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...
A watershed moment for the most populous US city as opponents vow to challenge the lawMore than 800,000 non-citizens and “Dreamers” could vote in New York City municipal elections as early as next year, after Mayor Eric Adams allowed legislation to become law on Sunday.Opponents have vowed to challenge the law, which the city council approved a month ago. Unless a judge halts its implementation, New York is the first major US city to grant widespread municipal voting rights to non-citizens. Continue reading...
Four leading American authors assess the Covid-battered first year of Joe Biden’s presidencyRichard Ford is a novelist and short story writer best known for his quartet of novels featuring the protagonist Frank Bascombe, a failed sportswriter turned novelist, which includes The Sportswriter, Independence Day and the Pulitzer prize-winning The Lay of the Land. Ford’s acclaimed memoir, Between Them: Remembering My Parents, was published in 2017 and the following year his 1990 novel, Wildlife, was made into a widely praised film starring Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal. His most recent short story collection is Sorry for Your Trouble Continue reading...
Taskforce including civil rights leaders and attorneys scrutinizes legacy of centuries of injusticeDawn Basciano’s ancestors arrived five generations ago in Coloma, California, as enslaved people, forced to leave behind an infant son enslaved to another family in Missouri.Those ancestors, Nancy and Peter Gooch, were freed in 1850 when California joined the union as a free state, and 20 years later, their son and his family were able to join them in the fertile agricultural land north-east of Sacramento. Their journey west was funded by the sweat and hard work of Nancy, who grew and sold fruit, mended clothes and cooked for the local miners. Continue reading...
One-third of former prisoners sent to third countries are lacking legal status – unable to work or travel and at risk of human rights abusesAbout 30% of former Guantánamo detainees who were resettled in third countries have not been granted legal status, according to new analysis shared exclusively with the Guardian, leaving them vulnerable to deportation and restricting their ability to rebuild their lives.Of the hundreds of men released from Guantánamo since the prison first opened 20 years ago, about 150 were sent to third countries in bilateral agreements brokered by the US, because their home countries were considered dangerous to return to. Continue reading...
The US-run enclave has proved hard to dismantle over two decades, a legal anomaly and lead weight wrapped around America’s global reputationOn 4 January 2002, Brig Gen Michael Lehnert received an urgent deployment order. He would take a small force of marines and sailors and build a prison camp in the US-run military enclave on Cuba’s south coast, Guantánamo Bay.Lehnert had 96 hours to deploy and build the first 100 cells, in time for the first plane-load of captives arriving from the battlefield in Afghanistan on 11 January. The job was done on time: a grid of chain-link cages surrounded by barbed wire and six plywood guard towers manned by snipers. There were five windowless huts for interrogations. It was named Camp X-Ray. Continue reading...
America’s biggest city is seeing another winter spike, but with good vaccines and a new message many residents say this wave feels differentIn the spring of 2020, Hart Island, a mile from City Island in the Bronx, was a focal point of grief in New York. It was here, at the city’s public cemetery or potter’s field, the final resting place of more than a million people, that officials ordered trenches dug to accommodate those the coronavirus was expected to kill.The trenches were never filled. Many bodies were returned to funeral parlors or stored in mobile freezers on Randall’s Island, better known for music festivals and the Frieze art fair than cold storage of corpses. Continue reading...
With the country polarised and Republicans embracing authoritarianism, some experts fear a Northern Ireland-style insurgency but others say armed conflict remains improbableJoe Biden had spent a year in the hope that America could go back to normal. But last Thursday, the first anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, the president finally recognised the full scale of the current threat to American democracy.“At this moment, we must decide,” Biden said in Statuary Hall, where rioters had swarmed a year earlier. “What kind of nation are we going to be? Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm?” Continue reading...
