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Today — 18 May 2024Main stream

Trump trial judge rebuked for donations to Democrat-aligned groups in 2020

18 May 2024 at 10:00

Ex-president’s legal team sure to make hay out of Juan Merchan’s $35 gift to Biden for President and anti-Republican groups

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money campaign finance trial in New York has been cautioned by a state ethics panel over two small donations made to Democrat-aligned groups in 2020.

The caution is likely to be seized on by Trump and his lawyers as evidence of his claims that the New York trial, now entering its fourth week, has been unfairly adjudicated by Judge Juan Merchan along partisan political lines.

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© Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP

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© Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP

‘She’s in the pantheon now’: Kristi Noem and the politicians who hit self-destruct

18 May 2024 at 09:00

The dog-killing South Dakota governor’s VP hopes are in tatters. But she’s not the first politician to flame out with an own goal

She could have been a contender. But then she wrote a book. And suddenly Kristi Noem was caught like a rabbit – or a rambunctious puppy – in the headlights.

The governor of South Dakota found herself insisting that a false claim she met the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un had been put in her book by accident. Wait, said Elizabeth Vargas of NewsNation, you recorded the whole audiobook version and read this passage out loud. Why didn’t you take it out then?

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Man arrested in connection with assault on actor Steve Buscemi

18 May 2024 at 08:53

New York actor was taken to hospital after a stranger punched him in the face while he was walking in Manhattan on 8 May

A man wanted in connection with the random attack on actor Steve Buscemi on a New York City street earlier this month was arrested on an assault charge on Friday, police said.

The 66-year-old star of Boardwalk Empire and Fargo was walking in midtown Manhattan on 8 May when a stranger punched him in the face, city police said. He was taken to a hospital with bruising, swelling and bleeding to his left eye, but was otherwise OK, his publicist said at the time.

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© Photograph: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

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© Photograph: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Red flag? Samuel Alito scandal casts further doubt on supreme court’s impartiality

18 May 2024 at 07:00

The court will play a crucial role in November’s election. Alito’s pro-Trump flag adds fuel to an already raging ethics debate

With less than six months to go before America chooses its next president, the US supreme court finds itself in a profoundly unenviable position: not only has it been drawn into the thick of a volatile election, but swirling ethical scandals have cast doubt on its impartiality.

The US supreme court’s discomfort worsened dramatically on Thursday night when the New York Times published a photograph of an upside-down American flag being flown outside the Alexandria, Virginia, home of the hard-right justice Samuel Alito. The photo was taken on 17 January 2021, days after the insurrection at the US Capitol and days before Joe Biden’s inauguration.

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© Photograph: Douglas Rissing/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Douglas Rissing/Getty Images

Master of litters: cat named Max given honorary degree by US university

18 May 2024 at 06:00

Vermont State University confers doctorate in ‘litter-ature’ upon tabby for being keen hunter of mice and beloved figure on campus

Men named Max have won the Nobel prize (Planck), the Oscar for best actor (Schell), and multiple Formula One world championships (Verstappen).

A cat in the US named Max now joins those lofty ranks, having earned a doctorate in “litter-ature” when Vermont State University bestowed an honorary degree on the campus-dwelling tabby in recognition of his friendliness, a gesture which quickly achieved virality in corners of the internet dedicated to spotlighting light-hearted news.

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© Photograph: Rob Franklin/AP

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© Photograph: Rob Franklin/AP

Will Michael Cohen’s testimony sway jurors in Trump’s hush-money trial?

18 May 2024 at 06:00

Trump’s former fixer gave damning testimony – and he’ll return to the stand on Monday as the trial moves towards a close

Donald Trump’s criminal trial is drawing to a close, with two looming questions: what will the jury decide, and how will America react?

After weeks of testimony from witnesses including the porn star Stormy Daniels, National Enquirer boss David Pecker and former senior Trump aide Hope Hicks, the trial came to an inflection point this week with its star witness. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer and attorney who has since turned into a bellicose critic of his old boss, was on the stand all three days court was in session this week. He delivered damning testimony – then faced a tough if uneven grilling from Trump’s team.

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© Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters

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© Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters

Yesterday — 17 May 2024Main stream

Colorado voters to decide on abortion rights after measure qualifies for ballot

17 May 2024 at 17:49

Supporters gather enough valid signatures to put measure – that would enshrine abortion rights into constitution – on to ballot

Voters in Colorado will have a say on abortion rights this fall after supporters collected enough valid signatures to put a measure on the ballot, part of a national push to pose abortion rights questions to voters since the US supreme court removed the nationwide right to abortion.

