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Maureen O’Connor, the chief justice of the Ohio supreme court, is defying her party by rejecting skewed electoral mapsHello, and happy Thursday,Over the last few months, an extraordinary standoff has been taking place in Ohio. And at the center of this dispute is Maureen O’Connor, the Republican chief justice of the Ohio supreme court. Continue reading...

Patrick Lyoya, aged 26, was killed in Grand Rapids, Michigan, during a struggle after a traffic stopA Black man face-down on the ground was fatally shot in the back of the head by a Michigan police officer, the violent climax of a traffic stop, foot chase and fight over a stun gun, according to videos of the 4 April incident released by police on Wednesday.Patrick Lyoya, 26, a Congolese refugee, was killed on a residential street in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Continue reading...

The Japanese phenom has become a global star after one of the greatest games ever pitched, and he has survived tragedy along the wayThere are no-hitters. There are perfect games. And there’s the sort of virtuosity that Rōki Sasaki managed to conjure for two and a half unforgettable hours on Sunday afternoon at the Zozo Marine Stadium outside Tokyo.Sasaki, a right-handed flamethrower for the Chiba Lotte Marines of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, achieved one of his sport’s rarest feats when he retired the minimum 27 batters without allowing an opposing player to reach base in a 6-0 win over the Orix Buffaloes, racking up a record-tying 19 strikeouts in only 105 pitches. Even more remarkable: he’s still only 20 and grew up amid the wreckage of the 2011 tsunami after his house, and several family members, were swept away by the floodwaters. Continue reading...

Volodymyr Zelenskiy calls for European Union to impose embargo on Russian oil. Plus: our food system isn’t ready for the climate crisis• Don’t already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up hereGood morning.The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet has been severely damaged, Moscow has said, following an explosion that Ukraine claimed was due to a missile strike. The entire crew was evacuated.The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, called for an oil embargo on Wednesday, demanding EU states “stop sponsoring Russia’s military machine”.The US president, Joe Biden, announced a further $800m in military assistance to Ukraine as the country prepares for Russia to ramp up its efforts in the country’s eastern regions.What will happen to the officer? He is on paid leave during the investigation.Where did the footage come from? Lyoya’s passenger, the officer’s body-worn camera, the patrol car and a doorbell camera. Continue reading...

A sudden enforcement of a jewellery ban in F1 seems aimed squarely at Lewis Hamilton’s piercingsLewis Hamilton’s glinted piercings and gleaming earrings are as much a part of his look as his afro-natural hairstyles and sharp tailoring. The 37-year-old’s habit of wearing jewellery in competition has never been an issue in his 15 previous F1 seasons, seven of them ending in world championships.But at last week’s Australian Grand Prix, rookie race director Niels Wittich made clear that he would be enforcing a longstanding regulation banning drivers from wearing any material under their livery that isn’t fireproof. In his Melbourne pre-race notes Wittich expressly prohibited “the wearing of jewellery in the form of body piercings or metal neck chains” while allowing drivers a few races’ grace period to comply. After that, they risked a fine or reprimand. Continue reading...

On social media, a tendency to connect disparate news stories is causing many of us to lose our sense of realityAs a child, in the back of the car on drives along the motorway, I would look for connections between the number plates on surrounding cars. How many started with an odd number? How many with an even number? The search for patterns is a common human trait. People also see images in TV static, or nonexistent patterns in the goals scored in football games. There is a term for this: illusory pattern perception, the human tendency to try to make sense of the world by finding relationships between stimuli. It has been found to be a “central cognitive mechanism” accounting for conspiracy theories and supernatural beliefs.I see this in the inclination to stitch together disparate cultural events (see, here I am, looking for meaning) that has become widespread on social media. The tendency to think that everything can be linked to something else, or compared, or both, and hence explained. The recent Oscars slap by the actor Will Smith was compared, nonsensically, to both Harvey Weinstein’s sustained history of sexual abuse and harassment, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This was just one recent example of something that happens all the time.Rachel Connolly is a London-based journalist from Belfast Continue reading...

Frank R James, 62, was arrested in Manhattan close to where he was spotted hours earlier by a member of the publicThe man suspected of firing more than 30 shots in a gun attack on a New York subway train has been charged with a federal terror offence.Frank R James, 62, was arrested on Wednesday afternoon on the Lower East Side in Manhattan by two patrol officers without incident and is being held at a local police precinct. Continue reading...