Attack on Yao Pan Ma, 61, drew attention amid rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and is now being treated as homicideA Chinese American man who was brutally attacked last April while collecting cans in East Harlem has died of his injuries and the case is now deemed a homicide, police in New York said on Saturday.Yao Pan Ma, 61, died on 31 December, police said. Continue reading...
by Associated Press in Fairfax county, Virginia on (#5TT4Y)
Cheyenne Brown and Stephanie Harrison linked to Anthony Robinson, accused of using shopping cart to move victims’ bodiesAuthorities in Virginia have positively identified the remains of two women they say were killed by a man they believe is a serial killer who used a shopping cart to transport his victims’ bodies after meeting them on dating sites.Police said DNA analysis confirmed remains found in a container in Fairfax county on 15 December are those of 29-year-old Cheyenne Brown, of Washington DC, and 48-year-old Stephanie Harrison, of Redding, California. Continue reading...
He knew that his Oscar win wouldn’t suddenly open doors for others and became a formidable force for a generationThe death of Sidney Poitier is a moment of great sadness for many, but especially for people like my parents, who remember him being the first Black actor they ever saw on TV. Raised in the Bahamas by tomato farmers, he was the youngest of seven children and came from extreme poverty. He moved to New York aged 16, where he worked as a dishwasher, took acting lessons and taught himself how to read, write and enunciate by reading newspapers and listening to the radio. He was the definition of a self-made man.When he won an Academy Award for best actor in 1964, he was the first Black person to do so. He was proud of his victory but, admirably, wasn’t blinded by it. “I don’t believe my Oscar will be a sort of magic wand that will wipe away restrictions on job opportunities for negro actors,” he said in an interview. He wasn’t wrong. It would be 38 years before another Black person (Denzel Washington) would win a best actor Oscar. Continue reading...
Rilu, 11, began showing symptoms in November and the CDC says most animal Covid infections come from contact with humansA snow leopard at a zoo in Bloomington, Illinois, has died after contracting Covid-19.Miller Park Zoo announced the death of Rilu, 11, which the zoo previously said “began coughing and had a raspy respiration beginning on 20 November”, in an Instagram post on Thursday. Continue reading...
Authorities say 13-year-old son of Sarah Beam, a teacher, was found in her car’s trunk at a testing site in the Texas cityA Houston mother has been charged after allegedly placing her 13-year-old son in the trunk of her car in an attempt to isolate him after he tested positive for Covid-19, then took him to a drive-thru testing site.In a statement reported by KPRC, an NBC-affiliate, the Cyprus-Fairbanks school district said police were “alerted that a child was in the trunk of a car at a drive-thru Covid-19 testing site earlier this week. Continue reading...
While there are a bunch of factors at play, from social media to a decrease in alcohol use, one hypothesis can be worryingAnd just like that, nobody’s having sex any more. Middle-aged people aren’t having much. Young people aren’t having much. Japanese people aren’t having much. Nor are Brits or Australians or Americans. Over the past decade a number of studies have found a significant decline in sexual activity around the world, the latest example of this being a recent US-focused study showing declines from 2009 to 2018 in all forms of partnered sexual activity and a decline in adolescent masturbation. The researchers, by the way, looked at self-reported information from government surveys among people 14-49 years old; it’s possible that it’s a very different story when it comes to the over-50s.Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for order – and is far better value than a jar full of farts or an NFT of Melania’s head Continue reading...
The lie that the election was ‘stolen’ from Trump is building its monuments in ludicrous stories, and codifying them in laws to make the next elections easier to pilferAmerican democracy is in peril and nearly everyone paying attention is trying to find the best way to say so. Should we in the intellectual classes position our warnings in satire, in jeremiads, in social scientific data, in historical analogy, in philosophical wisdom we glean from so many who have instructed us about the violence and authoritarianism of the 20th century? Or should we just scream after our holiday naps?Some of us pick up our pens and do what we can. We quote wise scribes such as George Orwell on how there may be a latent fascist waiting to emerge in all humans, or Hannah Arendt on how democracies are inherently unstable and susceptible to ruin by aggressive, skilled demagogues. We turn to Alexis de Tocqueville for his stunning insights into American individualism while we love to believe his claims that democracy would create greater equality. And oh! how we love Walt Whitman’s fabulously open, infinite democratic spirit. We inhale Whitman’s verses and are captured by the hypnotic power of democracy. “O Democracy, for you, for you I am trilling these songs,” wrote our most exuberant democrat.David W Blight is sterling professor of American History at Yale and author of the Pulitzer-prize winning Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom Continue reading...
