by David Smith in Washington, Martin Pengelly in New on (#5Y20H)
President promises to tackle gun violence and vows prosecution for those who use untraceable guns assembled from kitsJoe Biden has announced a crackdown on “ghost guns”, untraceable firearms assembled from kits that have been used in a rising number of shooting crimes.The US president, who promised to tackle gun violence across America, said the new rule would make it easier for law enforcement officials to track and catch those who use illegal firearms. Continue reading...
Anti-LGBTQ+ measures among more than 156 bills targeting issues of identity, says PEN reportSince Florida passed its controversial “don’t say gay” bill, conservative states across America have been advancing similar bills as they attempt to ban the discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in classrooms.Last month, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed into law the Parental Rights in Education bill. The law prohibits all discussion of sexuality and gender identity in schools, a move that advocates say will “erase” LGBTQ+ students and history.This article was amended on 11 April 2022. An earlier version of the standfirst suggested all 156 bills in question related to LGBTQ+ issues. Continue reading...
US’s largest utility reaches settlement with prosecutors but does not admit wrongdoing over Dixie and Kincade firesPacific Gas & Electric, the nation’s largest utility provider, has agreed to pay more than $55m to avoid criminal prosecution for two large wildfires started by its ageing power lines in northern California.PG&E does not admit wrongdoing in the two settlements reached with prosecutors for last year’s Dixie fire, one of the biggest wildfires in California’s history, and the 2019 Kincade fire in Sonoma county. The deals expedite damage payments to the hundreds of people whose homes were destroyed. Continue reading...
Some readers offended by its reference to high rates of mental illness among incarcerated people to attract psychologistsPsychologists who work for the bureau that runs federal prisons in the US can treat incarcerated people with every mental illness imaginable, according to an employment ad that stirred controversy on social media.The ad, bought by the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) on Facebook as part of a broader campaign, asks readers to flip to any page in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a standard US text. Continue reading...
The school I worked in has been forced to close. Our dreams are shattered and we urge you, people of the west, to helpI am a woman living in Kabul and I am a teacher. Until eight months ago, I was one of the staff at The City of Knowledge (COK), an educational centre that helped women go to university and pursue the careers of their choice. Through my work, I witnessed the ambition and hope of many women in my country. Since the Taliban came back, our life has drastically changed. We are like moving bodies without souls. Our dreams, and the knowledge we could have had, are shattered.I always believed history was a progression, but I have seen in the past few month’s my country’s rapid regression to the middle ages. Before, women and girls were still taking tiny steps towards a better future. Now, just going to school has become an unattainable dream for hundreds of thousands of them.The author is a former teacher at the now closed COK, an education centre in Kabul for girls and women supported by the charity V-Day. Her name has been changed to protect her security Continue reading...
McIlroy’s best performance at Augusta should give him the belief to contend at the remaining majors this yearRory McIlroy has been dejected enough times when exiting on to Washington Road via Magnolia Lane that he is entitled to savour a sense of harmony after leaving Augusta National this year.If the latest staging of the Masters ultimately belonged to Scottie Scheffler, it was a tournament dominated by other themes. Fascination regarding Tiger Woods’s every move was clear by the depth of galleries and television ratings. And when those around the 18th green roared for McIlroy’s hole out from a bunker, it was the loudest celebration of day four. That Scheffler four-putted his final hole played a part in that scenario but we had already been served a reminder of the fervour with which people want McIlroy to regain his major-winning touch. McIlroy’s own display of emotion resonated; he had given himself a chance to win the Green Jacket as his bunker shot rolled in. Continue reading...
Bryson Galaz was six years old when ball hit his head, causing brain damage, during warmup at Angel Stadium in AnaheimThe family of a boy who suffered a fractured skull and brain damage after being hit with a baseball during the warmup for a Los Angeles Angels game has sued the Angels, claiming negligence on the team’s part.In 2019, Bryson Galaz, who was then six years old, was walking with his father in the first row of Angel Stadium, where players were mingling with fans more than an hour and half prior to the game, the lawsuit said. Bryson was struck on the side of his head when Keynan Middleton, an Angels pitcher who was warming up on the field, threw a ball at a teammate who missed the catch. Continue reading...
