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.”
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...A group of students in Washington DC watch as their teacher, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, cooly makes a basketball shot from across the court. Fitzpatrick, known as 'Ms Fitz' to her students, had promised hot chocolates for all if she made the shot
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Band’s management says singer self-isolating at home and is not showing any symptoms
Suga, songwriter and rapper for the K-pop sensation BTS, has tested positive for the coronavirus after returning from concerts in the US, the group’s management has said.
The 24-year-old, whose real name is Min Yoon-gi, was confirmed to have contracted the virus on Friday during his self quarantine after returning home to South Korea on Thursday, according to Big Hit Music.
Continue reading...Nasa’s new administrator discusses the space race with China, UFOs, billionaire ‘astronauts’ and building a ‘mission control’ for climate change
When Apollo 11 launched in July 1969, Bill Nelson was an army lieutenant on leave behind the iron curtain, listening with colleagues to the BBC on shortwave radio.
“There were three young Americans standing on the hills overlooking Budapest, screaming at the top of our lungs, cheering as that rocket lifted off,” Nasa’s new administrator recalled in a video interview.
Continue reading...Analysis: charges could be well founded given Trump’s incendiary remarks to a rally before the Capitol attack and aggressive pressuring of officials
Expectation is growing that Donald Trump might face charges for trying to obstruct Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election this year as a House panel collects more evidence into the 6 January attack on the Capitol, former prosecutors and other experts say.
Speculation about possible charges against the former US president has been heightened by a recent rhetorical bombshell from Republican representative and 6 January panel vice-chair Liz Cheney suggesting the House panel is looking at whether Trump broke a law that bars obstruction of “official proceedings”.
Continue reading...Ex-officer maintained during trial that she made a mistake when she grabbed her gun instead of her Taser
The jury in the manslaughter trial of former Minnesota police officer Kim Potter, who shot dead 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in April 2021, has found her guilty.
The former police officer, who is white, had maintained that she made a tragic mistake when she grabbed her gun, instead of her Taser, and shot Wright, who was Black, when he was pulled over while driving in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center.
Continue reading...An appeals court ruled against the former US president two weeks ago but prohibited documents from being turned over
Donald Trump turned to the supreme court Thursday in a last-ditch effort to keep documents away from the House committee investigating the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol.
A federal appeals court ruled against the former US president two weeks ago, but prohibited documents held by the National Archives from being turned over before the supreme court had a chance to weigh in. Trump appointed three of the nine justices.
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