The man suspected of firing more than 30 shots in a gun attack on a New York subway train has been charged with a federal terror offence. Frank R James, 62, was arrested on Wednesday afternoon on the Lower East Side in Manhattan by two patrol officers without incident and is being held at a local police precinct.Officials said James was apprehended thanks to a tip a few hours earlier from a member of the public in a McDonald’s on Sixth Street and First Avenue

Judge unseals evidence of WhatsApp texts between UK-based men who reportedly made $700m on collapse of oil price in 2020“Please don’t tell anyone what happened today lads x,” one of a group of traders dubbed “the Essex Boys” texted his colleagues as they reportedly made $700m on the collapse of the oil price in 2020.The text and others were unsealed in a Chicago court on Tuesday as a US judge gave the green light to a proposed class-action lawsuit filed against the traders. Continue reading...

Pentagon says military equipment that includes helicopters and armored personnel carriers available now

State is investigating whether Trump’s ex-chief of staff committed fraud by registering to vote at residence he never owned or lived inDonald Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has been removed from the electoral roll in North Carolina, amid a criminal inquiry into whether he committed election fraud by registering to vote at a residence he never owned or lived in.Melanie Thibault, director of the Macon county board of elections, confirmed her decision to the Asheville Citizen Times, which reported that the registration for Meadows’s wife, Debra, remained active. Continue reading...

Tax records from 2014 to 2018, analysed by ProPublica, show 25 Americans collectively earned $401bn but paid just $13.6bnBetween 2014 and 2018, the 25 wealthiest Americans collectively earned $401bn, but paid just $13.6bn – about 3.4% of that – in taxes, according to a bombshell ProPublica investigation into the finances of the wealthiest Americans released on Wednesday.The investigation is the latest in a series ProPublica started in June 2021 that looks at the tax records of the top 0.001% wealthiest Americans. This installment uses a trove of tax filings from 2013 to 2018 to dive into the wealth of the 400 richest Americans, all of whom earn more than $110m a year. It found that the wealthy benefit from lower tax rates on financial assets and deductions from charitable contributions to keep their taxes low. Continue reading...

CDC says it is extending order, which was set to expire on 18 April, to allow more time to study Omicron subvariantThe Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it is extending the US nationwide mask requirement for public transit for 15 days as it monitors an uptick in Covid-19 cases.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it was extending the order, which was set to expire on 18 April, until 3 May to allow more time to study the BA.2 Omicron subvariant that is now responsible for the vast majority of cases in the US. Continue reading...

First lady tells authors of new biography she cut off push to recruit her husband to challenge George W Bush in 2004Feeling “burned” by her husband’s first run for the presidency, Jill Biden resisted advisers including Ron Klain, now White House chief of staff, who pushed him to mount another campaign in 2004.“All these men – and they were mostly men – coming to our home,” she said. “You know, ‘You’ve got to run, you’ve got to run.’ I wanted no part of it.” Continue reading...

California court rules that company made misleading and potentially harmful statements in hundreds of thousands of adsA California appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that Johnson & Johnson must pay penalties to the state for deceptively marketing pelvic mesh implants for women.Johnson & Johnson had appealed in 2020 after superior court judge Eddie Sturgeon assessed the $344m in penalties against the US pharmaceutical company’s subsidiary, Ethicon. Continue reading...

Lawyer for man charged with stealing a coat rack from the Capitol has vowed to show Trump abused his power to ‘authorize’ attackMentions of Donald Trump have been rare at the first few trials for people charged with storming the US Capitol, but that has changed: the latest Capitol riot defendant to go on trial is blaming his actions on the former president and his false claims about a stolen election.Dustin Byron Thompson, an Ohio man charged with stealing a coat rack from the Capitol, doesn’t deny that he joined the mob on 6 January 2021. But his lawyer vowed Tuesday to show that Trump abused his power to “authorize” the attack. Continue reading...

Partygate, bullying ministers, groping MPs and insider lobbying: the Tories have polluted our entire system of governmentBoris Johnson was never going to resign if he didn’t have to. This is all about the Tory party’s view of him now. The party knows as well as you or I that Johnson lied about the lockdown parties. It knows that the lies hit middle Britain, conscientiously obeying the lockdown laws, in the gut. It knows the Tories will take a hit for it in the local elections and eventually the general election too. Yet, remarkably, when it weighs all this up, the Tory party thinks this does not matter all that much.The ostensible reason now being offered is that a prime minister is too important to be dumped during a war. Britain’s own history shows how specious this claim is. Margaret Thatcher was ousted during the build-up to the Gulf war in 1990; Neville Chamberlain during the second world war in 1940; and Herbert Asquith was pushed aside during the first in 1916. Actually, you could argue that a war is a good time to ditch a failing prime minister, not a bad one. Continue reading...