A new wave raises questions about identity, elections and how we live. Conventional politics must answer them or dieIf today’s democracy teaches any lesson it is don’t underestimate populism. Insult it, deride it, excuse it, no-platform it, but it is a serious force in electoral politics. In France, Marine Le Pen has surged into contention for the presidency.Earlier this month, Hungary’s authoritarian Viktor Orbán swept the board. In Russia, albeit in vexed circumstances, Vladimir Putin retains a patriotic hold on opinion. In the US, Donald Trump refuses to disappear. These individuals are in no way the same, but they speak the same message.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
The president exploited the ideas of Le Pen and Zemmour for his own political gain. As disaster looms, he must change tackOn 6 May 2017, the day Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France after running on a “neither-left-nor-right” platform and defeating his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen, the new ruler made a promise to the French people: that the country would never again see a far-right candidate reach the second round of the presidential election. “Our task is immense,” Macron said as he took office. “In the five years to come, my responsibility will be to appease fears, to revive the French optimism … I will fight with all my strength against the divisions that undermine us.” He vowed to “rally and reconcile” the French, for “the unity of the people and the country”. Today, almost five years later, France woke up to the result of the first round of the presidential election – and the prospect, once again, of a runoff between Macron and Le Pen.The incumbent president (of the La République En Marche party, founded by Macron in 2016) won 27.6% of the vote on Sunday, followed by Le Pen (National Rally, formerly National Front) with 23.4%. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the leftwing party La France Insoumise, came close but failed to qualify for the runoff with 22%; then came Éric Zemmour (Reconquête party), the openly racist candidate who ran on a platform based entirely on the “great replacement” theory, with 7.1%. Continue reading...
Midwives, nurses and physician assistants authorised to perform abortions after lawmakers approve bill vetoed by Larry HoganMaryland has become the 15th US state to allow health professionals other than doctors to carry out abortions, as part of a bill expanding access to reproductive rights for women.Under the new law, midwives, senior nurses and trained doctor’s assistants will be authorised to perform medical abortions from 1 July. The bill also directs the state to ring-fence $3.5m a year for abortion-care training. Continue reading...
The 24-year-old was a son, a teammate and a friend. But some could not see beyond his status as an entertainer when he was killed on SaturdayWhen Daniel Wilcox read the tweet ESPN’s Adam Schefter posted to break the news of NFL quarterback Dwayne Haskins’ death, he thought about how some view athletes as mere entertainers without taking the time to see them as human.“When you’re in the NFL, you’re just a piece of meat. You’re a name and you’re a number,” says Wilcox, who played tight end for the New York Jets, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Baltimore Ravens. Continue reading...
I’d love to stop Britain’s neighbour from repeating our mistakes, but advice from overseas counts for nothing – and can sometimes backfireAs France trudges towards a runoff election between a technocrat and a populist, it’s natural to want to help. “Don’t do it!”, say Americans on the socials, “Please, France, this is a really bad idea.” “It might seem fun now,” we, their neighbours, chime in, “but once you’re fielding a moral vacuum on the world stage, you’ll see that it isn’t fun at all.”It reminds me of the period just before the referendum, when Europeans begged us not to leave, with heart emojis and witty videos, and it changed my mind only insofar as it made the whole situation sadder, while not changing the minds of the leavers in any way. Or maybe that’s wrong: maybe it made them more determined. Continue reading...
Thanks to a flourishing ADHD positivity movement, women like me who once hid their neurodivergence are finding ways to celebrate itOn any given day I will spend a considerable amount of time tensing my muscles to the rhythm of the national anthem. I might be driving, in a meeting or writing to a deadline, but my muscles will be sending our gracious Queen victorious, happy and glorious, long to reign over us. Other times, I breathe in sync with the sound of traffic going past, bite my nails or pinch myself when I’m trying to complete a task, so that if my brain decides to abandon its instructions, the sensation will serve as a reminder of them. I often forget to buy food or take my medication, and often can’t recall whether I’ve showered or not. My email inbox currently has 18,485 unread messages.Still, I am luckier than most women with ADHD. I received a diagnosis at the age of seven after a school referral. But many women come to be diagnosed later, after decades of being called scatty or disorganised, plagued by guilt and anxiety. The latest NHS figures show that while more than 100,000 men were diagnosed with ADHD in 2019-20, just 33,000 women received a diagnosis. With diagnostic standards set by studies of boys and men – who tend to show symptoms such as hyperactivity, as opposed to the introverted and inattentive presentations more common in women and girls – we are often forgotten.Mim Skinner is the author of the book Jailbirds: Lessons from a Women’s Prison and co-founder of REfUSE. Her second book Living Together, finding community in a fractured world will be published later this yearAdditional reporting for this piece by Ashleigh Dick
Strangers are so keen to tell me my life as I know it will be over soon – thank goodness for those who have told me it will be OK“Enjoy it while you can”: how I’ve come to dislike these five little words, which have followed me everywhere since my pregnancy became obvious. Suddenly, they are applied to anything pleasurable – sleep, holidays, a meal in a restaurant. “Enjoy it while you can,” people say (because when the baby comes, your life as you know it will be over).They mean well, I think, but I’ll confess that I’ve been shocked by the negativity surrounding parenthood. People seem to feel that they simply must tell you how hard it is, warts and all, maybe because no one told them, and they do it with the zeal of missionaries: they have seen the truth, and it is terrible to behold. Hollie McNish has a book of poetry about parenthood called Nobody Told Me. Mine would be called Everybody Told Me, All the Time, Until I Had to Ask Them to Stop.Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Judge to rule on challenge from Georgia voters that says far right congresswoman should be disqualified under the 14th amendmentA federal judge has indicated that an attempt to stop the far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene running for re-election will be allowed to proceed.The challenge from a group of Georgia voters says Greene should be disqualified under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, because she supported insurrectionists who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Continue reading...
