US news | The Guardian

The key to success in the viral word game is understanding the rules that govern how sounds fit togetherIt’s a point in 2022’s favour that, rather than violent insurrection or the misery of lockdown, most English-speaking people on the internet are currently preoccupied with a harmless word game. Harmless at the time of writing, I should say – it’s popular enough that some kind of backlash is inevitable. I’m sure any day now Wordle will be revealed as a Bad Thing and I don’t want to speculate how; I am merely here to observe that it is a) a lot of fun b) linguistically interesting, and I’d like to explain why. I may even be able to make you a bit better at it.If you don’t already know, Wordle is a browser-based puzzle that gives you six goes at guessing a five-letter word. If your guess includes a letter that’s correct but in the wrong place, it turns yellow (more like ochre – now there’s a good starting word for you). If it includes a letter that’s correct and in the right place, it turns green, allowing you to build on your guesses until you hit the jackpot. The solution to the Wordle in the screenshot above is “craze”.David Shariatmadari is the author of Don’t Believe a Word: From Myths to Misunderstandings – How Language Really Works Continue reading...

Scott Baldwin faced backlash after his comments during a hearing on Senate Bill 167, which would ban ‘concepts that divide’ in schoolsAn Indiana state senator has backtracked on his remarks that teachers must be impartial when discussing nazism in classrooms after he sparked widespread backlash.During a state senate committee hearing last week about Senate Bill 167, a proposed bill that would ban “concepts that divide”, Republican Senator Scott Baldwin, who co-wrote the bill, said teachers should remain unprejudiced when teaching lessons about fascism and nazism. Continue reading...

North Carolina group files candidacy challenge, citing Republican congressman’s alleged involvement in 6 January attackA group of North Carolina voters told state officials on Monday that they want Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn to be disqualified as a congressional candidate, citing his involvement in the 6 January attack on the Capitol.Cawthorn questioned the outcome of the presidential election during the “Save America Rally” before the Capitol riot later that day that resulted in five deaths. Continue reading...

Residents tell of anguish after fire broke out on Sunday morning, leaving 17 people dead and scores injuredKaren Dejesus, 54, was cooking breakfast for her young granddaughter and her son when she heard fire alarms on Sunday morning in the Bronx borough of New York.Dejesus and her family have lived in the high rise apartment building for almost 19 years. Alarms in the building went off erroneously so often that residents on Sunday didn’t register the sirens as real, she told the Guardian. Continue reading...

The Georgia Bulldogs lay more than four decades of frustration to rest on Monday night, defeating the Alabama Crimson Tide to capture the school’s first national championship since 1980

California law mandates that his conviction will be vacated and the charges over the murder of his missing first wife will be dismissedIn the final months of Robert Durst’s life, it seemed as if the walls were at last closing in on the disgraced multimillionaire and real estate heir. He was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a longtime friend in September, and shortly after, New York officials charged him with the murder of his missing first wife.But his death in a California hospital on Monday has upended the cases against the 78-year-old. The murder case over the death of his ex-wife Kathleen McCormack Durst will come to a halt and, thanks to a legal technicality, the murder conviction for the killing of his friend Susan Berman will soon be voided. Continue reading...

Prosecutors make offer ahead of sentencing in effort to bring swift closure for the victims as Maxwell’s team push for new trialIf Ghislaine Maxwell is not granted a retrial in her Manhattan federal court sex trafficking case, prosecutors are prepared to drop pending perjury counts when she is sentenced, they said in a 10 January letter.Prosecutors said they were prepared to dismiss the perjury counts in an effort to bring swift closure for the victims and prevent them from being re-traumatized at a possible second trial. Continue reading...

The 58-story luxury condominium building continues sinking despite a $100m plan to reinforce its foundation to prevent tiltingSan Francisco’s infamous Millennium Tower – a luxury condominium where star athletes and retired Google employees bought multimillion dollar apartments before they realized it was sinking – is continuing to sink and tilt to the side by about about 3in (7.5 cm) per year, according to the engineer responsible for fixing the troubled building.In a few years, if the tilting continues at the current rate, the 58-story luxury building could reach the point where the elevators and plumbing may no longer operate, said Ron Hamburger, the engineer. Continue reading...

The virus has depleted the ranks of emergency and essential workers, leaving California’s health system critically strainedOfficials in San Francisco are asking residents not to call 911 except in dire emergencies to avoid further straining emergency resources, as coronavirus cases deplete the ranks of health workers, ambulance crews, firefighters and other essential workers.The Omicron variant, which appears more likely to cause breakthrough cases even among vaccinated people, has begun to thin the ranks of those most needed to fight this latest wave of infections. San Francisco mayor London Breed said on Friday that ​​about 400 city employees, including emergency responders, had either tested positive for Covid-19 or were isolated at home due to exposure. Continue reading...

