In alarming testimony to a House subcommittee, the acting chief of Capitol police, Yogananda Pittman, said threats were circulating that directly targeted Joe Biden's first formal speech to a joint session of Congress – the date of which has not yet been announced.
Militia groups involved in the 6 January insurrection want to stage another attack aiming to 'blow up' the complex and kill lawmakers, Pittman has warned
Continue reading...February was the peak of my pandemic depression – and then came the ‘Arctic blast’
As for so many, February was the peak of my pandemic depression. It nearly marked the first anniversary of the Covid lockdown, and the demise of my social life. But quarantining in San Antonio, Texas, brought an entirely new set of challenges.
My breaking point was around midnight last Tuesday, during the “Arctic blast” which, prior to last week, sounded like a refreshing juice-box flavor for children. Our house was 40F (4C). My father was outside boiling water on the grill so we could have a hot drink to get us through the night. My only link to the outside world was a horrendous internet connection, so I couldn’t even doom-scroll my way out of this frozen hellscape.
Continue reading...Operation, which was approved by Joe Biden, comes after a series of attacks against US targets in Iraq
The United States has carried out airstrikes in Syria targeting facilities near the Iraqi border used by Iranian-backed militia groups.
The Pentagon said the strikes were retaliation for a rocket attack in Iraq earlier this month that killed one civilian contractor and wounded a US service member and other coalition troops.
Continue reading...White House says president ‘affirmed the importance the United States places on universal human rights and the rule of law’
Joe Biden has spoken with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman for the first time as president, ahead of the publication of a US intelligence report expected to implicate the Saudi crown prince in the 2018 murder of dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
A White House account of the call did not mention the report, but did say, in another context, that Biden “affirmed the importance the United States places on universal human rights and the rule of law” and that the two discussed working on “mutual issues of concern”.
Continue reading...California’s Covid-19 death toll rose above 50,000 on Wednesday, after Los Angeles county reported another 806 deaths during the winter surge.
The county, which has a quarter of the state’s 40 million residents, said the deaths mainly occurred between 3 December and 3 February. The department of public health identified them after going through death records that were backlogged by the sheer volume of the surge’s toll.
Continue reading...Water Act proposes injection of federal dollars to overhaul ageing infrastructure, create jobs and address inequalities
Democratic lawmakers and advocates are urging Joe Biden to back legislation proposing unprecedented investment in America’s ailing water infrastructure amid the country’s worst crisis in decades that has left millions of people without access to clean, safe, affordable water.
Continue reading...Lineup at annual gathering features former president’s allies – and Trump himself – suggesting his dominance is undiminished by his election loss
Ronald Solomon spent five days making the 2,300-mile drive from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Orlando, Florida, where he will sell about 75 different hat designs, 15 types of flag, 10 T-shirt designs and a range of eight face masks.
Solomon is the president of the Maga Mall, a retailer of Donald Trump and “Make America great again” merchandise. Undeterred by the former president’s 2020 election defeat and disgrace, he expects to do brisk business when the biggest annual gathering of grassroots conservatives opens on Thursday.
Continue reading...It was a spring afternoon in 1955 when a teenager’s spontaneous act of defiance changed US history. Why did it take 40 years for her to get any credit?
It was 2 March 1955, and an unusually humid spring day when students at Booker T Washington high school, a segregated school in the heart of the Jim Crow south, had been let off early to make their way home. A group boarded a segregated public bus, which wound through segregated neighbourhoods gradually filling up with passengers.
A 15-year-old gifted Black student, with aspirations to become a civil rights attorney, took a window seat near the exit door. She gazed outdoors until the white driver instructed her to give up her seat for a white passenger standing nearby.
Continue reading...Move undoes actions that blocked many immigrants from entering the US and sought to cut funding to cities Trump deemed ‘lawless’
Joe Biden has formally reversed a series of executive actions taken by Donald Trump, including a proclamation that blocked many green card applicants from entering the United States.
Continue reading...Alex García from Honduras sought sanctuary in Missouri church in 2017 under threat of removal from US by Trump administration
After three and a half years living inside a Missouri church to avoid deportation, a Honduran man has finally stepped outside, following a promise from Joe Biden’s administration to let him be.
Alex García, a married father of five, was slated for removal from the US in 2017, the first year of Donald Trump’s administration. Days before he would have been deported, Christ Church United Church of Christ in the St Louis suburb of Maplewood offered sanctuary.
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Joe Biden is meeting with a bipartisan group of Congress members to discuss improving US supply chains to better prepare for future crises.
“The last year has shown some of the vulnerability we have with some of the supply chains, including the PPE we needed badly but had to go abroad to get,” Biden told reporters at the start of the meeting.
