Jane Hartley nomination continues practice by both parties in recent decades of appointing wealthy donors to prestigious jobJane Hartley, a businesswoman and Democratic party fundraiser, has been nominated as the next US ambassador to Britain, continuing a practice by both parties in recent decades of appointing wealthy donors to the prestigious job.Hartley, who served as ambassador to Paris in the Obama administration, is a business executive, and is married to an investment banker, with a record of large-scale fundraising for Democratic candidates. Continue reading...
Democrat Gary Chambers Jr smokes blunt in video in effort to ‘destigmatize’ use and raise awareness about racial justiceA US Senate candidate from Louisiana has shared a campaign video in which he smokes marijuana in an effort to “destigmatize” its use and raise awareness about racial justice.Gary Chambers Jr, a 37-year-old Democrat and social justice advocate from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is shown seated outdoors in a chair, taking puffs from a blunt. Continue reading...
The Grammy-winning rapper, who is from the New York borough, will fund repatriation of victims to be buried in the GambiaCardi B has offered to pay the burial costs for all 17 people killed in a fire that ripped through a New York City high-rise.New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, announced on Wednesday that the Grammy-winning rapper had offered the financial relief for victims of the fire in the Bronx, where she grew up. Continue reading...
State health agency conducting inquiry into Raul Pino to ‘determine if any laws were broken’A health official who helped lead Florida’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been put on administrative leave as state officials investigate whether he tried to compel employees to get vaccinated.The state health agency is conducting an inquiry into Raul Pino, director of the Florida department of health in Orange county, to “determine if any laws were broken in this case”, the state department of health press secretary, Jeremy Redfern, said in an email. Continue reading...
by Joan E Greve in Washington and agency on (#5V6AJ)
Progressive Vermont senator believes ‘there’s a very good chance’ Democrats will face challenges over their filibuster stanceBernie Sanders has said he may consider supporting primary challengers against colleagues Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the two Democrat holdouts in debate over whether to amend the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation.The progressive Vermont senator told reporters on Tuesday that he believes “there is a very good chance” that Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, and Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona, will face primary challenges because of their stance on the filibuster.Associated Press contributed to this report Continue reading...
by Lauren Aratani in New York and agency on (#5V5Z4)
Court filing says investigators are seeking to question Donald Trump and his two eldest childrenThe New York attorney general’s office has told a court that its investigators have uncovered evidence that Donald Trump’s company used “fraudulent or misleading” asset valuations to get loans and tax benefits.The court filing late on Tuesday said state authorities had not yet decided whether to bring a civil lawsuit in connection with the allegations, but that investigators needed to question Trump and his two eldest children as part of their inquiries. Continue reading...
Aviation watchdog says signals from 5G masts near airports could interfere with some planes’ equipmentAirlines including Emirates, Lufthansa and Air India have cancelled or changed US-bound flights owing to concerns about the deployment of 5G mobile phone technology near airports.The US aviation watchdog has said 5G signals could interfere with radio altimeters, which measure how high a plane is in the sky and are a crucial piece of equipment for pilots, particularly when landing in bad weather. Continue reading...
Without robust federal legislation, it will soon be impossible to stop America’s degeneration into a diluted pseudo-democracyIt has not been a good start to 2022 for American democracy. MLK Day came and went, and even though Democratic leaders, including President Biden, are finally pushing hard to pass federal legislation that would protect voting rights, they have so far been unable to deliver: while Republicans remain united in obstruction, Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema keep chasing the chimera of “bipartisanship”. As Democrats are likely to lose either the House or the Senate in this year’s midterm elections, it might soon become impossible to stop America’s slide into authoritarianism.I understand this may sound hyperbolic. Donald Trump was voted out, his coup attempt failed; Joe Biden is president, and Democrats have the majority in Congress. How bad could it possibly be? But since the 2020 election, Republicans have actually escalated their assault on the political system, particularly on the state and local levels. They remain united behind Trump, and they have decided that if they cannot have democracy and Republican rule, then democracy has to go.Thomas Zimmer is a historian and DAAD visiting professor at Georgetown University where he focuses on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States Continue reading...
The Bengals won their first postseason game in 31 years last weekend. Much of their success is down to a young quarterback-coaching duoOnly one year has passed since Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown felt the need to issue a statement explaining why he was keeping head coach Zac Taylor, whose Bengals had won just six of 32 games in his first two seasons.Brown, the 86-year-old son of the late legendary Hall of Fame coach and Bengals founder Paul Brown, ended his statement with this kind-of-silly line (which should have been accompanied by the sound of a snarling tiger): “Next year, we will earn our stripes.” Continue reading...
