Russian court rejects appeal by Griner against nine-year prison sentence for drugs possession and smuggling
A Russian court has rejected an appeal by the US basketball star Brittney Griner against her nine-year prison sentence for possession and smuggling of drugs.
The two-time Olympic gold medallist was arrested on 17 February at a Moscow airport with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil, which is banned in Russia.
Continue reading...Ex-chancellor is third Tory prime minister in less than two months and fifth in six years. Plus, the history of radical art protest by women
Good morning.
Rishi Sunak formally became prime minister on Tuesday despite losing the Conservative leadership contest to Liz Truss only six weeks ago.
What else should we know about Sunak’s background? He was educated at the prestigious boarding school Winchester college, followed by Oxford University and then had a career in finance. His business background is more California tech bro than City pinstripe, though after he took an MBA at Stanford. He is the richest MP with a fortune worth an estimated £730m.
Will Rishi Sunak find the fractured Tory party is ungovernable? Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary and one of Johnson’s most diehard allies, said Sunak had “no mandate” to govern and predicted it would be “impossible” to avoid calling a snap general election.
Washington has long accused Beijing of meddling in US politics and attempting to steal intellectual property. But the move to unmask the espionage operation marked an escalation by the justice department.
Continue reading...GOP courts blue collar voters but most favor anti-union ‘right to work’ laws and reject laws that would protect right to organize
After years of struggle, America’s labor unions enjoy greater public approval than at any time in more than 50 years. Yet even as the Republican party seeks to rebrand itself as the party of the working class, its lawmakers, by and large, remain as hostile as ever toward organized labor. It doesn’t look like that situation is about to change.
With the midterm elections approaching, and many polls indicating that the Republicans will win control of the House, nearly all Republican lawmakers in Congress oppose proposals that would make it easier to unionize. One hundred and eleven Republican House members and 21 senators are co-sponsoring a bill that would weaken unions by letting workers in all 50 states opt out of paying any fees to the unions that represent them. And at a time when many young workers – among them, Starbucks workers, Apple store workers, museum workers, grad students – are flocking into unions, Republican lawmakers often deride unions as woke, leftwing and obsolete.
Continue reading...Opponents fear the measure might result in increased ballot counting time and identity fraud
A measure on Arizona’s ballot in November could require more stringent voter identification, both at the polls and via mail-in ballots – the primary way people in the state vote.
Opponents of Proposition 309 warn it could disenfranchise voters, making them susceptible to identity fraud and taking longer to count ballots. But the measure has the backing of Arizona GOP heavyweights and the state party itself, and it comes on the heels of nonstop, unfounded claims of 2020 election fraud by Republicans here.
Continue reading...Authorities said no body was found, after cadaver dogs had made “slight” notifications of possible human remains
Crews fully excavated a car that police said was buried in the backyard of a northern California mansion 30 years ago and found no human remains, authorities said Monday.
The convertible Mercedes Benz filled with bags of unused concrete was discovered last week by landscapers in the affluent town of Atherton in Silicon Valley. Cadaver dogs brought to the scene made “slight” notifications of possible human remains on three separate occasions, police said in a statement.
Continue reading...Gunman, 20, shot and killed two people at Central Visual and Performing Arts high school before police shot him dead
A gunman broke into a St Louis high school on Monday and killed two people before police shot him dead.
Several other people were wounded in a deadly intrusion that is certain to reignite debate about gun control in the US, even after Congress passed a bill earlier this year that tightened restrictions on access to firearms for some people who are considered to be at risk of carrying out violence.
Continue reading...The R&B superstar, who has lost numerous family members to the disease, appeared with first lady Jill Biden to announce program
The Biden administration’s initiative to spur the prevention and treatment of cancer got a dose of celebrity support on Monday when singer Mary J Blige joined Jill Biden and the American Cancer Society (ACA) to announce national meetings on breast and cervical cancer.
The ACA pledged to convene the events after US president Joe Biden and the first lady resurrected the “cancer moonshot” initiative this year. The program provides more money for research to, as Jill Biden said, “Help us end cancer as we know it. For good.”
Continue reading...Karen Bass, LA mayoral hopeful, told Adidas to sever ties with the rapper while talent agency CAA reportedly dropped him as a client
Kanye West is facing a growing backlash among Los Angeles’ political and Hollywood leaders following several antisemitic incidents in the city that came after the artist made bigoted comments about Jewish people.
On Monday Karen Bass, the congresswoman and LA mayoral hopeful, called for Adidas to cut ties with West, referencing an incident over the weekend in which protesters on a freeway overpass were photographed giving Nazi salutes with banners referencing antisemitic comments made by West. In addition, Los Angeles police are investigating a recent distribution around the city of fliers spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Continue reading...US basketball star Brittney Griner “does not expect miracles” at her appeal hearing on on Tuesday against a nine-year Russian jail term on drug charges, her lawyers said in a statement.
The Olympic champion was arrested in February at a Moscow airport with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil. She was sentenced in August to nine years in a penal colony on charges of possessing and smuggling drugs.
Continue reading...Republican senator Ted Cruz was a vociferous objector to the 2020 election, but ended up hiding in a supply closet when insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on January 6, as Ramon Antonio Vargas reports:
As a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol during the January 6 attack in a desperate attempt to keep him in the Oval Office, Ted Cruz hid in a closet next to a stack of chairs, but he never thought twice about continuing to sow doubt about the former president’s electoral defeat, the Republican senator from Texas has revealed.
