Jason Rivera, 22-year-old officer, killed and another wounded after attending domestic dispute in HarlemA rookie New York City police officer was hailed as an inspiration to his community on Sunday, as investigators sought to make sense of his death, shot while attending a domestic dispute in Harlem.Another officer shot on Friday night was said to be still “fighting for his life”. Continue reading...
A fish rots, it is said, from the head down. With claims of blackmail, bullying and racism, it seems so too does a political partyIf a British minister knowingly misleads parliament, they are expected to resign as a constitutional convention. Should a minister refuse, then they could legally carry on in office, but it would be unconstitutional. Boris Johnson seems not to care. Last week, he brazenly refused to accept that the political principle should apply to him. What are the consequences of lying to lawmakers? The answer could be nothing much. That highlights a far bigger problem.Britain is governed by a political – rather than a legal – constitution that relies heavily on conventions, and leaders with a sense of decency, to work. The dishonest and deceitful Mr Johnson is uniquely unsuited for the top job. A fish, it is said, rots from the head down. With claims of blackmail, bullying and racism, it seems so too does a political party. Continue reading...
Hundreds of people in California were told to evacuate because of a new blaze as authorities were forced to shut one of the state's main highways. Firefighters were battling the blaze that broke out in rugged mountains in Big Sur on Friday night and quickly spread toward the sea, fanned by strong winds of up to 50mph. The blaze burned at least 2.3 square miles of brush and redwood trees
On Russia and Putin, the president said the quiet part loud. Re-engagement has been welcomed but the exit from Afghanistan was a disaster. Analysts see much to do to rebuild US credibilityJoe Biden marked his first anniversary in office with a gaffe over Ukraine that undid weeks of disciplined messaging and diplomatic preparation.The president’s suggestion that a “minor incursion” by Russia might split Nato over how to respond sent the White House into frantic damage limitation mode. Continue reading...
Paul Vernon Hoeffer, 60, also pleads guilty in federal court to threats against Kim Foxx, a prominent district attorney in IllinoisA Florida man has pleaded guilty to threatening to kill Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi, two leading Democrats in Congress, and Kim Foxx, a prominent district attorney in Illinois.The US attorney’s office for the southern district of Florida said Paul Vernon Hoeffer, 60, entered his plea in federal court in Fort Pierce on Friday. Continue reading...
The Colorado fire grew to more than 2.3 sq miles while, earlier in the day, the vice-president outlined a response to reduce riskAs Vice-President Kamala Harris visited California to highlight new funding for fighting wildfires, hundreds of residents in the Big Sur area in the north of the state were told to evacuate due to a new blaze as authorities were forced to shut its main roadway.Harris visited on Friday. On Saturday, firefighters were battling the blaze that broke out in rugged mountains along Big Sur on Friday night in a steep canyon and quickly spread toward the sea, fanned by strong winds up to 50mph. Continue reading...
A shorter week could attract employees to your small business – as well as increase productivity and moraleEvery small business owner I talk to has the same problem: we can’t find enough people to do the work we need. Well, I have an answer: perhaps we should be offering a four-day workweek.“What? A four-day workweek?” I’ll often hear when I propose this. “I need my people to work more, not less!” Continue reading...
The Philadelphian’s journey from college basketball to US Olympic bobsledder could land her on the podium in BeijingThree years ago, Sylvia Hoffman tried out for NBC’s second season of The Next Olympic Hopeful for one last shot at becoming an Olympic athlete. After tryouts, she laid on a foam roller, stretching out, when she heard two other athletes next to her talking: “The show last year was so great,” they said to each other.Hoffman perked up. A show? She thought this was just a scouting camp. When she asked the two athletes, they told her, “Yeah, they’re going to make this into a documentary.” Still confused, Hoffman Googled what she had just signed up for. Sure enough, it’s a show with one season out already. “Wow. OK, cool,” she thought to herself. She had been so focused on the word “Olympics” that she didn’t care about anything else, much less that this was a documentary. “Well, good thing I tried my best,” she said. Continue reading...
