US news | The Guardian

Drivers call for federal action to address what they say are decreasing pay and rampant fraudUS truck drivers are pushing for federal action to address what they say are deteriorating working conditions, decreasing pay and rampant fraud.Caleb Fernandez, a long-distance truck driver since 2017, said he often spends hours waiting to load or unload his truck’s cargo without getting paid for the time. It can be drawn out to several hours, which will often disrupt his entire schedule for the week and he doesn’t receive any compensation for those hours. Continue reading...

The small, agricultural town of Planada was inundated amid a wave of intense storms this winter. Residents, many of whom are undocumented, say they have been neglectedNearly four months after the waters washed through Planada, most of Samuel Gomez’s one-bedroom house has been stripped back to the studs. He was still sleeping in a small room at the back of the house – the only one that hadn’t been completely wrecked.“Yeah, I’ll get sick from all this,” said Gomez, 80, gesturing at the mould-marred corners and sludge-soaked floorboards. “But where do I go?” Continue reading...

Years ago, Putin lifted much of the censorship that haunted the Soviet Union. Now it’s back with a vengeance, and Russia’s artists are fleeingAs much as Russia is the country of Tolstoy and Rachmaninov, it is also the country of Stalin and the Lubyanka prison – a nation built as much on beauty as it is on the blood of its people. Russians cherish their cultural history just as strongly as people cherish ours in Britain. And yet historically, to be creative in Russia is to incur a significant risk, for an act of creation is also an act of freedom.In the years of the Soviet Union, speaking one’s mind might mean being taken to a windowless room and then to Siberia. Today, Russians can – and do – face the same kind of danger for speaking out against Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. In the words of Pyotr Stolypin: “In Russia, every 10 years everything changes, and nothing changes in 200 years.”William Fear is a writer based in London Continue reading...

Federal prosecutors’ investigation into possible crimes involving taxes and gun purchase appears near completionThe White House is bracing for political fallout from a looming decision by federal prosecutors over whether to charge Joe Biden’s son Hunter with tax crimes and lying about his drug use when he bought a handgun.In a signal that the investigation is nearing completion, Hunter’s lawyers last month held a meeting with David Weiss, the top federal prosecutor in Delaware, at the justice department in Washington, the Washington Post said. A separate report by CNN noted that Hunter’s longtime lawyer Chris Clark was among those entering the department headquarters. Continue reading...

Abdullah al-Derazi and Youssef al-Manasif have appealed to secretary of state Antony Blinken as their cases are being reviewedTwo Saudis who were arrested and allegedly tortured for crimes they were accused of committing as minors are facing an imminent threat of execution, in what human rights experts say is a sign of the kingdom’s violation of its own promise to end death penalty cases against child defendants.In a letter to US secretary of state Antony Blinken, a family member of one defendant, Abdullah al-Derazi, describes how Abdullah was swept off the street and disappeared for three months in August 2014 for protest crimes he is alleged to have committed when he was 17 years old. Continue reading...

Authorities are stumped after seven cows are mutilated in three counties within weeksTheir tongues were cut off, but there was no spilled blood. No signs of struggle. No footprints or tire tracks were found. Investigators were stumped: who is going on a murderous rampage of cows in Texas, and how are there no clues surrounding their deaths?It seemed a scene straight out of The Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch, the reality TV show on the History Channel about the Utah ranch that is supposedly the site of unexplained supernatural phenomena. Continue reading...

Tech CEOs want us to believe that generative AI will benefit humanity. They are kidding themselvesInside the many debates swirling around the rapid rollout of so-called artificial intelligence, there is a relatively obscure skirmish focused on the choice of the word “hallucinate”.This is the term that architects and boosters of generative AI have settled on to characterize responses served up by chatbots that are wholly manufactured, or flat-out wrong. Like, for instance, when you ask a bot for a definition of something that doesn’t exist and it, rather convincingly, gives you one, complete with made-up footnotes. “No one in the field has yet solved the hallucination problems,” Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet, told an interviewer recently.Naomi Klein is a Guardian US columnist and contributing writer. She is the bestselling author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine and Professor of Climate Justice and Co-director of the Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia Continue reading...

