US news | The Guardian

Evan Corcoran cannot invoke attorney-client privilege, judge rules, because advice could have been in furtherance of a crimeDonald Trump’s main lawyer involved in turning over classified-marked documents at the Mar-a-Lago resort to the justice department last year must provide additional testimony in the criminal investigation, a federal judge ruled on Friday, overriding his objections of attorney-client privilege.The ruling marks a major moment in the investigation into Trump’s unauthorized retention of national security materials and obstruction of justice that could open up new avenues of information to the special counsel overseeing the matter.

Ex-president also makes return to Facebook with video clip focused on 2024 campaignYouTube said on Friday it was lifting restrictions on Donald Trump’s official account which were imposed after the violent January 6 attack on Congress.Leslie Miller, vice-president of public policy, told Axios Trump’s “ability to upload new content is restored”. Continue reading...

Gavin Newsom wants to overhaul California’s oldest prison into a facility focused on training programs and educationThe California governor, Gavin Newsom, has announced a plan to transform the state’s oldest prison into a center for rehabilitation, education and training, modeled after Norwegian incarceration systems, which are much less restrictive than US facilities.Newsom told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday that his goal was “ending San Quentin [prison] as we know it” and working to “completely reimagine what prison means”. San Quentin, located on a peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area and established in 1852, houses nearly 4,000 people, including hundreds on its infamous death row, the largest in the US, which is on track to be dismantled. Continue reading...

President calls on Congress to expand FDIC’s authority to claw back compensation – including gains from stock sales

Intense storms highlight fragility of the state’s infrastructure, with 35 of 58 counties now under an emergency declarationAbout two dozen people in southern California were forced to flee from their oceanside apartment buildings, as the hill beneath them started to crumble in torrential rains.With more rainstorms coming, authorities in San Clemente said on Thursday there was no timetable for the residents to be allowed back into their homes. Continue reading...

Report commissioned by Trump campaign debunked former president’s claims that ballots came from dead votersThe Donald Trump election campaign’s efforts to show that thousands of ballots were cast in the name of dead people in the pivotal state of Georgia during the 2020 election resulted in a research report that in fact contradicted Trump’s claims that widespread election fraud cost him the presidency, according to a report on Friday.Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia in 2020 was key and the Trump team’s own information went against Trump’s subsequent denial of the legitimate win by his opponent, according to the Washington Post. Continue reading...

Irish leader meets US president at White House for traditional St Patrick’s Day event a day after making gaffeIreland’s taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has apologised for making an apparent joke about Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, during an event in Washington on the eve of St Patrick’s Day celebrations.Varadkar’s comment on Thursday risked overshadowing his meeting with Joe Biden at the White House on Friday for the traditional handing over of a bowl of shamrock to the US president, the most important day in the Irish-American political calendar. Continue reading...

EPA scientists assessed a dioxin cancer risks threshold in 2010, but a federal cleanup is only triggered at far higher levelsNewly released data shows soil in the Ohio town of East Palestine – scene of a recent catastrophic train crash and chemical spill – contains dioxin levels hundreds of times greater than the exposure threshold above which Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists in 2010 found poses cancer risks.The EPA at the time proposed lowering the cleanup threshold to reflect the science around the highly toxic chemical, but the Obama administration killed the rules, and the higher federal action threshold remains in place. Continue reading...

Video from state mental hospital of brutal treatment of Irvo Otieno recalls death of George Floyd, lawyer saysVideo from a state mental hospital shows a Black Virginia man who was handcuffed and shackled being pinned to the ground by deputies who are now facing second-degree murder charges in his death, according to relatives of the man and their attorneys who viewed the footage on Thursday.Speaking at a news conference shortly after watching the video with a local prosecutor, the family and attorneys condemned the brutal treatment they said Irvo Otieno, 28, was subjected to, first at a local jail and then at the state hospital where authorities say he died on 6 March during the admission process. Continue reading...