by Associated Press in Buffalo, New York on (#5Y1HJ)
Arbitrator says Martin Gugino, who fell and hit his head after shove by two officers, was acting erraticallyAn arbitrator has ruled that two Buffalo police officers did not violate use-of-force guidelines when they pushed a 75-year-old protester to the ground in June 2020, during racial injustice protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.The episode drew national attention when a news crew captured video of Martin Gugino being shoved by officers Robert McCabe and Aaron Torgalski in downtown Buffalo, as crowd control officers in riot gear cleared demonstrators for an 8pm curfew. Continue reading...
Woods ranks playing four rounds at Augusta as one of his greatest achievements and confirmed he will be at St AndrewsThe look on Tiger Woods’s face as he walked off the 18th green told you all you need to know about what he’s been through in the last 14 months.Woods had just shot his second consecutive round of 78, which is the worst score he’s ever made in the 24 years he’s been playing here, and done it on a day that seemed tailor-made for going low. The round left him 13 over par for the tournament, and 22 shots off Scottie Scheffler’s lead, in 47th place. And despite it all, he was grinning like he’d just won the tournament. He clearly wasn’t exaggerating when he said he wasn’t sure whether his injuries would ever allow him to play competitive golf again. Continue reading...
Lizelle Herrera has been released after being thrown in jail last week, while district attorney says this is ‘ not a criminal matter’The woman who was thrown in jail on a murder charge in Texas for allegedly having caused the “death of an individual by self-induced abortion” has been released after the local district attorney dropped the case.Lizelle Herrera, 26, was reported to be back with her family on Sunday after the district attorney in Rio Grande City, on the US-Mexico border, put out a statement saying he was immediately dismissing the case. Herrera had been arrested last Thursday and placed in the Starr county jail on the back of a grand jury indictment. Continue reading...
Family members of official killed in ‘senseless and tragic’ robbery and shooting in community near AtlantaA Georgia coroner went to a shooting range owned by his family on Friday evening and found his parents and son had been shot dead in a robbery, officials said.In a brief telephone interview with the Guardian on Sunday, Richard Hawk confirmed his 19-year-old son Luke Hawk, father Tommy Hawk and mother Evelyn Hawk were killed at the shooting range, which was owned by his father. Continue reading...
‘It’s going to be a person’s decision about the individual risk,’ says president’s chief medical adviser after spate of positive tests in DCA rash of coronavirus infections among elites in Washington that came close to Joe Biden shows a new reality facing Americans including the president, his chief medical adviser said: that life will involve daily decisions about individual risk from Covid.“It’s going to be a person’s decision about the individual risk they’re going to take,” Dr Anthony Fauci told ABC’s This Week, adding that protocols protecting the president were “pretty strong”. Continue reading...
Senate minority leader projects ‘pretty good beating’ for Biden administration in November midtermsThe Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Sunday Republicans will force Joe Biden to govern as a “moderate” if the GOP retakes Congress in November.Speaking to Fox News Sunday, McConnell attacked Biden on subjects including reported crime increases in large US cities, the decision to extend a moratorium on repaying student loan debts, and the administration’s attempt to lift a Trump policy that allowed border patrol agents to turn away migrants at the southern border, ostensibly to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Continue reading...
Former president enthuses about TV doctor in statement and at rally but many on far right doubt conservative credentialsDonald Trump has endorsed Dr Mehmet Oz for the Republican nomination for Senate in Pennsylvania, an expression of support for a fellow TV star which could test the former president’s grip on his party.Being on TV was “like a poll, that means people like you,” the former president and Celebrity Apprentice star said of Oz, a heart surgeon turned daytime host. Continue reading...