The longer Conservative MPs prevaricate about removing him, the more they become complicit in this scandalThe magic number is 54. This is how many Tory MPs have to write a secret letter to the chairman of their 1922 Committee in order to trigger a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson. There are easily more than 54 Conservative MPs who think their leader is a busted flush, who appreciate the risk his attempts to hang on to the premiership will inflict lasting reputational damage on their party and who understand that Britain won’t return to anything resembling seemly and orderly government until he is gone. One senior Tory ended a conversation with me by quoting François Rabelais: “Bring down the curtain, the farce is over.”Quite a lot share the public revulsion with the lockdown-busting of the prime minister and his staff. Some agree that he lied to MPs and that it is critical to the integrity of our politics that deliberately misleading parliament is always treated as a resignation offence. More are agitated about what leaving Mr Johnson in place means for their electoral prospects. All can read the opinion polls. His personal ratings have plunged to depths not even plumbed by Theresa May at her lowest point. This strongly suggests we are witnessing the implosion of the Cult of Johnson that I wrote about at the time of the last Tory party conference. And yet Sir Graham Brady, the man who keeps count of the letters, has not announced that the magic number has been reached. Tory MPs scheme, gossip, brief, speculate and plot. With a few exceptions, what they have not done is act. Continue reading...
No western leader wants to lock horns over Ukraine – but they need to declare the Russian leader a pariahThe term “rogue male”, denoting a rampaging bull elephant, is also used figuratively to describe a dangerously out-of-control, cold-hearted loner. It may be that Vladimir Putin has a cuddly side. If so, it’s well-hidden. Russia’s president fits the rogue male profile to a T – unscrupulous, vicious, cunning, and ever ready to trample on other people and countries.Much recent effort has been expended trying to understand and explain Putin’s motives in threatening a wider war in Ukraine. Does he hope to restore past Soviet glories or crush Kyiv’s pro-western trajectory? Is it about his historical legacy or his need for a repeat electoral “Crimea bounce”? Such theories carry weight, but they all miss the essential point. Continue reading...
The two Democratic senators chose to wreck American democracy, simply to feed their sense of their own importanceWhat can possibly explain Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to sink voting rights protections? Why did they create a false narrative that the legislation had to be “bipartisan” when everyone, themselves included, knew bipartisanship was impossible?Why did they say they couldn’t support changing Senate filibuster rules when only last month they voted for an exception to the filibuster that allowed debt ceiling legislation to pass with only Democratic votes? Continue reading...
One cynomolgus monkey remained on the loose overnight after the truck transporting 100 of them crashed near DanvilleThe last of the monkeys that escaped from a truck after it had crashed on a Pennsylvanian highway have been accounted for and three have been euthanised.Several monkeys had escaped following Friday’s collision between the pickup truck transporting them and a dump truck, but only one had remained unaccounted for as of Saturday morning, prompting the Pennsylvania Game Commission and other agencies to launch a search for it in frigid weather. Continue reading...
Incident occurred in Harlem, as four officers have now been shot in New York City in as many daysThe 22-year-old New York City police officer who was shot dead while responding to a call in a Harlem apartment on Friday night came from an immigrant family and grew up in a community with strained police relations, but once wrote that he joined the force to make a difference in the “chaotic city”.“I know that something as small as helping a tourist with directions, or helping a couple resolve an issue, will put a smile on someone’s face,” Jason Rivera wrote to his commanding officer in 2020, when he was a probationary police officer. Continue reading...
Corrections center staff will not be charged in Cedric Lofton’s death in September due to Kansas’ ‘stand your ground’ lawSurveillance video shows a Black 17-year-old struggling with staff at a Wichita juvenile center last fall before his death, which followed being restrained facedown for more than 30 minutes.Late on Friday, Sedgwick county released 18 video clips of what happened before Cedric Lofton was rushed to a hospital on 24 September. He died two days later. Continue reading...
At a board meeting on Covid mitigation strategies, the woman said, ‘My children will not come to school with masks on’A Virginia mother was charged with making a threat on school property after she told local board members she would bring “every single gun loaded” if the district instituted a mask mandate.Renewed mask fights were touched off this month after the new Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, issued an executive order making masks optional for students, subject to the preference of parents. Continue reading...