There is no other mainstream sport where carnage and indifference occur so regularly – and are as toleratedI was 18 when I first saw a racehorse break down. It was the late 1990s and I was an exercise rider galloping horses at Del Mar racetrack, the Pacific Ocean glistening in the distance. Seared into my memory is the image of a petite dark bay horse on the inside rail just by the wire in the bleached light of a southern California morning. The rider, who had escaped injury, stood tugging at the reins fighting to keep the horse still. The horse had suffered a clean break of the right front ankle and his foot dangled and swung from the bottom of his leg. He turned and staggered on the stump in panic – euthanasia would soon follow. I averted my eyes and felt instantly sick as I jogged my filly by, the siren that blares across the backside when there is an accident ringing through my head. At that time I could not have known it would be the first of many such scenes I would see over the years of my life on the track.Decades later the deaths roll on. Seven racehorses lost their lives in the days leading up to this year’s Kentucky Derby. Four breakdowns, a broken neck in the paddock, and two yet-to-be-explained collapses paint a grim picture of horse racing in America. Continue reading...

Rightwing lawyer Cleta Mitchell faces criticism after comments to GOP donors urging new rules to make voting harder for studentsRightwing election lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a key ally of Donald Trump as he pushed bogus claims of fraud to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 win, is facing intense fire from voting watchdogs and bipartisan criticism for urging curbs on college student voting, same day voter registration and absentee voting.The scrutiny of Mitchell, who runs the Election Integrity Network at the pro-Trump Conservative Partnership Institute to which a Trump Pac donated $1m dollars, was sparked by recent comments Mitchell made to Republican donors, and a watchdog report criticizing her advisory role with a federal election panel. Continue reading...

Those who opposed it must be portrayed as radical, or the whole rotten system it represents might come crashing downThe biggest illusion – and utility – of royal events such as the coronation is that we are somehow a part of them. We are, of course, in a way; we need to be for the institution of monarchy to have any meaning at all. But not as equals. We have the worst of both worlds: the royal family gives us nothing, and we in turn legitimise it, give it meaning and audience and pay, through subsidies and tax exemptions, for its ability to wow us. The monarchy does provide a service, but not to us. It is to an entire system of political decline and economic inequality that cannot withstand closer scrutiny, and so it must be embellished and cloaked in ceremony.And it was ever thus. The historian David Cannadine, in an essay on the “invented traditions” of royal ceremonies, wrote: “in a period of change, conflict or crisis”, unchanging ritual “might be deliberately unaltered so as to give an impression of continuity, community and comfort, despite overwhelming contextual evidence to the contrary.” That evidence to the contrary cannot be more overwhelming than reports that money for food banks has been diverted to pay for coronation events. What those funds bought was a coronation, much like the screens assembled to hide King Charles as he derobed, that for a moment erected an ornate cover that hid the nation’s hunger. Continue reading...

Senate majority whip and judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin ups pressure on chief justice Roberts to impose new ethics rulesUS supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s ties to conservative political figures is an American embarrassment, and the question is whether that is shameful enough to the country’s highest-ranking judge to do something about it, the Senate judiciary committee’s chairperson said on Sunday.“This tangled web around justice … Thomas just gets worse and worse by the day,” Illinois’s senior Democratic senator, Dick Durbin, said on CNN’s State of the Union. “I don’t know what is going to come up next. I thought I heard it all, but disclosures about his activities just embarrass me.” Continue reading...

Police say crash may have been intentional, and driver was arrested for reckless driving and could face other chargesEight people have been killed and 10 others were injured after a car plowed into a crowd outside a shelter serving migrants and homeless people in Brownsville, Texas, on Sunday, and investigators believe it may have been intentional, according to authorities.The car careened into the crowd of people who were sitting on the curb at a bus stop near the Ozanam Center at about 8.30am, the police department in Brownsville, which is near Texas’s border with Mexico, said. That came four days before the scheduled expiration of Title 42, the Covid-19 era policy that allows border patrol agents to swiftly expel migrants at the US’s southern border. Continue reading...

An SUV has slammed into a crowd, killing at least seven people and injuring at least 10 who were waiting at a bus stop outside a migrant shelter in the border city of Brownsville, Texas, police said. The driver was taken to the hospital for injuries sustained when the car rolled over and police also retrieved a blood sample and sent it to a Texas Department of Public Safety lab to test for intoxicants.

Federal agents reportedly examining social media history of alleged shooter Mauricio GarciaUS federal officials are looking into whether the gunman who killed eight people at a Dallas-area mall expressed an interest in white supremacist ideology, as they work to try to discern a motive for the attack, a law enforcement official has told the Associated Press.The official cautioned that the investigation was in its early stages. Continue reading...

