CVS Health, AT&T, Walmart and Comcast among companies that supported anti-LGBTQ+ candidates, Popular Information reportsJune is Pride month, and many US corporations are advertising their support for the LGBTQ+ community. A new study, however, has found that 25 companies otherwise eager to wave the rainbow flag have donated more than $10m to anti-LGBTQ+ federal and state politicians over the past two years.Related: ‘A war on 100 fronts’: mapping the anti-trans laws sweeping America Continue reading...

Senate minority leader’s remarks prompt increasing calls for Stephen Breyer to step down during Biden administrationThe Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Monday it was “highly unlikely” he would allow Joe Biden to fill a supreme court vacancy arising in 2024, the year of the next presidential election, if Republicans regained control of the chamber.Related: Senior DoJ official to exit amid outcry over seizure of Democrats’ records Continue reading...

Ex-intelligence contractor convicted of leaking report on Russian interference in US election released for good behaviorReality Winner, a former intelligence contractor convicted of leaking a report about Russian interference in the US election in 2016, has been released from prison.Winner’s attorney, Alison Grinter Allen, made the announcement via Twitter, saying the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor had been released into a residential re-entry programme for good behavior. Continue reading...

Communique is first time alliance has asserted it needs to respond to Beijing’s growing powerNato leaders have declared China presents a security risk at their annual summit in Brussels, the first time the traditionally Russia-focused military alliance has asserted it needs to respond to Beijing’s growing power.The final communique, signed off by leaders of the 30-member alliance at the urging of the new US administration, said China’s “stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order”. Continue reading...

A barrage of death threats against officials and volunteers from ex-president’s supporters could make recruiting poll workers harderLate on the night of 24 April, the wife of Georgia’s top election official got a chilling text message: “You and your family will be killed very slowly.”A week earlier, Tricia Raffensperger, wife of the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had received another anonymous text: “We plan for the death of you and your family every day.” Continue reading...

Driver arrested after being treated at an area hospital while police haven’t confirmed a motive for the attackA woman is dead and three others injured after a car was driven into a crowd of anti-police brutality protesters in Minneapolis on Sunday night, Minneapolis police confirmed on Twitter.The driver was arrested and is in police custody after being treated at an area hospital, according to police. The police have not confirmed a motive for the attack. Continue reading...

Before world leaders met in Cornwall, finance ministers had made an agreement that could spell the end of tax havensG7 summits nowadays are mostly fields of the cloth of gold. They are about showing off, with Boris Johnson in full Henry VIII rig. He staged beach parties, hired cruise ships, dug up trees, summoned royals and organised worship of David Attenborough. The planet was saved, the world cleansed and the poor vaccinated. Johnson got through £70m in policing for a three-day event.Most important, the G7 hates any row that spoils the show. Johnson succeeded in neutering the US president, Joe Biden, on the Northern Ireland protocol, deftly deploying tea with the Queen. He failed on the same subject with France’s Emmanuel Macron. With his signature banality, he equated the vexed protocol with Macron barring a Toulouse sausage from reaching Paris. Continue reading...

Andy Slavitt writes that White House Covid taskforce coordinator told him ‘I hope the election turns out a certain way’, CNN reportsDr Deborah Birx, then the White House coronavirus taskforce coordinator, hinted to an Obama-era official shortly before the 2020 election she wanted Donald Trump to lose to Joe Biden.Andy Slavitt, a former acting chief of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, writes in a new book, according to CNN, that he spoke to Birx “to get a sense for whether, in the event of a strained transition of government, she would help give Biden and his team the best chance to be effective. Continue reading...

I was offered an MBE for ‘services to literature’, but I can’t think of anything I want less, writes author Nikesh Shukla

Wildlife manager discovers nearly 20 packages at Florida space force stationThe mystery of more than 20 unidentified floating objects that washed up on the beach at Florida’s Cape Canaveral space force station was solved when the contents turned out to be more than 60lb of cocaine, apparently lost from a passing trafficker’s boat.The discovery was made by a wildlife manager who was surveying turtle nests and spotted one of the square packages, bound tightly in plastic wrapping, lying on the sand. Continue reading...

