Vaquita porpoise could survive … but only if illegal fishing stops immediately

DNA study finds rarest cetacean, only found in Gulf of California, has enough genetic diversity to recover – if gillnet ban is enforced


Scientists studying the DNA of the world’s smallest cetacean and rarest marine mammal, the vaquita porpoise, have made a surprising and bittersweet discovery.

With a tiny population of fewer than 10 individuals left, the mammal was assumed by conservationists to be at a similar risk of harmful mutations and inbreeding as other species with small gene pools.

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Alleged Colombian cartel head due in New York court after extradition

Victims of paramilitaries demand Dairo Antonio Úsuga come clean about atrocities committed by forces he commanded

The accused head of Colombia’s Gulf Clan cartel is due to appear in a federal court in New York on Thursday, as victims in his home country call for guarantees that he will come clean on atrocities committed by the feared paramilitary fighters he once commanded.

Dairo Antonio Úsuga, who is Colombia’s most wanted drug suspect for nearly a decade, was extradited from Colombia late on Wednesday on cocaine and weapons charges.

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Donald Trump Jr testifies before the committee on the events of January 6

House panel also released text messages in which Donald Trump’s son begged the White House to get his father to condemn the riot

Donald Trump’s oldest son has met with the congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The interview Tuesday with Donald Trump Jr comes as the bipartisan House committee moves closer to the former president’s inner circle of family members and political advisers.

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Sweden says US has offered security guarantees if it applies to join Nato

Foreign minister Ann Linde spoke after meeting with US secretary of state Anthony Blinken

Sweden has received assurances from the US that it would receive support during the period a potential application to join Nato is processed by the 30 nations in the alliance, foreign minister Ann Linde said in Washington on Wednesday.

Sweden and neighbour Finland stayed out of Nato during the cold war, but Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its invasion of Ukraine have led the countries to rethink their security policies, with Nato membership looking increasingly likely.

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Amber Heard testifies in Johnny Depp defamation trial: ‘This is horrible for me’

Actor takes witness stand in Virginia court and tells jurors trial ‘has been one of the most painful things I’ve ever gone through’

Amber Heard took the witness stand in a Virginia court on Wednesday afternoon during Johnny Depp’s defamation lawsuit against her – a make-or-break moment for the actors in a four-week trial that had so far largely focused on Depp’s version of events during their turbulent 15-month marriage.

“I struggle to find the words to describe how painful this is … this is horrible for me to sit here for weeks and relive everything, to hear people that I knew, some well, some not, my ex-husband with whom I shared a life, speak about our lives in the way they have,” she said.

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Militia group leader tried to ask Trump to authorize them to stop the transfer of power

The justice department has alleged that Oath Keepers leadership called the president’s confidant to allow them to use force

Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers militia group leader charged with seditious conspiracy over the January 6 attack on the Capitol, asked an intermediary to get Donald Trump to allow his group to forcibly stop the transfer of power, the justice department has alleged in court papers.

The previously unknown phone call with the unidentified individual appears to indicate the Oath Keepers had contacts with at least one person close enough to Trump that Rhodes believed the individual would be a good person to consult with his request.

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Biden warns LGBTQ+ children could be next target of Republican ‘Maga crowd’

President warns of new attacks by Trump-dominated political party after supreme court ruling draft leak on abortion

Joe Biden has warned of new attacks on civil rights as the supreme court prepares to strike down the right to abortion, telling reporters at the White House that LGBTQ+ children could be the next targets of a Trump-dominated Republican party he called “this Maga crowd” and “the most extreme political organisation … in recent American history”.

“What happens,” the president asked, if “a state changes the law saying that children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children? Is that legit under the way the decision is written?”

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Biden condemns efforts of extremist ‘Maga crowd’ to overturn Roe v Wade abortion protections – as it happened

The judge overseeing the federal civil rights cases of four former Minneapolis police officers in the killing of George Floyd said Wednesday that he has accepted the terms of Derek Chauvin’s plea agreement and will sentence him to 20 to 25 years in prison.