The Dutchman started ninth on the grid but still came away with victory in Florida as his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez finished secondLap 2/57: Miami-area native Logan Sargeant is already in the pit, and it’s a long stop of nearly 30 seconds.Lap 1/57: Verstappen is playing the long game, opting for hard tires, but he’s already up one place to eighth. Continue reading...

The former Democrat says she speaks frequently with White House but ‘rejects party politics’ and stays mum on re-electionUS senator Kyrsten Sinema has vowed to never join the Republican party after she changed her party affiliation from Democrat to independent late last year.In an interview aired on Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Arizona senator said that she is “absolutely” done with the country’s two-party political system. Continue reading...

Critics say the Republican senator should advocate for meaningful gun control rather than invoke prayer after mass, deadly violenceTexas US senator Ted Cruz’s comment that he was “praying” for families of the eight victims killed in a shooting at a shopping mall in his state has sparked outrage as many critics say the Republican should advocate for meaningful gun control rather than repeatedly invoke prayer after mass, deadly violence.The backlash came as President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass gun control bills in the wake of Saturday’s attack, in which the gunman was also killed, in Allen, Texas. Continue reading...

Shoppers flee in panic after gunman steps out of silver sedan and opens fire at Premium Outlets mallWitnesses have described a scene of terror and chaos after a gunman killed eight people and wounded seven others at a shopping mall outside Dallas, Texas on Saturday.Hundreds of terrified shoppers fled in panic after a man stepped out of a silver sedan and opened fire at the Premium Outlets mall, a sprawling outdoor shopping centre in Allen, a community of about 100,000 people. Continue reading...

A gunman killed at least eight people at a mall outside Dallas, Texas, before being fatally shot by police at the scene. Witnesses describe seeing the shooter and walking past bodies, including those of children. Video footage from outside the shopping centre in the city of Allen shows the moments of panic as gunshots were heard inside the building. Mass shootings have become commonplace in the US, with at least 198 so far in 2023, the most at this point in the year since at least 2016, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The nonprofit group defines a mass shooting as any in which four or more people are wounded or killed

Xi Jinping’s aggressive stance and ‘wolf-warrior’ diplomacy drive the Philippines and other vulnerable countries into Washington’s armsUS efforts to counter Chinese military expansionism and political influence in the Indo-Pacific took another significant step forward last week with an agreement to deepen defence and security ties with the Philippines.Yet US president Joe Biden’s success in developing bilateral and multilateral alliances may have more to do with growing wariness across the region about Beijing than a sudden desire for closer partnership with Washington. Continue reading...

Other European royals would never have risked a display on this scale. From his much-mocked pledge of allegiance onwards, Charles’s gamble has gone terribly wrongThe king never said: “Who will rid me of this troublesome republican?” Of course he didn’t. No doubt he wrung his hands with woe at the sheer idiocy of the police arresting the head of Republic, Graham Smith, and others as they unloaded harmless “Not My King” placards on the morning of the coronation. What a gift to their cause. A letter from the Met had warned them “tolerance will be low”, but it never said it would be at absolute zero under the new anti-protest laws.The homemade sign that may have captured the mood of many read simply: “Don’t you think this is a bit silly?” Oh, but this is what we do so well! We invite the world to see us in our lavishly gilded splendour; parading the largest military display for 70 years, as the commentators boasted over and over, so that no visitors would guess our army is a fifth of its size at the last coronation. Continue reading...

An adopted woman travels from France to South Korea in search of her roots in Davy Chou’s star-making second filmThe Cambodian-French film-maker Davy Chou, a longtime champion of “lost” Cambodian cinema, made a splash in Cannes in 2016 with his dramatic feature debut, Diamond Island, a prize winner in the international critics’ week strand. For the lead role in his follow-up feature, Return to Seoul, about an adoptee who travels from France to Korea in search of her roots, he turned to Korean-born visual artist Park Ji-min, who had moved to France as a child but had no acting experience. An intense period of collaboration followed, and the result is this remarkably intimate and very affecting drama – an episodic odyssey (inspired by script consultant Laure Badufle) spanning the best part of a decade. It became Cambodia’s entry for this year’s 95th Academy Awards, and confirms both Chou and Park as major talents to watch, in whatever field.We first meet Freddie (Park) when she ships up in Seoul as if by accident; we later learn that she was bound for Tokyo, but all the flights were grounded. Hotel clerk Tena (Guka Han) seems to spy a lost soul and takes Freddie under her wing, although it soon becomes clear that this new arrival is also an agent of chaos, overturning polite social mores with an exuberance that suggests deep well-springs of buried anger and confusion. Continue reading...

