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Sensors and electronics pulled from waters off South Carolina, says military. Plus, how AP African American studies became the most controversial course in the USGood morning.The US military has recovered “significant debris” from a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon shot down this month, the Pentagon has said, after the White House claimed China had been operating a high-altitude balloon program spying on the US and its allies for many years.What did John Kirby say? “It was operating during the previous administration, but they did not detect it,” Kirby said. “We detected it, we tracked it. And we have been carefully studying to learn as much as we can.”What’s happening in Canada? An object roughly the size of a small car was shot down over a rugged section of Canada’s Yukon territory. Canadian crews are searching the vast and bitterly cold landscape for any debris. Residents along the coast of Lake Huron have found themselves at the centre the search for unidentified flying objects.What have the police said? While appealing for information from the public, the police said it was unclear what the motive for the attack may have been and work to identify the suspect was ongoing. Earlier in the evening, police released images of the suspect, describing him as a short male wearing a mask. Continue reading...

Almería was an off-grid paradise, but I like to think I’ve brought part of it back to the city with meI take one last look at the lush valley below me. A tall palm tree sways in the soft warm breeze. A group of young people are working on one of the many vegetable and fruit terraces, their laughter mixing with the sound of water in the riverbed below. I tell myself that one day I will be back. But for now, it is goodbye. I’m leaving the eco-village in southern Spain, this cluster of old, whitewashed houses set in a green valley where I’ve spent the past six years.My partner and I first arrived in Los Molinos – in Almería province, the driest part of Spain – in 2006, after a long spell in north London. Our experience of eco-living was limited to regular recycling and buying biodegradable laundry and bathroom products. In Spain, we had to learn how to live completely off-grid. All our electricity came from the array of solar panels in the garden, which meant we couldn’t have energy-hungry devices such as toasters and electric kettles. We even had to forgo the internet because there was no connection. Continue reading...

‘Outraged’ senator Ron Wyden urges agency to explain tactics from 2020 protests reminiscent of rogue behaviour from decades pastThe FBI’s use of an informant to infiltrate Black Lives Matter in Denver during the wave of protests over the 2020 police killing of George Floyd has prompted concern in Congress that the federal agency is once again abusing its powers to harass and intimidate minority groups.Ron Wyden, the Democratic senator from Oregon, is calling for the FBI to explain how it came to recruit a violent felon as an informant who then went on to gain prominence among Denver racial justice activists. The informant is alleged to have encouraged protesters to engage in increasingly violent demonstrations while trying to entrap them in criminal misdeeds. Continue reading...

The Oscar Mayer crew didn’t relish their time in Las Vegas after the vehicle had to be towed to an auto body shopOne of the US’s most easily recognizable vehicles is back on the road after it fell victim to a crime that has grown more common in recent years: catalytic converter theft. While parked in Las Vegas ahead of a Super Bowl weekend appearance, the Wienermobile, a 27ft-long bright yellow-and-red hotdog on wheels, was disabled after someone took the vehicle’s hardware.The Wienermobile is actually a fleet of six vehicles used as a promotional tool for the celebrated Wisconsin-based hotdog brand Oscar Mayer. The Wienermobiles are driven across the nation by “hotdoggers” who claim the job for a one-year assignment. The morning after the converter was taken, the Wienermobile was towed to a nearby auto repair shop where mechanics installed a temporary converter that would allow the Wienermobile’s crew to drive it. Continue reading...

Online misinformation exploits victims’ traumatic experiences, and factcheckers need support as they work to debunk itA video shared on social media shows a column of thick smoke billowing from a harbour-side building before a cataclysmic explosion. The caption says it is, incredibly, footage of a nuclear power plant in Turkey exploding after the earthquake that ravaged the country.Except Turkey doesn’t have any operational nuclear power plants. The footage actually shows a fertiliser storage facility in the port of Beirut, Lebanon, exploding in 2020.Abbas Panjwani is assistant editor at Full Fact, an independent charity of factcheckers and campaignersDo 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...