Biden, meeting in Oval with members of Congress about supply chain problems, including a shortage of computer chips for the autos industry, says it’s causing some production lines to slow down and “people might be laid off.” pic.twitter.com/nHNN2CofN5
Congresswoman Deb Haaland, Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the interior department, faced more pointed questions from Republicans during her second confirmation hearing today.
Republican Senator John Barrasso pressed Haaland, who would be the first Native American cabinet secretary if confirmed, on her past statements against fracking on public lands.
Continue reading...Canadians voice suspicions over palm oil, raising questions over transparency in a powerful industry
It began with an innocent question on Twitter: was butter in Canada becoming more difficult to spread?
“My butter just seemed harder. It was during a very hot period and I noticed it wasn’t behaving right,” said Sylvain Charlebois, a professor of food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University who posted the tweet. “But I thought I was the only one experiencing this.”
Continue reading...President Biden to call King Salman as his administration prepare to release intelligence report expected to implicate crown prince
Joe Biden is expected to call Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, as his administration prepares to release a declassified intelligence report that many experts expect will name the royal’s son and heir as complicit in the grisly murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
The White House confirmed on Wednesday that Biden’s call to the 85-year-old ruler would take place “soon” and that the declassified report on Khashoggi’s murder was being readied for release. Biden is insisting that he speak only to the king.
Continue reading...Rightly, a digital platform for conservatives, goes down awkwardly in Qatari-funded news organisation
Al Jazeera’s surprise decision to launch a digital platform for conservatives in the US has left many within the Qatar-based news organisation dumbfounded and confused, staff have told the Guardian.
The network has announced the launch of Rightly, a platform that will host programmes and produce online content aimed at “audiences currently underrepresented in today’s media environment”, in this case right-of-centre Americans.
Continue reading...A senior adviser to Democrat Joe Biden in his campaign for president believed “Covid is the best thing that ever happened to him”, a new book reports.
Related: Ruling on Trump tax records could be costliest defeat of his losing streak
Continue reading...After 139 years at 807 Franklin Street in San Francisco, a two-storey Victorian house has a new address. The green home with large windows and a brown front door was loaded on to giant dollies and moved to a location six blocks away on Sunday. Onlookers lined the sidewalks to snap photos as the structure rolled – at a top speed of 1mph – to 635 Fulton Street
Villages in southern Afghanistan have become frontline of conflict as peace talks stall and uncertainty surrounds US withdrawal
The people who lived in Spairwan village spent two days huddled in their homes, besieged by fighting, before the Taliban came and told them all to leave the area. Qayoom and his family were among 10,000 families pushed out of their homes as government and Taliban forces battled for territory in southern Afghanistan last month.
Qayoom found his new home was to be a couple of large sheets propped up over cold, bare earth, a shelter among many others in a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) on the outskirts of Kandahar city. But the shelter barely checks the icy blasts of bitter winter winds.
Continue reading...This weekend, the city moved a Victorian house six blocks – a practice that has continued for more than a century
Hundreds of San Franciscans lined the streets on Sunday – phones drawn and ready – to glimpse a unique procession slowly making its way through the city. “Ladies and gentlemen, please stand on the sidewalk,” a police speaker blared. “There’s a house coming down the street.”
The two-story, 5,170-sq-ft green Victorian, known as the Englander House, had spent more than a century in the heart of San Francisco. But for years it stood vacant and fell into disrepair, sandwiched behind a gas station and loomed over by new apartment buildings. The city, which suffers from a housing shortage, was ready to build a 48-unit building in its place.
Continue reading...The co-founder of the City Lights Bookstore had global stature but remained a neighborhood fixture
By early afternoon, a small memorial of flowers and a can of Pabst had begun to accumulate outside the door of City Lights Books, to commemorate the death of its co-founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
And by the evening, a vigil for Ferlinghetti, one of the last living links to the Beat generation, was being held in the adjacent Jack Kerouac Alley, a tiny side street that separates the bookstore – a tourist attraction and official city landmark for decades – from the celebrated Beat hangout Vesuvio Cafe.
Continue reading...Canadian PM congratulates US president on rejoining Paris accord, saying ‘it’s nice when the Americans are not pulling out all the references to climate change’
Justin Trudeau has praised Joe Biden for rejoining the Paris climate accord during their first bilateral meeting, saying: “US leadership has been sorely missed over the past years.”
The Canadian prime minister added: “And I have to say as we were preparing the joint rollout of the communique on this, it’s nice when the Americans are not pulling out all the references to climate change and instead adding them in.”
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