US news | The Guardian

War of words begins before leaders’ meeting, with US president warned Taiwan is China’s ‘ultimate red line’China’s president, Xi Jinping, is expected to warn his US counterpart, Joe Biden, to “step back” on the Taiwan issue in their first virtual meeting on Monday evening Washington time, according to Chinese state media.State media outlets such as China Daily are briefed by authorities on important issues such as China-US relations and have been accurate in reflecting the priorities of Chinese leaders. Continue reading...

The quarterback was one of the most feared players in the league On Sunday, he rolled back the years with the the team he took to the Super BowlThe Carolina Panthers’ reunion with Cam Newton could easily have been a gimmick. The last time we heard from the quarterback formerly known as Superman, the New England Patriots had released him after he lost the starting battle with Mac Jones. The fact that it took until Week 10 for a team to take a chance on him felt ominous. Turns out the only ones who needed to be worried were the Arizona Cardinals.Before Sunday afternoon’s game, the team announced that Newton would be active but wouldn’t start. This turned out to be technically true, as PJ Walker took most of the snaps during the Panthers’ 34-10 win. But it didn’t matter: this was Newton’s show from the very start. Continue reading...

Jeremy Strong and Lady Gaga are the latest actors to try the time-honoured technique. As an actor, I’ve seen its strange effectsThere’s an old showbiz anecdote that sums up the differences between two distinct acting techniques, which I will call simply “method” and “not method”.In 1976, on the set of the spy thriller Marathon Man, Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman, the film’s two stars, are apparently not getting along. Hoffman hasn’t slept for 72 hours in order to bring verisimilitude to his portrayal of a man being interrogated under sleep deprivation. Seeing his colleague turn up ragged before the cameras roll, Olivier drily remarks: “My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”Rebecca Root is an actor. Her recent work includes The Queen’s Gambit Continue reading...

Compromise was inevitable, but still the conference increased the speed of action with three important developmentsIf a bus were hurtling towards a child in the middle of the road, no one nearby would take merely one step to get that child out of the way. They would rush, at speeds previously unbeknownst to them, using every muscle in their body, to get that child to safety.On the climate crisis, a bus is careering toward us and we have still not flexed all our muscle power to get ourselves or future generations to safety.Christiana Figueres was head of the UN climate change convention that achieved the Paris agreement in 2015, and is the author of The Future We Choose. Continue reading...

President, who has said he played at law school, sends letter before momentous game in Dublin and calls team and Irish leader afterJoe Biden wished the Ireland rugby team luck in their game against mighty New Zealand on Saturday, saying in a letter: “Go spread the faith. I’ll be cheering for you.”Before the game in Dublin, the All Blacks had this autumn heavily beaten Wales and Italy and thrashed the USA by no less than 104-14. Continue reading...

Serb separatist provocations must not be tolerated – and the people must be offered hope of something betterBetter late than never? The US and Europe finally show signs of awakening to the dangers facing Bosnia. A crisis with long roots has escalated dramatically, with the international community’s chief representative, Christian Schmidt, warning that the country could soon break apart. He described a “very real” prospect of a return to conflict, 26 years after the Dayton peace accords ended a war that cost 100,000 lives, and the Srebrenica massacre of Muslim men and boys that was the worst atrocity in Europe since the second world war.Since then, Bosnia has been made up of the Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosniaks and Croats, with a tripartite presidency composed of one Serb, one Bosniak and one Croat. Milorad Dodik, the genocide-denying leader of the Bosnian Serbs, has pressed for years for them to go their own way. The limited international pushback has emboldened him. In response to the introduction of a genocide denial law by the previous high representative, Mr Dodik is threatening to quit state institutions – including the national armed forces. This would be, as Mr Schmidt noted, secession in all but name. In creating a new Bosnian Serb army, it would also revive the very body responsible for genocide. Mr Dodik has said he would force Bosnian troops out of the Republika Srpska and that, if necessary, his “friends” would back him. Continue reading...

Baghuz bombing of people trying to escape fighting was covered up, says NY Times reportThe US military has confirmed for the first time a 2019 airstrike in Syria that killed up to 80 people, mostly women and children, but claimed the strike was justified as it killed Islamic State fighters who were attacking coalition forces.The confirmation from US Central Command followed a report by the New York Times in which former and current Pentagon officials alleged there had been a cover-up of a likely war crime. Central Command argued that because some women and children had taken up arms for IS, whether by indoctrination or choice, they “could not strictly be classified as civilians”. Continue reading...

