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Team GB’s women won curling gold before a Beijing closing ceremony to a Games embroiled in controversy

Apparent suicide of Jean-Luc Brunel in Paris jail ends case against him unless other suspects are foundVictims of a French modelling agent’s alleged sexual abuse have expressed shock and dismay after he was found dead in his cell, in an apparent echo of the prison suicide of his close associate, the disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein.Paris police are investigating the death of Jean-Luc Brunel, 75, who had been charged with the rape of minors and was also being held on suspicion of trafficking underage girls for sex, whose body was found in La Santé prison early on Saturday. Continue reading...

The term ‘fully vaccinated’ needs to be redefined. It’s time for the United States and the CDC to see natural immunity as a partial path to protectionThe US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has failed to recognize that people with confirmed Covid infections, also known as “natural immunity,” have achieved some level of protection against subsequent infections and severe disease. This has unnecessarily fueled divisiveness, particularly when vaccines are mandated without acknowledgement that prior Covid is an alternate path, albeit with some limitations, for protection of the individual and helping to build the population’s immunity wall.While there has been a body of data supporting a robust immune response to Covid infections, that evidence has recently been substantially bolstered. In the very large trial on the Johnson and Johnson vaccine single shot compared with placebo, among over 2,000 participants with prior infections, as documented by positive antibody status, their protection against moderate or severe disease was 90%. That’s much higher than the vaccine efficacy of 56%, yet the CDC recognizes 2-shot of this vaccine as “fully vaccinated” but ignores these data, and many other proof points, of natural immunity protection.Eric Topol is the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, professor of molecular medicine, and executive vice-president of Scripps Research Continue reading...

Local officials are being ousted and threatened as extreme rhetoric takes over once-staid public meetingsResidents of a California county are mounting an aggressive campaign to oust officials who have supported Covid safety measures and vaccines, the latest example of a growing extremism in local politics fueled by the pandemic.A group in Nevada county, a rural expanse of about 100,000 people in the Sierra Nevada, is seeking to recall five county supervisors, saying that contact tracing efforts and the promotion of lockdowns and vaccines violate “religious freedoms and individual liberty”. Continue reading...

Ron DeSantis is backing a bill that would strip education funding from Democratic counties that retained Covid precautionsFlorida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, is backing a controversial proposal to strip $200m in education funding from Democratic counties that defied his executive order last year banning mask mandates in schools.DeSantis, who is widely seen as a leading heir to Donald Trump in the Republican party, plans to send the money instead to mostly Republican counties that supported him. Continue reading...

This great cultural institution’s trustees must refuse to renew its sponsorship arrangement with BPThe critics are unanimous: the British Museum’s new exhibition, The World of Stonehenge, is a triumph. As archaeologists, it’s wonderful for us to see the show achieve such plaudits. But the fact that the exhibition is once again sponsored by the oil and gas supermajor BP brings inevitable disquiet. Hundreds of our colleagues in archaeology, museums and the heritage sector have recently signed a letter asking the museum to end its relationship with BP. The signatories include senior curators and academics from across the UK and beyond. This is a decisive moment for the British Museum: its agreement with BP is due for renewal this year and its future hangs in the balance.BP has maintained a strategy of sponsoring cultural institutions for decades, as part of its heavy investment in public relations. It’s keen to convince the public – and our policymakers – that it can be trusted to manage the transition to net zero itself. But BP’s programme for “net zero by 2050” relies on massive use of unproved carbon capture technologies and implausible offsetting. The company is continuing to look for new sources of oil and gas, which the International Energy Agency has said cannot be exploited if net zero is to be achieved. BP’s plans also ignore its 20% stake in the Russian oil company Rosneft, which is launching a $134bn project to drill in the Arctic. BP’s activities jeopardise efforts to keep global heating within the 1.5C limit of the Paris climate agreement and avoid yet worse droughts, wildfires and sea level rise. Continue reading...

