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The Super Bowl champions made aggressive moves to acquire big-time players. They combined with homegrown talent to secure the franchise’s second titleAs the confetti fell at SoFi Stadium, Odell Beckham stood alone amid the revelry, eyes welling, hands on his head in disbelief. No sooner than the dazed receiver appeared on the stadium’s massive video screen did the Los Angeles Rams partisans, in slight majority among the 70,048 attendees, loose a deafening roar. To find their common emotional trigger, one needn’t have looked further than the message writ large on Beckham’s matching hat and T-shirt: Super Bowl Champions.Nothing gets LA in a froth like a big sparkly prize. On Sunday the Rams’ 23-20 dismissal of the upstart Cincinnati Bengals was recognized with a Lombardi trophy, the second Super Bowl crown in the franchise’s 86-year history. It was a capstone achievement that was realised in Los Angeles, on the Rams’ home turf, with more A-listers in attendance than at most recent award shows. There was the Rock, Cardi B, Bennifer – and those sightings all came before the Grammy-grade halftime show. Continue reading...

After 70 years, retiring in good health to hand over to Prince Charles would be good for the monarchy and the nationThis May, the Queen will celebrate 70 years in office, her platinum jubilee. She is already the longest-serving British ruler and, by then, will be second only to Louis XIV among European monarchs. Such longevity in office is phenomenal and will merit national congratulation and celebration.The Queen has performed her duty of symbolising the British nation over an extraordinary era, from the end of empire, through joining and leaving the European Union, to a global technological revolution. She has known 14 prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Boris Johnson. Though her “rule” is powerless and largely ritualised, she has performed with energy and dignity. She has steered her office away from controversy, and retained a sincere public affection. Given her bizarre occupation, she has been well-cast. Continue reading...

Civil rights trial of Tou Thao, J Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane, accused of failing to intervene in Floyd’s murder, takes placeUse of the controversial label “excited delirium” by first responders when subduing people exhibiting signs of severe agitation has emerged as a key issue in the federal trial of three former Minneapolis police officers involved in the death of George Floyd.Tou Thao, J Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane are accused of depriving Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, of his civil rights by failing to give him medical aid while he was handcuffed and lying facedown as their senior colleague Derek Chauvin proceeded to murder him on 25 May 2020. Continue reading...

Effort to launch convoy taking shape but diffuse organization make it difficult to predict size of protests – or what it wantsThe effort to launch an American “freedom convoy”, inspired by the Canadian truckers who have shut down parts of Ottawa for several weeks initially to protest vaccine mandates, is taking shape in a somewhat haphazard fashion.At least three national organizations, and a constellation of regional ones, say they will depart for Washington in early March. Continue reading...

The US risks embarrassing itself and its intelligence if Russia chooses an option other than invasionWarnings from the US that Russian troops are poised to strike at Ukraine are growing more urgent and strident. There can be little doubt of the US’s conviction that Ukraine is at imminent risk, and the number of nations advising citizens to leave the country as soon as possible shows that the warnings are at last being considered credible.But the emphasis on near-inevitable war – and the naming of narrow timeframes when it is expected to happen – is also closing down options for the US and its allies, while opening them up for Russia. Moscow still has the initiative, and the risk is growing that its president, Vladimir Putin, is being set up to achieve a diplomatic victory through pulling the rug from under the western war scare. Continue reading...

As if the border isn’t surveilled and militarized enough, the Department of Homeland Security wants to go full Black MirrorAre we all doomed to live in Charlie Brooker’s techno-dystopia? In Metalhead, an episode from season four of his famed Netflix show Black Mirror, a woman navigates an austere post-apocalyptic landscape while running for her life from a murderous robot dog. What makes the mechanized beast in the show particularly frightening is the lethal combination of the single-mindedness of a computer program with the extreme ferocity of an angry, feral dog.But it’s just TV, right? Not exactly. The military, technological, security and political classes in this country appear united in their desire to make robot dogs part of our future, and we should all be worried. Continue reading...

Ukrainian president urges Joe Biden to visit Kyiv in coming days. Plus, lessons for lifelong loversGood morning.Europe is closer to war than at any point over the past 70 years, a UK government minister has warned, as Russian troops amass on the borders of Ukraine and western leaders warn that an invasion could take place early this week.Is Joe Biden involved in the last minute negotiations? Yes but yesterday, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, urged Joe Biden to visit Kyiv “in the coming days” in a show of moral support. However, the White House has made no mention of the invitation so it’s unclear if Biden intends to go.Is time running out to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis? US intelligence over the weekend claimed that Russia had accelerated plans for an invasion and could move troops across the border as soon as Wednesday, before the end of the Winter Olympics on 20 February.What about the protests in Ottawa? Small-scale protests there swelled to what police said were 4,000 demonstrators. The city has seen that on past weekends, and loud music played as people milled about downtown where anti-vaccine demonstrators have been encamped since late January. Continue reading...

