Cheryl Hole thought it was a joke when she was told Adele wanted to meet her backstage at G-A-Y’s Porn Idol event.

The ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ star had thought it was “strange” when she went to her dressing room at London’s Heaven nightclub earlier this month to find the area deserted and couldn’t believe it when G-A-Y owner Jeremy Joseph told her there was a special guest on the way.

She said: “I walked up and there was no one there, and I was like, ‘This is strange! Normally there are people here already, it’s like quarter-past twelve’, and I was like, look let’s just crack on, let’s just do the damn thing, and all of a sudden, I’m putting my last three nails on, and then they say ‘Adele’s at the back door’, and I’m like ‘What?’, they’re like, ‘THE Adele is here’, and I was like, ‘Nah, I don’t believe you, you’re just trying to pull my leg Jeremy’.

“Then all of a sudden, you know the voice, you can’t mistake that voice… I just hear ‘Hello Babes!!’, this cackling coming round the corner, and I went ‘F***, F***, F***, F***, F***”, I could not believe it.’

Adele went on stage with Cheryl and even pole danced for the stunned crowd.

And the drag star admitted she is going to “sell” the moment forever to help her own career.

Speaking to Rylan Clarke on his ‘Ry-Union’ podcast, she said: “I’m going to put that on every poster that I’ve got and sell that until the end of time, I mean I have hugged and shared a stage with Adele, and I sang her song! Not with her but I sang it to her!”

Listen to ‘Ry-Union with Rylan’, brought to you by Sky Bingo, on Apple, Spotify and all podcast providers

By Karin Strohecker

(Reuters) -The United States and its allies are coordinating new sanctions on Russia after Moscow recognised two regions in eastern Ukraine as independent, officials said.

Details have started to emerge on the steps taken or planned by the United States, European Union, Britain and other western powers.

Below are details on the curbs proposed so far and on what other sanctions could target Russia:

BANKS & FINANCIAL FIRMS

Britain announced sanctions on five banks – Bank Rossiya, Black Sea Bank, Genbank, IS Bank and Promsvyazbank – all are smaller lenders, with only Promsvyazbank on the central bank’s list of systematically important lenders.

Bank Rossiya is already under U.S. sanctions from 2014 for its close ties to Kremlin officials.

A European Union sanctions package has been drafted to include curbs on banks involved in financing separatist activities in eastern Ukraine. EU foreign ministers will discuss the measures in Paris from 1500 GMT and aim to finalise “without delay”.

While Washington has yet to announce exact measures it plans to take, sources have said President Joe Biden’s administration has prepared sweeping measures to hurt the Russian economy which would cut the “correspondent” banking relationships between targeted Russian banks and U.S. banks that enable international payments.

Washington also will wield its most powerful sanctioning tool against certain Russian individuals and companies by placing them on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list, effectively kicking them out of the U.S. banking system, banning their trade with Americans and freezing their U.S. assets.

Sources familiar with the planned measures said VTB Bank, Sberbank, VEB, and Gazprombank are possible targets. It is unclear whether Russian banks would be added to the SDN list, but both types of sanctions could hit Russia hard and make it difficult to transact in U.S. dollars.

Russia’s large banks are deeply integrated into the global financial system, meaning sanctions could be felt far beyond its borders. Data from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) shows that European lenders hold the lion’s share of the nearly $30 billion in foreign banks’ exposure to Russia.

According to data from Russia’s central bank, total Russian banking foreign assets and liabilities stood at $200.6 billion and $134.5 billion respectively with the U.S. dollar share amounting to around 53% of both, down from 76-81% two decades ago.

SOVEREIGN DEBT & CAPITAL MARKETS

The package of measures under discussion by the EU aims “to target the ability of the Russian state and government to access the EU’s capital and financial markets and services, to limit the financing of escalatory and aggressive policies,” according to a statement by the bloc.

Britain threatened last week to block Russian companies from raising capital in London, Europe’s financial centre for such transactions, though has stopped short of doing so in its announcements on Tuesday.

Even before the latest events, access to Russian bonds had become increasingly restricted.

U.S. sanctions imposed in 2015 made future Russian dollar debt ineligible for many investors and key indexes. In April 2021, Biden barred U.S. investors from buying new Russian rouble bonds over accusations of Russian meddling in the U.S. election.

The curbs have cut Russia’s external debt by 33% since early 2014 — from $733 billion to $489 billion in the third quarter of 2021. Lower debt improves a country’s balance sheet on the surface, but deprives it of financing sources that could contribute to economic growth and development.

