Ahmaud Arbery's family bared their grief and loss to the judge during the sentencing of three white men convicted of his murder.The men, father and son Greg and Travis McMichael and their neighbor William 'Roddie' Bryan, chased down Arbery, who was jogging in his neighbourhood, in pickup trucks and shot him dead.At the start of the hearing, superior court judge Timothy Walmsley rejected last-minute legal motions by Bryan's defense attorney to throw out his murder conviction and spare Bryan from the life sentence that state law imposes automatically Continue reading...

Bank becomes first on Wall Street to implement a mandate after saying in October it would require all US employees to get vaccineCitigroup is set to begin enforcing its “no jab, no job” policy next week, making it the first Wall Street bank to implement a vaccine mandate.The New York-headquartered bank said in October that it would require all US employees to be vaccinated against Covid as a condition of their employment in line with a Biden administration policy requiring workers supporting government contracts to be fully vaccinated. Continue reading...

On 24 March 2002, Sidney Poitier received an honorary Oscar 'in recognition of his remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being'. As he was introduced on to the stage by Denzel Washington, Poitier received a standing ovation

Company has failed to comply with court order to turn over public documents from review beset by shoddy working and infightingCyber Ninjas, the firm that was contracted by Arizona Republicans to carry out a widely-criticized review of 2.1m ballots cast in the presidential election, is shutting down amid a legal battle seeking to force the company to make documents from the review public.A judge fined the company $50,000 a day on Thursday – 50 times the amount requested by plaintiffs – for failing to comply with a court order to turn over public records, in a lawsuit brought by the Phoenix-based Arizona Republic newspaper. Continue reading...

The actor, whose groundbreaking work in the 1950s and 60s paved the way for generations of black film stars, has died aged 94.Poitier, who was born in Miami but raised in the Bahamas, was the first black winner of the best actor Oscar, for his role in Lilies of the Field. He was a pioneering black presence in mainstream Hollywood cinema.His death was announced on Friday by Fred Mitchell, the minister of foreign affairs of the Bahamas

His roles in films like To Sir with Love mirrored my own experiences, and made me rethink what was possibleAs a young kid, there really weren’t many black figures to aspire to, to mould yourself to. I was always glued to the telly and one night my dad put on this film, In the Heat of the Night. I will always remember the moment when Sidney Poitier came on screen as Virgil Tibbs. Seeing any black person on TV was extraordinary, but seeing someone with such ability, such grace, such style, changed me.I knew how bad racism was in the US at that time, and watching that film I feared for this black character in that world. But there’s a moment where an older white gentleman, Endicott, slaps Tibbs, and he immediately slaps him back in the face. There was an audible gasp in our living room, quickly followed by cheers. It was a thing we’d never seen before – he was standing up, he was strong, and he wasn’t taking any shit.David Harewood is an actor Continue reading...

The Republicans who once denounced him are beginning to accept Trump’s election lies. But where will voters go in the midterms?The problem with coverage of this week’s anniversary of the events of 6 January 2021 is that too much of it was written in the past tense. True, the attempted insurrection that saw a violent mob storm Capitol Hill in order to overturn a democratic election was a year ago, but the danger it poses is clear and present – and looms over the future. For the grim truth is that while Donald Trump is the last US president, he may also be the next. What’s more, the menace of Trumpism is darker now than it ever was before.This grim prognosis rests on two premises: the current weakness of Joe Biden and the current strength of his predecessor. Start with the latter, evidence of which comes from the contrast in how Trump’s fellow Republican politicians talked about 6 January at the time and how they talk – or don’t talk – about it now.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

More than 2,300 flights cancelled as schools and offices shuttered and parts of the north-west under an avalanche warningUS winter weather is wreaking havoc coast to coast, with more than 90 million people affected by potentially hazardous weather from Thursday and into Friday.More than 2,300 flights were canceled in the US on Friday morning. Schools and offices in the north-east were shuttered, by a fierce overnight snowstorm, if not only by the Omicron coronavirus surge, and parts of the north-west were under an avalanche warning. Continue reading...