Public workers trained in use of tourniquets credited with saving life of man injured while operating band sawA man who stumbled along a street in Maine carrying his own severed arm was saved by two public workers who saw him and happened to be trained in the use of tourniquets, authorities said.“It had to be divine intervention because two of my best guys just happened to be there sanding sidewalks,” said Mary Ann Brenchick, director of Lewiston Public Works. “It couldn’t have been better guys for this kind of situation.” Continue reading...
For razzle-dazzle they can’t be beaten and we could all do with more of it these daysIt is too easy to fall down rabbit holes of old festival sets on YouTube. I’ve revisited the ones I first saw on TV – PJ Harvey in a pink catsuit, singing Down by the Water at Glastonbury, broadcast on Channel 4 in 1995 into my childhood front room, changing my tastes forever – and later, the ones where I can try to see if I was in the crowd, while suspecting it’s probably best to not know.There is something that almost every one of the shows that took place before, roughly, the mid-00s, has in common: they are strikingly un-produced. Nirvana at Reading festival in 1992 is music history, but watch it again now: it’s three blokes playing their instruments on a vast, open stage. The razzle-dazzle, arena-show-style spectacles we’ve grown used to, the big screens, light shows, costume changes, fireworks that put New Year’s Eve to shame, are relatively new. Continue reading...
A tweet from a professor at Wharton School reveals students in one class believed the average American makes over six figuresIt costs over $100,000 a year to attend the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. I don’t know what you get for that money exactly but insights into the everyday economy clearly aren’t on the syllabus. Nina Strohminger, an assistant professor at Wharton School recently asked her students how much they reckoned the average American makes a year. A quarter of the class, she reported in a viral tweet, thought it was over six figures; one student thought it was $800,000. The real figure? Around $53,838, according to figures from the Social Security Administration (SSA) last year. Continue reading...
We don’t realize how important physical contact is in building and facilitating and servicing relationshipsEarlier this fall, in the quaint days when our variants had progressed only an eighth of the way through the Greek alphabet, I made a seemingly impractical trip: I unstuck myself from the couch where I’d been working the previous 18 months, kissed my husband and three children goodbye, and traveled to a DC suburb where, for 10 waking hours, I sat next to my friend on her couch, and worked, and hung out with her three children. Then I commuted six hours home.After months apart, during which we’d communicated almost solely in sentence fragments on WhatsApp, we had a single hour of child-free chatting over a bottle of wine – at 9 o’clock, we were both too tired to stay awake, so crawled into beds in adjacent rooms. And when the sun rose, we teamed up to shove tiny feet and hands into boots and gloves while, perhaps a little too on-the-nose, Elton John’s I’m Still Standing blasted over the living room speakers, then drove the girls to school. On the relaxation scale, it clocked in closer to “gut renovating your apartment” than “spa”. But those measly 10 hours, full of random, unprompted hugs and the knowledge that we could just exist, in the same place, with no real agenda – Eating takeout! Chatting in a car! Or while doing the dishes! Blowing raspberries on the one-year-old’s tummy as the other one plowed through emails! – replenished a part of my social life that has languished perhaps more than any other lately: a type of socializing that falls under the heading of hanging out. Continue reading...
What defenders of the filibuster want is minority rule – and a government unable to deliver anything meaningful to its peopleOn Joe Manchin’s US Senate website, you can click on “Help from Joe”. American democracy (not to speak of another Joe) desperately needed his help this week. What it got instead was notes cribbed from constitutional law 101, selective and self-serving worship of a distant deity known as “the Founders”, and sanctimonious invocations of bipartisanship.The battle to secure free and fair conditions for voting through a simple Senate majority seems lost for the moment; and Republicans – who call for bipartisanship only when they happen to be in the minority – are gloating. But we should not move on so quickly. Otherwise, like dirt, the deeply misleading claims about the filibuster preventing a “tyranny of the majority”, advanced by Manchin and commentators thinking the point of politics is moderation for its own sake, might come to stick. Continue reading...
The city’s biggest arthouse cinema may become a live entertainment venue just shy of its 100th birthdayFor years, the San Francisco underground drag performer and cinephile Peaches Christ has filled the city’s renowned Castro Theatre with her Midnight Mass series, juxtaposing cult film screenings with live, drag-parody re-enactments and onstage interviews. These loving but irreverent late-night events have been a staple of LGBTQ+ culture at the city’s pre-eminent arthouse theater, itself one of the most visible landmarks in San Francisco’s most famous gayborhood.As Peaches Christ puts it: “Cinema has been my religion, and the Castro is our Vatican.” Continue reading...
