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Leon Black, one of New York’s wealthiest men, locked in a bitter dispute with a former lover who accuses him of sexual violenceWith Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal conviction working its way toward an appeal, and Virginia Giuffre’s civil case against Prince Andrew caught up in arguments over evidence and depositions, another high-profile case linked to the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is working through the New York court system.It too is dragging in some of the biggest names in elite New York society, in this case sending shockwaves through the rarefied world of Manhattan finance. Continue reading...

Russell Westbrook and Frank Vogel have taken an outsized share of the blame for the Lakers’ struggles, but maybe the composition of this team was doomed from the jumpAt 37 years old, LeBron James is having one of the best seasons of his 18-year NBA career.The Los Angeles Lakers star is averaging 28.8 points (his most since 2009-10), 7.6 rebounds and 6.4 assists in 33 games this season, shooting 51.7% from the field, 36.4% from three and 75.4% from the free-throw line, all above his career averages. After a relatively slow start and then an abdominal injury that sidelined him for eight games, James has been an MVP-level player over his last 15 games, averaging 33/9/6 on 53/37/75 shooting splits with 1.5 steals and 1.3 blocks. Continue reading...

Lawyer Mark Richard files request for return of gun and other items ‘to ensure firearm in question is properly destroyed’Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois man acquitted last year of fatally shooting two men and wounding a third during racial justice protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020, is requesting the return of the gun.Rittenhouse killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, when he shot them with an assault rifle as he roamed the streets of Kenosha with other armed men acting as self-described militia during protests over the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white officer. Continue reading...

Romney, Cheney and others were hailed as the conscience of the party but their deeds in the Senate have provoked accusations of hypocrisyThey have been hailed as the conscience of the Republican party, heroes of the resistance to former US president Donald Trump’s hostile takeover.But Senator Mitt Romney, Congresswoman Liz Cheney and others this month helped kill off a voting rights bill that Democrats say is essential to protecting democracy from a Trump-driven onslaught. Continue reading...

Some Trumpland observers are convinced that he is in serious legal trouble as New York’s AG investigation of Trump Organizations’s finances intensifiesWhen Donald Trump announced plans in 2006 to build a golf complex on ancient sand dunes on the Aberdeenshire coast in Scotland he told reporters it was love at first sight. “As soon as I saw it there was no question about it,” he said. It would be the world’s “greatest golf course”.This week Trump International Scotland became a central element of a case that looks poised to dominate his post-presidential life, and could even put him behind bars. Continue reading...

Lawsuit claims employee from state-funded program informed couple they would not serve them ‘because of their Jewish faith’A Jewish couple from Tennessee has filed a lawsuit against the state’s Department of Children’s Services after a state-funded Christian program denied them foster care services for religious reasons.According to the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram signed up for the foster-parent training class and home-study certification process last January at the Holston United Methodist Home for Children. Continue reading...

Court’s conservative supermajority appears open to reversing Roe, overturning nearly 50 years of precedent since 1973 decisionIn 1974, on the first anniversary of the Roe v Wade supreme court decision, abortion opponents gathered on the National Mall in Washington to “march for life”. They vowed to return each year until the ruling, which established the right to abortion, was no longer the law of the land.On Friday, anti-abortion activists from across the country braved sub-zero temperatures and the coronavirus pandemic to assemble in Washington, more hopeful than ever that this would be their last march to a court where the fate of Roe will soon be decided. Continue reading...

The US secretary of state described talks in Geneva with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, intended to reduce tensions that have risen since Russia massed troops near Ukraine's border, as ‘frank and substantive’. But Antony Blinken repeated the US and Nato’s position that there could still be no compromise on the central issue of the right of Ukraine and other countries to join Nato in the future

Messages said there should be ‘no more stolen election talk’ and ‘no more crazy people’ should be admitted to president’s orbit

Unpublished executive order, obtained by Politico, among documents provided to January 6 panel after court ruling

New justice department unit alleges Texas man posted message on Craigslist calling for deaths of several officialsA special justice department unit created to combat threats against election officials made its first arrest on Friday after a man allegedly posted threats online against Georgia election workers.Chad Stark, a 54-year-old resident of Texas, was arrested by law enforcement after officials alleged he posted a message on Craigslist on 5 January 2021 saying that he wanted “Georgia Patriots” to kill several election officials. Continue reading...