INDIVIDUALS

Sanctioning persons via asset freezes and travel bans is a commonly used tool and the United States, the EU and Britain already have such sanctions in place against a number of Russian individuals.

The EU on Monday imposed sanctions on five people who were involved in a Russian parliamentary election in annexed Crimea in September 2021.

The package drafted by the EU on Tuesday could see curbs on those who were involved in the decision to recognise the breakaway regions – which could mean all members of the lower house of the Russian parliament who voted in favour of the recognition, according to one official.

Meanwhile Britain has imposed sanctions on three men, Gennady Timchenko and billionaires Igor and Boris Rotenberg – all of whom are allies of President Vladimir Putin from St Petersburg whose personal fortunes grew precipitously following Putin’s rise to the presidency. All three men are already sanctioned by the United States.

Detailed measures from Washington are yet to come. While the U.S. has used the SDN designation in the past to sanction oligarchs deemed to be “bad actors”, it has become more cautious in recent years after 2018 sanctions on the owner of Rusal saw aluminium prices skyrocket and forced Washington to backtrack.

A bill unveiled by U.S. Senate Democrats in January aimed for sweeping sanctions against top Russian government and military officials, including Putin, and President Biden has said he would be ready to consider personal sanctions on the Russian president.

Moscow has said any move to impose sanctions on Putin himself would not harm the Russian president personally but would prove “politically destructive”.

ENERGY CORPORATES & NORD STREAM 2

The United States and the EU already have sanctions in place on Russia’s energy and defence sectors, with state-owned gas company Gazprom, its oil arm Gazpromneft and oil producers Lukoil, Rosneft and Surgutneftegaz facing various types of curbs on exports/imports and debt-raising.

Sanctions could be widened and deepened, with one possible option being to prevent companies settling in U.S. dollars.

Nord Stream 2, a recently completed pipeline from Russia to Germany, was awaiting regulatory approval by EU and German authorities before Berlin put its certification on ice.

Europe’s dependence on Russian energy supplies weakens the West’s hand when considering sanctions in this sector.

CURBING CHIPS

The White House has told the U.S. chip industry to be ready for new restrictions on exports to Russia if Moscow attacks Ukraine, including potentially blocking Russia’s access to global electronics supplies.

Similar measures were deployed during the Cold War, when technology sanctions kept the Soviet Union technologically backward and crimped economic growth.

SWITCHING OFF SWIFT

One of the harshest measures would be to disconnect the Russian financial system from SWIFT, which handles international financial transfers and is used by more than 11,000 financial institutions in over 200 countries.

In 2012, SWIFT disconnected Iranian banks as international sanctions tightened against Tehran over its nuclear programme. Iran lost half its oil export revenue and 30% of its foreign trade, the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank said.

Among Western countries, the United States and Germany would stand to lose the most from such a move, as their banks are the most frequent SWIFT users with Russian banks, said Maria Shagina at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Calls to cut Russia’s SWIFT access were mooted in 2014 when Moscow annexed Crimea, prompting Moscow to develop an alternative messaging system, SPFS.

The number of messages sent via SPFS was about one fifth of Russian internal traffic in 2020, according to the central bank, which aims to increase this to 30% in 2023. However, SPFS has struggled to establish itself in international transactions.

(Reporting by Karin Strohecker and Catherine Belton in London, Katya Golubkova and Andrey Ostroukh in Moscow; editing by Timothy Heritage and Jason Neely)

By Rich McKay

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (Reuters) -The three white men convicted of chasing down and murdering a young Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, as he was out jogging in their suburban Georgia community, were found guilty on Tuesday of committing federal hate crimes and other offenses in the 2020 killing.

A predominantly white jury deliberated for about four hours over two days before returning the verdict against Travis McMichael, 36, his father, former police officer Gregory McMichael, 66, and a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, in U.S. District Court in Brunswick, Georgia.

“Ahmaud will continue to rest in peace but he will now begin to rest in power,” Wanda Cooper-Jones, Ahmaud’s mother, said outside the courthouse after the verdict was read.

All three men were found guilty of violating Arbery’s civil rights by attacking him because of his race, and of attempted kidnapping, capping the latest high-profile trial to probe issues of vigilantism and racial violence in America.

The McMichaels were additionally convicted of a federal firearms charge. Bryan was not charged with a weapons offense. The hate-crimes felony, the most serious of the charges the defendants faced, carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.

