Police issued a warrant for the arrest of Terry Wright, 65, of Grants Pass, Oregon. The woman's detention on Thursday at a Bank of America in Galveston was captured by the officer’s body camera.
An arrest warrant was issued for Wright, who refused to wear a mask at a Texas bank, saying to a police officer: 'What are you going to do, arrest me?'
Police said they had obtained an arrest warrant on resisting arrest and criminal trespassing charges
Continue reading...Brother of Syrian man aims to force Moscow to investigate possible role of Wagner Group in his killing
The brother of a Syrian man killed by suspected Russian mercenaries has called on the authorities in Moscow to investigate the incident and the possible role played by the Wagner Group, a mercenary group run by one of Vladimir Putin’s close allies.
Video footage published by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta shows a group of six men torturing a Syrian detainee. The victim, Mohammed Taha Ismail Al-Abdullah, is believed to have deserted from President Bashir al-Assad’s army and then been captured.
Continue reading...Kremlin critic reveals on Instagram he has arrived in penal colony north-east of Moscow and has a ‘freshly shaven head’
The Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is being held in a prison camp in the Vladimir region of Russia north-east of Moscow known for its strict control of inmates, a message posted on the opposition politician’s Instagram account confirmed on Monday.
Navalny’s precise location had been unknown after his legal team said last week that he had been moved from the nearby Kolchugino jail and that they had not been told where he was being taken.
Continue reading...Canadian Energy Centre, funded by Alberta government, says Bigfoot Family ‘brainwashes’ youngsters and ‘peddles lies’
The animated film Bigfoot Family has come under fire in Canada – but not because of its stilted dialogue or confusing plot.
Instead, a government-funded lobbying group has targeted the movie – a fantasy epic featuring a human family whose father is Bigfoot – on the grounds that it “peddles lies” about the oil and gas industry.
Continue reading...Study of tree rings dating back to Roman empire concludes weather since 2014 has been extraordinary
The series of severe droughts and heatwaves in Europe since 2014 is the most extreme for more than 2,000 years, research suggests.
The study analysed tree rings dating as far back as the Roman empire to create the longest such record to date. The scientists said global heating was the most probable cause of the recent rise in extreme heat.
Continue reading...Fears Syrian government carrying out ‘degrading’ exhumations to erase identities and forensic evidence
Fadwa Hallak’s memory of what happened the day her husband died is blurry.
Ibrahim Rahawi was killed by shrapnel in either an airstrike or missile attack in 2015 during the siege of Aleppo – one of the bloodiest and most brutal chapters of Syria’s long war.
Continue reading...Company’s financial chief has been rebranded ‘master of coin’ following £1bn bitcoin investment
Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla with a penchant for eccentric behaviour, has changed his job title to “technoking” of the electric car manufacturer.
In addition to Musk, who also retains his position as chief executive, the company’s financial chief, Zach Kirkhorn, has been rebranded as “master of coin”.
Continue reading...A sandstorm has combined with already high air pollution to turn the sky over Beijing an eerie orange. Air quality indexes recorded a “hazardous” 999 rating on Monday as commuters travelled to work through the thick, dark air across China’s capital and further west. Large-scale deforestation is considered a factor in the spring dust storms that are relatively common at this time of year and are usually attributed to winds blowing across the Gobi desert
Continue reading...Camps for refugees are growing as old rivalries between Fulani herders and Dogon farmers are exacerbated in Mali’s war on Islamist militants
Mopti used to be a stopover for tourists on their way to the fabled Timbuktu, or to see the homes of the Dogon people cut into the yellow cliffs of Bandiagara. The Malian city, which is known for its grand mosque and rock-salt markets, lies where the Niger and Bani rivers meet. When the rivers flood, the town is turned into a series of islands.
But the visitors and their cameras are gone, and the 4x4s that used to transport them replaced with those bearing logos of humanitarian organisations, as the Mali government struggles to root out a strengthening Islamist movement that has been expanding from the north of the country since 2015.
Continue reading...French firefighters in southern region won’t get AstraZeneca jab; Dutch watchdog says possible thrombosis among cases
Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd has said it has signed an agreement with contract manufacturer IDT Biologika GmbH to manufacture Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid vaccine, according to Reuters.
Reuters reports:
Firemen in France’s southern Bouches-du-Rhone region have suspended the use of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine for their staff after signs of negative side-effects, reported BFM TV and AFP, fuelling concerns related to the product.
France and Germany have decided to continue administering the shot while other European countries, including Ireland, Norway and the Netherlands, have suspended its use on safety grounds.
Continue reading...Consumption at home rose sharply last year, with mozzarella up 21% and raclette machines in high demand
How did the French keep smiling through the Covid lockdown? Not by saying “cheese” but by eating it, figures suggest.
Researchers say cheese consumption at home soared last year as the confined sought comfort food. And in a nation that boasts 246 kinds of cheese, as the former president Charles de Gaulle once said, it was Italian mozzarella that benefited most, with a 21.2% rise in sales in 2020.