A major series blaming Islamophobia for the 2014 Birmingham schools controversy is one-sided and risks opening old woundsSerial is one of the most downloaded podcasts in the world. Its first season, a true-crime whodunnit that became an instant hit had me hooked on its release eight years ago. So I was excited to tune into its new offering with the New York Times, The Trojan Horse Affair, an eight-part series that promises to tell the real story of the anonymous letter sent to Birmingham city council in 2013, that alleged a plot to take over and run local state schools according to strict Islamist principles.But this latest series skewers the art of narrative journalism Serial is widely considered to have pioneered. Long-form podcasts have more blockbuster potential than straight-up reporting, but are laced with danger: the temptation to cherry-pick facts in service of a gripping story. Continue reading...

Congresswoman has been a boon to progressive candidates in Texas while party grapples with rift in WashingtonHolding a gold microphone and wearing a seafoam-green pantsuit, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez energized the San Antonio crowd with her vision for flipping the state of Texas to Democratic control.“It will happen,” Ocasio-Cortez said at a rally earlier this month. “The only question is when, Texas.” Continue reading...

‘You’re a creep, bro,’ says New York congresswoman after Carlson attacked Ocasio-Cortez in Fox News segmentThe Fox News host Tucker Carlson attacked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday night, claiming the US congresswoman was not a woman of colour.“She’s a rich entitled white lady,” he said. Continue reading...

Police in Florida share video of aircraft descending and crashing in incident which left two passengers injuredA helicopter crashed into the sea off Miami Beach on Saturday, a few feet away from swimmers in a crowded stretch popular with tourists, officials said.Two passengers were taken to a nearby hospital in stable condition, police said, adding that no one else appeared to be injured. Continue reading...

US agriculture department says safety is paramount after threat to inspectorThe avocado ban is toast. US officials announced on Friday that imports from Mexico had resumed, following a temporary ban that stemmed from a threat against an American agricultural inspector.The US Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (Aphis) said avocado inspections in Michoacán, Mexico had restarted, allowing imports to follow. Continue reading...

Trump Organization has held discussions with Saudi-backed body, Washington Post reports

Company says it is not aware of any consumer complaints but lists 404 stores that might have sold contaminated food and drugsMore than 1,000 rodents were found inside a Family Dollar distribution facility in Arkansas, the US Food and Drug Administration said on Friday as the chain issued a voluntary recall on items purchased from hundreds of stores across the US south.A consumer complaint had prompted officials to inspect the West Memphis, Arkansas, facility in January, the FDA said. Continue reading...

Police tactics used against protesters following murder of George Floyd widely condemnedJose Garza ran for district attorney in Austin on promises to hold police accountable in the Texas capital. He got off to a fast start, charging at least seven officers during his first year on the job, including one charged with murder twice.But no cases have reached deeper into the police department than the indictments on Thursday of 19 officers on felony charges over tactics used during protests against racial injustice in 2020. Continue reading...

Members of Sackler family would contribute sum over 18 years under latest proposalMembers of the Sackler family who own OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, are willing to kick in more money – up to $6bn in total – to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids as the company tries to work out a deal with state attorneys general who torpedoed an earlier settlement.The offer was detailed in a report filed on Friday in US bankruptcy court by a federal mediator who asked the court to let her have until the end of the month to broker a new settlement. Continue reading...

Congressman Mark Takano, whose family was forced into camps, calls for vigilance amid ‘nefarious nostalgia’Eighty years ago, as anti-Japanese fervor gripped the US, the parents and grandparents of the California congressman Mark Takano were among 120,000 Japanese Americans forcibly removed from their homes and sent to desolate camps scattered across the west.They were allowed to take only what they could carry. Everything else was sold, stored or left behind. Confined by barbed wire fences and armed military guards, their only offense was looking like the enemy. Continue reading...

