The owner of Polaris decided to journey onward from San Francisco after paperwork difficulties arose for the young canineOne very good boy finally has a very loving home.A puppy abandoned at the San Francisco International airport was adopted by an air pilot just in time for the holidays. Continue reading...

As the storm hits vast parts of the US, outdoor workers are pushing for greater protections and compensationAs millions of Americans around the country experienced the effects of a winter storm, thousands of workers in essential and emergency jobs had no choice but to work outdoors in blizzards and record low temperatures.Over 200 million Americans were placed under winter weather alerts heading into Christmas weekend. Regions throughout the west and midwest were hit by record-breaking low temperatures. In the south, Florida experienced its coldest Christmas in decades. Hundreds of flights were canceled and thousands of Americans in hard-hit areas lost power. Continue reading...

Democratic congressman says recent changes to electoral college laws are unlikely to stop another January 6Recent reforms to the laws governing the counting of electoral college votes for presidential races are “not remotely sufficient” to prevent another attack like the one carried out by Donald Trump supporters at the Capitol on January 6, a member of the congressional committee which investigated the uprising has warned.In an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Maryland House representative Jamie Raskin on Sunday renewed calls echoed by others – especially in the Democratic party to which he belongs – to let a popular vote determine the holder of the Oval Office. Continue reading...

Severe weather conditions from a storm in the US have caused snowdrifts to immobilise emergency vehicles in New York state, left homes and business across the north-east without power, forced thousands of flights to be cancelled and made roads too dangerous to travel on.The storm, which stretched from Great Lakes on the Canadian border to Rio Grande along the Mexican border, has killed at least 34 people

I’ve been toying with giving up my chronic chronicling, perhaps even deleting the evidence – but something always stops meUnder an awning at night with the rain coming down. On the top deck of a bus travelling between parties at opposite ends of London. Leaning against the cubicle door of a pub toilet. These are some of the places I have written Google Docs diary entries in the past week. Mostly I do so via the Google app on my phone in a document titled Written Version of 2022. It contains everything you might imagine – slipshod accounts of nights out and lists of everything I recall drinking, lines from poems and films and songs, screenshots of paintings, recipes, scraps of news, seasonally dependent paeans or fury directed towards the weather, honest accounts of my emotional state, less honest accounts of my emotional state.At the time of writing, Written Version of 2022 is 52,000 words and 85 pages long. Sometimes I’ll augment it with new events two or three times per day. As things happen to me, I am already speculatively ordering them into a narrative, my so-called version of events becoming overlaid with their real-time unfurling. All this is to say, I’m worried my chronic diary-writing habit is starting to get in the way of me actually living my life.Lamorna Ash is the author of Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town Continue reading...

Bold campaign promises to reform criminal justice are stymied at the state level and amid partisan point-scoring in CongressTwo years to the day since George Floyd was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Joe Biden stood in the White House and signed an executive order he argued should instill optimism and hope among reform advocates across the country.It was late afternoon in the spring of this year, and among the attendees were members of Floyd’s family and the family of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old Black woman killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky, shortly before Floyd’s death. Continue reading...

From Djokovic’s deportation to the arrival of the future of the sport via farewells to two of the greatest players of all timeRoger Federer and Serena Williams were born one month apart and having built legendary careers that redefined the concept of longevity in the sport, this year they departed within three weeks of each other. Continue reading...

Former prosecutors say exhaustive report from Capitol attack committee ‘amounts to a detailed prosecution memo’After 18 months of investigating Donald Trump’s drive to overturn his 2020 election loss, the House committee on the January 6 insurrection has provided the Department of Justice with an exhaustive legal roadmap as it pursues potential criminal charges against the former US president.Amid reports the committee is already co-operating with DoJ by sharing evidence garnered from 1,000 witness interviews and thousands of documents, former federal prosecutors say the panel’s work offers a trove of evidence to strengthen the formidable task of DoJ prosecutors investigating the former US president and his top loyalists. Continue reading...

Ben Wikler, Wisconsin’s Democratic party chair, on midterm success that means ‘democracy is going to survive in our state’Ben Wikler spent so much time poring over polls ahead of the midterm elections that it eventually became too much to bear.“I was throwing up with anxiety,” Wikler, the chair of Wisconsin’s Democratic party, confessed to the Guardian. Continue reading...

