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Brittany Dawn Davis’s followers claim they received similar meal plans and were conned out of paid one-on-one consultsBrittany Dawn Davis, a fitness and Christianity influencer from Fort Worth, is being sued by the state of Texas for promising her followers personalized exercise and nutrition plans that never materialized. Davis’s website promised unsuspecting clients that her Brittany Dawn Fitness (BDF) crew would be with them “every step of the way”, but instead her followers received a generic diet and workout plan not unique to them. The state believes this amounts to “deceptive trade practices” and is seeking damages from $250,000 up to $1m.Davis, who has almost 1 million TikTok followers, became a lifestyle influencer after competing in “bikini competitions”, bodybuilding events where the contestants stay in swimsuits. She launched her business, bdawnfit.com, in March 2014 claiming it promoted a holistic approach to health, including “flexible dieting, effective training, balanced living, and community support”. Continue reading...

Americans face having to move or pay much bigger slice of income to stay in their homes as prices outstrip wagesRental prices across America have soared over the past year, with some cities experiencing average price hikes of up to 40%, leaving many renters stunned and grappling with either having to move to be able to afford rent or pay significantly more of their income to remain in their homes.Joshua Beadle of Sarasota, Florida, lived in a 950 sq ft loft apartment for four years for about $900 a month until about one year ago when the owner sold the building and he was forced to move. Continue reading...

She’s faced a lifetime’s worth of zombies, ridden a Party Bus to Hell and befriended a talking hedgehog called Andy. If anyone deserves to succeed as an MI6 agent ‘with a difference’, it’s herI’m going to let you into a little secret here. Whenever I’m feeling blue, one thing that will cheer me up without fail is looking at Tara Reid’s IMDb page. Not necessarily for the films that she’s made, but for the films that she’s about to make.Like Eric Roberts before her, Reid’s IMDb page contains a long, long list of movies in pre-production. And while Roberts might have her purely on numbers (he currently has some 70 films that are either filming or in pre- or post-production), Reid arguably has him on choices. She has a comparably piffling 18 titles in pre-production, almost all of them seem precision-designed to stretch the limits of plausibility to their very limits. Continue reading...

I’m not a hygiene freak but I draw the line at walking dirt into houses. And don’t get me started on suitcases on bedsThere are three things that make me unreasonably irritated while watching TV. The first is when the person on screen hangs up the phone without any acknowledgment that the conversation is over. Nobody does that in real life. It’s sociopathic! The second is when people put their suitcase on their bed to pack or unpack (this is extremely common on reality TV). “Do you know where that suitcase has been?” I yell at the telly whenever my eyeballs are confronted with such smut. “There’s a 99.99% chance you now have faecal matter and rat urine on your sheets, you filthy animal!”Continuing that theme, my third pet peeve is when TV characters lounge on their beds with shoes on. I’m not a hygiene freak – I’ll happily eat food that has fallen on the floor even after the five-second rule has passed: I’ve always believed that a little bit of dirt a day keeps the doctor away. But I have my limits, and the idea of street shoes on a bed makes me gag. This obviously also applies to real life: I don’t care who you are, you are not setting foot in my house with shoes on. (And before you bring pets into this, let me state for the record that I wash my dog’s paws after a walk: he’s a good clean boy). Anyway, I’m not going to bother going into all the statistics about how there are apparently 421,000 units of bacteria on the outside of an average shoe, or how 93% of shoes will have poo on them after a month of normal use. I am not going to bother trying to argue this topic because, unlike most issues in life, there is no room for debate here: only a barbarian wears outdoor shoes indoors.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Mazars’ cutting ties with ex-president mark significant step in New York investigation of his financial affairs, among 19 current casesThe news that the longtime accounting firm for the Trump Organization has cut ties with the company and retracted 10 years of its financial statements is a new and serious blow to Donald Trump’s increasingly frenzied battle to fend off the legal investigations that are rapidly engulfing him.The revelation that Mazars USA last week ended its relationship with the Trump family comes at a perilous moment for the former president as he strives to protect himself, his family and his business from legal threats that are now coming thick and fast. Continue reading...

