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Biden tells Ukraine US could offer economic support as tensions mount. Plus, the climate disparity between rich and poor countries

Extensive planning and tangible action by the far-right militia group’s members provide ‘strong grounds’ for case, experts sayLater this year the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia and nine alleged co-conspirators will be the first to face trial on seditious conspiracy charges related to the insurrection at the US Capitol.The charges are significant because they allege that the January 6 attack went beyond disorderly conduct and assaults on law enforcement, instead constituting an organized and violent attempt to stop the democratic transfer of power. Continue reading...

Music is still synonymous with romance – just ask West Elm Caleb. But dating apps reduce it to data points, and a digital playlist is no match for the mixtapes of oldThe way culture works today, you will either know everything there is to know about West Elm Caleb or nothing. For the uninitiated, he is a 20-something New Yorker who works at a furniture store and gained online infamy for his poor dating behaviour. A group of women who had met Caleb via dating apps and then connected with each other on TikTok have accused him of ignoring messages, recycling lines, sleeping with one shortly before going on a date with another and sending unsolicited nudes.After 15m views of the #westelmcaleb hashtag on TikTok, the facts of the situation are unclear and the ethics murkier still. I do, however, feel qualified to comment on one element: Caleb’s seduction playlist on Spotify. One of the claims against Caleb was that he sent at least two women the same playlist, each believing it to have been personalised; it’s now being circulated to inform our collective arbitration of his conduct. Continue reading...

Charges were brought in 2016 against London-based Gavin Black and New York colleague Matthew ConnollyA US court has overturned the conviction of two former Deutsche Bank traders for allegedly rigging the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor).A three-judge panel from the second US circuit court of appeals in Manhattan ruled the US government “failed to show that any of the trader-influenced submissions were false, fraudulent or misleading”. Continue reading...

The temperature is forecast to be well below freezing when the teams kick off on Sunday. But how much that will affect the result is debatableForewarned is forearmed and clearly, at some stage in late November, Gregg Berhalter and US Soccer sat down, ran the tape, looked through the Edmonton squalls and saw in the frozen Mexican faces all the warning they needed.In truth they could have saved themselves 90 minutes and read the French advice. Just 19 words of it. “To survive the Canadian winter, one needs a body of brass, eyes of glass, and blood made of brandy.” Continue reading...

Kevin Dugar claimed his innocence for years. A letter he received while incarcerated changed everythingKevin Dugar got a letter from his brother.It was fall 2013, and Kevin hadn’t seen his identical twin Karl in years – they were both serving time in different Illinois prisons. A murder conviction all but guaranteed Kevin, 36, would remain incarcerated well into his 70s. Continue reading...

After one of the most entertaining divisional rounds in NFL history, there are just four teams remaining. Which two will come out on top?Following last weekend’s slate of thrillers, what does the NFL do for an encore this time around? Sunday’s two championship games have a lot to live up to but there are more than enough storylines swirling around the four remaining teams to ensure plenty of fireworks (quite literally when it comes to the Chiefs). Continue reading...

Luntz spent years sampling opinion for Republicans before a stroke changed his outlook: ‘I’m not afraid any more, so you will hear me criticise people I never would have two years ago’When he suffered a stroke, Frank Luntz blamed it on the anger and tension coursing through him after decades of inhaling America’s toxic political culture. The country’s best-known pollster found himself hospitalised for nearly a week with dangerously high blood pressure.Two years later, Luntz regards the experience as a turning point. “That completely changed my outlook,” he says. “The loudness of my voice has changed. The speed in which I speak is changed. I’m slower and I’m quieter and I think about what I say. It’s not that I’m trying to be careful, it’s that I really analyse stuff that comes out.” Continue reading...

