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Footage goes viral showing teachers stuffing notes into clothing to fund classrooms while audience cheersA competition pitting 10 teachers against each other to scramble for dollar bills to fund school supplies in a city in South Dakota has been described as “demeaning” and drawn comparisons with the Netflix hit series Squid Game.The local newspaper the Argus Leader reported $5,000 (£3,770) in single dollar bills were laid out on the ice skating rink during the Sioux Falls Stampede hockey game on Saturday night, and the teachers from nearby schools competed to grab as many as possible in less than five minutes. Continue reading...

What happened on 6 January was an attempt to overturn the election results and the rule of law. The threat is far from overEven as the mob ran screaming and smashing through the capitol on J6 anuary , it was clear this was a coup attempt. It was equally clear that it had been instigated by the then president and his circle, much of whose audience in the “stop the steal” rally would become that mob. Everything since has been fill-in, important in building the legal case against the leaders of this attempted coup and establishing the facts for history and public knowledge – and, one hopes, for efforts to prevent another such attempt.That the goal was a coup is a solemnly horrifying fact. That those who orchestrated it and those who have excused and dismissed it afterward continue to conspire against the rule of law and the right of the people to choose their leaders is another such fact. Documents such as the Powerpoint presentation turned over to the 6 January commission by Trump’s then chief of staff Mark Meadows confirm the details and build our understanding of the threat. On the basis of sometimes ridiculous pretexts, the circle around then President Trump intended to steal the election and seize power. Many, including Utah senator Mike Lee and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, reportedly knew the agenda.Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses Continue reading...

Originally more than 100 people were feared dead, but hopes rise that death toll could be lower than feared. Plus, trading up from a hairpin to a houseGood morning.Joe Biden declared a major federal disaster in Kentucky after a swarm of deadly tornadoes hit the state on Friday, as representatives of a candle factory destroyed by a twister said far fewer people may have died than previously feared.Isn’t spring the main season for tornadoes? Yes, this latest event was very unusual coming in December, when colder weather normally limits tornadoes, said Victor Gensini, an extreme weather researcher.Does the climate emergency have something to do with this? Possibly. Biden has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate what role the crisis might have played.What makes boosters more effective than the first two Covid jabs? Mutations in the virus look quite different from that of the original Wuhan strain that all current vaccines were designed to target. That in turn means existing antibodies will be less efficient at intercepting Omicron and a higher quantity of antibodies is required to compensate for them being less well matched. Continue reading...

Drone footage has captured the devastation after a series of deadly tornadoes struck Kentucky on Friday. The US president, Joe Biden, declared a major federal disaster in the state, with officials saying the death toll could exceed 100 in Kentucky alone.The governor, Andy Beshear, said the tornadoes were the most destructive in the state’s history. One tornado that tore through four states over four hours of nighttime devastation is believed to be the longest distance for a tornado in US history. In Mayfield, a community of about 10,000 in the south-western corner of Kentucky, large twisters also destroyed fire and police stations

Pandemic deepened disparities in infrastructure, education and health care, non-profit leader saysAmid the Covid-19 pandemic the president of one of the largest Native American– run non-profits has warned that health and economic disparities are still seriously affecting Indigenous communities, despite some progress achieved by the Biden administration.Josh Arce, president of the Partnerships with Native Americans (PWNA), told the Guardian in an interview that challenges affecting Indigenous groups ranged from health inequities such as high rates of diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses to inadequate infrastructure such as running water and reliable electricity. Nearly all of these problems were worsened by the pandemic. Continue reading...

New York City FC ended the season as MLS Cup champions but the best team of the year was another franchise in the north-eastNobody in MLS reached the level of Carles Gil in 2021. The 29-year-old was the conductor through which so much of the record-breaking New England Revolution’s play flowed. Without Gil, the Revs wouldn’t have been the regular season force they were. Continue reading...