It’s too late for incremental change. By mobilising just 25% of people, we can flip social attitudes towards the climateNow it’s a straight fight for survival. The Glasgow Climate Pact, for all its restrained and diplomatic language, looks like a suicide pact. After so many squandered years of denial, distraction and delay, it’s too late for incremental change. A fair chance of preventing more than 1.5C of heating means cutting greenhouse gas emissions by about 7% every year: faster than they fell in 2020, at the height of the pandemic.What we needed at the Cop26 climate conference was a decision to burn no more fossil fuels after 2030. Instead, powerful governments sought a compromise between our prospects of survival and the interests of the fossil fuel industry. But there was no room for compromise. Without massive and immediate change, we face the possibility of cascading environmental collapse, as Earth systems pass critical thresholds and flip into new and hostile states. Continue reading...

Campaigner against miscarriages of justice was ‘forgotten man’ in case which inspired Bob Dylan song and Denzel Washington movieJohn Artis, who was wrongly convicted with boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter in a triple murder made famous in a 1975 song by Bob Dylan and a 1999 film staring Denzel Washington, has died. He was 75.Artis died on 7 November of a gastric aneurysm at his home in Hampton, Virginia, said Fred Hogan, a longtime friend who worked to help overturn the convictions of Artis and Carter. Continue reading...

Associate of financier Jeffrey Epstein faces charges of sex trafficking and enticement of minorsGhislaine Maxwell is to emerge from her New York prison cell on Monday after a 15-month wait for the start of a trial for sex trafficking children, perjury and the enticement of minors while she was a close associate of the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.The 59-year-old, the youngest child of the British newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell, has been held on remand in a Brooklyn detention centre since shortly after her arrest in July 2020. Continue reading...

European Union policies have turned migrants into a resource to be exploitedA company of men in dark uniforms and balaclavas, all carrying clubs. They are battering a group of people, repeatedly clubbing them on their arms, legs and backs. They push them into a river that marks the boundary of the European Union. “Go,” they yell. “Go.”It’s not an incident on the border between Belarus and Poland, the latest migrant flashpoint on the EU border, and one now dominating the news. It happened 1,000 miles to the south, between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. And it’s been happening for months, but with much less publicity or scrutiny than that afforded the events in Belarus. Continue reading...

Freedom and progress are hard won, and any gains made are all too often lost by a single, self-aggrandising individualDo revolutions always end in betrayal? Sudanese citizens are but the latest group to see a democratic dawn blotted out by the forces of reaction. It’s an age-old story. Napoleon subverted the French Revolution, imposing an imperium where freedom briefly reigned. Stalin purloined the power of the proletariat to build a totalitarian dictatorship.From southern Africa to Cuba to Myanmar, today’s ruling heirs to revolutionary political struggle dishonour their inheritance. European peoples who joyfully cast off the Soviet yoke watch liberties erode anew. The Arab spring swiftly wilted. The 1776 “American revolution” was arguably no revolution at all – more a white middle-class taxpayers’ revolt dressed up in fancy language. Continue reading...

A new book, Betrayal, dissects the final, authoritarian spasm of the Trump presidency, and Karl warns: ‘We came close to losing it all’How did it come to this? For five wretched hours, the vice-president of the United States found himself hiding in a barren underground garage with no windows or furniture. Somewhere above, a baying mob was calling for him to hang.The story of the deadly insurrection on 6 January, when Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to subvert democracy, has been told in newspapers, books and TV documentaries. But journalist Jonathan Karl has seen unpublished photographs from that day that tell a new story about Vice-President Mike Pence. Continue reading...

TikTok video calls for bath in borax – but once a person is vaccinated, there’s no way back, doctors sayMedical experts are speaking out against Covid-19 vaccine “detoxes” that some inaccurately claim can remove the effects of vaccinations received under mandates and other public health rulings.In one TikTok video that has received hundreds of thousands of views, Carrie Madej, an osteopath based in Georgia, falsely claims a bath containing baking soda, epsom salts and the cleaning agent borax will “detox the vaxx” from anyone who has received a jab. Continue reading...