President strikes different tone in tacit admission that ignoring the most powerful force in the Republican party is riskyIn the first moments of his presidency, Joe Biden called on Americans to set aside their deep divisions inflamed by a predecessor he intentionally ignored. He emphasized national unity and appealed to Americans to come together to “end this uncivil war”.Nearly a year later, as a divided nation reflects on the first anniversary of the 6 January assault on the US Capitol, the uncivil war he sought to extinguish rages on, stronger than ever. In a searing speech on Thursday, Biden struck a different tone. Continue reading...
The illusion of a successful, free-market economy is shattered – and now Tokayev’s violent crackdown bodes ill for dissentersAlmaty, the commercial capital of Kazakhstan, is the kind of mirage that oil-rich nations so often produce. It has all the trappings of comfort and consumer excess: swanky shopping malls, luxury car dealerships, high-end hotels.This is the image of prosperity that the country’s rulers enjoy projecting to the world. For decades, Kazakhs have been encouraged to take out expensive loans to experience their share in the dream: to buy flats, cars and even holidays they can barely afford.Peter Leonard is Central Asia editor at the news and analysis website Eurasianet Continue reading...
by Sam Levine in New York, with photographs by Imani on (#5TST1)
Revealed: Fewer than 200 of those affected have been able to regain their voting rights in the last quarter-centuryThe Mississippi officials met in the heat of summer with a singular goal in mind: stopping Black people from voting.“We came here to exclude the Negro,” said the convention’s president. “Nothing short of this will answer.” Continue reading...
Best case scenario: a scaled down plan that saves popular programs and a billionaire tax to pay for itDemocrats were already facing a bleak landscape for this year’s midterm elections, with Joe Biden’s approval rating languishing in the low 40s and his party holding narrow majorities in both the House and the Senate.Now, with Senator Joe Manchin’s refusal to support the Build Back Better Act, the chances of Republicans regaining control of the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate as well, appear higher than ever. Continue reading...
Messages between Mark Meadows and others suggest the Trump White House coordinated efforts to stop Joe Biden’s certificationThe House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is examining whether Donald Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 6 January that connected the White House’s scheme to stop Joe Biden’s certification with the insurrection, say two senior sources familiar with the matter.The committee’s new focus on the potential for a conspiracy marks an aggressive escalation in its inquiry as it confronts evidence that suggests the former president potentially engaged in criminal conduct egregious enough to warrant a referral to the justice department. Continue reading...
Hunter Lewis spent years creating the adventure, but it ended tragically when he didn’t return from preparing the final clueHunter Lewis left his father’s home on California’s far northern coast last week with a plan. The adventurous college student, 21, had spent years creating an elaborate treasure hunt for his friends and family. Now it was time to hide the final prize.On 30 December, Lewis is believed to have launched a 15ft green canoe into the frigid Pacific waters to hide the treasure that would complete the journey. Continue reading...
Judge rules William ‘Roddie’ Bryan can seek parole after 30 years while Travis and Gregory McMichael cannotA judge in Georgia sentenced Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan to life in prison on Friday for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was running through their mostly white neighborhood in February 2020 when they chased him down and killed him.Under Georgia law, murder carries a mandatory life sentence unless prosecutors seek the death penalty. For the judge, Timothy Walmsley, the main decision was whether to grant father and son Greg McMichael, 66, and Travis McMichael, 35, and their neighbor, Bryan, 52, a chance to earn parole. Continue reading...
