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Engineers are focused on reducing its carbon footprint, ignoring the governance issues raised by the technologyWhen the cryptocurrency bitcoin first made its appearance in 2009, an interesting divergence of opinions about it rapidly emerged. Journalists tended to regard it as some kind of incomprehensible money-laundering scam, while computer scientists, who were largely agnostic about bitcoin’s prospects, nevertheless thought that the distributed-ledger technology (the so-called blockchain) that underpinned the currency was a Big Idea that could have far-reaching consequences.In this conviction they were joined by legions of techno-libertarians who viewed the technology as a way of enabling economic life without the oppressive oversight of central banks and other regulatory institutions. Blockchain technology had the potential to change the way we buy and sell, interact with government and verify the authenticity of everything from property titles to organic vegetables. It combined, burbled that well-known revolutionary body Goldman Sachs, “the openness of the internet with the security of cryptography to give everyone a faster, safer way to verify key information and establish trust”. Verily, cryptography would set us free. Continue reading...

Declining viewers and Omicron-induced apathy could see gong ceremonies going the way of the untelevised Golden GlobesThe first mass use of the word “snub” in any given year ushers in award season for me. This year, Kristen Stewart has been snubbed, apparently, after the Screen Actors Guild failed to nominate her for a best actress award for her role as Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín’s Spencer. She had been widely tipped to pick up an Oscar nomination, perhaps for the brazen bizarreness of the casting, which actually sort of worked. If she has been snubbed here, commentators are asking, will she be shut out of the Oscars?As controversies go, it is a tame one, which speaks volumes about the unsettled state that award ceremonies seem to have found themselves in. I say this as someone with a disproportionate love of these ridiculous events, but even I am finding it difficult to care. Usually, I love the clothes and the speeches and being put out when something I adored is passed over in favour of something objectively worse, and feeling thrilled when Olivia Colman inevitably wins everything, and I love looking out for that precise moment when an actor adjusts their face from “absolutely fuming” to “gracious in defeat”. Continue reading...

Feminism isn’t about championing women like Nancy Pelosi just because they’re in high-powered positions: it’s about fighting for a more equal societyHere’s a thorny philosophical quandary for you: if you’re a politician who shapes policy and is privy to confidential information that will impact the stock market, should you and your immediate family be able to trade individual stocks?Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for order Continue reading...

Maxwell was convicted last month of recruiting and grooming teenage girls for Jeffrey Epstein to abuseGhislaine Maxwell is due to be sentenced in late June after her conviction last month on charges including sex trafficking and conspiracy relating to the recruitment of teenage girls for financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse.US district judge Alison J Nathan announced the 28 June date on Friday even as she waits to resolve defence claims that a new trial should be ordered after a juror’s public admissions after the verdict about his childhood sexual abuse. Continue reading...

The White House claims to follow the science. But it has missed chance after chance to limit infection – with disastrous resultsOn 2 December, the White House announced its winter plans for a likely Covid surge that would come as cold temperatures and holiday plans drove people indoors. It included an alarmingly inadequate plan to get at-home tests to people.The plan dropped nine days after scientists in South Africa had announced that they had discovered a new variant of the coronavirus, one that appeared to be even more transmissible. The US had acted quickly to ban travel from South Africa and several other southern African countries, claiming that such restrictions would “slow things down” and “buy time” for the US to prepare. Continue reading...

In an interview with the Guardian, the civil rights leader and his daughter talk about digging in and fighting onAs the US approaches the annual holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr, the family of the late civil rights leader is urging Americans to hold off on celebrations. Instead, they’re urging Americans protest and to demand the Senate pass sweeping voting rights legislation.But the prospects for such an effort, for now, seem bleak. On Thursday, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, two Democrats who staunchly support the filibuster, said they would not back an effort to change the rules to advance voting rights legislation. Because no Republicans support the changes, that effectively kills any chance of passing voting rights legislation. Continue reading...