Actor, director and civil rights activist Sidney Poitier has died at the age of 94. Poitier, who took on many challenging and groundbreaking roles, was the first Black person to receive a best actor Oscar• Peter Bradshaw on Sidney Poitier: a natural film star who quietly pioneered a revolution Continue reading...

Economists had predicted a rise of 422,000 non-farming jobs as Omicron variant adds new complication to economic recoveryThe US economy ended the year with disappointing jobs growth figures for December, adding just 199,000 workers to the non-farming labor force.Economists had been expecting more than double that number – 422,000 – suggesting that the US economy was improving, but erratically, as worker shortages troubled employers even before the Omicron coronavirus variant arrived, threatening another recovery stall. Continue reading...

A woman doing a selfie dance next to her ill newborn in an ICU? A teen dancing in front of his grandfather’s deathbed? As disturbing as it may seem, they’re ahead of the curveMouths agape, we’ve all cringed and borne witness to that infamous (and now deleted) TikTok video of a young woman doing a selfie dance routine in a newborn intensive care unit, next to her very ill infant’s hospital bed. “‘Li’l Lee was taken in cause of low oxygen. He tested positive for RSV. Waiting for him to breathe better on his own,’” read the caption, as she danced to Nessa Barrett’s If You Love Me while miming cradling motions.For many internet commenters, the video was evidence of a society hell-bent on collapse. “This is the kind of stuff Black Mirror warns us about,” wrote one person on Reddit. Another asked, “Is this real or just some gross ‘social experiment’?” (It’s real.)Rohit Thawani is a creative director working at the intersection of tech and advertising. He is co-host of The Hopeless Show podcast Continue reading...

As I untangled the tinsel, I wondered how much longer the magic of the festive season would holdAs we age, some things fade, while others take on greater significance. It’s a line that sounds lifted from a Call the Midwife voiceover, but as the new year begins, it also strikes me as true. For the first time this year, I’m aware of a shift in emphasis, from Christmas Day itself – a pain of logistics and expectation management – to the period directly afterwards. Specifically, an occasion that before now I’ve never felt to be any such thing: the taking down of the tree. Continue reading...

It’s not enough to excoriate Trump and his supporters. We must seek out and eradicate the roots of the alienation and resentment that so deeply divide usThere’s something exhilarating about hearing someone tell the truth, especially now when so many people seem to believe that the difference between facts and falsehood is a matter of political affiliation or personal opinion. Watching Kamala Harris and Joe Biden speak in the Capitol Rotunda on the anniversary of the 6 January insurrection, hearing the president blame the brutal riot directly on Donald Trump and his supporters – it felt almost like exhaling, after holding your breath for too long. Yes, it’s a lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Yes, it’s a lie that the rioters swarming the Capitol building were genuine American patriots. Those are facts that can’t be stressed enough, that need to be said and repeated by the powerful and the widely respected.Over the past few days, I’ve watched deeply moving interviews with the Capitol police officers who lived through the riot. Especially affecting was the PBS conversation with Sandra Garza, whose partner, Brian Sicknick, defended the Capitol against attackers and died the next day of a stroke; in Garza’s view, Donald Trump “needs to be in prison”. When I register my own jarringly adrenalized response to even the briefest film clip of the surging crowd calling out for blood, I know that I cannot begin to imagine what those who survived it – and their loved ones – continue to suffer.Francine Prose is a novelist. Her latest book, The Vixen, was published in June Continue reading...

Many young Americans are still reeling from their parents’ involvement in the violence of a year ago – and some reported them to the policeA year on from the Capitol attack by loyalist supporters of Donald Trump, many families are still reeling from members outing each other to law enforcement and offspring traumatized by their parents’ involvement in the insurrection.Jackson Reffitt, a 19-year old from Texas, called the FBI weeks before his father, Guy Reffitt, stormed the US Capitol on January, saying that his father had been hinting at doing “something big”, Teen Vogue reported. Continue reading...