GlaxoSmithKline’s £1.5bn Sierra Oncology deal comes after pressure from Elliott to boost its pipelineThe UK drug company GlaxoSmithKline has agreed a £1.5bn deal to buy a US cancer treatment developer, Sierra Oncology, as it tries to fend off pressure from the activist shareholder Elliott Management.The deal will give Britain’s second-largest pharmaceutical company access to California-based Sierra Oncology’s momelotinib, a drug being tested on anaemic patients with a type of bone marrow cancer called myelofibrosis. GSK said the drug had “significant growth potential” and it expected sales to start next year, with one analyst predicting it could generate peak annual sales of about $1.7bn (£1.3bn). Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: we speak to the head coach of the newly-established team spearheaded by Natalie PortmanWelcome to Moving the Goalposts, the Guardian’s new (and free) women’s football newsletter. Here’s an extract from this week’s edition. To receive the full version once a week, just pop your email in below.I will not have been the only one in recent weeks to have turned my eyes to the west coast of America as one of the most eagerly-awaited arrivals to the NWSL seized centre stage. On 20 March, Angel City FC finally took to the field at the Titan Stadium in California under the guidance of the head coach, Freya Coombe. They emerged to a raucous reception as they made their much-anticipated professional debut. Continue reading...

It’s impossible to understand American politics without grappling in earnest with why Greene’s extremism is widely seen as justified on the rightEver since entering Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene has been making headlines for her long history of peddling conspiracy theories, her blatant embrace of anti-Muslim bigotry and white Christian nationalism, and her aggression against political opponents. The latest escalation came last week, when she smeared her Republican colleagues in the Senate, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, as “pro-pedophile” after they voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US supreme court; Democrats, she added, “are the party of pedophiles.”There is a calculating quality to Greene’s polemics. Last fall, for instance, she recorded a campaign video in which she used a military-grade sniper rifle to blow up a car that had the word “socialism” written on it, promising to do the same to the “Democrats’ socialist agenda.” It was over-exaggerated campaign nonsense. But Greene knew the unsubtle insinuation of using violence against a political opponent would demand attention.Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer Continue reading...

Nato was never serious about admitting Ukraine. The Russian invasion has lowered Ukraine’s chances even furtherAmid the debate over the war in Ukraine, there’s widespread agreement on one point: the carnage and destruction will continue – not just for weeks, but for months or, according to some western officials, years or even decades.Eventually, however, this war, like all others, will conclude, but not before Russia or Ukraine, perhaps both, become convinced that the losses – in blood and treasure – are unbearable and success beyond reach. Continue reading...

Challenging anti-union rhetoric and pro-union attitudes of younger workers are undermining highly paid consultantsThe nation’s anti-union consultants and lawyers – who have made millions of dollars fighting against union drives – have just been through some of their worst weeks ever as unions racked up wins at Amazon, Starbucks, REI, the New York Times, MIT and other places.These consultants and lawyers – often called “union busters” – have done so poorly that John Logan, a professor who has studied “union avoidance” efforts for two decades, says their anti-union kryptonite seems to have suddenly lost much of its power. “For decades, the consultants have seemed almost invincible. Many firms have boasted victory rates of over 95%,” said Logan, a professor at San Francisco State. But in Staten Island, “the Amazon Labor Union turned the tables on the company’s anti-union consultants” and showed they may have been “more of a liability than an asset”. Continue reading...

US president says Russian leader ‘trying to wipe out the idea of even being Ukrainian’. Plus, the first youth-led climate case to go to trialGood morning.Joe Biden has accused Russia of carrying out genocide in Ukraine, saying that Vladimir Putin is “trying to wipe out the idea of even being Ukrainian”.What did Biden say? “More evidence is coming out of the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine. And we’re going to only learn more and more about the devastation. We’ll let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies, but it sure seems that way to me.”What else is happening? Here’s what we know on day 49 of the invasion.Do we know anything about the suspect? As of late Tuesday night, officials had no one in police custody, but authorities named Frank James, 62, as a person of interest in connection to the shooting. A $50,000 reward has been offered for information. Continue reading...