When the white former office is sentenced he will serve the term concurrently with the state criminal sentence he is currently serving (and appealing), of 22.5 years, following his conviction last spring for the May 2020 murder of Floyd, a Black father who had moved from Houston to Minneapolis to start a new chapter after being released from prison.

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Ohio man who groped flight attendants gets 60 days in prison

Maxwell Berry, 23, who was restrained in his seat with tape, also was sentenced to a year of supervised release after his jail time

An Ohio man who had to be restrained in his seat with tape after groping and assaulting flight attendants during a flight from Philadelphia to Miami last year has been sentenced by a federal judge to 60 days in prison.

Maxwell Berry, 23, also was sentenced by US district judge Robert Scola Jr to a year of supervised release after his jail time.

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Wagner-linked Putin ally: ‘Dying west thinks Russians are third world scum’

Yevgeny Prigozhin accused of financing Wagner mercenary group responds to accusations of massacres in Mali

A Russian businessman and close ally of Vladimir Putin accused by the US, EU and others of financing the private military company Wagner group has said that “a dying-out western civilisation” will be defeated by Russia.

The Guardian had approached Yevgeny Prigozhin seeking his reaction to evidence implicating Wagner fighters in massacres in Mali. In response he said he had “repeatedly said that the Wagner group does not exist” and that he had “nothing to do with it”.

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Just Eat senior executive steps down amid misconduct investigation

Takeaway group in boardroom turmoil after two bosses exit before annual shareholder meeting

Just Eat Takeaway is facing boardroom turmoil after a senior executive stepped down amid an investigation by the courier group into a formal complaint regarding misconduct at a company event.

The board of Just Eat said it would not be putting Jörg Gerbig, its chief operating officer, forward for re-election at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, as it was due to engage an “external expert” to conduct an investigation into “possible personal misconduct”.

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Dave Chappelle attacked by man with replica gun at LA comedy festival

Incident raises further questions over comedian safety after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at Oscars

The comedian Dave Chappelle was attacked during a performance in Los Angeles, according to witnesses and videos of the incident posted online.

Footage showed someone running on stage and tackling Chappelle during his performance at the Netflix Is a Joke festival at Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night. The incident took place as the comedian was closing the show and thanking earlier performers including Chris Rock, Leslie Jones and Jon Stewart.

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Statue of Native American ballerina destroyed and sold to recycling center

Outcry after thieves in Oklahoma chopped statue of Marjorie Tallchief into pieces and sold parts to recycling center for $250

Thieves have destroyed a statue of a Native American ballerina and sold the broken parts to a recycling center in Oklahoma for about $250.

Last week, thieves chopped the statue of Marjorie Tallchief into pieces, prompting outcry among residents in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tallchief was an American ballerina, primarily in the 1940s and 50s, and a member of the Osage Nation.

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US shaken by supreme court draft overturning Roe v Wade | First Thing

Biden condemns abortion opinion that, if handed down, would mean ‘fundamental shift’ in law and imperil many other rights

Good morning.

Joe Biden has warned that a leaked draft supreme court ruling overturning Roe v Wade, the 1973 case that guaranteed the right to abortion, would represent a huge change in US law and could imperil a wide range of other civil rights.

What’s the reaction been like? As news broke, demonstrators gathered in major cities across the US. There were tears and tension as protesters swarmed outside the US supreme court to voice their outrage.

How soon could US states outlaw abortions if Roe v Wade is overturned? While the draft could still change, if it is not substantially altered it would result in 26 states immediately or as soon as practicable banning abortion, a sea change in the American legal and political landscape.

How significant is a leak of a draft supreme court ruling? The Guardian’s Washington correspondent, David Smith, called the leak “stunning and unprecedented” and said it would be the worst security breach in the court’s history.