I lose time and burn up mental energy in pursuit of a dopamine rush that, as with all addictions, is a diminishing return. If only everyone else would join meThe problem with Wordle isn’t that some people use it to show off to strangers or that it’s especially time-consuming, or even that it’s a bit of a waste of brain, but the minuscule feeling of emptiness once you have done it. All that thrill of the chase collapsed into the meagre satisfaction of arriving at something you’re not even sure is a word, like “caulk”. That is how I got hooked on Quordle – a four-word grid – just to delay the inevitable anticlimax. I cycled through Heardle (guessing a song, way too hard) and Worldle (guessing a country, in which I was mainly hamstrung by not being able to instinctively tell east from west). I had just enough discipline to avoid Octordle, in which you have 13 guesses to reach eight words. Then I discovered Phrazle, in which you have to find a whole phrase. I’ll just have one quick go, I thought. I definitely won’t commit.This enterprise is just daft. The world is absolutely rammed with phrases. I had one easy win – “Beware the Ides of March” on the first try – and then I was hooked. Now I can lose a sizeable proportion of my mental energy for the entire day, getting to “until the cows come home”. It doesn’t even mean anything! The whole experience is one of aching meaninglessness, chasing some combination of words that are either platitudes, demonstrably untrue, or long ways to say a thing that could be shorter. There’s no skill in it at all that I can make out. It’s not unusual for the phrase to contain so many weird combinations of letters that you have gone down a rabbit hole of whether there are any well-known axioms pertaining to the Balearic islands, before you finally land on “my birthday suit”. I can’t even bear to time how long it takes me, this daily three-act theatre of puzzling. “Word games” was not the addiction I expected so incredibly early in middle age. And the post-victory flatness, the diminishing dopamine returns, are still exactly the same – I’m just taking a more scenic route.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The media’s framing of measures like Florida’s African American studies ban is a dangerous falsification of realityA wave of Republican enthusiasm for banning concepts, authors and books is sweeping across the United States. Forty-four states have proposed bans on the teaching of “divisive concepts”, and 18 states have passed them.Florida’s Stop Woke Act bans the teaching of eight categories of concepts, including concepts that suggest that “a person, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex”. Many of the laws also target Nikole Hannah-Jones’s influential 1619 Project. Continue reading...

Suspected shooter found dead off-campus with self-inflicted gunshot woundAt least three people were killed and several more injured in a shooting at Michigan State University, according to campus police. The suspected attacker died from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.University police tweeted on Monday that shots were fired in two locations: near an academic building called Berkey Hall and an athletic facility known as IM East. Continue reading...

Sensors and electronics pulled from waters off South Carolina, says military, after White House says Beijing’s surveillance program dates back yearsThe US military has recovered “significant debris” from a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon shot down this month, the Pentagon has said, after the White House claimed China had been operating a high-altitude balloon program spying on the US and its allies for many years.The US Northern Command said in a statement: “Crews have been able to recover significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified as well as large sections of the structure.” Continue reading...

Nearly 2,000 balloons are launched into the sky daily, to monitor everything from the weather to specific phenomena in spaceMystery still surrounds the latest flying objects shot down by the US over northern Alaska, Canada’s central Yukon territory and Lake Huron in Michigan in the last week.Unlike the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on 4 February, US authorities have been mostly unwilling to speculate on where the last three objects originate from – or even to characterise what they are. Continue reading...

I like to be booked with my emotional support keyboard player – but it’s not unusual to meet band members for the first time when you arrive at the venueLook for me on a Saturday night and chances are you’ll find me in front of the band at a wedding. And it’s not just Saturdays; thanks to Covid postponements people are booking their big day any time their dream venue can fit them in: Sundays, Fridays, even Tuesdays.Yep, you can call me Adam Sandler because I am a wedding singer. Continue reading...

The concept is said to increase relationship happiness, but research provides few words of affirmation for its effectivenessLove languages – the concept coined by Baptist pastor Gary Chapman some 30 years ago – has taken the relationships world by storm. It’s often the “go-to” topic on first dates, and for those in relationships love languages are said to provide deep, meaningful and reliable insights into how relationships function. Putting love languages into action is believed to increase relationship happiness.The concept clearly has appeal. At last count, 20m copies have been sold worldwide of Chapman’s 1992 book The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts. The book has been translated into 49 languages. Continue reading...