A Trumpist takeover of the battleground state is raising eyebrows over concerns of the end of ‘free and fair elections’Donald Trump has endorsed rightwing Republican candidates who support his baseless claims of a stolen election for key posts in Michigan, raising the prospect of a Trumpist takeover of how the key battleground state might run its elections.Trump and his allies are backing numerous candidates in the coming midterm elections across the US, including in other vital states like Arizona and Georgia. Continue reading...

The exploitation reflects America’s longstanding history of medically abusing vulnerable communities of color

This Cincinnati team have a great quarterback surrounded by talent. But consistent excellence is hard in the NFL and they play in the formidable AFCUnderdogs win Super Bowls by creating turnovers, playing clean and entering the fourth quarter within a score with a quarterback capable of creating some off-script magic. The Bengals hit on all three on Sunday. The game was right there for Cincinnati to close out.Then the Rams’ stars took over, and the flaws in a far-from-flawless Cincinnati roster were ultimately exposed – with a dose of help (as ever) from the league’s officials. The Bengals couldn’t tackle Cooper Kupp, at least not in time. And they could not block Aaron Donald, who led a defensive front that wound up dropping Joe Burrow seven times, a Super Bowl record. Sean McVay coached his Rams team into a hole, and his players dragged him out. Continue reading...

Nearly one-third of US parents are opposed to vaccinating their kids against Covid – so one-time vaccine skeptics are helping families find evidence-based answersAlexis Danielsen sat down and rolled up her sleeve. When the shot went into her arm, one thought flooded her mind: “Finally!”It was May 2021, and she was receiving her first Covid shot – in fact, her first immunization of any kind. She was 39. Continue reading...

Comments come after report that Trump ally is in talks about options, including in-person interview or submitting a depositionBipartisan figures on the congressional committee investigating Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat said on Sunday they expected the former president’s close ally, Rudolph Giuliani, would comply with a subpoena to give testimony.Giuliani is among a number of Trump sphere insiders who have so far refused to cooperate with the bipartisan House panel looking into Trump’s subversion efforts and the January 6 Capitol insurrection the then president incited that claimed five lives. Giuliani was scheduled to testify last Tuesday, after the committee issued a subpoena last month, but did not appear. Continue reading...

New film sheds light on story of Murat Kurnaz, arrested without explanation a month after 9/11The mother of a German-born Guantánamo Bay detainee held at the camp for six years and tortured has said she is still waiting for an apology or compensation as a new film sheds light on a story she says remains an “open wound”.In Rabiye Kurnaz vs George W Bush,which premiered at the Berlin film festival on Saturday, the director, Andreas Dresen, whose socially engaged film-making has led him to be described as Germany’s answer to Ken Loach, revisits the case of Murat Kurnaz, who was arrested without explanation in Pakistan in October 2001, a month after the 9/11 attacks. Continue reading...

A treacherous alliance is growing that will undermine democratic institutions in the US and elsewhereThe United States presents itself as the beacon of democracy in contrast to the autocracies of China and Russia. Yet American democracy is in danger of succumbing to the same sort of oligarchic economics and racist nationalism that thrive in both these powers.After all, it wasn’t long ago that Donald Trump – who openly admired Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin – encouraged racist nationalism in America while delivering much of the US government into the hands of America’s super-rich.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 Continue reading...

In the shadow of war, the Ukranian novelist tells of how citizens are trying to live, work and maintain hopeFive planes from Egyptian resorts returned to Boryspil airport yesterday, picked up new passengers and flew back. A plane also flew in from the Cuban resort of Varadero, where my friend, the publisher Anetta Antonenko, recently had 10 days rest. Ukrainians are already used to warming up and sunbathing in Egypt in winter.I do not know how they feel now, flying to warmer climes. Do they take with them documents for their property and everything that the Ukrainian government advised its citizens to put in one “emergency suitcase”, along with a supply of food for two days, a change of underwear and personal documents? Continue reading...