Continue reading...There is an avant-garde bravery to this international love story – but how can we invest in protagonists we never see?
Here is a thought-experiment of a movie from Brazilian film-makers Clarissa Campolina and Luiz Pretti: it’s a dramatic essay, or docu-fictional romance, or perhaps the cinematic equivalent of an epistolary novel, and it has been much admired on the festival circuit.
Related: Streaming: indie films from Latin America
Continue reading...Remarks follow EU formally launching legal action over protocol arrangements in the region
The White House has urged London and Brussels to work together to preserve the peace in Northern Ireland, after the EU formally launched legal action against the UK over Brexit arrangements in the region.
Joe Biden’s spokesperson said: “We continue to encourage both the EU and the UK government to prioritise pragmatic solutions to safeguard and advance the hard-won peace in Northern Ireland.”
Continue reading...Joe Biden wants zero emissions by 2050, but time is ticking. So how will the country have to change over the next 30 years?
If America finally weans itself off planet-heating emissions, the country will look and feel very different.
Landscapes from coast to coast would be transformed, carpeted in wind turbines and solar panels, with enough new transmission lines to wrap around Earth 19 times. The populace would whiz past in their electric cars, to and from homes equipped with induction stoves and heat pumps. The air would be near-pristine. Hundreds of thousands of people who would have prematurely died from the toxic fossil-fuel age would still be alive.
Continue reading...Despite vaccine hesitancy, figures show a big drop in infections – giving hope that, after a brutal year, an end is in sight
Joan Phillips, a certified nursing assistant in a Florida nursing home, loved her job but dreaded the danger of going to work in the pandemic. When vaccines became available in December, she jumped at the chance to get one.
Months later, it appears that danger has faded. After the rollout of Covid vaccines, the number of new Covid cases among nursing home staff fell 83% – from 28,802 for the week ending 20 December to 4,764 for the week ending 14 February, data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services shows.
Continue reading...Critics warn of imperial fantasy but the economic and political forces pulling the UK back to the region are real
Some will call it a tilt, others a rebalancing and yet others a pivot but, either way, the new big idea due to emerge from the government’s foreign and defence policy review on Tuesday will be the importance of the Indo-Pacific region – a British return east of Suez more than 50 years after the then defence secretary Denis Healey announced the UK’s cash-strapped retreat in 1968.
Boris Johnson and his admirals are billing the focus on a zone stretching through some of the world’s most vital seaways east from India to Japan and south from China to Australia as Britain stepping out in the world after 47 years locked in the EU’s protectionist cupboard. Others warn Johnson is indulging a hubristic and militarily dangerous imperial fantasy.
Continue reading...Parents whose only hope was finding foreign sponsorship or a clinical trial are now looking for homegrown breakthroughs
For three years, Vidya tried to find the cause of her son’s recurrent fevers and low cognitive development. When she found out, she was devastated.
Vineeth, 10, has an incurable illness – mucopolysaccharidosis type 2 – that affects his organs. Afflicting just one in a million, the enzyme-replacement medication that can help stop the illness getting any worse costs £100,000 a year, far beyond the reach of even a wealthier Indian parent.
Continue reading...Guardian analysis of 44 studies finds nearly 40% of 9,000 products from restaurants, markets and fishmongers were mislabelled
A Guardian Seascape analysis of 44 recent studies of more than 9,000 seafood samples from restaurants, fishmongers and supermarkets in more than 30 countries found that 36% were mislabelled, exposing seafood fraud on a vast global scale.
Many of the studies used relatively new DNA analysis techniques. In one comparison of sales of fish labelled “snapper” by fishmongers, supermarkets and restaurants in Canada, the US, the UK, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, researchers found mislabelling in about 40% of fish tested. The UK and Canada had the highest rates of mislabelling in that study, at 55%, followed by the US at 38%.
Continue reading...In the few areas not retaken by Assad’s forces, people gather to reiterate the same demands protesters made a decade ago
Sarah Kasem was 12 when Arab Spring protesters began to fill the streets and squares of Syria 10 years ago. She remembers the hope and excitement of that time vividly; it seems so divorced from the horrors that followed.
Kasem’s teenage years were spent living under siege in the city of Homs, where friends and relatives disappeared in regime prisons and her family lived much of the time without electricity, struggling to secure food and medicine. All the while, Bashar al-Assad’s air force dropped barrel bombs and cluster munitions on their neighbourhood.
Continue reading...Analysis: PM is on course for fourth term in office. What is his secret and how is next coalition government likely to look?
The outgoing prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, appears headed for a comprehensive victory and fourth successive term in office as the Dutch go to the polls in national elections on Monday, with voting spread over three days due to coronavirus restrictions.
Polls predict Rutte, who has headed three coalition governments of different political complexions since 2010, and his centre-right People’s party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) will win twice as many parliamentary seats as his nearest rival.
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