Protests such as the Ottawa truck blockade are sweeping rich nations. But the movements are based on capitalist delusionsWhen a group in black fatigues called Alpha Men Assemble began practising paramilitary manoeuvres in a park in Staffordshire at the beginning of this year, it looked pretty threatening. These men, we were warned, were about to launch an insurrection against vaccines and in favour of “the sovereign citizen”. Since then, silence. It wouldn’t be surprising if the group had dispersed: a society of self-proclaimed alphas is bound to fall apart.This was just one example of the incoherent protests now sweeping rich, English-speaking nations. Others include the truck blockade in Ottawa and its duplicates in Australia, New Zealand and the US, and the angry men outside the British parliament, waiting to pounce on passing politicians. By incoherent protest, I mean gatherings whose aims are simultaneously petty and grandiose. Their immediate objectives are small and often risible, attacking such minor inconveniences as face masks. The underlying aims are open-ended, massive and impossible to fulfil. Not just politically impossible, but mathematically impossible. Listening to these men (and most of them are men), it seems that every one of them wants to be king.George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Analysis: US president gives the kind of speech normally delivered on the eve of momentous action, while speaking over Putin’s head to the Russian people

Committee to examine coordination behind brazen effort to submit false electoral certificates in states won by Joe BidenThe House select committee investigating the Capitol attack issued subpoenas on Tuesday to top Trump campaign and Republican officials involved in the scheme to send false electors for Donald Trump in states won by Joe Biden, as it examines the coordination behind the effort.The panel sent subpoenas to six individuals who were involved in a brazen attempt to meet and submit fake electoral college certificates that formed the backbone of a Trump-connected scheme to have Congress return the former president to office. Continue reading...

Only 54% of the LA sheriff’s department is vaccinated, despite a mandate in place, with about 4,000 deputies at risk of job lossA sheriff’s department in southern California is encouraging law enforcement officers who oppose vaccine mandates to “take back [their] freedom” and apply for jobs with the department.The Kern county sheriff’s office released a video last week inviting applications from deputies within Los Angeles county, where officials passed an order that could lead to the termination of thousands of county workers who haven’t received the Covid-19 vaccine or provided a religious or medical exemption. Continue reading...

Jury rejects claim the newspaper damaged her reputation by erroneously linking campaign rhetoric to mass shootingFormer Alaska governor Sarah Palin lost her libel lawsuit against the New York Times on Tuesday when a jury rejected her claim that the newspaper maliciously damaged her reputation by erroneously linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting.A judge had already declared that if the jury sided with Palin, he would set aside its verdict on the grounds that she had not proven the paper acted maliciously, something required in libel suits involving public figures. Continue reading...

The family of cinematographer alleges that reckless behavior and cost-cutting led to her death on the film’s set in October 2021The family of the late cinematographer Halyna Hutchins has filed a lawsuit against actor Alec Baldwin and other members of the film Rust, alleging that reckless behavior and cost-cutting led to Hutchins’ wrongful death on set.Hutchins, a 42-year-old film veteran, was shot and killed on 21 October last year while preparing for a scene at the Bonanza Creek Ranch outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, when a gun held by Baldwin accidentally went off, in an incident that shocked Hollywood and prompted a reckoning over production safety and the use of weapons on set. Baldwin has since said in an emotional interview with ABC News that he believed the gun to be safe and did not pull the trigger. Continue reading...