US will have its experts try to understand unknown objects, including broader policy implications, says John Kirby

Only Black Republican in Senate set to challenge Donald Trump for nomination, Wall Street Journal saysSouth Carolina senator Tim Scott is reportedly taking steps to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.Reporting the news, the Wall Street Journal cited anonymous sources “familiar with his plans”. Jennifer DeCasper, a senior adviser, said the senator was “excited to share his vision of hope and opportunity and hear the American people’s response”. Continue reading...

The White House has confirmed that the objects shot down over North America did not come from worlds beyond. ‘There is no indication of aliens or terrestrial activity with these recent takedowns. I wanted to make sure that the American people knew that,’ press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. John Kirby added that closer scrutiny of airspace may partially explain the increase in objects detected but that they were not assessed as a threat to people on the ground and showed no signs they had manoeuvring or propulsion capability Continue reading...

Group gathered outside Arizona stadium to protest the team’s name and the insulting gesture and chant performed by its fansThe Kansas City Chiefs may have won the Super Bowl in an epic game, but for some there will be no victory until the football team changes its name and symbol and its fans stop performing an insulting gesture and chant.A small but loud group protested outside the stadium hosting the Super Bowl in Arizona on Sunday, aggrieved that the team from the city that straddles the Kansas-Missouri border continues to refuse to drop its name and arrowhead symbol, which Native American leaders class as a racist mascot and symbol that devalues Native traditions. Continue reading...

The league may want to pretend it has changed but TV coverage in the US reminded us that it remains in love with its own importanceWith Tom Brady finally, probably off the scene and the age of Patrick Mahomes upon us, this year’s Super Bowl promised a new beginning for football in America, a kind of cultural reset after the Kaepernick-Trump years. Rihanna back on stage for the first time in four years! Two Black quarterbacks facing off for the first time in Super Bowl history! Greg Olsen’s emergence as America’s favorite play-by-play guy and the enduring gap-toothed charm of Michael Strahan! At each turn of the half-day behemoth that was Fox’s pre-game coverage, viewers were handed some fresh invitation to believe that we have entered a new era. But as kickoff grew closer and the jingoism thickened, a darker truth became clear: the NFL has not changed. It’s just found a new and bigger cast of characters to buy into its bullshit.No country has America’s gift for blending sport, militarism, celebrity, and consumerism into a single package, and there’s no better demonstration of that gift than the Super Bowl. Fox, a network completely at ease with the death cult of modern America, is maybe the perfect home for an assignment like this, its on-air talents blending football pedigree and thoughtless patriotism in perfect, Super Bowl-ready proportion. Continue reading...

In forcing her audience to confront her physical reality, the pop star took ownership of her body – and she did it in real timeRihanna’s Super Bowl set lasted just shy of 13 minutes. But the image of the pregnant pop star, cradling her belly in a red silk Loewe catsuit as she descended from the heavens on a Perspex box, is surely up there with the greatest pregnancy reveals of the Instagram age.Even before she had switched into a puffer coat with built-in gloves by Alaia, it had become more than a half-time performance. Here was a woman, returning to work for the first time since having a baby, somehow converting this moment into a tightly controlled but highly visible moment, while putting paid to the difficult second pregnancy reveal. In forcing her audience to confront her physical reality, Rihanna went past making a fashion statement. She took ownership of her body, and she did it in real time. Continue reading...

Plane heading for San Francisco took steep dive shortly after takeoff in dramatic incident in mid-DecemberA United flight from Maui to San Francisco plummeted to less than 800ft above the Pacific Ocean shortly after takeoff in December, an apparent near crash and previously unreported safety incident revealed by airline industry publication the Air Current.Flight tracking data analysis revealed that the Boeing 777-200 had reached an altitude of roughly 2,200ft when it began a steep dive, descending at a rate of about 8,600ft a minute. After dipping below 775ft, the flight recovered altitude and traveled to San Francisco without further issue. Continue reading...