After a shocking start to the season, Kansas City look back to their best. So it was an odd decision for their opponents to give them added motivation on SundayIt’s hard to imagine what motivated the Las Vegas Raiders to prance to the middle of Arrowhead Stadium and stomp on the Chiefs’ logo during pregame warmups. “You don’t want people coming into your stadium and disrespecting what you’ve built,” Patrick Mahomes would later say.There is no official rule against what the Raiders did but there are also things called etiquette and common sense. And as the Raiders quickly learned Sunday, there’s another thing called karma. Seventeen seconds into the game it was the Chiefs who were dancing after defensive tackle Jarran Reed caused a Josh Jacobs fumble, which cornerback Mike Hughes took to the house for the first of what felt like a million points for Chiefs. Twenty-one minutes later it was 28-0 Chiefs. The final score was 48-9. It was an embarrassment on all levels for Las Vegas. The Raiders’ little pregame ritual certainly didn’t help matters. Continue reading...

Dozens unaccounted for amid conflicting reports on survivors as crews search wreckage in ‘deadliest tornado event we’ve ever had’The death toll from record tornadoes that roared across hundreds of miles this weekend was feared to exceed 100 in Kentucky alone, with dozens still unaccounted for and conflicting reports on the number of survivors as crews scramble to search wreckage.One tornado that tore through four states over four hours of nighttime devastation is believed to be the longest distance for a tornado in US history, leaving destruction, death and a frantic search by survivors to find family and shelter, from Arkansas to Kentucky. Continue reading...

Autumn Kirks took shelter and glanced away from her boyfriend, who was 10ft away, and when she looked back he was goneWorkers on the night shift at the candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky, were part of the holiday rush that was keeping the place going around the clock when a tornado whirled towards the small city and the word went out to “duck and cover”.Autumn Kirks pulled down her safety googles and took shelter, tossing aside wax and fragrance buckets to make room for herself. Continue reading...

Experts say tornadoes with such intensity are rare later in the year during colder seasonal weatherJoe Biden has asked the US environmental protection agency (EPA) to investigate what role the climate crisis might have played in the deadly tornadoes that killed scores in Kentucky and several other states this weekend.Experts have said that tornadoes with such intensity are rare later in the year during colder seasonal weather, and that Friday night’s storms, which included one tornado tearing a path of more than 225 miles across Kentucky, appeared to be an anomaly. Continue reading...

What could prove to be the longest tornado in US history has left a trail of destruction from Arkansas to Kentucky, part of a vast storm front that is feared to have killed at least 100 people in southern and central states of the US.A candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky, and an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, were just two of the buildings destroyed in Friday night’s storm, which was all the more unusual because it came in December, when colder weather normally limits tornadoes

Sadly, it appears that respecting the teaching profession was just a pandemic fadTwo weeks out from the Christmas break, and across the US the annual note from school PTAs reaches parents: it is time to recognise this year’s efforts by teachers through contributions to the holiday fund. It’s a solicitation that goes out every year, but this year the wording is particular. The past 12 months have been terrible, period, but particularly terrible for those working in schools. Please dig deep, we are advised; these are uniquely difficult times.It’s not only a whip-round but an invitation for thanks and praise that, in these endless, waning days of the pandemic, seems to belong to an earlier time. If we were frightened in 2020, there was also a sense of readjustment, much discussed, about what we owed to one another. There was a warm glow of mutual responsibility. Those taken for granted were lauded and rewarded. In New York, food delivery apps introduced a button for a 40% tip, and teachers and doctors were heroes. Nothing lasts, of course, but the collective sense of a near-death experience meant that – as many thought in the heat of the moment – some version of this gratitude would.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Beijing is aiming for global ascendancy – but its leader’s vision of world dominion is centralised, oppressive and totalitarianThe US describes its newly announced diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, backed by Britain and other western countries, as a protest against China’s “egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang”, where the Chinese Communist party (CCP) is accused of genocide, as well as its evisceration of Hong Kong’s democracy.Yet a separate, lurking worry informs Washington’s action: that China may turn the games into a propaganda extravaganza, showcasing its growing strength to a global audience. Think Gladiator, and then think Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian president, acting like a latter-day Roman emperor exercising power over life and death. Continue reading...