Kryst, who died aged 30, called ‘a curriculum for how to be an attorney, how to be an advocate and how to be a human being’Hundreds of mourners gathered at a church in North Carolina on Friday night to celebrate the life of Cheslie Kryst, an attorney, former Miss USA and justice advocate who died last month, aged 30.“Cheslie … sowed many seeds through her work, her philanthropy, her advocacy, and most importantly, her genuine care for others,” said Kryst’s mother, April Simpkins, as reported by the Charlotte Observer.In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 and online chat is also available. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org

While gizmos such as Apple’s AirTags are undeniably useful, they carry with them the danger of privacy abusesOnce upon a time, intensive surveillance was a prerogative of states. After the arrival of the internet, and especially the rise of companies such as Google and Facebook, ISPs (internet service providers) and mobile networks, it became a prerogative shared between the state and private companies – corporations that log everything you do online. Surveillance became a kind of public-private partnership. The companies do much of the work and readily cooperate with security agencies when they come armed with a warrant.Way back in 2009 the German Green politician Malte Spitz went to court to obtain the data that his mobile phone operator, Deutsche Telekom, held on him and then collaborated with the newspaper Die Zeit to analyse and visualise it. What emerged was a remarkably detailed timeline of his daily life, a timeline that would have been readily available to state authorities if they had come for it with appropriate legal authorisation. Continue reading...

There are different constellations in the Never Trump firmament and it’s unclear if they can uniteAs Joe Biden lurched from crisis to crisis with plummeting approval ratings, the Republican party seemed largely content to bury its internal differences and enjoy the show.But not for long. Continue reading...

The prince’s settlement with Virginia Giuffre leaves several loose ends, including whether more in the disgraced financier’s circle could be implicatedAfter news of Prince Andrew’s settlement with his accuser Virginia Giuffre, the question of who or what the tentacles of the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking conspiracy will envelope next remains.New York attorneys believe it is unlikely any more will be said by the parties involved in Andrew’s case, assuming the senior British royal keeps to the agreed settlement. The letter that accompanied the court filing last week, agreed by both sides, was unusually explicit and calculated to the purpose of settling the matter for good. Continue reading...

Former model agency boss accused of rape and suspected of trafficking minors has died in prisonThe former boss of a French model agency accused of rape and under investigation on suspicion of supplying underage girls to the late American financier Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead in prison.The body of Jean-Luc Brunel, 75, was reportedly found hanging in his cell in the early hours of Saturday. The French prosecutors’ office confirmed the report and said an inquiry had been opened into the exact cause of death, but early indications pointed to suicide. Continue reading...

Celebrities look increasingly desperate when they turn their hands to reality TV genres to try to keep in the spotlightAnother week and the smell of another celebrity cooking show permeates the air. Gavin Rossdale, of 90s grunge-adjacent, arena-stuffing band Bush, is the latest star to turn to cookery, with Deadline reporting that he is to launch a cooking and entertainment show called E.A.T. In it, he will talk to celebrity guests, including Tom Jones, at his house in the Hollywood Hills, while designing, preparing and making them a three-course meal.He is part of a broader picture of celebrities widening their repertoires and his is not the first celebrity-to-chef shift of recent times. Those who follow such news will be familiar with Brooklyn Beckham’s move from photography to cookery, Cookin’ With Brooklyn, a social media series presumably conceived of as rhyme first, content later, in which Beckham describes making a sandwich, but confuses slices of bread with loaves. (Unless he really does put fish between two loaves of bread. Maybe that’s the twist.) Selena Gomez learns to cook on Selena + Chef, which is like a high-end version of that bit on Sunday Brunch where soap stars chuck flour in a bowl and pretend to enjoy baking. Sadly, Paris Hilton’s Netflix show, Cooking With Paris, has not been renewed for a second series, despite being a work of genuine high art. Continue reading...