You know that previously sensible friend who now beams every time her perfect child farts? Reader, that’s meUh oh, it has happened. I have officially turned into that person. You know who I mean: the adult who seems oblivious to the fact that their screeching infant is not the most adorable thing to crawl the face of this Earth but an out-of-control noise machine. That person is the previously sensible and self-aware friend of yours who beams every time their perfect progeny farts or grunts, and acts like it is the cutest thing they have ever seen. “What happened to you?” I used to think, when I was childfree, and hung out with friends who had procreated. “How do you not realise that your child is sort of annoying? What did parenthood do to your brain?”I do not have the scientific answers to this but I can say that parenthood has undoubtedly done a number on my own brain. I have 100% been baby-pilled. My eight month old will be screeching like a banshee and, instead of finding it irritating, I will look at her perfect little face and my heart will melt. I find myself googling things such as: if my baby screams a lot at an unusually high decibel level, does it mean that they are gifted? (The jury is out on that but my kid is obviously brilliant).Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Students join wave of protests across the country calling for better masking and testing or a return to virtual learningMore than 1,200 students in Oakland, California, have signed a petition saying they would stay home this week unless school administrators provide additional Covid protections, including more N95 masks, weekly testing and better social distancing – or a shift to virtual learning.On Tuesday, three district campuses were closed because students and teachers, in solidarity, stayed home. Continue reading...
The president has none of Trump’s hostility to the press but frustration is growing over a lack of engagement with reportersWhen Joe Biden finished delivering a televised update on the administration’s coronavirus response last week, aides began to usher the press towards the exit as reporters shouted questions. Biden declined to answer.“Folks, we’ll talk about that later,” he said. Then came a question from NBC’S Kelly O’Donnell he couldn’t ignore: “Maybe a press conference soon, Mr President? We would look forward to that.” Continue reading...
The platform, launched in a surprise decision last year, met with backlash from staff who feared it would tarnish brandAl Jazeera, the Qatar-funded media organization, has reportedly stopped creating content for its new conservative digital project in the US, Rightly.Four sources confirmed the news to Axios, which was the first to report it on Tuesday. In December, the company ended its show on the platform, which was being overseen by its editor-in-chief, Scott Norvell, a Fox News veteran. Continue reading...
Michael Todd spat into his hand twice, and audience gasped when he rubbed his hands on his brother’s faceA pastor from a megachurch in Tulsa, Oklahoma, faced a wave of criticism online over video of him rubbing spit on a worshipper’s face.During a sermon on Sunday, Michael Todd, a 34-year-old lead pastor at Transformation church, spat into his hand twice. Continue reading...
House special committee demands documents and testimony from ‘war room’ team involved in effort to overturn election resultThe US congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack has issued a blitz of subpoenas to some of Donald Trump’s top lawyers – including Rudy Giuliani – as it examines whether the former president oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 6 January 2021.The House panel subpoenaed four of Trump’s legal team on Tuesday: the former president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his associate Boris Epshteyn, as well as Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, who all defended Trump’s baseless voter fraud claims as he attempted to overturn the election result. Continue reading...
The book, to be published in March, will divulge details from his tenure as attorney general for George HW Bush and TrumpWilliam Barr, Donald Trump’s second attorney general and perceived “hatchet man” until he split from the former president over his lies about election fraud, will publish his memoirs in March.HarperCollins, the publisher of One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, promised a “vivid and forthright” read on Barr’s long career in law and conservative politics, in which he was first attorney general under George HW Bush. Continue reading...
by Kari Paul and Carly Olson and agencies on (#5V5EA)
Move follows letter from airline executives concerned about interference with plane instrumentsThe US phone carriers AT&T and Verizon agreed on Tuesday to temporarily defer turning on some wireless towers near key airport runways to mitigate a looming aviation crisis caused by new 5G technology.Both AT&T and Verizon will launch new C-Band 5G wireless service on Wednesday but agreed to delay some deployment near airports that had threatened to result in numerous flight cancellations. Continue reading...
Misuse of Autopilot, which can control steering, speed and braking, is the subject of investigations by two federal agenciesCalifornia prosecutors have filed two counts of vehicular manslaughter against the driver of a Tesla on Autopilot who ran a red light, slammed into another car and killed two people in 2019.The defendant appears to be the first person to be charged with a felony in the United States for a fatal crash involving a motorist who was using a partially automated driving system. Los Angeles county prosecutors filed the charges in October, but they came to light only last week. Continue reading...