We have a saying that captures the devastation of our country: ‘Saddam has gone, but 1,000 more Saddams have replaced him’Twenty years ago, around this time, the US-led military operation to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein’s regime finally seemed inevitable for Iraqis. With it, the idea of leaving started to sink in.By leaving, I do not mean fleeing the country. That was not even an option. After the 1990s Gulf war, and the international sanctions that followed it, Iraqis were isolated from the rest of the world. For many, there was no exit. Leaving meant departing schools, universities or workplaces, saying goodbye to friends and colleagues, and moving to relatively safer places within the country, away from the areas targeted by strikes and bombings. But my parents decided to stay at home in Baghdad. “If we were meant to die, it would be better to die at home” – that was our logic. Continue reading...

SVB Financial Group files for chapter 11 protection but failed Silicon Valley Bank, now under FDIC control, is not part of itSilicon Valley Bank’s parent company filed for bankruptcy protection on Friday, a week after the tech lender was taken over by federal regulators following a 36-hour surge of depositor withdrawals that triggered the worst bank collapse since the financial crisis.SVB Financial Group filed for chapter 11 protection on Friday in New York bankruptcy court where administrators will set about selling off assets to meet creditors claims. Continue reading...

Family of Tom Benson had argued businessman had been manipulated into cutting them out of succession planGayle Benson inherited control of New Orleans’s NFL and NBA teams when her husband and the multibillion-dollar organizations’ owner, Tom Benson, died five years ago. Ever since then, her ownership of the NFL’s Saints and the NBA’s Pelicans had been under threat from Tom’s daughter and grandchildren from a previous marriage. Until Thursday they had the option of filing a lawsuit challenging the validity of the will that cut them out of his succession plans and installed Gayle as the inheritor of the sports teams.That deadline passed without Tom Benson’s daughter Renee or her children Rita and Ryan LeBlanc apparently having taking any such action, however. The time limit’s lapse would mean Gayle Benson has officially consolidated her ownership of the teams, which she has promised will be sold only after her death on the condition that they remain in New Orleans. Continue reading...

Democratic presidential candidate says: ‘If I can be a bitch at the office at times, I don’t think anybody’s happy about that’Marianne Williamson, a 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, has responded to claims she was verbally and emotionally abusive during her 2020 White House run, calling the accusations a “hit piece” and a “distraction technique”.Williamson, a self-help guru who is the only declared Democratic candidate challenging incumbent Joe Biden for the party’s nomination for the presidency, rejected claims made by former campaign staffers that she had episodes of “foaming, spitting, uncontrollable rage” during the campaign and threw her phone at staff. Continue reading...

Two BNSF trains derailed in separate incidents in Arizona and Washington state on Thursday, with the latter spilling diesel fuel on tribal land along Puget Sound. The derailments came amid heightened attention to rail safety nationwide after a fiery derailment last month in Ohio where a freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed near the Pennsylvania border, igniting a fire and causing hundreds of people to be evacuated

The Gamecocks’ center of attention and soon-to-be No 1 WNBA draft pick opens up about South Carolina’s quest for a perfect season and why Dawn Staley won’t be the NBA’s first female coachAliyah Boston, the frontcourt phenomenon for the University of South Carolina’s women’s basketball team, comes across as a genuinely humble person in conversation. A polished speaker (she is a communications major who plans on going into broadcast journalism once her playing days are over), Boston redirects much of the praise surrounding her own success toward her family. “My mom told us, my sister and I, that we need to pick what we wanted to do,” Boston tells the Guardian. “She talked to us a lot, even when we were younger, about going to college and coming out without any student loans. So, she wanted us to get really good at something … so we picked basketball.”What started as a method for securing university scholarships, however, has since morphed into the start of a potentially great basketball career. Boston’s future in professional basketball is promising – she is the consensus No 1 pick in next month’s WNBA draft – but, as she and her teammates begin their NCAA tournament title defense on Friday against Norfolk State, it’s worth taking the time to appreciate everything Boston has accomplished at the college level over the last four years. In March 2023, Boston is the Everything Everywhere All at Once of women’s college basketball – she has won just about every award there is. Continue reading...