The Colorado measure officially made the ballot on Friday and would enshrine abortion rights into the constitution in a state which already allows abortion at all stages of pregnancy despite the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade.

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© Photograph: Jason Connolly/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Jason Connolly/AFP/Getty Images

Four US daycare workers charged with spiking children’s food with melatonin

17 May 2024 at 17:21

New Hampshire employees of day care arrested after six-month investigation and each face 10 charges of endangering children

Four New Hampshire daycare employees allegedly spiked children’s food with the sleep supplement melatonin and were arrested on Thursday.

The arrests stem from a November 2023 investigation at a daycare in Manchester, New Hampshire, about 30 minutes outside the state capital of Concord.

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© Composite: The Guardian/Manchester Police Department

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© Composite: The Guardian/Manchester Police Department

Supplies arrive in Gaza via new pier but land routes essential, says US aid chief

17 May 2024 at 17:20

Samantha Power says barely 100 trucks of aid a day enter Gaza, far less than 600 needed to address threat of famine

Humanitarian assistance has begun to arrive in Gaza along a US-made pier, but the US aid chief said the new sea corridor could not be a substitute for land crossings, and warned that deliveries of food and fuel entering Gaza had slowed to “dangerously low levels”.

The White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, confirmed on Friday that truckloads of humanitarian aid, including food from the United Arab Emirates, sent by ship from Cyprus, had been unloaded on the Gaza coast and handed over to the control of the UN.

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© Photograph: Reuters TV/Reuters

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© Photograph: Reuters TV/Reuters

Video shows Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs assaulting singer Cassie in 2016

17 May 2024 at 14:46

Hotel surveillance cameras at InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles captured incident Combs had vehemently denied

A newly released video shows Sean “Diddy” Combs manhandling and kicking singer Cassie Ventura – his former girlfriend – in plain view of hotel surveillance cameras in 2016, before the rapper, music producer and businessman rapidly settled a lawsuit that she brought against him this past November, according to footage exclusively obtained by CNN.

The video in question illustrates in the most graphic nature possible one of the beatings alleged and described in Ventura’s lawsuit, which Combs had vehemently denied.

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© Photograph: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Teen who texted 911 rescued after she was trafficked to California from Mexico

By: Maya Yang
17 May 2024 at 14:21

In texts received in Spanish and translated to English, the girl tried to describe her location, though she did not know where she was

Authorities rescued a 17-year old girl after she was trafficked to Ventura county, California, from Mexico two months ago and texted 911 for help.

On Thursday, the Ventura county sheriff’s office announced that on 9 May authorities rescued the girl after she sent messages to 911. The text message correspondence began with a call taker at a 911 communication center, according to the sheriff’s office, which added that the messages were received in Spanish and translated into English.

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

David DePape, who bludgeoned Nancy Pelosi’s husband, sentenced to 30 years

DePape, a rightwing conspiracy theorist, broke into the Pelosis’ San Francisco home in 2022 and hit Paul Pelosi with a hammer

David DePape, a rightwing conspiracy theorist who broke into Nancy Pelosi’s northern California home in 2022 and bludgeoned her husband with a hammer, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

A federal jury convicted him of attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on the immediate family member of a federal official in November 2023, just over a year after the attack in the former House speaker’s San Francisco home.

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© Photograph: Arthur Dong/EPA

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© Photograph: Arthur Dong/EPA

Trump aides plot deportation effort inspired by UK Rwanda plan – report

Wall Street Journal notes that British example may not be a good one, as ‘plan hasn’t gone into effect yet ‘amid legal challenges’

Aides to Donald Trump working to transform US immigration policy should he return to power are pursuing goals including “the largest mass deportation in US history” while “part-inspired” by the UK government’s deal to ship asylum seekers to Rwanda, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Conservative UK government reached an agreement with the African country in 2022. Since then, however, the Rwanda policy has proved politically controversial, legally vulnerable, highly inefficient and vastly expensive.

