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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Nicola Slawson

First Thing: Kevin McCarthy fails in speakership bid for 11th time

U.S. representatives gather for a third day to try to elect a new Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol in WashingtonHouse Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) places his hand over his mouth as he stands inside the House Chamber during voting for a new Speaker on the third day of the 118th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 5, 2023. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Kevin McCarthy loses US House speakership bid on third day as votes tally climbs to 11. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Good morning.

Despite House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy entering the third day of voting for House speaker with fresh momentum for his candidacy, the 118th Congress made history again yesterday, as he failed to win for the 11th time after eight hours of voting.

The protracted stalemate marks the first time since 1859 that the House has required more than nine ballots to determine a new speaker. The failure came amid reports that he had made significant concessions to his roughly 20 detractors within the Republican conference.

But the ongoing negotiations did not sway McCarthy’s critics, who continued to oppose him across three votes yesterday. McCarthy won 200 votes on the ninth ballot, leaving him 18 votes short of the 218 needed for a victory.

Yesterday’s votes included a couple of surprises. Far-right congressman Matt Gaetz, a Republican of Florida, twice cast a ballot for Donald Trump. As the US constitution does not specify that the House speaker must be a member of the chamber, lawmakers are not required to support one of their colleagues. Trump received no other votes.

  • Who are the hardline House members voting against McCarthy? A group of about 20 hardline Republicans have brought Washington to a standstill. They include Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry, who is the chair of the caucus, Florida’s Byron Donalds, Texas Republican Chip Roy and Lauren Boebert, who has expressed support for the QAnon conspiracy theory.

‘All I did was testify’: Republican who defied Trump will get presidential medal

Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives Russell Bowers sits for a photograph in Phoenix, Arizona, on October 26, 2022. - In three decades of involvement in conservative politics, Rusty Bowers has never been so worried by the gap between perception and reality in Arizona’s Republican Party. Ahead of the November 8th midterm elections, masked poll watchers, some of them armed, have been looming over ballot boxes in a bid to prevent a repeat of the vote-fixing they are convinced took Donald Trump’s presidency away from them in 2020.
Rusty Bowers was unseated from Arizona House of Representatives by his own party for standing up to Trump. Photograph: Olivier Touron/AFP/Getty Images

Rusty Bowers, the former top Republican in Arizona’s house of representatives who stood up to Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and was punished for it by being unseated by his own party, is to receive America’s second-highest civilian honor today.

Bowers will be among 12 people who will be awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by Joe Biden at the White House at a ceremony to mark the second anniversary of the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. It will be the first time that the president has presented the honor, which is reserved for those who have “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens”.

All 12 took exceptional personal risks to protect US democracy against Trump’s onslaught. Many are law enforcement officers who confronted the Capitol rioters, others are election workers and officials in key battleground states who refused to be bullied into subverting the outcome of the presidential race.

Several of the recipients paid a huge personal price for their actions. Brian Sicknick will receive the presidential medal posthumously – he died the day after the insurrection having suffered a stroke; a medical examiner later found he died from natural causes, while noting that the events of January 6 had “played a role in his condition”.

  • What did Bowers Bowers tell the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection? He said that shortly after the November 2020 election he had received a phone call personally from Trump, who asked him to take the state’s 11 electoral college votes away from Biden and hand them to him. Bowers replied: “Look, you’re asking me to do something that is counter to my oath … I will not do it.”

Prince Harry saw ‘red mist’ in William during brother’s alleged attack

FILES-BRITAIN-ROYALS-BOOK(FILES) In this file photo taken on September 14, 2022 Britain’s Prince William, Prince of Wales and Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex follow the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, during a procession from Buckingham Palace to the Palace of Westminster, in London. - Britain’s Prince Harry recounts in his new book how he was physically “attacked” by his older brother Prince William during an argument in 2019, the Guardian reported on January 4, 2023. (Photo by LOIC VENANCE / AFP) (Photo by LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images)
Prince Harry (right) and Prince William at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September. Photograph: Loïc Venance/AFP/Getty Images

Prince Harry has said he saw “the red mist” in his brother, Prince William, when his older sibling allegedly attacked him during a confrontation over the younger duke’s relationship with Meghan Markle.

In a newly released clip from ITV’s forthcoming interview with Harry, the Duke of Sussex said his brother, William, was so frustrated during the 2019 incident he saw “the red mist in him”.

“He wanted me to hit him back, but I chose not to,” he says of his brother, who he earlier claimed in his book had physically attacked him – as was first reported by the Guardian.

The book’s revelations are spread across front pages of almost every national newspaper in the UK and are likely to reduce the possibility of a reconciliation between the Sussexes and the rest of the British royal family. In the clip, released early on Friday morning, Harry tells the interviewer, Tom Bradby: “What was different here was the level of frustration, and I talk about the red mist that I had for so many years, and I saw this red mist in him.”

  • How has the royal family responded? Kensington Palace, which represents Prince William and Buckingham Palace, which represents King Charles, have both declined to comment on the allegations.

  • When is Harry’s book out? Although it was mistakenly released early in Spain, it’s actually out next Tuesday.

In other news …

Actor Gong Jintang
Actor Gong Jintang died on New Year’s Day, but his cause of death has not been reported. Photograph: Guangdong TV
  • A spate of deaths among celebrities and public figures across China has sparked concerns that the actual death toll from Covid-19 may be far higher than authorities are reporting. The World Health Organization earlier this week criticised China’s “very narrow” definition of Covid deaths, warning that official statistics were not showing the true impact of the outbreak.

