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Republican Senate leader ‘tripped at a hotel during a private dinner’ and is receiving treatment, according to a spokespersonThe Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, was taken to hospital in Washington DC on Wednesday night after he tripped and fell at a hotel, a spokesperson said.David Popp said McConnell, 81, fell “during a private dinner”. Continue reading...

People once hoped the two powers could forge a better relationship. Now the best hope is stopping deteriorationLooking back, it is hard to believe that in the Obama era there were serious discussions about whether a “G2” could emerge – with the US and China coming together, never easily but earnestly, and in good faith, to tackle the world’s great problems.The costs of mutual hostility are now greater and clearer than they were back then: the risk of global economic recession, a failure to tackle the climate crisis, and even of military conflict in the future. Yet far from strengthening, bilateral relations have nosedived. The relationship between China and the US is not only at its lowest point for years, but appears to be trapped in a downward spiral. For now Beijing, in particular, seems to be giving up on fixing it. Its support for Moscow has contributed to the deterioration, but is also driven by its belief that the partnership helps to buttress it against US hostility. How and when the war in Ukraine ends could prove critical for US-China relations. Continue reading...

CDC says animal-to-human transmission is rare but study’s lead investigator calls for closer look at virus in rats for new strainsNew York City rats may be renowned for carrying pizza through the subway but according to a new study, they can also carry the virus behind Covid-19.The study released on Thursday in mBio, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, concluded that New York rats among a population of roughly 8 million are susceptible to three Covid variants. Continue reading...

In an aggressive confrontation at a Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee, Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator, clashed with Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, a US labor union. 'You need to shut your mouth,' said Mullin after a testy interaction in which Mullin asked the union head what he did to earn his salary. 'You’re out of line,' O’Brien retorted. Bernie Sanders attempted to mediate between the two men, to little avail

Military members and veterans of the Afghanistan war offered harrowing eyewitness testimonies of the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from the country’s longest conflict, during an hours-long congressional hearing on Wednesday.They also pleaded with Congress to help the Afghan allies left behind.

Baseball games are getting shorter as pitchers and batters are forced to quicken play. It may help bring in the younger fans the game cravesMajor League Baseball’s hottest new star is the talk of spring training. No, it’s not some big-name prospect. It’s not a human being at all, in fact, but rather a timekeeping device. Yes, the buzz is all about how baseball is incorporating the pitch clock into its everyday routine, as those behind the scenes attempt to revitalize a game struggling to keep pace with the modern world.For years, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has been tweaking the rules to shorten the length of games – presumably to attract younger fans as contests have become longer over the years – without alienating the traditionalist bent of its core audience, a feat akin to a hippopotamus trying to walk a tightrope. The most notable “innovation” prior to this offseason had been the introduction of an additional baserunner in extra-inning games as way to avoid extended stalemates. Most fans have not warmed to the idea – but those actually working games like it, so it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future. Continue reading...

Markwayne Mullin, a former MMA fighter, argues with union’s Sean O’Brien as Bernie Sanders seeks order in Senate hearingA Republican senator who once had to reassure voters he didn’t think he was “Rambo” and was a mixed martial arts fighter before entering politics got into a vocal brawl with a union boss during a public congressional hearing, saying: “You need to shut your mouth.”Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma exchanged verbal fire with Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, during a hearing staged on Wednesday by the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee. Continue reading...

Carlson has been caught out of character. Is it over for him? Somehow, I don’t think so“I hate him passionately.”Thanks to new court filings in a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News we now know exactly how the network’s star host, Tucker Carlson, really feels about Donald Trump. Two days before the insurrection at the Capitol, around the same time that Carlson was publicly singing Trump’s praises to his audience of millions, he was also sending private texts to members of his staff about how much despised the guy. It’s almost like Carlson doesn’t believe a single word he says on TV.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Here’s a dirty secret: both Republicans’ debt hysteria and Biden’s proposed tax hikes are pure theater. Neither will happenPresident Biden is proposing to trim the federal budget deficit by close to $3tn over the next 10 years. He was an FDR-like spender in the first two years of his presidency. Has he now turned into a Calvin Coolidge skinflint?Neither. He’s a cunning political operator.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, 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.comThis article was amended on 9 March 2023 to correct an editor’s error in the standfirst. Biden has proposed tax hikes for wealthy Americans, not tax cuts. Continue reading...

