Police say Tiger Woods ‘lucky to be alive’ after car crash in California

  • 45-year-old undergoes surgery after crash in suburb of LA
  • Reports say golfer suffered compound fractures to legs

Tiger Woods has been taken to hospital with serious injuries to both legs after a car accident, with a Los Angeles police officer saying the golfer is “very fortunate” to have survived.

Carlos Gonzalez, the first LA county deputy to respond to the scene, added that Woods was “calm and lucid” despite being trapped inside his vehicle. Woods was removed from the crash by firefighters, and his vehicle suffered “major damage”.

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Ghislaine Maxwell offers to renounce foreign citizenship in exchange for bail

The British socialite charged with aiding Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse has been denied bail twice since being arrested in July

Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite charged with aiding Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse, has offered to renounce her UK and French citizenship in an attempt to secure bail.

The offer to surrender her foreign citizenship is the latest attempt by Maxwell’s lawyers to secure bail for their client. Maxwell, 59, has been denied bail twice, with a judge deeming her to be a flight risk.

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El Chapo’s wife helped him run drug empire from jail, US court hears

Emma Coronel is ‘not a big fish’, experts say, but indictment accuses her of assisting dramatic jailbreak in 2015

The wife of the world’s most notorious drug cartel boss, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, has appeared in court charged with helping him run his drug empire from jail, a day after she was arrested at Washington’s international airport.

Emma Coronel Aispuro, a 31-year-old Mexican-American who married the drug kingpin in 2007 after he spotted her in a beauty pageant, is also accused of helping organise her husband’s breathtaking jailbreak in 2015, which involved a mile-long tunnel leading from his prison shower and a motorbike adapted to run on rails from one end to the other.

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Capitol mob ‘came prepared for war’, US Senate hears testimony – video

The former Capitol police chief, Steven Sund, said during a joint hearing on security failures that the insurrectionists during the 6 January attack 'came prepared for war'.

Senators investigating the attack on the US Capitol last month heard testimony on training and equipping the Capitol police as the former police chief of that department and other security officials testified publicly for the first time Tuesday.

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US Capitol rioters ‘came prepared for war’, Senate hears in testimony

First congressional hearing on attack comes day after Merrick Garland said he would expand investigation into 6 January assault

Testifying on Tuesday in the first congressional hearing on the US Capitol attack, the chief of Capitol police who resigned over the riot said the pro-Trump mob which stormed the building “came prepared for war”.

Related: Ruling on Trump tax records could be costliest defeat of his losing streak

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‘We’re risking our lives’: California’s slow vaccine rollout leaves essential workers exposed

Millions who cannot afford to stay home still lack access to inoculation, even as their work puts them in harm’s way

Pharmacy workers helping maskless customers. Uber drivers transporting coughing passengers. Janitors cleaning contaminated workspaces.

Amid California’s slow Covid-19 vaccine rollout, millions of essential workers in high-exposure jobs are still waiting to get the life-saving doses, with many uncertain when or how they will get access.

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Coronavirus live news: Fauci says political divide added to ‘stunning’ US deaths; Italy ‘misled’ WHO

Syria approves Sputnik vaccine; UK government eyes return to normal by end of June; Fauci says political divide contributed to ‘stunning’ US deaths

Here are some of the key development in the last few hours.

The Philippines will let thousands of its healthcare workers, mostly nurses, take up jobs in Britain and Germany if the two countries agree to donate much-needed coronavirus vaccines, a senior official said on Tuesday.

Reuters reports that the Philippines, which has among Asia’s highest number of coronavirus cases, has relaxed a ban on deploying its healthcare workers overseas, but still limits the number of medical professionals leaving the country to 5,000 a year.

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My Brother’s Keeper: a former Guantánamo detainee, his guard and their unlikely friendship – video

Mohamedou Ould Salahi and one of his former guards, Steve Wood, reunite in Mauritania 13 years after last seeing each other, rekindling an unlikely relationship that profoundly changed their lives.

Mohamedou was a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay for 14 years. During his incarceration he was subjected to torture and solitary confinement, but never charged with a crime. His memoir, Guantánamo Diary, became an international bestseller and was adapted into the film, The Mauritanian, starring Tahar Rahim and Jodie Foster.

My Brother's Keeper is BAFTA longlisted for British Short Film 2021.

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Ruling on Trump tax records could be costliest defeat of his losing streak

Analysis: The US supreme court has rejected an attempt to block a subpoena from New York where the ex-president’s business affairs are under investigation

Donald Trump used to promise his supporters that they would be winning so much, they would get sick and tired of winning. But the former US president is now on a seemingly endless losing streak.

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Denver plane engine fire consistent with metal fatigue in fan blade, say investigators

US reveals preliminary results of inquiry into Pratt & Whitney engine fire that led to grounding of dozens of Boeing 777s around the world

Metal fatigue in the fan blades may have been behind the engine failure of a Boeing jet in Denver at the weekend, the US National Transportation Safety Board has said.

The Pratt & Whitney engine caught fire shortly after take off on a United Airlines Boeing 777-200, during a flight from Denver to Honolulu, with 231 passengers and 10 crew onboard. Pilots issued a mayday call and returned to Denver.

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Biden on reaching 500,000 US Covid deaths: ‘We must not become numb to the sorrow’

In a somber address, the president urged Americans to overcome their political divides and follow health guidelines


In a somber address to the nation as the US surpassed half a million coronavirus deaths on Monday, Joe Biden urged the country to unify in its battle against the virus.