The Brennan Center for Justice explains how the US government monitors social media – and how ‘counter-terrorism’ efforts can threaten civil rights and privacyIn the year since the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, federal authorities have faced intense scrutiny for failing to detect warning signs on social media.After the 6 January insurrection, the US agency tasked with combatting terrorism and extremism, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has expanded its monitoring of online activity, with officials touting a new domestic terrorism intelligence branch focused on tracking online threats and sharing information about possible attacks. Continue reading...

President condemns predecessor’s ‘web of lies’ and says democracy is still at risk. Plus, the young people seeking couples therapyGood morning.Joe Biden marked the anniversary of the Capitol attack with his strongest denunciation yet of his predecessor, accusing Donald Trump and his allies of placing a “dagger at the throat of American democracy”.The potential for a future stolen election is higher than ever, Sam Levine warns in his analysis of the continuing machinations. Since the insurrection, Republicans have powered ahead with efforts to undermine the processes of election administration and vote counting.The forceful denunciation “cannot have been easy” for Biden, who favours bipartisanship and ran on a platform of national unity, writes David Smith in his analysis. It shows that Biden understands the “threat must be looked squarely in the eye”.What did Trump say? He had planned to hold a news conference from Mar-a-Lago, but canceled under pressure from conservative allies. Nevertheless, he issued a series of statements maintaining the “big lie”.What else has contributed to climbing death rates? Drug overdoses and homicides have also risen during the pandemic.Why are long Covid deaths difficult to tally? In some patients, the virus weakens organs or leads to new ailments – but may no longer be present at the time of death. Continue reading...

Many of the deaths aren’t counted in the official Covid tally because they happen months after infections, expert saysThe true number of deaths from the Covid pandemic in the US is likely being undercounted, due to the long-lasting and little-understood effects of Covid infection and other deadly complications that surged during the past two years.“We are seeing right now the highest death rates we have ever seen in the history of this business,” J Scott Davison, CEO of insurance company OneAmerica, told journalists on 30 December. Continue reading...

The government must listen: community engagement is the only way to cut serious crime in the UK’s most deprived areas

For the first time in modern NFL history, teams will play their 17th regular season games. Here are our predictions of who will win the weekend’s deciding matchesWhile there may not be as many playoff spots on the line at this stage as was promised when the league introduced the its new 17-game schedule, there’s still a lot at stake this weekend. Beyond the battle for seedings among teams who have already booked their postseason berth, there are five games that will decide who joins them in the playoffs: we preview them here. Continue reading...

Analysis: Republican strategy has focused on sowing doubt about 2020’s result, passing new laws and taking over key election officesOn 6 January 2021, it seemed like the stitching holding America’s democracy together might finally collapse. As armed supporters of a defeated president laid siege to the Capitol, the US Congress did something extraordinary – it suspended the official procedure to certify the winner of a presidential election.The attack was eventually put down and Congress returned to officially certify Joe Biden’s victory. “They tried to disrupt our democracy. They failed,” Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said when the Senate came back into session. Continue reading...

Partisanship overshadows sombre commemorations as insurrection becomes another wedge in a split nationThey thought it couldn’t happen here. But so did many other nations before America.Walking the halls of the snowbound US Capitol on Thursday afternoon, a year to the hour since it was breached by a fascist impulse, it was hard to imagine the mob running riot – pummeling police, flaunting the Confederate flag and abusing a Black officer with the n-word. Continue reading...

Xiang Haitao admitted to stealing software developed by the agribusiness giant to take to China, says justice departmentA Chinese national has pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal a trade secret from American agribusiness giant Monsanto, the US justice department said.Xiang Haitao, 44, was employed as an imaging scientist by Monsanto and its subsidiary, The Climate Corporation, from 2008 to 2017, the department said in a statement. Continue reading...

Investigators are looking into the possibility that five-year-old playing with a lighter sparked blaze that killed 12Investigators are looking into the possibility that a five-year-old who was playing with a lighter set a Christmas tree on fire, sparking a conflagration that killed 12 people in a Philadelphia rowhome, officials revealed on Thursday.The revelation was included in a search warrant application as city and federal investigators sought to determine the cause of the city’s deadliest single blaze in more than a century, which took the lives of two sisters, several of their children and others early on Wednesday. Continue reading...

