Sherri Papini out on bond but must undergo psychiatric treatment and surrender passport, judge rulesSherri Papini, the northern California woman arrested last week for allegedly faking her own 2016 kidnapping and lying to federal agents, was released from jail on Tuesday after her family posted a $120,000 bond.Papini, 39, was seen leaving the Sacramento county jail on Tuesday afternoon, after a judge approved her release on conditions including that she undergo psychiatric treatment and surrender her passport. Continue reading...
Homemade firearms continue to proliferate despite California lawmakers’ efforts to ban themA California man who shot and killed his three daughters, a chaperone who was supervising a visit with the girls and then himself last month was armed with a ghost gun, law enforcement officials revealed.David Mora Rojas was visiting his daughters Samarah Mora Gutierrez, nine, Samantha Mora Gutierrez, 10, and Samia Mora Gutierrez, 13, at a Sacramento church on 28 February when he opened fire. Nathaniel Kong, 59, an employee of the church who was supervising Mora Rojas’s time with the children, was also killed. Continue reading...
Scotty David admits he rushed screening questionnaire and says he gave answer to sexual abuse question that was not accurateThe juror in the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell who did not disclose childhood sexual abuse during jury selection claimed on Tuesday to have been distracted by background noise, and a recent breakup, when he rushed through a screening questionnaire.Scotty David, who was juror 50, made the claims in Manhattan federal court, during a proceeding in which he was questioned about the omission by the judge in the case, Alison Nathan. David was granted immunity to testify, having previously said he would invoke his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. Continue reading...
Fire department confirms several small fires had been contained and no injuries had been reportedSeveral brush fires were set ablaze in New York’s world-famous Central Park on Tuesday afternoon and the authorities are examining whether arson was the cause.Clouds of smoke were wafting over the park’s north woods area as the New York fire department worked to contain the flames. Continue reading...
Surgeon general says state will be first in US not to recommend Covid vaccination for healthy children, prompting condemnationHealth experts have widely denounced Florida’s decision to recommend against Covid-19 vaccinations for children, describing it as “irresponsible”, “reckless” and “dangerous”.In a pronouncement which stunned experts on Monday, Florida’s controversial surgeon general Dr Joseph Ladapo said the state would be the first to “recommend against” Covid-19 vaccination for “healthy children”.This story was amended to correct a misspelling of the name of Florida’s surgeon general, Dr Joseph Ladapo. Continue reading...
Governor DeSantis is expected to sign the proposal restricting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identityThe Republican-dominated Florida legislature passed a bill on Tuesday which would forbid instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, rejecting a wave of criticism from Democrats that it marginalizes LGBTQ+ people.The proposal, which opponents have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, now moves to the desk of the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign it into law. Continue reading...
Guy Reffitt was found guilty of five felonies in the first case related to the January 6 riot go before a juryA Texas man who joined the assault on the US Capitol by Trump supporters was found guilty for his role in the attack on Tuesday, a milestone victory for federal prosecutors in the first such case to go before a jury.The defendant, Guy Reffitt, was found guilty on all five of the felony charges he faced, including bringing a gun on to the Capitol grounds and obstructing an official proceeding. Continue reading...
by Martin Pengelly in New York and Lauren Gambino in on (#5WWPJ)
Enrique Tarrio was not physically in Washington on 6 January but is charged with directing, mobilising and leading crowdEnrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys far-right nationalist group, has been arrested and charged with conspiracy over the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.Tarrio, 38, faces counts of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and obstruction of an official proceeding, and two counts each of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and destruction of government property. Continue reading...
Joe Biden announced a ban on US imports of Russian oil on Tuesday, the latest effort to cut off foreign revenue as punishment for the invasion of Ukraine.
Ron Johnson’s statement about scrapping Affordable Care Act if GOP wins control of Congress seen as open goal for DemocratsThe Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson said Republicans should try again to repeal the Affordable Care Act if they take back power – then retreated, under fire from the Biden administration.Speaking to Breitbart News, a far-right site, on Monday, Johnson said Republicans could “actually make good on what we established as our priorities” if they won control of Congress in midterms this year and the presidency in 2024. Continue reading...