From Sunak’s non-dom problem to Javid’s offshore trusts, will the staggering wealth gap between the government and ordinary Britons finally tell?Nearly three years into Boris Johnson’s premiership, its defining theme may at last have arrived. For all his talk of “levelling up” and the supposed wonders of life outside the EU, his government has singularly failed to come up with any kind of coherent narrative, leaving events to tell their own story. And on that score, we now have an embarrassment of riches.As much as the government would like people to view it as an irrelevance, Partygate grinds on. Johnson’s recent history is smattered not just with illicit social events, but tales of £840-a-roll wallpaper initially paid for by a Tory donor, gratis holiday accommodation in Mustique and Marbella, and suggestions that he simply cannot afford to live on his prime ministerial salary. Massively lucrative Covid contracts have been handed to companies with clear links to Conservatives. Now, the Tory backbencher David Warburton is accused of sexual assault and cocaine use, the failure to declare a loan of nearly £150,000 from a controversial Russian businessmanand lobbying the Financial Conduct Authority on the latter’s behalf: he has so far said only that he has “enormous amounts of defence”, but “can’t comment any further”. Continue reading...
Summer switch to cable news likely to sharpen perception in America that both sides are just really in it for the moneyThe routine trafficking of political personnel in America to the nation’s television networks hit a road bump last week after staffers at NBC News complained about White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s rumor-as-fact plans to join the liberal news outlet MSNBC when she leaves her West Wing post this summer.The clumsily handled move, previewed in a leak to Axios, triggered anger among journalists who said they feared Psaki’s hiring would “taint” the NBC brand and reinforce the impression, already well-established in opinion polls, that the news business in the US works hand-in-glove with political factions. Continue reading...
Working Americans – many of whom voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 – are being shafted. Biden needs to deliver for them now or risk losingAs America slouches toward the midterm elections, you need an economic message that celebrates your accomplishments to date – job creation and higher wages – yet also takes aim at the major abuses of economic power that remain in the system, fueling inflation and widening inequality.You should put these 10 indisputable facts center stage:Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at 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
For the first major of the year we take a look back at some of our favourite images from AugustaCheck back later for images from the final day’s action Continue reading...
Trump’s legal jeopardy about the January 6 insurrection is growing but experts say attorney general must move carefullyThe attorney general, Merrick Garland, is facing more political pressure to move faster and expand the US Department of Justice’s investigation into the January 6 Capitol attack and charge Donald Trump and some of his former top aides.With mounting evidence from the January 6 House panel, court rulings and news reports that Trump engaged in a criminal conspiracy in his aggressive drive to thwart Joe Biden’s election win in 2020, Garland and his staff face an almost unique decision: whether to charge a former US president. Continue reading...
Emmanuel Macron faces the fight of his political life as the presidential election opens today. His fate has lessons for parties continent-wideToday’s Brexit Conservatives will hate the comparison, but there are inconvenient parallels between their domestic agenda and Hungary’s newly elected, self-confessed apostle of democratic illiberalism, Viktor Orbán, French uber-nationalist and anti-immigrant Marine Le Pen and Poland’s murky Law and Justice party. All trumpet a boastful nationalism and disregard international law, all aim to create a hostile climate for immigrants, all believe the electoral system should be manipulated for their advantage, all distrust a pluralist media, all want to limit dissent and expand summary policing powers, all incline to traditional views about sexuality and the family and, to varying degrees, all are climate change deniers.All habitually dissimulate and even lie; criticism is fake news. The Johnson government’s police, nationality and borders and election bills come from these same rightwing, anti-Enlightenment, illiberal roots, as does its assault on public service broadcasting and, of course, the big beast of them all, Brexit. Paradoxically, Brexit Toryism is very European – if Europe at its worst. Continue reading...
Ellen Isaacs is intent on holding Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family to account – for the deaths of her son and many thousands of othersA cottage outside Floyd, Virginia, is a tranquil stage-set for Ellen Isaacs to wage one of the longest-running wars of the opioid epidemic: the battle to hold OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma, its owners and executives, to just account.It’s battle that Isaacs, a former mortgage fraud expert at Citigroup, has been fighting since she and her son Ryan became dependent on OxyContin, Purdue Pharma’s “non-addictive” painkiller that has played a central role in an epidemic that has cost 500,000 lives over two decades. Continue reading...