Bombings, looting, atrocities – Chechens know what it’s like to suffer Russia’s aggressionI have found it almost impossible to look away from the images of the carnage unleashed by Russian troops on occupied Ukrainian towns. Overcome with numbness, I masochistically zoom in on the photos of victims, studying every face, or whatever is left of it. All I can think is: “They have done this before. They are doing it again.”The indiscriminate shelling, the looting, the evidence of rape, torture and executions, and, above all, the sense of enthusiasm with which these war crimes are being carried out are painfully familiar. In recent days, my mind has kept wandering to another photo, taken 18 years ago in Rigakhoy village in Chechnya by my mum, human rights activist Natalya Estemirova. It shows the corpses of five tiny, grey-faced children, all siblings, lined up according to height. The oldest is five years old, the youngest – twins – were not even 12 months old. The children and their mother, Maydat Tsintsayeva, were killed in a deliberate bombing by the Russians on 9 April 2004.Lana Estemirova is the host of Trouble with the Truth podcast and is currently working on her first book

Aidan Hutchinson and Kayvon Thibodeaux will feature as top picks later this month. But there are tantalising stories further down the boardThe 2022 NFL draft is a little over two weeks away. It’s time to look at five of the upcoming class’s most intriguing (rather than the best) prospects. Continue reading...

Does fighting on the radical right’s turf help to steal its voters? Our research suggests it doesn’tAcross Europe, radical-right parties remain on the rise. In France, Marine Le Pen is again in the runoff for the French presidency against Emmanuel Macron. This time, polls suggest a much closer race than in the 2017 election. Just over a week ago, Viktor Orbán’s populist nationalist Fidesz party won a landslide in Hungary’s parliamentary elections.Parties of the far right not only have realistic chances of entering and leading governments in many countries, their success continues to spread across the entire continent. Even Spain and Portugal, long considered exceptional because of the absence of radical-right forces, have recently seen the emergence, respectively, of Vox and Chega.Werner Krause is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna; Denis Cohen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research; Tarik Abou-Chadi is associate professor of European politics at Nuffield College, University of Oxford Continue reading...

Governor seems eager to eliminate two congressional districts with large Black electorates giving Republicans a 20-8 edgeThe Florida legislature will allow Governor Ron DeSantis to take the lead on redrawing the state’s 28 congressional districts, a highly unusual move that will probably diminish Black political power in the state and allow Republicans to further distort the state’s map to their advantage.State legislatures, including Florida’s, usually draw a proposal for a plan that the governor approves or rejects. DeSantis vetoed the GOP-controlled legislature’s proposed congressional districts on 29 March after proposing his own map that would increase the number of GOP seats while eliminating two districts represented by Black Democrats. Leaders in the legislature said on Monday that they would not try to draft a new plan ahead of a special session next week, but instead were waiting for DeSantis, a likely 2024 presidential candidate, to submit his own plan. Continue reading...

State legislatures using gerrymandering, voter suppression, misinformation and intimidation to make voting more difficultAn “insidious and coordinated” effort between lawmakers and extremist groups is under way to undermine American democracy, according to a new report.On Tuesday, the nonpartisan civil rights organization National Urban League released the annual report in its analysis series The State of Black America. The report, called Under Siege: The Plot to Destroy Democracy, outlines the “conspiracy and the urgent case for a national mobilization to protect and defend our most sacred constitutional right”. Continue reading...

Authorities identify person of interest in subway attack as Biden says ‘we’re not letting up until we find the perpetrator’

Deaths rise even as teen drug use drops overall, with researchers pointing to flood of deadly counterfeit pillsDrug overdose deaths among high school-aged US teens have more than doubled since 2019, driven by a rise in the deadly opioid fentanyl, a new study has found.Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, who analyzed mortality rates among 14- to 18-year-olds over the past decade, found that while drug use among this age group is actually falling, fatalities are on the rise, jumping from 492 in 2019 to 954 in 2020, then climbing to 1,146 in 2021. Continue reading...

Papini will plead guilty to lying to authorities and mail fraud over 2016 incident that led to three-week searchSherri Papini, the northern California woman charged last month with faking her kidnapping in 2016, accepted a plea bargain with prosecutors on Tuesday and acknowledged she had made up the story that prompted a frantic search and international headlines.Her defense attorney William Portanova said his client would plead guilty to charges of lying to a federal officer and mail fraud. Continue reading...

Democrat Brian Benjamin pleads not guilty to several charges, as arrest creates political crisis for governor Kathy HochulNew York’s lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, resigned on Tuesday in the wake of his arrest in a federal corruption investigation, the state’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, said.The development created a political crisis for Hochul seven months after she selected Benjamin as a partner to make a fresh start in an office rocked by scandal after Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned amid allegations of bullying and sexual harassment. Continue reading...