Their divorce may be a private matter between the two of them but further normalizing the idea that persistent pursuit is romantic is harmful for everyoneI do not, as a rule, keep up with the Kardashians. And I try to pay as little attention as humanly possible to the erratic antics of Kim Kardashian’s ex Kanye West (who recently changed his name to Ye). But over the last couple of weeks I’ve made something of an exception to my “avoid losing braincells through exposure to Kimye drama at all costs” rule because Ye’s public behaviour has become increasingly disturbing. Even more disturbing, however, is the way his behaviour towards Kardashian is largely being treated as entertaining gossip by the media instead of being called out as harassment. While a handful of (mainly women-focused) media outlets, including Elle and Jezebel, have sounded alarm bells at the way Ye is acting, his behaviour is still being dangerously downplayed.Sending a truck filled with roses and emblazoned with the words “MY VISION IS KRYSTAL KLEAR” on its side to Kardashian’s house for Valentine’s Day.Posting what seems to be private correspondence from Davidson online.Encouraging his fans to scream “Kimye Forever” at Davidson if they see him in public.Leaking what appear to be private text messages from Kardashian on social media. He later acknowledged this “came off as harassing Kim” but then continued to rail at her online.Publicly accusing Kardashian of kidnapping their daughter Chicago after she threw her a birthday party and allegedly refused to tell him the address. He also turned up at the birthday party despite reportedly having agreed to host a separate event for Chicago.Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for order Continue reading...

Dr Nadine Burke Harris is an expert on how childhood trauma can affect health. That proved to be valuable expertise during the pandemicWhen Dr Nadine Burke Harris was first appointed California surgeon general, she set out to address the toxic stress and trauma plaguing the state’s most vulnerable residents.Then the pandemic hit. Suddenly, she found herself having to guide millions through statewide shutdowns, and persuade scared, skeptical Californians to get vaccinated against Covid-19 and wear masks to prevent the virus’ spread. Continue reading...

Instead of pursuing the ‘metaverse’, the company’s new head of global affairs should address the surveillance business model that has done so much harmWhen the former British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg joined Facebook in 2018, the company was immersed in a number of scandals. Cambridge Analytica had been harvesting personal data from Facebook profiles. UN human rights experts said the platform had played a role in facilitating the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar. Its policies during the 2016 US presidential election had come under fire. Now Clegg has taken a top role as the company’s president of global affairs. Will he be able to tackle the seemingly endless problems with the way that Facebook – which recently rebranded as Meta – works?For better or worse, Meta and Google have become the infrastructure of the digital public sphere. On Facebook, people access the news, social movements grow, human rights abuses are documented and politicians engage with constituents. Herein lies the problem. No single company should hold this much power over the global public sphere. Continue reading...

The prime minister’s denial of breaking Covid rules rests on what exactly he gets up to in the office and elsewhere Continue reading...

A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico Continue reading...

Authorities were able to re-create the family’s hiking path using data, including GPS locations and photos, from their phonesAuthorities have released new phone data, including unsent text messages pleading for help, in the case of the young California family killed by extreme heat during a hike in a remote area of the Sierra Nevada mountains last August.The new details surrounding the deaths of 45-year-old Jonathan Gerrish, his 35-year-old wife Ellen Chung, their one-year old daughter Aurelia “Miju” Chung-Gerrish and their dog Oski, were released on Thursday by the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office, included family photos taken during the hike, text message and phone call attempts, and GPS locations. Continue reading...

Stewart Rhodes ‘presents a clear and convincing danger’ after spending thousands on weapons before riot, judge saysThe founder of the far-right Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, will remain in jail until his seditious-conspiracy trial for allegedly helping plot the assault on the US Capitol, a US judge said, calling him a “clear and convincing danger”.The US district judge Amit Mehta said during a Friday court hearing that Rhodes spent thousands of dollars on weapons and other equipment ahead of the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters and also made “substantial purchases” of weapons afterwards. Continue reading...

