Congressman causes outrage by posting ‘insensitive’ tweet just days after Michigan school shooting
A US congressman has posted a Christmas picture of himself and what appears to be his family, smiling and posing with an assortment of guns, just days after four teenagers were killed in a shooting at a high school in Michigan.
Thomas Massie of Kentucky tweeted: “Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo.”
Continue reading...Covid-19 is unlikely to be eradicated, experts say, but societies in the past have learned to live with diseases
First, the bad news. With unpredictable outbreaks still occurring around the world, and variants like Omicron raising questions about the virus’s contagiousness, we are very much still in a pandemic.
The good news: while it’s difficult to predict the exact timing, most scientists agree that the Covid-19 pandemic will end and that the virus will become endemic. That means the virus will probably never be eliminated entirely, but as more people get vaccinated and become exposed to it, infections will eventually arise at a consistently low rate, and fewer people will become severely ill. An area where vaccination and booster rates are high will probably see endemicity sooner than a region with lower rates.
Continue reading...Analysis: after he promised to crush the coronavirus, the rise of a new strain could be a blow to perceptions of his competency
Joe Biden looked out at an audience of government scientists last week and recognized a mask-wearing Anthony Fauci, his top adviser on the coronavirus. “I’ve seen more of Dr Fauci than my wife,” he joked. “Who’s president? Fauci!”
The US president was visiting the frontline of the Covid-19 struggle, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where he unveiled a winter plan that includes a drive for vaccine boosters, free at-home testing and fresh requirements for international travelers.
Continue reading...A short history of the Rose decision’s emergence as a signature cause for the right
Public opinion on abortion in the US has changed little since 1973, when the supreme court in effect legalized the procedure nationally in its ruling on the case Roe v Wade. According to Gallup, which has the longest-running poll on the issue, about four in five Americans believe abortion should be legal, at least in some circumstances.
Yet the politics of abortion have opened deep divisions in the last five decades, which have only grown more profound in recent years of polarization. In 2021, state legislators have passed dozens of restrictions to abortion access, making it the most hostile year to abortion rights on record.
Continue reading...Analysis: The task of Ghislaine Maxwell’s defense may be to tangle her so deeply in Epstein’s shadow that they cannot find her guilty
The graphic testimony presented to jurors in Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal sex abuse trial last week seemed at times to mesh and then detach from broader theories – criminal, conspiratorial or both – about the nature of Jeffrey Epstein’s world.
Whether prosecutors and defense attorneys are successful in separating criminal conspiracy from the conspiracy theories that run through the entire Epstein-Maxwell narrative may determine how the criminal complaint against the 59-year-old former British socialite is ultimately resolved.
Continue reading...Vladimir Putin is an old-fashioned sort of guy. He yearns for the days when the Soviet Union was a great power. He still views western democracies as adversaries, to be confounded whenever possible. And he has never reconciled to the post-Soviet loss of cold war-era satellite republics in eastern Europe. This is especially true of Ukraine.
The Russian view that Ukraine is stolen territory to which it has a natural right has roots in tsarist times and before. Ukrainians (and Belarusians) were habitually called “little Russians”. Indigenous narratives stress a common history and common faith indissolubly linking two brotherly eastern Slavic races. Putin has repeatedly stated that “Russians and Ukrainians are one people”.
Continue reading...OR-93 traveled further south than any wolf had in a hundred years. Even after death, he continues to inspire
The young gray wolf who took experts and enthusiasts on a thousand-mile journey across California died last month, ending a trek that brought hope and inspiration to many during a time of ecological collapse.
The travels of the young male through the state were a rare occurrence: he was the first wolf from Oregon’s White River pack to come to California and possibly the first gray wolf in nearly a century to be spotted so far south.
Continue reading...CNN has fired the primetime anchor Chris Cuomo for trying to help his brother, the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, fight accusations of sexual misconduct which resulted in his resignation.
Announcing the firing on Saturday, CNN said “additional information” had come to light.
Continue reading...Iran walked back all compromises made in previous talks on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, pocketed compromises made by others and asked for more in its latest proposals, a senior US state department official told reporters on Saturday.