Judge ruled certain sections will be made public this week, including one involving witnesses who may have lied under oathPortions of a Georgia grand jury’s report on whether Donald Trump and allies committed crimes when they tried to overturn the 2020 election will be made public this week, but the entirety of the report will remain secret until the Fulton county prosecutor decides whether to bring charges, a judge ruled on Monday.The sections that will be made public are the report’s introduction, conclusion and a section discussing whether some of the witnesses who testified before the special purpose grand jury lied under oath. The section does not identify which witnesses may have lied. Continue reading...

The 24-year-old quarterback made a single, costly error against the Kansas City Chiefs but was otherwise superb in defeat for PhiladelphiaJalen Hurts made one mistake in Super Bowl LVII, as Kansas City and Philadelphia were trading blows early in the second quarter in Glendale, Arizona. Facing third and five from his 49-yard line, the Eagles star fielded a shotgun snap and lunged forward in an obvious quarterback draw play, only to immediately find himself under pressure from the Chiefs’ pass rush. As Hurts staggered to his right to avoid incoming Chiefs linebacker Nick Bolton, the ball slipped out and tumbled backward on to the turf. Without breaking stride, Bolton scooped it up at the 36-yard line and, with a three-man Chiefs convoy, sprinted into the endzone to tie the game at 14-14.It was the kind of play that could have dented Hurts’s confidence, given that the last time he stumbled on a stage this big was when he was leading Alabama in the 2018 college national championship game. This time, however, a back-up wasn’t trotting on to the field to replace Hurts, because his error didn’t permanently halt the Eagles momentum. But it didn’t spare them from a 38-35 defeat either. In the end Kansas City were simply the more resilient team thanks to their Michael Jordan in cleats, Patrick Mahomes. The official record should reflect that, but for a play here or there, it could have easily been Hurts basking in MVP glory after leading his team to victory. Continue reading...

The Kansas City Chiefs are Super Bowl champions for a second time in four years after a hobbled Patrick Mahomes led them to victory over the Philadelphia Eagles from a 24-14 deficit at half-time. Mahomes entered his third Super Bowl in four seasons nursing a sprained right ankle but was one of the chiefs most valuable players in the second half, completing 13 out of 14 passes for 93 yards and two touchdowns.

Military general says he will not rule out any explanation as fourth object this month is downed over North America. Plus, is Florida running out of orange juice?

It’s no fun getting older in our youth-obsessed culture. As for those who would mock their elders, two words of advice: just waitJust before President Biden turned 80 in November, he said something that I could identify with – that he didn’t even want to say his age out loud.That’s how I’ve felt ever since I turned 40 – which was, let’s say, not a recent event.Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture Continue reading...

The Kansas City Chiefs are Super Bowl champions for a second time in four years after a hobbled Patrick Mahomes marshalled a game-winning drive to seal a 38-35 comeback win over the Philadelphia Eagles. 'It hasn't even sunk in yet,' Mahomes said before adding, 'I appreciate it more because of the failures of losing a Super Bowl and losing an AFC Championship game.' Following their defeat, Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts said, 'we came here to win and came up short. There's something that I know: it'll motivate me'

Voting rights groups say there’s no time for complacency as restrictive laws take toll on a battleground stateAfter mobilizing voters for several statewide elections last year, from the primary to the November midterm and then the December runoff, voting rights groups in Georgia say there’s no time to rest. Organizers from New Project Georgia are hitting the streets and going door to door to register voters to continue expanding the state’s electorate, building Georgia’s growing influence on national politics.Keron Blair, the group’s chief field and organizing officer, is coordinating upwards of 50 organizers in an effort to accelerate voter expansion during this time when many voters become disengaged. Continue reading...

Control of state supreme court could flip from conservative to liberal with big consequences for most gerrymandered US stateVoting is under way in an under-the-radar race that could ultimately wind up being the most important election in America this year.At stake is control of the Wisconsin supreme court. Because control of state government in Wisconsin is split between Democrats and Republicans, the seven-member body has increasingly become the forum to get a final decision on some of the most consequential issues in the state – from voting rights to abortion. Continue reading...