As pressure grows on athletes to turn in elite performances, another side of human nature emerges, experts sayAltogether, it was quite a plunge for Jacob Runyan and Chase Cominsky, two stars of the professional fishing world. In a matter of weeks they went from nearly sealing top team honors to facing prison time.Their alleged crime? Filling the insides of their five Lake Erie walleyes with stones and supermarket filets at a north-east Ohio angling tournament. The tournament director, Jason Fischer, sounded the alarm after gutting their catch, screaming: “We got weights in fish!” The alleged perpetrators could only sit sheepishly behind the cops who had come to arrest them as an angry spectator mob closed in. Continue reading...

Yes, the Jaguars are peaking at the right time as they close in on a playoff berth. But their recent success drives home just how much the dark days of this franchise are in the pastAs fanbases go, no one had a more joyous last few weeks than Jacksonville. It wasn’t just following the Jags’ astonishing Week 15 overtime win over Dallas by taking care of the Jets 19-3 on Thursday night. It wasn’t just because that was the team’s third win in a row. Or that at 7-8 they now sit atop the AFC South and can clinch a home playoff game in Duval County with a Week 18 win over the reeling Titans.Yes, Jacksonville are peaking at the right time. But their recent success drives home just how much the dark days of this franchise are over. It’s kind of a miracle, really. To excel in the present, one must learn from the past. For a while, it wasn’t clear if Jags owner Shad Khan was capable of turning around the franchise he purchased in 2012. Continue reading...

What healthy habits did I take up in 2022? I’m racking my brain, searching for scraps of self-improvement, but I’ve had a hard time finding anyIt’s humblebragging season. Around this time of year newspapers are stuffed to the brim with articles about what so-and-so achieved in 2022 and what they hope to achieve in 2023. They read a book a day! They gave up alcohol! They gave up social media! They took up wild swimming!Me? I did none of those things. Especially not wild swimming, which is a peculiarly British obsession. There’s nothing Brits love more than turning something objectively miserable into a hobby. Long muddy walks, beans on toast, swimming in freezing cold lakes: if it’s damp and vaguely masochistic, Brits are all over it.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Rebecca Scofield said a TikTok user spread baseless and false claims linking her to the November slayings of four studentsA University of Idaho professor has filed a defamation lawsuit against a self-proclaimed psychic on TikTok after the tarot card reader accused her of killing four of the school’s students, whose murders shocked the US last month.The federal lawsuit filed by the university’s history department chair Rebecca Scofield on Wednesday alleges that TikTok user Ashley Guillard spread baseless claims which falsely linked the professor to the 13 November slayings of Xana Kernodle, 20; Ethan Chapin, 20; Maddie Mogen, 21; and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, in Moscow, Idaho. Continue reading...

Police say the shooting involved a married couple – an unidentified man fatally shot a woman before killing himselfPolice in Thornton, Colorado, say they found two adults dead after investigating a suspected murder-suicide at a Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall on Christmas morning.Officers in the suburb north of Denver tweeted at 10.30am Sunday that they were investigating a homicide at the gathering place but that “there [was] no active threat”. Continue reading...

Officials warn the number of deaths might rise, while a quarter of a million people in the US have no electricityThe monstrous Arctic storm that has gripped most of the continental US over the Christmas holiday continued to batter the northern city of Buffalo, New York, on Sunday, as freezing temperatures trailing across the nation created what forecasters called a “potentially life-threatening hazard”.Twenty-eight deaths attributed to the weather have been recorded across the nation, with officials warning that the number of fatalities would probably rise as “the Arctic air enveloping much of the eastern two-thirds of the US would be slow to moderate”. Continue reading...

Three buses of Central and South American migrants arrived to the vice-president’s home from TexasThree busloads of migrants were dropped off outside the Washington DC home of US vice-president Kamala Harris late on Christmas Eve, the latest episode in an escalating battle between the Joe Biden White House and the governors of southern Republican states over federal immigration policy.The Central and South American migrants, believed to be sent from Texas, were dropped off in below-freezing temperatures, with some wearing only sweatshirts and shorts. Continue reading...

The democratic magic of six strings, two hands and an electric current – a means of self-expression as perfect as it has ever beenIn the world of music, two of this year’s seemingly endless losses happened within a fortnight of each other. Both led to outpourings

These types of restrictions serve a purpose, at least for some companies of a particular size – otherwise, let workers go where they pleaseOnce upon a time a business would hire an employee and make them sign an employment agreement which would include a “non-compete” clause – a pro-business protection that serves one objective: prohibiting an employee from working for a competitor.But in a period when employers are fighting for talent, workers have the upper hand and the tide is turning. Joe Biden, for one, is not a fan of non-compete clauses. Continue reading...