Business groups warn of supply chain disruptions after Governor Greg Abbott orders checks for people and contraband smugglingMexican truck drivers have blockaded bridges at the border with the United States for a second day to protest against an order by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, to increase safety inspections that has snarled traffic at ports of entry and led business groups to warn of supply chain disruptions.“Yesterday it took me 17 hours to cross into the United States and return,” said Raymundo Galicia, a Mexican driver participating in a protest at the Santa Teresa bridge connecting San Jerónimo, Chihuahua, to Santa Teresa, New Mexico. Continue reading...

Reported cases dropped in early months of Covid-19 pandemic but disrupted healthcare and diverted resources aided sharp riseAfter briefly dropping in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) then resurged beyond 2019 levels to finish the year at a record high, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Researchers with the CDC said its report, 2020 Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance, shows how Covid-19 disrupted in-person healthcare and diverted scarce public health resources away from STIs, which had been on the rise for years. Continue reading...

Ten people were shot and a total of 16 injured in a subway shooting in New York City on Tuesday morning, a New York fire department spokesperson said.

Plea deal spares Miya Ponsetto of prison after charges from 2020 incident in which she tackled 14-year-old at Manhattan hotelA California woman who went viral in 2020 for wrongly accusing a Black teen of taking her phone at a New York City hotel has reached a plea deal to spare her prison if she avoids further trouble.Miya Ponsetto, 23, pleaded guilty on Monday to unlawful imprisonment as a hate crime, which is a felony, but will have a chance to re-plead to a misdemeanor aggravated harassment charge if she follows the terms of the agreement. Continue reading...

Bill makes it a felony to perform an abortion, unless it’s necessary to save a mother’s life, punishable by up to 10 years in prisonThe governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, signed a bill into law on Tuesday that makes it a felony to perform an abortion, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, as part of an aggressive push in Republican-led states across the country to scale back abortion rights.The bill, which takes effect 90 days after the state legislature adjourns next month, makes an exception only for an abortion performed to save the life of the mother. Continue reading...

They will be forever followed by tales of people who abided by the Covid rules and died alone – while Downing Street partiedThey broke the rules they set for everyone else. Then the prime minister lied and lied again to parliament. “Never before in history has a prime minister broken the law,” Chris Bryant, chair of both the standards and privileges committees, told me this afternoon. “These aren’t just rules; they broke the law.” Johnson’s chancellor, asked if he had attended two Downing Street Christmas parties, told the Commons: “No, Mr Speaker, I did not attend any parties.”Breaking the law and lying about it or misleading the house would have seen any other prime minister and chancellor resign instantly. But nothing can make them go if they cling to their posts. Only their own MPs can oust them, with a flurry of those famous letters to the backbench 1922 committee chair. There should be queues forming outside Sir Graham Brady’s door right now, but don’t hold your breath. Instead, you hear calculating perplexity: without them, who would be our winning leader? But for the sake of their reputations, these MPs should only consider the probity of their party.Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

A new survey highlights the abuse LGBTQ+ people suffer from family members. Britain’s anti-trans rhetoric will make things worseYou don’t need to have raised children to know that, at its core, parenthood is about unconditional love. We don’t get to choose them, and we may find friends and companions that we gel with better, but family is supposed to be that ultimate safety net. If your life is upended and all else seems lost, it should be a reserve of love that will never be depleted. Of course, parenthood also means disapproval, disappointment, even blind fury – but, for most, being rejected or abandoned by those who brought you into the world is unthinkable.For many LGBTQ+ people, however, it can be a grim fact of life. It has been more than half a century since same-sex acts were partly decriminalised, and 25 years since a Labour government was elected that commendably repealed anti-gay laws. But according to a new study by the charity Galop, a third of LGBTQ+ people have suffered abuse from relatives, mostly their parents. Among trans and non-binary people, that figure is even higher: more than four in 10.Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Few British waterways are in decent condition, with thousands of tonnes of sewage discharged into the environment. It is high time we demanded more from our leadersThere are certain phrases that deserve a nod of recognition when they prove to be literally true: anyone who’s ever dug such a big hole that they hit the rock bottom will know what I’m talking about. Or if you’ve ever stood at a ferry terminal realising that you have, in fact, missed the boat. Perhaps this Easter you will unpack your shopping, covered in a slimy, clear film, and understand the error of putting all your eggs in one basket. Personally, I have found myself swimming through actual shit.Not just once, either. Not by a long chalk. Over the past 37 years, I have probably swum through enough sewage to fill a river. Because, you see, it does fill our rivers. And seas. And lakes. And the little streams that snake behind housing estates, and the pools that have the audacity to sit beside poorly maintained pipes. Such is the problem that you would be hard pressed to find any body of water in Britain that a privatised water company hasn’t flushed with turds now and again in the quest for ever-greater profits. Continue reading...