Customer survived gunshot wound to shoulder in incident three days before end of Nevada Covid mask mandateA convenience store clerk who killed himself minutes after shooting a customer who refused to wear a mask and walked out without paying for three bags of chips would have faced criminal charges if he had survived, a police report said.The 6 February shootings on the north-west edge of Las Vegas came four days before Governor Steve Sisolak lifted Nevada’s Covid-19 mask mandate. Continue reading...

The ex-president has been ordered to testify in a New York fraud case. Will he invoke his constitutional right to remain silent?Donald Trump and his two eldest children have been ordered by a New York judge to appear for a deposition within 21 days, as part of an investigation into the Trump family finances. The development presents the former US president with a dilemma: should he invoke his right to silence by pleading the fifth? Continue reading...

Medals in speed skating and monobob raise hopes that more young athletes of color will thrive in winter sportsOnly two Black Americans had won an individual medal in nearly a century of Winter Olympics before this week. It took less than 24 hours for Erin Jackson and Elana Meyers Taylor to double that list.When Jackson ended a couple of lengthy speed skating medal droughts for the United States in a sport they once dominated by winning Sunday night’s women’s 500m, the roller derby skater from central Florida became the first Black woman from any country to win an individual gold in a Winter Olympics event according to the Olympedia.org website, the most comprehensive database about the Olympic Games. Continue reading...

Eve Muirhead and co set up a curling final against Japan after Eileen Gu won another gold medal for China, and ROC beat Sweden in the men’s hockeyFreestyle skiing: The men’s skicross 1/8 finals are under way, that man Alex Fiva kicking things off in the opening heat. The US-born Swiss former alpine skier is the first man into the quarter-finals with a dominant display.Ice hockey: A chance for the shorthanded Slovakia to pull level but the puck evades Michal Kristof by a matter of inches off the pass from Juraj Slafkovsky. And it remains 1-0 to Finland as time ticks down in the third period - just under 15 minutes remaining now. Continue reading...

To stop Russia, Ukrainians must show, for as long as possible, that we are unconquerableThis week I had my first nightmare about war. In the dream, I woke up to find that Russia had attacked my home city of Kyiv: there was no internet connection, and no way of finding out what had happened.I had this dream on Wednesday, the night on which – according to western intelligence – Russia was most likely to begin its attack on Ukraine. Over the last few months, we Ukrainians have of course considered various scenarios and contingency plans, but mainly we have kept calm. But when the US, the UK and dozens of other states evacuated their embassies from the capital, it felt different.Nataliya Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian journalist specialising in foreign affairs and conflict reporting and author of Lost Island: Tales from the Occupied Crimea Continue reading...

In October, Brandon Brown unwittingly became a rightwing meme. Now he is delicately treading the line between profit and politicsBrandon Brown was not an especially fearsome stock car driver, nor did he figure as the sort to crack open sport’s Pandora’s box entering last October’s Sparks 300 – a race in Nascar’s mid-tier Xfinity series. In most cases a mid-pack qualifying position would not bode well. But at Talladega Speedway, a crash-happy oval circuit where anything can happen, the best drivers are the ones who survive the carnage. And after two multi-car pile ups, Brown assumed a narrow lead with 13 laps to go. A final accident two laps later that took out seven cars sealed his first Xfinity series triumph in 114 tries.With night falling on the Alabama circuit, the 28-year-old Virginia native emerged from his Chevrolet Camaro machine in a daze for the post-race TV interview. As he breathlessly thanked his sponsors and revisited his driving tactics, some in Talladega’s packed crowd began chanting “Fuck Joe Biden” loud and clear enough to come across Brown’s microphone. Desperate to keep the interview going with her producers unable to bleep the background noise, NBC Sports reporter Kelli Stavast tried to Jedi mind trick her viewers. “You can hear the chants from the crowd – Let’s go, Brandon,” she said. Continue reading...