Figures show benefit of Covid vaccines and boosters to reduce hospital risk as agency says: ‘Get vaccinated as soon as possible’New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revealed that unvaccinated adults infected with Covid-19 who are 65 and older are 49 times more likely to need hospitalization compared to those who have received booster doses.The CDC also found that in December, unvaccinated adults in that same age group experienced a rate of Covid-related hospitalization 17 times higher than those who are fully vaccinated. Continue reading...

Whether it’s the monarchy, the union or the BBC, today’s Tories are trampling on the values they once claimed to cherishJust because Boris Johnson approaches every issue thinking only of Boris Johnson does not mean we have to do the same. Even the crisis that now engulfs the prime minister, and sees his fate hang on Tory MPs’ reaction to a Sue Gray report that could come next week, is not only about him. It’s tempting to see it that way – to look for the roots of the partygate scandal in Johnson’s arrogance, entitlement and narcissism – but it’s a double mistake.As a matter of politics, it’s unwise because it would allow the Conservatives to ditch Johnson, pick a successor and claim to be a new government exorcised of its demon, with no need for the electorate to turn to Labour. But it’s also wrong.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Henry Cuellar, a member of the House of Representatives since 2004, said he would fully cooperate with the investigationCongressman Henry Cuellar of Texas has had his home and campaign office raided this week as apart of a federal investigation into Azerbaijan and US businessmen who may have ties to the country, according to senior officials.On Wednesday, the FBI searched Cuellar’s property, in what it described as “court-authorized law enforcement activity”. Witnesses said at least a dozen federal agents moved through Cuellar’s home and office, carrying out various items and cases, as first reported by the Monitor of McAllen, Texas. Continue reading...

Who came back? Who fell away? Who changed tracks? Continue reading...

While Biden has made mistakes, his biggest obstacles – such as electoral biases built into the US system – are not his doingA year into his term, the Biden administration is in shambles. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema’s support for the legislative filibuster has killed the Democratic voting rights push. Biden’s Build Back Better plan, a massive reconciliation package containing initiatives on issues from climate change to childcare is, for now, dead in the water; Manchin and Sinema will determine whether any of its provisions survive in attenuated form.Immigration reform and healthcare reform, both central to Democratic intra-party debates during the 2020 primaries, have fallen entirely off the radar. The US supreme court may overturn Roe v Wade in the coming months. The latest wave of the coronavirus pandemic is still ravaging the country thanks not only to Covid denialists and vaccine skeptics on the right, but an administration that has struggled to keep its pledges on easy access to tests. Abroad, Biden’s courageous withdrawal from Afghanistan ⁠– a kept promise even the president’s harshest critics on the left were willing to give him credit for ⁠– has been marred by economic sanctions that have left 23 million Afghans without enough to eat, and the media is already itching to blame Biden for a Russian invasion of Ukraine.Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Mike Lindell is being sued by UK-based company Smartmatic over his claims that it switched votes from Trump to Biden in 2020The MyPillow CEO, Mike Lindell, is facing another defamation lawsuit for promoting his conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was rigged against Donald Trump.Smartmatic, a UK-based voting machine company, filed a lawsuit against Lindell on Tuesday claiming that Lindell espoused lies about the company switching votes from Trump to Joe Biden in order to better sell his products. Continue reading...

Ticket stubs, newspaper cuttings and letters from my mother’s old employer. But what is treasure and what is trash?I moved into my present apartment seven years ago, and my six crates of papers moved with me – directly from one closet, where they had squatted undisturbed for five years, to another, where the same fate awaited. For almost two decades, these things have followed me around, and I’ve never had the slightest inclination to go through them.Then last week, in a fit of January decluttering fervour, I decided to reclaim my closet. Everything came out into the living room, where it seemed to me an achievable aim to aggregate these six crates down into a single container. I could probably do it in an hour, I thought. Four days later and here I still am: surrounded by papers, trying to weigh the value of a letter from my mother’s then 17-year-old brother to her in 1967, and whether I should keep receipts from my tax return in 1998.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

As shareprice drops, CEO admits firm needs to ‘evaluate’ size of workforce and reset productionPeloton is considering workforce cuts and production changes as investors hammered its share price after a report said it was considering halting the manufacture of its exercise bikes because of a slump in demand.The company’s chief executive, John Foley, said a report by CNBC claiming that it plans to temporarily halt production of its exercise bike and treadmill products was “incomplete, out of context, and not reflective of Peloton’s strategy”. Continue reading...