Six-year-old shot Abigail Zwerner on 6 January while she was teaching class, leaving her seriously injuredA six-year-old boy who shot his teacher in January will not face criminal charges, a prosecutor in Newport News, Virginia, said on Wednesday night.On 6 January, the first-grader shot Abigail Zwerner while she was teaching class at Richneck elementary school, leaving her seriously injured. Continue reading...

Zah, first president of the largest tribal reservation in the US, worked tirelessly to correct wrongdoings against Native AmericansPeterson Zah, a Navajo Nation leader who guided the tribe through a politically tumultuous era and worked tirelessly to correct wrongdoings against Native Americans, has died.Zah died late on Tuesday at a hospital in Fort Defiance, Arizona, after a lengthy illness, his family and the tribe announced. He was 85. Continue reading...

US bank moves against former employee in attempt to make him liable for any penalties from civil lawsuitsThe US bank JP Morgan is suing the ex-Barclays boss and its former employee Jes Staley, over his relationship with the late billionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.The lawsuit is JP Morgan’s attempt to make Staley liable for penalties it may face as a result of two separate legal battles that accuse the lender of helping Epstein’s sex trafficking of women and girls. Continue reading...

The actor has been complaining about the hurt that critics can deliver. But someone has to call out stinkers, as you would think he’d agree

As books become intellectual property assets, publishers become asset managers trying to future-proof their toxic investmentsThe news that many of Roald Dahl’s books had been edited by the publisher Puffin to excise “offensive references to gender and race” has unleashed a brouhaha among the literary establishment, anti-woke crusaders and just about everyone online.The revisions brought simmering debates about censorship in the name of creating a more genteel, accepting society to their head. An added valence, that the books are for children, seemed to weigh in favor of those who believed references to women as “hags” or to a “weird African language the monkeys spoke” should be scrubbed so that future generations can be shielded from prejudiced thoughts. Continue reading...

Latest attack reported to include use of hypersonic missiles, of which Moscow is only believed to have a few dozen. Plus, the 10 worst places to live in the US for air pollution

In 2022, many Republicans who embraced election denialism were re-elected and, in some cases, elevated to higher officeDonald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election brought the US to the brink of a democratic crisis. Refusing to concede his loss to Joe Biden, he attempted to use every lever available to try and throw out the results of the election, pressuring state lawmakers, Congress and the courts to declare him the winner.Those efforts didn’t succeed. But Trump nonetheless created a new poison that seeped deep in the Republican party – a belief that the results of US elections cannot be trusted. The belief quickly became Republican orthodoxy: it was embraced by Republican officeholders across the country as well as local activists who began to bombard and harass local election officials, forcing many of them to retire. The January 6 attack on the US Capitol – in which thousands stormed the building, and five people died – was the starkest reminder of the potential violent consequences of this rhetoric. Continue reading...

My scorn for convention hid a pit of insecurity. I was just another urban millennial, and never as singular as I imaginedOvernight, I’ve started listening to Radiohead. For the millions who have already experienced the pleasure of transcending their mortal form via Weird Fishes, this won’t seem particularly notable. But I have spent my entire life this far avowedly not listening to Radiohead, a band reserved for boyfriends. Now, to paraphrase Thom Yorke himself, it’s as if I’ve knocked a hole in a wall and can see out on to another plane I never knew existed.This is just one of a series of drastic U-turns I’ve made in recent months that have significantly undercut my previous conception of what sort of person I am. I’ve gone from seven years of declaring that I would never get on a bike in London, to being an annoying cycling evangelist.Moya Lothian-McLean is a contributing editor at Novara MediaDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Nothing could be more fulfilling than making the countryside safe for walkers. No one should have to risk their neck on a rickety stileI know what my dream job is, partly thanks to something I once wrote here about a nasty fall I had one Easter Sunday. A riveting piece, which you doubtless remember. It was on Gower, during a long walk, when a knackered old stile by a patch of wild garlic proved no match for my bulk. I still sport the scar. Two years on from this unhappy incident I was stopped while out shopping in Sketty, a suburb of Swansea. This nice woman told me that her husband, being in charge of paths for Swansea council, had read the piece, worked out where the now-destroyed stile was, and got it fixed.I expressed my gratitude, but my first, thrilling thought was this: there is a head of paths? That’s an actual thing? How wonderful. I want that job. I want to get up every morning, sift through reports of poor signage, overgrown-ness and death-trap stiles, consult my maps and then go out and rectify. I believe I have also written about an encounter with some path-clearers. I’m serious about this. I left the woman my number for the path man to call me so we could talk for hours, but he didn’t. If he was worried I’d want his job off him, he was on the right, well, track. Continue reading...