Ahmaud Arbery's family bared their grief and loss to the judge during the sentencing of three white men convicted of his murder.The men, father and son Greg and Travis McMichael and their neighbor William 'Roddie' Bryan, chased down Arbery, who was jogging in his neighbourhood, in pickup trucks and shot him dead.At the start of the hearing, superior court judge Timothy Walmsley rejected last-minute legal motions by Bryan's defense attorney to throw out his murder conviction and spare Bryan from the life sentence that state law imposes automatically Continue reading...
Bank becomes first on Wall Street to implement a mandate after saying in October it would require all US employees to get vaccineCitigroup is set to begin enforcing its “no jab, no job” policy next week, making it the first Wall Street bank to implement a vaccine mandate.The New York-headquartered bank said in October that it would require all US employees to be vaccinated against Covid as a condition of their employment in line with a Biden administration policy requiring workers supporting government contracts to be fully vaccinated. Continue reading...
On 24 March 2002, Sidney Poitier received an honorary Oscar 'in recognition of his remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being'. As he was introduced on to the stage by Denzel Washington, Poitier received a standing ovation
Company has failed to comply with court order to turn over public documents from review beset by shoddy working and infightingCyber Ninjas, the firm that was contracted by Arizona Republicans to carry out a widely-criticized review of 2.1m ballots cast in the presidential election, is shutting down amid a legal battle seeking to force the company to make documents from the review public.A judge fined the company $50,000 a day on Thursday – 50 times the amount requested by plaintiffs – for failing to comply with a court order to turn over public records, in a lawsuit brought by the Phoenix-based Arizona Republic newspaper. Continue reading...
The actor, whose groundbreaking work in the 1950s and 60s paved the way for generations of black film stars, has died aged 94.Poitier, who was born in Miami but raised in the Bahamas, was the first black winner of the best actor Oscar, for his role in Lilies of the Field. He was a pioneering black presence in mainstream Hollywood cinema.His death was announced on Friday by Fred Mitchell, the minister of foreign affairs of the Bahamas
His roles in films like To Sir with Love mirrored my own experiences, and made me rethink what was possibleAs a young kid, there really weren’t many black figures to aspire to, to mould yourself to. I was always glued to the telly and one night my dad put on this film, In the Heat of the Night. I will always remember the moment when Sidney Poitier came on screen as Virgil Tibbs. Seeing any black person on TV was extraordinary, but seeing someone with such ability, such grace, such style, changed me.I knew how bad racism was in the US at that time, and watching that film I feared for this black character in that world. But there’s a moment where an older white gentleman, Endicott, slaps Tibbs, and he immediately slaps him back in the face. There was an audible gasp in our living room, quickly followed by cheers. It was a thing we’d never seen before – he was standing up, he was strong, and he wasn’t taking any shit.David Harewood is an actor Continue reading...
The Republicans who once denounced him are beginning to accept Trump’s election lies. But where will voters go in the midterms?The problem with coverage of this week’s anniversary of the events of 6 January 2021 is that too much of it was written in the past tense. True, the attempted insurrection that saw a violent mob storm Capitol Hill in order to overturn a democratic election was a year ago, but the danger it poses is clear and present – and looms over the future. For the grim truth is that while Donald Trump is the last US president, he may also be the next. What’s more, the menace of Trumpism is darker now than it ever was before.This grim prognosis rests on two premises: the current weakness of Joe Biden and the current strength of his predecessor. Start with the latter, evidence of which comes from the contrast in how Trump’s fellow Republican politicians talked about 6 January at the time and how they talk – or don’t talk – about it now.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
More than 2,300 flights cancelled as schools and offices shuttered and parts of the north-west under an avalanche warningUS winter weather is wreaking havoc coast to coast, with more than 90 million people affected by potentially hazardous weather from Thursday and into Friday.More than 2,300 flights were canceled in the US on Friday morning. Schools and offices in the north-east were shuttered, by a fierce overnight snowstorm, if not only by the Omicron coronavirus surge, and parts of the north-west were under an avalanche warning. Continue reading...