Republicans are vying for critical positions in many states – from which they could launch a far more effective power-grab than Trump’s 2020 effortAt 1.35pm on 6 January, the top Republican in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell, stood before his party and delivered a dire warning.If they overruled the will of 81 million voters by blocking Joe Biden’s certification as president in a bid to snatch re-election for the defeated candidate, Donald Trump, “it would damage our Republic forever”. Continue reading...

Biden has made 78 ambassadorial nominations but just seven have been confirmed as two Republican senators play hardballJoe Biden will on Monday hold a high-stakes virtual summit with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, his latest initiative to restore US authority on the world stage. But the president’s efforts are being hampered by a logjam in Washington that threatens to cripple American diplomacy.Biden had made 78 ambassadorial nominations as of 5 November, according to the White House, but just seven of them – or 9% – had been confirmed by the Senate. Former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump had 77% and 70% of their ambassadorial nominees confirmed respectively at this stage. Continue reading...

Conspiracy theories have taken root in Australia, but it doesn’t impact just the converts. For every new believer, there are the friends and family who they’ve shut outCam Smith, an Australian researcher who monitors online far-right activity, had first noticed mention of QAnon in the local communities he watched as early as 2018. At the time, it looked like just a few “tiny meetup groups on Facebook” of around 20 people, he told me. “They were talking about, ‘Oh, we’ll meet up at like some pub in Oakleigh, and we’ll talk about this QAnon thing.’ And I didn’t think it was going to be that important.”Smith’s interest in the local movement was sparked again during the periods of heavy coronavirus public health restrictions in Melbourne, in 2020. To contain an outbreak of the virus within Melbourne’s public housing high-rise towers, local authorities had moved quickly – and controversially – to unilaterally lock down the residential communities in the buildings. In defiance of the restrictions, a group of QAnon believers drove nearly 2,000km from Queensland to protest against the events, filming themselves – and expounding their theories – as they went. Continue reading...

Panel of judges rules stay of requirement for businesses with 100 or more workers is ‘firmly in the public interest’Judges appointed by Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan declined on Friday to lift a stay on the Biden administration’s Covid-19 vaccine requirement for businesses with 100 or more workers.One law professor said the move showed the court was “radical and anti-science”. Continue reading...

Judge rules against ex-president’s former fixer while Apprentice contestant ‘stands by allegations’

Austin and Dallas districts say they won’t respond to lawmaker’s letter targeting 850 books, many on race and LGBTQ+ issuesMajor Texas school districts are resisting a Republican state representative’s request that they divulge information on books kept in classrooms and libraries, as part of attempts to remove titles targeted by conservative parents and politicians.The Austin and Dallas independent school districts, two of the largest in the state, said they would not respond to a request to go through a list of about 850 books, noting how many copies schools have and how much the books cost, the Houston Chronicle reported. Continue reading...

Stringent proof-of-vaccine measures are an attempt to prevent the ‘incalculable loss’ of lives that struck the area last winterThis week, Los Angeles embraced one of the strictest vaccine rules in the United States, requiring residents to show proof of full vaccination before entering restaurants, movie theaters, gyms and other public spaces.The latest rules are expected to boost vaccination rates in the US’ second most populous city. But they also prompted backlash. On Monday, demonstrators including municipal workers, police officers, dock workers, parents, and teachers protested in front of city hall, carrying signs reading “Freedom Not Force!” and “My body, my choice.” Continue reading...

Singles’ Day is a Chinese holiday turned online shopping bonanza. But Americans, too, love to buy things to fill our gaping existential despairI found out about the existence of Singles’ Day in the most apt way possible: a shopping alert. “It’s Singles’ Day!”, announced my phone on 11 November, with a notification alert that sounded like a small bird’s hiccup. Here, have a treat on us! And by “on us”, I mean a 10% discount to give you the excuse to buy the Alexander McQueen heels you’ve had on your wishlist for eight months and that haunt your Google ads.“Excuse me! Excuse me,” I yelled at my phone, which had since moved on to giving me alerts about environmental collapse and that someone I don’t know and have never heard of is now on Instagram. I am no longer single! I found someone to love me and treasure me and give me access to health insurance, so I am afraid I cannot partake in your shopping holiday, please save your discounts for the singles of the world who need them.Jessa Crispin is a Guardian US columnist. Continue reading...