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© Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Beware the Biden factor, Keir Starmer: you can govern well and still risk losing the country | Jonathan Freedland

17 May 2024 at 12:26

Politics is about achieving things and telling a compelling story. But neither the president – nor Starmer – can match Trump’s gift for narrative

The smile was the giveaway. Asked whether he was “just a copycat” of Tony Blair at the launch of his Blair-style pledge card on Thursday, Keir Starmer positively glowed. He was delighted with the comparison, which the entire exercise was surely designed to encourage. Blair “won three elections in a row”, Starmer said, beaming. Of course, he’s thrilled to be likened to a serial winner. And yet the more apt parallel is also a cautionary one. It’s not with Starmer’s long-ago predecessor, but with his would-be counterpart across the Atlantic: Joe Biden.

It’s natural that the sight of a Labour leader, a lawyer from north London, on course for Downing Street after a long era of Tory rule, would have people digging out the Oasis CDs and turning back the clock to 1997: Labour election victories are a rare enough commodity to prompt strong memories. But, as many veterans of that period are quick to point out, the circumstances of 2024 are very different. The UK economy was humming then and it’s parlous now. Optimism filled the air then, while too few believe genuine change is even possible now. And politics tended to be about material matters then, tax and public services, rather than dominated by polarising cultural wars as it is now.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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© Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

The FBI investigated David Copperfield for two years. The claim that he was ‘exonerated’ was widely embraced. Was he?

A woman alleged that the magician sexually assaulted her on his private island in 2007. His lawyers said he was falsely accused

Lacey Carroll headed straight to Harborview medical center after touching down in Seattle following a three-day stay on David Copperfield’s private island in the Bahamas. It was August 2007 and – according to police records – she had gone to get medical treatment for sexual assault.

The 20-year-old later alleged to Seattle police and in court filings that she had embarked on the long journey to Musha Cay – the islands in the Bahamas that Copperfield reportedly bought for $50m in 2006 – because she had been offered a chance to do promotional work and some modeling there along with a team of others. Instead, she claimed, she found herself alone with Copperfield and a few members of his staff. Copperfield, she alleged, raped and assaulted her multiple times.

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© Photograph: AP

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© Photograph: AP

Biden and Trump are betting on debates to help magnify the other’s weaknesses

17 May 2024 at 10:31

Trump will look to again cast Biden as greatly diminished while Biden will aim to remind voters why they rejected Trump in 2020

It’s game on for a pair of presidential debates between two unpopular candidates most Americans wish weren’t running for the nation’s highest office.

In a ratatat social media exchange on Wednesday, Joe Biden and Donald Trump agreed to participate in two debates on 27 June, hosted by CNN, and on 10 September, hosted by ABC.

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© Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

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© Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

‘I’m the new Oppenheimer!’: my soul-destroying day at Palantir’s first-ever AI warfare conference

17 May 2024 at 10:00

America’s military-industrial complex took center stage at AI Expo for National Competitiveness, where a fire-breathing panel set the tone

On 7 and 8 May in Washington DC, the city’s biggest convention hall welcomed America’s military-industrial complex, its top technology companies and its most outspoken justifiers of war crimes. Of course, that’s not how they would describe it.

It was the inaugural “AI Expo for National Competitiveness”, hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project – better known as the “techno-economic” thinktank created by the former Google CEO and current billionaire Eric Schmidt. The conference’s lead sponsor was Palantir, a software company co-founded by Peter Thiel that’s best known for inspiring 2019 protests against its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) at the height of Trump’s family separation policy. Currently, Palantir is supplying some of its AI products to the Israel Defense Forces.

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© Photograph: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Palantir

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© Photograph: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Palantir

Alito urged to recuse himself from Trump cases over reports of upside-down US flag outside his house – live

Senate judiciary committee chair says supreme court justice biased after report says flag linked to Trump’s baseless 2020 election fraud claim was flying outside his house

The Hawaii Democratic senator Brian Schatz also had strong words for Samuel Alito after the New York Times reported that a flag associated with Donald Trump’s election lies flew outside his house:

On X, Alicia Bannon, the director of the judiciary program at the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice, warned that Samuel Alito’s display of a flag associated with Donald Trump’s election lies was “a five-alarm fire”:

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© Photograph: Reuters

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© Photograph: Reuters

Have I Got News for You to launch in the US in autumn

Adaptation of hit comedy quiz will begin airing on CNN on Saturday nights to coincide with presidential election

Arch, ironic and understated, Have I Got News for You is the quintessential British comedy quiz, but its creators are hoping a US version of the show can translate its particular brand of political humour across the Atlantic.