It’s going to be a painful year for many business owners. But there is good news – this won’t last for everMost small businesses in the US will continue to grapple with a slower economy, inflation, supply chain challenges and labor shortages next year. But our biggest problem will be interest rates. Rates rose sharply in 2022 – in 2023 those rates are going to hurt.As recently as March, the federal funds rate, which is the rate the Federal Reserve charges banks for its money, was 0.25%. Now it’s 4.33%. During the same period of time, and because of this increase in the cost of doing business, the average prime rate at most banks has risen from 3.25% in March to 7% today. Continue reading...

The legislation aims to end the ‘puppy mill-to-pet store pipeline’ for abusive breeders of dogs, cats and rabbitsAnimal welfare advocates in New York are heralding the recent approval of a statewide law that prohibits the sale of dogs, cats and rabbits at retail pet stores to “end the puppy mill-to-pet store pipeline and stop abusive breeders” and help more stray and abandoned pets find homes.The law, which goes into effect in 2024, will not outright bar pet shops from having four-legged friends on display as retailers may charge rescue organizations rent to present ready-to-adopt companion animals. But it has been hailed as a major achievement for animal welfare by its backers. Continue reading...

Chairman of militia group and four others are charged with seditious conspiracy related to Capitol insurrectionThe January 6 committee investigating the attack on the Capitol may have issued its huge final report, but the wheels of the justice system in the US are grinding on and one of the most high-profile trials emerging from the insurrection is about to begin in earnest.Jury selection began last week with the seditious conspiracy trial against ex-Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and four others involved in the far-right, often violent militia group. Continue reading...

When the original Santa for the majority-Black Seventh Ward died a new one stepped into his boots, inspired by his memoryFor Theron Murphy, the only thing cooler than taking pictures as a child with a Santa Claus who – like him – was Black was eventually getting the jolly guy’s blessing to carry on his spirit. Murphy, 33, was among the generations of children taken by their parents to Dennis Photofinish studio at the corner of St Bernard Avenue and North Tonti Street in New Orleans’s majority-Black Seventh Ward neighborhood to have their portrait taken with the man countless folks in the city simply knew affectionately by his preferred nickname: “Chocolate Santa”.Chocolate Santa for most of the year was school bus driver Fred Parker. But when the holidays rolled around, Parker transformed into Chocolate – or Seventh Ward – Santa, complete with the traditional red suit and hat. He sat patiently listening to wishes for toys and other Christmas miracles at the portrait studio or at the schools, daycares, hospitals, markets and malls he visited during “the most wonderful time of the year” for nearly five decades. Continue reading...

I wouldn’t have been surprised to find this delivery company was running the country – it would explain a lot

FDA regulators to change packaging labels to make clear pill will not work if person is already pregnantThe US Food and Drug Administration has announced it will change packaging labels for the emergency contraceptive Plan B, to specify that it is not an abortion pill.According to many anti-abortion activists, any form of disruption to an egg is considered an abortion. Continue reading...

America’s top health official, a cult figure for millions, has advised seven US presidents – but will he speak freely about Trump’s response to coronavirus?Dr Anthony Fauci speaks to the Guardian via Zoom a couple of hours before his leaving do, marking the end of a 54-year career at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).“That’s going to be done according to all public health guidelines,” America’s top public health official, wearing dark suit, blue shirt and blue-and-white polka dot tie, is quick to add. “People with masks and people online and people dialling in through Zoom, so it’s not going to be the classical party.” Continue reading...

More than 60% of US faces winter weather warnings, with temperatures drastically below normal in many placesA wild winter storm enveloped much of the US on Saturday, bringing blizzards, freezing rain, flooding and intense cold close to record lows. More than a dozen deaths were attributed to the storm. Holiday travel and utilities were disrupted, with around 1.4 million homes and businesses left without power by late afternoon.Forecasters said the storm, a “bomb cyclone” or “bombogenesis”, was caused by a collision of cold, dry air from the north and warm, moist air from the south. Continue reading...

Trump supporter has refused to concede to Democrat Katie Hobbs but Maricopa judge says no evidence of misconductA judge on Saturday threw out Republican Kari Lake’s challenge of her defeat in the Arizona governor’s race to the Democrat Katie Hobbs, rejecting her claim that problems with ballot printers at some polling places on election day were the result of intentional misconduct.The Maricopa county superior court judge, Peter Thompson, who was appointed by then-Republican governor Jan Brewer, said the court did not find clear and convincing evidence of the widespread misconduct Lake alleged affected the result of the 2022 election. Lake will appeal, she said. Continue reading...

Republicans rail against pandemic-era rule as 226 House members from left to far right take chance not to vote in personRashida Tlaib of Michigan, one of two Democrats to oppose the $1.7tn spending bill that averted a US government shutdown on Friday, did so by voting “present”. But Tlaib was not present at the Capitol, voting instead by proxy.Proxy voting was instituted during the Covid pandemic and is due to come to an end on 3 January, in the new Congress with Republicans controlling the House. Continue reading...