He was never going to win, and now he has struck a settlement that will stand as a stain on his reputation, and that of the monarchy• Stephen Bates is a former Guardian royal correspondentIt was always going to come to this. Prince Andrew’s American lawyer’s statement in New York this afternoon announcing the agreed settlement with Virginia Giuffre sets the seal on the prince’s humiliation over his association with the convicted sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein and his friend, the woman who procured girls for him, Ghislaine Maxwell.It has cost the prince his much-prized royal position on palace balconies, his perks – all those helicopter flights to golf matches at public expense, all those private flights across the world to shake hands with sheikhs – and all his military ranks, titles and honorifics. No more honorary colonelcies: colonel of the Grenadier Guards, commodore-in-chief of the Fleet Air Arm, to say nothing of the colonelcy of the New Zealand Army Logistic Regiment and the Princess Louise Fusiliers of Canada. All gone. Strangely, he remains a vice-admiral, but the full admiral title will now for ever elude him. He may be a duke, but he is no longer an HRH. The retreat is complete. Continue reading...

Remington Arms will release all discovery and depositions on elementary school mass shooting to the public, attorneys saidA gunmaker has been held liable for a mass shooting in the United States for the first time after Remington Arms agreed to pay $73m to the families of five adults and four children killed in the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre.Twenty students and six adults were killed on 14 December 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut, by Adam Lanza, who used a Remington Bushmaster AR-15 rifle to shoot his way into the school after killing his mother at home. Continue reading...

Victims ‘financially and emotionally devastated’ by scammers who prey upon vulnerable, often older, people, bureau findsAmericans lost more than $1bn in 2021 alone to “romance scams” such as the one documented in the hit Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler, according to the FBI.The majority of the victims who were cheated out of their money were women older than 40, and women who are widowed, divorced, elderly or disabled, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) said in a press statement last week. Continue reading...

Kamila Valieva took to the ice amid a swirl of controversy and elsewhere there were golds, blunders and much moreFreeslopestyle: Can anyone else complete a solid first run? Not Team GB’s Kirsty Muir. Not the ROC’s Anastasia Tatalina, who crashes. Not the USA’s Maggie Voisin, who takes off awkwardly on one element and pulls out of her next trick.Top two are Tess Ledeux (72.91) and Team GB’s Katie Summerhayes (60.01), but it’s hard to see those scores landing on the podium. Continue reading...

The sportswear brand is using 25 pairs of breasts to market its new range of bras. It’s a shameless attention grab and I’m all in favour‘If in doubt, get the breasts out.” That is not an official advertising slogan, but it might as well be. Cleavage has always been the uninspired ad man’s best friend. Flogging fast food? Show a bunch of busty models eating burgers in bikinis. Hawking ice-cream? Film a slow-motion shot of it dripping down a woman’s chest. Selling cars? Boobs. Selling home insurance? More boobs. You get the idea; you would have to be a boob not to.While breasts are not exactly unusual in adverts, Adidas’s new marketing campaign for its expanded range of sports bras takes things to the extreme. Instead of just showing a bit of cleavage, the advert features 25 pairs of bare breasts. Some are scarred; some are small; some are saggy; all of them are unapologetically uncovered. Accompanying the nudity are layers of predictable PR guff about how Adidas wants to celebrate inclusivity and showcase the many varieties of modern mammaries etc etc. Frankly, I would have respected the company a lot more if it just said: it is not that deep – we know this is guaranteed to get people talking, which means our brand name will worm its way into your unconscious and hopefully translate into a sales boost for our bras.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Efforts by Republicans to restrict voting rights could result in return to Jim Crow era, says progressive in New Yorker interviewThe progressive New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez believes the Republican-led pressure on political systems is so great that there is “a very real risk” democracy will cease to exist in the US within a decade.The leftist Democratic politician derided efforts by Republican legislatures around the country to restrict voting rights as the “opening salvos” in a war on democracy, which she said could result in a return to the Jim Crow-era disenfranchisement of racial minorities. Continue reading...