The frightening character who appears amid union disputes can be traced back to a single factory – which wasn’t unionizedIn New York – a city poised to hire its first “rat czar” after rat sightings doubled in the past year – street-side rodents are fairly commonplace. But the rat stationed on a Union Square curb is something of a different beast. This one is roughly 10ft tall, with incisors the size of iPads. Its eyes are bloodshot, its claws extended, and its belly marked with what look like open, oozing sores. Depending whom you ask, its name is “Scabby”, or just “the Rat”.Since January, give or take, the Rat has been strapped into the bed of a Ford F-150, staring down Tammany Hall. The historic building is poised to become a giant pet store, Petco’s New York flagship, a three-floor bestial mall equipped with its own animal hospital. Continue reading...

Wild African serval known as Amiry was captured by police in January after being spotted in treeA wild cat captured earlier this year with cocaine in its system is now living at an Ohio zoo.The African serval known as Amiry was captured in late January after being spotted in a tree in Oakley, Ohio, a neighborhood in Cincinnati, the local news outlet WLWT5 reported. Continue reading...

Powerball prize winner Edwin Castro now has a mansion nestled among the homes of Ariana Grande and Jimmy KimmelCountless people ask themselves what they would do if they hit the jackpot, and the California man who took home the world’s largest ever lottery prize has now shown his answer to that age-old question.Edwin Castro, winner of the historic $2.04bn Powerball jackpot in November, recently spent $25.5m buying a five-bedroom, six-bathroom mansion in Los Angeles’s glitzy Hollywood Hills, the real estate publication Dirt and the city’s Times newspaper first reported. Continue reading...

Secretary of state’s reluctance to speak to Russian counterpart impedes US, says envoy who helped arrange WNBA star’s releaseA former US diplomat who participated in efforts to free the WNBA star Brittney Griner from jail in Russia has harshly criticised the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the Biden administration over their approach to diplomacy with Moscow.Cameron Hume, a career diplomat who was an ambassador under Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama, said: “For a secretary of state to not want to even get body language or two words from Sergei Lavrov about the situation in Moscow, in the Kremlin, in the people who are close to [Vladimir] Putin, during a time of war was striking to me. Continue reading...

Georgia Republican Barry Loudermilk denied giving tours related to the January 6 riots until video was releasedBarry Loudermilk, the Republican representative from Georgia who has been accused of giving tours of the Capitol building days before the January 6 insurrection, will lead a new House committee that will investigate the Democratic-controlled January 6 select committee.On Tuesday, Loudermilk criticized the select committee, saying: “The J6 committee chose to ignore the facts and pursue a particular political narrative. I will not do this.” Continue reading...

Officers used excessive force and failed to protect Black residents, a report launched following the death of Breonna Taylor has foundA report published by the US justice department following the botched police raid that killed Breonna Taylor has found that Louisville’s Metro police department routinely engaged in a pattern of excessive force that deprived people of their rights.The litany of abuses revealed in the report comes amid a reckoning in the US with the brutality and racism of American policing. Continue reading...

Press secretary criticizes Fox News host for depicting security footage as what he described as ‘peaceful chaos’

A combination of flash flooding, gusty winds and rain could bring more woes for state still recovering from heavy snowstormA fresh atmospheric river is expected to bring more weather chaos to California even as the state is still digging itself out from massive amounts of snow that left mountain communities buried for weeks.Northern and central California are set to receive most of the rain this weekend, which forecasters have warned could cause flash flooding as warm rain hits the state’s almost record snowpack. The state will see moderate to heavy rain, flooding, gusty winds and heavy snow in high elevations through the weekend, according to the National Weather Service. Continue reading...

