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Cousin of prospective US health secretary shares disturbing tale involving blender for his Senate confirmation hearingTrying not to upset the French" could be a chapter in a Debrett's guide to etiquette and manners, one that may have been taken to heart by the government this week with its decision to change the name of a new submarine. The Astute-class attack vessel is still being built, but on Sunday night, the Royal Navy announced that what was to become HMS Agincourt would, instead, be given the more Franco-friendly name of HMS Achilles. Up pops Grant Shapps, the former Conservative defence secretary, to dust off his opportunism and accuse the navy of bending to Labourite woke nonsense". It's just like riding a bike! Continue reading...

News that the singer had done a slot in New York's Comedy Cellar was met with derision, but she has always walked a fine line between comedy character and over-the-top pop starNew York's famed Comedy Cellar has long been known as a testing ground for hot young talent. The Greenwich Village club hosted stand-ups like Ray Romano and Jon Stewart early in their careers, and although tourists now flock to the venue in the hope of seeing an A-lister do a surprise drop-in, young comics can still get their start there. Case in point: last weekend, Madonna did a set at the Comedy Cellar. You may be able to draw nearly 2 million people to Rio's Copacabana beach for a concert, but in the cutthroat world of comedy, you still have to start from the bottom.A report in the Sun said that Madonna tested out material for about 30 minutes, and that she was accompanied to the club by her friend Amy Schumer, who later went on Howard Stern to big up Madonna's act. She has something in her that's interested in standup and she knows that, like anything else, you have to work really hard on it. She is kind of working on her set and it's not cringey," Schumer told Stern. She's funny! She's got jokes. She's got things to say. She's got tea." Continue reading...

Trump's vision of governance reminds me of nothing so much as the declaration attributed to Louis XIV: L'Etat, c'est moi": I am the stateThe new Trump administration is busy. In a fury of executive orders, the restored president has frozen hiring at the federal government, cut off large amounts of science and research funding, ended or severely curtailed international programs in women's health and HIV treatment, attempted to unilaterally amend the constitution to deny citizenship to hundreds of thousands, cut off aid to Ukraine, provoked a diplomatic spat with Colombia, and renamed the Gulf of Mexico in official documents as the Gulf of America."Many of these moves are stunts and distractions, meant to appease Trump's base of aggrieved culture warriors. Others are meant to further Trump's personal power, and to make sure that no obstacles will be presented to his second term agenda of malice, retribution, and corrupt self-dealing.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

As Trump creates unprecedented chaos, Democrats have offered little more than platitudes - sparking comparisons to France's collaborationist second world war regimeAt the dawn of the second Trump presidency, defiance has given way to compliance.While Donald Trump has rapidly and ruthlessly thrown the federal government into unprecedented chaos, the leaders of the Democratic party have offered up little more than limp banalities and platitudes. Presidents come and presidents go. Through it all. God is still on the throne," tweeted the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, at the end of Trump's first week in office. Continue reading...

The World Series champions have been accused of becoming baseball's Manchester City, spending their way to success. But there are differencesDeferred contracts were once baseball's annual joke played on the New York Mets.They released veteran third baseman Bobby Bonilla after a dismal season in 1999. But rather than pay the $5.9m left on his contract as a lump sum, the club offered a 25-year deferred deal at a munificent 8% interest rate. Continue reading...

Betting companies are making huge amounts from the confidence of young, male customers who think they can beat the systemWatching televised sports in 2025 can feel a little like sitting through one long gambling commercial, interspersed by occasional flashes of actual games. Those sports, meanwhile, are played in venues and uniforms plastered with the logos of yet more betting houses, airing on broadcasts that sprinkle in mentions of gambling sponsors.The experience on sports podcasts and websites and apps is much the same. But why? As the biggest event on the US sports calendar - the Super Bowl - approaches, how did we get to a place where sports have been reduced to a kind of raw material to be refined and packaged into the real product: the no-sweat, profit-boosted, five-leg, in-game parlay bonus bet? Continue reading...

Crash called avoidable', with lawmakers and residents previously sounding alarm about region's crowded skiesAfter Wednesday's fatal crash which took down a commercial jet and a military helicopter on a training flight at Washington DC's Reagan National airport, public officials and aviation experts are resurfacing concerns about how uniquely congested the airspace is around the country's capital.As of Thursday night, authorities have said all 64 people on the American Airlines flight were presumed dead as well as three more on the army helicopter, making the incident the deadliest US air tragedy since 2001. Continue reading...