The three men were convicted last year of murder and other crimes in state court and sentenced to life terms for the shotgun slaying of Arbery, 25, a onetime high school football star who worked for a truck-washing company and his father’s landscaping business.

Prosecutors in the state trial avoided characterizing the killing as racist, seeking only to prove that the McMichaels and Bryan were responsible for his death.

Cooper-Jones on Tuesday railed against the Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors, who had originally reached a plea deal with the defendants to avoid a trial. In a rare move, the judge last month rejected the plea deal https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-prosecutors-reach-hate-crime-plea-deals-ahmaud-arbery-murder-court-filings-2022-01-31 after Ahmaud’s family implored her not to accept it.

“What we got today, we wouldn’t have gotten today if it wasn’t for the fight that the family put up,” Cooper-Jones said. “What the DOJ did today, they was made to do today. It wasn’t because it’s what they wanted to do.”

LAG TIME ON CHARGES

Arbery was shot to death on Feb. 23, 2020, by the younger McMichael after all three defendants had chased him down in pickup trucks as the victim was out for an afternoon jog through the community of Satilla Shores, near the southeastern coastal town of Brunswick.

The McMichaels insisted they did not act out of racial animus but out of self-defense and a belief that Arbery appeared suspicious when they saw him running through the streets after a series of neighborhood break-ins.

But trial testimony revealed there had been no burglaries, but thefts from unlocked cars. And federal prosecutors presented testimony from 20 witnesses and other evidence they said showed that the three men had long histories of using slurs and making racist statements. The defense rested its case after calling just one witness.

There was never any dispute that the younger McMichael fired his shotgun three times at Arbery at close range.

The killing was captured in a graphic cellphone video recorded by Bryan, stoking public outrage when it surfaced on social media more than two months later with no arrests yet made, even though Travis McMichael had admitted to police at the scene that he gunned down Arbery.

Civil rights activists pointed to the lag time in arrests of the three men as the latest example of law enforcement allowing white perpetrators to go unpunished in the unjustified killing of Black people.

Arbery’s name became entwined with a host of others invoked in a summer of protests against racial injustice across the United States after another unarmed Black man, George Floyd, was killed by a white police officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck until he could no longer breathe in May 2020. The federal prosecution of Arbery’s killers is the first in which those who committed such a high-profile murder are facing a jury in a hate-crime trial.

The two McMichaels had agreed last month to plead guilty to the federal hate-crimes offense, and the son acknowledged at a federal court hearing that he singled out Arbery because of his “race and color.”

But Judge Lisa Wood rejected the plea bargain because it bound her to a 30-year sentence that prosecutors had agreed would be served in a federal lockup before the men were returned to the Georgia prison system, widely perceived as a tougher environment for inmates compared with federal penitentiaries.

The plea deals were then withdrawn, and all three defendants proceeded to trial.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Brunswick, Ga.; Additional reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Donna Bryson and Alistair Bell)

Washington (AFP) – The US Supreme Court on Tuesday formally ended former president Donald Trump’s bid to block the release to congressional investigators of White House records related to last year’s attack on the Capitol.

The court’s decision, issued in an unsigned order that made no comment, followed its rejection last month of Trump’s emergency request to shield the documents held by the National Archives.

Trump, who has been accused of fomenting the deadly January 6 assault by a mob of his supporters, had asked the nation’s highest court to stay a ruling by a federal appeals court rejecting the petition.

But it refused in a decision issued on January 19, and Tuesday’s announcement marks the definitive end of the line for Trump’s legal fight.

“We expected this to happen after the Court voted 8-1 to deny Trump’s request to block documents while they considered his petition for review,” the public accountability watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said in a statement.

“But even though it was expected, it’s still good to see it happen.”

The House select committee is scrutinizing the attempt by hundreds of Trump supporters to block congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s November 2020 election victory by storming the Capitol.

The development will be seen as a victory for investigators looking into how the riot took place, and whether Trump and members of his circle had any part in encouraging it.

The ex-president had sought to exercise his privilege as a former president to keep under wraps White House records and communications that might relate to the attack.

In a filing with the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers had argued that “a former president has the right to assert executive privilege, even after his term of office.”

Biden waived executive privilege on the Trump records so they could be handed over to the committee and the appeals court decided that “the right of a former president certainly enjoys no greater weight than that of the incumbent.”