Cell towers near unspecified number of runways will not be switched on amid claims they could affect altimetersAT&T will postpone new wireless service near some airports planned for this week after the nation’s largest airlines said the service would interfere with aircraft technology and cause huge flight disruptions.The company said on Tuesday it would delay turning on new cell towers around runways at some airports – it did not say how many – and work with federal regulators to settle a dispute over potential interference from new 5G service. Continue reading...
Florida governor wants lawmakers to allocate nearly $6m for Office of Election Crime and SecurityThe Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, has proposed the formation of a large and unprecedented state agency to investigate election crimes – in a state where there is little evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election or otherwise.In response, one prominent state prosecutor sought to tie DeSantis to rightwing conspiracy theorists, calling his proposal “a solution in search of a problem … a $6m door prize for a QAnon pep rally”. Continue reading...
by Nadia Khomami Arts and culture correspondent on (#5V04E)
Historical document is part of an auction of the private library of antiquarian book dealer William S ReeseOne of the earliest contemporary broadside editions of the Declaration of Independence is to go on sale later this year as part of an auction of the private library of William S Reese, the most prominent antiquarian book dealer of his generation.The collection of “Bill” Reese, including printed works, historic prints, fine art and colour-plate books, will be among the most valuable sales of printed Americana in over 50 years, Christie’s said, giving it a “conservative” pre-sale estimate of $12m-$18m. Continue reading...
Pay and bonuses for each employee averaged just over $400k for 2021, up $75k on the year beforeGoldman Sachs paid its 43,900 bankers more than $17bn (£12.5bn) last year, a 33% increase on 2020 as the investment bank celebrated a more than doubling of pre-tax profits to $27bn thanks to frenzied dealmaking on both sides of the Atlantic.The pay and bonuses increase works out at about $403,000 for each employee on average, up from about $328,000 a year ago. It is the most the bank has paid out in wages and bonuses since 2007 at the height of the banking boom leading up to the financial crisis. Continue reading...
Hawks in DC are calling for more US involvement in Ukraine. But that would increase the risk of direct US-Russia conflictBiden came to office aiming to focus his foreign policy on the needs of the US middle class. Ending the pandemic, rejuvenating the nation, addressing climate change and competing with China were top priorities. Russia was not. After an initial series of measures designed to punish Vladimir Putin for his chemical-weapons attack on Alexei Navalny, cyber-espionage, and meddling in US domestic politics, policymakers opted to pursue stability and predictability in the US-Russia relationship.The crisis over Ukraine now threatens to derail this aim and distract from Biden’s broader agenda. It would be tragic if, after having been through the painful process of withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden administration is now pulled deeper into the crisis over Ukraine.Christopher S Chivvis is the Director of the American Statecraft Program and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Continue reading...
Living in the US, I have always seized every opportunity to insist things are better in Blighty. But now both countries look ludicrousFor years now I have been living with a chronic condition that I’ve finally been able to diagnose as Privileged Immigrant Derangement Syndrome (PIDS). Let me explain: more than a decade ago I left my native Britain to go and work in New York. I wasn’t fleeing persecution, poverty, or life in a failed state; I just wanted to live in the US. There were more opportunities, I didn’t have to navigate the suffocating class system, and, most importantly, my English accent gave me a competitive edge. Women swooned at my vowel sounds (I’m not making that up: they swooned … OK, I promise at least one woman swooned) and everyone assumed I was on tea-drinking terms with the Queen.Anyway, that’s the PI bit of PIDS. The D bit is this: when you spend extended time away from your home country, it’s easy to build up a romanticised version of it in your head. I became a cheerleader for all things British; I even bought a pair of union jack wellies, and wore them with pride whenever it rained. As my long-suffering American wife can attest, I seized every opportunity to say how much better things were in Blighty than Stateside. We had a superior healthcare system; we weren’t gun-nuts?; our infrastructure was better; our political system wasn’t as drenched with money, and was less corrupt. Even our rain was better. On and on I went about how the UK was infinitely superior to the US.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
There is always an alternative to a custodial sentence. No court decision should endanger the life of an unborn childIn the past three years, two babies born inside English prisons have died. In September 2019, a woman, now known as Ms A, gave birth alone in her cell at HMP Bronzefield and the baby died. In July 2020, a baby was stillborn at HMP Styal. Prison will never be a safe place for pregnant women, so why are our courts still sending them there?Geraldine Brown, Maria Garcia de Frutos and I set about trying to answer that question. Our research into pregnancy in English prisons (there are no women’s prisons in Wales), published this week, has convinced me that imprisoning pregnant women is disproportionate, cruel and simply unnecessary.Rona Epstein is an honorary research fellow at Coventry Law School Continue reading...