Cockpit voice and flight data recorders found from American Airlines flight that collided with military helicopter; 28 bodies recovered from Potomac River

This liveblog is now closed.Here's some more reaction to Donald Trump's executive order instructing the military to prepare to house 30,000 immigrants at the US naval base in Cuba.Guantanamo is a stain on our nation's honor," Jerry Nadler, a Democratic congressman from New York, said.For years, I have advocated for its closure, condemning the abuses and glaring lack of accountability that persist there. This massive expansion into a mass detention camp is morally indefensible & raises significant civil liberties concerns.We cannot allow this level of dehumanization to become normalized. We need to shut down Guantanamo once and for all. Continue reading...

Promising young skaters also among those onboard as well as passengers from Germany, the Philippines and Russia

This liveblog is closed - please follow our new liveblog hereMultiple media including the New York Times, Reuters and CNN are saying the Black Hawk helicopter was carrying three soldiers. No senior army officials were onboard, they reported, citing US defence officials.Multiple sources are now saying that about 60 people were onboard the American Airlines plane that collided with the helicopter. Continue reading...

An American Airlines passenger jet with 64 onboard was coming in to land at Ronald Reagan National airport when it collided with a military helicopter

Recorders from plane are currently at National Transportation Safety Board labs for analysis, agency says

Bankrupt Roman Catholic archdiocese replaced members at church-affiliated non-profit over $16m disputeThe archbishop of New Orleans' bankrupt Roman Catholic archdiocese on Thursday abruptly fired and replaced top leaders at a church-affiliated food bank, with those dismissed saying it was because the non-profit refused to contribute to paying survivors of child sexual abuse by clergymen.The ousted members of Second Harvest's board of directors say the changes follow months of increasingly aggressive pressure placed on Second Harvest to contribute as much as $16m toward helping to resolve victims' claims related to the church's sexual abuse-related bankruptcy", which has been pending since May 2020. Continue reading...

Conservative New Orleans court ruling for people between 18 and 21 comes amid major shifts in firearm legal landscapeA conservative US appeals court on Thursday ruled that a ban on handgun sales to people between the ages of 18 and 21 violates the second amendment.The ruling, handed down by a panel of three judges on the fifth US circuit court of appeals in New Orleans, comes amid major shifts in the national firearm legal landscape following a landmark US supreme court decision that expanded gun rights in 2022. Continue reading...

Canada and Mexico draw plans to mitigate effect of duties Trump has threatened, possibly sparking a trade war

Former chief resigned 10 days ago, after Elon Musk, a close adviser to Donald Trump, called for him to quit

Hours after the Washington plane crash, the president's desire to politicise tragedy was breathtaking in its audacity

Skeptical senators ruthlessly questioned Trump's national intelligence director nominee ahead of confirmation vote

Key Trump ally strives to extricate himself from statements he had made earlier, claiming mischaracterization'Kash Patel sought to allay concerns about his fitness to serve as the FBI director at his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday, but declined to engage with questioning that explicitly asked whether he would use his position to investigate some of Donald Trump's top political opponents.The hearing revolved around Patel's provocative public remarks attacking the FBI and his ability to resist political pressure from the White House, a topic that has come to the fore with the justice department rocked by the ouster of prosecutors who worked on cases against Trump. Continue reading...

More flights, staffing shortages and mounting safety questions may have played a role in deadly air collision

Non-profit alleges Grants Pass shelters are inaccessible and that many have no legal option for their continued survival'The small Oregon city at the heart of a major US supreme court ruling last year that allowed cities across the country to fine and jail unhoused people sleeping outside is facing a fresh lawsuit over its anti-camping rules.Disability Rights Oregon sued Grants Pass on Thursday, accusing it of violating a state law requiring cities' camping regulations to be objectively reasonable". Continue reading...

Advocates report harassment and loss of gender-affirming care as trans women face transfers to men's prisonsTransgender women incarcerated in federal prisons have been placed in isolation, told they will be transferred to men's prisons and advised they will lose access to gender-affirming medical treatments in response to Donald Trump's executive order defending women from gender ideology extremism", according to civil rights advocates and people behind bars.LGBTQ+-rights lawyers say the moves will have major consequences for the health and safety of trans people in federal custody, and blatantly violate federal laws and a range of constitutional protections. Continue reading...

Three-week-old program to curb vehicle emissions received approval from Biden administration, which Trump may pullDonald Trump's administration is reportedly considering putting a stop to New York City's three-week-old congestion pricing program, which aims to curb emissions from auto vehicles.The program received crucial federal approval from the Biden administration last year. Trump's transportation department is weighing the possibility of pulling that authorization, the New York Times reported, which would probably incite a legal battle between state and federal officials and could put a stop to the program. Continue reading...