For Democrats in tight re-election races, being photographed with a president whose approval rating hovers at 40% is a riskWith a handshake and brief embrace, congresswoman Abigail Spanberger welcomed Joe Biden to her Virginia district last Thursday. The event was an opportunity to highlight the administration’s plans to lower the cost of prescription drugs, but it also provided an opportunity for the US president to promote the members of his party ahead of the midterm elections in November.“In every chapter in her career, in every chapter, she’s always been about one thing: service,” the president said of Spanberger, a Democrat whose competitive re-election race is on the front line of the battle for control of the House. Continue reading...

Is Pamela Anderson being violated all over again by the re-telling of a scandal from the 1990s?Does this happen to every generation? Where a cultural moment that, during our adolescence appeared deliciously shocking, is revealed to us in adulthood as, at best “troubling”, at worst a grim representation of how the world is cracked down the middle, a thick and low-humming oil dripping from its wound?I realise now what a naive girl I must have been, to have accepted without daily outrage such clumsy horrors as the media’s addiction to Amy Winehouse’s addictions and Britney Spears’s breakdown, and I choose “naive” rather than “cruel”, because this week has been tough enough. But today, entering middle-age tired and thoughtful, I remain grateful for the ongoing trend for films and TV shows produced as correctives to those decades of casual cruelty, partly for the answers they give, and partly for the questions they leave me with. Continue reading...

As his new play opens, the eminent writer on where documentary ends and drama beginsI still own a painting that I purchased at a flea market in Los Angeles in 1993. I got it cheap; $25 and it was in the back of my clapped-out convertible . It turned out to be a copy of Bronzino’s Portrait of a Young Man with a Book. In 16th-century Florence, if you wanted your portrait painted then he was your man, for one simple reason: he made you look great. His particular gift – and shrewd commercial decision – was to imbue his wealthy subjects with swagger, confidence and even a certain weight loss.Three centuries before you could sit before a photographer and more than four before you could take a selfie, rich Florentines would sit still for days and trust that Bronzino would do for them what he’d done for their wealthy neighbours, for Dante. It paid to flatter. Continue reading...

Palin’s return to the headlines – for her defamation trial and flouting Covid rules – is a reminder to many that her ascent in 2008 was a pivotal moment in US politicsRemoving a white face mask as she took the witness stand behind a Plexiglass shield, Sarah Palin likened herself to the biblical David taking on the mighty Goliath of American media, the New York Times newspaper.The 58-year-old’s appearance in a Manhattan courtroom this week was a far cry from her heyday on the campaign trail, whipping up crowds with incendiary rhetoric as a US vice-presidential candidate in 2008. Continue reading...

Brexit Britain’s isolated leaders resort to posturing and fist-waving over Ukraine while France’s Macron pursues diplomatic solutions in MoscowDespite increasingly frantic warnings from Washington about an “imminent” attack, all-out war in Ukraine is not inevitable. Far from it. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s military pressure tactics are working. The west has been forced to listen to his grievances. Fighting could start soon. But US intelligence is not exact, and Moscow is adept at spreading disinformation and fear. Just as likely, this standoff could last months. Meanwhile, diplomacy still has a chance.The best hope remains the path to peace outlined last week by French president Emmanuel Macron during talks with Putin in Moscow. How shaming, and dangerous, that Boris Johnson’s government is so unsupportive. Brexit Britain, detached by choice from the EU and in thrall to US policy, is undermining European diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis. Continue reading...

Sunday’s NFL’s showpiece between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals takes place amid troubling allegationsThe sky over Los Angeles is forecast to be clear and blue and the temperature around 30C when the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams run out for Super Bowl LVI on Sunday. It should be a chance for the NFL to celebrate weathering Covid‑19 with television ratings up 10% from 2020, as well as an opportunity to pay tribute to the greatest Super Bowl champion of all time, Tom Brady, who has announced his retirement after seven championships and 10 trips to the big game.But this is the NFL, which often appears closer to a soap opera than a sports league. On the day Brady signalled the end of his career, the league duly delivered its latest plot twist. As is often the case in the league and the US as a whole, it had much to do with race and inequality: Brian Flores, the former head coach of the Miami Dolphins, filed a lawsuit claiming the league “is racially segregated and is managed much like a plantation”. Continue reading...

Louise Lucas noted she received a text from Glenn Youngkin congratulating her for a speech Mamie Locke gaveThe Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin, has apologized after mistaking one Black legislator for another in a text message.Youngkin is the new Republican governor of the state, which has trended Democrat in recent election cycles but stunned observers by picking Youngkin as its new leader last year over a centrist Democrat candidate. Continue reading...