Palin, who is unvaccinated, was spotted at multiple city restaurants in violation of state and CDC health guidanceSarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, has continued to dine out at New York City restaurants despite testing positive for Covid-19.The ex-Alaska governor, who is not vaccinated, was spotted on Wednesday eating outdoors at the upper east side restaurant Elio’s after testing positive for the illness, according to photos published by Mediaite. Palin had dined at the same restaurant on Saturday night, where she was seen eating indoors in violation of city rules requiring proof of vaccination for indoor dining. Continue reading...

Lawyer is accused of diverting $300,000 of a book advance but adult film star says she never agreed to pay more than $100Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti, two former friends once united in a mission to take down ex-president Donald Trump, were reunited in a federal courtroom in New York on Thursday – but facing off as enemies.The adult film actor and producer told a jury in the criminal case against Avenatti, her former lawyer, that he “stole from me and lied to me”. Continue reading...

Killings took place two weeks apart but neither received national coverage, prompting questions about whose stories are toldThree recent killings in the Los Angeles area have put the spotlight on the disparate impact of American gun violence on Black women and the lack of attention their stories receive, as the country reckons with some of the most intense spates of gun violence in years.Both killings took place on weekends, a mere two weeks apart. On 8 January, California officials found the body of Tioni Theus, a 16-year-old girl who was found shot at a busy onramp of the 110 freeway. On 23 January, sisters Breahna Stines and Marneysha Hamilton were among four people shot dead during a mass shooting at a birthday party in Inglewood. Continue reading...

Government Accountability Office says ‘persistent deficiencies’ at HHS have hindered response to public health emergenciesThe US government’s main health agency is failing to meet its responsibilities for leading the national response to public health emergencies – including the coronavirus pandemic – extreme weather disasters and even potential bioterrorist attacks, a federal watchdog said Thursday.The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said it is designating the Health and Human Services Department’s leadership and coordination of public health emergencies as a “high risk” area for the government. Continue reading...

Discovery brings total to five, but search for survivors will be suspended if new discoveries are not made, says US coast guardThe US coast guard said it would call off the search for survivors at sunset on Thursday if no new discoveries were made following a boat capsizing off the Florida coast at the weekend with 40 people on board.Four more bodies had been discovered, bringing the total to five, Capt Jo-Ann Burdian, commander of the coast guard’s Miami sector, said in a press conference on Thursday. Continue reading...

Ron Johnson doesn’t believe the state should give help to parents – but he’s very keen to stop a woman’s right to chooseRon Johnson, the US senator for hot takes, famed for such hits as “[the Capitol riot] seemed like a peaceful protest to me” and “mouthwash has been proven to kill the coronavirus”, is at it again. On Wednesday, Johnson, the senior Republican senator from Wisconsin, told local news station WKBT: “People decide to have families and become parents. That’s something they need to consider when they make that choice.”He continued: “I’ve never really felt it was society’s responsibility to take care of other people’s children.” Continue reading...

Speaking at a press briefing alongside outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer, US President Joe Biden pledges to nominate the first black woman to the supreme court. Biden applauded Breyer’s work on the supreme court over the past 27 years, and pledged to nominate someone who would follow in his footsteps

US president announced plans for court at White House event marking retirement of Justice Stephen BreyerJoe Biden intends to announce his nominee to become the first Black woman to sit on the US supreme court by the end of February, the president said on Thursday at a formal White House event to mark the retirement of the liberal-leaning justice Stephen Breyer.Lauding the retiring justice as a “beacon of wisdom” and a “model public servant at a time of great division in this country”, Biden pledged to replace him with someone worthy of Breyer’s “legacy of excellence and decency”. He said the nominee would have “extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity, and that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States supreme court.” Continue reading...

Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement allows Biden to make history by appointing its first Black womanThe liberal supreme court justice Stephen Breyer is retiring and Joe Biden has said he will stand by a previous promise to nominate a Black woman to America’s highest legal body.At 83 years old, Breyer is the oldest justice of the court and his retirement will give Biden his first seat to fill on the supreme court, which is currently conservative-leaning by six to three. Replacing Breyer won’t allow Biden to change that dynamic but it does allow him to ensure the liberal contingent is not reduced further and make history by appointing its first Black woman. Continue reading...