Senate minority leader suggests African Americans and Americans are two distinct groups. Plus, Sonny Rollins on his years playing on the Williamsburg Bridge

Ramped up security, risk trainings and compliance reviews part of new policies to be implemented – but will they work?A slew of sexual violence and drugging allegations prompted officials at the University of Southern California to shut down all fraternity parties last fall. Now the parties are back on – but with new rules.Security guards will be stationed on stairways and in public areas, risk and sexual violence prevention trainings will be mandatory for members and chapters will have to complete compliance reviews before and after all gatherings when they resume in March, according to details outlined in an action plan this week. Continue reading...

The US singer and actor Meat Loaf has died aged 74, his agent has confirmed. No cause of death was shared. His 1977 debut album Bat Out of Hell is one of the biggest-selling albums in history, while his 1993 album Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell produced the global hit single I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That). It was his only UK No 1 single, spending seven weeks at the top

Meat Loaf’s 1993 album Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell produced the global hit single I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That). It was his only UK No 1 single, spending seven weeks at the top. In his 1998 VH1 Storytellers special, Meat Loaf said 'what is "that"?' is the question he was asked most frequently and he explained it on stage using a blackboard and a pointer Continue reading...

The Mavericks roster has often failed to reflect the demographics of the league. There are a number of reasons, some more justifiable than othersIn 2020, the NBA was 74.2% black and 16.9% white. It seems every decade, the white NBA player becomes less relevant. Yet one franchise has often kept the dream of mediocre white guys alive: the Dallas Mavericks. In 15 of the last 21 Mavs seasons, there were three or more white players on the 12-man active roster. In more than half of those 15 seasons there were at least four white players, not to mention at least two starting white players. The Mavericks, in the literal sense, do not look like the rest of the league.It’s tempting to put this down to racism or at least unconscious bias on the part of the Mavericks and their owner, Mark Cuban. But, if anything, the opposite is true. Although the Mavericks have a dubious history of toxic workplace culture when it comes to female employees, Cuban has thrown his support behind Black Lives Matter and has appointed a black CEO (Cynthia Marshall), president (Terdema Ussery), head coaches (Jason Kidd, Quinn Buckner, Jim Cleamons and Avery Johnson) and general manager (Nico Harrison) during his time in Dallas. Continue reading...

The president has failed to capitalise on progressive sentiment: his party needs to stand up for the working classHow should one feel about the first year of the Biden presidency?I can’t really say I’m disappointed, since I didn’t have high hopes going into it. But I do feel dread. This last year has felt a bit like being trapped in a nail-biting intermission between two horror films. The opening instalment consisted of Donald Trump’s first four years in office – it ended with the cliffhanger of a deadly plague and a surreal, poorly executed, but still terrifying ransacking of the Capitol. The sequel practically writes itself, as the man ascends to power a second time, even more emboldened and determined to hold on to power.Astra Taylor is a writer, organiser and documentary maker Continue reading...

Eight teams remain after a brutal Super Wild Card Weekend. Which four teams will advance to the conference finals?OK, so the much ballyhooed Super Wild Card Weekend slate ended up being something of a bust. Of the six games, four ended up being blowouts, with only the Cincinnati Bengals’ win over the Las Vegas Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys’ epic choke-job against the San Francisco 49ers providing much drama. However, with the NFL playoff field culled down to eight, the divisional round traditionally ends up providing fans with the most exciting four games of the year. Here are our predictions for which teams will be advancing to the conference finals. Continue reading...

Mia Mottley is just one of a raft of strong women across the Caribbean and South America tackling society’s most pressing issues. The world could learn a lot from themThere is a common misconception that the developing world is full of archaic values and that women struggle to have their voices heard. The more countries I visit and the more female leaders I speak to, the more I am convinced the contrary is true.In fact, those in positions of power worldwide could learn important lessons from these strong women when it comes to tackling some of society’s most pressing issues, including pandemics, the climate crisis, education and infrastructure. Continue reading...

Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell has been criticised after saying that Black Americans vote 'in just as high a percentage as Americans'. The comment came after Senate Democrats failed to pass voting rights protections in the run-up to this November's midterm elections that will determine control of Congress in 2023.A reporter asked McConnell if he had a message for voters of color who were concerned that, without the John R Lewis Voting Rights Act, they were not going to be able to vote in the midterm. 'Well, the concern is misplaced because, if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,' McConnell said

In an extremely bruising loss for Biden, Republicans used the filibuster to block the sweeping bill from passingFor a little over a year, America has faced a democratic crisis unlike any it has seen in recent history.As Republicans have spread lies about the 2020 presidential election, confidence in it remains staggeringly low and about 1 in 3 Americans now believe Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. Republicans who claim the election was stolen are trying to grab key election administration roles, prompting unprecedented alarm that a future election could be overturned. Continue reading...

Ex-whistleblower says group enlisted his help to seek potentially damaging information on two members of Congress to prod them to back audits in key states Trump lostFBI agents and the House panel investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol have both learned of an alleged plan by allies of retired army Lt Gen Michael Flynn to gather “intelligence” on top Republicans to “move” them to back election audits in key states Trump lost, said ex-whistleblower Everett Stern who talked to the panel and the FBI.Stern, who runs the intelligence firm Tactical Rabbit and is a Republican vying for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, in multiple interviews with the Guardian said two Flynn associates with the rightwing Patriot Caucus group enlisted his help in April in a scheme to seek potentially damaging information on two Republican members of Congress to prod them to back an audit of the 2020 vote that Joe Biden won. Continue reading...

America in Crisis brings together 40 leading American photographers and more than 120 works exploring social change in the US from the 1960s to the present day. The exhibition, organised by Saatchi Gallery, opens from 21 January to 3 April

About 500 miles into the journey, the flight had to turn back as the customer refused to comply with the federal mask mandateFor airline staff, navigating the pandemic has meant grappling with a surge in bad behavior, ranging from temper tantrums to punching flight attendants in the face.In the latest incident, 129 passengers paid a remarkable price: a maskless “disruptive customer” forced American Airlines’ flight AAL38 flying from Miami to London to turn around and go back, the New York Times reported. The reversal occurred off the North Carolina coast, after the flight had traveled about 500 miles. Continue reading...

Republican Senate minority leader’s comments came after party members blocked voting rights bill and changes to filibuster ruleSenate minority leader Mitch McConnell has sparked widespread outrage by appearing to refer to African Americans and Americans as two separate groups in comments about Black voters that have since gone viral.The Kentucky Republican was speaking after Republican senators once again blocked Democrats’ voting rights legislation on Capitol Hill on Wednesday evening. Continue reading...

DA requests subpoena power to compel testimony from witnesses, such as Brad Raffensperger, who Trump asked to ‘find’ 11,780 votesThe prosecutor for Georgia’s biggest county on Thursday requested a special grand jury with subpoena power to aid her investigation into former US president Donald Trump’s efforts to influence the state’s 2020 election results.In a letter to Fulton county’s chief judge, first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper, district attorney Fani Willis wrote that multiple witnesses have refused to cooperate without a subpoena requiring their testimony. Continue reading...

President alarmed Ukraine with ‘minor incursion’ remark on Wednesday, as confidence in Biden’s leadership eroded by series of problemsJoe Biden on Thursday marked a year since his inauguration as president obliged to confront the same urgent crises he inherited when he took the oath of office: an unrelenting pandemic, economic uncertainty and a democracy threatened by partisan division and lies.But now those challenges have been compounded by a string of setbacks, both at home and abroad, that have eroded confidence in his leadership. Continue reading...

Investigators seek testimony from former first daughter, with panel increasingly focused on Donald Trump’s inner circleThe House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is asking Ivanka Trump, the daughter of the former president, to appear for a voluntary deposition to answer questions about Donald Trump’s efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.The move by the panel marks an aggressive new phase in its inquiry into the 6 January insurrection, as House investigators seek for the first time testimony from a member of the Trump family about potential criminality on the part of the former president. Continue reading...