The names in legal documents and fresh details of his daily itinerary present a picture of how Epstein tried to rebuild his reputationLike a Hollywood zombie, the scandal surrounding the late sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein is resurfacing to infect the reputations of the living, as names once again emerge from legal documents amid fresh details of his daily itinerary of meetings with prominent government, financial and cultural figures.The latest boldface names to emerge from a series of Wall Street Journal reports include the director of CIA, Williams Burns, and Kathryn Ruemmler, White House counsel under Barack Obama, alongside lesser figures including the leftwing professor and activist Noam Chomsky, billionaire venture capitalist Reid Hoffman and Lawrence Summers, former Harvard president and director of the National Economic Council under Obama. Continue reading...

As the world’s fastest female pitcher, 18-year-old Genevieve Beacom is smashing norms and fielding interest from US collegesAn Australian baseball prodigy believed to be the fastest female pitcher on the planet is fielding interest from US colleges and quietly dreaming of becoming the first woman to pitch in Major League Baseball.Genevieve Beacom, 18, a left-hand pitcher with a 138kph [85.9mph] fastball and mean curveball, who last year became the first female to play for a professional team in Australia, has just returned home to Victoria after a three-month stint at Tread Athletics, a private US-based baseball development facility. Continue reading...

Bruno Le Maire isn’t the only politician to try his hand at an erotic novel, but one passage has been singled out for attentionSex in novels is frequently terrible and occasionally so excruciating as to verge on the actionable; indeed, a legal precedent that would penalise writers for scorching their readers’ retinas with the sheer heat of embarrassment might function as a useful deterrent. Literature needs all the fans it can get; protect us from the throbbing gristle and heaving mammaries of a thousand overheated imaginations. Institute a particular ban on the word moist, and freedom of speech be damned. Alas, it would be too late to curb the creative enthusiasms of Bruno Le Maire, the French economy minister whose most recent novel, Fugue Américaine, has erm, risen to prominence courtesy of a dilated anus. Protect your eyes and do not enquire further.Naturally, much of the truly gripping stuff is going on beyond the page. Le Maire stands accused of fiddling while Paris burns, amusing himself on his typewriter as France’s citizens stand on the barricades protecting their pension rights and railing against the callousness of the Macron administration. This feels harsh: everyone has a right to a life outside work and writing about an anus seems small beer compared with eating one on national television in a celebrity game show, or hosting frothing rightwing debates, were one, say, to be a sitting member of parliament.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

‘Fifteen wheelbarrow loads’ of uncooked spaghetti and macaroni mysteriously left in Old Bridge creekResidents of a New Jersey town are stumped after they found about 500lbs of pasta inexplicably dumped next to a local brook.Last month, Nina Jochnowitz – a former candidate for a seat on the Old Bridge township council – posted pictures on to her Facebook page that showed heaps of spaghetti and macaroni preposterously dumped alongside a bank of Iresick brook. Continue reading...

In honouring the late Chanel designer, New York’s annual extravaganza overlooked his many faultsThe Met gala has come and gone in a brief cacophony of internet clicks. Like many people, I balance ignorance of its purpose (it’s an annual fundraiser for the Met museum’s Costume Institute) with needing to know what everyone wore. The men triumphed this year, what with Taika Waititi’s unstructured bluish-grey housecoat, Bad Bunny’s seductive white backless blazer, Barry Keoghan in retina-sizzling electric blue plaid and Pedro Pascal’s bare knees, cheeky scout grin and scarlet overcoat.Every Met gala has a theme, and this one honoured the late Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld. Lagerfeld’s designs were peppy and sellable. But the monochrome palette, the bouclé wool, the pearls, the silk jersey, the uncorseted black dress, the neat little shoulders and narrow silhouette, the androgyny and uniform aesthetics, the quilting and tweed, the chains and braids, the camellias, the handbag, the logo and – above all – Chanel No 5 perfume, whose sales keep the business running? Those were invented by one woman, the genius Coco Chanel. Continue reading...

Scott Fetgatter proposes legislation aimed at halting early release of certain sex offenders after mass killingAn Oklahoma state lawmaker is planning to introduce new legislation aimed at halting the early release of certain sex offenders after a convicted rapist killed six people – including five children – at his home the night before he faced another criminal trial.The proposal from state representative Scott Fetgatter would come after the killings in his district by 39-year-old Jesse McFadden, who authorities say murdered his wife, her three children and two of their friends before he died by suicide and their bodies were discovered on Monday. Continue reading...