Artificial intelligence aliens may not be as appealing as those who are warm-blooded and squishy, but it’s probably more accurate to imagine them that wayI’m an astronomer at the Seti Institute, a non-profit research organization in California’s Silicon Valley. My colleagues and I look for extraterrestrial life, including intelligent beings – or in the vernacular, aliens. It’s exciting times for people like me, because extra-terrestrial life is being widely discussed now in the lead-up to the Pentagon’s highly anticipated report on so-called unexplained aerial phenomena.Yet I should say straight away that I am not expecting any big revelations out of the report. I think it’s overwhelmingly likely that aliens are present in our galaxy. But I don’t believe they’re hanging out in our airspace. Not now, and not in historic times. Continue reading...

Deaths from fentanyl overdoses have jumped by more than 2,100% in five years as the powerful drug has flooded the stateWhen San Francisco police seized seven kilos of powder-filled baggies containing the deadly opioid fentanyl last week, the city’s police chief warned the bust contained “enough lethal overdoses to wipe out San Francisco’s population four times over”.But drug addiction experts say the haul may represent just a tiny fraction of the massive volume of the powerful synthetic drug that is flooding California, after being mostly an east coast phenomenon for years. Continue reading...

After tea with the Queen, the president has moved on to Brussels for the Nato summit before his big meeting with Vladimir Putin. Plus, the woman who forced the US government to take UFOs seriouslyGood morning.Joe Biden is expected to use a Nato summit in Brussels on Monday – his first as president and the first since the start of the pandemic – to atone for the damage of the Trump years and to address the security challenge from China.

19.3 million adults said in late May that their households didn’t get enough food to eat while several states have started to cut benefitsFood banks in many states across the US are bracing for a surge in demand for food aid due to Republican governors ending federal extended unemployment benefits early in a move that will hit millions of American families.Several states across the US have started to voluntarily end federal extended unemployment benefits, as Republican governors in at least 25 states have announced intentions to do so. Continue reading...

Around 2,500 dogs competed in the 145th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, with a Pekingese named Wasabi winning best in show. Wasabi, who is the grandson of a previous winner, has notched a fifth victory for the unmistakable toy breed.The annual event usually takes place at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, but owing to the Covid-19 pandemic the event took place without an audience in Westchester County. The show is the second longest continuously running sporting event in the US after the Kentucky Derby.

Other sports watched with interest at how today’s tools were used for a fight with narrative, hype, personalities and jeopardySome food for thought. Last week, the Guardian’s report on the “special exhibition” between the Hall of Fame boxer Floyd Mayweather and the celebrity YouTuber Logan Paul, was the second most-read story on our entire website. Millions read it, shared it, devoured it. A million Americans also paid $49.99 to watch on pay-per-view. Beforehand Mayweather had described it as “legalised bank robbery”. And it was. Yet people still willingly stuck their hands in the air and handed over their cash.Related: Logan Paul v Floyd Mayweather ends in boos as each fighter makes millions Continue reading...

Champion follows in his grandfather Malachy’s paw prints and gains fifth-ever win for PekingeseA Pekingese named Wasabi, who is the grandson of a previous winner, has been awarded best in show at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, notching a fifth victory for the unmistakable toy breed. A whippet named Bourbon was named runner-up.Waddling through a small-but-mighty turn in the ring on Sunday night, Wasabi clinched the prestigious prize after winning the big American Kennel Club National Championship in 2019. Continue reading...

The former heavyweight champion says psychedelics would have helped him with his mental health during his career. Some scientists and companies agreeThe peyote cactus is central to many of the rituals of the indigenous Huichol tribe of Mexico. The bright colors and dreamy symbols of their yarn paintings are said to be inspired by the hallucinations experienced by ingesting the mescaline-rich plant in shamanic rituals.“They do these beautiful creations with beads, paint and sculpture. [By taking] peyote they say they communicate with the gods for the design. I respect that,” says Mauricio Sulaimán, the Mexican-born president of the World Boxing Council [WBC]. Continue reading...

Omens are favourable, but experts warn previous four years will have lasting consequencesThree years ago it was Donald Trump who stunned Nato members at a summit in Brussels, warning that he may be prepared to pull the US out of the western military alliance if its other members did not increase their defence spending.At a summit in the same city on Monday, it falls to Joe Biden to repair the damage from four years of his predecessor’s freewheeling theatrics, although experts caution that the Trump era will have lasting consequences. Continue reading...

New Zealand often shines brightest on the world stage when the rest of the world is otherwise indisposedNew Zealand’s main centre, Auckland, has been named the most liveable city in the world this year – primarily, it seems, by simple virtue of not being anywhere else during a global pandemic.Like during the 1976 Olympics, where Kiwi athletes collected a swag of coveted running medals largely thanks to a boycott by dominant African nations, New Zealand often shines brightest on the world stage when the rest of the world is otherwise indisposed. Continue reading...

Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez address Democratic senator who has refused to back ending the filibusterJoe Manchin, the conservative Democratic West Virginia senator whose defiance over the filibuster rule threatens to stall Joe Biden’s domestic legislative agenda, found himself under pressure from both wings of his party on Sunday.Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, adopted a conciliatory approach on CNN’s State of the Union show, offering a novel interpretation of Manchin’s assertion a week earlier that he would refuse to support Biden’s flagship For the People voting rights act, or vote to end the filibuster that would allow it to pass. Continue reading...

House speaker says reported seizure of Democrats’ private phone data undermined ‘rule of law’The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on Sunday it was “beyond belief” that the three top justice department officials of Donald Trump’s administration had been unaware of secret subpoenas seeking private data from the former president’s political opponents.Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first pick as attorney general, his successor, William Barr, and the long-serving deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein have all claimed to have no knowledge of the alleged attempts by their department to harvest information covertly from leading Democrats during the investigation into whether Donald Trump and his campaign utilized links with Russia during the 2016 election, according to CNN. Continue reading...

US president gives insight into his discussions with monarch in short visit after G7 summit in CornwallJoe Biden revealed the Queen had asked him about his Russian and Chinese counterparts, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, during their 45-minute talk over tea at Windsor Castle, in the aftermath of the G7 summit on Sunday.It was an exceptionally rare, if limited, insight into political discussions involving the British monarch: the contents of her regular weekly audiences with the British prime minister of the day are kept confidential. Continue reading...

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, would be doing the right thing by pardoning the organisers of 2017’s illegal referendumMadrid’s Plaza de Colón is home to the largest Spanish flag in the world, making it a natural focal point for demonstrations of rightwing patriotic fervour, particularly on matters related to Catalonia. On Sunday, it was packed again. Thousands of protesters made their feelings clear following reports that Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, is about to pardon the 12 Catalan politicians who were convicted over their roles in the illegal independence referendum of 2017.The imprisonment of leading separatists such as Oriol Junqueras, the president of the Republican Left of Catalonia party (ERC), was a draconian response to an episode of foolhardy brinkmanship by the pro-independence movement. The jail sentences handed out to Mr Junqueras and eight other separatist leaders two years ago ranged from nine to 13 years. But a majority of Spaniards are in no mood for showing clemency. The Plaza de Colón demonstration may have been attended by Spain’s three main rightwing parties, but a recent poll found that fully 61% of respondents, and 53% of socialist voters, opposed the idea of pardons. Fewer than 30% were in favour. The failure of the jailed politicians to express any regret for their actions has hardened public opinion and was not lost on the judges of the Spanish supreme court, which has stated that issuing pardons would be “unacceptable”. Continue reading...

The US president Joe Biden said: ‘America is back at the table’ as the G7 summit came to a close. Speaking in Newquay, southwestern England, after the three-day summit, Biden said democracies faced a threat from autocratic governments.He said the US was in a ‘contest with autocrats’ and that he wanted a democratic alternative to China’s belt and road initiative

Just when leadership is required, those nations with the capacity to do so are thinking parochiallyThe Atlantic charter of 1941, signed by then prime minister, Winston Churchill, and US president, Franklin D Roosevelt, set out the principles that would govern the postwar world. From self-determination to international trade to “a world free from want and fear”, its ambitions were lofty and its goals expansive. We live today with its legacy.Some 80 years on, Boris Johnson and Joe Biden signed what was termed a “new Atlantic charter” ahead of the G7 meeting in Cornwall. But the new Atlantic charter reflects the diminished status of both the US and Britain in the 21st century. It set out some sensible areas for bilateral cooperation – from quantum computing to air travel – but there was little of lasting note. These were not two world leaders charting the future for humankind, nor indeed for post-Brexit Britain: there was not even a promise of a US-UK trade deal. Continue reading...

Progress has been made, but the release of the profound film, The Reason I Jump, shows how much further we need to goA film comes out this month that is among the most profound, thought-provoking and moving feats of documentary-making I have ever seen. It is about autism, and a state of being that far too many people either misunderstand or ignore. But as it ranges across lives played out in Japan, Britain, the US, India and Sierra Leone, it also shines a light on parts of the autistic experience millions of us would recognise in ourselves. In doing so, the film shows how little we still know about the human mind, but how much more we understand than we did even a decade ago.The Reason I Jump draws on the revelatory book of the same name, written by the Japanese author Naoki Higashida when he was only 13 and first published in 2007. Diagnosed with “autistic tendencies” when he was six, Higashida had always displayed the deep difficulties with spoken communication common to many autistic people. But when he learned to use a computer connected to an alphabet grid, he began to map out his world in rich, aphoristic prose that rarely wasted a word. Continue reading...

