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Grand jury investigating ex-president over hush money payment to adult film star appears poised to complete its work soonLaw enforcement officials in New York on Tuesday continued preparing for possible unrest on the streets of Manhattan as a grand jury investigating Donald Trump over a hush money payment to the adult film-maker and star Stormy Daniels appeared poised to complete its work by criminally indicting the former president.Barriers were brought to the area around the Manhattan criminal courthouse in the lower part of the island. Uniformed police were out in force. So were reporters and protesters. Continue reading...

Whale collided with sailboat 13 days into group’s three-week sailing trip from Galápagos Islands to French PolynesiaA giant whale sunk a sailing crew’s boat in the Pacific Ocean before the group was rescued at the end of an ordeal that could have come out of a novel.Rick Rodriguez of Tavernier, Florida, and three friends spent 10 hours on a lifeboat and dinghy after a whale sunk the crew’s 44ft sailboat Raindancer, the Washington Post reported on Monday. Continue reading...

President to designate Avi Kwa Ame, a desert mountain in Nevada, Castner Range in Texas, and a marine sanctuary in the PacificJoe Biden is establishing national monuments in Nevada and Texas and creating a marine sanctuary in US waters near the Pacific Remote Islands south-west of Hawaii.The Democratic president is set to announce the measures on Tuesday at a White House summit on conservation action at the interior department. Continue reading...

A water main break caused by heavy rain left a busy Los Angeles highway submerged in water, as commuters slowly made their way through the flooded lanes. The state was deep in a drought until the new year brought a series of atmospheric rivers that caused severe weather and flooding. The state's rainy season typically stretches only into the first three months of the year before falling off dramatically

Abigail Zwerner, who was seriously injured in incident with pupil in January, made remarks in first interview with NBC Today showThe Virginia school teacher who was shot in her classroom by a six-year-old student in January “can’t get out of bed” some days because her recovery has been so physically and mentally exhausting, she has said in her first interview since the attack.“But … for going through what I’ve gone through, I try to stay positive,” 25-year-old Abigail Zwerner told NBC’s Today show in an interview aired on Tuesday. “You know, [I] try to have a positive outlook on what’s happened and where my future’s heading.” Continue reading...

The actor and influencer has been called out for glorifying restricted eating. What is it with the rich and their weird ideas about wellness?This time there aren’t any vaginas involved. I say that because half the time Gwyneth Paltrow is in the news it’s vagina-related. On this occasion, however, it’s because a lot of people are seemingly annoyed that she – a woman who has amassed a fortune doling out strange and often suspect health advice via her lifestyle brand Goop – follows that advice herself.The trouble started when Paltrow appeared on an episode of Dr Will Cole’s The Art of Being Well podcast and shared what she eats in a typical day. Which, no points for guessing, isn’t much. She doesn’t eat until about noon which, in normal-person-speak, means she skips breakfast. In wellness land it means she’s doing “a nice intermittent fast”. Then she has something that won’t spike her blood pressure, such as coffee. She often follows that up with “bone broth”. An hour of “movement” ensues, wrapped up with some vigorous dry brushing and the sauna. Finally: an early dinner. “I try to eat according to paleo,” she says. “So lots of vegetables. It’s really important for me to support my detox.” I’m sorry, detox? You can’t detox if there was never any tox in the first place. Continue reading...

Kiley Swaine filed suit against Torrance after his car was seized by officers during arrest and came back defacedA California city has agreed to a $750,000 settlement with a Jewish man who accused police of spray-painting a swastika in his car.Kiley Swaine filed a lawsuit against Torrance, 15 miles south-west of Los Angeles, in 2022 after his car was seized by Torrance officers and defaced. Continue reading...