Machaela Cavanaugh promises to hold up legislation unless bill to block gender-affirming healthcare for youth is droppedWhen state senator Machaela Cavanaugh set out to block every bill brought by the Nebraskan legislature this session, it was kind of an accident.She was so incensed by the advancement of LB 547, a bill looking to block gender-affirming healthcare for young people in Nebraska, she promised to hold up every single bill the legislature brought – including those she agreed with – unless her colleagues agreed to drop it. Continue reading...

It was hard to escape the sense of the absurd as a 21st-century democracy relived a medieval fantasyIt rained. Of course it did. It wouldn’t have been a proper coronation if it hadn’t. Brits wouldn’t have had it any other way. We were born to suffer. Keep calm and carry on.The first guests had started arriving at Westminster Abbey from early in the morning. Among them the lucky MPs who had received an invitation. Though many Tories had been complaining it was all a stitch-up by Number 10. That Rishi Sunak had hand-picked favourites and those he wanted to get on side. Whatever. Let’s hope they had strong bladders. It was going to be a long morning. Continue reading...

US homeland security secretary calls circumstances ‘difficult’ as ending of pandemic-era Title 42 restrictions approachesThe US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said on Friday that immigration authorities faced “extremely challenging” circumstances along the border with Mexico days before the end of asylum restrictions implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic.A surge of Venezuelan migrants through south Texas, particularly in and around the border community of Brownsville, has occurred over the last two weeks for reasons that Mayorkas said were unclear. On Thursday, 4,000 of about 6,000 migrants in border patrol custody in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley were Venezuelan. Continue reading...

Casey Cole White escaped from county jail last year helped by Vicky White, who died from self-inflicted gunshot woundAn Alabama jail detainee charged in the death of a high-ranking guard who helped him escape while he engaged in an affair with her pleaded guilty Thursday to the escape in exchange for having the murder case dismissed.Casey Cole White, 39, entered the plea agreement in Lauderdale county court, avoiding a June trial on the charge of felony murder in the death of Vicky White, the assistant director of corrections at the local jail. He continues to await trial on a separate murder charge. Continue reading...

Meg Ryan was declared ‘unrecognizable’ in headlines after attending a screening – even though the tabloids clearly recognized herOh no, it’s happened again. Every now and again a famous woman over the age of 45 has the temerity to go out in public without following The Rules of Ageing While Female and all hell breaks loose. This time the offender is Meg Ryan. The 61-year-old actor attended a documentary screening in New York this week, sparking immediately scrutiny from all the usual tabloids about her appearance and how much plastic surgery she might have had. Both the Daily Mail and Page Six declared Ryan “unrecognizable” in their headlines. Which is weird, because they clearly recognized her. Continue reading...

Reparations committee says admission of wrongdoing is not enough and seeks funding for services for descendants of enslaved peopleCalifornia’s reparations taskforce is due to vote on recommendations for a formal apology for the state’s role in perpetuating a legacy of slavery and discrimination that has thwarted black residents from living freely for decades.The nine-member committee, which first convened nearly two years ago, is expected to give final approval at a meeting in Oakland on Saturday to a list of ambitious proposals that will then be in the hands of state lawmakers. Continue reading...

Higher rates slow the renewable energy transition and shield oil and gas producers from competition by low-carbon producersIn late 2021, consumer price inflation surged in many countries. Prices shot up again following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In response, central banks drastically tightened monetary policy – raising interest rates from near zero to around 5% or more. Since the interest rate hikes have failed to bring down core inflation to the target rate of 2% favored by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB), the pressure for further rate hikes has been insistent.We have long doubted that central bank rate rises could control the new inflation at a socially acceptable price. In most countries, wages lag well behind inflation. Too much of the rise in prices clearly reflects the impact of higher profit margins and obvious supply bottlenecks.Thomas Ferguson is professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and director of research at the Institute for New Economic ThinkingServaas Storm is a senior lecturer at the Delft University of Technology Continue reading...

