ‘reductive and binary view of sex’Florida lawmakers are considering a draft law to strengthen state control over sex education that its sponsor says would ban any instruction in schools about menstrual cycles before the sixth grade.The proposal comes as Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature, backed by Governor Ron DeSantis, has already passed a raft of laws limiting discussion in schools of gender and sexuality and reducing the emphasis on diversity in public schools. Continue reading...

Manhattan district attorney expected to file criminal charges against ex-president for payment to adult film star in 2016Donald Trump is bracing for his most legally perilous week since he left the White House, with the Manhattan district attorney likely to bring criminal charges against him over his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, as he huddled this weekend to strategize his legal and political responses.The former US president has posted in all-caps on his Truth Social platform that he expected to be “ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK” and called for his supporters to engage in protests – an ominous echo of his tweets urging protests in the lead-up to the January 6 US Capitol attack. Continue reading...

The conspiracy theorist was ordered to pay the families of the victims damages for claims that 2012 shooting was a hoaxRightwing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones appears to be moving his money to friends and family in an attempt to avoid paying out nearly $1.5bn in damages to the families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, a new report reveals.Last year, Jones was ordered to pay the huge damages following his years-long claims on his digital platform Infowars that the mass shooting was a hoax staged by the government to take away guns from Americans. Continue reading...

The ‘new Iraq’ that the warmongers promised us did not bring Starbucks or startups, but car bombs, al-Qaida and Islamic State

Alvin Bragg is expected to bring an indictment against Trump this week over hush payments to adult actor Stormy Daniels in 2016The Manhattan district attorney widely expected to bring an indictment against Donald Trump this week has vowed that his staff will not be intimidated after the former US president called for his supporters to protest any action against him.Trump triggered a flurry of frantic headlines and statements from his political allies on Saturday when he posted a message on social media claiming he was set to be arrested this Tuesday on charges of hush payments to adult actor Stormy Daniels. Continue reading...

Progressive Democrat launches offensive on politicians on the left and the right who supported Trump-era deregulation of US banksPolitical fall-out in the US from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank continued on Sunday when leftwing Senator Elizabeth Warren hit the morning talk shows and repeatedly called for an independent investigation into US bank failures and strongly criticised Federal Reserve finance officials.The progressive Democrat from Massachusetts, who has positioned herself as a consumer protection advocate and trenchant critic of the US banking system, told CBS’s Face the Nation that she did not have faith in San Francisco Federal Reserve president Mary Daly or Fed chairman Jerome Powell. Continue reading...

Death of Stephen Smith, 19, was ruled a hit-and-run but case was reopened after Murdaugh’s conviction of murder of wife and sonTwo weeks after South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh was convicted in the brutal murders of his wife and son, the body of a teenager who was found dead on a country road near the murder scene six years earlier is now set to be exhumed.Sandy Smith confirmed that the remains of her son Stephen, 19 at the time of his death, will undergo a private autopsy after a GoFundMe campaign raised $43,000 to pay for exhumation. Continue reading...

Many of us have indulged in fantasies of a more enriching job in a remote location. But in reality, even wrangling baby penguins would have its problems ...Fancy looking after a Hebridean island or counting penguins in Antarctica? Both roles are on offer currently, following much hyped opportunities to run a bookshop in the Maldives, become an Austrian hermit, or a lighthouse keeper at Cape Wrath.The enthusiasm with which “dream jobs” are greeted speaks to a communal hankering to chuck it all in. We’re emerging from an existential reckoning that made life feel precarious and precious, so we want to put our hands in soil, wake with the dawn chorus, get the camper van, write that novel. My WhatsApp threads return to this regularly: let’s get a €1 Sicilian house and a few goats and live off the land (no, none of us knows one end of a goat from the other).Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Scot Hollingsworth of Daytona Beach said he heard a noise and after opening door was bitten by 9ft alligator on the thighA Florida man answering a knock at his front door was promptly bitten by a 9ft long alligator when he opened it to see who was there.Scot Hollingsworth, of Daytona Beach, told local TV station WKMG that he was watching TV with his wife when he heard a bump at the door and got up to investigate. Continue reading...

