‘Meet Barnaby Joyce!’: Amber Heard names dog after Australia’s deputy PM

Actor welcomes scruffy white pet with tribute to politician Johnny Depp described as ‘inbred with a tomato’

Six years after Barnaby Joyce threatened to euthanise dogs belonging to Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, Heard appears to have had the last laugh, naming her new four-legged friend after Australia’s deputy prime minister.

On Monday the actor posted a photograph on Twitter showing herself holding up a large scruffy white dog with the caption: “Meet the newest member of the Heard family, Barnaby Joyce!”

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Sarah Weddington, attorney who won Roe v Wade abortion case, dies aged 76

Texan lawyer and Linda Coffee won landmark 1973 case, safeguarding right now under threat from US supreme court

Sarah Weddington, an attorney who argued and won the Roe v Wade supreme court case which established the right to abortion in the US, has died aged 76.

Susan Hays, a Democratic candidate for Texas agriculture commissioner, announced the news on Twitter on Sunday and the Dallas Morning News confirmed it.

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Christmas storms hit California with much-needed snow and rain

State says snowpack now between 114% and 137% of normal across Sierra range while southern areas get much-needed rain

A major Christmas storm caused whiteout conditions and closed key highways in the mountains of northern California and Nevada, with forecasters warning that travel in the Sierra Nevada could be difficult for several days.

Rainstorms also continued to hit parts of southern California. The conditions were difficult but welcome developments in a parched state where the Sierra snowpack had been at dangerously low levels after weeks of dry weather.

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Fauci says Omicron surge will continue and Americans must not be complacent

Cases of Covid-19 will continue to surge worldwide due to the Omicron variant, the US chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said on Sunday, warning Americans not to get complacent amid reports that the variant is less harmful than others.

“If you have many, many, many more people with a less level of severity,” Fauci told ABC’s This Week, “that might kind of neutralise the positive effect of having less severity.

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‘Let’s go Brandon’ Santa Tracker caller insists he meant no disrespect to Biden

Jared Schmeck, 35, tells Oregonian he has ‘nothing against’ president to whom he repeated ‘Fuck Joe Biden’ rightwing meme

The caller who ended a conversation with Joe Biden with the rightwing meme “Let’s go Brandon” – which means “fuck Joe Biden” – has insisted he was joking and meant no disrespect to the president.

“At the end of the day I have nothing against Mr Biden,” Jared Schmeck, 35, told the Oregonian newspaper. “But I am frustrated because I think he can be doing a better job. I mean no disrespect to him.”

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‘Radically optimistic’: the thinktank chief who believes the US can ‘self-correct’

Patrick Gaspard discusses his Haitian dissident parents, meeting Mandela and protecting democracy

Barack Obama could be forgiven for considering himself a big shot. But Patrick Gaspard used to keep his ego in check.

“You’re of course an extraordinary historic figure but I’m sorry, this doesn’t compare,” Gaspard would joke, “meeting Nelson Mandela will always be the top of Mount Kilimanjaro for me.

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‘Landmines all the way down’: the guilt and frustration of breakthrough Covid

The never-ending pandemic forces people to do their best to balance living a decent life and making responsible choices

When Sean Williams, 50, caught a breakthrough case of Covid-19 in November, he felt guilty and embarrassed. His 14-year-old tested positive, too; both were “double-vaxxed” and probably caught it from his 11-year-old daughter, who got it in school two days before her scheduled first vaccination.

“It’s impossible to talk about without going through this whole tortured thing about how careful you were before you got it,” says Williams, who lives with his family in New York City. “Also, this horrible feeling that you have to stutter your way through a clarification that you do believe in science, you did get vaccinated, you’re, like, not a fascist, even. It’s landmines all the way down.”

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Covid live news: new restrictions for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland

New coronavirus restrictions are being introduced in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as the country’s leaders try to combat rising Covid cases

China has reported 206 new Covid cases on Christmas Day, a significant jump from 140 a day earlier, its health authority said on Sunday and Reuters reports.

Of the new infections, 158 were locally transmitted, according to a statement by the National Health Commission, compared with 87 cases the previous day.

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T Mark Taylor, He-Man and Masters of the Universe toy designer, dies aged 80

The California native also helped create the popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise in a lifetime working for Mattel

T Mark Taylor, artist and toy designer for the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe franchise as well as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, has died of heart failure at his home in southern California. He was 80.

He-Man was the muscled frontman for toy manufacturer Mattel’s Masters of the Universe franchise, which would later spawn an animated series that became a staple for children.

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California officials close beaches after man dies in shark attack

Thirty-one-year-old man, who appeared to be a bodyboarder, pronounced dead in San Luis Obispo county

California authorities have closed some beaches in San Luis Obispo County after a 31-year-old man was pronounced dead following an encounter with a shark on Friday.