Reverend Al Sharpton delivered the eulogy at Valentina Orellana-Peralta’s funeral, saying ‘it was like the wild, wild west’ with LAPDThe Rev Al Sharpton delivered a eulogy on Monday for Valentina Orellana-Peralta, the 14-year-old girl killed by a Los Angeles police officer, denouncing LAPD’s longstanding abuses, as her family remembered a bright young girl who excelled in school and had big dreams for her life in the US.“There is nothing normal about shooting so recklessly that a young teenage girl looking to live the American dream, shopping with her dear mother … for a Christmas dress, ends up being dressed for her funeral,” Sharpton said in his eulogy, recounting his marches in LA and fight for justice 31 years ago when LAPD beat Rodney King. “I led marches and joined in all kinds of efforts to call on the prosecution of those police, and calling on the Los Angeles police department to reform how they do policing … Through those 31 years, we keep seeing LAPD get it wrong. Here we are again. How long will it take for you to get it right?” Continue reading...

Thomas Welnicki expressed interest in killing then president in interview with Capitol police in July 2020, complaint saysA New York man upset with what he perceived as Donald Trump’s threat to democracy was criminally charged on Monday with threatening to kill the former president, who he once referred to as Hitler.According to an unsealed complaint, Thomas Welnicki, 72, from Rockaway Beach, expressed interest in killing the then president in an interview with US Capitol police in July 2020 and in several calls to the Secret Service the following year. Continue reading...

Diplomats stress they have not made progress towards resolving fundamental disagreementsUS and Russian diplomats have emerged from a day of negotiations in Geneva over the fate of Ukraine, describing the talks as “useful” and “very professional” – but also stressing they had not made progress towards resolving fundamental disagreements.The two sides largely spent the eight hours of talks presenting their points of view on the situation in Ukraine, currently hemmed in by some 100,000 Russian troops, and on European security in general, and deferred further debate on them to a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday between Russia and all Nato members. Continue reading...

Advances for economic and political rights are dead on arrival in the Senate unless Mr Biden can rewrite its procedural rule bookJoe Biden wants to go down in history as a transformative US president. He began his time in office by passing a popular economic stimulus and Covid-19 relief bill. The Biden White House basked in comparisons with Franklin Roosevelt’s country-changing presidency. With Democrats in control of the executive and legislative branches of government, the sky seemed the limit. However, in recent months Mr Biden’s agenda – most notably on climate change – has been buried in a legislative graveyard.This is in part because the US Senate is a rare law-making body: it needs a supermajority for ordinary business. Its rules require 60 senators to give the green light for a bill to go to the floor for passage with a straightforward vote. This is the hurdle required to beat a filibuster, where debate is extended so that no vote on a bill can take place. Frustrated and hamstrung, President Biden has cooled on such mechanisms. He’s right to think about ending this manoeuvre, which is used to block legislation a majority wishes to pass. The 41 Republican senators needed to defeat “cloture” motions – those required to end a debate – could represent less than a quarter of the US population. Continue reading...

Durst died in a California hospital while serving a life sentence for the murder of Susan Berman, after appearing frail at his trialRobert Durst, the convicted murderer and disgraced multimillionaire real estate heir, has died. He was 78.Durst died in a California hospital while serving a life sentence for the murder of Susan Berman, his friend and confidante who prosecutors say helped him cover up the killing of his first wife. Continue reading...

Initially 19 people were believed to have died in the blaze – city’s deadliest in three decades – as doctors battle to save gravely hurtThe mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, on Monday revised the death toll from a high-rise fire in the Bronx on Sunday, saying 17 people were killed, two fewer than originally thought.Adams said nine adults and eight children died. He did not immediately provide a reason for the lower count. Continue reading...

The new-look Chicago Bulls are top of the Eastern Conference standings and bona fide title contenders again for the first time since the 1990s heyday of Jordan and PippenTo be a Chicago Bulls fan over the past two decades is to somewhat know the true pain of injuring a strong knee or a healthy hand. It takes time to adjust to the idea that the body could be anything less than perfect. And when the mind eventually catches up, alas, it’s beyond frustrating.The Bulls I grew up rooting for were so able. They were led by the shrewdest coach, the finest sidekick and the best player who ever lived. They beat back the Bad Boy Pistons, outran the Showtime Lakers and abused the New York Knicks while distinguishing themselves as the preeminent sports dynasty. As the Last Dance docuseries explicitly showed, the Bulls were a cultural force – one that not only put my overlooked hometown on the map, but made basketball the global game it is today. Continue reading...