The appeals court said the public interest was greater than Trump’s own in relation to the records.

Washington (AFP) – The US national women’s team has won a $24 million payout and a promise of equal pay in a landmark settlement with US Soccer, the two sides announced Tuesday in a joint statement.

“US Soccer has committed to providing an equal rate of pay going forward for the Women’s and Men’s National Teams in all friendlies and tournaments, including the World Cup,” the terms of the deal, sent to AFP, said.

The question of World Cup prize money had formed a prominent part of the lawsuit filed by the US women’s soccer team in 2019, which accused the federation of “stubbornly refusing” to pay its men and women’s players equally.

“I think we’re going look back on this day and say this is the moment that, you know, US Soccer changed for the better,” women’s star Megan Rapinoe said in an interview with ABC after the deal was announced.

“Obviously we can’t go back and undo the injustices that we faced but … we know that something like this is never gonna happen again,” she continued, adding she hopes that they can now “move forward” with “setting up the next generation so much better than we ever had it. So it’s a great day.”

Her teammate Alex Morgan, also speaking on ABC, called the deal “a monumental step forward in feeling valued, feeling respected and just mending our relationship with US Soccer.”

The agreement stipulates that $22 million will be distributed to the players, while $2 million will go into an account to benefit them “in their post-career goals and charitable efforts related to women’s and girls’ soccer.”

The settlement is contingent on a new collective bargaining agreement, which needs to be ratified before the deal can be finally approved by a court.

A federal judge had rejected the claim of pay discrimination, but the US women then launched an appeal.

The 2019 lawsuit cited the discrepancy in World Cup prize money payments paid to the two teams in 2014 and 2015.

The US men received $5.375 million for reaching the round of 16 at the 2014 World Cup, while the women received $1.725 million for winning the 2015 tournament.

‘Not easy’

The US Soccer Federation had argued that its hands were tied because the prize money is set by FIFA, which awarded $38 million to France for winning the 2018 men’s World Cup in Russia, but only $4 million to the American women for winning the 2019 Women’s World Cup.

“Getting to this day has not been easy,” both sides admitted in a statement announcing the deal.

“The US Women’s National Team players have achieved unprecedented success while working to achieve equal pay for themselves and future athletes… We look forward to continuing to work together to grow women’s soccer.”

In September last year USSF president Cindy Parlow Cone said the body hoped to equalize the World Cup prize money for its players.

“Until FIFA equalizes the prize money that it awards to the Men’s and Women’s World Cup participants, it is incumbent upon us to collectively find a solution,” she wrote in an open letter addressed to fans.

She said the gulf in prize money paid out by FIFA was “by far the most challenging issue” facing US Soccer in pay negotiations with men’s and women’s teams.

By John Chalmers, Sabine Siebold and Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Union agreed new sanctions on Russia that will blacklist more politicians, lawmakers and officials, ban EU investors from trading in Russian state bonds, and target imports and exports with separatist entities.

However, EU foreign ministers chose not to sanction Russian President Vladimir Putin, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said following a meeting in Paris on Tuesday.

Russia’s formal recognition of two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine was an unacceptable breach of Ukraine’s sovereignty, Borrell said.

“This package of sanctions that has been approved by unanimity by the member states will hurt Russia, and it will hurt a lot,” Borrell told a news conference alongside France’s foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian at a meeting in Paris.

Separately, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told Reuters that further Russian aggression in Ukraine would result in more sanctions, in coordination with the United States.

The package of sanctions includes all members of the lower house of the Russian parliament who voted in favour of the recognition of the breakaway regions, freezing any assets they have in the EU and banning them from travelling to the bloc.

It was not immediately clear when the sanctions would take effect, but diplomats expect them in the coming hours or days, when names and details will be made public.

Borrell also said: “We are going to target 27 individuals and entities who are playing a role in undermining or threatening Ukrainian territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence.”

Borrell said those individuals and entities were in Russia’s defence, banking and financial sector.

“We target the ability of the Russian state and government to access our capital and financial markets and services,” Borrell said.

Banks involved in financing separatist activities in eastern Ukraine would also be targeted.

The two regions could also be removed from a free-trade deal between the EU and Ukraine, “to ensure that those responsible clearly feel the economic consequences of their illegal and aggressive actions,” an EU statement said.

PRAISE FOR GERMANY

Borrell congratulated Germany’s decision to put the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project on ice, arguably the most far-reaching reaction to Moscow’s move late on Monday. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also praised Berlin.