The Raiders’ Carl Nassib is proving that coming out is not a distraction to a team or the game and that you can win big when your team can accept and support its playersIt is no exaggeration to say the world was watching when Carl Nassib became the first active player on an NFL roster to come out as gay. Some watched with shock, most with support. Still, for many of us, myself included, beyond the celebration of his barrier-breaking announcement, was something deeper behind our attentive gaze, a question: What now?A couple weeks after the initial media craze, it seemed like business as usual for the Las Vegas Raiders and the sports world as a whole. Only Carl himself will know just how much his announcement tipped the scales of acceptance and bigotry one way or the other in his locker room, on the field, and with peers or fans. As an NFL veteran, I know that most teams will go through collective obstacles, distractions and hard times, and that off-the-field problems or events can affect on-field performance. However, after last Sunday’s playoff clinching performance, we can all proudly say that Carl’s coming out was not one of those things for the Raiders. Continue reading...

After a week of setbacks, some analysts say time is running short to impress voters ahead of the November pollsEven for a White House familiar with roadblocks and frustration, Thursday’s setbacks on vaccine mandates and voting rights came as hammer blows.Aside from the immediate derailing of two key policy tenets of Joe Biden’s administration, the vaccine ruling by the supreme court, which quickly followed Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema’s public assassination of his voting reform efforts, prompted a new round of questions over whether his presidency was doomed. Continue reading...

Reporters this week found packages with labels of many major US mail companies including Amazon, REI among othersNewly released photos and videos showing train tracks littered with discarded boxes have cast fresh attention on the theft of packages from cargo containers crossing through Los Angeles in recent months.On tracks near downtown Los Angeles, a team from Agence-France Presse on Friday found packages with labels of most major US mail order and courier companies. Reporters from CBSLA on Thursday found boxes from retailers including Amazon, REI and others. CBSLA reported that Union Pacific, the railroad company operating the cargo trains, had cleaned up the area of tracks where the boxes were found three months ago and again about 30 days ago. Continue reading...

Ex-vice-president says Democratic push to expand voter access and 6 January effort to overturn the election are both ‘power grabs’Mike Pence has equated Democratic efforts to pass voting rights protections with the 6 January attack on the US Capitol, writing in a staggeringly misleading and inaccurate op-ed that both were “power grabs” which posed a threat to the US constitution.As vice-president to Donald Trump, Pence refused to overturn the 2020 election, rebuffing pressure to reject valid slates of electors at the Capitol on 6 January 2021. Continue reading...

The price tag on the roughly 2,000 sq ft Victorian, called ‘the worst house on the best block’, was the outcome of overbiddingA decaying, 122-year-old Victorian marketed as “the worst house on the best block” of San Francisco has sold for nearly $2m – an eye-catching price that the realtor said was the outcome of overbidding in an auction.A developer’s $1.97m cash offer for the 2,158 sq ft (200 sq metre) property in the Noe Valley neighborhood was finalized last week. On the social media page Zillow Gone Wild, some commenters marveled at the price while others questioned the value of a house with boarded-up windows, peeling paint and an unstable foundation. Continue reading...

Friday ruling came after FTC and seven states brought a case against Shkreli, nicknamed the ‘Pharma Bro’Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical entrepreneur vilified for astronomically hiking the price of a life-saving drug, has been barred for life from the pharmaceutical industry and fined $64.6m by a US court.The Friday ruling came after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and seven states brought a case against Shkreli, nicknamed the “Pharma Bro” for his sometimes outrageous behavior. Continue reading...

A landslide on 7 January caused the house to slide off its foundation, killing one dog and leaving the other trapped insideA dog that was trapped for six days inside a Seattle house that collapsed last week in a landslide has been rescued, officials said.“My baby. My baby,” said home owner Didi Fritts when a person emerged from the house Thursday carrying her alert black Labrador mix Sammy, KING-TV reported. Continue reading...