Fox & Friends host played edited clip before claiming the US president was ‘facing backlash’ for his remarksFox News edited video of Joe Biden to remove context from remarks some could judge as racially insensitive.In Veterans Day comments at Arlington National Cemetery on Thursday, Biden told an anecdote that referenced the baseball player Satchel Paige, who pitched in the Negro Leagues before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. Continue reading...

Three teenagers, aged 13 to 16, are accused in attacks that police say ‘reflect a racial motivation theme’Authorities say three teenagers driven by racial hatred were behind hoax calls that brought major police responses to the home of a leading Black Lives Matter activist in Los Angeles.The teenagers, aged 13 to 16, connected over the Discord chat platform and are suspects in more than 30 bomb threats and so-called “swatting” incidents across the country, according to Los Angeles police. Continue reading...

The dynamics of each case make it clear who the overwhelmingly white and male US legal system is designed to protectThe comedian Beth Stelling once described the US legal system as “the white man’s FUBU: just for us, by us”. If you had any illusions that this description was a comedic exaggeration then the past week should have shattered them. Two high-profile murder cases have shone a bright light on the inequities of the “justice” system and made it very clear who the law is there to serve.Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for pre-order Continue reading...

Crowds of fans launched confetti and erupted in cheers and chants of 'Britney is free!' after a judge approved the termination of Britney Spears's conservatorship. The ruling frees the pop star from a legal arrangement that has controlled her life for nearly 14 years, and allows her to retake control of her finances, career and personal life. Spears tweeted after the ruling: 'Good God I love my fans so much … Best day ever'

When conservative men like Rittenhouse and Brett Kavanaugh express their feelings, it is an act of thwarted entitlement – or a threatHis voice choked up and his face went red. The young man squinted and panted, his mouth pulled up plaintively towards his nose, his answers to the questions coming out in gasping little bursts. Kyle Rittenhouse, on the stand testifying at his trial for killing two people and wounding a third last summer at a racial justice protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was not crying for the men he killed, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber. He was crying for himself, describing what he said was his mortal fear that night in August 2020, when he opened fire on the protesters using an AR-15. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Rittenhouse gasped, describing how he had confronted and ultimately killed the two men while he was guarding the lot of a car dealership. “I defended myself.”Rittenhouse was 17 at the time of the shooting; he is 18 now. The young man’s emotional testimony had a practical purpose: it was a performance meant to make him seem helpless and childlike, and to convince the jury in his homicide trial that there was a reasonable possibility that he was in fear for his life when he shot the three men. But to many, the emotion of Rittenhouse’s testimony seemed to stem not from his memories of the incident, but from the indignant entitlement of a white man thwarted in the enforcement of his own privilege. Continue reading...

The management’s initial offer of 1%-a-year raise and 26% cut in salary for new hires seen as a wage squeeze during pandemicAcross corporate America, relations between companies and their labor unions range from chilly to ice-cold. Not at Kaiser Permanente – the California-based healthcare giant. Kaiser has long been seen as having the nation’s best labor-management partnership. Now the partnership finds itself in crisis as 34,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers prepare to strike on Monday, in what would be the largest walkout in this fall’s strike wave.After risking their lives during the pandemic, many Kaiser workers are asking how things could have turned so sour in the much-praised partnership, in which managers and union members team up at hundreds of Kaiser facilities to find innovative ways to improve care and efficiency, saving the company tens of millions of dollars a year. Continue reading...

After a xenophobic rant was directed at Irvine’s vice-mayor, originally from South Korea, her response drew attentionTammy Kim, the vice-mayor of Irvine, California, won her seat with more votes than any candidate in the city’s history. But that hasn’t stopped the racist attacks.Kim, originally from South Korea, is one of three Asian American members of the southern California city’s council, which gained an Asian majority with Kim’s election. During a recent public discussion about a proposed veterans cemetery, she faced a xenophobic rant from a man who asked how she felt about the “36,574 Americans who died trying to save your country for freedom” during the Korean war. Continue reading...