Taking steps to limit or ban Russia’s access to the Belgium-based SWIFT global interbank payments system used for Russian money flows was not immediately part of the EU sanctions.

The EU had repeatedly said it was ready to impose “massive consequences” on Russia’s economy if Moscow invaded Ukraine but has also noted that, given the EU’s close energy and trade ties to Russia, it wanted to move in stages.

Not all of the bloc’s 27 member states have the same relation to Russia or dependency on its gas, which could eventually complicate the adoption of further sanctions.

EU officials and diplomats have said some EU countries, including Austria, Hungary and Italy, Russia’s closest allies in the bloc, would prefer more limited sanctions in response to Putin’s move on eastern Ukraine.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, whose country relies on Russia for much of its gas, told a news conference in Rome that any sanctions should not include energy imports.

(Reporting by John Chalmers, Robin Emmott, Sabine Siebold, Francesco Guarascio, Ingrid Melander, Marine Strauss, Bart Meijer, Padraic Halpin and Crispian Balmer, Andrius Sytas, writing by Ingrid MelanderEditing by Tomasz Janowski)

By Jonathan Allen

ST. PAUL, Minn. (Reuters) -A federal prosecutor told a jury in closing arguments on Tuesday that three former Minneapolis police officers ignored their training and basic human decency by failing to intervene when their colleague knelt on George Floyd’s neck leading to his death.

Tou Thao, 36; J. Alexander Kueng, 28; and Thomas Lane, 38, have all pleaded not guilty to charges they willfully denied Floyd’s right to receive medical aid in police custody during the May 2020 arrest even as they had what a prosecutor called “front-row seats” to Floyd’s murder beside a police car parked in a Minneapolis intersection.

Thao and Kueng are also charged with willfully breaching the handcuffed 46-year-old Black man’s rights by not intervening while their colleague Derek Chauvin, who is white, knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes as horrified onlookers begged the officers to check Floyd’s pulse.

Chauvin, 45, was sentenced to 22-1/2 years in prison after being convicted of Floyd’s murder at a separate state trial last year. The federal trial in the U.S. District Court in St. Paul hinges on when an officer has a duty to intervene in a colleague’s misconduct and has shone a light on a deeply hierarchical culture at police departments.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Manda M. Sertich said Thao was captured on video choosing to “argue and mock” with the people on the sidewalk begging him to help Floyd rather than trying to get Chauvin off Floyd’s neck. Kueng, she said, could be seen smiling at a shared joke with Chauvin as Floyd died beneath them, and picking gravel out of a police car’s tire. Lane could be heard worrying that they should turn Floyd on his side but did not get up from pinning down Floyd’s legs.

She said the defendants did not do what “human decency and common sense required them to do: to stop the slow-motion killing unfolding right in front of them.”

All three defendants testified in their own defense, saying they deferred to Chauvin’s many years of experience as the most senior officer on the scene. Lane and Kueng, who pinned down Floyd’s buttocks and legs as Thao stood nearby keeping onlookers on the sidewalk, have emphasized that they were rookies only a few days out of training.

Sertich said that even the rookies could and should have asked Chauvin to get off Floyd or to check his neck for a pulse.

“They want you to accept that it is too much to ask of them to say those things even though it was not too much for those regular people who were walking by,” Sertich said. “They made the choice not to upset their colleague rather than do their duty, even though that choice resulted in the death of a human.”

The men said they did not grasp that Floyd was dying beneath Chauvin’s knee, and assumed that, with 18 years on the force, the officer knew what he was doing. Sertich argued that they could easily tell Floyd had passed out from a neck restraint, which they should have known from training, was dangerous.

Prosecutors have repeatedly drawn attention to the horrified bystanders on the sidewalk, most of whom had no medical training but correctly observed that Floyd had fallen unresponsive and screamed at officers to check Floyd’s pulse. Some appeared on the stand during the near three weeks of testimony.

Kueng can be heard in body-worn camera videos telling his colleagues twice that he cannot find a pulse. He told the jury he did not take from this that Floyd’s heart had stopped, but decided instead that the handcuffs were preventing him from checking the pulse successfully.

The defendants’ lawyers will deliver their own closing arguments before the jury begins deliberating. All three men face years in prison if convicted, and are also due to stand trial in a Minnesota court in June on state charges of aiding and abetting Floyd’s murder.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Mark Porter)

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a web designer’s free speech claim that she cannot be forced under a Colorado anti-discrimination law to produce websites for same-sex marriages, a practice she opposes on religious grounds.