There isn’t panic on the streets, but I’ve been stocking up on fuel, food, and jigsaws to distract me from anxietyAs a child growing up in Ukraine, every time I blew out the candles on my birthday cake I made a wish that there would be no war in the world. Now the war is at my door.For almost eight years we have been hearing about the dead at the war front in Donbas, seeing the tears of people who lost their families and homes, and who had to start again from scratch. In January, I was visiting friends in the UK, and reading the latest news stories about Russian troops building up on the border.Alexandra Matzota is an event planner based in Ukraine Continue reading...

Millions are seduced by the glamour, but they should also look at the fate of Caroline Flack and others. Fame can exact a very high price“Fame is a sweet poison you drink of first in eager gulps. Then you come to loathe it.” Richard Burton’s aphorism, and the context of his turbulent stardom, is still a near perfect summary of the nature of fame; but as our polarised society and media-industrial complex continue to engorge and mutate, new strains of this toxin hit the market almost daily.Two years on, the collective guilt felt by many of us over the death of Caroline Flack, which has never truly subsided, was again brought to the fore by her mother’s forceful accusation yesterday that the police treated Caroline differently – more harshly – simply because she was famous.In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.orgMark Borkowski is a crisis PR consultant and author Continue reading...

The rural back yards of the Czech Republic hide Europe’s biggest methamphetamine problem. Users like Lenka have a complex story to tell

Left-leaning people wonder ‘what’s wrong’ with the unvaccinated. But what if their non-compliance isn’t that surprising? Continue reading...

Move could be sign of de-escalation amid fears of invasion but size of withdrawal is unclear. Follow all developments live here. Plus, Sarah Palin’s lawsuit against New York Times thrown outGood morning.Russia’s defence ministry has announced it is to withdraw some of its troops from the border with Ukraine in a possible de-escalation of the threat of a potential invasion.Is this really a de-escalation? Russia has previously announced the conclusion of military exercises near the Ukrainian border, but social media and satellite photography taken in the following days have not shown considerable changes to Russia’s force posture.Is this any different? It’s unclear yet but Russia’s rouble currency reportedly posted gains following the announcement, indicating that investors hoped this would mark the beginning of a de-escalation of tensions between Russia and the west.The findings have renewed calls for greater transparency in the booming private equity industry, so that communities bearing the brunt of toxic emissions and extreme weather can track the money behind the misery. Continue reading...

Additional funding via the American Rescue Plan comes after a two-year increase in homicides in many major citiesFor years, local gun violence prevention programs have struggled to get long term funding. The people who look out for students on and off US school campus, sit at the bedsides of gunshot wound survivors, and embrace the families of homicide victims, are rarely paid with dedicated public money. Instead many groups survive on unpaid hours, donations and competitive one-off grants. But since 2021 a historic amount of government funding has been made available across the US that can turn the tide.This money comes as US cities are in dire need of intervention and healing resources after a nearly two-year increase in homicides and shootings. Still, this potential windfall also comes with confusion, especially for smaller programs whose staff don’t have the bandwidth to manage tedious, competitive applications without support. Continue reading...

Female genital mutilation is about the subjugation of women. But I am optimistic about ending it in my lifetimeIt is down to sheer ignorance that the misogynistic practice of female genital mutilation still exists in the world. In the UK, for example, FGM has been banned since 1985, but the country’s first court conviction occurred only in February 2019. The truth is, FGM will continue as long as there is inequality between men and women. It is about power and oppression, and its only purpose is to subjugate the woman and her sexuality to the man. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.The UN has a stated goal of eliminating FGM by 2030. Unfortunately, this is pure announcement policy. I worked as a UN special envoy from 1997 to 2003 and came to realise that the organisation is not doing what it should. That disappointed me and is why I started my own organisation, the Desert Flower Foundation. And, in my opinion, we are doing a better job than the UN. Continue reading...

CDC considers rolling back limits on which doses can be prescribed and for how many days in cases of acute painThe US could see loosened guidance around prescribing opioids, as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers relaxing some of its guidelines in a move that could signal a new direction for managing chronic pain.The CDC last Thursday released proposed changes to its guidance on prescribing opioids, rolling back limits on which doses can be prescribed and for how many days in cases of acute pain. Continue reading...