Grassroots methods to woo coworkers to join the ‘revolution’ worked even as the company came for him with all its might“The revolution is here,” said an exuberant Chris Smalls on a cloudy morning via a Google Meet call last week.Clad in a black baseball cap and air pods, Smalls spoke with the Guardian less than a week after winning a historic victory over Amazon, the second largest US employer – and establishing the company’s first ever union. Continue reading...
Brian Schatz from Hawaii, who denounced Josh Hawley on the Senate floor over Ukraine, tells own side to make more noiseDemocrats need to make more noise when taking on Republicans, a US senator said, after angry remarks on the Senate floor in which he denounced the Missouri senator Josh Hawley for delaying Pentagon appointments and voting against aid to Ukraine, among other flashpoints.“Democrats need to make more noise,” Brian Schatz, from Hawaii, told the Washington Post. “We have to scream from the rooftops, because this is a battle for the free world now.” Continue reading...
Cameron Smith was the main beneficiary of Moving Day as his 68 took him closer to runaway leader Scottie SchefflerRory rolls another one in! He curls a right-to-left 25-footer into the cup for birdie on 7. All good, except it follows a heavy handed chip from the fringe at 6 that left a six-footer he couldn’t make. Two bogeys and two birdies, and he can get no higher than +2.Victor Hovland only just made the cut after opening rounds of 72 and 76. He needs something really special today - plus a Scottie Scheffler stumble - if he’s to contest tomorrow. That didn’t look on the cards when he went out this morning in 37, but he’s caught alight since turning, with birdies at 10, 11 and now 13. Some way to breeze around Amen Corner. He’s +2. Continue reading...
Northern Irishman still attracts galleries at Augusta but has now adjusted his sights to a top-10 finish going into final day“I feel like I’m right there,” said Rory McIlroy on Friday night, as he weighed his chances after back‑to‑back rounds of 73 on Thursday and Friday. “You go out tomorrow and you play a decent front nine, and all of a sudden you’re right in the thick of things.” Seventeen hours later, he stepped out on to the 1st tee and, thwack, dumped his opening drive right into a fairway bunker, then, crack, whacked his second shot into the lip where it rebounded and fell back down by his feet. His third made it on to the green, where he took two putts from 20ft. So McIlroy started his charge to the top by dropping a shot.From there, it was off to long downhill dog-leg 2nd, which has been the easiest hole on the course this week. The field have made more than a hundred birdies there. Just the place to get that run up the leaderboard going, then. This time there was a long, loud cry of “Right!” as McIlroy’s drive whizzed overhead into the gallery, after that he fizzed his second into the front bunker, and scrambled his way out in even par. On to the stiff uphill 3rd then, a trickier proposition this, but McIlroy earned a birdie chance with a brilliant approach that landed 7ft from the pin. Then he missed the putt. Oh, Rory. Continue reading...
by Associated Press in Rio Grande City on (#5Y0NH)
Law enforcement official confirms arrest and charge but police do not say under which law Lizelle Herrera chargedA 26-year-old woman has been charged with murder in Texas after authorities said she caused “the death of an individual by self-induced abortion”, in a state that has the most restrictive abortion laws in the US.It was unclear whether Lizelle Herrera was accused of having an abortion or whether she helped someone else get an abortion. Continue reading...
by Martin Pengelly in New York and agencies on (#5Y0ND)
CNN reports Trump’s eldest son texted chief of staff two days after 2020 election to say ‘we have multiple paths … we control them all’Two days after the 2020 election, Donald Trump Jr texted the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with strategies for overturning the result, CNN reported.“This is what we need to do please read it and please get it to everyone that needs to see it because I’m not sure we’re doing it,” Trump Jr reportedly wrote, adding: “It’s very simple … We have multiple paths[.] We control them all.” Continue reading...
Unlike some series, the hugely popular gangs of Birmingham saga knew when to stop and just how to do itLast Sunday night, almost four million people tuned in to witness Cillian Murphy signing off as Tommy Shelby – for now, at least.The finale of Peaky Blinders, which had spent much of the season hinting that it might do away with our antihero for good, instead opted to keep matters open, with a masterful twist that might as well have been an apology for all of the meandering routes it took to get there. (I can’t have been the only one wondering why the gangster-turned-MP, who remained handy with a firearm and loose with the law, still appeared to have more scruples and ethics than most of the bunch currently in charge of the country.) The final episode was a deserved reward for those of us who stuck with the show, during what I found to be a confusing last season. Continue reading...
