Biden has begun speaking at the White House about the agreement reached to head off a rail workers strike.
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Continue reading...The filing urges UN special rapporteurs to declare life sentences, including without parole, a violation of incarcerated people’s rights
The moment Terrell Carter learned the death sentence he received decades ago would end, he was filled with extreme happiness and intense sorrow.
Carter had spent 30 years of his life in prison without parole for second-degree murder he committed in Pennsylvania, one of six states in the US where there is no possibility of parole when sentenced to life. In July, after Governor Tom Wolf commuted his sentence, Carter, now 53, regained his freedom after a nearly three-year process petitioning with the state board of pardons. Still, he said he felt “survivor’s guilt”.
Continue reading...Announcement in early hours comes a day before deadline for deal as freight strike threatened widespread disruption
A tentative agreement had been reached to avert a freight rail strike that could have disrupted commuter rail services across the US, Joe Biden has said.
A strike would also have dealt a major blow to Democrats two months before midterm elections in which they will try to keep control of the Senate and the House.
Continue reading...Law in effect wipes out abortion access for 1.5 million people in the state, which was a safe haven for those seeking the procedure. Plus, how house music changed the world
Good morning.
A sweeping abortion ban went into effect in Indiana today, containing only extremely narrow exceptions for medical emergencies, rape and incest – making it the latest state to largely outlaw the procedure in the US.
What are the exceptions? The Indiana law – known as SB 1 – is an all-encompassing abortion ban with some extreme restrictions. It limits abortions to cases where there is serious risk to the health or life of the pregnant person, and in the case of a lethal fetal anomaly up to 20 weeks post-fertilization.
What’s happening now in the city? Regarded for centuries as the gateway to the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and, from there, to the Black Sea, today Izium is a giant crime scene where Ukrainian prosecutors are moving fast to gather evidence on war crimes allegedly perpetrated by the Russians.
Continue reading...The former school principal was abducted during a medical mission in Bukina Faso in a case that drew international attention
A Catholic nun from New Orleans who was kidnapped while working in western Africa, contracted malaria as she was held for nearly five months and was ultimately freed, said reciting prayers helped her survive her ordeal.
“Prayer sustained me,” Suellen Tennyson, 83 and a former principal of a Catholic elementary school, told the in-house newspaper of the New Orleans archdiocese. “That was the thing that kept me going because I had nothing.”
Continue reading...John Kelly secretly consulted The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, according to new book by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser
Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff secretly bought a book in which 27 mental health professionals warned that the president was psychologically unfit for the job, then used it as a guide in his attempts to cope with Trump’s irrational behavior.
News of John Kelly’s surreptitious purchase comes in a new book from Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker. The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Continue reading...All four of the Pew Research Center’s scenarios showed the Christian share of the population shrinking and the number of non-believers rising
Christians in the US may become a minority group by 2070 if recent trends continue, according to data released by the Pew Research Center.
To predict how the US religious landscape will change over the next 50 years, the center posed several questions: “What if Christians keep leaving religion at the same rate observed in recent years? What if the pace of religious switching continues to accelerate? What if switching were to stop, but other demographic trends – such as migration, births and deaths – were to continue at current rates?”
Continue reading...Law effectively wipes out abortion access for 1.5m people in the state, which was a safe haven for those seeking the procedure
A sweeping abortion ban went into effect in Indiana on Thursday, containing only extremely narrow exceptions for medical emergencies, rape and incest and making it the latest state to largely outlaw the procedure in the US.
The ban is being challenged in court by the ACLU and several abortion care providers, with hearings set to start on 19 September.
Continue reading...Founder Yvon Chouinard announced that all the company’s profits will go into saving the planet
Setting a new example in environmental corporate leadership, the billionaire owner of Patagonia is giving the entire company away to fight the Earth’s climate devastation, he announced on Wednesday.
Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, who turned his passion for rock climbing into one of the world’s most successful sportswear brands, is giving the entire company to a uniquely structured trust and nonprofit, designed to pump all of the company’s profits into saving the planet.
Continue reading...The verdict is the latest legal blow for the R&B artist, who faced 13 counts
A federal jury on Wednesday convicted R Kelly of several child pornography and sex abuse charges in his home town of Chicago, delivering another legal blow to a singer who used to be one of the biggest R&B stars in the world.
Kelly, 55, was found guilty on three counts of child pornography and three counts of child enticement.
But the jury acquitted him on a fourth pornography count as well as a conspiracy to obstruct justice charge accusing him of fixing his state child pornography trial in 2008. He was found not guilty on all three counts of conspiring to receive child pornography and for two further enticement charges.
Continue reading...Baltimore City state’s attorney requests a new trial for Adnan Syed after an investigation points to alternative suspects
Prosecutors have filed a motion to vacate the murder conviction of 42-year old Adnan Syed, a case that previously gained international attention after it was featured on the podcast Serial.