The justices took up evangelical Christian Denver-area business owner Lorie Smith’s appeal of a lower court ruling rejecting her bid for an exemption from a Colorado law barring discrimination based upon sexual orientation and certain other factors. The case follows the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in favor of a Christian Denver-area baker who refused on religious grounds to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

Smith’s case gives the justices an opportunity to answer a question that has been raised in other disputes including the baker case but never definitively resolved: can people refuse service to customers in violation of public accommodation laws based on the idea that fulfilling a creative act such as designing a website or baking a cake is a form of free speech under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

The justices are set to hear oral arguments and decide the case in the Supreme Court’s next term, which begins in October and ends in June 2023.

The court declined to take up a separate question concerning whether Smith has a religious rights claim, also under the First Amendment. Smith had asked the court to overturn its important 1990 ruling that limited the ability of people to cite their religious beliefs in seeking exemptions from laws that apply to everyone.

Smith runs a web design business called 303 Creative that she wants to operate in accordance with her Christian faith. She believes that marriage should be limited to opposite-sex couples, a view shared by many conservative Christians.

Before adding wedding websites to the services she offered customers, Smith sued the state’s civil rights commission and other officials in 2016 because of her concern she would be punished under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. The law bars anyone from refusing “goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations” to anyone based among other things on sexual orientation, age, race, gender and religion. About 20 other states have similar laws.

Smith’s lawyers at the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom have said that any state action punishing her for refusing to design websites for gay weddings violates her right to religious expression and her free speech rights.

Colorado officials have said they never investigated Smith’s company and saw no evidence that anyone ever actually asked her to design a website for a same-sex wedding. Lower courts backed the state, including the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a July 2021 ruling.

The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has become increasingly supportive of religious rights and related free speech claims in recent years even as it has backed LGBT rights in other cases. The court legalized gay marriage nationwide in 2015 and in 2020 expanded protections for LGBT workers under federal law.

The Supreme Court has struggled to resolve cases in which conservative religious opposition to LGBT rights has clashed with situations in which LGBT people are seeking to exercise their own rights.

The justices in 2021 issued an important decision in a religious rights case involving a Catholic Church-affiliated organization that sued after the city of Philadelphia refused to place children for foster care with the agency because it barred same-sex couples from applying to be foster parents. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-rules-catholic-group-lgbt-rights-dispute-2021-06-17 in favor of Catholic Social Services but left some legal questions unresolved.

The Colorado website case is a similar dispute to the one that prompted the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling on narrow legal grounds siding with a baker named Jack Phillips. The court said in that case that the state civil rights commission that imposed sanctions on Phillips was motivated by anti-religious bias but did not make any broader pronouncements.

Similar legal fights have been waged in other states involving other small business owners including a wedding photographer and a calligrapher.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

By Jonathan Allen

ST. PAUL, Minn. (Reuters) -Pinning George Floyd face down on a Minneapolis road in a May 2020 arrest seemed reasonable in the moment, Thomas Lane, one of three former Minneapolis police officers on trial for violating the handcuffed Black man’s civil rights, testified on Monday.

Lane was the third of the three defendants to take the stand in his own defense at the federal trial in the U.S. District Court in St. Paul, charged with denying Floyd’s right to receive medical aid once in police custody.

Answering questions from his lawyer Earl Gray, Lane told the jury how he had called over the radio for an ambulance to come after seeing Floyd’s mouth was bleeding after he struggled against Lane and another officer trying to get him in the back of a police car.

He became emotional as he recalled helping Floyd onto a stretcher and saw Floyd’s face several minutes after he fallen unresponsive beneath Lane and two other officers.

“He didn’t look good,” Lane said, his voice beginning to waver.

His co-defendants Tou Thao, 36, and J. Alexander Kueng, 28, took the stand last week to say they deferred to the authority of Derek Chauvin, the most senior officer at the scene. Lane, who was on Floyd’s ankles, and Kueng, who was on Floyd’s thighs, were rookies only a few days out of training.

Cellphone video of Chauvin, who is white, kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes while Floyd begged for his life triggered huge protests against racism and police brutality. Chauvin was convicted in a separate state trial last year of murdering Floyd and sentenced to 22-1/2 years in prison, and in December he pleaded guilty to the federal charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights.