More than 60 people are believed to have died after an American Airlines regional passenger jet collided with a US army helicopter

Trump's health secretary pick transferred ownership of Maha slogan application to anti-vaccine ally Del BigtreeRobert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist nominated for US health secretary by Donald Trump, recently applied to trademark his own Make America Healthy Again" slogan for use in marketing potential products including food supplements, vitamins, essential oils - and vaccines.Documentation filed with the Office of Government Ethics lists $100,000 earned from a licensing agreement to use Maha brand marks". Continue reading...

Two new bills could secure higher pay and add support, but advocates say they're only the beginning of reforms neededFirefighters from across the US fought side by side to quell the firestorm in Los Angeles this month, working tirelessly together in dangerous and chaotic conditions. But there was one glaring difference among them: federal firefighters are paid just a fraction of what state and local crews make doing the same work.It's a problem that's long plagued the federal crews who play a crucial role in protecting the country when catastrophes unfold. Continue reading...

The president wants to detain thousands of people at a site that is notorious for its secrecy and history of abuseIt has been denounced as America's gulag": a secretive, abuse-ridden Caribbean prison camp for terror suspects that Donald Rumsfeld once said contained the worst of the worst".All of us have scars in our souls, deformities, from living at Guantanamo," a former Yemeni inmate recalled of his time at the notorious military detention facility in south-east Cuba. Continue reading...

Handover delayed by jostling crowd in Khan Younis, Gaza, with Netanyahu suspending release of Palestinian prisoners Middle East crisis - live updatesThree Israelis and five Thai citizens held in Gaza have been freed, as Donald Trump's Middle East envoy met hostages' relatives, reportedly telling them he was optimistic the ceasefire would hold to allow the return of all the living and the dead.The handover on Thursday of seven hostages in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, was delayed by a chaotic crowd surging towards the group, despite an escort of heavily armed militants, jostling and blocking their passage to waiting Red Cross vehicles. Continue reading...

Exchange between six governors and Senate minority leader exposes divisions in party over opposition approach

Sha'Nya Bennett, 23, gave birth to son Dallas in parking lot of doughnut chain during historic snowstormA newborn baby may not be able to eat doughnuts but one has been supplied with a year's worth of the treats after being born in the parking lot of a Krispy Kreme outlet in Alabama.Sha'Nya Bennett, 23, gave birth to her new son, Dallas, on Krispy Kreme property in Dothan, Alabama, on 22 January after a historic snowstorm prevented her and her partner, Keon Mitchell, Dallas's father, from reaching hospital in time. Continue reading...

More than 30 bodies reportedly recovered so far after American Airlines flight collides in midair with Black Hawk helicopter

At least 30 bodies were recovered from the Potomac River, local media reported, after a passenger jet collided with a military helicopter on Thursday. The American Airlines plane was carrying 64 people - 60 passengers and four crew members - and three service personnel were onboard the US army Black Hawk helicopter. All takeoffs and landings from Reagan national airport in Washington were halted as emergency services searched the river for survivors. The world champion Russian figure skaters Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were confirmed to be on the passenger flight

Residents worry about leaving their homes, but many in the city are organizing legal aid, workshops and virtual servicesSome corners of Chicago have been unnervingly quiet this week.Residents who have lived in the city for decades without immigration documents have been worried about leaving their homes. Undocumented parents have been signing powers of attorney to ease custody issues if they are detained and separated from their children. Business owners are deputizing employees to take care of their affairs if anything happens. Continue reading...

NIH fellows say policy changes including funding freeze would severely limit' researchers' ability to do their workA union representing about 5,000 researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has issued a legally binding demand to bargain over Donald Trump's sweeping policy changes, including a funding freeze, a communications blackout and a staff travel ban.The NIH is the largest biomedical institution in the world, providing more than $40bn annually to fund health research, providing grants to more than 300,000 researchers at more thab 2,500 universities, medical schools and other research institutions globally, with nearly 6,000 scientists performing research in its own labs. Continue reading...

These new initiatives are not about shrinking the size of the federal government. They're about centralizing control in Trump's handsChaos on a huge scale.On Wednesday, Trump rescinded an order he had made late on Monday night that froze up to $3tn in federal grants and loans.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest 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...

Democrats' current approach to political messaging is broken - and party leaders have no conception of how to fix itAs Donald Trump stood in the Capitol Rotunda last week, blundering his way through his second oath of office, online liberals were preoccupied with debating another matter: who will be the first Democrat to call Republicans the R-word? Setting aside the question of whether they should a term widely considered an ableist slur, that very debate was revealing, for a number of reasons.The former and now current president's narrow but nonetheless triumphant victory in November made clear that America's so-called wokeness movement" is in an advanced stage of decay. And if Trump's first week back in the White House serves as any indication, he intends to further accelerate the process.Peter Rothpletz is a freelance writer Continue reading...