The responses to my London accent show how UK Black culture is changing perceptions in the US – but only for someI hadn’t even reached Ithaca, the tiny university town in upstate New York – my home for the next six years, as I studied for a PhD – when the confusion over my Blackness and British accent began. I was ill-prepared for Matt, the skinny white American in a cap sitting beside me on the plane. “But you don’t seem like you’re from London,” he said (I’m from Hackney, and very proud). Matt had never been to the UK, let alone London.This response emerges from the US’s own unique history of race and class. The British accent remains for some the epitome of white privilege, reviving memories of high-born English settlers and exuding an air of aristocracy. Blackness signifies the opposite. The property of those settlers. The lowest of the low. Slaves. And so I was violating the US’s time-worn prejudices. Matt was trying to put me back in my place.Amandla Thomas-Johnson is a freelance journalist, PhD student and author of Becoming Kwame Ture Continue reading...

The tennis player may be unjabbed, but he did what was asked of him to access the countryThere is so far only one lesson in the “acquittal” of the tennis player Novak Djokovic on a charge of seeking to enter Australia unvaccinated. It is that something is badly wrong with that country’s border controls.The judge found that the tennis star had met all reasonable requirements for admission, as was conceded by the Canberra government. He had two separate permits for exemption from vaccination, one from the Australian tennis authorities and one from the state of Victoria. His visa was cancelled at the gate after he had landed, without time to reach his lawyer. He was detained in a notorious hostel used to house asylum seekers. The procedure was bizarre.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The UN has appealed for urgent help following militia attacks on camps for internally displaced people. But money alone won’t solve the crisisIn a bare and violent patch of land in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 75,000 people are living in what one UN field officer described as “hellish conditions”. Food and water are scarce. Even the flimsiest shelters are in short supply and sanitation is nonexistent. Girls have been raped by militiamen while attempting to find food in fields around the site. Ibrahim Cisse of Unicef says people here are effectively being held hostage.Rhoe – a remote camp of internally displaced people (IDP) approximately 45km northeast of Bunia, the capital of DRC’s Ituri province – is “a tragedy waiting to happen”, according to those who have visited. Continue reading...

Experts caution the defense department’s safeguards don’t go far enough and that ‘we’re behind the ball on what we know’Fears are growing among experts, politicians, and former generals about the rise of rightwing extremism in the US military and the potential threat it could pose to American democracy.Even as the US Department of Defense issues new policies to root out extremism in its ranks, some experts caution that the safeguards don’t go far enough, leaving the next election vulnerable to attack as well as fears about a broader violent “insurgency” by rightwing radicals. Continue reading...

The next attempted coup will not be a mob attack, but a carefully plotted and even technically legal one. Instead of costumed rioters, the insurrectionists are men in suits and tiesAmerican democracy suffered two brutal blows on 6 January.The first has been seared into the national psyche: costumed insurrectionists ransacking the US Capitol, attacking Capitol police, and interrupting the constitutionally mandated electoral college count. They got closer than anyone could imagine to Vice-President Mike Pence and other terrified leaders, some hidden behind makeshift office-furniture barricades.David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count and Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy. He is a senior fellow at FairVote Continue reading...

The Ohio Republican, claiming an ‘outrageous abuse’ of authority, is the second member of Congress to resist the investigation

Despite how many times, under how many presidential administrations, I have been disappointed, I hold out hopeInjustice takes many forms. After 20 years in US custody, most of that time spent in Guantánamo, you could say I am an expert.It may surprise you to know that I think America has a very good justice system. But it is only for Americans. In the cases of those like me, justice is not something that interests the US. I wish that people understood how Guantánamo is distinct. Continue reading...

Police in Los Angeles pulled a pilot from a plane that had crashed on to rail tracks near Whiteman airport in Pacoima just moments before it was hit by an incoming train.

Video shows Los Angeles police officers freeing pilot from plane that had crash-landed on rail tracksPolice in Los Angeles, California, pulled the pilot from a crash-landed Cessna seconds before the aircraft was hit by a train, sending debris flying in all directions.Dramatic video obtained by Reuters shows several officers freeing the man from the downed plane, which had crashed shortly after takeoff in the Pacoima neighbourhood, according to local media. The officers and pilot were only a few feet away from the tracks when the passing train destroyed the plane. Continue reading...