The former PM is wheeling out the old clown act to rebuff the Partygate allegations. Let’s hope it’s for the last timeOne last heave – in all senses of the word – for Boris Johnson, Britain’s worst ex, who tomorrow flops himself out in front of the standards committee and asks it to consider an auto-satirical question: did the foremost British liar of the age tell a lie? If you want a sense of our self-respect as a nation, an entire parliamentary investigation has spent 10 months gathering evidence on that question, while £220,000 and rising has been spent by the taxpayer on Johnson’s legal defence. It is, let’s face it, a long way to go to reach the conclusion, “Lol of course he told a lie – it’s BORIS JOHNSON?!?!?!?!?”Strip away the incidental details of this latest adventure in a career of turbo-fibbing and you are faced with a reality as old as bullshit itself. Johnson, who last told the truth during the Reagan administration – and then only accidentally – has somehow got the government to fund state-of-the-art lawyers to prove he wasn’t aware of parties happening in his own house, attended by his own self, against his own rules, and in at least one case against his own laws, having gone on telly every single night to tell people that compliance to the letter of said rules and laws was a matter of life and death. Please bear this in mind if you tune in to his appearance tomorrow afternoon, along with the question: does our country have a path to dignity? Because this ain’t it.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Missouri’s Republican attorney general sidesteps GOP-led state senate as it struggles to pass similar legislation. Plus, how mass shootings are reshaping Asian Americans’ views on guns

Success can be elusive for Black restaurateurs, but a cohort of buzzy chefs is working to change thatFew food personalities enjoy as high a profile as Joseph Johnson. “Chef JJ”, as the New York chef is known to his fans, has a colossal social media following, a long-running cooking show and a name that’s a staple of the who’s who lists that appear in major food publications.Trained at the Culinary Institute of America, Johnson took a break from the US restaurant scene early in his career to spend time in kitchens in West Africa. The experience, he says, forever changed how he looked at the food of his ancestors, which was largely absent from the types of restaurants with crisp white tablecloths and punctilious waitstaff. Johnson decided he would devote himself to addressing that imbalance. Continue reading...

Angel Pittman says her dream to create a mobile hair salon was thwarted when a neighbor harassed her with racist comments and vandalized her busesAngel Pittman’s dream was to create a mobile hair salon. So the 21-year-old stylist bought less than an acre of unrestricted land in North Carolina for $10,000 in September and purchased three school buses for $14,000 with money she had saved since she was 17.“I’ve never seen anybody driving around doing people’s hair,” she said. “But not only did I want to get paid for doing hair, but I wanted to drive around, do a couple of homeless people’s hair and maybe go to some prisons and help incarcerated people.” Continue reading...

Players such as Mitch Marsh, Quinton de Kock and Liam Plunkett are bringing their experience to a notoriously tough marketIt was an obvious place to launch a sporting moonshot – a cricket league that can survive and thrive in America.Last week, Space Center Houston hosted a reveal of next-generation spacesuits for a lunar mission. A few days later its main hall was crowded with cricketers wearing gaudy baseball caps in the colours of their new teams as the latest attempt to bring professional cricket to the US held its domestic player draft. Continue reading...

Those at the top need to have skin in the game – and know that risky decisions they make will affect them tooExecutives at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Credit Suisse took substantial risks. SVB proactively expanded the bank’s deposits, some might say excessively. These depositors were uninsured and undiversified. And back when interest rates were low, the bank invested significantly in US government bonds, which was fine at the time. But when there were signs that interest rates were rising and creating substantial interest rate risk, managers left this portfolio unhedged and unchanged. How come SVB managers took those risks? It seemed that they lacked “skin in the game”.The risks taken by executives at Credit Suisse were of a different nature, but still substantial. By becoming involved in such companies as the now defunct Greensill and Archegos, the bank’s capital took a hit. The fines it has accrued after facing scandal after scandal have also bitten into its capital. It can be said that those involved also lacked skin in the game.Natacha Postel-Vinay is assistant professor of economic history at the London School of Economics Continue reading...

