Author: The Guardian

A Missouri judge has awarded more than $23 million to a former St. Louis police officer who was assaulted by other officers while working undercover at a 2017 protest.On Monday, St. Louis Circuit Judge Joseph Whyte granted Luther Hall a substantial amount of damages after a defendant failed to respond to a lawsuit over a 2017 attack.”Mr. Hall had to endure this severe beating and when it happened he knew it was being administered by his fellow officers who were sworn to serve and protect,” White said.After Jason Stokely, the white police officer who shot and killed 24-year-old Anthony Lamar…

Orlando Whitfield is a youngish man, shy, with a reddish beard. His hands are aggressively tattooed, as if they’d been laid, backs down, on wet newspaper. The ink is a form of armour, he says, like his pranking brand of humour (for a while his iCloud hotspot was “Lord Lucan’s iPhone”). But he’s earnest, too, quick to draw on a literary quotation. Today he has arrived at lunch apologetic and soaked through, having been caught on his bike in a downpour.We’ve met at the Academy Club – his choice – an old-timers’ haunt in Soho, London, with black oilcloths on…

Andy Murray has been named for next month’s French Open, but Emma Raducanu, fresh from success in Britain’s Billie Jean Gold Cup final qualifying, may need another Roland ·Garros’ wild card.Murray, 36, has battled injuries since being forced to withdraw from last year’s French Open and rupturing ankle ligaments at last month’s Miami Open. But the former Wimbledon champion was ranked 56th out of 99 players five weeks before qualifying began.Emma Raducanu has a protected ranking of 103 and is the fifth alternate. Photograph: Aurélien Meunier/Getty Images for ITFRaducanu endured a sweltering final eight months of 2023, but the former…

Last week, gun-wielding conservation officers stuffed a 500-lb elephant seal in the back of a van, drove him along a winding highway in western Canada and left him on a remote beach “far from human habitation”.The plan was to move the young seal far from British Columbia’s capital city, where over the last year, he has developed a reputation for ending up in “unusual locations”, including flower beds, city parks and busy roads.Emerson, as he is known to locals, had other plans.Less than a week after he was removed from Victoria, he made an “epic” 126-mile trek along the rugged…

Rate, comment and share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email. Today on the Podcast; Barcelona led 4-2 on aggregate at home before Ronald Araujo’s red card changed the outcome of the game. What are we to make of a Paris Saint-Germain team that is worrisomely capable and almost likeable? Elsewhere, Dortmund also trailed until a brilliant header from Nicolas Feilkruger and an inspired Marcel Sabitzer put them in front of the noisy yellow wall. Plus: Cole Palmer performs at Stamford Bridge, Pompeo promotes and answers your questions. Photo:…

A group of far-right sheriffs is set to meet Donald Trump allies in Las Vegas on Wednesday for talks with dozens of Republican state officials and candidates focused partly on potential election fraud by non-citizens, which experts say is wildly overblown.The far-right Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which the former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack founded in 2011 and which boasts hundreds of members nationwide, is hosting the day-long event, which it bills as a “training session”. The group is known for attacks on Covid mask mandates and gun control measures.The Vegas confab is slated to feature talks by Mack…

AAmong the NFL’s heirloom teams, the Chicago Bears are one team still living in the last century and the pride of league founder “Papa Bear” George Halas.From their neoclassical stadium to their 101-year-old matriarch to their response to “bear weather” (ie: lake effect) winter conditions only affect other team), everything about the franchise is old school. Even if the Bears were able to select a quarterback with the No. 1 pick in this month’s draft, that would be about 30 years too late in a league dominated by the passing game. Remarkably, the passerby they saw was not the second…

As jury selection in Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money case started this week, it seemed like the former president would face a tough crowd. When Judge Juan Merchan asked the first group of 96 prospective jurors whether any thought themselves incapable of being be fair and impartial, more than 50 raised their hands.These prospective jurors were excused from serving on the case, of course, but it still might have smarted for the real estate tycoon turned TV star turned America’s 45th president. New York is Trump’s home town, but it appears he’s so polarizing that his fellow citizens wanted an out.As…

Heavy rains have battered the United Arab Emirates, flooding major highways and disrupting flights at Dubai International Airport in what the government called a ” maximum rainfall over the past 75 years.At least one person was killed when a 70-year-old man was swept away from his car in Ras Al Khaimah, one of the country’s seven emirates, police said.Rainfall began on Monday night and by Tuesday evening the desert city of Dubai had received more than 142 millimeters (5.59 inches) of rain – usually the average rainfall for a year and a half.With an average annual rainfall of 94.7 millimeters…

The view from the top was breathtaking. It was 2023 and I had just climbed the Hvannadals Peak in Iceland, almost seven years after becoming paralysed from the chest down after a climbing fall. Raging winds had been replaced by crystal clear blue skies. My two teammates and I were on our way to becoming the first all-disabled team to cross Europe’s largest ice cap, the mighty Vatnajökull glacier, unsupported and unassisted.A year before, when Niall McCann first suggested making the 100-mile trip, I was excited by the prospect of returning to this lost world of crevasses, mountains and ice,…