Amnesty International says technology championed by mayor reinforces discriminatory policing against minority communitiesNew Yorkers who live in areas where controversial stop-and-frisk searches happen most frequently are also more likely to be surveilled by facial recognition technology, according to research by Amnesty International and other researchers.Research also showed that in the Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens boroughs of the city there was a direct correlation between the proportion of non-white residents and the concentration of controversial facial recognition technology. Continue reading...

San Francisco district attorney says it was possibly a rights violation and could deter sexual assault victims from speaking outSan Francisco police used DNA collected as part of a rape exam to link a woman to a crime, possibly violating her constitutional rights, the city’s district attorney alleged on Monday.The department’s crime lab entered the DNA profiles of potentially thousands of sexual assault victims over “many years” to a database that is used to identify suspects, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. District attorney Chesa Boudin, who said his office first learned of the practice last week, told the newspaper such use of victims’ DNA could violate the California’s Victims’ Bill of Rights as well as constitutional laws related to unreasonable searches and seizures. Continue reading...

The 6ft-long Rye Riptides was packed with photos, fall leaves, acorns and state quarters and equipped with a GPSA small boat – containing photos, fall leaves, acorns and state quarters – launched in October 2020 by some New Hampshire middle school students has been found 462 days later by a sixth grader in Norway.The 6ft-long (1.8-meter) Rye Riptides, decorated with artwork from the kids and equipped with a tracking device that went silent for parts of the journey, was found on 1 February in Smola, a small island near Dyrnes, Norway, the Portsmouth Herald reported Monday. Continue reading...

Mazars, Donald Trump’s longtime accountancy firm, sever links amid criminal and civil investigations of ex-president’s businessDonald Trump’s longtime accountancy firm cut ties with his business last week, saying that nearly a decade’s worth of Trump’s filings should “no longer be relied upon”.The move comes amid ongoing criminal and civil investigations into whether Trump illegally inflated the value of his assets. Continue reading...

Jim Jordan’s statement on Fox News is another example of violent rhetoric entering the Republican mainstream, analysts sayAnti-hate speech activists have condemned the Republican US congressman Jim Jordan for his apparent endorsement of Donald Trump’s declaration that members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff should have been executed.Jordan asserted on Fox & Friends that the former president was “right on target” when he accused Clinton’s aides of spying on him, and that in another time in US history their “crime would have been punishable by death”. Continue reading...

Judge tosses the former vice-presidential candidate’s case while allowing the jury to continue deliberationsSarah Palin’s lawsuit accusing the New York Times of defaming her by incorrectly linking her to a mass murder was thrown out on Monday.US District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said he will order the dismissal of the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate’s lawsuit, but in an unusual twist, he will enter his order after the jury finishes its own deliberations. Continue reading...

Manuel Oliver said he climbed the 150ft crane ‘so the whole world will listen to Joaquin today’The father of a Parkland shooting victim was taken into custody after scaling a construction crane near the White House on Monday as part of a protest against gun violence and in honor of the fourth anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in Florida that killed 17 people and wounded 17 more.Manuel Oliver, whose 17-year-old son Joaquin “Guac” Oliver was one of the 17 victims in the country’s deadliest high school shooting, said he climbed the 150ft crane “so the whole world will listen to Joaquin today”. Continue reading...

The event showed just how much the city hasn’t changed, in which staggering wealth and abject poverty coexist without really touching, like oil and vinegarBefore the Super Bowl could officially kick off in Los Angeles, someone had to raise the curtain on this distinctly post-Covid festival of American glitz and glamour – so why not the biggest movie star on the planet.In a WWE-style teaser that played over the enormous video board that hovers over SoFi Stadium like a serpentine halo, the Rock set the tone for Super Gold Sunday, TV-speak for the cosmic-like coincidence of a Super Bowl falling during the middle weekend of the Winter Olympics – a first. Over the course of a two-minute monologue the actor-wrestler also known as Dwayne Johnson valorized the gladiators here as well as the others gritting it out under our flag in the Beijing Olympics. And he made sure to justify why we should stay tuned to the exception of all else. “It’s about the idea that this game [the Super Bowl] and these Games [the Olympics] can achieve one of the most precious feats of all – bringing us all together for a celebration of who we are.” Continue reading...