Tight Senate margins and a Democratic president would make it impossible for GOP leaders to deliver on the party’s most hardline fiscal wishes, at least with President Joe Biden still in office. The disappointment would surely prompt blowback from right-leaning Republicans already known as the sharpest thorns in the party’s side.
“Spare me if you’re a Republican who puts on your frigging campaign website, ‘Trust me, I will vote for a balanced budget amendment, and I believe we should balance the budget like every family in America.’ No shit,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the pro-Trump Freedom Caucus, said in an interview.
Continue reading...Pair allegedly tried to bribe top US official as attorney general says DoJ ‘will not tolerate attempts to undermine the rule of law’
Two Chinese intelligence officers tried to bribe a US law enforcement official as part of an effort to obtain inside information about a criminal case against the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, federal prosecutors alleged in an indictment unsealed on Monday.
The announcement of charges against the two alleged agents came as attorney general Merrick Garland detailed two other cases in which Chinese intelligence operatives harassed dissidents inside the United States and pressured US academics to work for them.
Continue reading...Reports suggest that the character actor appears to have suffered a medical emergency before crashing his car in Hollywood
Actor Leslie Jordan has died after a car accident in Los Angeles on Monday at the age of 67.
Law enforcement sources told TMZ and then the Los Angeles Times that they suspected the beloved actor suffered a medical emergency before crashing his BMW into the side of a building in Hollywood.
Continue reading...Americans discarded 51m tons of plastic in 2021 – of which almost 95% ended up in landfills, oceans or scattered in the atmosphere
Only 5% of the mountains of plastic waste generated by US households last year was recycled, according to new research by Greenpeace.
Americans discarded 51m tons of wrappers, bottles and bags in 2021 – about 309lb of plastic per person – of which almost 95% ended up in landfills, oceans or scattered in the atmosphere in tiny toxic particles.
Continue reading...Woman was taking dog out when she was ‘charged by an adult female black bear’ and sustained non-life threatening injuries
A woman in Washington state survived a bear attack on Saturday after she punched the animal in the nose, an official said.
The woman, who has not been named, was taking her dog out in the town of Leavenworth, in the middle of the state, when she was “charged by an adult female black bear”, the Washington department of fish and wildlife said.
Continue reading...Jury ordered Jones to pay $965m in damages to families subjected to harassment from Jones’s lies about Newtown school shooting
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has asked a Connecticut judge to throw out a nearly $1bn verdict against him and order a new trial in a lawsuit by Sandy Hook families, who say they were subjected to harassment and threats from Jones’s lies about the 2012 Newtown school shooting.
Jones filed the requests Friday, saying Judge Barbara Bellis’s pretrial rulings resulted in an unfair trial and “a substantial miscarriage of justice”.
Continue reading...Voters take advantage of in-person and mail-in voting as more than 5.8 million people already cast their vote by Friday
Early voting in the midterm elections is on track to match records set in 2018, according to researchers, as voters take advantage of both in-person and mail-in voting in states across the country.
More than 5.8 million people had already cast their vote by Friday evening, CNN reported, a similar total to this stage in the 2018 elections, which had the highest turnout of any midterm vote in a generation.
Continue reading...Survey finds pro-China sentiment has collapsed in many nations while positive opinion of US has rebounded
China’s reputation has deteriorated rapidly over the last four years, particularly in the west, and a large share of global opinion would back some form of international help for Taiwan if Beijing tries to take the island by force, according to a survey.
It comes as Xi Jinping warned of “dangerous storms” on the horizon as he was confirmed on Sunday as Chinese leader for a precedent-breaking third term, and as Washington warns that Beijing is accelerating plans to annex the island.
Continue reading...Full extent of injuries from ‘brutal attack’ on Satanic Verses author in New York state in August revealed
Salman Rushdie has lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand after the attack he suffered while preparing to deliver a lecture in New York state two months ago, his agent has confirmed.
The 75-year-old author, whose received death threats from Iran in the 1980s after his novel The Satanic Verses was published, was stabbed in the neck and torso as he came on stage to give a talk on artistic freedom at the Chautauqua Institution on 12 August.
Continue reading...Doctors warn exposure to omnipresent yet poorly understood chemicals such as microplastics could play a role in dementia
The mystery behind the astronomical rise in neurological disorders like Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s could be caused by exposure to environmental toxins that are omnipresent yet poorly understood, leading doctors warn.
At a conference on Sunday, the country’s leading neurologists and neuroscientists will highlight recent research efforts to fill the gaping scientific hole in understanding of the role environmental toxins – air pollution, pesticides, microplastics, forever chemicals and more – play in increasingly common diseases like dementias and childhood developmental disorders.
Continue reading...Animal Collective, Bonobo and Mercury prize winner Little Simz among acts to cancel concerts
Musicians are cancelling concerts and entire tours because the rising costs of staff and materials coupled with a drop off in ticket sales is making them too expensive to run.
Earlier this month, US band Animal Collective cancelled forthcoming European dates as“not sustainable”. Within days, the UK downtempo producer Bonobo called time on future live shows in America, describing them as “exponentially expensive”. Then electronic musician Tourist rescheduled a US stint, saying “sometimes tickets just don’t get sold”.
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