Nearly 400,000 have died since it won independence 10 years ago. Now violence looms again, within and beyond its bordersIndependence isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Recent additions to the family of nations, such as Kosovo and East Timor (Timor-Leste), have struggled to find their feet. In 2017, Catalonia’s secessionists split their homeland in two. Scottish referendum voters took a pass in 2014. The uncomplicated glory days when “third world” liberation movements ousted colonial regimes seem a long time ago.South Sudan, which marked its 10th birthday on Friday, came late to Africa’s independence party – the product of a complex 2005 deal to end Sudan’s decades-old civil war. Barack Obama, seeking the credit, waxed lyrical. “Today is a reminder that after the darkness of war, the light of a new dawn is possible,” he declared. Continue reading...

Monuments to Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson and Robert E Lee, which had become a rallying point to white supremacists, have been removedThe statue of a Confederate general that helped spark a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017 was removed on Saturday after a long legal battle.The small Virginia city said the equestrian statue of Gen Robert E Lee and a nearby statue of Gen Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson would be removed to storage. Designated public viewing areas for the removals had been established and a small crowd of onlookers cheered as the statue of Lee was hoisted away first, lifted by crane from its stone pedestal and taken away on a flat-bed truck. Continue reading...

Hundreds gathered to see the monument to Robert E Lee, once a rallying point for white supremacists, hoisted off its pedestalAs the statue of Robert E Lee, the Confederate general, was hoisted off its pedestal and strapped to a waiting truck in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, the removal was largely greeted with cheers and expressions of relief by those witnessing it.Several hundred people had gathered to see the early morning removal of Lee’s statue from the city’s Market Street park, with shouts of “get up and get outta here” and “bye bye” marking the moment. Continue reading...

Authorities have launched a grand jury investigation into the collapse as families have filed at least six lawsuitsThe number of people confirmed to have been killed in the collapse of a Miami-area condominium tower last month has reached 86, Miami-Dade county mayor Daniella Levine Cava said on Saturday.No survivors have been pulled alive from the ruins since the first few hours after the tower partially caved in on itself early on 24 June. Continue reading...

Statues of Confederate generals Robert E Lee and Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson were taken down in the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, nearly four years after white supremacist protests over plans to remove them led to clashes in which a woman was run down by a car and killed. A small crowd of onlookers cheered as the statue of Lee was hoisted away first, lifted by crane from its stone pedestal and taken away on a flat-bed truck.

Newly released footage of the Tennant fire in California, filmed on 29 June, shows a fire tornado near the Klamath national forest. Large wildfires can heat air so much that huge clouds develop. In strong winds, these can rotate and sometimes produce a tornado, or fire whirl.California’s wildfire season is already more extreme than in 2020. Officials say the length of the fire season has increased by 75 days across the Sierras, in keeping with a rise in the extent of forest fires statewide

Experts worried about long-term impact on low-income and non-white Americans, populations community colleges tend to serveDavid Ramirez, a student at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California, struggled with balancing work and classes during the pandemic. Ramirez, who works at Starbucks, worked at least 30 hours a week in addition to his classes.He wasn’t alone. The number of students enrolled in community colleges – local educational establishments that offer two-year courses and are often seen as an affordable stepping stone to higher education – was down 9.5% this past spring, about 476,000 fewer students than in spring 2020, according to National Student Clearinghouse data released last month. Continue reading...

Soaring temperatures are a way of life in the Central Valley, but racial disparities mean many have no access to reliefIn Cantua, a small town deep within California’s farming heartland, the heat had always been a part of life. “We can do nothing against it,” said Julia Mendoza, who’s lived in this town for 27 years. But lately, she says, the searing temperatures are almost unlivable.By midday on Thursday, the first day of a protracted, extreme heatwave in California’s Central Valley, the country roads were sizzling with heat. A young volunteer with a local environmental justice non-profit who had come to check in on the neighborhood collapsed on the sidewalk, her face bright red and damp. Construction crews working nearby quickly swept her into an air-conditioned car and handed her a cold bottle of water. Continue reading...

Cybersecurity comes down to which side has access to more information about the other and can utilize it bestThis week, shares in China’s giant ride-hailing app Didi crashed by more than 20%. A few days before, Didi had raised $4.4bn in a massive IPO in New York – the biggest initial public offering by a Chinese company since Alibaba’s debut in 2014.The proximate cause of Didi’s crash was an announcement by China’s Cyberspace Administration that it suspected Didi of illegally collecting and using personal information. Pending an investigation, it had ordered Didi to stop registering new users and removed Didi’s app from China’s app stores. Continue reading...