Many of the rejected ballots fail a new requirement to provide an identification number inside the return envelopeElection supervisors in Texas have warned that new stricter voter ID requirements ahead of next month’s state governor’s primary have already resulted in an uncharacteristically high number of ballot rejections.Voting rights activists have expressed fears that new laws making access to the vote more difficult – that have been passed in many states across the US by Republicans – will impact Democrat-leaning voters of color. Continue reading...

Joseph Paul Berger and his father, Joseph Raymond Berger, arrested last week and charged with multiple firearms offensesFederal prosecutors have charged an “alt-right” podcaster who espoused strong anti-government views with assembling an arsenal of weapons, including machine guns, in the locked basement at a home in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.They also charged his father, the Daily Beast reported. Continue reading...

Judge bars higher cost estimate which puts a dollar value on damages caused by additional greenhouse gases emittedA Trump-appointed federal judge has blocked the Biden administration’s attempt to put greater emphasis on potential damage from greenhouse gas emissions when creating rules for polluting industries.The move represents a blow to Joe Biden’s efforts to bring America more back in line with global efforts to fight the climate crisis after the Trump era, when the US largely turned its back on measures that might have helped limit emissions. Continue reading...

Ketanji Brown Jackson and Leondra Kruger were evaluated last year, but J Michelle Childs has become a third candidateJoe Biden had zeroed in on a pair of finalists for his first supreme court pick when there were rumors last year that Justice Stephen Breyer would retire. But since the upcoming retirement was announced late last month, it has come with the rise of a third candidate, one with ready-made bipartisan support that has complicated the decision.For Biden, it’s a tantalizing prospect. The president believes he was elected to try to bring the country together following the yawning and rancorous political divide that grew during the Trump administration and especially following the Capitol insurrection in January 2021. Continue reading...

Amazon’s official TikTok account has been boosting the dystopic trend and sharing videos of delivery people dancing on commandBeing an Amazon delivery driver sure sounds like a blast: you get to see the world (well, part of it anyway) as you cruise the open road. Yes, the hours are gruelling. Yes, you sometimes have to pee in water bottles because there’s not enough time and no available facilities in which you can take a proper bathroom break. Yes, hauling heavy packages means you are at high risk of being injured on the job. Yes, creepy surveillance equipment tracks your every move. But you know what? You get the unparalleled satisfaction of knowing that your hard work is helping Jeff Bezos afford an obscenely large superyacht. And while the work may be difficult, there are also moments of joy: you get to jive on the job! According to Vice, TikTok users have started leaving notes in the Amazon app asking their delivery drivers to dance for their door cameras. Then these delightful people post the videos on social media.Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for order. Continue reading...

The court has approved or tolerated massive voter roll purges, extreme gerrymandering and election laws that have a disparate impact on minoritiesThe US supreme court, in a 5-4 decision, used the ruse that it was too close to an election – three months away – to scrap a racially discriminatory, Republican-drawn legislative map in Alabama. A lower court had previously ruled against the state because its gerrymandered congressional districts diluted the voting strength of African Americans by ensuring that 27% of Alabama’s population would garner only 14% of the state’s congressional representation. But that reality didn’t faze five justices; the US supreme court was just fine with letting a policy designed to disfranchise Black voters unfurl and do its damage in an oncoming federal election.The echoes of a brutal past are resonating in this decision.Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler professor of African American studies at Emory University and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide and One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy. She is a contributor to the Guardian Continue reading...

The pandemic crisis has seen a boom in Black women – ‘so often entrepreneurs of necessity’ – setting up on their ownKnown as “The Cookie Lady” around Washington DC, Lacey Fisher is famous for her British- and German-inspired alcohol-infused confectionaries. Fisher launched Cookie Lane during the economic crisis of 2008, after being laid off from four different jobs as a mortgage auditor.“I ran through my six months of savings and rent was due,” Fisher says. Continue reading...

The US is poised to have a staggeringly low number of competitive House seats, an alarming trend that makes it harder to govern and exacerbates political polarizationWhen millions of American voters head to the polls this autumn to vote for congressional candidates, the vast majority of their votes won’t matter at all.It’s an idea that’s anathema to the very idea of US government – that politicians are accountable to the people. But America is poised to have a staggeringly low number of competitive seats in the US House, an alarming trend that makes it harder to govern and exacerbates political polarization.