The incident serves as a reminder to thoroughly map, plan ahead and be well-prepared when hiking, no matter the seasonWhen a young family died mysteriously on a trail in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains in August, authorities scoured the area for clues. Maybe there was a gas leak from a nearby mine. Maybe the family drank water that contained toxic algae. In the end, as a new report showed, the answers were more prosaic, if just as tragic: the triple-digit temperatures and tough terrain created a fatal situation.Nearly eighty pages of investigative reports obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle lay out the tragic missteps that led to the death of the young family and hold important lessons about the dangers of hiking in a grueling climate. Continue reading...

The US mortgage firm Better sacked 900 workers in a video meeting. It’s time to entrust such tricky human resources tasks to artificial beingsThere is no right way to fire someone, but there is a wrong way to fire 900 people. On Wednesday 1 December, Vishal Garg, the chief executive of Better, an American mortgage provider, convened a Zoom meeting of 900 employees. We don’t know what they expected. Perhaps a Christmas quiz. It wasn’t to be.“I come to you with not great news,” Garg began. “I do not want to do this. The last time I did it, I cried. This time I hope to be stronger.” Everyone was rooting for him. “If you’re on this call,” he continued, “you are part of the unlucky group being laid off. Your employment here is terminated, effective immediately.” Merry Christmas. Don’t let the laptop screen hit your hand on the way down. Continue reading...

A survey finds that the longer we spend being educated the more intelligent we’ll be for the rest of our livesDo years in school make you smarter or do smarter people just stay at school for longer?There’s a strong correlation between our IQ scores and the time we spend in education, so consistent with either possibility. But the implications for education policies are different: if education raises our intelligence we should want more of it than if it just gives us specific skills or knowledge. Continue reading...

The entrepreneur, father of six, says we all need to have more babies to save civilisation. There might be some downsides...Six children, seven – it could sound like a lot to take on. But the rocket and car entrepreneur and father of six Elon Musk, says it is imperative that humankind follows his example – likewise that of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg – and puts population maintenance first. “There are not enough people,” Musk told a US business audience last week. “I can’t emphasise this enough, there are not enough people.”He was renewing his warning that advocates of smaller families, among them Britain’s prime minister and Prince Harry, have got it wrong. Harry received an award not long ago for pledging to have no more than two children. Before that, Johnson, whose growing family is still believed to be in single figures, spotted that the “primary challenge facing our species” is people like himself. From a plane window, he wrote: “You have a horrifying vision of habitations multiplying and replicating like bacilli in a petri dish.” Continue reading...

Justice at work is difficult to watch when big-money lawyers go in hard as they try to discredit witnessesThe slut-shaming – or something very much like it – of the four key witnesses against Ghislaine Maxwell and her late lover, Jeffrey Epstein is, almost, a thing of beauty, a dark wonder to behold. You’ve got to admire the way Maxwell’s multimillion-dollar attorneys break her accusers on the rack of their own human frailty. No one dare call it torture: we’re watching justice at work, the Ghislaine Maxwell defence team way.In order of appearance witness “Jane” was challenged as a drug user from a wealthy but deeply unhappy home; witness “Kate” was a drug user with a troubled mother; witness Carolyn – to give her some privacy the court accepted her request to use only her real first name – had a single parent mother who was an alcoholic and a drug addict, who became an alcoholic and a drug addict herself, who left school when she was 14, who did not, said her ex-boyfriend Shawn “have the reading ability” to say Ms Maxwell’s first name, Ghislaine. So Carolyn called her Maxwell. Witness Annie Farmer – her full real name, was 16, the child of a divorced single mum but not herself broken, not at all. Continue reading...

Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, Pennsylvania 2020 – now Georgia, with its changing demographics and fight over voting rights, looks set to be the bellwetherTo understand the forces shaping American politics, one state will be impossible to overlook in 2022: Georgia.The Peach State will offer the biggest litmus test yet of former US president Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican party, and the persistence of his false claims of election fraud, as well as a guide to whether Democrats can expect the nation to move in their direction. Continue reading...

Experts fear if psychedelics fall exclusively into the hands of big pharma the industry will follow the same path as legal marijuana, making the rich richerThe Wonderland psychedelic business conference, held recently in Miami, Florida, drew large crowds and big-name keynote speakers – such as former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson – with the promise of a booming new sector. It is being suggested that the next big development in mental healthcare will come in the form of psychedelic drugs: substances such as psilocybin (magic mushrooms), ayahuasca (a plant-based mixture from South America), and DMT (a naturally occurring hallucinogenic).While these substances have been illegal and primarily associated with countercultures such as the hippies of the 1960s and ravers of the 1990s, changes in laws and scientific breakthroughs in psychedelic treatments for depression and anxiety have created a new industry projected to be worth £8bn by 2027. Continue reading...

Tornadoes tore through central and southern US states on Friday, leaving at least 70 people feared dead in what President Biden called an ‘unimaginable tragedy’ Continue reading...

A relatively small but incredibly organized faction is working to turn the country into something resembling a theocracyForget everything you ever thought you knew about pregnancy: a 26-year-old congressman, who will never be pregnant himself, has helpfully stepped in to explain the process to everyone. A fetus is just like a photograph, according to Madison Cawthorn, a right-wing congressman from North Carolina. During an anti-abortion speech on the House floor last week, Cawthorn proclaimed that having an abortion is like snatching a half-developed photograph of a sunset out of someone’s hand and ripping it to shreds. (You could almost see his brain working as he spoke: a photo develops … an embryo develops … wow, I am very smart!)Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for order Continue reading...

An Amazon warehouse near Edwardsville, Illinois, about 25 miles (40km) north-east of St Louis, was destroyed in extreme weather conditions on Friday night. It wasn’t immediately clear how many people were hurt by the roof collapse, but emergency services called it a 'mass casualty incident' on Facebook. One official told KTVI-TV that as many as 100 people may have been in the building, working the night shift, at the time of the collapse.

In allowing Texas’s outrageous abortion ban to stay in place, the court signaled that it is willing to sacrifice its own legitimacy and power in order to destroy RoeDon’t be fooled by the supreme court’s nominal hedging on its endorsement of SB8, the Texas abortion ban that deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who assists in an abortion after six weeks’ gestation. In a ruling on Friday, the court held that a lawsuit by Texas abortion providers could go forward – but only on narrow grounds. Only those state officials responsible for licensing medical providers may be sued, the court ordered – no one else involved in the state’s practical maintenance of SB8 is liable. The ruling said, for instance, that the providers could not sue court clerks, those bureaucrats tasked with actually docketing the lawsuits that would enforce SB8.For providers, it seems that the best possible outcome for the suit now is that they may be able to secure an injunction preventing medical providers from being delicensed. These perplexing limits placed by the court on which parties can be sued to challenge SB8 ensures that though the suit against the law will be at least partly allowed to go forward, it will be largely toothless.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

The first Nobel peace prize for journalists since 1935 shouldn’t obscure the fact that record numbers are in prison, facing intimidation or murderMaria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, the first journalists to receive the Nobel peace prize since 1935, share a belief that the world is engaged in an existential battle for truth and against lies. Speaking at Friday’s Nobel prize ceremony, Muratov noted simply, “the world has fallen out of love with democracy”.He remembered his fallen colleagues – the six journalists murdered from Novaya Gazeta, the Moscow-based newspaper that Muratov has edited for 25 years – and asked the audience to stand to stand in solidarity with the journalists of the Philippines, who have “given their lives for this profession”.Joel Simon is the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists Continue reading...