My newfound delight in the smallest pleasures is unlikely to survive the resumption of normal lifeThe weather is warm, and we’re heading into summer, with the assumption that this one will be better than the last: freer of lockdowns, less fraught with uncertainty and with a high probability that, when we come back in September, it will be to something like regular life. This is a great feeling in almost every way, except for a nagging anxiety – that, now the end is in sight and the limbo practically over, a reckoning is finally due.The reflex to learn something from everything is, I guess, noble and human, but let’s face it, it’s also a pain in the arse. In New York at the moment, think pieces abound on how the city might come out of the pandemic a better, more equal place. Large thoughts attend patterns of work and how they may or may not have been permanently disrupted. These are worthwhile speculations at the social and political level, but at home, on the sofa, the creeping pressure to turn the pandemic experience into a spur for “growth” and renewal – in other words, to return to the pre-pandemic assumption that every life stage must be harnessed to rampant personal improvement – brings on a certain weariness. Continue reading...

Engineers are working on a plan to quiet the ‘unbearable’ sound, which occurs when strong winds hit the bridgeSomewhere in a wind tunnel on the south-western side of Ontario, a group of the world’s leading bridge aerodynamics and acoustics experts are puzzling over a full-scale model of the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge.The experts have been contracted to solve the mysterious problem of a strange humming sound that has been emanating from San Francisco’s famous bridge for the past year, driving some nearby residents to a state of madness. Continue reading...

The media reaction to students voting to remove a portrait of the Queen has been cynically exploited by the ToriesSome good news at last! The middle common room of Magdalen College, Oxford has voted to remove its portrait of the Queen because of her association with colonialism. Don’t you think that’s really great news? There certainly seemed to be a consensus across the political spectrum that it was.To be clear, I’m not saying there was a consensus that it was right to remove the picture. Far from it. That wouldn’t have been good news – that would have been exceptionally boring news. Everyone agreeing isn’t entertaining. This was great news because of the hysterical divergence of opinion about it. Continue reading...

Workers fight for permanent improvements to wages and benefits as many are concerned about safety and angry over working conditionsWorkers who were deemed essential during the coronavirus pandemic and publicly praised for continuing to work in-person are now fighting for permanent improvements to working conditions, wages and benefits as safety protections are lifted and they still grapple with the impact of working through the long crisis.Millions of essential workers contracted Covid-19 while working through the pandemic. Thousands died as a result or lost co-workers, friends and family members to the virus. Many who caught the virus still experience long-term symptoms and Covid-19 cases and deaths are still a concern in many areas of the US. This is especially true in low-income, predominantly Black and Latino communities where vaccination rates have been lagging despite these communities being hit hardest by the virus. Continue reading...

Burst of legislating slowed this week as most conservative Senate Democrat thrust into position of unique powerFive months after taking office, Joe Biden’s legislative agenda from infrastructure to voting rights is essentially hanging in the balance of one Democratic senator: Joe Manchin of West Virginia.The Democrat-controlled Senate passed a flurry of measures in the early days of the administration, including the $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus package and a nearly quarter-trillion-dollar bill to improve American competitiveness with China. Continue reading...

The way Republicans have pushed the myth marks a dangerous turn from generalized allegations of fraud to refusing to accept the legitimacy of elections, experts sayJust a few days after the polls closed in Florida’s 2018 general election, Rick Scott, then the state’s governor, held a press conference outside the governor’s mansion and made a stunning accusation. Continue reading...

It is not only Iranians who will suffer if a hardliner wins, it could have profound consequences for world peaceIran’s beleaguered voters do not have much of a choice in this Friday’s presidential election. The regime, dominated by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a fiercely anti-western conservative, has cynically manipulated the contest to ensure that a like-minded hardliner, most probably Ebrahim Raisi, head of the judiciary, wins.While the result is hardly a cliff-hanger, its impact may nonetheless be far-reaching – in Iran and internationally. The possibly negative consequences for talks on curbing Iran’s nuclear programme, for peaceful relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the west, for the wars in Syria and Yemen, for the geopolitical balance and for Iran’s own citizens are alarming. Continue reading...