When banks like Silicon Valley Bank collapse, money floods to bigger ones like JPMorgan. Clients know they’re ‘too big to fail’Greg Becker, the former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, sold $3.6m of SBV shares on 27 February, just days before the bank disclosed a large loss that triggered its stock slide and collapse. Over the previous two years, Becker sold nearly $30m of stock.But Becker won’t rake in the most from this mess. Jamie Dimon, chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the biggest Wall Street bank, will probably make much more.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, 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...

Have you had a point-of-sale device spun round after minimal service inviting you to add a tip starting at 20%? You are not aloneI’m writing this column from Las Vegas where I’m attending a conference. This morning, I went to a coffee shop in the hotel. The cost of my small coffee was $6.49 and no, I am not kidding. Welcome to Vegas.To add insult to injury, the cashier who served me the coffee – which took her about five seconds – spun the point-of-sale device around and stared me in the eye as I looked down at that screen that is all-familiar to most of us: the request for a tip. The minimum tip displayed was 20%. Or I could choose “no tip.” What do I do? C’mon, what do you think I did? I walked away sipping my $7.79 small coffee. Continue reading...

Families demand federal investigation amid reports of deplorable conditions, rampant violence and inadequate medical servicesFamilies of 14 inmates who have died in a West Virginia jail in the past year amid reports of deplorable conditions, rampant violence and inadequate medical services are demanding a federal investigation into what they say is negligence on the part of state authorities.Recently the 14th death was recorded at the Southern regional jail in Beaver, West Virginia. Herbert Doss, 48, who had been incarcerated for three months, died of causes that are not yet known. Continue reading...

New York museum is among institutions reattributing works by painters born in what is now Ukraine – to a mixed responseQuestions of attribution are constantly under review by art scholars, but rarely are they so topical or heated as institutional efforts underway in the US and in Europe to reclassify art once described as Russian as Ukrainian.In New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has quietly changed the name of an 1899 painting by the French Impressionist Edgar Degas from Russian Dancer to Dancer in Ukrainian Dress. Continue reading...

Twenty years ago a US-led coalition launched its ‘shock and awe’ attack to topple Saddam Hussein. The reverberations are still being feltOn 20 March 2003, as bombs and missiles from the US-led coalition rained on Iraqi cities in the opening “shock and awe” campaign against Saddam Hussein, the tectonic plates of the post-Second World War international order shifted permanently.For those of us who covered the run-up to the war, the invasion and the long aftermath of an occupation marked by the country’s violent sectarian fracturing, the profound consequences of that momentous day were obscured by the shock of the unfolding events. Continue reading...

It’s not just Putin or the refusal of the major powers to disarm. Unstable regimes in Israel and North Korea are also raising global nuclear tensionsLeaders of unstable nuclear-armed states do dangerous and foolish things when under stress. They miscalculate, provoke, overreach. Given the febrile state of bilateral relations, last week’s aerial military clash between Russia and the US over the Black Sea inevitably intensified fears of nuclear escalation. The incident dramatised how dangerous Vladimir Putin, cornered by his existential Ukraine blunder, truly is – and the risks he is increasingly prepared to run. But he’s not the only one.As often the case over the past year, Putin relied on American restraint. US forces could easily have gone after the offending Su-27 fighter at its Crimea base. Each time Russia’s president darkly hints at going nuclear, that once unthinkable prospect becomes a little less outlandish – and western leaders must steel their nerves. Russia’s repeated bombing of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant fits this pattern of minacious brinkmanship. Continue reading...

Former president says he expects to be arrested on Tuesday but there has been no official confirmation of the likelihood or timing of charges being broughtTop Republicans, including some of Donald Trump’s potential rivals for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, rushed to his defence after the former president said he expected to be arrested next week.On Saturday, Trump announced he would be arrested on Tuesday in a criminal case involving hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, but there has been no official confirmation on the likelihood that charges will be brought. Continue reading...