Congressman poised to helm Trump’s media company is poster child for the notion that, in today’s politics, extreme partisanship paysFor the first and perhaps the only time in his pugnacious political career, the California congressman and noted Trump apologist Devin Nunes is inspiring some kind of unanimity across party lines.When news broke on Monday that Nunes was retiring from Congress to become chief executive of the fledgling Trump Media & Technology Group, nobody on the left or the right doubted he’d landed where he belonged. After 19 years as a reliably rock-ribbed Republican legislator, Nunes told his supporters that he wasn’t giving up on fighting his political enemies, just “pursuing it by other means” – and for once those enemies took him at his word. Continue reading...

The Boston Celtics center received plenty of criticism after his appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight. But his views are a little more nuanced than some perceiveEnes Kanter Freedom has had an intriguing basketball career. He was barred from playing college basketball at the University of Kentucky because he had received benefits from his time playing professional basketball in Turkey as a teenager. And since being drafted as the No 3 overall pick in the 2011 draft, he has played for five different NBA teams and is currently in his second spell with the Boston Celtics.But it is off the court where Freedom has attracted the most attention. He has spoken out on human rights violations both in China and Turkey, where he grew up. His criticism of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, led to reprisals against his family and Freedom’s Turkish passport being cancelled. More recently, he has taken aim at LeBron James for his sponsorship deal with Nike and the company’s alleged ties to forced labor in China. Then last month, he became a US citizen and legally changed his name from Enes Kanter to Enes Kanter Freedom.You can listen Thomas’s full interview with Enes Kanter Freedom here Continue reading...

Making substances illegal has never worked, simply because it fails to address the reasons why people use themI once lived with a militant vegetarian who had grown up near an abattoir. With a thousand-yard stare, he’d talk about how its bloody runoff would seep into his local playground. He hadn’t touched meat since those days. You often hear this sort of thing from vegetarians and vegans: that if you looked at what went on inside (or even outside) a slaughterhouse, you’d switch to Quorn full-time. In a similar vein, if you want to quit smoking, I recommend watching someone go through lung cancer.I could never look someone in the eye and tell them smoking isn’t both immensely pleasurable and cool-looking. What I would say is this: my mum was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017. Over just a few months I watched her shrivel, become obscured by tangles of medical tubing, and begin to suffocate to death as her lungs filled with fluid. She died that same year, and it was a relief to know that her unimaginable suffering was over. I apologise if this description has either put a damper on your next fag break, or stressed you into taking a fag break when you didn’t even have one planned. As a former smoker, I can understand either scenario.Eleanor Margolis is a columnist for the i newspaper and Diva Continue reading...

A new Missouri bill could make Kevin Strickland and other exonerees eligible for restitution paymentsIt’s been more than two weeks since Kevin Strickland was released from the Western Missouri correctional center and now he often wakes at 3.30am, long before the dawn, with an urge to get outside.For 43 years of a sentence under a former Missouri law known as the “Hard 50” – which required Strickland to serve at least 50 years before he would be eligible for parole – that was an impossibility. Continue reading...

The former vice-president seems to be playing a long game for the 2024 election, possibly betting Trump’s influence over the Republican party will wane“Hang Mike Pence!” was the chilling chant of the mob at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Can the same constituency be persuaded to vote Mike Pence on 5 November 2024? He, for one, appears to think so.The former vice-president this week travelled across New Hampshire, host of the first-in-the-nation presidential primary elections, to meet local activists, raise money and deliver a speech attacking potential opponent Joe Biden. Continue reading...

Supreme court appears inclined to severely curtail or overturn Roe v Wade after hearing Mississippi case, which could have affect gay rights, contraceptives and fertility treatmentsConstitutional scholars in the US said a litany of rights, from same-sex marriage and sex to birth control and in vitro fertilization, could come into question if the country’s highest court moves to overrule or weaken Roe v Wade.The supreme court last week heard arguments in the case Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which centers on whether the state of Mississippi can ban abortion at 15 weeks gestation, roughly nine weeks before bans are permitted under current law. Continue reading...