Board of directors say Vishal Garg has reflected on his leadership style and received executive coaching during his time offVishal Garg, the CEO of online mortgage lender Better.com, has officially returned to work after taking a hiatus in December when he was criticised for firing more than 900 employees by video chat.In a letter sent to Better.com employees and reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, the company’s board of directors announced Garg’s return, saying he had reflected on his leadership style and received executive coaching during his time off. Continue reading...

This latest defeat is not a fatal blow. The struggle for democracy is ongoing – and our fate has not been decided yetAt the conclusion of the 1984 Democratic national convention, Jesse Jackson gathered his supporters and offered important perspective to those of us who had labored long and hard on his presidential campaign, telling us, “We’ve never gotten freedom at a convention. The convention is a comma, where you pause and go on. We’re going to keep fighting for freedom – at the polls, in the courts, in the streets.” And then he concluded by invoking the phrase made famous by Malcolm X – “Freedom, by any means necessary.”This week’s fight in the US Senate over the voting rights bill is a comma in a much, much longer story. It is a story that started in 1619 when Africans were brought in chains to America’s shores to do the work that created the wealth that made many white people rich. It is a story encapsulated in the country’s 1790 Naturalization Act, one of the nation’s very first pieces of legislation, which stated that citizenship is reserved to “free white person[s]” (a law that defined US immigration policy until 1965). It is a story that saw hundreds of thousands of Americans who wanted to be able to continue to buy and sell Black bodies go to war and kill hundreds of thousands of other Americans who sought to end slavery. Continue reading...

Investigation finds majority of cases probably linked to pre-existing medical conditions, environmental factors or stressAn initial CIA investigation into the mysterious set of symptoms known as Havana syndrome has found that it is unlikely to be the result of a worldwide campaign of attacks by a foreign power against US diplomats and spies.However, two dozen cases, including some of those originally afflicted in Havana in 2016, could not be explained and would be further studied for evidence of a possible attack, according to a senior CIA official who briefed the US press. Continue reading...

The reason it failed is simple: 50 Republicans didn’t support the proposals and two Democrats opposed changing the filibusterHello, and happy Thursday,It’s difficult to figure out what to say about the kind-of-surprising-yet- not-really-surprising-at-all collapse of Democrats’ effort to pass sweeping voting rights legislation.I interviewed Martin Luther King III and his daughter Yolanda about what comes next in the fight for voting rights.Governor Ron DeSantis is proposing a massive new state agency to investigate election crimes, even though there’s little evidence of fraud in Florida.Preparations for the upcoming Texas primary are a bit of a mess as officials struggle to implement the state’s new voting restrictions. Officials have reported rejecting high percentages of mail-in ballot applications.The Ohio supreme court struck down GOP-drawn maps for both the state legislature and Congress, saying they were so partisan they violated the state constitution.Republicans in Virginia and Arizona have introduced a slew of new voter restrictions. Continue reading...

Manchin and Sinema’s intransigence on the filibuster helps the Republican party usher in an era of voter suppression and election subversionThe last chance for federal legislation to stem the tide of Republican state-level attacks on the franchise died this week, when Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema rejected a bid by the Senate’s Democratic majority to change the filibuster rules to allow the passage of two voting rights bills.The Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would together serve to establish a baseline of federal rules enabling access to the ballot in all 50 states, and would restore the congressional authority to oversee new election laws in states that have a history of racist voting restrictions – a civil rights-era provision that was gutted by the Republican-controlled supreme court. But the two bills have been blocked repeatedly by Senate Republicans, who have used the chamber’s supermajority rule to prevent them from coming to a vote.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Vice-president warns of ‘severe costs’ for any Russian incursion after president’s press conference raised doubts.Kamala Harris has joined in on the White House’s campaign to repair Joe Biden’s flub on Ukraine in his press conference on Wednesday, where he revealed Nato is divided on how to respond to a “minor incursion” from Russia.“The president of the United States has been very clear, and we as the United States are very clear: if Putin takes aggressive action, we are prepared to levy serious and severe costs. Period,” Harris said in a Thursday morning appearance on NBC’s Today Show. Continue reading...

Bonhams says late supreme court justice’s collection gives sense of who she was and how she came to beThe personal library of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late US supreme court judge who became a liberal and feminist icon for championing women’s rights, is up for auction.Among more than 1,000 books from Ginsburg’s collection are legal textbooks from her student days, literature, feminist classics, and works by her fellow supreme court justices. Continue reading...