World No 1 immediately released from detention, but immigration minister considering cancelling visa again. Plus Succession triumphs at low-key Golden Globes

A baby was rescued from a massive fire in New York where at least 19 people were killed, including nine children, and dozens were injured.

Uncertainty facing nation hits its second-largest school district on a vast scale as Omicron fuels soaring casesFor students across the US, the return from winter break has been marked by chaos and confusion as the Omicron variant has exacerbated staff shortages and sparked fierce debates about how to reopen classrooms safely.In Chicago, classes resumed and then were canceled abruptly last week as the teachers’ union and school district failed to agree on safety protocols, while teachers in San Francisco and other Bay Area schools staged a “sickout” to demand more N95 face masks, testing and paid sick leave for those who contract the coronavirus. Continue reading...

The Indianapolis Colts entrusted their playoff hopes in their quarterback’s hands and catastrophe ensued. Even by the standards of the finest Wentz-ings, this was something specialJust when you think everything is going right, along comes Carson Wentz.There was a wonky stat floating around on Sunday afternoon. It pointed out that Wentz, the Indianapolis Colts’ quarterback, was one game away from playing an entire season without throwing an interception on the road. It’s a neat stat. And it would be meaningful if Carson Wentz was not … Carson Wentz. Continue reading...

In an exclusive interview, the senator says it’s time to ‘step up and take on the greed of the ruling class in America’Senator Bernie Sanders has called on Democrats to make “a major course correction” that focuses on fighting for America’s working class and standing up to “powerful corporate interests” because the Democrats’ legislative agenda is stalled and their party faces tough prospects in this November’s elections.The White House is likely to see his comments as a shot across the bow by the left wing of a party increasingly frustrated at how centrist Democrats have managed to scupper or delay huge chunks of Biden’s domestic policy plans. Continue reading...

Compensation for allowing torture at Vilnius black site indicates changing attitudes in Washington, lawyers say

Nineteen people have been killed, including nine children, and dozens more injured in an apartment building fire in the Bronx borough of New York City. ‘The numbers are horrific,’ said New York City mayor Eric Adams. ‘This is going to be one of the worst fires that we have witnessed during modern times here in the city of New York’

Kinzinger asks if Trump ‘incompetent or a coward’ during 6 January riot while Raskin ponders 14th amendment to bar new run

Ice fishers among people brought back to shoreline of Lake Michigan by airboats after split possibly caused by bargeAuthorities rescued 27 people from a floating chunk of ice that broke away from shore in the bay of Green Bay in eastern Wisconsin, a sheriff’s office said.No injuries were reported in the incident that happened on Saturday morning north of Green Bay, in part of Lake Michigan, the Brown county sheriff’s office reported. Continue reading...

The United States National Labor Relations Board has accused the paper of undermining union activity. Are they any different to Amazon?One of the most useful qualities of labor unions is their ability to force Good Liberals to actually demonstrate their principles in a tangible way. It is easy for a self-proclaimed progressive business owner to say all the nice things about how they believe in equality and fair wages and worker rights – but when their employees unionize and come to claim those rights, those nice bosses must stop talking about how nice they are, and prove it. For limousine liberals, dealing with unions is where the rubber hits the road.Needless to say, many Good Liberals turn out to be charlatans. There is a saying in the union world: “A boss is a boss.” This is a more pithy way of saying: “A boss is kind of a greedy jerk, no matter how many ‘Nevertheless, she persisted’ bumper stickers they have plastered on their Volvos.” Continue reading...

As supreme court ponders workplace vaccine mandate, CDC director Rochelle Walensky seeks to set record straightFacing accusations of confusing messaging about the Omicron Covid surge, a senior Biden administration official was forced on to the back foot on Sunday by a supreme court justice’s mistaken remark about hospitalisations among children.During oral arguments over a vaccinations mandate for private employers, the liberal justice Sonya Sotomayor said on Friday the US had “over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators”. Continue reading...

Republican announces run for third term, delighting both his own party and Democrats seeking a win

Democrat answers criticism over police role for brother and appointment of scandal-hit former officer to public safety postEric Adams has promised to restore “swagger” to New York, the city he has run as mayor for barely a week. But even in that brief time he has attracted fierce criticism and flirted with scandal.On Sunday, the new mayor said a former police chief brought back into the administration despite having resigned seven years ago amid a corruption investigation had not done “anything that was criminal”. Continue reading...