Federal sex-trafficking trial has shed more light on pair’s ties, and how their lives seemed intimately interwovenGhislaine Maxwell has long been accused of luring teenage girls into Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit for him to sexually abuse, but whatever motive for allegedly doing so has long remained a mystery.The answer hinges somewhat on the nature of their relationship. Did Maxwell serve as the late financier’s consigliere, or act as his girlfriend and procurer? Continue reading...

College students say they will be striking indefinitely until Arizona senator agrees to support Freedom to Vote ActSince Monday, a group of 20 college students from the University of Arizona and Arizona State have been on hunger strike in an effort to pressure one of the most heavily criticized Democratic senators, Kyrsten Sinema, to take action on the passage of crucial voting reform legislation.The students say they will be striking indefinitely until Arizona’s Sinema agrees to support the Freedom to Vote Act, a bill that would ensure fair election measures like automatic voter registration and the protection and expansion of vote by mail. Continue reading...

Former president was furious over ex-Israeli PM’s acknowledgment Biden won election, book saysDonald Trump spat an expletive about his old ally, Israel’s ex-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for congratulating Joe Biden on his victory in last year’s election, according to a new book.Trump lashed out in an interview for a book on US-Israel relations during his presidency, the author Barak Ravid wrote on the Axios website on Friday. Trump’s remarks were also published by the English-language website of Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper. Continue reading...

Presentation turned over by Mark Meadows made several recommendations for Trump to pursue to retain presidencyFormer Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the 6 January Capitol attack a PowerPoint recommending Donald Trump to declare a national security emergency in order to return himself to the presidency.The fact that Meadows was in possession of a PowerPoint the day before the Capitol attack that detailed ways to stage a coup suggests he was at least aware of efforts by Trump and his allies to stop Joe Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January. Continue reading...

Annie Farmer testifies about encounter at New Mexico ranch in 1996, and recounts how she met Maxwell and Jeffrey EpsteinThe fourth accuser to testify in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial said Friday that she was only 16 when the British socialite gave her a nude massage at Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico ranch.This accuser, Annie Farmer, also said that the morning after her encounter with Maxwell, Epstein climbed into bed with her and said he “wanted to cuddle” and she “felt kind of frozen”.Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 802 9999. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html Continue reading...

The highest court in the US has been defied by a group of extremist Republicans openly flouting the court’s own rulingsSonia Sotomayor, the liberal-leaning justice on the US supreme court, put it plainly. For almost three months, lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature of Texas had “substantially suspended a constitutional guarantee: a pregnant woman’s right to control her own body”.“The court should have put an end to this madness months ago,” Sotomayor said. Continue reading...

Subpoenas for Brian Jack and Max Miller raise pressure on Trump as panel investigates extent of former president’s involvementThe House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Friday issued new subpoenas against two Trump White House officials involved in organizing the rally and march that descended into the 6 January insurrection, as they inquire into the extent of Donald Trump’s involvement.The select committee issued orders compelling documents and testimony to Brian Jack, Trump’s former White House director of political affairs, now working for the House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, and Max Miller, a former deputy manager for the Trump campaign. Continue reading...

Vishal Garg apologizes for failing ‘to show the appropriate amount of respect and appreciation’ for laid-off staffThe CEO of online mortgage lender Better.com will be “taking time off” from his role after he abruptly fired more than 900 employees via a Zoom call last week, according to an email from the company’s board of directors to employees Friday.Vishal Garg, who founded the company in 2016, told the employees on the call that they “are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off”. Continue reading...

The high court has ruled that the WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, overruling a previous judgment that allowed him to stay in the UK. In the ruling, senior judges stated they sided with the US authorities after a near-unprecedented package of assurances was put forward that Assange would not face the strictest measures either pre-trial or post-conviction unless he committed an act in the future that required them.Stella Moris, Assange's fiancee, reiterated that the high court had accepted the conclusion of the magistrate that if Assange is extradited and placed in self-isolation in the US, it would drive him to take his own life

Approach by Bain Capital pitted group’s leaders against campaigners and politicians in year-long battle