Covid unemployment payments have not caused a labor shortage – Chipotle simply chose not to chop executive payHouse Republicans are blaming Democrats for the rise in Chipotle burrito prices.Related: America’s richest men pay $0 in income tax. This is wealth supremacy | Robert Reich Continue reading...

The EU risks irrelevance if it doesn’t seek new purpose – and it won’t find it in the fantasy of power projected by the G7Beneath the strained bonhomie of the G7 summit lurks a visceral fear: that Joe Biden’s bid to build a democratic alliance to stem the authoritarian tide led by China and Russia will split the world in two, leaving Europe, betrayed by Boris Johnson’s turncoat Britain, to play piggy-in-the-middle.Despite public applause for Biden’s key message – that the US is “back” after the xenophobic hyper-nationalism of Donald Trump – European leaders seem far from convinced. They worry the EU may be sucked into a second, limitless cold war, and that Biden, who will be 82 in 2024, could be unseated by a hawkish Trump or Trump clone. Continue reading...

French President Emmanuel Macron has said that Joe Biden has convinced allies that the US is back, as the two leaders met at the G7 summit on Saturday. Biden, asked by a reporter if America was back, turned to Macron and gestured with his sunglasses towards the French president that he should answer that question. 'Yes, definitely,' Macron said. 'It's great to have a US president who's part of the club and very willing to cooperate'

Other performers can learn from the irreversible break-up that made Oasis one of the greatsIn an age of celebrity blandness, where famous people usually decline to say much of interest in public, Noel Gallagher is reliably forthright in doling out his opinions. Last week, doing the rounds, he let rip at hard-to-hit targets such as Prince Harry (“woke snowflake”) and Little Mix (“not in the same league as Oasis”). So familiar are his “better in my day” grumbles that they’re essentially white noise now; they should make a relaxation app out of them, to soothe sleep-troubled woke snowflakes who are unbearably anxious about the prospect of Little Mix not winning a Brit next year.But in among all the “Dad, put your phone down” stuff, there was wisdom. On the Sky Arts documentary Noel Gallagher: Out of the Now, he dug into the Oasis split, explaining that their break-up was “the best thing for me and for the band”. Prior to that, he said, they were “not lauded as one of the greats of all time”. I saw them trudge through a handful of joyless festival sets in the 00s, which were, like Little Mix, “not in the same league as Oasis”. Calling it a day made them into greats, because it meant they never quite had the chance to become fully spoiled. Continue reading...

Democratic leadership chimed in to rebuke the progressive congresswoman for what was clearly a mischaracterization of her comments Continue reading...

The bee teaches many invaluable life lessons and this year’s is a celebration of perseverance. After a long, difficult season of tumult, anxiety and loss, maybe it’s exactly what we all need2020 was a year like no other. Although it understandably wasn’t top of mind, the competitive spelling world also suffered the disruptive consequences of the pandemic. The Scripps National Spelling Bee – which only the second world war had previously cancelled – became a casualty of Covid-19, despite pleas for organizers to find a virtual work-around or at least extend eligibility for unfortunate eighth graders who lost their final chance to compete.Related: National Spelling Bee adds vocabulary and lightning-round tiebreaker for 2021 Continue reading...

The socialist candidate Pedro Castillo is on the verge of victory, but a hostile elite could stymie his agendaPeru’s presidential election has been settled by the slimmest of margins, but it signals a momentous change. When all the votes from the second-round run-off on Sunday 6 June were finally counted, the socialist Pedro Castillo, former head of the main teacher’s union, held a razor-thin lead of about 60,000 votes – 0.34% – over Keiko Fujimori, candidate of the right and daughter of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori. She has now launched accusations of fraud, demanding that as many as 200,000 votes be nullified. It may take several days for her legal challenges to be heard, and she is clearly still hoping to overturn the result – though the prospect is unlikely. The fact remains that millions of Peruvians joined together to deliver a telling blow to the political and economic model that has dominated the country for the past three decades.The electoral drama in Peru was in that sense a generational reckoning, comparable to the recent upheavals in Chile and Colombia. But it was also the product of the specific political crises Peru has endured in recent years. Since 2018, the country has had two presidents impeached and removed on charges of corruption and one hounded from office by a surge of protests. The sleaze and dysfunction of the established parties was one of the factors that enabled Castillo’s shock breakthrough in the first round of voting in April. Continue reading...