The Steelers quarterback is headed to the Hall of Fame. But he was unloved outside Pittsburgh for understandable reasonsBen Roethlisberger is lucky that football legacies are not decided by finales. If Sunday night was indeed Big Ben’s last ever NFL game, as he has strongly hinted, it wasn’t exactly a mic drop. In the 42-21 beatdown by the Chiefs, Roethlisberger struggled with rollouts, and lacked the creativity and finesse of his opposing number, Patrick Mahomes.Just as no one places too much weight on Dan Marino’s 62-7 playoff loss to the Jaguars in his career finale, Roethlisberger’s clunker of an ending won’t be a significant part of his story. But in comparison to Marino – and most other quarterbacks – Roethlisberger’s legacy is complicated. Continue reading...
The family of Martin Luther King Jr has called for the passage of a law to protect voters from racial discrimination, while the vice-president, Kamala Harris, said the right to vote in the US was 'under assault'. As part of the annual MLK Day peace walk, the King family and more than 100 national and local civil rights groups strode across the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge urging the Democrats to pass the bill in the US Senate
The committee is undecided on making the near-unprecedented step as the threat of Republican retaliation loomsThe House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is weighing whether to subpoena some of Donald Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill as it considers its options on how aggressively it should pursue testimony to move forward its inquiry into the January 6 insurrection.The Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and Republican members of Congress Jim Jordan and Scott Perry may have inside knowledge about Trump’s plan to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election and whether it was coordinated with the Capitol attack. Continue reading...
Spirits at work were common in the 60s, and pints at lunchtime were normal in the 80s, but most workplaces sobered upThe time to be alive, if you wanted to drink hard liquor at work, was the 60s, but it actually is not possible to drink spirits all day without something terrible happening. Not “rude remark” terrible, not “accounting mistake” terrible, but “falling out of a window” terrible. To drink like this, you would have to be both in the 60s and in a film.Nevertheless, a couple of pints at lunchtime, even in reputable careers such as teaching, was still commonplace in the 80s. By the 90s, it had mainly been phased out – except if you were a journalist. When I got my first job on a paper in 1994, it was routine to arrive at 10am, go to lunch at 12.30pm, come back to the office at 2pm to leave your jacket on the chair (the universal camouflage of the presentee), go back to the pub, then regroup in the office at 4.30pm to collect your jacket. When the nation decided to put in charge of the country a bunch of men whose formative professional years were 80s and 90s Fleet Street, the obvious risks were that they would run the place like a newspaper column, with tiny amounts of knowledge parlayed into huge statements that, unlike a column, would turn into concrete acts, and have consequences for millions of lives. That turned out to be devastatingly true, but what, weirdly, none of us predicted was that it would also turn Downing Street into a year-round Oktoberfest.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Puzzle of Biden’s unpopularity has some pieces within his control and some not, experts say, as Covid casts a shadow over his first year in officeJoe Biden ends his first year in office at a particularly bleak moment for a US president who promised competency and normalcy.Much of his domestic agenda is stalled on Capitol Hill, impeded by members of his own party. The virus is once again raging out of control: daily infections of Covid-19 have soared to record levels, hospitalizing more Americans than at any previous point during the pandemic. The administration’s vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers was blocked by the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority. Inflation is at a nearly 40-year high. Diplomatic talks have so far failed to pull Russia back from the brink of war with Ukraine. Continue reading...
The lawsuit alleges that the jail physician told the four men that the prescribed drugs were ‘mere vitamins, antibiotics and/or steroids’Four inmates at an Arkansas jail have filed a lawsuit against the facility and its doctor after they said they were unknowingly prescribed ivermectin to treat Covid-19 as a form of “medical experimentation” despite US health officials warning that the anti-parasitic drug should not be used for that purpose.The Arkansas’ chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of the men last week against Washington county jail, Washington county sheriff Tim Helder and jail physician Dr. Robert Karas. Last August, Helder revealed that the drug had been prescribed to patients with Covid-19. Continue reading...
Luke was targeted by adverts for ‘free bets’ to lure him back to gambling after he had quit. I’m campaigning to have this kind of marketing bannedThis time last year, my husband Luke and I had everything we wanted: each other, a lovely house and two wonderful children. Three months later, this life was shattered. On 22 April 2021, my wonderful partner took his own life.