“I ask all Americans to remember those we lost and those we left behind. But as we all remember, I also ask us to act, to remain vigilant, to stay socially distanced, to mask up, get vaccinated when it’s your turn,” the president said in his address from the White House.

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Emma Coronel, wife of El Chapo, arrested on drug trafficking charges

Joint US-Mexican citizen has also been charged with conspiring to help arrange her husband’s escape from prison in 2015

Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Mexico’s most notorious cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, has been arrested in Virginia on drug trafficking charges.

In a statement released on Monday, the US justice department said that Coronel, 31 – who is a joint US-Mexican citizen – was arrested at Dulles international airport and was scheduled to make her initial appearance in federal court on Tuesday via video conference.

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America’s half a million Covid deaths a stark reminder of challenges for Biden

Analysis: the president has ambitious plans to halt a public health crisis his predecessor wrongly claimed would simply disappear

Exactly one year after the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed in the United States, Joe Biden was sworn in as president, inheriting the worst public health disaster since the flu pandemic of 1918. In the days that followed, Biden pledged a “full-scale, wartime” effort to combat the virus, even as he braced a disease-weary nation for its darkest chapter yet.

“Things are going to continue to get worse before they get better,” Biden said at the time, offering a dire forecast. The national death toll, he warned, could exceed half a million by the end of February.

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US Covid death toll expected to reach half a million within 24 hours – live

The supreme court has rejected Donald Trump’s request to block New York prosecutors from gaining access to his tax returns.

In a one-sentence unsigned order, the court ruled that it would not step in to prevent the Manhattan district attorney’s office from obtaining eight years of Trump’s financial documents from his accounting firm.

The work continues.

The Senate judiciary committee has now started the confirmation hearing for Merrick Garland, Joe Biden’s nominee for attorney general.

Garland, a federal judge, is best known as Barack Obama’s supreme court nominee in 2016, who never received a hearing because Republican leader Mitch McConnell wanted to keep the seat open until after the presidential election. (The seat was eventually filled by Neil Gorsuch.)

Related: Merrick Garland vows to target white supremacists as attorney general

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Woody Allen denies claims in Allen v Farrow HBO documentary

The film-maker and wife Soon-Yi Previn claim film is ‘hatchet job riddled with falsehoods’ on abuse allegations

Woody Allen has rebutted renewed allegations, in the HBO documentary Allen v Farrow, that he sexually assaulted his daughter Dylan in 1992, calling the series “a hatchet job riddled with falsehoods”.

In a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, said that film-makers Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick had “spent years surreptitiously collaborating with the Farrows and their enablers to put together a hatchet job riddled with falsehoods”.

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Trump to tell CPAC he is Republican ‘presumptive 2024 nominee’ – report

Unnamed source tells news site Axios Trump’s speech to the rightwing event will have the message ‘I’m still in charge’

Donald Trump will reportedly tell the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida this week he is the man to drain the Washington swamp – as Republicans’ “presumptive 2024 nominee”.

Related: Republicans failing to toe the Trumpist line feel wrath of their state parties

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Republicans aim to purge anti-Trump officials from state parties in sign of battles ahead

Analysis: members of Senate and House are targets but some doubt wisdom of enforcing fealty to the one-term president

Republican state parties have been lashing out at elected officials of their own party in a sign of ongoing fealty to Donald Trump.

The moves by state party officials are highly unusual and an indication of the heated internal battles the Republican party is facing in the months and years to come as it struggles with the legacy of its capture by Trump, his allies and his loyal supporters.

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Coronavirus live news: German pupils start returning to kindergartens; Mumbai imposes fresh restrictions

Berlin among 10 regions to start return to schooling; rises in cases in India’s worst-affected region fuels fears of new wave

The Italian government on Monday extended a ban on non-essential travel between the country’s 20 regions until 27 March as it looks to slow the spread of highly contagious coronavirus variants.

Reuters reports:

The ban on travel between regions was introduced just before Christmas and had been due to expire on 25 February, but officials fear a relaxation of restrictions could lead to a new surge in cases, driven by the so-called “British” variant.

In its first decisions on Covid-19, prime minister Mario Draghi’s new cabinet also extended restrictions on visiting family and friends, with no more than two adults allowed into another person’s home at the same time.

Chile is streaking ahead of the rest of Latin America in its campaign to vaccinate its population against coronavirus, which the Andean country’s leaders hope can help not only beat back the virus but also unite the nation.

Reuters reports:

As of 18 February the copper-producing country had given over 2.5m doses of vaccine, enough for around one shot for 12 in every hundred people, according to Our World in Data. It could fully vaccinate 10% of its population with two doses per person in just over 20 days at its current rate, Reuters data show.

That puts it in the top 10 globally of larger countries and compares to 172 days for Brazil and over 1,000 days for Mexico, which has faced delays in its inoculation program.

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Boeing 777s grounded by airlines after FAA issues emergency order

Engine failure of a United Airlines Boeing prompts airlines in US and Japan to ground dozens of 777s

Boeing 777s have been grounded in the US and Japan after the US Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency airworthiness directive following a catastrophic engine failure on one of the planes in Denver on Saturday.

United Airlines said it was grounding all 24 of its Boeing 777s in active duty after one of its Boeing 777-200s had to make an emergency landing at the weekend, scattering engine debris across the ground.

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