Shows like Netflix’s Inventing Anna are hits because they reflect the unreality of a world that has normalised fakeness“You’re not special,” Anna Delvey sneers at the reporter covering her story in the Netflix drama series Inventing Anna. The implication is that Delvey, a con artist and convicted felon, is special – and millions of people seem to agree. Inventing Anna has some of the highest ratings in Netflix’s history, with over 400m hours’ worth of views in February; and the real-life Delvey – who goes by her faux-heiress, conwoman name rather than her actual surname, Sorokin – has seen her number of followers on Instagram alone soar from 150,000 to over 800,000 since the series premiered.The streamer’s other top February hit was The Tinder Swindler, which attracted more than 45m views in its first week of release, and hit Netflix’s Top 10 list in 92 countries. Why two shows about con artists – one a fake German heiress and the other the fake scion of an Israeli diamond business – have so captured the world’s attention has spawned a slew of think pieces asking: why do we love – or love to hate – scammers so much? And why now, especially?Nancy Jo Sales is a writer at Vanity Fair and the author of American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers and The Bling Ring Continue reading...
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine called for a historic response. What we got was the same old, same old: from nasty to uselessOne of the things people often say when they see a colourised photo from the past is how vividly it brings history to life. The type of historical images we are more accustomed – and perhaps more inured – to seeing in monochrome are made breathtakingly new in colour, and this or that photo from the second world war is given such immediacy that it feels like something more relatable from our present.Yet for the first time yesterday, I saw the technique work in the other direction. When an image of the vast and desperate crowds at Kharkiv train station was flying around, an ITN cameraman posted the same picture but in black and white, and it instantly felt 10 times more arresting. Happening right now was a tableau straight from Europe’s dark past – thousands of tightly packed people massed on a station platform and trying to flee, vastly outnumbering the available train space. Perhaps we know best how to read this picture when we literally see it in black and white.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
An earlier version of the bill, which was blocked in the Senate, was passed by the House in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murderThe US Senate has unanimously passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime. Such efforts had failed for more than a century.Bobby Rush, the Illinois Democrat who introduced the measure in the House, said: “Despite more than 200 attempts to outlaw this heinous form of racial terror at the federal level, it has never before been done. Today, we corrected that historic injustice. Next stop: [Joe Biden’s] desk.” Continue reading...
Russia threatens Europe’s gas supplies, and says rejecting its oil would be ‘catastrophic’ for world. Plus, tipping point for Amazon rainforest loomsGood morning.Moscow has stoked fears of an energy war by threatening to close a major gas pipeline to Germany after the US pushed its European allies to consider banning Russian oil imports over its invasion of Ukraine.What has Joe Biden said about Russian oil imports? The president held a video conference call with the leaders of France, Germany and Britain yesterday as he pushed for their support to ban Russian oil imports. The US was, however, willing to move ahead without its European allies, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.What else is happening? Here’s what we know on day 13 of the Russian invasion.About 66,000 Ukrainians have returned home to help from around the world. Here’s one man’s story about his journey from Portland to Ukraine’s frontlines.What was his involvement in 9/11? According to a Guantánamo detainee profile maintained by the Defense Department, Al-Qahtani was trained by al-Qaida and sought unsuccessfully to enter the US on 4 August 2001 to take part in the 9/11 attacks.Was he tortured? The man was subjected to brutal interrogations that the Pentagon legal official in charge of war crimes commissions said amounted to torture, including beatings, exposure to extreme temperatures and noise, sleep deprivation and extended solitary confinement. Continue reading...
MLB’s commissioner has attracted plenty of criticism after the recent lockout. But how well are his contemporaries doing their jobs?League: NBA Continue reading...