A US adaptation of the show will be broadcast by CNN in the autumn, to coincide with the presidential election. It will hit screens on Saturday nights – part of a double-bill with Bill Maher’s Real Time.

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© Photograph: Ray Burmistan/Hat Trick Productions/PA

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© Photograph: Ray Burmistan/Hat Trick Productions/PA

Digested week: When is the summer of dumpy women who can’t wear skirts? | Lucy Mangan

17 May 2024 at 07:53

I thought this would finally be the year – but no. Oh well, I can’t find my way from my house anyway

Nice weather is here! The sun is out and the papers and the internet are filling with their annual offers of help. This is my year, at last – I can feel it! The Summer Style Dilemmas Solved are finally going to work for me! I peruse them eagerly, as I have done for the last 30 years and more, hope undimmed in my increasingly mottled and scraggy breast. But no – no, my hopes are quickly dashed. One again, this year, it seems that my Summer Style Dilemmas can only be solved by losing half my body weight and/or going back in time and making sure one of my parents mates with a gazelle instead.

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© Photograph: Hollie Adams/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Hollie Adams/Getty Images

‘Magic David called’: David Copperfield repeatedly contacted Jeffrey Epstein

Phone messages and meetings suggest a friendship between Copperfield and the disgraced financier. His lawyers deny it

The message pads appear a little faded, but the handwriting on the spiral-bound notebooks is clear enough.

Staff at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion in Florida’s Palm Beach used the pads to jot down the names of the people who had called the financier, and between 2004 and 2005, one well-known person appeared to be calling persistently.

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© Composite: Getty Images

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© Composite: Getty Images

Trump-linked dark-money group spent $90m on racist and transphobic ads in 2022, records show

Revealed: Citizens for Sanity was one of top political spenders last election cycle and is back for 2024 with more extreme messaging

A dark money group with ties to Trump’s inner circle dropped more than $90m on ads described as vile, racist and transphobic in the second half of 2022 alone, new tax records obtained by Documented and the Guardian reveal. The staggering sum makes the newly created group, which is based out of the nerve center for the Maga movement, one of the top political spenders in the last election cycle, as it now appears to gear up to influence voters with violent, bigoted messaging in 2024.

The group, called Citizens for Sanity, formed in mid-2022, and quickly drew attention as it flooded the airwaves in battleground states and swing districts with deeply offensive and often misleading ads. Some ads targeted LGBTQ+ rights and attacked “Biden and his radical allies” for supporting “the woke left’s war on girls’ sports” and the “woke war on our children”. Others pictured Latino immigrants and characterized them as criminals “draining your paychecks, wrecking your schools, ruining your hospitals [and] threatening your family”, declaring that “Joe Biden and the Democrats have erased our southern border”.

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© Photograph: Alex Wroblewski/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Alex Wroblewski/AFP/Getty Images

Trump to speak at NRA convention as US gun-safety groups sound alarm

17 May 2024 at 07:00

Fears grow that former president will follow through on threat to roll back gun-control regulations if he wins White House

When Donald Trump last addressed members of the National Rifle Association in February, he pitched himself as a paragon of inaction on gun violence, vowing to again march in lockstep with the gun rights group if he is reelected in November.

“During my four years, nothing happened. And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield,” Trump said at the NRA’s Great American Outdoor Show then. “When I’m re-elected, every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated.”

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© Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

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© Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

Norman Finkelstein on Gaza, ‘from the river to the sea’ and political messaging: ‘We need to bring unity to this struggle’

17 May 2024 at 07:00

New York University professor Nikhil Singh interviews the political scientist and longtime critic of Israel after his speech at Columbia University

How do the messages and slogans adopted by social movements matter? In the 1960s, one of the simplest and most powerful slogans of the African American civil rights movement was: “Freedom now!” With that slogan, the movement indicated that Black demands exceeded a narrow reading of legal rights and protections. At the same time, it tapped into one of the most powerful keywords in the American political lexicon in a way that was immediately legible to a large, popular audience.

The occasion for the conversation below was a speech that the political scientist Norman Finkelstein gave at the Columbia University encampment protesting Israel’s war in Gaza. Finkelstein challenged students to think of the kind of messaging that might broaden their audience and build their movement. He questioned the slogan “Palestine will be free, from the river to sea” as mostly ineffective for these purposes, due to how it inflames fears among Israel’s supporters and gives fuel to arguments that pro-Palestinian protests on US university campuses are antisemitic and even “genocidal”.