The International Olympic Committee wants to find a pathway for Russians to compete in Paris despite the war in UkrainePicture the mise-en-scène in Paris next year, on the opening day of the Olympics. At the final of the 10m air rifle shooting mixed team event, the Russian Sergey Kamenskiy presses his eye to his gun, squeezes the trigger, and – a millisecond later – is triumphantly celebrating gold. Meanwhile 1,500 miles away in Kyiv, rubble from homes and hospitals continues to pile up, along with the bodies of the dead.Far fetched? Hardly. The International Olympic Committee is determined to establish a pathway for Russians to compete in Paris. And it won’t be deterred by widespread condemnation from Ukrainian athletes, or the expectation that 35 countries – including the UK and United States – will call for a ban this week. Instead on Sunday the IOC president, Thomas Bach, doubled down by denying his organisation was on the wrong side of history. Continue reading...

Companies such as Amazon, Disney and Walmart funded Florida governor who has imposed curbs on teaching about race in schoolsPolitical activists in Florida have condemned the “hypocrisy” of large corporations that use Black History Month to denounce racism while donating hundreds of thousands dollars to the state’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis.

Kansas City’s supremely gifted playmaker was close to flawless when it counted against Philadelphia, building his case as the greatest quarterback to ever lace them upNow imagine if he had two good ankles. Patrick Mahomes hopped and hobbled to the sideline at the end of the first half, unable or at least unwilling to put any weight on his right leg after Eagles linebacker TJ Edwards had dragged him down by it. He showed no such struggle two quarters later, as he accelerated away from the league’s best pass rushers and into the open field on the 26-yard run that set his team up to win Super Bowl LVII.This is what the great ones do, putting their troubles to one side and their teams on their backs in the moments that matter. Mahomes aspires to be the greatest. “That’s what he wants to do, that’s how he goes about his business,” said Andy Reid afterward. “The great quarterbacks make everyone around them better, including the head coach. He’s done a heck of a job.” Continue reading...

Military general says he will not rule out any explanation as fourth object is downed over North America this month

How do you switch off at the end of the day if there’s no journey involved? Gardening? Sex? Crisps?If you’re reading this standing in a stationary train’s vestibule, squeezed between a furtive flosser and someone eating a keto breakfast of hard-boiled eggs and sardines, while everyone listens to Jolyon on speakerphone review the new draft pitch deck, take heart: commuting is good for you.It’s the second outing I have spotted for this argument. In 2021, the Harvard Business Review asserted the value of commuting in setting and maintaining boundaries between work and home selves, thus avoiding burnout. Now the concept is back, with US researchers further exploring the role of the commute as a “liminal space” that allows for psychological detachment and recovery from work. There are psychological as well as physical and temporal dimensions to the commute, they argue, and “the experience of rolelessness” during it may create a mental space for “psychological role transition and recovery”.Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Is Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the notorious Wagner group, a Kremlin-sanctioned bogeyman or a real threat to the president?The rise of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch, Putin confidant and head of the notorious Wagner private military company, is a sign of the erosion of the rule of law in Russia. It shows that the state is willing to tolerate extreme, unaccountable violence as long as it serves its interests. This could ultimately become a threat to the regime itself.Prigozhin is a private citizen who was previously a restaurant magnate – known as “Putin’s chef” due to the president’s patronage of his restaurants and catering firms. But at some point in 2014, he co-founded the Wagner Group along with former Russian military personnel, and has since become a major player in Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine.Samantha de Bendern is an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House and a political commentator on LCI television in France Continue reading...

Measures to combat overdose crisis include stiffer penalties but some worry it may signal a turn away from harm reductionJoe Biden’s call for stronger penalties to crack down on fentanyl trafficking during the his State of the Union address last week drew mixed responses from experts.On Tuesday, the president laid out a series of measures to combat the country’s overdose crisis including increased drug detection machines, cargo inspections and harsher penalties surrounding fentanyl trafficking. Continue reading...