Will Joe Burrow lead the underdogs to their first-ever Super Bowl title? Or will Aaron Donald and Matthew Stafford win it for the hometown team?Play clean. The Rams have the talent advantage. Their defense ranks first in the league in pressure rate, and gets almost all of that with a four-man rush. Putting that up against this flaky Bengals offensive line? Yikes. Favorites lose Super Bowls by way of bone-headed plays, dodgy time management, or unforced turnovers – typically a cocktail of all three. If the Rams can keep the turnover battle even, they have the defense to take over the game. OC Continue reading...

Every one of us now has a duty to do something, if not for ourselves then for the survival of future generationsClimate change is terrifying, so why don’t we do more to stop it? Read any headline on the climate crisis, and it seems unbelievable that we’re not all chaining ourselves to the headquarters of oil and gas companies, or at least hammering on MPs’ office doors. But we’re not. “Of course, I care about climate change,” we say. “But … ”Then they come out, the reasons for apathy. We’ve all heard them. We’ve probably all said some of them. But do they really excuse us?Elizabeth Cripps is a writer and moral philosopher at the University of Edinburgh, and author of What Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care Continue reading...

D’Monterrio Gibson was delivering packages in Mississippi when he was allegedly attacked by Brandon and Gregory CaseA Black FedEx driver who was allegedly shot at by a white father and son in Mississippi while delivering packages said he “can definitely see the similarities” between his case and that of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was murdered in 2020 by three white men while jogging in Georgia.“Because Ahmaud Arbery didn’t survive to speak up for himself, so I want to take that upon myself to do that for me and him as well,” said D’Monterrio Gibson, 24, in an interview with CNN on Friday. Continue reading...

As the US downsized its Pacific presence, China stepped into the vacuum; a rare visit from the secretary of state won’t convince Fiji to turn on its allyThe US secretary of state’s lightning visit to Fiji may be sudden, but not surprising. That Antony Blinken is the first US secretary of state to visit Fiji in 37 years reflects just how much has changed geopolitically.It is also an indication of Fiji’s influential role in this part of the world, being a strong, if not the strongest, Pacific ally of China, the arch-rival of the US in the Pacific. Continue reading...

Lawyers want new trial after juror Scotty David gave interviews in which he said he had been sexually abused as a childGhislaine Maxwell’s lawyers cannot keep sealed their detailed legal arguments about a juror in her trial who might not have disclosed childhood sex abuse during jury selection, a judicial decision issued Friday said.Judge Alison Nathan wrote: “[The] defendant’s motion to temporarily seal, in their entirety, all documents related to the motion for a new trial, is denied.” Continue reading...

‘It’s time to burn the Confederacy down’, says Senate hopeful Gary Chambers, who smoked marijuana in his previous adA Louisiana candidate for the US Senate has burned a Confederate flag in a powerful campaign ad about racial injustice in Louisiana and America.Democrat Gary Chambers is also known for a viral ad where he smokes marijuana to “destigmatize” its use and discusses the unfair policing of drug laws. Continue reading...

Money would go toward humanitarian efforts for Afghan people and to US victims of terrorism, keeping it out of hands of TalibanJoe Biden signed an executive order on Friday releasing $7bn in frozen Afghan reserves to be split between humanitarian efforts for the Afghan people and American victims of terrorism, including relatives of 9/11.In a highly unusual move, the convoluted plan is designed to tackle a myriad of legal bottlenecks stemming from the 2001 terrorist attacks and the chaotic end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, which ignited a humanitarian and political crisis, the New York times reports. Continue reading...

Civil liberties watchdogs condemn agency’s collection of domestic data without congressional or court approval or oversightThe Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been secretly collecting Americans’ private information in bulk, according to newly declassified documents that prompted condemnation from civil liberties watchdogs.The surveillance program was exposed on Thursday by two Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico alleged that the CIA has long concealed it from the public and Congress. Continue reading...

Comedian, who was criticised after he spoke out against project in Yellow Springs, Ohio, says he is not opposed to affordable housingComedian Dave Chappelle said his threat to pull the plug on his plans to open a comedy club near his home town in Ohio was not because he opposed a proposal for affordable housing in a nearby development.Chappelle, who became the target of criticism this week after speaking against the development in Yellow Springs, said in a statement that the plan was not the right fit for the village. Continue reading...

Jim Lamon’s ad depicts ‘shootout’ with Democrats including Mark Kelly, senator whose wife Gabby Giffords was shot in deadly attackA Republican Senate primary candidate in Arizona has been condemned for a “disgusting” campaign ad in which he shoots at lookalike actors portraying Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and the incumbent Arizona senator Mark Kelly.Jim Lamon, an energy executive, shared the ad on Twitter, saying it would be aired at this year’s Super Bowl. Continue reading...