Delays and processing problems mean turmoil for arrivals from South and Central America seeking a better life in the USAfter walking around downtown for hours, two young Colombian men stood across from the El Paso Chihuahuas baseball team’s stadium, looking for a shelter that immigration officials had mentioned.A security guard who didn’t speak Spanish grasped their need and pointed towards the convention center. Continue reading...

North American Aerospace Defense Command has sought to reassure nation’s children since 1955The US military agency known for tracking Santa Claus as he delivers presents on Christmas Eve does not expect Covid-19 or the “bomb cyclone” winter storm affecting large parts of North America to affect present delivery.The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, is responsible for monitoring and defending the skies above North America. Continue reading...

Mark Woodley was sent by Iowa TV station to report on the bitterly cold conditions – and he did not like it that muchAs a huge winter storm battered the US, a short-staffed TV station in Waterloo, Iowa dispatched a sports reporter to describe the scene outside.Footage of Mark Woodley’s increasingly stressed video reports for KWWL, from a bitterly cold and snow-covered highway, duly went viral, registering 27m views by Saturday. Continue reading...

It’s always a busy time of year for couples therapists like myself, but there are ways to protect your relationship from the stressA few weeks ago, I received my first Christmas card from a carpet-cleaning company I sometimes use. A garish green and red, I opened it to read: May the Joy of Family Light Up Your Christmas, followed by the suggestion that I might like to “freshen” up my carpets for the coming seasonal guests.This card, which was selling the idea that family is the true spirit of Christmas and the source of all happiness has, of course, some truth in it. But it’s no great secret that the festive season can also place big demands on our most intimate relationships.Susanna Abse is a couples psychotherapist and author of Tell Me the Truth About Love Continue reading...

Musk’s cult-like fans haven’t entirely lost faith in their leader yet, but it’s getting a lot harder for him to keep up his imageI hate it when I have to do this but here goes: I was wrong. I was very, very wrong. Back in October, when Elon Musk’s $44bn acquisition of Twitter was finalized, I predicted that the social network would become a lot nastier but ultimately keep chugging along. I assumed Musk had a couple of brain cells and a little self-restraint; I assumed he wasn’t going to drive away Twitter’s advertisers by making erratic business decisions; I assumed he was going to be at least somewhat sensible. After all, he did have $44bn on the line. Continue reading...

In the snow and cold, I wear three pairs of socks, and I get sick easily. But the delivery apps don’t seem to care about our safetySnow doesn’t fall in Guatemala. When I was a little kid I’d see snow in movies, but never did I think I’d see it in real life.I’ve been a delivery worker in New York City since I moved here nearly 18 years ago. I was at home when I saw snow for the first time. It looked so different from how I’d imagined. I woke up early with some friends to shovel snow from people’s driveways and I earned $200. Continue reading...

Mike Lee of Utah made comment in text message to Trump aide on evening after the Capitol attackA senator who received a voice message meant for another Republican on January 6 described the caller, Rudy Giuliani, as “walking malpractice”.The piquant characterisation of the former New York mayor, then Donald Trump’s attorney and a leading proponent of his election fraud lie, was made in a text message sent by Mike Lee of Utah. Continue reading...

More than a million people in darkness and thousands of flights cancelled amid lows with wind chill of -55F (-48C)More than a million people in the US are in the dark after a “bomb cyclone” winter storm struck the country, closing highways, grounding flights and causing misery for Christmas travellers.Heavy snow, howling winds and air so frigid it instantly turned boiling water into ice took hold of much of the country, including normally temperate southern states. Continue reading...

A TV sports anchor from Iowa braved blizzard conditions on Thursday morning to report on the winter storm that has left more than 1.4m homes without power. Mark Woodley jokingly told audiences: 'I can still feel my face right now but I kind of wish I couldn't'. He said he usually reported on sports, but 'everything has been cancelled' Continue reading...

The Trump years demonstrated that the norm of presidential candidates voluntarily releasing their returns is too weakDonald Trump’s biggest worries right now might not be about Congress having released six years of his tax returns. But it is an issue where Republicans can comfortably have it both ways: please Trump’s base, as they loudly perform indignation about Democrats’ conduct, even as they cease defending a politically weakened Trump against the charges of the January 6 committee.The Republican party has all but said that they will play tit-for-tat in the new Congress – investigations, impeachments, whatever it takes to troll Democrats and distract the public with political theater, as Republicans are unlikely to make good on campaign promises. Hence it is crucial to understand what made the release of Trump’s tax returns legitimate – and why Trump cannot appeal to privacy as a trump card – and why we must also put rules in place to prevent political witch-hunts.Jan-Werner Mueller teaches at Princeton and is a Guardian US columnist. His most recent book is Democracy Rules Continue reading...