Global shares rise as $30bn lifeline for US bank eases fears of imminent collapse and Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, says US banking system ‘is sound’. Plus, a 5,000-mile stinking blob of seaweed heads to Florida• Don’t already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up hereGood morning.Some calm has returned to financial markets at the end of a turbulent week, but investors remain wary. Asian shares have risen as help for struggling banks, such as the $30bn lifeline for First Republic Bank in the US, has eased banking crisis fears.What is happening with Credit Suisse? US investors in Credit Suisse have hit the beleaguered Swiss bank with legal action, claiming it overstated its prospects before this week’s share crash. The lender suffered a rapid sell-off, with shares plunging on Wednesday by as much as 30% at one point after comments from Credit Suisse’s largest shareholder, Saudi National Bank. Credit Suisse shares shed earlier gains this morning and fell 4%.What is the US government saying about the crisis? Before the latest news Yellen assured Congress on Thursday that the US banking system was “sound”. She told the Senate finance committee: “I can reassure the members of the committee that our banking system is sound, and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them.”Who knew about where the money came from? According to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian and interviews with several people familiar with the payments, the knowledge about the $8m being potentially problematic stretched across a number of top executives at Trump Media. Continue reading...

Student debts and underwater mortgages are private burdens, but corporate losses are matters of urgent public interestSilicon Valley Bank was supposedly the type of institution that would never need a government bailout – right until its backers spent three days on social media demanding one, and then promptly receiving it, after the bank’s spectacular collapse last week.Eight years ago, when the bank’s CEO, Greg Becker, personally pressed Congress to exempt SVB from post-2008 financial reform rules, he cited its “low risk profile” and role supporting “job-creating companies in the innovation economy”. Those companies include crypto outfits and venture capital firms typically opposed to the kind of government intervention they benefited from on Sunday, when regulators moved to guarantee SVB customers immediate access to their largely uninsured deposits. Continue reading...

JP Morgan to depose ex-employee as part of lawsuit claiming he hid key information about sex trafficker client

In framing the Ukraine war as a fight between democracy and autocracy, Biden shows that the US hasn’t learned from IraqTwo decades ago, the United States invaded Iraq, sending 130,000 US troops into a sovereign country to overthrow its government. Joe Biden, then chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, voted to authorize the war, a decision he came to regret.Today another large, world-shaking invasion is under way. Biden, now the US president, recently traveled to Warsaw to rally international support for Ukraine’s fight to repel Russian aggression. After delivering his remarks, Biden declared: “The idea that over 100,000 forces would invade another country – since world war II, nothing like that has happened.”Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School and Catholic University. He is the author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of US Global Supremacy Continue reading...

Complaint claims bank made ‘materially false and misleading statements’ in 2021 annual report

Barely 8% of its inductees are female. The canon-making doesn’t just reek of sexist gatekeeping, but also purposeful ignorance and hostilityI got into this business to write great songs and have fun. I was a quick learner. I read every music magazine I could get my hands on and at 12, after digesting many issues of Creem, I decided to base my personality on Lester Bangs, the rock critic raconteur; his abiding belief in the transformative power of a great rock song matched mine. (I also obsessed over his running arguments with Lou Reed – they confounded me, but I loved it.) Artists and their songs shaped my life, my beliefs, my self-conception as a musician – Patti Smith’s growling Pissing in the River, Heart’s Barracuda, the Runaways’ Dead End Justice, which I still know every word of. But what no magazine or album could teach me or prepare me for was how exceptional you have to be, as a woman and an artist, to keep your head above water in the music business.The magnificent Chuck D rapped: “Elvis is a hero to most, but he doesn’t mean shit to me.” I concur. Big Mama Thornton first sang Hound Dog, written for her (and possibly with her) in 1952, which later put the King on the radio. Sister Rosetta Tharpe covered it, too, hers being the fiercest version. Her song Strange Things Happen Every Day was recorded in 1944. It was these songs, and her evangelical guitar playing, that changed music for ever and created what we now call rock’n’roll. Continue reading...

Exclusive: financing with suspected Russian ties came at a critical time as company was running out of cash after a planned mergerTop executives at Donald Trump’s social media company started to become concerned last spring about $8m that they had accepted from opaque entities in two emergency loans when its auditors sought further details about the payments, according to documents, emails and sources familiar with the matter.The payments had come at a critical time for Trump Media – which runs the Truth Social platform – because it was running out of cash after its planned merger with a blank check company known as DWAC that would have unlocked $1.3bn in capital stalled pending an SEC investigation. Continue reading...