Democracy isn’t an institution – it’s a practice that becomes stronger through use. The key to defeating Trump lies in mobilising ordinary people to articulate their real needsThe recent anniversary of the Trumpian riot at the Capitol building highlighted a growing anxiety about the state of democracy both in America and around the world.In a widely circulated article, the Canadian professor Thomas Homer-Dixon warned of a rightwing dictatorship in the US by 2030. At the same time, a Quinnipiac University poll found nearly 60% of Americans believed their democracy is “in danger of collapse”. Continue reading...
The British hostage-taker was originally welcomed and offered tea before the situation turned ‘tense and terrifying’The rabbi and congregants of the Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas have begun offering accounts of their 11-hour, partially live-streamed ordeal at the hands of British hostage-taker Malik Faisal Akram.Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker told CBS he initially welcomed the stranger, who had been staying in a Dallas homeless shelter, and made him a cup of tea. He said the man was not threatening or suspicious at first. Continue reading...
Whales still face many threats, mostly from us, so let us savour this rare congregation of them in the Antarctic PeninsulaGood news doesn’t get any more in-your-face than this. One thousand fin whales, one of the world’s biggest animals, were seen last week swimming in the same seas in which they were driven to near-extinction last century due to whaling. It’s like humans never happened.This vast assembly was spread over a five-mile-wide area between the South Orkney islands and the Antarctic Peninsula. A single whale is stupendous; imagine 1,000 of them, their misty forest of spouts, as tall as pine trees, the plosive sound of their blows, their hot breath condensing in the icy air. Their sharp dorsal fins and steel-grey bodies slide through the waves like a whale ballet, choreographed at the extreme south of our planet. Continue reading...
Martin Luther King’s family and civil rights advocates urged lawmakers to ‘protect our voting rights or be an enabler of voter suppression’Vice-president Kamala Harris on Monday warned that the right to vote in America was “under assault” and tens of millions of Americans faced potential disenfranchisement unless threatened voting rights legislation was passed by US lawmakers.The speech was given on the Martin Luther King day public holiday and comes as King’s family and other civil rights activists in America are pushing for expanded federal voting rights legislation despite political opposition from Republicans. Continue reading...
According to Anti-Defamation League, there were over 2,100 acts of assault, vandalism and harassment last yearThe hostage-taking attack on a Texas synagogue has renewed fears of increasing antisemitism in the US. The incident, which Joe Biden called “an act of terror”, comes as organizations tracking antisemitic violence say it is increasing across the US.“Assault, harassment and vandalism against Jews remain at near-historic levels in the US,” said the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in its most recent Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. According to the group, there were more than 2,100 acts of assault, vandalism and harassment last year, an increase of 12% over the previous year. Continue reading...
More than 50 million under winter weather alerts on Monday morning as Florida also sees tornados and rare snow flurriesA dangerous winter storm brought significant snowfall, strong thunderstorms and blustery winds to the north-east of the US on Monday as well as rare snow flurries and deadly tornados to Florida.More than 50 million people were under winter weather alerts on Monday morning the huge system affected a gigantic swath of the country stretched from Florida to Maine. Continue reading...
Pet was center of children’s books by second family and John Oliver’s satirical book on search for same-sex rabbit partnerMarlon Bundo, the family pet rabbit of former vice-president Mike Pence, has died, marking the end of an unlikely career as a prominent gay rights figure in the US.Charlotte Pence Bond, Pence’s daughter, announced Bundo’s death in posts on social media. “Somehow, you taught me how to always try to be kind first and never stop making an effort to get along. We had some wild times together and I’m forever grateful. Rest in sweet peace, little bunny,” she wrote. Continue reading...
UK counter-terrorism police detain teenagers in Manchester and suspect named as Briton Malik Faisal Akram. Plus, Lego sued over Queer Eye toy jacketGood morning.Two teenagers have been arrested in Manchester, north-west England, after the FBI said an armed British man travelled to Texas and took four hostages at a synagogue in what President Joe Biden called “an act of terror”.Did any of the hostages die? No. All four hostages survived the siege and were unharmed, according to local police.What about Akram? He was pronounced dead after the FBI stormed the building.Where is he from? UK security sources confirmed to the Guardian that the suspect had been a resident of Blackburn in Lancashire. This was later confirmed in a statement by Greater Manchester police.What has Djokovic said? In a statement yesterday, he said he was “extremely disappointed” with the ruling but respected it and would “cooperate with the relevant authorities in relation to my departure from the country”. Continue reading...