In a motion filed by Baltimore City state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby, a nearly year-long investigation with Syed’s defense team revealed new information that points to alternative suspects, according to a statement from her office.
Continue reading...Charlotte Bennett’s lawsuit is at least the second to be filed by one of the women who accused the former New York governor of misconduct
A onetime aide to former New York governor Andrew Cuomo sued him Wednesday, saying he sexually harassed her and then smeared her reputation after she became the second woman to publicly accuse him of misconduct.
Charlotte Bennett’s lawsuit, filed in a federal court in New York City, repeats many of the allegations she has talked about publicly in the year and a half since she first began telling her story.
Continue reading...Man who said he discovered package at Northeastern University may have staged incident, law enforcement officials say
Federal officials are now examining whether the employee who reported an explosion at Northeastern University may have lied to investigators and staged the incident, law enforcement officials said on Wednesday.
Investigators identified inconsistencies in the employee’s statement and became skeptical because his injuries did not match wounds typically consistent with an explosion, said one official.
Continue reading...President is in Detroit to promote the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes incentives for buying electric cars
A presidential run may be Mike Pence’s best hope of getting back into the White House. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that Donald Trump has thoroughly disavowed his former vice president:
Donald Trump will not pick Mike Pence as his running mate if he runs for the presidency again, according to an interview with the authors of a new book on his time in the White House.
Continue reading...The case mirrors a District of Columbia complaint alleging the company pushes sellers to maintain higher prices on other sites
California is suing Amazon, accusing the company of violating the state’s antitrust laws by stifling competition and engaging in practices that push sellers to maintain higher prices on products on other sites.
The 84-page lawsuit filed on Wednesday in San Francisco superior court mirrors another complaint filed last year by the District of Columbia, which was dismissed by a district judge earlier this year and is now going through an appeals process.
Continue reading...White House says South Carolina senator’s proposed bill ‘wildly out of step with what Americans believe’. Plus, how YouTube got swamped with creepy content for kids
Good morning.
Senator Lindsey Graham proposed legislation on Tuesday for a nationwide 15-week abortion ban, a politically risky strategy as a backlash grows to the US supreme court ruling earlier this summer overturning federal protections for the procedure.
Could Graham’s legislation pass? Even if Republicans seize control of the Senate chamber in November, Graham’s bill is unlikely to pass because the current Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, has indicated he would be unwilling to lift the filibuster - a procedure that requires a bill to win the support of 60 senators – for the abortion issue.
Doesn’t Louisiana’s abortion ban contain a general exception for fetuses that cannot survive outside their mothers’ wombs? Yes and the law’s author – state senator Katrina Jackson – has insisted that Davis could have legally obtained an abortion without having to go across the country.
So why wasn’t Davis allowed one? Acrania is not explicitly included in the list of conditions for exemption so officials at the hospital where Davis had her ultrasound refused to provide an abortion for her, apparently fearing that they could be exposed to prison time, fines and forfeiture of their licenses to practice if they performed the procedure.
Continue reading...As Biden’s recommendations fall flat, negotiations between management and unions are at an impasse – and workers are prepared to walk
US freight railroad workers are close to striking over claims that grueling schedules and poor working conditions have been driving employees out of the industry over the past several years.
Heated negotiations over a new union contract between railroad corporations and 150,000-member-strong labor unions have been ongoing for nearly three years. A “cooling off” period imposed by the Biden administration after it issued recommendations to settle the dispute ends on Friday. If no deal is reached, unions are threatening industrial action – the first since 1992 – and workers say they will quit an industry already facing staff shortages.
Continue reading...Nancy Davis suffered ‘unspeakable pain’ due to the poorly worded law that meant a hospital in her home state refused to terminate the pregnancy
An expectant Louisiana woman who was carrying a skull-less fetus that would die within a short time from birth ultimately traveled about 1,400 miles to New York City to terminate her pregnancy after her local hospital denied her an abortion amid uncertainty over the procedure’s legality.
Nancy Davis, 36, told the Guardian that she had her pregnancy terminated on 1 September after traveling from her home town of Baton Rouge to a clinic in Manhattan whose staff had agreed to complete the procedure.
Continue reading...Human trafficking victim gets probation with risk of 20 years’ prison for manslaughter, with judge saying ‘no other option’ than to impose restitution
A teenage human trafficking victim who was initially charged with first-degree murder after she stabbed her accused rapist to death was sentenced on Tuesday in an Iowa court to five years of closely supervised probation and ordered to pay $150,000 restitution to the man’s family.
Pieper Lewis, 17, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and wilful injury in the June 2020 killing of 37-year-old Zachary Brooks of Des Moines. Both charges were punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Continue reading...Revelation about former president’s concern reported in new book The Divider by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser
In December 2020, Donald Trump told friends he was afraid Iran would try to assassinate him in revenge for the death of Qassem Suleimani, an Iranian general killed in a US drone strike nearly a year before.
The startling news is reported in a new book by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, a husband-and-wife team who write for the New York Times and the New Yorker.
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