A New York judge has ruled Trump will have to testify in his fraud investigation, leaving Trump sweating and his investors shaking their headsDonald Trump’s bad luck continues. On Thursday afternoon, Arthur Engoron, a Manhattan judge, gave the thumbs up to subpoenas issued to Trump, favorite child Ivanka, and Donald Trump Jr, by Tish James, New York’s attorney general. The court’s ruling follows a decision by Trump’s accountants to walk away from the one-term president and disavow years of financial statements issued by his company.Much as the Trump trio tried, they could not shut down James’s investigation into the Trump Organization’s business practices, which could lead to a civil suit by James. Unlike a criminal prosecution, a civil action comes with a lower burden of proof for the government. At the same time, civil lawsuits can drag on – like right into 2024. Barring a stay, Trump and his two children have been ordered to appear at deposition within 21 days. Continue reading...

Thanks to the Duke of York and Oliver Dowden’s preposterous war on woke, the culture wars are now being fought in a street near youAs you know, Oliver Dowden laments threats to all British statues – indeed, this week found the Conservative chairman in Washington DC, making a speech about such things to an American thinktank. As a keen student of his joined-up theories, I’ve always looked forward to the day Oliver feels ready to give us his speech on the disgraceful 2012 removal of the Jimmy Savile statue from Glasgow’s Scotstoun leisure centre. Have we not got to live with our history? Debate it, yes, question it, yes – but ultimately preserve every handcarved wooden statue of a paedo in whatever family setting happens to boast one.In the meantime, according to Dowden, woke ideology is putting the west at risk from countries such as Russia, even though Russians are so woke they have whole parks of torn-down statuary, featuring figures whose historical legacy they didn’t feel particularly minded to debate or live with when they were yanking them off the plinths. Absolute snowflakes. Continue reading...

The ‘gate money’ the state offers is ‘insufficient to survive’, one activist says, and can contribute to recidivismA California lawmaker wants to increase the allowance that people released from prison receive to cover basic needs for the first time in nearly 50 years.Sydney Kamlager, a state senator representing Los Angeles, is introducing legislation Friday to bump up the “gate money” – funds that people released from state prisons are given – from $200 to nearly $2,600. Continue reading...

Former president has to testify within 21 days and hand over documents within a fortnight. Plus, the answer to our productivity crisis?Good morning.Donald Trump and his two eldest children have been ordered by a New York judge to sit for a civil deposition in the deepening investigation over alleged fraud in the valuation of assets belonging to his family business.Could Trump plead the fifth? It would be tricky: his criminal defense lawyer says it would be front-page news and would make it impossible to pick a jury. Additionally, Trump has previously mocked the practice, saying: “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the fifth amendment?”What’s next? Trump is likely to appeal against the decision ordering him to comply with the subpoena.Who else has backed the convoy? Ted Cruz has demanded an investigation into GoFundMe after it deleted the page for donations to Canadian truckers, as did DeSantis. The Ohio congressman Jim Jordan also criticized the platform.How should the double standard be understood? This rhetoric is Republicans seizing any opportunity to attack Joe Biden – rather than being part of a “hard ideological stance”, said Jared Holt, an extremism researcher. Continue reading...

For years MLS was seen as a retirement league. But the flow of talent now appears to be crossing the Atlantic from west to eastIf any evidence was needed to prove European clubs are increasingly looking to Major League Soccer for talent, it came in the January transfer window. No fewer than 33 players left North American soccer’s top flight to head across the Atlantic with two of those players (Daryl Dike and Ricardo Pepi) entering the list for the top five most expensive transfers in MLS history.Bundesliga club Augsburg made Pepi their club-record signing while Dike joined West Brom. Teenager Kevin Paredes left DC United for Wolfsburg, James Sands signed for Rangers on loan from New York City FC and George Bello joined Arminia Bielefeld, having made his breakthrough at Atlanta United. Even after the January transfer window closed, Arsenal completed a deal that will see US men’s national team goalkeeper Matt Turner move to London this summer. Continue reading...