A survey of 56 senior Black executives at largest private employer in US found they would not urge people of color to join the retailerSome Black senior managers at US retail giant Walmart do not recommend working there, according to an internal survey from the company.The survey, as reported by Bloomberg, asked 56 Black senior directors, managers and supervisors about their experience. Black workers make up 21% of the company’s 1.6 million US workforce, and are mainly concentrated at the lower levels of the organization. Continue reading...

The band has barely played live in 27 months, and I have forgotten what it’s like to address a crowdIn the spring of 2019, the band I’m in decided to take a 12-month break from playing live. A year later we were preparing for a small tour when the pandemic hit – our year off suddenly became two. We played one of a pair of socially distanced gigs in December, before the other one was cancelled after restrictions were reimposed.All our spring 2021 gigs were postponed, some of them twice. In June we were rehearsing for the Black Deer festival when we heard it would not go ahead for the second year running. Continue reading...

Las Vegas could surpass its record-high of 117F as residents of US west face very high risk of heat-related illnessMore than 31 million people across the US west and south-west are bracing for a brutal heatwave that could bring triple-digit temperatures this weekend, with authorities warning that records could be broken in many regions of California and Nevada. Officials have said that Las Vegas could even surpass its record-high temperature of 117F.The “heat risk” is classified as “very high” across much of this area, meaning all residents there face “very high risk of heat-related illness due to both the long duration heat, and the lack of overnight relief”, the National Weather Service (NWS) has said. Continue reading...

Hervis Rogers became a national symbol of tenacity when he cast his ballot in last year’s presidential primariesA Texas man who became a national hero after he waited seven hours in line to vote in last year’s presidential primary has been arrested and charged with voting illegally. Continue reading...

‘Capitalism without competition is exploitation’, president said while denouncing era of business monopoliesJoe Biden has signed an executive order targeting anti-competitive practices across the economy that could have major ramifications for America’s largest tech companies.Friday’s order is the latest of Biden’s actions on anti-trust issues, which have pleased progressives pushing for more action on corporate power – particularly among big tech companies – for years. Continue reading...

Claims that fed-up residents are leaving en masse have been widespread – but they’re a myth, researchers sayThe idea of a “California exodus” that has seen waves of residents abandon the state has been steadily gaining steam. But new research has revealed it appears to be more myth than reality.Researchers from a consortium of universities – including the Berkeley, UCLA, Cornell and Stanford – teamed up in the fall of 2020 to study California’s population. Their finding, released this week, determined there was “no evidence of an abnormal increase in residents planning to move out of the state”. Continue reading...

• Acting commissioner refers agency to inspector general• Biogen Inc’s drug Aduhelm controversially approved last monthThe US drug regulator has called for an independent federal investigation into the interactions between its representatives and Biogen Inc that led to the approval of the company’s Alzheimer’s disease drug last month.The drugmaker’s shares fell 3% after the agency’s acting commissioner, Janet Woodcock, asked the office of the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate if the talks were inconsistent with the regulator’s policies. Continue reading...

Another 62 people remain unaccounted for as rescue workers in Surfside focus on finding remains instead of survivorsThe death toll in the collapse of a Miami-area condo building rose to 78 on Friday, a number the mayor called “heartbreaking” and “staggering” as recovery workers toiled for a 16th day to find victims in the rubble.Another 62 people remain unaccounted for. No one has been found alive since the first hours after the building fell on 24 June. Continue reading...

As I came to know in my own NBA career, the reality is most people don’t care what athletes are going through personally. Just do your job, entertain me and keep your issues to yourselfWhen it comes to athletes, nobody cares about your pain.That much is apparent after listening to all of the discussions on sports radio and television and reading comments across social media in the week since Sha’Carri Richardson was dropped from the US Olympic team after testing positive for marijuana. Continue reading...

• Commuters forced to wade through filthy water• Mayoral favourite Eric Adams says: ‘This cannot be New York’Commuters having to wade through waist-deep water on subway concourses, rain cascading directly onto train platforms, desperate motorists rescued by police from their inundated cars – the battering New York City has taken from tropical storm Elsa has raised questions as to how well the metropolis is prepared for the ravages of the climate crisis.Elsa had already hit areas of Florida and Georgia, causing at least one death, before shifting north, where it unleashed a barrage of thunderstorms on Thursday. The storm is now expected to move towards the Boston area, with about 40 million people from New Jersey to Maine issued flash flooding warnings. Continue reading...