Miami-Dade police department has shared body cam footage of one of their officers rescuing a juvenile dolphin that was tangled in a fishing net off the coast of Miami, Florida. The footage shows officer Nelson Silva using a knife to cut the net and free the animal. The rescue took place on 10 December

Treasury department says relief funds have been redirected to unauthorized programs opposing mask use in schoolsThe Biden administration is threatening to recoup millions of dollars in Covid-19 relief funds from Arizona because the state has been discouraging families from following federal guidance that recommends wearing masks in schools.Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, has been at odds with the Biden administration for months over the use of the aid funds. Other Republican governors across the country have also been trying to use the funding for measures – such as tax cuts – that are not related to the pandemic and are not authorized under the terms of the grants. Continue reading...

Virginia bill banning teaching of ‘divisive concepts’ confused black civil rights campaigner with white senator Stephen DouglasA Republican bill to ban the teaching of “divisive concepts” in schools in Virginia ran into ridicule when among historical events deemed suitable for study, it described a nonexistent debate between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.Lincoln did engage in a series of historic debates hinged on the issue of slavery, in the Illinois Senate campaign of 1858. But he did so against Stephen Douglas, a senator who had ties to slavery – not against Frederick Douglass, the great campaigner for the abolition of slavery who was once enslaved himself. Continue reading...

Royal offspring are accidents waiting to happen. Far better to cut down the throne to an heir and a spareThe royal family is engaged in frantic damage limitation ahead of the Queen’s platinum jubilee this summer. The Duke of York’s court case, which could turn out to be a high-octane festival of royal humiliation, risks contaminating the celebrations. This should have nothing to do with Britain’s monarchy, except that it has everything to do with it. The essence of monarchy is its image; right now, the royal family’s public appearance looks messy.The lifestyles of the Queen’s son and grandson, the dukes of York and Sussex, have acquired the aura of a Shakespearean tragedy appropriate to their titles. The Duke of Sussex has done nothing wrong; as yet, neither has the Duke of York. Prince Harry was merely seeking to profit from his only marketable asset – royalty. Prince Andrew used the same asset to win unsavoury friendships, one of which laid him open to what he regards as outrageous blackmail, as yet untested in a court of law. His desperate hope was that a New York judge would disallow Virginia Giuffre’s suit. But American lawyers do not volunteer to starve. Continue reading...

Unsealed court documents provide the most detailed account to date of the alleged level of planning by far-right militiaThe seditious conspiracy charges against the leader of the Oath Keepers militia and 10 others related to the January 6 Capitol attack have revealed an armed plot against American democracy that involved tactical planning and a formidable arsenal of weapons.Court documents unsealed on Thursday provide the most detailed account to date of the level of planning by the far-right militia in the assault on the Capitol that was aimed at scuppering the certification of Joe Biden’s election win. Continue reading...

Reports of a wild party on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral haven’t yet done for Johnson – but there could be more to comeIncredible, when you think about it, that the ceremonial funeral of His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh had fewer attendees than “Slacky”’s leaving do the night before. That’s showbiz, I guess. Anyway: another day, another Downing Street party dispatch from the nation with the highest Covid death toll in Europe. If only Boris Johnson’s administration could have organised a piss-up in a brewery, instead of just in No 10.I’m sure Dominic Cummings has some complex 5D game-theory analysis as to why decision-making in Whitehall was systematically loaded toward bad outcomes, but a lot of us will be developing an alternative hypothesis. Namely, do you reckon one of the reasons we did so badly was because you lot were trashed half the time? Forgive me: I forgot to use the approved euphemism. Do you reckon one of the reasons you made impaired decisions and now seem to be suffering repeated memory loss was because of “the drinking culture at No 10”? I mean, honestly. Imagine being such a mess that even JOURNALISTS reckon you drink too much.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnistJoin our journalists for a Guardian Live online event on the No 10 lockdown party and Boris Johnson’s future at 8pm GMT on Wednesday 19 January. Book here Continue reading...

In 24 states at least 80% of staffed hospital beds were occupied as the Omicron variant has triggered a record number of Covid casesHospitals in nearly half of US states are nearing capacity, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, as the Omicron variant has triggered a record number of cases across the country.In 18 states at least 85% of adult intensive care unit beds were in use, while in 24 states at least 80% of staffed hospital beds were occupied, HHS data shows. Continue reading...