Steep dive in crypto market resulted in final bid of about $170,000 – $80,000 short of the starting bid thresholdWhat do Melania Trump’s wide-brimmed white hat, a painting of her wearing the hat and an NFT of an animated version of the hat have in common?They were all put up for auction by the former first lady – and as of early Wednesday, failed to rake in the target price of a $250,000 opening bid. Continue reading...

Donald Grant’s execution was the first in the US in 2022 and third in the state since it resumed lethal injections in OctoberOklahoma executed a man on Thursday for the murders of two hotel workers during a robbery in 2001.Donald Grant, 46, received a lethal injection at the Oklahoma state penitentiary in McAlester and was declared dead at 10.16am. It was the first execution in the US in 2022 and the third in Oklahoma since the state resumed lethal injections in October following a nearly seven-year hiatus. Continue reading...

The Tennessee legislature’s splintering of Nashville is just one example of the gerrymandering taking place across the USHello, and happy Thursday,On Tuesday afternoon, Jim Cooper, a moderate Democrat who has been in Congress for more than three decades, announced he was retiring. The timing was not a coincidence. Continue reading...

The 83-year-old US supreme court justice is stepping down – and allowing Biden to chose a successor before the midterms. Thank God for thatThat sound you hear is Democrats in Washington and across the country letting out a sigh of profound relief: Associate Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring in June, at the end of the US supreme court’s current term. News of the 83-year-old’s choice to step down broke on Wednesday – evidently a little earlier than the man himself would have liked – giving Joe Biden his first opportunity to fill a vacancy on the nation’s highest court.The decision from Breyer ends months of speculation and a determined pressure campaign to convince the ageing liberal justice to retire while Democrats still held both the White House and the Senate, that rare and precarious circumstance that is now required for any Democratic president to see his federal court nominees confirmed. Breyer’s decision to step down this summer gives the Democrats a narrow window to appoint his replacement before they are expected to lose control of the Senate in the November midterms. Continue reading...

On Holocaust Memorial Day, it is vital we remember all the people targeted by the NazisMany people, even those with no more than a passing interest in sport, have heard of Jesse Owens, the American athlete who ruined Adolf Hitler’s moment in the sun. For there can be no question that Hitler saw the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin as the ideal platform from which to amplify Nazi propaganda and demonstrate his white supremacist ideology. But Owens, the grandchild of a slave, shattered that illusion.Owens became the first US track and field athlete to win four gold medals at a single Olympiad. For most of the watching world, his dominance in the 100m, 200m, long jump, and 4x100m relay was a powerful repudiation of Hitler’s myth of a superior race of humans, the Aryans. So stung were the Nazis by Owens’ exploits in their own backyard that their chief propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, would later write in his diary that “white humanity should be ashamed of itself”. By this he meant that it had been a mistake to allow black athletes to compete at the world’s grandest sporting event.Olivia Marks-Woldman is the chief executive and Farayi Mungazi is the senior communications officer at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust Continue reading...

Apps like Tinder and Hinge give straight men unfettered access to women – and a new sense of boldness through a seemingly endless set of optionsIf you’ve managed to live your life so that you’ve somehow avoided the “West Elm Caleb” saga that’s unfolded over the last week, then you’re probably a happier, less perplexed person because of it. And if you’re a single straight woman who uses dating apps and have never dated a young man who resembles West Elm Caleb, then that is nothing less than a miracle.In brief: West Elm Caleb is a guy, 25, who got outed on TikTok for allegedly dating multiple women he met on dating apps, all at the same time, leading them on and then ghosting them. “Back in my day we just called that a fuckboy,” said my friend Amelia, 29. Yes, I know. Back in 2015, I wrote a story for Vanity Fair entitled Tinder and the Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse in which I reported: “A ‘fuckboy’ is a young man who sleeps with women without any intention of having a relationship with them or perhaps even walking them to the door post-sex.”Nancy Jo Sales is a New York-based writer. Her latest book is Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno

Details of every event at this year’s Winter Olympics in China Continue reading...