Kristen Roupenian’s viral 2017 short story is again being debated, now over her alleged use of details drawn from life. The questions this raises do not have neat answersSince its publication in the New Yorker nearly four years ago, Kristen Roupenian’s Cat Person remains the most discussed short story ever to have hit the internet. Roupenian’s portrayal of an encounter between a young woman called Margot and an older man called Robert rode the wave of the #MeToo movement, and as a result readers often seem to use the work as a vessel for their own projections. The story provoked widespread anger among some men for its negative depiction of Robert, the man who shows his true colours at the end of the story, and whose wounded reaction to Margot’s rejection resonated with many women.Related: Why is ‘Cat Person’ going viral again? Continue reading...

Rainstorms drenched New York while Tropical Storm Elsa sparked tornadoes in North Carolina and VirginiaThe US east coast was battered by extreme weather on Thursday evening as heavy thunderstorms brought flooding and travel disruption to the New York City area, while Tropical Storm Elsa dumped heavy rainfall and even sparked tornadoes in North Carolina and Georgia.Some subway system ya got there. This is the 157th St. 1 line right now. @NYCMayor @BilldeBlasio pic.twitter.com/xyfTAUPPNu Continue reading...

On morning TV this week, two of the developers of the Oxford vaccine were faced with an outpouring of thanks. It was very much deserved – and very hard for them to replyI don’t watch much TV in the morning – I put it roughly on a par with smoking weed in the morning – and this has led me to miss the entire brilliant oeuvre of Lorraine, on ITV, until Thursday. She was interviewing Prof Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green, the authors of Vaxxers, but more relevantly from the globe’s perspective, the scientists behind the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has now been administered half a billion times. Lorraine called them superheroes, and they dealt with that fine. But then the show’s in-house doctor couldn’t contain himself. “I am starstruck,” he said. The amount of hope … the number of lives they’d saved … the sheer scale of their achievement. He’d worked in resuscitation in a south London hospital at the height of the first wave, and recalled the feeling of despair as he wondered if it would ever end. He thanked them personally, and then he thanked them on behalf of the whole of the NHS. At this point, there seemed to be a very real risk of his crawling toward them in fealty and kissing the hem of their garments. It was all so palpably sincere, and Gilbert and Green just didn’t know where to put themselves.It is hard to take praise at the best of times, and there are no easy answers. A simple and warm “thank you” is the recommended course, but the bigger the praise-event, the more excited the praiser gets, and then it’s polite to try to match their excitement, except you can’t, really, because their joy all relates to how great you are. I’ve definitely said that to people before – “I think you’re just wonderful” – and these would mainly be authors, or teachers, or once a woman who made me some curtains, and realised too late that there’s nothing they can say back, they can neither agree nor disagree, so I’ve effectively cut them out of the conversation, just at the point when conversing with them was all I wanted to do. Continue reading...

Gareth Southgate’s team are great, but far from ushering in an era of inclusivity, victory would stoke ugly nationalismGareth Southgate, Raheem Sterling, Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka, Jordan Henderson … how could you not love the current England squad? As well as their footballing prowess, they’ve shown moral leadership and social awareness, taking positions on poverty, racism, LGBT rights and multiculturalism. I will be delighted for each of them individually if they achieve their dreams on Sunday night.But they’re not playing as individuals, of course. They’re part of a team, and that team represents England. And here I have a problem. Continue reading...

Florida entrepreneur James Solages and Joseph Vincent accused of involvement in the killing of Haiti’s president. Plus, storms batter US east coast, and the Syrian refugee who lived in an airport for seven monthsGood morningA Florida entrepreneur has been accused of involvement in the assassination of Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse. Continue reading...

In 1919, white rioters stormed into an Omaha courthouse and dragged a Black jailed man who said he was innocent out to his deathHuman skin melts at 162F (72C). Fifty degrees more and the blood boils. Continue reading...

Research suggests looking at role of job loss, economic change, closure of schools and community organizations and civil unrestGun homicides surged across the United States during the coronavirus pandemic, in the same year that Americans bought a record-breaking number of guns.But some of America’s leading gun violence researchers have concluded that what might seem like an obvious cause-and-effect – a surge in gun buying leads to a surge in gun violence – is not supported by the data. Continue reading...

The logistical challenges of covering a major sporting event were made even tougher this year by a global pandemicJon Champion isn’t one for notes.When the match on hand cries out for one of his signature rhetorical flourishes, the veteran English broadcaster depends on spontaneity. Never a script. Continue reading...