The Bronx Bombers’ cheapness will be seen by many as another sign that the franchise remains trapped in the glory days of its pastYou would think that playing for the most valuable franchise in baseball would come with all the perks, but that turns out not to be true. Apparently, signing with the New York Yankees means paying for your own wifi on team flights. Is this merely cheapness on the part of team ownership, or another example of the Yankees being trapped in the past?Let’s start with Stephanie Apstein’s bombshell (well, bombshell-ish) report for Sports Illustrated that revealed that when the Yankees take team flights on Delta, players have to pay out of their own pockets if they want to check their emails. Apstein’s research uncovered that only one other MLB team fails to provide free wifi for its players: the Cincinnati Reds. This means that in this one instance, the Yankees are actually cheaper than the Miami Marlins. Continue reading...

I’m now living full-time in my own personal sunk-cost fallacy. It’s a white-knuckle ride I really don’t need to be onLike all bad ideas, this enterprise started with me thinking: “I bet I could make this myself.” It was kimchi. Everyone really likes it: one kid likes it in a pancake, another likes it in a butter curry, a third likes it with falafel, which he calls “fusion” just to troll me. I like it when I have a hangover; Mr Z likes it on everything; my friend likes it but has rheumatoid arthritis and doesn’t live anywhere near a Korean supermarket. The logic seemed to me almost inexorable: if everyone likes this thing, I bet I could make it myself.So, newsflash everyone: your average kimchi is not vegetarian. It has a load of fish sauce in it, which yes, you can substitute with vegan fish sauce, except there is also fermented shrimp, and it really can’t be overstated how not-vegetarian that is. There is a point in the fermentation lifecycle of a shrimp that it goes beyond even crustacea – in stench and intensity, it’s basically reindeer. It’s impossible to know what to do with this information: do I assume that the shop-bought stuff is veggie, which is fair, as I cannot read the ingredients (too small, also in Korean)? Do I cut the vegetarians out of my homemade experiment, or just pretend to forget there is shrimp in it, which will take some doing, given that my hands, my face and all my clothes still smell very strongly of the controlled rotting of something that was once alive?Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Directive sidesteps Republican-controlled state legislature, which wasn’t able to pass similar legislation before recessMissouri’s Republican attorney general on Monday said he will limit access to gender-affirming care for minors, sidestepping the GOP-led state senate as it struggles to pass a law banning the practice for children completely.As hundreds of activists rallied at the state capitol to pressure lawmakers to act on the bill, Andrew Bailey announced plans to file an emergency rule. Continue reading...

President rejects legislation to overturn a labor department rule Republicans have denounced as ‘woke capitalism’Joe Biden issued the first veto of his presidency on Monday, rejecting legislation to overturn a labor department rule related to an investment strategy for Americans’ retirement plans that Republicans have derided as “woke capitalism”.“The legislation passed by the Congress would put at risk the retirement savings of individuals across the country. They couldn’t take into consideration investments that would be impacted by climate, impacted by overpaying executives,” Biden said in an Oval Office video released by the White House. “And that’s why I decided to veto it.” Continue reading...

The four were also convicted of conspiracy stemming from an insurrection at the Capitol in failed effort to keep Trump in officeFour people associated with the far-right Oath Keepers militia were convicted on Monday of conspiracy and obstruction charges stemming from the insurrection at the US Capitol in 2021 by extremist supporters of Donald Trump in a failed attempt to keep him in office, in the latest trial involving members of the antigovernment group.A Washington DC jury found Sandra Parker, of Morrow, Ohio, Laura Steele, of Thomasville, North Carolina, William Isaacs, of Kissimmee, Florida, and Connie Meggs, of Dunnellon, Florida, guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and other felony charges. Continue reading...

Manhattan judge allows central accusations that banks benefitted from ties to sex trafficker to proceedA US judge has ruled that a pair of lawsuits accusing two major banks of knowingly benefitting from ties to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein can proceed, though in a narrower form than had been initially filed.The four-page ruling by Manhattan district judge Jed Rakoff granted motions by JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank to dismiss some counts against them, but permitted the central claims brought by Epstein accusers and the US Virgin Islands to proceed. Continue reading...