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© Photograph: Katie Smith/Sipa USA via Alamy

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© Photograph: Katie Smith/Sipa USA via Alamy

The artist behind the short-lived portal linking New York and Dublin: ‘People got carried away’

17 May 2024 at 03:00

Benediktas Gylys admits he was surprised by the rowdy behavior that came from the exhibit connecting people in the two cities

The artist behind the controversial “Portal” art exhibit that visually linked New York and Dublin in real time, but was then closed due to rowdy and extreme behavior by the public using it, has admitted he was surprised by the reaction.

Benediktas Gylys also vowed to continue with his project, which has the aim of connecting people and communities all over the world and is hoped to reopen soon.

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© Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters

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© Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters

The Big Cigar review – proof that Hollywood can’t be trusted to tell the stories of Black radicals

17 May 2024 at 00:00

This drama about a fake movie fabricated to let Black Panther fugitive Huey P Newton flee to Cuba in the 70s not only dilutes the story of a Black leader – it centres the white characters. Eyes will roll

A few years back, in conversation with three Chicago-area Black Lives Matter activists, I brought up the then-forthcoming film Judas and the Black Messiah, starring Daniel Kaluuya as Fred Hampton, the deputy chairman of the Black Panther party in Illinois, who was assassinated by Chicago police, with help from the FBI, in 1969, aged 21. Were they excited to see this hometown hero brought to the big screen? Their collective eye-roll was so hard it nearly put a hole through the wall. “I mean, the CIA has a liaison office in Hollywood,” said one. “It’s impossible to go through that system and expect an authentic portrayal of an anticapitalist revolutionary.”

The Big Cigar is the latest attempt to pull off such a portrayal, regardless. It stars Moonlight’s André Holland as Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P Newton and tells the (sort of) true story of Newton’s 1974 flight to Cuba to escape a murder charge, with the help of Hollywood producer Bert Schneider (Alessandro Nivola) and an entirely fake movie codenamed The Big Cigar. It sounds similar to the plot of 2012 Oscar-winner Argo, because it is, and because both were originally optioned from magazine features written by the same hot-shot long-read reporter, Joshuah Bearman.

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© Photograph: Apple TV+

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© Photograph: Apple TV+

US teen with heart condition died after eating spicy tortilla chip, autopsy finds

16 May 2024 at 20:59

Tenth-grader who participated in social media challenge ingested too much chile pepper extract and died of cardiopulmonary arrest

A Massachusetts teen who participated in a spicy tortilla chip challenge on social media died from eating a large quantity of chile pepper extract and also had a congenital heart defect, according to autopsy results obtained by the Associated Press.

Harris Wolobah, a 10th grader from the city of Worcester, died on 1 September 2023 after eating the Paqui chip as part of the manufacturer’s “One Chip Challenge”.

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© Photograph: Steve LeBlanc/AP

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© Photograph: Steve LeBlanc/AP

Before yesterdayMain stream

Texas governor pardons man who killed Black Lives Matter protester in 2020

Greg Abbott on Thursday pardoned Daniel Perry, who has been serving a 25-year sentence since 2023 murder conviction

Governor Greg Abbott of Texas issued a full pardon on Thursday to a former US army sergeant convicted of murder for fatally shooting an armed demonstrator in 2020 during nationwide protests against police violence and racial injustice.

Abbott announced the pardon just minutes after the Texas board of pardons and paroles disclosed it had made a unanimous recommendation that Daniel Perry be pardoned and have his firearms rights restored. Perry has been held in state prison on a 25-year sentence since his conviction in 2023.

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© Photograph: Yi-Chin Lee/AP

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© Photograph: Yi-Chin Lee/AP

Biden asserts executive privilege to block release of special counsel interviews

House Republicans seek recordings of classified documents case interviews, in what Democrats call a ‘purely political’ move

Joe Biden asserted executive privilege to stop House Republicans obtaining recordings of his interviews with Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s retention of classified information after his time as a senator and as vice-president to Barack Obama.

In a letter reported by the New York Times and other outlets on Thursday, the White House counsel, Edward Siskel, told the Republican chairs of the House judiciary and oversight committees: “The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal – to chop them up, distort them and use them for partisan political purposes.