FBI and DHS flagged content that could ‘inspire violence by lone offenders against government officials’The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has warned of an increase in extremist content and threats against US lawmakers in the days leading up to the anniversary of the 6 January insurrection, according to a memo obtained by the Guardian.The memo, sent on Thursday to state and local law enforcement, said that DHS had no indication of a specific and credible plot, but that the agency and the FBI had “identified new content online that could inspire violence, particularly by lone offenders, and could be directed against political and other government officials, including members of Congress, state and local officials, and high-profile members of political parties, including in locations outside of [Washington DC]”. Continue reading...

Politico reports then vice-president elect was taken out of DNC headquarters minutes after Capitol police arrived to investigateKamala Harris was inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters when a pipe bomb was discovered outside the building on 6 January last year, according to a report.The then vice-president elect, who was sworn into office two weeks later, was evacuated minutes after Capitol police began investigating the bomb, Politico reported. The FBI described the bomb as a “viable” device which “could have been detonated, resulting in serious injury or death”. Continue reading...

Comments come as many Americans, particularly Trump supporters, continue to deny the dark reality of the insurrectionSome of America’s most prominent historians gave an urgent warning about the state of American democracy as they gathered on Capitol Hill on Thursday to commemorate the 6 January insurrection.Doris Kearns Goodwin and Jon Meacham condemned the attack on the Capitol, which was carried out by a group of Donald Trump’s supporters to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Continue reading...

Kelly Ernby, who recently ran for the state assembly, was unvaccinated at the time of her death, husband saysA deputy district attorney from California who regularly spoke out against vaccine mandates has died of complications from Covid-19.Kelly Ernby, 46, a prosecutor from Orange county, southern California, who recently ran for the state assembly, died after contracting the virus, her family and friends have said. Continue reading...

Deputy chair of special House committee hails then-vice-president for ‘doing his duty’ and certifying election results

Maxwell’s lawyers say they will request retrial after unidentified juror told reporters he was sexually abused as a childA juror who sat at the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell last month and has now told reporters he was sexually abused as a child has retained a lawyer, the trial judge said on Thursday.The unidentified juror’s public interviews led defense lawyers in the case to say they will request a new trial. Continue reading...

Analysis: This was the moment the president realized the clear and present danger posed to US democracy by an ex-leader gone rogueHere, at last, was the Joe Biden that anyone on vigil for America’s teetering democracy had been waiting for.In historic National Statuary Hall at the US Capitol, a year to the day after it was overrun by an authoritarian mob, the US president gave his clearest dissection of “the big lie” and his clearest denunciation of his predecessor, Donald Trump. Continue reading...

He has been detained amid growing hostility towards people who appear to be unjabbed. Even fame could not protect himThis weekend, Novak Djokovic should have been warming up for yet another grand slam.But instead the world No 1 tennis champion – and noted vaccine sceptic – is cooling his heels in an Australian quarantine hotel, while an international row rages over whether he should be kicked out of the country altogether. Djokovic had boasted on social media of securing an exemption, for medical reasons he has not explained, to the rules that all players in the Australian Open must be double-jabbed. But hours later he was stopped at the airport, his visa cancelled, and he was unceremoniously threatened with deportation. His lawyers are challenging that ruling, meaning the outcome of this particular tournament may now be determined in a court – rather than on one. Not since the actor Johnny Depp and his then wife, Amber Heard, flew their two dogs, Pistol and Boo, into the country by private jet without the necessary paperwork has the power of celebrity met the force of Australian biosecurity requirements with quite such explosive results.Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

We have been accused of erasing history – but that’s impossible. All we did was shine a light in places people don’t want lights to shineOn 7 June 2020, I was part of a group of protesters who pulled down a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston and threw it into the Bristol harbour. I have never felt and will never feel that what we did was wrong, and I have never thought I was a criminal. But it’s a beautiful thing that a jury has sat through all the evidence, and come to the same conclusion.I had a good feeling about the trial throughout, but I had to prepare for both outcomes – it could have gone either way. Our defence rested on the argument that we had indeed pulled down the statue during a Black Lives Matter protest, but that given Colston’s role in the Royal African Company, which enslaved tens of thousands and was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 19,000 people, this wasn’t a case of criminal damage. Continue reading...