A new alliance of financial institutions is committed to funding the changes necessary to avert climate catastropheSix years ago, in Paris, countries reached an historic agreement to limit the global temperature rise to less than 2C, targeting 1.5C. In finance, we launched the task force on climate-related financial disclosures so that companies would disclose their climate-related risks, allowing finance to measure what matters.Despite these breakthroughs, in the years that followed, action didn’t match ambition. Few countries pursued the necessary policies, and business investment in decarbonisation was limited. Too many in finance thought that the climate crisis was someone else’s problem.Mark Carney is UN special envoy on climate action and finance and former governor of the Bank of England Continue reading...

President hits the road to sell bill as Democrats, facing daunting odds in 2022, fight to reach votersThe Port of Baltimore dazzled in the setting sun. Giant cranes arched over the Chesapeake Bay, the shoreline stacked with colorful shipping containers. At the center of the tableau was the American president, on a mission to promote his hard-won $1tn infrastructure package.“Infrastructure week has finally arrived,” Biden said last week, beaming at the mix of elected officials and local union leaders in attendance. Continue reading...

Analysis: The jury is to hear closing arguments in a murder trial featuring prosecution missteps and a controversial judgeAs testimony wrapped up this week in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, a wary America has realized that the trial of the young man on charges linked to his killing of two racial justice protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, has not played out like many people expected.With more than 30 witnesses taking the stand throughout a tumultuous week, a few called on by the state appeared to help Rittenhouse’s legal team with its claim that he was acting in self-defense. That added to notable errors made by prosecutors, as well as a judge with a simultaneously stern and flamboyant courtroom style who has shocked with controversial comments and outbursts. Continue reading...

Former New Jersey governor’s new book bound to put him at odds with former president as 2024 approachesChris Christie’s comeback tour will continue next week with publication of a book, Republican Rescue, in which the former New Jersey governor seeks to present himself as the face of the party after Donald Trump, and a plausible contender for the presidential nomination in 2024.Such efforts have already seen the one-time presidential candidate clash with Trump, who did not take kindly to Christie warning in a speech in Nevada last weekend: “We can no longer talk about the past and the past elections – no matter where you stand on that issue, no matter where you stand, it is over.” Continue reading...

Thank climate activists for the fact that any progress was made in Glasgow. Unless we push hard, powerful interests don’t budgeIt was inspiring to watch activists – especially young people and those from the global south – as this Glasgow Cop limped towards its mushy end. They were on top of every twist in the text, and they won significant concessions from the big polluting countries. At the time of writing, it looks as if the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels will be mentioned in a Cop document for the first time, and that there will be more money for nations of the global south to “adapt” to the climate crisis. The activists’ anger echoed through the halls, and was heard in whatever parts of the world were listening. To the extent that this Cop worked at all, it’s a tribute to their perseverance and creativity.But was this a sea change in the way we deal with the global climate crisis? No –Glasgow moves us down the track a little and boxes in national governments a little more, but it has changed not nearly enough. After 26 iterations, the truth about these Cops is pretty clear: the results are largely determined before they even begin. Yes, there’s an endless succession of concerts, marches, seminars, negotiating sessions, speeches, ultimatums, declarations, photo-ops; and yes, everyone works hard to build a sense of drama (the media especially). But history would suggest that the parties rarely go beyond what they’d intended to do before they arrived.Bill McKibben is the Schumann distinguished scholar at Middlebury College, Vermont, and leader of the climate campaign group 350.org Continue reading...

Dontae Sharpe, who was given a life sentence at age 19, will be able apply for compensation of up to $750,000A North Carolina man who spent 24 years behind bars for a murder he has long said he did not commit has been pardoned by the state’s governor.Dontae Sharpe has been out of prison since 2019 and the pardon allows him to apply for compensation of up to $750,000 for his wrongful conviction. Continue reading...

Former Trump adviser indicted by grand jury on two counts for contempt of CongressDonald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon has been charged with contempt of Congress after failing to appear before a committee investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.The justice department said Bannon had been indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts: refusing to appear for a deposition and refusing to provide documents in response to the committee’s subpoena. Continue reading...

Glen de Vries and Thomas Fischer were aboard a single-engine Cessna that went down Thursday in northern New JerseyA wealthy tech mogul who traveled to space with William Shatner last month was killed along with another person when a small plane crashed in northern New Jersey, according to state police.Glen de Vries, 49, of New York City, and Thomas Fischer, 54, of Hopatcong, New Jersey, were aboard a single-engine Cessna 172 that went down Thursday in a wooded area of Hampton Township. Continue reading...