Coronavirus focuses new attention on need for laws requiring paid time offThe coronavirus pandemic has fueled the demand for American workers to be provided with paid sick leave at their jobs, as essential workers risked not only contracting coronavirus but also losing two weeks of income if they tested positive for the virus.US workers receive far fewer days off than workers in other major industrialized nations, and work an average of four to eight more hours a week than the average worker in Europe. More than 32 million workers in the US had no paid sick days off before the pandemic, and low-wage workers are less likely to have paid sick leave and other benefits such as health insurance. Continue reading...

The US east coast was hit by extreme weather on Thursday as heavy thunderstorms brought flooding and travel disruption to New York City. The city witnessed dramatic scenes as subway stations were inundated by water due to heavy rainstorms ahead of the arrival of Tropical Storm Elsa

Zaila Avant-garde, a 14-year-old from Harvey, Louisiana, has taken out the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee, becoming the first African American winner in the tournament's 96-year history. Avant-garde correctly spelled “murraya”, a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees, to take out the title ahead of Chaitra Thummala, a 12-year-old from Frisco, Texas.

Avant-garde, a basketball prodigy, also holds three Guinness world records for ball dribblingWhether dribbling a basketball or identifying obscure Latin or Greek roots, Zaila Avant-garde doesn’t show much stress.

Officials reported 116 deaths in Oregon and 78 in Washington after extreme temperatures in normally moderate regionThe death toll from the record-breaking heatwave that struck the US Pacific north-west last week has risen to nearly 200, with health authorities reporting 116 deaths in Oregon and 78 in Washington state.The data in Washington state are particularly striking given historical context. There were seven heat-related deaths in Washington between mid-June and the end of August in 2020. Between 2015 and 2020, the state saw just 39 deaths in the late spring and summer months. Continue reading...

• ‘I will not send another generation to war in Afghanistan’• Withdrawal ahead of schedule as Biden says ‘speed is safety’Joe Biden pledged on Thursday that he would not send “another generation of Americans” to war in Afghanistan and said the US would withdraw its forces from the nation by 31 August.“Our military mission in Afghanistan will conclude on August 31,” Biden said. Continue reading...

More victims were recovered Thursday, with 76 still unaccounted for as officials say no chance of life in rubbleRescue efforts at the site of the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, Florida, officially ended late on Wednesday night as officials have said there is no chance of life in the rubble.More victims were recovered on Thursday, bringing the death toll by the early evening to 64 and the number of those still unaccounted for down to 76. Of those who were recovered, 35 have been identified. Continue reading...

• Avenatti weeps and tells his children to be ashamed of him• Bombastic lawyer represented Stormy Daniels against TrumpMichael Avenatti, the bombastic lawyer known for representing the adult film actor and producer Stormy Daniels in lawsuits against Donald Trump, was sentenced on Thursday to two and a half years in prison for attempting to extort up to $25m from the sportswear company Nike.Related: Michael Avenatti: prosecutors seek long prison sentence for corrupt lawyer Continue reading...

Agreement was disclosed late Wednesday night in a US bankruptcy court filing in New YorkOxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s plan to reorganize into a new entity that helps combat the US opioid epidemic got a big boost as 15 states that had previously opposed the new business model now support it.The agreement from multiple state attorneys general, including those who had most aggressively opposed Purdue’s original settlement proposal, was disclosed late Wednesday night in a filing in US bankruptcy court in White Plains, New York. It followed weeks of intense mediations that resulted in changes to Purdue’s original exit plan. Continue reading...

Ubiquitous political border tours fixate on immigration, missing the complex character and needs of the regionEdward Marquez, the father of my classmate when I was growing up, became a border community hero in 1994 when, as a state district judge from El Paso, he initiated a rare legal maneuver that resonated along the Texas-Mexico border. Fed up with a long history of disparate funding and state services to border communities from the state capital in Austin, he convened a court of criminal inquiry – a weapon in the legal arsenal that is available when a judge has evidence that a prosecutor fell short of pursuing a criminal case and justice was not being served.Related: Welcome to the US southern border: same country, different planet Continue reading...

The Habs’ ultimately doomed title challenge served as a reminder of just how deep the storied team’s social imprint goes across the north. Just don’t call them Canada’s teamFor such a storied team, it’s inevitable that you step back into the past to figure out the present.It was October 1975 when the Montreal novelist and incisive social purveyor, Mordecai Richler, filed a piece for Esquire magazine entitled, ‘The Home Team, My Heroes’. Continue reading...

Investors worry resurgence of Covid-19 cases will slow economic growth and stall global recovery