The dieting program is closing after 40 years. That doesn’t mean we’re moving towards body acceptanceI was 10 years old when I learned what bodies should – and shouldn’t – look like. Kirstie Alley was on TV, pointing to a paparazzi photo of what her pudgy stomach looked like before she tried Jenny Craig’s weight loss program. But after testing the brand’s signature mix of dieting, meal plans and personal coaching, Alley showed off her new physique: smooth, with no bumps peeking out from her body-con dress.Sitting cross-legged in front of the television, I peered down at my own stomach. It felt soft when I poked it. I decided it could be slimmer. That night, I went upstairs to my mother’s scale and weighed myself. It was the first time I ever knew my weight. Continue reading...

The contract that the writers are striking for could set a powerful precedent that AI must work for people, rather than being used to marginalize people to juice profitsThere is nothing particularly novel about thinking to yourself, “You know, my job used to be pretty decent. Now, I’m working harder and the money is getting scarcer. What happened?” You might think this, in 2023, as a college professor or a cab driver or a journalist or a factory worker. This is America – our entire economy is built on making millions of jobs worse, in order to make a few people very rich.What would be remarkable is if – when you realized that your once-good job was being made worse in order to satisfy the profit hunger of some faraway investment banker – you were able to actually do something about it. That, in our nation, would be news. That would be something for everyone to cheer for. The plain old workers standing up against enormous companies to stop the process that is turning their careers into execrable “gigs”. Is it a fairy tale? No, my friends. Welcome to the Great Writers Strike of 2023. Continue reading...

The required app often doesn’t work – and if it does it may send families a thousand miles along the border for their appointmentsWhen they arrived in Ciudad Juárez on 17 March, across the US-Mexican border from El Paso, Texas, Nestor Quintero and his family were penniless, hungry and homeless. But their primary concern was getting their hands on a smartphone.The 35-year-old Venezuelan migrant had found out in Tapachula, a city close to the Mexico-Guatemala border, that people hoping to enter the US to ask for asylum needed to secure an appointment through a recently introduced mobile phone app known as CBP One. Continue reading...

Across the Commonwealth, the contrast with the jubilation of 1953 is stark. Times have changed, but have the royals?When Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, there were celebrations across the Commonwealth. In Barbados, people were jubilant and the government even issued a postage stamp to commemorate the moment.Things have changed a great deal since then. Most Commonwealth citizens feel removed from the monarchy and will be going about their business as usual today. Curiosity will capture some of our attention, but for the average Barbadian man and woman the occasion will pass without much fanfare.Suleiman Bulbulia is a commissioner on Barbados’s constitutional reform commission and a former member of the republican status transition advisory committee Continue reading...

Lawsuit, filed two years after shooting at a FedEx facility where eight were killed, alleges advertising influenced the gunmanThree victims of a 2021 mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indiana are suing the gun manufacturer for the advertising of its products that the suit claims directly influenced part of the shooter’s actions.The lawsuit was filed two years after the shooting in Indianapolis, Indiana, when Brandon Scott Holes, a former employee at the facility, went on a rampage and killed eight. Continue reading...

Anger mounts that white subway rider who put Black man in chokehold was released without chargeAs New York City authorities continue to investigate the killing of an unhoused Black man who was put into a chokehold by a white transit passenger, anger and frustration mounted over the lack of an arrest in the case, reinforcing longstanding racial disparities over who gets charged for crimes in the city and nationally.“His killing is a reflection of deep racial bias in our society,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told the Guardian on Friday. “And the way he was treated after death is a reflection of other biases with regard to people who suffer mental illness. Continue reading...

Dennis Maliq Barnes of New Orleans announces he will attend Cornell University this fall to study computer scienceThe 16-year-old American high schooler who set what is believed to be a US record after collecting more than $10m in college scholarship offers is bound for the Ivy League.Dennis Maliq Barnes announced on Friday that he plans to enroll at Cornell University for the fall semester to study computer science after his 24 May graduation from New Orleans’s International high school. The Ithaca, New York, university only accepts 9% of applicants, and just 7% of its 15,000 or so students are Black like Barnes, according to the US News & World Report. Continue reading...

Peter Schwartz’s prison sentence is the longest so far among hundreds of cases stemming from the January 6 insurrectionA Kentucky man with a long criminal record has been sentenced to a record-setting 14 years in prison for attacking police officers with pepper spray and a chair as he stormed the US Capitol with his wife.Peter Schwartz’s prison sentence is the longest so far among hundreds of Capitol riot cases. The judge who sentenced Schwartz on Friday also handed down the previous longest sentence – 10 years – to a retired New York police department officer who assaulted a police officer outside the Capitol on 6 January. Continue reading...