Actor, director and civil rights activist Sidney Poitier has died at the age of 94. Poitier, who took on many challenging and groundbreaking roles, was the first Black person to receive a best actor Oscar• Peter Bradshaw on Sidney Poitier: a natural film star who quietly pioneered a revolution Continue reading...
Economists had predicted a rise of 422,000 non-farming jobs as Omicron variant adds new complication to economic recoveryThe US economy ended the year with disappointing jobs growth figures for December, adding just 199,000 workers to the non-farming labor force.Economists had been expecting more than double that number – 422,000 – suggesting that the US economy was improving, but erratically, as worker shortages troubled employers even before the Omicron coronavirus variant arrived, threatening another recovery stall. Continue reading...
A woman doing a selfie dance next to her ill newborn in an ICU? A teen dancing in front of his grandfather’s deathbed? As disturbing as it may seem, they’re ahead of the curveMouths agape, we’ve all cringed and borne witness to that infamous (and now deleted) TikTok video of a young woman doing a selfie dance routine in a newborn intensive care unit, next to her very ill infant’s hospital bed. “‘Li’l Lee was taken in cause of low oxygen. He tested positive for RSV. Waiting for him to breathe better on his own,’” read the caption, as she danced to Nessa Barrett’s If You Love Me while miming cradling motions.For many internet commenters, the video was evidence of a society hell-bent on collapse. “This is the kind of stuff Black Mirror warns us about,” wrote one person on Reddit. Another asked, “Is this real or just some gross ‘social experiment’?” (It’s real.)Rohit Thawani is a creative director working at the intersection of tech and advertising. He is co-host of The Hopeless Show podcast Continue reading...
As I untangled the tinsel, I wondered how much longer the magic of the festive season would holdAs we age, some things fade, while others take on greater significance. It’s a line that sounds lifted from a Call the Midwife voiceover, but as the new year begins, it also strikes me as true. For the first time this year, I’m aware of a shift in emphasis, from Christmas Day itself – a pain of logistics and expectation management – to the period directly afterwards. Specifically, an occasion that before now I’ve never felt to be any such thing: the taking down of the tree. Continue reading...
It’s not enough to excoriate Trump and his supporters. We must seek out and eradicate the roots of the alienation and resentment that so deeply divide usThere’s something exhilarating about hearing someone tell the truth, especially now when so many people seem to believe that the difference between facts and falsehood is a matter of political affiliation or personal opinion. Watching Kamala Harris and Joe Biden speak in the Capitol Rotunda on the anniversary of the 6 January insurrection, hearing the president blame the brutal riot directly on Donald Trump and his supporters – it felt almost like exhaling, after holding your breath for too long. Yes, it’s a lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Yes, it’s a lie that the rioters swarming the Capitol building were genuine American patriots. Those are facts that can’t be stressed enough, that need to be said and repeated by the powerful and the widely respected.Over the past few days, I’ve watched deeply moving interviews with the Capitol police officers who lived through the riot. Especially affecting was the PBS conversation with Sandra Garza, whose partner, Brian Sicknick, defended the Capitol against attackers and died the next day of a stroke; in Garza’s view, Donald Trump “needs to be in prison”. When I register my own jarringly adrenalized response to even the briefest film clip of the surging crowd calling out for blood, I know that I cannot begin to imagine what those who survived it – and their loved ones – continue to suffer.Francine Prose is a novelist. Her latest book, The Vixen, was published in June Continue reading...
Many young Americans are still reeling from their parents’ involvement in the violence of a year ago – and some reported them to the policeA year on from the Capitol attack by loyalist supporters of Donald Trump, many families are still reeling from members outing each other to law enforcement and offspring traumatized by their parents’ involvement in the insurrection.Jackson Reffitt, a 19-year old from Texas, called the FBI weeks before his father, Guy Reffitt, stormed the US Capitol on January, saying that his father had been hinting at doing “something big”, Teen Vogue reported. Continue reading...
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