Leon Black, one of New York’s wealthiest men, locked in a bitter dispute with a former lover who accuses him of sexual violenceWith Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal conviction working its way toward an appeal, and Virginia Giuffre’s civil case against Prince Andrew caught up in arguments over evidence and depositions, another high-profile case linked to the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is working through the New York court system.It too is dragging in some of the biggest names in elite New York society, in this case sending shockwaves through the rarefied world of Manhattan finance. Continue reading...
Russell Westbrook and Frank Vogel have taken an outsized share of the blame for the Lakers’ struggles, but maybe the composition of this team was doomed from the jumpAt 37 years old, LeBron James is having one of the best seasons of his 18-year NBA career.The Los Angeles Lakers star is averaging 28.8 points (his most since 2009-10), 7.6 rebounds and 6.4 assists in 33 games this season, shooting 51.7% from the field, 36.4% from three and 75.4% from the free-throw line, all above his career averages. After a relatively slow start and then an abdominal injury that sidelined him for eight games, James has been an MVP-level player over his last 15 games, averaging 33/9/6 on 53/37/75 shooting splits with 1.5 steals and 1.3 blocks. Continue reading...
Lawyer Mark Richard files request for return of gun and other items ‘to ensure firearm in question is properly destroyed’Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois man acquitted last year of fatally shooting two men and wounding a third during racial justice protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020, is requesting the return of the gun.Rittenhouse killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, when he shot them with an assault rifle as he roamed the streets of Kenosha with other armed men acting as self-described militia during protests over the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white officer. Continue reading...
Romney, Cheney and others were hailed as the conscience of the party but their deeds in the Senate have provoked accusations of hypocrisyThey have been hailed as the conscience of the Republican party, heroes of the resistance to former US president Donald Trump’s hostile takeover.But Senator Mitt Romney, Congresswoman Liz Cheney and others this month helped kill off a voting rights bill that Democrats say is essential to protecting democracy from a Trump-driven onslaught. Continue reading...
Some Trumpland observers are convinced that he is in serious legal trouble as New York’s AG investigation of Trump Organizations’s finances intensifiesWhen Donald Trump announced plans in 2006 to build a golf complex on ancient sand dunes on the Aberdeenshire coast in Scotland he told reporters it was love at first sight. “As soon as I saw it there was no question about it,” he said. It would be the world’s “greatest golf course”.This week Trump International Scotland became a central element of a case that looks poised to dominate his post-presidential life, and could even put him behind bars. Continue reading...
Lawsuit claims employee from state-funded program informed couple they would not serve them ‘because of their Jewish faith’A Jewish couple from Tennessee has filed a lawsuit against the state’s Department of Children’s Services after a state-funded Christian program denied them foster care services for religious reasons.According to the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram signed up for the foster-parent training class and home-study certification process last January at the Holston United Methodist Home for Children. Continue reading...
Court’s conservative supermajority appears open to reversing Roe, overturning nearly 50 years of precedent since 1973 decisionIn 1974, on the first anniversary of the Roe v Wade supreme court decision, abortion opponents gathered on the National Mall in Washington to “march for life”. They vowed to return each year until the ruling, which established the right to abortion, was no longer the law of the land.On Friday, anti-abortion activists from across the country braved sub-zero temperatures and the coronavirus pandemic to assemble in Washington, more hopeful than ever that this would be their last march to a court where the fate of Roe will soon be decided. Continue reading...
The US secretary of state described talks in Geneva with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, intended to reduce tensions that have risen since Russia massed troops near Ukraine's border, as ‘frank and substantive’. But Antony Blinken repeated the US and Nato’s position that there could still be no compromise on the central issue of the right of Ukraine and other countries to join Nato in the future
New justice department unit alleges Texas man posted message on Craigslist calling for deaths of several officialsA special justice department unit created to combat threats against election officials made its first arrest on Friday after a man allegedly posted threats online against Georgia election workers.Chad Stark, a 54-year-old resident of Texas, was arrested by law enforcement after officials alleged he posted a message on Craigslist on 5 January 2021 saying that he wanted “Georgia Patriots” to kill several election officials. Continue reading...