What else is happening? More than 100 evacuees who managed to leave the besieged city of Mariupol – many trapped under the Azovstal steel plant – reached the relative safety of Ukraine-controlled Zaporizhzhia. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed in his latest national address 156 people, mainly women and children, were successfully evacuated.

What else do we know? Here’s a roundup of everything we know on day 70 of the invasion.

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‘A longstanding crisis’: California workers fight to reform nursing homes

Union pushing for proposal to create board to oversee industry in wake of pandemic that has decimated staffing

Jesus Figueroa Cacho, a certified nursing assistant of the Sacramento, California area, has worked in the nursing home industry for about 25 years.

She consistently works 16 hour long shifts, 60 to 80 hours per week, often working through breaks and not getting paid overtime because her employer she works night shifts and overtime accrual resets at 1am every day, in the middle of her shifts. Figueroa Cacho said her facility is severely understaffed, often with just two nurses to care for around 50 patients.

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How the oil and gas industry is trying to hold US public schools hostage

Fossil fuel interest groups are telling New Mexicans: let us keep drilling or the state’s education system will collapse

The oil and gas industry wants to play a word-and-picture association game with you. Think of four images: a brightly-colored backpack stuffed with pencils, a smiling teacher with a tablet tucked under her arm, a pair of glasses resting on a stack of pastel notebooks, and a gleaming school bus welcoming a young student aboard.

“What do all of these have in common?” an April 6 Facebook post by the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association (NMOGA), asked. “They are powered by oil and natural gas!”

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Elon Musk considers ‘slight’ Twitter fee for commercial users

Government users may also be charged, says billionaire, who has agreed to buy platform for $44bn

Elon Musk has said Twitter may charge a “slight” fee for commercial and government users, in the latest hint of the changes the world’s richest person could introduce after he completes his takeover of the social media platform.

“Twitter will always be free for casual users, but maybe a slight cost for commercial/government users,” Musk said in a tweet. In another tweet, he added: “Some revenue is better than none!”

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Biden ‘not prepared’ to support ending Senate filibuster to pass abortion rights law – live

Notre Dame Law School professor Richard W Garnett, a supreme court expert who clerked for the late chief justice William Rehnquist during the 1996-97 term, says the leaking of the draft document represents a “gross betrayal of trust”.

In a statement to the Guardian, Garnett said:

Most court-watchers have been expecting that, in the pending Dobbs case, a majority of the justices will vote to uphold Mississippi’s abortion regulation and to squarely overrule the earlier Roe and Casey decisions. And, it is unlikely that any observers or commentators familiar with the case are actually surprised by the possibility that Justice Alito has drafted a majority opinion stating that those decisions were ‘egregiously wrong’.

In any event, however, for an employee or member of the Court to intentionally leak a draft opinion would be a gross betrayal of trust, particularly if the leak were an effort to advance partisan aims or to undermine the Court’s work and legitimacy.

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Depp’s attorneys rest after 13 days of testimony in case against Heard

Amber Heard’s attorneys demanded judge dismiss defamation case but Judge Penney Azcarate ruled trial will proceed

Attorneys for Johnny Depp rested on Tuesday after 13 days of testimony in the actor’s $50m defamation case against his ex-wife Amber Heard. In court in Virginia, Heard’s attorneys demanded the judge dismiss the action.

Without jurors present, lawyer Ben Rottenborn asked the judge, Penney Azcarate, “to strike the plaintiff’s evidence and award summary judgment in whole or in part to Ms Heard”.

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‘Betrayal’: chief justice orders inquiry into leak of draft abortion ruling

John Roberts says leak of opinion to overturn Roe v Wade ‘intended to undermine the integrity of our operations’

John Roberts, the US chief justice, has announced an investigation into a leak showing that the supreme court provisionally voted to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade case that legalised abortion nationwide.

Publication of the draft opinion by the Politico website on Monday night sparked demonstrations outside America’s highest court, condemnation from Joe Biden and fears that the judiciary has suffered profound damage to its reputation for independence.

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