Whichever party wants to rule the state has to understand that the Latino voting bloc is not homogenousTwo key congressional races along the Texas-Mexico border underscore what Latino political analysts have been screaming for years: as a voting bloc, Hispanics are not a politically homogeneous group. So Democrats must have a more nuanced strategy to win the bloc if they want to recapture political power in the state, and extend that power to the US Congress.Both congressional districts, which were up for grabs in last week’s Texas primary, begin at the Rio Grande and snake north-east to San Antonio, among the largest cities in state. One of them, the 28th congressional district, which emanates from Laredo, captured the hopes of the progressive wing of the Democratic party. The other, the 15th district, which begins in McAllen, further south, has Republicans excited about the prospects of turning that district Republican for the first time in its history, with the help of newly redrawn district lines. Continue reading...
Since 2011, all my book editors have been white. Why wouldn’t I want another perspective on the characters I invent?Until a few years ago, only publishing industry insiders would have understood the role of the sensitivity reader. Then came American Dirt. The Jeanine Cummins novel sold to a US publisher for a seven-figure advance, was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club, and was touted as “the new Grapes of Wrath”. On release in 2020, early readers noted that the white author’s depiction of Mexican people was, at best, flawed, inaccurate, and riddled with stereotypes and, at worst, simply racist.A sensitivity reader is an additional editor who works alongside the publishing house staffer who acquired the rights to your book. This individual will conduct a very specific read of the manuscript, and offer notes on characters from marginalised groups, or elements which may cause offence. The argument goes that if American Dirt had been sufficiently scrutinised by a reader of Mexican heritage, some of the furore could have been avoided. Continue reading...
Participants in the privately run Isap program, billed as an alternative to detention, describe painful ankle monitors and contradictory rulesMacarena had just put on a pair of skinny jeans when her phone rang.On the other end of the line was an employee from BI Inc, the private contractor tracking Macarena’s whereabouts on behalf of US Immigration authorities. The employee had received an alert that the ankle monitor Macarena was wearing had been tampered with, Macarena recalled them saying. They asked if she was trying to take it off. Continue reading...
Sergey Korenev is one of about 66,000 Ukrainians returning home ‘to help my friends, they are my brothers in arms’Sergey Korenev was running out of time.He watched his daughter Anna, 11, practice skateboarding in a park on a rainy Thursday night outside Portland, Oregon. His midnight flight will board in a few hours that will begin a long journey to the war in Ukraine. Sergey still has to pack, but he doesn’t hurry her. Continue reading...
Locklan Samples of Georgia has a rare condition that means his hair stands out from the scalp and cannot be combed flatLast summer, Katelyn Samples posted a picture of her youngest son, Locklan Samples, to Instagram. Then a stranger sent her a message. It asked if her then 10-month-old son had been diagnosed with uncombable hair syndrome.The 33-year-old mother from Roswell, Georgia, was worried. Continue reading...
Two suspects held as police say gunfire on grounds of East high school in Des Moines appeared to come from passing vehicleOne person was killed and two others were critically wounded in a shooting outside an Iowa school, authorities said Monday.Des Moines police said in a news release that gunfire that struck the victims on the grounds of East High School, near Des Moines’ downtown, appeared to come from a passing vehicle. Potential suspects have been detained but no charges were immediately filed.
Mohammad Ahmad al-Qahtani was accused of attempting to enter the US to hijack planes in the September 11 attackA man accused of attempting to join hijackers in carrying out the September 11 attacks has been repatriated to his home country of Saudi Arabia for mental health treatment after two decades detained at Guantánamo Bay, the US Department of Defense said on Monday.Mohammad Ahmad al-Qahtani was flown back to Saudi Arabia, to a treatment facility, from the US base in Cuba after a review board including military and intelligence officials concluded he no longer represented a significant threat to US national security, and could be safely released after 20 years in custody. Continue reading...
BI claims it provides immigrant tracking and ‘high quality’ case management. A Guardian investigation paints a very different pictureThe computers at the BI Inc call center in Anderson, Indiana, are powered around the clock. Behind the monitors, dozens of customer support employees scan their screens for an alert to pop up – the signal they may be about to lose track of one of the thousands of people they’re tasked with watching. The warning could mean the ankle monitor they’re keeping tabs on is running low on battery. Maybe someone they’re tracking missed a scheduled check-in or moved outside the perimeter they’re required to stay in.The activities at the call center are part of the US government’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (Isap), a surveillance system launched in 2004 and pitched as a way to keep immigrants out of detention centers while they await a court hearing on their legal status.Monitoring as many as 300 people at once, BI case managers often don’t have enough time to offer immigrants tailored support and some are even discouraged by managers from doing so.BI’s ankle monitors can overheat, have shocked people, and at times are put on too tightly by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).BI’s app frequently malfunctions, causing immigrants to miss required check-ins.There are few protocols governing case managers’ decisions, even though they have enormous repercussions in immigrants’ daily lives. Continue reading...