Iran continues to accelerate its nuclear program in pretty provocative ways and China and Russia were taken aback at how far Iran had walked back its proposals in talks in Vienna, the official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Continue reading...Maryland home suffers over $1m in damage after cunning coal-based pest control plan backfires
A homeowner in Maryland tried to fight a snake infestation with coal, only to burn their own house down, causing more than $1m in damage. Nobody was injured.
Montgomery county fire and rescue officials notified the public about the blaze right after it happened on 23 November, describing a conflagration that left a “large two-three-story single family house with heavy fire throughout structure and roof collapse”.
Continue reading...James and Jennifer Crumbley, who face manslaughter charges, entered not guilty pleas after being found hiding in a warehouse
The parents of Ethan Crumbley, the Michigan teen charged with killing four students at his high school this week, “could have stopped” the shooting, prosecutors alleged at the parents’ arraignment on Saturday, before the judge set a combined $1m bond.
In a Zoom hearing, James and Jennifer Crumbley entered not guilty pleas to each of four counts of involuntary manslaughter.
Continue reading...A 34-year-old Nevada man has been arrested and held on multiple charges related to the 6 January riot at the US Capitol, including assaulting law officers with what prosecutors say appeared to be a table leg with a protruding nail.
A US magistrate in Reno on Friday ordered Josiah Kenyon of Winnemucca to remain jailed without bail, until he is transported to Washington to face charges.
Continue reading...In a blurb on the cover of Mark Meadows’ new book, Donald Trump calls the former congressman a “great chief of staff – as good as it gets” and predicts “a great future together”. The former president has also promoted the book to his followers.
Now the book is in the public domain, however, the former president reportedly thinks it is “garbage” and that Meadows was “fucking stupid” to write it.
Continue reading...A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Manila
Continue reading...US and Australia become latest countries to confirm locally transmitted cases
The Omicron variant has been detected in at least 38 countries but no deaths have yet been reported, the World Health Organization has said, amid warnings that it could damage the global economic recovery.
The United States and Australia became the latest countries to confirm locally transmitted cases of the variant, as Omicron infections pushed South Africa’s total cases past 3 million.
Continue reading...After their remarks, the members of the taskforce took a handful of questions from reporters. Fauci was asked when scientists will have a better understanding of the risks posed by the Omicron variant. He said they would have a clearer picture in the “next few weeks”.
But he said it could take longer to understand the impact of Omicron and whether it will overtake Delta as the dominant strain in the US.
Prosecution and defense argue about several photographs that might be presented at sex-trafficking trial in New York
Ghislaine Maxwell’s child-sex trafficking trial took a shocking turn Friday when prosecutors brought one of Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous massage tables into the courtroom.
By bringing this green, folding table into the courtroom, and then expanding it, prosecutors are working to bolster allegations that Epstein and Maxwell sexually abused teen girls under the pretext of giving him a massage.
Continue reading...The parents of a boy who is accused of killing four students at Oxford high school are missing and being searched for by law enforcement after the pair were also charged as part of the investigation into the mass shooting in Michigan.
Jennifer and James Crumbley were charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter.
Continue reading...John Eastman, linked to efforts to stop Biden certification, to invoke constitutional protection against self-incrimination
Former Trump lawyer John Eastman, who was connected to efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election win on 6 January, will plead the fifth amendment protection against self-incrimination before the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.
The move by Eastman, communicated in a letter to the select committee by his attorney, is an extraordinary step and appears to suggest a growing fear among some of Trump’s closest advisers that their testimony may implicate them in potential criminality.
Continue reading...Once a place ‘where careers go to die’, in Vegas you can see the big stars up close – and it makes sense for Adele
Las Vegas shows once conjured images of early-bird dinner specials, corny magicians and Cole Porter standards sung to happily clapping coach parties. But with another of the world’s biggest pop stars signing on to perform in the city, namely Adele, the Vegas concert residency is further cemented as a glamorous and lucrative rite of pop passage.
Her fourth album, 30, released last month, became the biggest-selling album of the year in the US after just three days on sale. That is the kind of popularity that warrants a stadium tour – indeed, she played to nearly 3 million punters across the 120-show stretch of her previous 2017-2018 world tour.
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