Film pulls in audiences across global business in December, pushing revenue to 88% of 2019 levels

The IMF allots voting rights and emergency funds according to an outdated and unfair quota system established in 1944, before most colonies were free. Let’s change itActivists pushing for global reparations for colonialism and slavery are often accused of asking for the politically impossible. At the international scale, however, reparations are more plausible than one might think. That is because an international mechanism to move resources to the formerly colonized world in a politically feasible fashion already exists: the policy instrument of “Special Drawing Rights” (SDRs) managed by the International Monetary Fund.Calls for changing SDR allocation are not new, nor is the idea that SDRs could function as reparations for trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism. Professor Cynthia L Hewitt of Morehouse College argued for exactly this strategy as early as 2004. What is new is the political possibility opened by growing awareness of the global climate crisis, which requires solutions that are not only practical but historically just. SDR reallocation, as the Barbadian prime minister, Mia Mottley, suggested in her “stinging” speech at Cop26, is both.Michael Franczak is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House and the author of the forthcoming book Global Inequality and American Foreign Policy in the 1970sOlúfẹ́mi O Táíwò is an assistant professor of philosophy at Georgetown University and the author of the forthcoming book Reconsidering Reparations Continue reading...

Affordable housing should never have become an asset class for the rich to make returns on investments. Of course this system is brokenIn New York, some things never change. If you die in a fire, it’s always your fault. When a fire started in a heater and ripped down the hallway of an apartment building in December 1998, killing four people in a blast of heat and smoke, city officials framed the fire as a tragedy that could have been avoided if people had only remembered to close their doors. “People should close the door behind them when leaving a [burning] apartment,” said then-fire chief Daniel Nigro – now the city’s fire commissioner.“They would not have died if they had stayed in their apartments,” said the city’s then-mayor, the now-infamous Rudolph Giuliani, musing that it’s “easier to blame things on mechanisms rather than on what human beings understand, do or don’t do”. Continue reading...

The Republican-appointed majority court says the risk is one workers have to accept in order to get a paycheckBy a 6-3 vote, with liberal justices in dissent, the supreme court on Thursday blocked the Biden administration from enforcing a vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers. (The court upheld a more modest mandate requiring vaccinations for healthcare workers who treat Medicare and Medicaid patients.)The employer mandate would have required workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or to wear masks and be tested weekly (neither employees nor employers were required to pay for the testing). It applied to employers with at least 100 employees. This would include more than 84 million workers, about two-thirds of the American workforce.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...

Duke of York will no longer use the His Royal Highness in any official capacity. Plus, Novak Djokovic’s Australian visa is cancelled again

The victims included eight children and several members of two families, devastating New York borough’s west African communityThey came from countries in west Africa, nearly all of them from the Gambia, and settled in Twin Parks Towers Northeast, a 19-story apartment building full of working-class families from the region and Latin America.Some of them were born here to parents from the Gambia, volunteering in local community groups, attending local mosques, enrolling in local schools and colleges hoping for a future in social work, economics and justice. Continue reading...

Nonprofit Truckers Final Mile was set up by a driver who witnessed first-hand companies’ indifference to death and injury on the roadOn the day after Christmas, 56-year-old Daryn Worster, a long-haul truck driver, was seriously injured in a crash near Grants, New Mexico. He died from injuries sustained during the crash.Though Worster worked for a trucking firm, his wife Joani said she received no help from the company in bringing her husband home from New Mexico to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he would be laid to rest. Continue reading...

The road to Super Bowl LVI starts on Saturday with the first ever three day Super Wild Card Weekend. Who will survive and book a spot in the NFL’s last eight?After the first Week 18 in NFL history ended a topsy-turvy season in suitably dramatic fashion, we’re headed into the first ever Super Wild Card Weekend. The NFL is giving us six games over the next three days and while you can’t predict football – just ask the Indianapolis Colts – we can at least make semi-educated guesses how the following games will go. Continue reading...