  • At least two deaths have been reported in connection with a ‘bomb cyclone’, bringing hurricane-force winds and torrents of rain to California, including a child whose home was hit by a falling tree in Sonoma county. More than 163,500 people were without power, with little reprieve in sight yesterday.

  • The suspect accused of murdering four University of Idaho students in their beds was linked to the slayings after authorities tested his family’s household trash for DNA and found a match on a knife sheath at the scene, according to court documents released yesterday.

  • A Utah man killed his five children, his mother-in-law and his wife and then killed himself two weeks after the woman had filed for divorce, according to authorities and public records. Officials believe Michael Haight killed his children ranged in age from four to 17 and the women by shooting them.

Stat of the day: Hackers reportedly leak email addresses of more than 200 million Twitter users

The Twitter logo is seen in this photo illustration.
There were no clues to the identity or location of the hacker or hackers. Photograph: NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

Hackers stole the email addresses of more than 200 million Twitter users and posted them on an online hacking forum, a security researcher said Wednesday. The breach “will unfortunately lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing and doxxing”, Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity monitoring firm Hudson Rock, wrote on LinkedIn. He called it “one of the most significant leaks I’ve seen”. Twitter has not commented on the report, which Gal first posted about on social media on 24 December, nor responded to inquiries about the breach since that date.

Don’t miss this: Take more breaks at work, put your head in the freezer … an expert’s eight simple tips for better sleep

Illustration of a woman struggling to sleep.
‘Sleep is one of the most powerful things you can do for your body’ … Aric Prather. Illustration: Veronica Cerri at Synergy/The Guardian

“Sleep is one of the most powerful things you can do for your body. It’s just critical to make that a priority,” says Aric Prather, author of The Seven-Day Sleep Prescription. In his book, the psychologist shares his strategy for “unlocking your best rest”. He says: “Life is hard, there is always stress, sleep is disrupted, but there are things we can do.” Better yet, the effort pays dividends. “The more work you put into it, the better you’ll sleep,” says Prather. His tips include keeping a sleep diary, waking up at the same time each day and taking five “microbreaks” of five to 15 minutes every day, preferably without reaching for a caffeine boost every time. Read more here.

… or this: The company purging meetings from calendars

6 April 2020. Istanbul / Turkey. Smartphone showing Zoom Cloud Meetings app,2BDFP9W 6 April 2020. Istanbul / Turkey. Smartphone showing Zoom Cloud Meetings app,
Shopify has banned many recurring meetings and all meetings on Wednesdays. Photograph: Mehmet Yaman/Alamy

A new year often brings about purges – closet clean-outs, Dry Januarys – and one company is urging its employees to ditch work meetings, too. Shopify, the Canadian e-commerce company, announced this week that it will conduct a “calendar purge” in 2023, requiring staff to scrap recurring meetings with more than three people in attendance. Meetings of any sort held on Wednesdays are out, too. “Uninterrupted time is the most precious resource of a craftsperson, and we are giving our people a ‘no judgment zone’ to subtract, reject meetings, and focus on what is most valuable,” Kaz Nejatian of Shopify said.

Climate check: Half of glaciers will be gone by 2100 even under Paris 1.5C accord, study finds

Turquoise water is seen in a large melt hole on the top of an iceberg in the Disko bay, Ilulissat, western Greenland, on June 29, 2022. - The icebergs originates from Jakobshavn glacier (Sermeq Kujalleq), the most productive glacier in the Northern Hemisphere. The massive icebergs that detach from the glacier float for years in the waters in front of the fjord before being carried south by ocean currents.
A large melt hole on top of an iceberg in Disko bay, Ilulissat, western Greenland, in June 2022. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images

Half the planet’s glaciers will have melted by 2100 even if humanity sticks to goals set out in the Paris climate agreement, according to research that finds the scale and impacts of glacial loss are greater than previously thought. At least half of that loss will happen in the next 30 years. Researchers found 49% of glaciers would disappear under the most optimistic scenario of 1.5C of warming. However, if global heating continued under the current scenario of 2.7C of warming, losses would be more significant. This will significantly contribute to sea level rise, threaten the supply of water of up to 2 billion people, and increase the risk of flooding.

Last Thing: Edward Norton is direct descendant of Pocahontas, records confirm

Netflix’s Glass Onion Los Angeles Tastemaker ScreeningLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 17: Edward Norton attends Netflix’s Glass Onion Los Angeles Tastemaker Screening on November 17, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Natasha Campos/Getty Images for Netflix)
Edward Norton also shares a distant cousin with another A-lister: Julia Roberts. Photograph: Natasha Campos/Getty Images for Netflix

Genealogical records reviewed on the show Finding Your Roots reveal that Pocahontas, the mythologized 17th-century Native American woman, is the 12th great-grandmother of actor Edward Norton. The PBS history show confirmed Norton’s longstanding family lore on a recent episode, with host Henry Louis Gates Jr telling the American actor: “You have a direct paper trail, no doubt about it, connection to your 12th great-grandmother and great-grandfather, John Rolfe and Pocahontas.” Norton, the star of Fight Club and American History X, said the revelation “just makes you realize what a small … piece of the whole human story you are”.

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