Study finds ‘patient influencers’ offer medical advice without always revealing ties to pharmaceutical companiesA young TikTok user has long wavy hair, glowing makeup and a radiant smile. She’s slim and wants you to know exactly why: she’s using Wegovy, a prescription drug originally developed to treat diabetes that’s become a popular drug for weight loss.In one clip, she picks up the medication from a pharmacy, lip-syncing to Cardi B, then demonstrates in a following clip how she injects it into her leg. A caption flashes across the screen: “I’m not a doctor just FYI”. Moments later she advises her nearly 20,000 followers on how to get started on the drug. “Start on the 0.25 mg,” she says directly into camera. “Work your way up with each dose. Do not skip doses. I do not want any of you feeling sick.” Continue reading...

The central bank has lent about half as much as it provided during the 2008 crisis as banks rush to shore up their financialsCash-short banks have borrowed about $300bn from the Federal Reserve in the past week, the central bank announced on Thursday.Nearly half the money – $143bn – went to holding companies for two major banks that failed over the past week, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, triggering widespread alarm in financial markets. The Fed did not identify the banks that received the other half of the funding or say how many of them did so. Continue reading...

Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan agree to prop up troubled bank after its shares tumbled amid wider turmoilWall Street’s giants moved to end the US’s spiraling banking crisis on Thursday by agreeing to prop up troubled First Republic, a mid-sized bank whose shares have been pummeled amid a wider banking turmoil.Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and others will deposit $30bn in First Republic, which has seen customers yank their money following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and fears that First Republic could be next. Continue reading...

Cause of the incidents remains unknown even as teams head to Washington state to clean spilled diesel on tribal landTwo BNSF trains derailed in separate incidents in Arizona and Washington state on Thursday, with the latter spilling diesel fuel on tribal land along Puget Sound.There were no injuries reported. It was not clear what caused either derailment. Continue reading...

Senate finance committee holds hearing on bank’s collapse and the role relaxing banking regulations had in the crisis

Court officials estimate another 700 to 1,200 defendants could face charges as editor of New York Jewish newspaper arrestedFederal prosecutors in Washington have reportedly told court officials a thousand more people could be charged in relation to the deadly January 6 Capitol attack.Matthew Graves, the US attorney in Washington DC, sent a one-page letter to the chief judge of Washington DC federal court, apprising her of the potential deluge of defendants, Bloomberg News reported. Continue reading...

Nearly back-to-back storms have refilled reservoirs and built up snowpack, easing drought as residents reckon with destructionDrought-busting rainfall from California’s 11th atmospheric river has brought the end of water restrictions for nearly 7 million people, which imposed limits on activities such as outdoor watering as the state grappled with severe shortages. But the state is still picking up the pieces from the most recent brutal storm that pushed parts of the state from desperately dry to excessively wet.On Thursday, thousands remained under evacuation warnings or without power. Flooding also closed several miles of the Pacific Coast Highway, and 43 of the state’s 58 counties have been under states of emergency due to the storms. Dramatic drone footage showed saturated hillsides along the Orange county coast that crumbled this week, leaving homes lurching precariously over newly created cliffs. Continue reading...

Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo are among the banks discussing a lifeline for the San Francisco-based lenderSome of the US’s biggest banks are weighing a rescue bid for First Republic, a mid-sized bank whose shares have been pummeled amid a wider banking turmoil.Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo are among the banks discussing a lifeline for the San Francisco-based lender, according to the Wall Street Journal. Continue reading...

In the US, Biden has assured voters that no taxpayer money would go to at-risk banks, but trust in the system relies on such supportBanks are a special type of organisation. They take deposits and lend these funds to borrowers over long periods. It is pretty remarkable when you think about it. Banks make loans over many years, but you and I can withdraw the savings that banks use to fund the loans instantly.For banks to operate this franchise model profitably, they essentially rely on two ingredients. First, they need to earn a profit by charging higher interest on long-term loans than they pay on short-term deposits. This model has come under severe strain in recent years. Owing to high inflation now and lower expected inflation in the next few years, many banks currently pay more for deposits and other funds than they earn on long-term loans and other assets. This makes the traditional banking model loss-making and raises questions about what the assets of some banks are worth if they had to be sold now.Jens Hagendorff is professor of finance at King’s College London Continue reading...

Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans was the only best picture nominee this year shot on celluloid. It’s time to stop misnaming moviesFor more than 100 years, films have been made of film. Now, instead of a magazine being loaded on to the camera, a card is inserted that electronically records whatever the camera sees.Today, most “films” are made electronically. No film is used in the making of them – not the shooting, editing or projection. So they can’t – or shouldn’t – be called films. Continue reading...

#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt videos have been viewed more than 40bn times, as users share their experiences of the ‘infinite loop’“An infinite loop of shoppertainment.” That might sound like the premise for a new Black Mirror episode. But it’s actually marketing blurb from TikTok. As part of its sales pitch to brands, the Chinese-owned platform tells its clients it is “at the forefront” of persuading online consumers to part with their cash. It boasts of a unique business model that endlessly entices people to not only discover and buy new stuff but also become repeat customers.Of course, anyone who has spent any time on TikTok, which claims to have more than a billion active monthly users, will already know this. Its famously sophisticated algorithm creates hyper-relevant, personalised feeds that are designed to keep us consuming content. “The algorithm tries to get people addicted rather than giving them what they really want,” Guillaume Chaslot, the founder of Paris-based AlgoTransparency, a group that has studied YouTube’s recommendation system, told the New York Times.Iona Bain is a financial journalist, founder of the Young(ish) Money blog and author of Spare Change & Own It Continue reading...

Walter James Griffin was killed when train he was training on passed a stationary freight car with a protruding metal beamAn Alabama woman whose husband was decapitated when the Norfolk Southern train he was training on passed a stationary freight car with a protruding metal beam is suing for wrongful death. The lawsuit comes at a difficult time for the rail giant, which must contend with litigation over a recent toxic derailment in Ohio.Walter James Griffin III, 43, was training to become a conductor when he was killed in Bessemer, Alabama, on 13 December, al.com reported. Continue reading...

Drone footage shot above Monterey County in central California on Wednesday shows rural communities inundated by flood waters after a levee on the Pajaro River failed. The levee failed on 10 March, prompting evacuations from the area, which is about 90 miles (140km) south of San Francisco. The flooding is the latest disaster triggered by a string of winter storms to strike California

Pentagon released footage on Thursday of Russian jet making close passes of drone and spraying fuel before collisionA US drone entered the Black Sea after a collision with a Russian fighter jet on Tuesday, in what appears to have been the first direct encounter between the world’s leading nuclear powers since the Ukraine war began. Here is everything you need to know: Continue reading...

Pentagon says video has been edited for length but shows events in sequential order

Suit alleges that Broward county sheriff’s office used excessive force as Kevin Desir suffered mental health emergency in 2021The family of a Florida man who died after being violently restrained by jailers is filing a civil rights suit against the officers who were involved in the incident and the jail’s healthcare provider.According to a draft of the lawsuit shared exclusively with the Guardian, the family of 43-year-old Kevin Desir alleges that Broward county sheriff officials used excessive force against Desir while he was suffering from a severe mental health episode, violating his 14th amendment rights. Continue reading...

Torrential rainfall hit parts of California on Wednesday, forcing evacuations and causing power cuts and road closures. The west coast is experiencing an usually wet season after two decades of drought. Drone footage taken in the beachfront community of San Clemente shows a house and pool perched on a cliff edge after the rains caused a landslide

Ex-staffers of self-help author seeking Democratic nomination report ‘uncontrollable’ fury at odds with message of loveLess than two weeks into her second campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, the self-help author Marianne Williamson was hit by claims her public message of love and compassion is undermined by behind-the-scenes behavior including “foaming, spitting, uncontrollable rage”.Speaking to Politico, 12 former staffers painted a picture of unpredictable anger, tending toward verbal and emotional abuse, beneath the bestseller’s promotion of spiritual calm. Continue reading...

A dispiriting new survey has found that nearly a quarter of schools teach poetry only once a year or less. What a shame that is