Figures show benefit of Covid vaccines and boosters to reduce hospital risk as agency says: ‘Get vaccinated as soon as possible’New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revealed that unvaccinated adults infected with Covid-19 who are 65 and older are 49 times more likely to need hospitalization compared to those who have received booster doses.The CDC also found that in December, unvaccinated adults in that same age group experienced a rate of Covid-related hospitalization 17 times higher than those who are fully vaccinated. Continue reading...
Whether it’s the monarchy, the union or the BBC, today’s Tories are trampling on the values they once claimed to cherishJust because Boris Johnson approaches every issue thinking only of Boris Johnson does not mean we have to do the same. Even the crisis that now engulfs the prime minister, and sees his fate hang on Tory MPs’ reaction to a Sue Gray report that could come next week, is not only about him. It’s tempting to see it that way – to look for the roots of the partygate scandal in Johnson’s arrogance, entitlement and narcissism – but it’s a double mistake.As a matter of politics, it’s unwise because it would allow the Conservatives to ditch Johnson, pick a successor and claim to be a new government exorcised of its demon, with no need for the electorate to turn to Labour. But it’s also wrong.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Henry Cuellar, a member of the House of Representatives since 2004, said he would fully cooperate with the investigationCongressman Henry Cuellar of Texas has had his home and campaign office raided this week as apart of a federal investigation into Azerbaijan and US businessmen who may have ties to the country, according to senior officials.On Wednesday, the FBI searched Cuellar’s property, in what it described as “court-authorized law enforcement activity”. Witnesses said at least a dozen federal agents moved through Cuellar’s home and office, carrying out various items and cases, as first reported by the Monitor of McAllen, Texas. Continue reading...
While Biden has made mistakes, his biggest obstacles – such as electoral biases built into the US system – are not his doingA year into his term, the Biden administration is in shambles. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema’s support for the legislative filibuster has killed the Democratic voting rights push. Biden’s Build Back Better plan, a massive reconciliation package containing initiatives on issues from climate change to childcare is, for now, dead in the water; Manchin and Sinema will determine whether any of its provisions survive in attenuated form.Immigration reform and healthcare reform, both central to Democratic intra-party debates during the 2020 primaries, have fallen entirely off the radar. The US supreme court may overturn Roe v Wade in the coming months. The latest wave of the coronavirus pandemic is still ravaging the country thanks not only to Covid denialists and vaccine skeptics on the right, but an administration that has struggled to keep its pledges on easy access to tests. Abroad, Biden’s courageous withdrawal from Afghanistan – a kept promise even the president’s harshest critics on the left were willing to give him credit for – has been marred by economic sanctions that have left 23 million Afghans without enough to eat, and the media is already itching to blame Biden for a Russian invasion of Ukraine.Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
Mike Lindell is being sued by UK-based company Smartmatic over his claims that it switched votes from Trump to Biden in 2020The MyPillow CEO, Mike Lindell, is facing another defamation lawsuit for promoting his conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was rigged against Donald Trump.Smartmatic, a UK-based voting machine company, filed a lawsuit against Lindell on Tuesday claiming that Lindell espoused lies about the company switching votes from Trump to Joe Biden in order to better sell his products. Continue reading...
Ticket stubs, newspaper cuttings and letters from my mother’s old employer. But what is treasure and what is trash?I moved into my present apartment seven years ago, and my six crates of papers moved with me – directly from one closet, where they had squatted undisturbed for five years, to another, where the same fate awaited. For almost two decades, these things have followed me around, and I’ve never had the slightest inclination to go through them.Then last week, in a fit of January decluttering fervour, I decided to reclaim my closet. Everything came out into the living room, where it seemed to me an achievable aim to aggregate these six crates down into a single container. I could probably do it in an hour, I thought. Four days later and here I still am: surrounded by papers, trying to weigh the value of a letter from my mother’s then 17-year-old brother to her in 1967, and whether I should keep receipts from my tax return in 1998.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