Prosecutors have said the officers have a duty of care to anyone in their custody, and the three men breached their training and common sense in not doing more to help Floyd.

Lane, 38, can be heard on body-worn camera videos asking his colleagues if they should roll the prone Floyd onto his side, something officers are trained to do to avoid positional asphyxia.

Chauvin, 45, rebuffs the suggestion, and continues to kneel on Floyd’s neck as Floyd falls motionless while bystanders scream at the officers to check his pulse.

“OK, I suppose so,” Lane recalled responding. “It just seemed reasonable at the time. This guy is out of control.” He said he believed the ambulance would be “here any minute.”

He said he was unable to see Floyd’s face for the entire nine-minute restrain. Lane got in the back of the ambulance and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Floyd under a parademic’s isntruction.

Prosecutors have previously called medical experts who said Floyd would almost certainly had lived if rolled on his side once he had been restrained.

Thao and Kueng face an additional count of violating Floyd’s rights in their role of police officers by failing to intervene to stop Chauvin’s use of excessive force.

Both have said they assumed Chauvin knew what was he was doing from his nearly two decades on the force and did not realize the force was excessive.

Minneapolis Police Department fired all four officers.

“I found out I was terminated the next day in a Subway parking lot,” Lane said, referring to the chain of sandwich stores. “I read a news article. That’s how I found out I got fired.”

(Reporting by Jonathan AllenEditing by Alistair Bell)

By Aidan Lewis

CAIRO (Reuters) – Tackling climate change is a security threat that requires accelerated action even as international attention is focussed on Russia and Ukraine, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said on Monday during a visit to Cairo.

Egypt will host the COP27 climate conference in November and Kerry said the task for this year was to bring more countries, including Russia and China, on board to set ambitious climate goals, as well as implementing pledges made at COP26 in Glasgow.

Kerry, a former secretary of state, said the crisis between Russia and Ukraine made him concerned over issues such as the principles of international law and respect for borders.

“But I am concerned in terms of the climate efforts that a war is the last thing you need with respect to a united effort to try to deal with the climate challenge,” Kerry told Reuters.

“Obviously we hope that we can compartmentalise, but it’s just made that much more difficult without any question.”

After meeting Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who will chair COP27, Kerry told reporters that climate change was a “national, international security threat to all of us.”

Egypt and the United States have created a working group to set priorities for COP27 and to support Egypt’s energy transition, Shoukry and Kerry said.

Egypt has set a goal of generating 42% of its power from renewables by 2030, though experts have suggested the target could be more ambitious. The government is preparing a new strategy for 2050.

Kerry cited work to help provide finance and technology to Indonesia, and to support China in accelerating its reduction of coal consumption, as examples of a push to secure new commitments ahead of COP27.

But he also said the energy transition had not reached the speed required. “We’re not moving fast enough, not enough is happening.”

Asked about the risk that companies “greenwash” their activities with net-zero announcements, Kerry said rules agreed in Glasgow to ensure transparency would help, as would satellites tracking carbon and methane emissions.

“We have accountability that we’ve really never had before, and we have to make sure we’re applying it,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Sherif Fahmy; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Jane Lynch thinks it’s “harder to work your way up as a woman” in comedy.

The 61-year-old actress – who stars in the hit TV series ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ – believes that female comedians need to be “exceptional” in order to make a meaningful impression.

Speaking about the series – which is set in the 1950s and 60s, and follows a housewife who becomes a stand-up star – Jane explained: “In order to break through, you had to have material that spoke to men because the club owners were men, the TV producers, the late-night hosts.”

Jane acknowledges that the landscape has massively improved for female comics. But she thinks they still face big challenges, compared to their male counterparts.

The actress – who previously played Sue Sylvester in ‘Glee’ – told the Guardian newspaper: “Any time you look at a comedy club, the headliners are guys. Every once in a while, they might throw a woman in there.

“It’s harder to work your way up as a woman and, like anything else where you’re trying to break a mould, you have to be exceptional.”

Many of Jane’s past roles were originally written for men. But the actress actually relishes playing so many stern, authoritarian figures.

She said: “I’m obsessed with that random exercise of power, power for power’s sake.”

Jane used to think she was a “depressed child”. But after watching some home movies of herself, she now has completely different impression.

She explained: “Always dancing to the camera; air guitar. I was a real free spirit and I loved to perform. And then, of course, high school happens, and maybe even before that when you start to realise: ‘Oh my God, I may be gay but I don’t even have a word for it.’”