Party urged justices to overturn maps imposed in North Carolina and Pennsylvania that made elections more competitiveThe US supreme court has rejected requests from Republicans in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to overturn electoral maps imposed by the state supreme court in both places that make elections more competitive.The justices ruled 6-3 on Monday not to block the new North Carolina maps from going into effect, with justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas saying they would have paused the state supreme court’s ruling. Continue reading...
White House refuses to confirm that top advisers considering spring Saudi Arabia visit to propose increase in oil exportsJoe Biden attracted criticism from both progressives and Republicans after a report indicated the White House was planning a visit to Saudi Arabia to discuss global oil supply.Axios reported on Sunday that Biden’s senior advisers were considering a spring trip to Saudi Arabia in an effort to improve relations and to propose a potential increase in oil exports. Continue reading...
Department of Justice lawyers make closing arguments against Guy Reffitt, first of 750 people charged with joining riot to face trialAn armed Texas militia member led a “vigilante mob” that overwhelmed police officers and became the first group of rioters to breach the US Capitol last year, a federal prosecutor said Monday at the close of the first criminal trial over the attack.A 12-member jury is scheduled to begin deliberating on Tuesday for Guy Reffitt’s trial on charges that he stormed the Capitol with a holstered handgun strapped to his waist and interfered with police officers guarding the Senate doors. Continue reading...
Barr’s book reveals he told Trump he was ‘like a bull in a bull ring’ – in return, Trump calls his former attorney general a ‘horse’Donald Trump’s second attorney general, William Barr, told the former US president he was “like a bull in a bull ring” and “someone’s going to come and put a sword through your head”.In return, Trump called Barr a “horse” who had been “broken” by the radical left. Continue reading...
Larry Scirotto says he promoted ‘minority candidates because they were exceptional – not because they were minority’Fort Lauderdale’s now-former police chief has hit back at officials in the Florida city who fired him after just six months on the job, accusing him of focusing too heavily on a diversity policy in hiring and promotion.Larry Scirotto, 48, the son of a white mother and Black father and the department’s first openly gay chief, was fired last Thursday after a city report related examples such as how he had once pointed to a display of photos of the department’s command staff in a conference room and said: “That wall is too white” and “I’m gonna change that.” Continue reading...
by Associated Press in Des Moines, Iowa on (#5WV9W)
Four of the seven killed in the storms – two children, their father and grandmother – died when tornado hit home near WintersetFour of the seven people killed in devastating storms that tore through central Iowa on Saturday were members of the same family who sought shelter inside a home that was razed by a powerful tornado, authorities said.Two children, their father and grandmother died when the tornado hit the grandmother’s home near Winterset on Saturday afternoon, the Madison county sheriff, Jason Barnes, told television station KCCI. Continue reading...
Three people were left critically injured after violence at Querétaro v Atlas. But many observers said the scenes could have been preventedThe scenes that shocked Mexico and horrified the world of soccer on Saturday were caught on shaky cell phone videos: men wearing the red and black jerseys of the Liga MX champions, Atlas, lay prone while others in the blue and black of Gallos del Querétaro beat and stripped them. Hundreds of raging fans descended on the pitch in Querétaro’s Corregidora Stadium, chasing their rivals, who sought refuge in the Atlas players’ locker room. Many Atlas fans ripped off their shirts to avoid being attacked.The riot that broke out during the match between the two teams from central Mexico left 26 injured, three in a critical condition, the governor of the state of Querétaro, Mauricio Kuri, told reporters at a press conference on Sunday. Kuri also denied reports that there had been fatalities. Continue reading...