Ex-president makes remark on Truth Social without any official confirmation of the likelihood or timing of charges being broughtDonald Trump has posted on his platform Truth Social that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday in the criminal case in New York involving hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.Earlier this year the former US president called for protests by his supporters if he was indicted in any of the numerous criminal investigations in New York, Georgia and by federal authorities into various allegations involving illegal campaign payments, election interference, efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss and keeping top secret documents at home after leaving office. On Saturday he posted: “Protest, take our nation back!” Continue reading...

The days of having ‘cool’ musical taste are over. Owning up to guilty listening pleasures is a joy in itselfThere must be a circle of rock’n’roll hell full of people tangled up for all eternity in concepts of “cool” and “uncool”. Now along comes U2’s frontman, Bono, speaking on BBC Radio 2’s Piano Room, saying that, as a 16-year-old punk rocker, pressure to look “macho” meant: “I [didn’t] want to own up to [liking] Abba.”Bono eventually got over it: by 1992, U2 were bringing Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson on stage to perform Dancing Queen. Still, it’s interesting, where do all these self-imposed cultural vetoes, these uptight musical embargos, come from? What’s with the mid- to late-life urge to let it all hang out and ’fess up to past supposed sins against musical taste? Is any of this still a thing? Continue reading...

Bianca Clayborne and Deonte Williams’ case fits pattern of child welfare services fueling disparities in who gets to remain a familyNearly a month ago, Bianca Clayborne, Deonte Williams, and their five children were on their way from Georgia to Chicago for Clayborne’s uncle’s funeral when a highway patrol officer stopped them in Manchester, Tennessee.That moment – about 60 miles outside Nashville – has since upended their lives as Clayborne and Williams try to regain custody of their children after they say state authorities “kidnapped” them on account of a minuscule amount of marijuana in the car, the Tennessee Lookout first reported. Continue reading...

US president says Russian leader has clearly committed war crimes and move makes ‘a very strong point’

A Texas man is suing his ex-wife’s friends for helping her get an abortion – whether he wins or not, the lawsuit is sending a terrifying message to womenMeet Jonathan Mitchell. The former solicitor general of Texas is not a household name but you’ll be familiar with his work. He’s the architect of the dystopian Texas law that lets private citizens act as vigilantes and sue abortion providers or anyone who “aids or abets” the procedure. As the New York Times noted in a 2021 profile of Mitchell, he’s devoted much of the past decade to “honing a largely below-the-radar strategy of writing laws deliberately devised to make it much more difficult for the judicial system – particularly the supreme court – to thwart them.” In other words: he’s brilliant at finding sneaky ways to inflict his beliefs on everyone else. And he appears to have made it his life’s work to weaponize the law to terrorize and control women. Continue reading...

Washington split with old allies in order to pursue its own interests in Iraq. Its support for Kyiv is equally conditionalIn the two decades since the second Iraq war, the United States appears like the Bourbon kings who had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq was a story of geopolitical failure and domestic political disaster. To understand the foolhardy decision to launch the war, one must first understand the US grand strategy of global hegemony, which Washington has pursued since 1945.The “war on terror” provided political cover for the further pursuit of supremacy, despite threatening democratic government with lies, fraud and violence. George W Bush’s rash actions did provoke some murmurs of concern about the damage being inflicted but these faded from the corridors of power. Instead the US has refused to move on, believing that countries are “either with us or against us”.Randeep Ramesh is chief leader writer for the Guardian and author of The War We Could Not Stop: The real story of the battle for IraqDo 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...

Fox pundits called mainstream journalists ‘leftwing media hacks’ and ‘cringing animals’. Now they’re eager for solidarityAs it tries to defend itself against the accusation that it knowingly spread lies about the 2020 presidential election, Fox News has touted some lofty notions about the role of journalism in a democratic society.“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners,” said a recent company statement, “but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v Sullivan.”Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture Continue reading...