Merrick Garland condemns ‘unacceptable’ police conduct after review concludes officers violated residents’ civil rightsLouisville police engaged in unlawful practices that violated residents’ civil rights and discriminated against Black people and people with behavioral health deficiencies, the US justice department concluded on Wednesday following an investigation prompted by the killing of Breonna Taylor in a botched police raid in 2020.The city of Louisville agreed to a consent decree to reform policing practices. Continue reading...

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson was 'not credible' given his misrepresentation of the January riots after obtaining footage from Republican house speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Carlson aired his first segment on the riots on Tuesday, where he described the mob that attacked Capitol Hill as 'peaceful sightseers'. Jean-Pierre told reporters: 'As it relates to the Tucker Carlson question, we agree with the Fox Nation's own attorneys and executives who have repeatedly stressed in multiple courts of law that Tucker Carlson is not credible when it comes to this issue in particular'

The US director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, told a Senate intelligence committee that Russian forces in Ukraine were 'facing considerable constraints, including personnel and ammunition shortages, dysfunction within the military's leadership, exhaustion, as well as morale challenges'. Haines said that without a move towards greater mobilisation and securing substantial third-party sources of ammunition, the Russian military may shift in the coming months to holding and defending the territory it currently occupies

Ex-governor pulls back from running for Republican nomination but says question of third-party run ‘keeps popping up’Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland, has ruled out a run for his party’s presidential nomination in 2024 – but not ruled out running as a third-party candidate in an attempt to stop Donald Trump’s return to the White House.Hogan told ABC: “I haven’t ruled that out. But it’s not something I’m really working toward or thinking about” even though “the question keeps popping up more and more”. Continue reading...

Fox News continues to claim January 6 was peaceful while legal filings show him saying Trump is good at ‘destroying things’The Fox News host Tucker Carlson told an associate he “hated” Donald Trump “passionately”, new filings in a $1.6bn defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems revealed.Even as the filings were reported on Tuesday, Carlson continued to broadcast January 6 security footage in his attempt to cast the deadly attack on Congress as “peaceful chaos” arising from a protest of Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden. Continue reading...

Review requested by mayor and police chief and will look into use of force, de-escalation and specialized unitsThe US justice department announced on Wednesday that it will review Memphis police policies on use of force, de-escalation and specialized units in response to the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols during an arrest.The review was requested by the mayor and police chief, the department said. In a separate effort, it will examine the use of specialized units around the US and produce a guide for police chiefs and mayors on their use. Continue reading...

Club in Pennsylvania was initially approved to use facilities, but was rescinded after pushback from community membersAn after-school Satanists club in Pennsylvania is threatening to raise hell after local district leaders denied them the ability to convene on their school grounds.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), together with its Pennsylvania chapter, sent a letter to the Saucon Valley school district demanding that they allow the After School Satan Club, or ASSC, access to school facilities in accordance with the US constitution’s first amendment right to practice religion freely. Continue reading...

Three states announce end of Eric membership citing unfounded concerns over security and political leaning of organizationThree Republican states announced this week that they would be terminating their membership with a prominent, multi-state consortium that shares voter rolls data to keep their lists up to date. The moves come amid unfounded rightwing conspiracies about the security and partisan leaning of the organization.Florida, West Virginia and Missouri said this week that they are leaving the Electronic Registration Information Center (Eric), a group of roughly 30 states on both sides of the aisle that assist one another in voter roll maintenance. The group matches member states’ voter rolls to each other to flag registrations of duplicate voters or people who have moved or died. The more states that are involved, the more accurate Eric’s services can be. Continue reading...

Email from billionaire mogul among reams of new evidence unsealed in defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting SystemsRupert Murdoch said Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham maybe “went too far” in their coverage of Donald Trump’s voter fraud lie, according to an email submitted as evidence in a defamation lawsuit brought by an election operations company.Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for $1.6bn, accusing the cable TV network of amplifying debunked allegations that their voting machines were used to rig the 2020 US presidential election against Trump, in favour of Joe Biden. Continue reading...

With 90% of ballots counted as of Tuesday night, 63% of voters rejected proposal to legalize recreational use for people over 21Oklahoma voters on Tuesday rejected a ballot measure that would have legalized recreational marijuana use by people over the age of 21, a setback for advocates who have seen the conservative state embrace access to the drug for medicinal purposes.Across Oklahoma, 2,890 licenses have been approved for medical marijuana businesses. Oklahoma City, the state capital, is home to more than 400 dispensaries. Continue reading...