The fatality marked the first death in a shark attack in 18 years in the area, which lies roughly midway between Los Angeles and Jan Jose.

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‘A lot of abuse for little pay’: how US farming profits from exploitation and brutality

Two dozen conspirators forced workers to pay fees for travel and housing while forcing them to work for little to no pay

In June, a farm worker from Mexico, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, was transported through a trafficking network from Monterey to work on farms in Georgia.

They paid the traffickers 20,000 pesos, about $950, loaned from their mother, taking frequent trips back and forth to Monterey, before being told it was safe to leave. Then they were finally transported across the border.

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Slice of life: New York’s famed $1 street pizza under threat from rising costs

Cheap street pizza is one of New York’s charms, but could supply chain problems and inflation this spell the end?

“Well, you can never go wrong with bread, cheese and tomato,” Lou Reed, poet of the New York streets, would sometimes remark as he passed by one of the city’s multitude of pizzerias.

The late musician was a fan of Coney Island’s legendary Totonno’s, close to the site of of one of the first recorded pizza parlors established by Italian immigrants in the 1880s.

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British estate agent shot dead ‘by evicted tenant’ in Florida

Sara Trost, from Southend, Essex, fatally wounded as she waited to show property in Coral Springs

A British woman who worked as an estate agent in Florida has been shot dead while preparing to show a property, allegedly by an evicted tenant.

Sara Trost, 40, from Southend, Essex, was shot on Thursday while sitting in her Jeep outside a house in Coral Springs, 40 miles north of Miami, at about 12.33pm.

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Caller tells Joe Biden ‘Let’s go Brandon’ during White House Christmas event

The saying has became an internet sensation as a coded vulgarity among Trump supporters

A vulgar anti-Biden slogan made for an awkward moment on Friday during Joe Biden’s phone calls with children tracking Santa’s flight when a father said, “Let’s Go Brandon.”

The refrain, a sanitized version of “Fuck Joe Biden,” has been an internet sensation since a television journalist told race car driver Brandon Brown that a Nascar crowd shouting the vulgarity was actually saying, “Let’s go Brandon.”

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Grace Mirabella, 70s and 80s US Vogue editor, dies aged 92

Mirabella was editor of the magazine from 1971 to 1988 and was a non-nonsense champion of practical fashion

Grace Mirabella, the editor of American Vogue throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, has died aged 92.

Mirabella was a non-nonsense champion of practical fashion. She succeed the more whimsical and bohemian Diana Vreeland as editor in 1971 and remained in the role until 1988.

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Covid live news: 1.7 million people in UK had coronavirus last week; hundreds of Christmas flights cancelled

ONS figures are highest on record so far; Christmas for many in disarray as US and Australian airlines say flight crews hit by Covid

Here’s a story that echoes the cancellation of flights happening over the US.

Thousands of Australians have had their domestic flights cancelled in the hours leading up to Christmas, as frontline staff were ordered to test and isolate amid a rise in Covid cases.

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As US west braces for omicron surge, leaders take a hands-off approach

Experts call for public health measures beyond vaccines as health workers describe a ‘war zone’

As the highly transmissible Omicron variant began to surge across Colorado this month, Governor Jared Polis adopted a laissez-faire tone. Asked in a radio interview about the possibility of reinstating a statewide mask mandate, he replied that, with Covid vaccines now widely available, getting sick was the “own darn fault” of the unvaccinated.

But health workers at hospitals in parts of Colorado that have been overwhelmed by coronavirus patients in recent weeks say they’re bracing for even worse.

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More options for Covid treatments in January as FDA approves two antiviral pills

The approval comes as reports of shortages in monoclonal antibody treatment arise and cases spike

People at greater risk of becoming seriously ill from Covid-19 will likely have more treatment options in January.

That’s the forecast in the wake of the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval this week of the first two antiviral pills used to treat Covid-19 and reports of shortages of a monoclonal antibody treatment used against the Omicron variant.

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Nirvana seek to dismiss sexual abuse lawsuit concerning Nevermind cover

Lawyers describe Spencer Elden’s claim of child exploitation as ‘not serious’ and says it fails to meet statute of limitations

Lawyers working on behalf of Nirvana have filed to dismiss a lawsuit made against the band by Spencer Elden, who appeared as a baby on the cover of their album Nevermind.

In the lawsuit filed in August, Elden claimed he was the victim of child sexual exploitation and that the cover artwork was a child sexual abuse image. “Defendants knowingly produced, possessed and advertised commercial child pornography depicting Spencer,” the lawsuit read.

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