Chairs of three committees demand testimony from district attorney, who is overseeing Stormy Daniels hush money case

Lowland communities of Alpaugh and Allensworth evacuated amid warnings that floods could isolate or trap residentsAs California communities continued to grapple with the aftermath of storms last week that displaced thousands and destroyed homes and infrastructure, thousands more were ordered to evacuate on Sunday in the agricultural Central Valley.The lowland communities of Alpaugh and Allensworth were evacuated after officials warned that floods could isolate or trap residents behind impassable roadways. The towns saw recent flooding due to a levee breach, which has been temporarily patched. Residents of Allensworth, the state’s first town to be founded by Black Americans, have been working to revive the local economy after decades of racist neglect had left the area without access to clean water. Continue reading...

Pandemic relief initiatives helped lift many families out of poverty and now those programs have all but disappearedLike many working mothers, the first months of the pandemic were a nightmare for Andria Kemp-Sellers. The state of California declared her husband’s job at a sugar factory essential, so he continued to go in for 12-hour shifts. She stayed at home in Vallejo, juggling raising their three children and teaching 25 four- and five-year-olds online in Oakland.“The kids were eating me out of house and home because they were bored,” Kemp-Sellers said, laughing. “Eating became an event!” Continue reading...

The US bank may need to raise more funds despite a $30bn rescue last weekShares in troubled First Republic Bank crashed more than 46% on Monday, after reports the San Francisco-based bank may need to raise more funds despite a $30bn (£24bn) rescue last week.As the growing banking crisis spread into a new week, the credit rating of the regional bank was downgraded deeper into junk status by S&P Global. The agency said that the bank, which caters to wealthy clients, probably faced “high liquidity stress with substantial outflows”. Continue reading...

Investigators arrest James Toliver Craig following evidence he arranged for a canister of potassium cyanide to be sent to his officeIn what authorities have called a “heinous, complex and calculated murder”, a dentist from the Denver area is facing accusations that he poisoned his wife and killed her so that he could make more room in his life for his mistress.James Toliver Craig, 45, of Aurora, Colorado, came under scrutiny after he drove his 43-year-old wife Angela Craig to a hospital on Wednesday night as she complained of severe headaches and dizziness, according to police. Her condition quickly worsened, and medical staff placed her on a machine meant to help her breathe before declaring her dead. Continue reading...

St Patrick's Day revellers were surprised by mysterious streaks of light in the sky on Friday night, with footage posted to social media showing the eerie sight in the Sacramento area. Astronomer Jonathan McDowell told the Associated Press he was 99.9% confident the streaks of light were from burning space debris Continue reading...

Tackling the climate emergency needs public funding, but without socialising the risk and allowing banks to privatise the profitThe world is only a few tenths of a degree away from the globally accepted goal of limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. On current trends, we will shoot past the target within a decade. That’s the warning from the world’s leading scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In their last report while it is still feasible to stay within 1.5C, they warn that what governments do in the next few years to limit greenhouse gas emissions will determine whether temperatures keep rising dangerously or fall back to safe levels.Billions of poor people who bear the least responsibility for the climate emergency are already being hit hard. Extreme weather events such as the flash floods in Turkey or Cyclone Freddy over southern Africa, which took hundreds of lives, are becoming more common occurrences. It is unequivocal, say the scientists, that human activity has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. It is also human activity that can bring temperatures down. Cutting carbon pollution and fossil fuel use by nearly two-thirds by 2035 would give humanity a decent shot at the target. The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, spelled out what this means: an end to new fossil fuel exploration and rich countries exiting coal, oil and gas by 2040. The UK, which is opening coalmines and approving North Sea oil and gas licences, should take note. Continue reading...

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...