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© Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Michael Cohen accused of lying over phone call at Trump hush-money trial

16 May 2024 at 17:30

Former lawyer and fixer for Donald Trump is under fierce attacks on his credibility by the ex-president’s legal team

Donald Trump’s lawyer on Thursday attacked the core charge against the former president as he sought to undercut Michael Cohen, the former attorney whose $130,000 hush-money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels is at the heart of the criminal trial in New York.

The defense, led by the Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, had Cohen admit that technically Daniels entered into a legal contract to sell the rights of her story about a sexual encounter with Trump, apparently in an attempt to justify labelling the repayments as legal expenses.

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© Photograph: Andrés Kudacki/AP

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© Photograph: Andrés Kudacki/AP

Gaetz invokes Trump’s call to far-right Proud Boys at hush-money trial

Republican congressman travels to New York to support former president and says he is ‘standing back, and standing by’

Matt Gaetz echoed Donald Trump’s infamous remarks about the far-right Proud Boys on Thursday, as the Florida Republican congressman and other rightwing supporters of the former US presidentattended his criminal trial in Manhattan.

“Standing back, and standing by, Mr President,” Gaetz wrote on social media, with a photo of his group of supporters standing behind Trump outside the court where Trump is on trial on election subversion charges arising from hush-money payments to an adult film star during the 2016 campaign.

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© Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Sea otters use tools to open hard-shelled prey, saving their teeth, research reveals

The behavior, documented in footage from researcher Chris Law, is most seen in females and sheds light on the threatened species

Floating on its back in the waters of California’s Monterey Bay, a sea otter takes a shelled animal and strikes it against a rock sitting on its chest to break open the prey.

This behavior, documented in footage from researcher Chris Law, is seen in relatively few animals and allows the otter to access food without damaging its teeth. A new study, which will be published in the journal Science on Friday, sheds light on the threatened species’ tactics.

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© Photograph: Monterey Bay Aquarium

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© Photograph: Monterey Bay Aquarium

Leonora Carrington painting auctioned for £22.5m in record for UK-born female artist

Les Distractions de Dagobert was the surrealist’s ‘definitive masterpiece’, says Sotheby’s expert in New York

She was worshipped as a muse by renowned surrealists including André Breton and Max Ernst, but the Lancashire-born artist Leonora Carrington quickly shrugged off the label to achieve an unprecedented level of mastery and freedom in her own painting.

Now, on the 100th anniversary of Breton’s publication of the Surrealist Manifesto, Carrington has become the most valuable British-born female artist at auction after one of her paintings sold for more than £22.5m.

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© Photograph: Sarah Yenesel/EPA

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© Photograph: Sarah Yenesel/EPA

David Copperfield ‘was in my nightmares’: the women alleging sexual misconduct - video

A Guardian US investigation is reporting allegations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate behaviour by illusionist David Copperfield. Testimonies from two women, both of whom are portrayed by actors, describe their alleged experiences and the impact it had on their lives. Copperfield denies all of the allegations and has never been charged with criminal wrongdoing

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© Photograph: REX/Getty

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© Photograph: REX/Getty

Trump lawyer casts doubt on Cohen’s testimony about October 2016 call to Trump – live

Entire hush-money trial likely to succeed or fail on whether jurors believe Michael Cohen’s testimony

Judge Juan Merchan is on the bench and the court is in session.

Donald Trump has arrived in the courtroom for day 18 of his criminal trial.

Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican representative

Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican congresswoman

Eric Trump

Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump aide

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© Photograph: Andrés Kudacki/AP

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© Photograph: Andrés Kudacki/AP

Former teen models accuse magician David Copperfield of misconduct

Some allege harassment, one claims she was sexually assaulted. His lawyers deny the allegations

It was September 1991 in New York and the grand finale of Look of the Year, a prestigious modeling contest that had helped launch the careers of supermodels Cindy Crawford and Helena Christensen.

The celebrity magician David Copperfield, one of the judges, watched from the front row as 58 contestants paraded across the runway in their branded hot pink and sorbet yellow swimsuits. Nearly all the contestants were teenagers; some were as young as 14.

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© Photograph: Roberto Rabanne

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© Photograph: Roberto Rabanne

Washington is pushing policies to combat antisemitism. Critics say they could violate free speech

16 May 2024 at 08:00

In the wake of campus protests, some say proposals are part of of a broader effort to silence criticism of Israel

Against the backdrop of demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza on college campuses, the White House and Congress have announced a string of policies and commitments aimed at addressing what Joe Biden warned was a “ferocious surge of antisemitism” in the United States.