You could hardly imagine a frostier welcome for these desperate people. The comparison with Europe tells you everythingOne and a half million desperate Ukrainian refugees. Fifty British visas. It beggars belief.In time of war we should keep emotional responses in proportion, but sometimes the hypocrisy is intolerable. Boris Johnson is frantically – and blatantly – traipsing his Churchill act through the capitals of Europe. He hurls abuse at Vladimir Putin and promises Ukraine guns and missiles, aid and sanctions, persecution of oligarchs, anything short of soldiers. But when asked to do the one concrete thing that might directly relieve that country’s agony, he reverts to type. For god’s sake keep these Ukrainians away from our shores. Remember the ark of the Brexit covenant. Continue reading...
A screening of the superhero blockbuster The Batman was interrupted when an audience member released a real batA live bat was released during a showing of The Batman in Austin, Texas, the prank forcing theater management to pause the film and attempt to remove the animal.Staff at the Moviehouse & Eatery acted swiftly at the Friday screening, once they realized an audience member for the superhero blockbuster, which stars the British actor Robert Pattinson, had released the bat, reported KXAN, a local NBC affiliate. Continue reading...
Letitia James launches attack after former governor, who resigned amid sexual harassment allegations, decries cancel cultureAndrew Cuomo, who resigned as governor of New York last year over sexual harassment allegations, is a “sick, pathetic man”, the state attorney general said on Sunday in a stinging rebuke.Cuomo had spoken at a Brooklyn church, complaining about cancel culture and the accusations against him and also appearing to hint at a political comeback. Continue reading...
Donald Trump’s last chief of staff reported to have registered using North Carolina mobile home at which he seems never to have livedMark Meadows played a key role in supporting and advancing Donald Trump’s lie about widespread electoral fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden, but the former White House chief of staff may have committed such fraud himself.According to the New Yorker, Meadows registered to vote at a property in North Carolina at which he appears never to have lived. Continue reading...
Trump tells Republican donors Putin would not have invaded Ukraine had he been president and calls Nato a ‘paper tiger’In a speech to Republican donors in New Orleans, Donald Trump said the US should put the Chinese flag on F-22 jets and “bomb the shit out of Russia” in retribution for its invasion of Ukraine.The Washington Post reported the remarks, which were made on Saturday night. Continue reading...
White gatekeepers repeatedly approach Black people with a disingenuous ‘can I help you?’ It never stopsWhen an anonymous Black person enters the white space, often the people there immediately try to make sense of him or her – to determine “who that is”, or to figure out the nature of the person’s business and whether they need to be concerned. When the Black person is unknown, stereotypes can rule perceptions, creating a situation that can estrange the Black person. In these circumstances, almost any Black person can experience distance, especially a young Black male – not as a measure of his merit as a person but because of his Black skin and its indication of “outsider” status in the white space. Thus, such a Black person is burdened with a deficit of credibility, especially in comparison with their white counterparts.Strikingly, a Black person’s deficit may be minimized or tentatively overcome by a performance, a negotiation, or what some Blacks refer to derisively as a “dance”, through which individual Blacks may be inclined to show white people and others that ghetto stereotypes do not apply to them personally; in effect, they perform for credibility or for acceptance. This performance can be as deliberate as dressing well and speaking in an educated way or as simple as producing an ID or a driver’s license in situations in which this would never be demanded of whites. Continue reading...
Scott David faces questioning under oath on Tuesday about his answers to a jury selection question about sexual abuseWhen Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted last December of procuring minor teenagers for the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse, their victims expressed joy and relief that long-delayed justice had finally been served.Less than one week later, however, a juror’s comments revealed that he apparently did not disclose childhood sexual abuse during jury selection – sparking a chain of events that could now potentially undermine the trial’s outcome. Continue reading...
As cases and hospitalizations decline, public health experts worry it might lull people into thinking the pandemic is overOmicron is receding in the US and states and cities are lifting remaining restrictions. Public health experts, however, are urging leaders to use the lull to prepare for future outbreaks.The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently announced new guidelines for judging community risk, shifting focus from cases to hospitalizations. Continue reading...
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