The US president spoke directly against Trump, saying the former president had created and spread a 'web of lie's that resulted in the deadly insurrection.

Prosecutors allege Dzhokhar Tsarnaev spent money on family instead of making court-ordered payments to victims of attackDzhokhar Tsarnaev, the convicted Boston Marathon bomber, spent $2,000 on expenses such as gifts, books and support for his siblings instead of making payments he owes to his scores of victims, prosecutors charged in a court filing on Wednesday.The document listed a number of large deposits to Tsarnaev’s inmate trust account that he failed to report to the court, allegedly violating the Mandatory Victim Restitution Act. Continue reading...

Efforts to exert control over election administration and counting of votes is latest in alarming anti-democratic trendsHello, and happy Thursday (and 2022),Over the last few days, I’ve been reporting on Republicans’ efforts to exert partisan control over election administration and the counting of votes, a new and deeply alarming anti-democratic trend.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, pledged there will be a vote on changing the filibuster rules by 17 January to pass voting rights legislation. It’s unclear if Democrats will have enough support to change the rules.A group of prominent election law scholars wrote an op-ed laying out how Congress can fix the Electoral Count Act, a confusing 19th-century law that Trump and allies tried to rely on to overturn the 2020 election. The law has remained unchanged since last year.Texas quietly released the results of the first part of a review of the 2020 election on New Year’s Eve. Officials didn’t find much.A Minnesota prosecutor is bringing criminal charges against a man who requested an absentee ballot in 2020 while on probation for a felony, but who never voted.California authorities completed a months-long investigation into a man who was found passed out with 300 absentee ballots last summer, and said there was no evidence he intended to commit election fraud. Continue reading...

Don’t expect a dramatic fascist storming of the Capitol building or a military takeover when our crisis comes to a headAmericans are not exactly known for nuance. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise us then that the rightwing protests that turned into a riot at the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021 were immediately described as a coup attempt.For most Democrats, the participants were at the very least insurrectionists guilty of sedition, or perhaps even domestic terrorists. Wall-to-wall coverage at the time on broadcast television and magazine thinkpieces waxing eloquent about the attack on “the people’s house” confirmed the assessment. Continue reading...

Behind the insurrection of 6 January was a coup plot that was months in the making, and which involved a dastardly cast of charactersAfter thousands of posts appeared for weeks on a website called TheDonald.win detailing plans for the 6 January attack on the Capitol, including how to form a “wall of death” to force police to abandon defensive positions; after Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, warned his senior aides of “a Reichstag moment” like the 1933 burning of the German parliament that Hitler used to seize dictatorial power; after insurrectionists smashed several ground floor windows of the Capitol, the only ones out of 658 they somehow knew were not reinforced, that allowed rioters to pour inside; after marching to the chamber of the House chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”; after pounding on the locked doors; and as the Capitol police led members in a run through the tunnels under the Capitol for safe passage to the Longworth Building, Congressman Jody Hice, a Republican of Georgia, raced by a Democratic colleague, who told me Hice was screaming into his phone: “You screwed it up, y’all screwed it all up!”Hice, an evangelical minister, professor of preaching at a Southern Baptist seminary, and radio talkshow host before his election in 2014, has notably declared that freedom of religion should not apply to Muslims and that the Sandy Hook massacre of 26 people at an elementary school by a deranged shooter occurred because liberals were “kicking God out of the public square”. Continue reading...

Jurors were asked to rule that Edward Colston’s heinous crimes were immaterial, but they chose to put themselves on the right side of historyThere were cheers from the public gallery of Bristol crown court when the verdicts of not guilty were returned. Eighteen months after Bristol’s now infamous statue of the slave trader Edward Colston was sent crashing to the pavement, the four young people who had been charged with criminal damage were acquitted.The strategy that the prosecution appears to have adopted – in a case that some now argue should never have been brought to trial – seemed to centre on asking that the jury be blind to history. Who the statue venerated, they argued, was irrelevant. This, they claimed, was an open-and-shut case of criminal damage, one in which the defendants did not even deny their role in the toppling of the statue or, in one case, helping to roll it to Bristol harbourside, from where it was cast into the water.David Olusoga is a historian and broadcaster Continue reading...