Antisemitism was on the rise in the US before Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. But the ensuing war has exacerbated the problem, with the law enforcement officials recording a spike in threats against Jewish Americans.

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© Photograph: John G Mabanglo/EPA

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© Photograph: John G Mabanglo/EPA

What’s up with ChatGPT’s new sexy persona? | Arwa Mahdawi

16 May 2024 at 06:15

OpenAI’s updated chatbot GPT-4o is weirdly flirtatious, coquettish and sounds like Scarlett Johansson in Her. Why?

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Arthur C Clarke famously said. And this could certainly be said of the impressive OpenAI update to ChatGPT, called GPT-4o, which was released on Monday. With the slight caveat that it felt a lot like the magician was a horny 12-year-old boy who had just watched the Spike Jonze movie Her.

If you aren’t up to speed on GPT-4o (the o stands for “omni”) it’s basically an all-singing, all-dancing, all-seeing version of the original chatbot. You can now interact with it the same way you’d interact with a human, rather than via text-based questions. It can give you advice, it can rate your jokes, it can describe your surroundings, it can banter with you. It sounds human. “It feels like AI from the movies,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a blog post on Monday. “Getting to human-level response times and expressiveness turns out to be a big change.”

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© Photograph: Warner Bros./Sportsphoto/Allstar

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© Photograph: Warner Bros./Sportsphoto/Allstar

EU investigates Facebook owner Meta over child safety and mental health concerns

16 May 2024 at 07:16

Company’s social media platforms, which also include Instagram, may have addictive effects, says European Commission

Business live – latest updates

The European Commission has opened an investigation into the owner of Facebook and Instagram over concerns that the platforms are creating addictive behaviour among children and damaging mental health.

The EU executive said Meta may have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA), a landmark law passed by the bloc last summer that makes digital companies large and small liable for disinformation, shopping scams, child abuse and other online harms.

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© Photograph: Chesnot/Getty

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© Photograph: Chesnot/Getty

I spent years studying American communism. Here’s what I learned | Maurice Isserman

16 May 2024 at 06:00

I was struck by the mystery of why so many intelligent and admirable people remained so loyal for so long to a fundamentally flawed movement

I’ll leave it to future historians to puzzle out the reasons why, but in the second decade of the 21st century, in the unlikely setting of the most thoroughly capitalist country in world history, large numbers of Americans, mostly young, displayed a new interest in socialist ideas, values and policy proposals, and in turn in the often neglected history of socialism and communism in the United States.

Having written three books early in my scholarly career dealing with one or another aspect of the tangled history of American communism, the last appearing in 1990, I figured I’d said all I had to say on the subject, and turned to other topics. Enough time had passed by the time of the 2010s socialist revival that the several score ageing communists and ex-communists whom I’d interviewed for my early books were now long dead.

Maurice Isserman teaches history at Hamilton College. His most recent book is Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism

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© Photograph: George Rinhart/Corbis/Getty Images

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© Photograph: George Rinhart/Corbis/Getty Images

It’s not pivotal that if the Donald is convicted Michael Cohen can sell his ‘Trump in jail’ T-shirts – but it’s not nothing | Emma Brockes

16 May 2024 at 06:00

It has been fun watching the former president’s disreputable former lawyer coolly damn his one-time mentor in court

There’s no justifying it, but I have a sneaky soft spot for Michael Cohen, the former lawyer, fixer and – as Fox News is keen to remind us – “ex-con” testifying against Donald Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush-money trial. Coming hard on the heels of Daniels’ explosive appearance last week, Cohen’s testimony could have been anticlimactic. Not so!

The 57-year-old, navigating a tricky line between languid, affable and sheepish, met tough questioning by Trump’s lawyers with the calmness of a man with nothing to lose and a lot of unfinished business to get through. Cohen, you’ll remember, literally did time for those hush-money payments (among other things), so it’s fair to say he might have a few scores to settle.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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© Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

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© Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Alleged ‘deal’ offer from Trump to big oil could save industry $110bn, study finds

Ex-president at Mar-a-Lago last month hosted more than 20 executives, including from Chevron, Exxon and Occidental

A “deal” allegedly offered by Donald Trump to big-oil executives as he sought $1bn in campaign donations could save the industry $110bn in tax breaks if he returns to the White House, an analysis suggests.