US president Joe Biden said he was not sure if his administration could push voting rights legislation through Congress, but he would continue fighting to change the law. ‘I don't know if we can get it done,' he said to reporters. ‘But I know one thing, as long as I have a breath in me … I am going to be fighting to change the way these legislatures are moving.' Earlier, Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema reaffirmed she would not support any change to the filibuster rules, effectively killing her party’s hope of passing the most sweeping voting rights protections in a generation.

Gavin Newsom rejected parole board’s ruling to free the 77-year-old despite commissioners deeming him ‘significantly incapacitated’California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has denied parole for Sirhan Sirhan, the 77-year-old who has spent more than 50 years in prison for the assassination of Robert F Kennedy.Newsom has previously cited Kennedy as his “political hero” and wrote in his decision rejecting parole: “After decades in prison, [Sirhan] has failed to address the deficiencies that led him to assassinate Senator Kennedy. Mr Sirhan lacks the insight that would prevent him from making the same types of dangerous decisions he made in the past.” Continue reading...

Stewart Rhodes and 10 others face 20-year prison sentences as the first charged with seditious conspiracy in January 6 insurrection

Move comes after longstanding complaints from party that non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates favors Democrats

‘Absurdle is an experiment to find the most difficult possible variant of Wordle,’ says its creatorWordle has taken over your timeline through pure force of pleasantness. Every day, an empty six-tiered grid appears in the world’s browser. We try to guess a secret five-letter word; with each entry the player learns if the letters they used appear in the solution, appear in the solution and are in the right place, or aren’t in the solution at all. So, you might navigate from ASKEW to ABLED, before eventually arriving at ABBEY.There’s only one new Wordle puzzle a day, and designer Josh Wardle has not included any of the garish barnacles that tend to accrue to breezy mobile pastimes. That philosophy has made it a runaway success with hundreds of thousands of players. In a media environment awash with misinformation and division, it’s just kinda nice to spend a few minutes every day trying to guess a word. Continue reading...

Judge Robert Adrian said the 148 days Drew Clinton had spent in jail for raping a 16-year-old girl was ‘plenty of punishment’A judge in western Illinois who found an 18-year-old man guilty of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl has come under fire after he later threw out the conviction, saying the 148 days the man spent in jail was punishment enough.Judge Robert Adrian of Adam county, Illinois, said Drew Clinton, who was convicted last October for raping a 16-year-old girl at a graduation party last May, had received “plenty of punishment”. Continue reading...

Front of Nathan Fletcher and Lorena Gonzalez’s house in San Diego was ‘engulfed in flames’ in early hours of WednesdayCalifornia police are treating a fire at the home of two Democratic politicians in San Diego as suspicious.Sgt Rick Pechin of San Diego police told the San Diego Union-Tribune that investigators believe the fire at the home of supervisor Nathan Fletcher and former state assemblywoman and prominent labor leader Lorena Gonzalez was suspicious in nature. Continue reading...

Secretary of state says officials do not know what illness is or who is responsible, with more sickness reported in Paris and GenevaThe United States still does not know what the illness known as Havana syndrome is or who is responsible for it, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Thursday after more American diplomats were reported ill in Paris and Geneva.Blinken said the entire federal government was working to get to the bottom of the illness, which has afflicted about 200 US diplomats, officials and family members overseas. Continue reading...

Many states prevent those once convicted of a felony from voting but one stands out for the scale and complexity of its lawHello, and Happy Thursday,For the last few years, I’ve wanted to write about the way Mississippi disenfranchises certain felony convictions. Every state in the country has slightly different felon disenfranchisement laws, but the one in Mississippi is especially harsh.Joe Biden on Tuesday gave the speech voting rights activists have been wanting to hear for months, calling for changing the Senate filibuster to pass voting rights legislation. But it still doesn’t seem like Democrats have the votes to change the filibuster. Days ahead of a vote, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, called it an “uphill battle”.Candidates for secretary of state are raising unprecedented amounts of money so far, according to a new Brennan Center report, a reflection of the battle for control of election administration that is shaping up across the country,A three-judge panel in North Carolina upheld the state’s new congressional districts, which were drawn to heavily favor Republicans. Plaintiffs have already said they will appeal the decision to the North Carolina supreme court.Many fewer used mail-in drop boxes in some of Georgia’s most populous counties last year after Republicans restricted their availability, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Continue reading...