New York families have been caught in a web of child protective services that disproportionately affects poor families of colorPaullette Healy can tick off the ways her family’s life has been disrupted over the last three months: her younger child’s nightmares, the hours she has poured into collecting evidence to prove she’s a fit parent and an arduous legal process that still looms to clear her name.From early November through 1 January, the Brooklyn family was under investigation by the administration for children’s services, or ACS, the New York City agency tasked with looking into suspected cases of child abuse and neglect. Healy had been reported for “educational neglect” for not sending her two children to school amid Covid fears, though she says her kids kept up with their work remotely. Continue reading...

Joe Biden now has the chance to act on his campaign promise to make sure a Black woman becomes one of the justices

It’s time to tell the truth about the big lieAccording to a number of polls and surveys, significant majorities of Republican-aligned voters seem to believe the big lie that Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 US presidential election and, consequently, the Biden administration is illegitimate.Taking these data at face value, a growing chorus insists that we’re living in a “post-truth” era, where members of one political party, the Republican party, can no longer tell facts from falsehood. As a result of the Republican party becoming unmoored from reality, the narratives typically continue, America is drifting headlong into a fascist takeover or a civil war.Musa al-Gharbi is a Paul F Lazarsfeld fellow in sociology at Columbia University Continue reading...

Phoenix’s new ‘heat tsar’ is betting on less asphalt, more green canopy and reflective surfaces to cool the sprawling heat islandA surge in heat-related deaths amid record-breaking summer temperatures offer a “glimpse into the future” and a stark warning that one of America’s largest cities is already unlivable for some, according to its new heat tsar.Almost 200 people died from extreme heat in Phoenix in 2020 – the hottest, driest and deadliest summer on record with 53 days topping 110F (43C) compared with a previous high of 33 days. Last year there were fewer scorching days, but the death toll remained staggeringly high, with people experiencing homelessness and addictions dying disproportionately. Continue reading...

A new generation of employees is refusing to simply ‘tough out’ bad treatment and bad pay. What’s so wrong with that?There’s nothing older generations enjoy more than complaining about the young. Their childhoods are too coddled and full of non-dangerous toys, then they get to school where they are not beaten with sticks and therefore do not build character, then they go to university where they bully statues and either have too much or not enough sex.Now, as millennials have aged into their uncool middle-manager era, and Gen Z enter the workforce, they have inspired a number of books and articles and speeches about how kids these days don’t know the value of a hard day’s work.Hannah Jewell is the author of We Need Snowflakes and 100 Nasty Women of History Continue reading...

Canada, Mexico and the US are frontrunners for a place at Qatar 2022. But there have been several important changes since the teams last playedIn the next seven days, Concacaf teams will play three matches that will go a long way to deciding who clinches a spot at Qatar 2022. With six games to go, Canada, the US and Mexico occupy the three automatic qualifying places in the table. Here’s what to look out for in the coming days. Continue reading...

Reaching the Super Bowl through the AFC now means battling past a host of brilliant young quarterbacks. Has the NFC become the easy option?Last Sunday’s epic between the Chiefs and Bills was about more than an individual game. It redefined what is possible in a playoff game, and what is now expected for a team to compete at the top of the AFC.Twenty-five points in the final two minutes. One haymaker after another. The Mahomes-Allen Show made one thing clear: Having a great quarterback used to be the league’s greatest advantage in making a deep playoff run. Now it is a prerequisite. Continue reading...

Robert Keith Packer of Virginia pleads guilty to parading, demonstrating or picketing in Capitol buildingA Virginia man who wore a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt at the US Capitol during last year’s riot pleaded guilty on Wednesday to joining the mob of people who stormed the building.Photographs of Robert Keith Packer wearing the sweatshirt with the antisemitic message went viral after the 6 January 2021 insurrection. Continue reading...