I wanted to learn a skill that would come in handy after society collapsed – perhaps I should have taken up unarmed combatThe cardigan was conceived in anxiety, so no wonder it came out looking like that. I started knitting in lockdown, because keeping my hands occupied made it harder to refresh news apps.At some point over the last year, as Covid worries began to retreat, knitting hitched itself to climate-based worries instead. I’m not saying it’s rational, but hear me out: my brain has been dabbling with “doomsday prepper” for its 2022 theme, and I reasoned with it that knitting was an essential skill for a rapidly changing world. Continue reading...

Hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people work in US prisons as part of their sentences, often without basic protections and for little to no payFor more than two decades imprisoned in California, Samual Brown worked more than a dozen different jobs and was transferred between penitentiaries throughout the state – earning less than a dollar per hour. At the beginning of the pandemic, he worked as a healthcare facility worker tasked with disinfecting areas where inmates with Covid had been held. He wanted to quit his job – he had asthma and risked his life – but was told he “had no choice”. By the time Brown was released in December 2021, he had paid just $3,000 of the more than $37,000 in restitution he owed the state.“That is tied directly into the same type of practices from slavery,” Brown, who is co-founder of the Anti-Violence Safety and Accountability Project, says. “That’s the same practice, the same energy, the same spirit that you see in this prison setting. A person can be on one plantation, and then they’ll be moved to another plantation, and you’ll never see the people who you were with ever again. They can separate you from your wife, separate you from your children, from your family. It’s the same way in the modern-day carceral setting.” Continue reading...

Despite key victories, books covering race and LGBTQ+ topics continue to attract bans in conservative statesBook bans have plagued many US schools throughout 2022, with stories focusing on LGBTQ+ and race issues being targeted by conservatives across the country, and the right aims only to step up its attempts at censorship in the new year, experts warn.States including Missouri and Utah have seen intensifying crackdowns in recent months, with some Utah school libraries now requiring permission slips for students to borrow books covering LGBTQ+ themes. Elsewhere the convincing re-elections of Republican governors in Florida and Texas, which have some of the most restrictive laws around education, mean that change is unlikely there in the short term. Continue reading...

According to transcripts, Cassidy was conflicted ahead of the hearing: ‘I felt like Trump was looking over my shoulder’“I’m about to be fucking nuked,” former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson reportedly told a January 6 committee staff member after meeting with investigators before her bombshell testimony to the committee in June. Her prediction turned out to be accurate.Within hours of Hutchinson’s surprise appearance, where she testified about a furious president who encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol, tried to grab the steering wheel of a presidential SUV and hurled his lunch against an Oval Office wall, the backlash began. Continue reading...

People shown hiding in stores after apparent altercation between two groups amid Christmas influx at the Mall of America in MinnesotaA teenager was killed during a shooting at America’s largest mall, in the state of Minnesota, that sent frightened customers racing into a lockdown just before the holiday weekend, police said.Bloomington’s police chief, Booker Hodges, said the victim was a 19-year-old man. A bystander’s jacket was also grazed by a bullet during the shooting at the Nordstrom outlet in the Mall of America on Friday. Continue reading...

For them, and for everyone who still regards them as heroes, there is no morality in business or economics. The winnings go to the most ruthlessIf this past week presents any single lesson, it’s the social costs of greed. Capitalism is premised on greed but also on guardrails – laws and norms – that prevent greed from becoming so excessive that it threatens the system as a whole.Yet the guardrails can’t hold when avarice becomes the defining trait of an era, as it is now. Laws and norms are no match for the possibility of raking in billions if you’re sufficiently ruthless and unprincipled. Continue reading...

The House committee has done its work. The result is a riveting read, utterly damning of the former president and his followersWhether fomenting insurrection, standing accused of rape or stiffing the IRS, Donald Trump remains in the news. On Monday, the House select committee voted to issue its final report. Three days later, after releasing witness transcripts, the committee delivered the full monty. Bennie Thompson, Liz Cheney and the rest of committee name names and flash receipts. At 845 pages, the report is damning – and monumental.Trumpworld is a crime scene, a tableau lifted from Goodfellas. Joshua Green of Bloomberg nailed that in The Devil’s Bargain, his 2017 take on Trump’s winning campaign. The gang was always transgressive, fear and violence part of its repertoire. Continue reading...