To say the relationship is symbiotic is an understatement. Trump has the political power; Musk has endless moneyTwo men, two huge egos, two quests for endless amounts of power and money - joined, for now, in the pursuit of those common goals. That's the story behind the tight relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire who hangs out in the West Wing of the White House and has the ear of the president.But there are cracks in the facade of closeness, and - based on Trump's past intolerance for anything but total loyalty among his allies - one must wonder how long it will last. And should the bromance come apart, it is likely do so with a bang heard 'round the world.Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture Continue reading...

Confirmation hearing was a spectacle as Democrats tried to hold a mirror to nominee, only for him to step right throughRobert F Kennedy Jr's testimony was a through the looking glass" moment for some senators, as lawmakers questioned one of the nation's most influential vaccine critics for a job as the top US health official.The hearing was a testament to how quickly Republicans have integrated Make America Healthy Again" rhetoric into their own, lauding Kennedy, who was called a predator" only hours earlier in a letter by his own cousin, as the correct man to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Continue reading...

Abrupt decision to pause all foreign aid could exacerbate violence in region already struggling with organized crimeThe Trump administration's abrupt decision to immediately pause all US foreign aid programmes could exacerbate violence in Latin America, driving more migration from a region already struggling with the rise of organised crime, experts have warned.The world's largest aid provider by far, the US disbursed $1.5bn (1.2bn) to South American countries in the 2023 financial year, funding a broad range of projects, including humanitarian, military, environmental and economic aid. Continue reading...

With the Super Bowl on the horizon we pick the outstanding players, coaches and moments from the 2023 season in the NFLJosh Allen, QB, Buffalo Bills. Take your pick between transcendent quarterbacks: Allen or Lamar Jackson. Neither answer is wrong. I edge towards Allen here, for the sole reason that he hasn't won the award before. That's not right; it's not fair. But it's the only way to split the fine margins between the two. Continue reading...

There are rational explanations for the continent's muted response to US threats - but that's not how you deal with this presidentDonald Trump's antics over the past week have put paid to the refrain, often heard in Europe, that the president should be taken seriously but not literally". It turns out that Trump literally wants Greenland. He doubled down on his aggressive rhetoric in a raging 45-minute call with the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, a few days ago, threatening crippling tariffs unless she agreed to sell the autonomous territory to the US. In response to Denmark's sharp increase in military spending for the Arctic, including ships and drones, he derided Copenhagen's dog-sled" defences for Greenland, the world's largest non-continental island, which pale in comparison with the strength of the US military base there.The threat to take over the territory of a European country by force is something that Europeans now know all too well. Russia has repeatedly threatened east European countries, making good on those threats by invading Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine since 2014. Yet many Europeans are gobsmacked that such a threat is now coming from its greatest ally. Continue reading...

An American Airlines passenger jet collided with a military helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan national airport near Washington DC. Video from an observation camera at the nearby Kennedy Center shows two sets of lights consistent with aircraft appearing to conjoin in a fireball. The American Airlines Flight 5342 departed from Wichita, Kansas, according to the FAA. According to American Airlines' website, the jet has a capacity for up to 65 passengers

This blog has now closed. Read our latest story hereTim Walz, the Minnesota governor and former Democratic vice-presidential nominee, argued that Donald Trump's federal funding freeze closely mirrors many of the proposals included in Project 2025.We were preparing for it. They wrote it out. If you go back and look at that now, you'll see this go step by step," Walz told MSNBC on Tuesday night. Continue reading...

The facility has in the past two decades been used to deal with prisoners accused of terrorism-related offences with few ever charged or convictedAs part of his administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, US president Donald Trump has announced that the United States will hold migrants at the notorious Guantanamo military detention facility in Cuba.Known primarily for holding suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, Trump ordered the preparation of a 30,000-person migrant facility" that he said would be used to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people." Continue reading...

The neighbourhood sure isn't what it used to be

Order asks agencies to explore ways to deport activists, including students with visas, who engaged in protestsDonald Trump has signed an executive order to combat antisemitism" that asks agencies to explore ways to deport pro-Palestinian activists, including student protesters.The US president's order instructs federal agencies to identify available civil and criminal authorities in order to combat antisemitism", specifically by deporting resident aliens - such as students with visas - who were found to have broken the law during protests. Continue reading...