Advocates and displaced residents condemn move amid fears for safety: ‘They are just trying to survive’Officials in Los Angeles have cleared a homeless encampment near SoFi stadium, where the Super Bowl will take place in three weeks, drawing backlash from human rights groups and the unhoused residents who have been displaced.On Monday and Tuesday, the state transit agency Caltrans shut down the tent community, which visitors would probably have passed on their way to the big game, calling it a “safety issue”. Continue reading...

Breyer, 83, had been under pressure from progressives eager to fill a seat on the supreme court while the Democrats hold powerJustice Stephen Breyer will retire from the supreme court, according to widespread media reporting on Wednesday, which, if confirmed by the court, will provide Joe Biden with the opportunity to fulfill a campaign pledge by nominating the first Black woman judge to the bench.Such a choice would be a milestone and bolster the liberal wing of the bench, even as it weathers a dominant conservative super-majority achieved under the Trump administration. Continue reading...

Analysis: president faces high expectations as he prepares make one of his most consequential decisionsIn his spare time, Justice Stephen Breyer enjoyed taking the bench at humorous “mock trials” of characters such as Macbeth and Richard III for Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company. The case usually turned on epic battles over succession.Now Washington is about to be consumed by the question of who will inherit Breyer’s crown following his reported decision to retire from the US supreme court. At 83, he is its oldest member, one of three liberals outnumbered by six conservatives. Continue reading...

A ‘devastating loss’ to the Atlanta zoo, the gorilla’s cause of death has yet to be determined by officialsThe world’s oldest male gorilla, named Ozzie, was found dead by his care team at the Atlanta zoo Tuesday, zoo officials announced. Ozzie was 61.The cause of the gorilla’s death was not immediately known though Ozzie began showing signs of low appetite last week, the zoo said in a news release. The zoo’s veterinary team treated Ozzie for symptoms including facial swelling, weakness and inability to eat or drink fluids. Continue reading...

One man allegedly responsible for half of San Francisco’s hate crimes, say authoritiesReports of hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the city of San Francisco increased dramatically last year, according to new police data, in what law enforcement called an “alarming rise”.Preliminary data from the San Francisco police department showed reports of incidents where police believe an anti-Asian bias played a role jumped from nine in 2020 to 60 in 2021, a 567% increase, in the city of 875,000 people. Continue reading...

Boat capsized in Atlantic Ocean between Bahamas and Florida in what officials say was ‘suspected human smuggling venture’The US Coast Guard was battling ocean currents and time on Wednesday after rescue teams found one body while a frantic search for 38 other people reported missing continued, after a boat capsized in the Atlantic between the Bahamas and Florida.The accident killed at least one person and left a single known survivor, while US authorities launched a criminal investigation into suspected human smuggling. Continue reading...

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said 'there will be no change 'to Washington’s support for Ukraine’s right to pursue Nato membership, the most contentious issue in relations with Moscow.

San Jose city council approved the measure Tuesday, despite swift opposition from gun owners threatening lawsuitsA California city has voted to require gun owners to carry liability insurance in what’s believed to be the first measure of its kind in the United States.The San Jose city council on Tuesday night overwhelmingly approved the measure despite opposition from gun owners who said it would violate their second amendment rights and promised to sue. Continue reading...

‘Fraudulent elector certifications’ sent from states won by Biden in effort to subvert election result and declare Trump the winnerFederal prosecutors have launched an investigation into the attempt by Republicans in seven presidential battleground states won by Joe Biden in 2020 to subvert the election result by sending bogus slates of Donald Trump electors to Congress.The ploy was one of the central tactics used by Trump loyalists as part of the “big lie” that he had defeated his Democratic challenger. The fake slates of electors were forwarded to congressional leaders, who then came under pressure to delay certification of Biden’s victory on 6 January 2021, the day of the Capitol insurrection. Continue reading...