After Jalani Lovett, 27, died in solitary confinement, his mother wants the sheriff’s department to be held accountable: ‘They have no regard for human life’The family of Jalani Lovett, a 27-year-old who died in a Los Angeles jail last year, is demanding that the county sheriff’s department be held accountable and authorities release more information about the final moments of his life.Lovett died in solitary confinement in Men’s Central jail in downtown LA on 22 September. The county coroner released an autopsy report on Tuesday saying Lovett’s death was “accidental” and that he had fentanyl and heroin in his system. Continue reading...

Lindsey Graham tells Senate majority leader he won’t vote for someone ‘that can’t have a working relationship with Trump’Mitch McConnell has been attacked by a key Trump ally and told to repair his relationship with the former US president or face failure as Senate Republican leader.The move by Lindsey Graham comes amid a rumbling dispute between McConnell and Donald Trump, whose grip on the party remains near-total despite his impeachment for inciting the deadly Capitol attack in service of his lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was caused by electoral fraud. Continue reading...

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy accused the House select committee investigating the US Capitol attack of ‘abuse of power’ as he denied the panel’s request for an interview

Because the global south is bearing the brunt of climate breakdown, it’s people of colour who are suffering mostIt’s 4am, and sparks from the circular saw are flying by my head. I have been given goggles to protect my eyes from the debris and although I’ve been told that I’m in safe hands, I do not feel safe at all. I’m cold from sitting on the road for five hours; my back is stiff, my hands are numb and, to top it all off, humanity is on the edge of extinction. This probably seems an odd way to spend my time to some of you, but this is how climate activists who engage in direct action try to be heard. We have tried everything else. We are exhausted and terrified. So we keep doing it.Last year I was included in an article about climate activists. In the original article, I was the only person pictured without my placard. My placard said: “Climate inaction = racism.” I want to talk about what this means.Elise Yarde is a climate justice activist from London

The more permissive attitudes and lack of public health advice are coming home to roost for a generation of older BritonsWhen I joined a community mental health team for older people 20 years ago, addiction wasn’t a central part of our work. One of our first referrals was for an alcoholic patient threatened with eviction. It was rejected – it wasn’t relevant to our service, or so I thought. But over the years the referrals combining social problems and addiction kept coming. We would bat the problems back to the GP, yet the same patients would be referred years later for depression and dementia. Their issues hadn’t gone away; if anything, they had worsened.It was a salutary lesson that led me to join forces with a group of professionals and delve more deeply into the problem of drug and alcohol addiction in older people. As we dug into the data, a pattern began to emerge of substance misuse among those born between 1946 and 1964: the so-called “baby boomers”. Their higher rates of addiction than in older or younger generations are coming home to roost, with implications for public health and clinical services.Tony Rao is a consultant old-age psychiatrist and author of the book Soul Trader

Since Lord Sugar and his wannabes were last on our screens, the world has endured two years of a pandemic. You’d never know it from the new series – and I for one am gratefulSometimes, change is the last thing you want. Yes, in the newfangled world of reality TV, you can now find innovative formats where dates are disposed of via a trapdoor or contestants woo each other without speaking the same language. But 2020 and 2021 were packed with enough plot twists to last a lifetime. This is why the return of TV staple The Apprentice is so welcome.After two years off air, almost everything in the world has changed, bar the show itself. As always, Alan Sugar takes on a crop of business hopefuls who are confident to the point of delusion (which is how one of them actually described themselves in the first episode). Even the first few minutes of its return were characteristically thick with quotables: “I am the EST of everything, which means I am the coolEST, smartEST and wickedEST in businEST”, assured one contestant. Continue reading...