The fundraising dinner held last month at Mar-a-Lago with more than 20 executives, including from Chevron, Exxon and Occidental Petroleum, reportedly involved Trump asking for large campaign contributions and promising, if elected, to remove barriers to drilling, scrap a pause on gas exports, and reverse new rules aimed at cutting car pollution.

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© Photograph: Jon Cherry/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Jon Cherry/Getty Images

Biden should have pardoned Trump on federal charges, Mitt Romney says

Republican senator tells MSNBC that ‘frankly, the country doesn’t want to have to go through prosecuting a former president’

Joe Biden should have pardoned Donald Trump on all federal criminal charges the moment they were announced, the Utah senator and former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said.

“Had I been President Biden,” Romney said, “when the justice department brought out indictments, I would have immediately pardoned him. I’d have pardoned President Trump.”

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© Photograph: Sipa US/Alamy

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© Photograph: Sipa US/Alamy

BTK serial killer investigation: new clue unlocks missing 16-year-old girl’s name

15 May 2024 at 16:55

After receiving a word puzzle, Oklahoma police say they’re closer to identifying another victim of murderer Dennis Rader

A newly re-examined word puzzle sent to a Kansas City TV station in 2004 could strengthen leads in a cold-case investigation into the disappearance of a 16-year-old girl in Oklahoma and link it to the convicted serial killer Dennis Rader, nicknamed BTK for “bind, torture, kill”.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Osage county sheriff Eddie Virden said he had received a package from a woman in April containing a crossword puzzle Rader allegedly used to taunt investigators.

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© Photograph: National Missing and Unidentified Person System

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© Photograph: National Missing and Unidentified Person System

Two years after Buffalo mass shooting, an art exhibit focuses on the victims

15 May 2024 at 16:21

A few months after 14 May 2022, a curator sought out three local artists. The resulting exhibition, Before and After Again, is thought to be the first of its kind

Two years ago, a white supremacist drove 200 miles to Buffalo, New York, and opened fire in a grocery store in the city’s predominantly Black East Side neighborhood, killing 10 people and injuring three.

Though the Tops Friendly Markets where the racist mass shooting took place has been remodeled, and most of the country has forgotten about the violence that occurred on 14 May 2022, Buffalo’s East Side is forever changed.

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© Photograph: Buffalo AKG Art Museum/Photo: Amanda Smith for the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

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© Photograph: Buffalo AKG Art Museum/Photo: Amanda Smith for the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump agree to two US presidential debates

15 May 2024 at 13:37

Both candidates agreed upon two dates for debates: 27 June and 10 September, and Trump also posted about a third date in October

Shortly after the Biden-Harris re-election campaign proposed two TV debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump ahead of November’s presidential vote, both men have agreed upon two debate dates: 27 June and 10 September.

CNN confirmed that it would host the first debate of 2024 on that date at 9pm ET from the crucial battleground state of Georgia.

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© Photograph: Reuters

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© Photograph: Reuters

We’re in a pivotal moment in American history. We cannot retreat | Bernie Sanders

15 May 2024 at 13:30

Clearly, our job is not just to re-elect Biden. It’s much more than that

In 1776, Americans, living in a British colony, put their lives on the line and fought for independence from the king of England. They wrote the strongest democratic constitution that had ever been written as they created a new nation. That was a pivotal moment in American history.

In 1861, civil war broke out in the United States and more than 600,000 Americans died in the war between the states. Slavery was abolished. Over the ensuing decades, racist forces regained power and established an apartheid form of government throughout the old confederacy. That was a pivotal moment in American history.

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© Photograph: Getty Images

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© Photograph: Getty Images

‘Good chance’ we’ll leave US if Trump acquitted, Stormy Daniels husband says

15 May 2024 at 19:49

Barrett Blade says wife, who testified in hush-money trial, ‘wants to move past this’ but admits ‘I don’t see people fighting for her’

The husband of Stormy Daniels said there is a “good chance” that the couple will leave the US if Donald Trump is acquitted in his criminal trial over paying hush-money payments to the adult film star.

“I think if it’s not guilty, we got to decide what to do. Good chance we’ll probably vacate this country,” Barrett Blade told CNN host Erin Burnett on Tuesday.

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© Photograph: Michael M Santiago/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Michael M Santiago/Getty Images

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