Crypto and online gambling ads as the US economy gets hollowed out at the Super BowlThe Super Bowl in 2000 is often referred to as the “Dotcom Bowl”, because so many buzzy new internet companies like Pets.com and AutoTrader.com bought ads that year. Ultimately, 14 such companies took part in the feeding frenzy, scooping up 20% of all available spots. Soon after, the stock price of many of these companies began to sharply deflate, and today that game is often described as the peak of the Dotcom Bubble.Super Bowl ads have long reflected the cultural currents that deep-pocketed corporations are trying to harness in a given era. Last night, they pointed towards the powerful pull of speculation that has enraptured so many over the past few years as betting platforms and cryptocurrency exchanges flooded the air with eye-catching spots. Continue reading...

Craig Greenberg, a Democratic hopeful for mayor of Louisville, was apparent target of the shooter, but police have no motivePolice in Kentucky have detained a person suspected of a Monday morning “assassination attempt” on a Democratic party candidate for Louisville city mayor.The Louisville Metro police chief Erika Shields said at a lunchtime press conference that the unidentified shooter entered Craig Greenberg’s fourth-floor suite in a downtown office building at about 10.15am and fired multiple shots. Continue reading...

Curtis Reeves, 79, killed Chad Oulson, 43, in a Tampa suburb in 2014 over the younger man checking text messages during previewsA retired Florida police captain went on trial for murder on Monday, eight years after he shot dead a moviegoer who threw a bag of popcorn at him in a dispute over text messages.Curtis Reeves, now 79, killed Chad Oulson, 43, at a movie theater in the Tampa suburb of Wesley Chapel shortly after the confrontation over the younger man’s use of his cellphone while previews were playing. Continue reading...

The Super Bowl champions made aggressive moves to acquire big-time players. They combined with homegrown talent to secure the franchise’s second titleAs the confetti fell at SoFi Stadium, Odell Beckham stood alone amid the revelry, eyes welling, hands on his head in disbelief. No sooner than the dazed receiver appeared on the stadium’s massive video screen did the Los Angeles Rams partisans, in slight majority among the 70,048 attendees, loose a deafening roar. To find their common emotional trigger, one needn’t have looked further than the message writ large on Beckham’s matching hat and T-shirt: Super Bowl Champions.Nothing gets LA in a froth like a big sparkly prize. On Sunday the Rams’ 23-20 dismissal of the upstart Cincinnati Bengals was recognized with a Lombardi trophy, the second Super Bowl crown in the franchise’s 86-year history. It was a capstone achievement that was realised in Los Angeles, on the Rams’ home turf, with more A-listers in attendance than at most recent award shows. There was the Rock, Cardi B, Bennifer – and those sightings all came before the Grammy-grade halftime show. Continue reading...

After 70 years, retiring in good health to hand over to Prince Charles would be good for the monarchy and the nationThis May, the Queen will celebrate 70 years in office, her platinum jubilee. She is already the longest-serving British ruler and, by then, will be second only to Louis XIV among European monarchs. Such longevity in office is phenomenal and will merit national congratulation and celebration.The Queen has performed her duty of symbolising the British nation over an extraordinary era, from the end of empire, through joining and leaving the European Union, to a global technological revolution. She has known 14 prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Boris Johnson. Though her “rule” is powerless and largely ritualised, she has performed with energy and dignity. She has steered her office away from controversy, and retained a sincere public affection. Given her bizarre occupation, she has been well-cast. Continue reading...