Former first lady makes remark on The Light Podcast, her new venture, and notes the lack of diversity at the Capitol that dayMichelle Obama has described how after leaving Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, she broke into “uncontrollable sobbing”.The former first lady was speaking on The Light Podcast, her new venture which launched on Tuesday. Continue reading...

The Federal Reserve chairman has admitted that at least 2 million people could lose their jobs if interest rates keep risingAs chairman of the Federal Reserve board, Jerome Powell is making his semi-annual policy report to Congress this week. I have an urgent question for Powell that I hope members of Congress will also ask: how can he justify further rate hikes in light of America’s staggering inequality?Powell and his colleagues on the Fed’s open market committee are considering pushing interest rates much higher in their quest to get inflation down to their target of 2%. They believe higher interest rates will reduce consumer spending and slow the economy.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, 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...

Reigning champion Cameron Smith will not be defending his Players Championship title at Sawgrass after being suspended from the PGA Tour due to his decision to join the LIV Tour. When asked whether he'll be watching this year's event in person, the golfer reported being a little bit unsure, despite living at Jacksonville Beach, just 10 minutes away. Smith joked that he might find an alternative way to be at the event, saying 'even getting out there and watching walking around in the crowd might be pretty funny'.

Stories of abuse are emerging from the rubble. Meanwhile, in a misogynistic society, women’s basic needs are going unmetIn Turkey’s southern province of Hatay, one of the most ravaged cities in the recent earthquakes, 25-year-old Alev Altun, the mother of two young children, became homeless in one night, like thousands of others. Having nowhere to go, she agreed to take refuge in the house of her ex-husband, on his invitation, assuming it would be safer to stay with the father of her children than alone in a tent or in a building at risk of collapse.While she was sleeping, her ex-husband allegedly poured scalding water all over her, shouting she should be grateful that he had not killed her. She remains in intensive care at a local hospital, with severe burns to her head, face and body. Hers is one of the many harrowing stories of women and girls in crisis zones. Continue reading...

Carmaker says it is progressing faster on US factory than European one thanks to subsidiesVolkswagen has told the EU it is making faster progress in building a US battery factory than one in eastern Europe because of huge subsidies made available by the White House – adding to pressure on Brussels to offer bigger green incentives.Europe’s largest carmaker has warned the EU it is being overtaken in the race to attract gigafactory investment, after Joe Biden announced a package of help to achieve net zero aims worth a total of $369bn (£312bn) under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Continue reading...

Andre Thomas, 39, was set to be executed on 5 April for killing his estranged wife and her two children in 2004A scheduled execution of a Texas death row inmate whose attorneys say gouged out both of his eyes, in separate incidents, because of severe mental illness was delayed by a judge on Tuesday.Andre Thomas, 39, was set to be executed on 5 April, for fatally stabbing in March 2004 his estranged wife, Laura Christine Boren, 20, their four-year-old son, Andre Lee, and her 13-month-old daughter, Leyha Marie Hughes, cutting out the hearts of the children. Continue reading...

We are deeply concerned about disinformation campaigns that seek to discredit intersectionality, Black feminism and antiracismAs academics, artists, advocates, policy-makers and concerned persons from different parts of the world, we emphatically oppose the attacks being waged on educational curricula in the United States and elsewhere against intersectionality, critical race theory, Black feminism, queer theory and other frameworks that address structural inequality. We join the thousands of signatories who have opposed censoring critical content in public and higher education. We also agree with the 30 Black LGBTQ organizations that have denounced the “relentless attacks that have led to book banning, curriculum censorship, politically motivated purges of educators, and an exodus of skilled teachers”.Here we write as concerned individuals in professions ranging from education and research to policymaking, clinical care, and advocacy who have benefited from and continue to use intersectionality and a family of related concepts in our work. In this letter, we express our concerns about the coordinated and dangerous disinformation campaigns that seek to discredit and censor vital tools such as intersectionality and Black feminism. This strategy has surfaced in conjunction with the recent debacle concerning college-level curriculum for high school students in the United States, but has appeared elsewhere as well.A growing number of activists, intellectuals, academics, and others have signed this open letter hosted by the Action Network Continue reading...

The women were refused abortions despite their nonviable pregnancies posing a serious risk to their health. Plus, the secrets of lifelong friendships