The Chiefs beat the Eagles in a classic game after staging a second-half comeback in Glendale, Arizona

Federal workplace authorities fined the popular Pennsylvania candy factory $14,500 and categorized citation as ‘serious’US federal workplace authorities have fined a popular Pennsylvania candy factory more than $14,500 after two of its employees fell into a large tub of chocolate last year.In a scene that seemingly could have come straight out of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, two workers last June landed in the tub at the Mars Wrigley factory in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Neither of the two workers had any injuries when the sticky situation unfolded as they did maintenance work and tumbled into a tank that was partially filled with chocolate. Continue reading...

‘Chinese were caught lying',’ says Senate majority leader as US and Canadian military scramble to recover piecesUS and Canadian military are continuing to search by sea and land amid hostile weather conditions in a scramble to recover portions of three flying objects shot down over North American airspace in the past week.The Democratic majority leader of the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, told ABC’s This Week on Sunday that he had been briefed by the White House and that officials were now convinced that all three of the flying objects brought down by air-to-air missiles this week were balloons. He put the finger of blame firmly on China. Continue reading...

Medical professionals attribute the increasing cases of disease to inadequate prenatal healthcare and understaffed workforceMississippi has registered an alarming rise in the number of infants being treated for congenital syphilis.According to hospital billing data shared with NBC, the amount of babies who have been treated for the sexually transmitted disease has increased by more than 900% over five years. Continue reading...

A US warplane shot down an unidentified object over North American airspace, the Canadian prime minister said on Saturday. It was the second day in a row in which the US military shot down an unidentified airborne object

President says at White House dinner that passage of infrastructure laws is evidence of ‘some bipartisan progress’Joe Biden appealed to Republican and Democratic governors on Saturday to continue working across political divides to improve Americans’ lives and rebuild the economy after the hardships brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.Speaking at a black-tie dinner at the White House, the president told 31 governors that the passage of laws on investing in infrastructure and domestic manufacture of semiconductors was evidence of “some bipartisan progress” among Republicans and Democrats. Vice-President Kamala Harris was also in attendance. Continue reading...

There must be a better euphemism. But ‘sensual’ just makes me think of a bare-chested StingI was fascinated by a recent interview with Amrapali Gan, the newish CEO of OnlyFans. Not by her blandly rehearsed claims that the platform isn’t mainly porn, and is, in fact, enabling diverse and empowered creativity – sports, cookery, fashion! – but by her use of the word “spicy”, which cropped up four times as a synonym for sexually explicit. “A bunch of spicy content … something on the spicier side … some of it might be spicy … spicier content.”That feels oddly coy, when you’re talking about a site hosting, for example, “super-specific niche fetish” and “vanilla hardcore”, as an OnlyFans content creator described it on a forum. (I can’t explore further, because I’m certain if I do, a wailing Internet Pervert klaxon will resonate throughout my neighbourhood. Yes, I’m extremely well adjusted, thanks.)Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

As a child, Ramzan’s fight for an education almost cost her her life. Worldwide, there are 222 million children out of school who urgently need our help

The office expenses I’ve saved on since 2005 have come at the expense of my company’s cultureThe pandemic is “over” – sort of. But one big question it generated is here to stay: should we ever go back to the office? It’s a question I have been asking myself for 18 years.My technology consulting company went fully virtual in 2005. Prior to that we – I ran the business with my father – had an office in a suburban neighborhood of Philadelphia. When my father passed away I started to spend more time in the office and I realized something: the office wasn’t so great. Continue reading...

The region’s popularity has seen a surge, sending real estate prices soaring and pushing locals outLate last year, Lake Tahoe earned a spot on an exclusive travel guide. But the mountain destination, famed for its cobalt blue waters and Olympic-quality ski resorts, wasn’t there for the reason you’d think.Fodor’s “No list” highlighted beloved getaways that needed a break, and Tahoe was up there with the neediest. Citing a pandemic influx of remote workers, second home buyers, traffic gridlock and packed beaches, the guide concluded “Lake Tahoe has a people problem”. Continue reading...