The action is aimed at expanding last year’s bipartisan Safer Communities act, which strengthened background checksLast year the Georgia-based gun manufacturer Daniel Defense tweeted an image of a young child with a rifle – about the same size as the child himself – in his lap. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it,” the caption read.The post came just eight days before an 18-year-old shot and killed 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas – using a weapon made by Daniel Defense. Continue reading...

For years after my Gordon’s death in Iraq, I campaigned for justice – until the 2016 inquiry and that encounter. A reckoning is overdueAlthough it’s 20 years since the Iraq war started, and coming up to 19 years since my son was killed, it still feels like yesterday to me. Anniversaries don’t mean much except another year without Gordon. It’s just as hard as it was in the beginning.Gordon never really had an ambition to join the forces. He was just a normal boy: full of fun, loved his sisters to bits, never got into trouble. He loved climbing, so if you were looking for Gordon you’d look up the nearest tree. He’d have his pals round every weekend, and they built a shed in a neighbour’s garden and nicknamed themselves the shed heads.Rose Gentle’s son, Gordon Gentle, was killed in Iraq in June 2004. As told to Katy GuestDo 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...

Spring could bring some respite for the state in the grips of a dramatic weather u-turn from extremely dry to dripping wetThe sun beamed through a cloudless sky across parts of California on Thursday, offering a much-needed break from relentless rains that have drenched the state for weeks. The window of good weather wouldn’t last long. The 12th atmospheric river in mere months is expected to unleash a new set of hazards across the sodden state early next week.“[The storm] is going to exacerbate things further with the flooding and the other impacts going on unfortunately,” said Jon Gottschalck, who heads the operational prediction branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (Noaa) climate prediction center, noting that more heavy rainfall and higher elevation snowfall is in the forecast. “It is also going to hamper ongoing relief efforts.” Continue reading...

Indivisible is targeting little-known GOP House members in swing districts for the 2024 election. Co-founder Ezra Levin says: ‘They are basically Marjorie Taylor Greenes in how they vote’Juan Ciscomani. Tom Kean Jr. Brian Fitzpatrick. Marc Molinaro. David Schweikert. Brandon Williams … Many Americans would struggle to identify who these people are or what they do.They are all, in fact, Republican members of Congress. And progressive activists argue that their fate is more crucial to the future of American democracy than more high-profile rightwing political figures such as Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Continue reading...

Tony Blair’s terrible decision inspired my tale of stupidity in the corridors of power – with a howl of frustration among the one-linersShortly before George W Bush and Tony Blair launched their war, the Arab League issued a statement declaring that invading Iraq would “open the gates of hell”. Of all the pieces of intelligence that the CIA and British agents were gathering at the time, this turned out to be the only accurate one.The invasion was launched on “evidence” about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that consisted mostly of whatever it was Iraqi informants knew our intelligence agencies most wanted to hear and would happily pay for. The biggest contributor to this self-fulfilling dossier was an alcohol-fixated defector called Curveball, who later admitted his improvisations about chemical weapons weren’t true.Armando Iannucci is a film and TV writer whose credits include The Thick of It, In the Loop and Veep Continue reading...

In true hypocritical manner, the ex-president has quickly forgotten why the two sectors are in shamblesWhen a fiery train derailment took place on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border last month, Donald Trump saw an opportunity. The former US president visited East Palestine, accused Joe Biden of ignoring the community – “Get over here!” – and distributed self-branded water before dropping in at a local McDonald’s.Then, when the Silicon Valley Bank last week became the second biggest bank to fail in US history, Trump again lost no time in making political capital. He predicted that Biden would go down as “the Herbert Hoover of the modrrn [sic] age” and predicted a worse economic crash than the Great Depression. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Apparent reversal of position adopted after invasion of Ukraine sends men fleeing Putin’s draft back to RussiaThe Biden administration has quietly resumed deportations to Russia, an apparent reversal of the position adopted after Russia invaded Ukraine just over a year ago, when such removals were suspended, the Guardian has learned.Immigration advocates were taken by surprise when a young Russian man, who came to the US fleeing Vladimir Putin’s efforts to mobilize citizens to fight in Ukraine, was abruptly deported at the weekend from the US back to Russia. Continue reading...