With 80% of pandemic funds misused and widespread vaccine myths, citizens have had to step up where government has failedIn January 2021, the Malawian rights activist Paul Msoma wrote that he was in Kamuzu central hospital, struggling to breathe. The hospital had oxygen cylinders but no flowmeters – the necessary instrument to connect him to them. I was left wondering where the funds that had been released for the country’s Covid-19 response were going. “My situation is getting bad and l desperately need oxygen,” Msoma wrote on Facebook. “Anyone who can urgently help out there please help by donating this very gadget.”Kamuzu central hospital is one of the biggest referral hospitals in Malawi and it did not seem right for such a big hospital not to have oxygen flowmeters, which are very basic medical equipment costing around £18 a piece. This was at a time when the government had released more than £5.6m for the Covid-19 response effort.Madalitso Wills Kateta is a freelance journalist based in Lilongwe, Malawi Continue reading...

State becomes focal point of politicized debate over whether Omicron is dangerous enough to overwhelm hospital systemsWhile Florida has experienced a record number of Covid-19 cases and sharp increase in hospitalizations in recent weeks, there is disagreement between Republicans and Democrats over whether the Omicron surge has actually overwhelmed the state’s healthcare system.For example, Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio posted on Twitter that there “is no Omicron hospital ‘surge’ in Florida. People admitted for non-Covid reasons get tested. If they test positive they get counted as a ‘Covid patient.’” Continue reading...

The upcoming offseason is set to be a frenetic one. Current and future NFL MVPs could all be on the move in 2022Last year the player empowerment movement that has swept across sports finally arrived in the huddle. Quarterbacks throughout the NFL started to flex their power. Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, Matthew Stafford, and Deshaun Watson all suggested (or demanded) trades; all four were stars at the peak of their powers.It will be much the same this summer. Rodgers, Wilson and Watson will be joined in trade discussions by Kirk Cousins and Matt Ryan, and the domino effect of any moves will be felt around the league. Continue reading...

Representative Dean Phillips describes the day that ‘changed him’ after a pro-Tump mob overran police and reached the doors of the House chamberIt was a visceral cry at the moment of maximum peril for American democracy.A furious mob had overrun police and was nearly at the door of the House of Representatives. Inside the chamber, Republican Paul Gosar was launching a spurious challenge to Joe Biden’s election victory in Arizona. Continue reading...

Finders Keepers lawsuit seeks confirmation that agency found trove in Pennsylvania after father-son team suggested locationTreasure hunters who believe they found a huge cache of fabled US civil war-era gold in Pennsylvania are now on the prowl for something as elusive as the buried booty itself: government records of the FBI’s excavation.Finders Keepers, a lost treasure locate and recovery service, filed a federal lawsuit against the justice department over its failure to produce documents on the FBI’s search for the legendary gold, which took place nearly four years ago at a remote woodland site in north-western Pennsylvania. Continue reading...

Despite having fled the mob on 6 January, many congressmen are openly fleeing the truth about what happened that dayWhen the insurrectionists of 6 January rampaged through the Capitol, congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia helped barricade a door, and he fled when the rest of Congress did. A photograph shows him looking panicky, mouth wide open and arm gesticulating wildly, behind what appears to be a security team member with a gun drawn, defending him. But a few months later he declared: “Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes, taking videos, pictures. You know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from 6 January, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”Clyde’s account of 6 January might be a little more preposterous than those of his fellow Republican legislators. But they all joined him in pretending nothing much had happened and objecting to the investigation of the day’s events. After all, they were partly responsible, most of them. It was elected Republicans who supported and spread the earlier lies that Donald Trump had won the election, the lies that fed the insurrection; and then they lied some more about their own words and actions before, during and after. In the immediate aftermath, the then Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, was angry and shaken, declaring: “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president.” Then he too began the project of walking it all back.Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses Continue reading...