Governor was photographed with a dozen others who pushed tables together at a bar but state only allows six to sit together

Political strategists have always sought to put us all into boxes – because if we’re railing against one another we’re not directing our anger at the governmentA fresh flurry of indignation has greeted the latest “slice, dice and present to collective outrage” demographic creation: the “geriatric millennial”, born in the early 80s. Apparently, their ease in shifting between analogue and digital worlds mean every workplace should be run by one, but that hasn’t stopped many, understandably, protesting about the terminology.An impressive – or alarming – amount of creative energy is expended in describing the simple fact that people are different ages. Marketing executives and political strategists used the likes of Mondeo Man or Aldi Mum, daft as they were, to describe a set of aspirations or attributes susceptible to targeted seduction. Continue reading...

By selling my songs to fans directly instead of via a record label, I’m getting agency back in a world where music is undervalued by streaming companies and the UK governmentI’ve come to realise that the old models of making music are becoming defunct. I spent 10 years on a major label, and it was sometimes hard: I was signed to EMI by the two guys who originally signed Radiohead and Kate Bush, who were excited that I dabbled in lots of different art forms. However, they left and I was given the man who signed Lily Allen and Kylie, and after that I felt tolerated rather than supported.I didn’t want to “go pop” or compromise my vision. Many of the artists I loved – David Bowie, Kate Bush, the Beatles – had been associated with EMI, and others such as Björk had also proved that it is possible to have commercial success and be unique and artistic. Had I been working in the 1960s or 70s I would have ridden a wave of avant garde work into the mainstream. I had three Top 10 albums, and Brit, Ivor Novello and Mercury nominations, but the whole time I was on a major label I felt like I was negotiating my art school philosophy of DIY. Continue reading...

Top aide says Democrat hasn’t ruled out challenging Republican Greg Abbott in 2022, but hasn’t taken formal stepsThree years after becoming the Democrats’ breakout star in Texas and a year after a short-lived presidential run, Beto O’Rourke is weighing a campaign for governor.Related: Matthew McConaughey ‘making calls’ about run for Texas governor – report Continue reading...

The bounce-back will be stronger in the US and China, but Europe and Japan face a slower restart

People gather at one of several events planned nationwide to mark one-year anniversary of Floyd’s death. Plus, US joins global outcry over Belarus ‘hijacking’ of planeGood morning,Rallies have been taking place in Minneapolis to mark the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. The world watched in horror one year ago on Tuesday as the police officer Derek Chauvin placed his knee on Floyd’s neck during an arrest and ignored his cries for help. After a summer of demonstrations nationwide, Chauvin went on to be one of the few police officers in the US to be prosecuted and convicted for killing a person while on duty. Continue reading...

This moment calls for humility – we cannot innovate ourselves out of this mess

One year after the murder of George Floyd, we should be honoring the actions that made his name a global call to action instead of targeting those who speak out

Cross-community action on culture, sport and schools shows that historical divisions are slowly erodingConsidering recent headlines, you could be forgiven for thinking Northern Ireland was hurtling back towards much darker days. The unrest witnessed in Belfast remains a legitimate concern, with deep-set socioeconomic roots. And we’ve been given a stark reminder of the Troubles with the inquest into the Ballymurphy massacre. However, despite the hurdles, there is much to suggest a populace who are intent on making a healthier, genuinely integrated society work.You can trace that commitment back to changes that are unshackling the country from its cyclical history of ethnic conflict and mutual mistrust. In the 23 years since the Good Friday agreement, people in Northern Ireland have repeatedly expressed that there can be no return to bloodshed and brutality in the name of national identity. This is reflected by younger people rejecting the idea of being either British or Irish, in favour of a fluid, fully inclusive Northern Irish identity. A recent poll suggested that while 51% of over-65s here consider themselves British, only 17% of those aged 18-24 identify the same way. Continue reading...

Union members who lost relatives to officer killings are fighting to eject ‘harmful and violent’ police groups from labor associations

Phil Mickelson has become the oldest major winner of all time after being crowned champion at the US PGA championship. Speaking after his success the fifty-year-old said ‘one of the moments I’ll cherish my entire life. I don’t know how to describe the feeling of excitement and fulfillment and accomplishment to do something when very few people thought that I could.’

Jim Davidson was 20,000ft up the world’s tallest mountain when an earthquake struck. He was determined to complete the journey he startedJim Davidson knows what it’s like to shelter in place following a once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe. His introduction to this type of resilience came not through the Covid-19 pandemic, but six years earlier, on Mount Everest.Davidson, a veteran mountaineer, was making his first attempt to summit the world’s highest peak in 2015. On the morning of 25 April, he and his team were at 19,700ft at the Camp One site – a narrow glacier situated between two towering ledges. Then they heard an increasingly loud rumble come down from the west shoulder of Everest, several hundred yards away. Then came a second rumble, from the opposite direction. Continue reading...

Prime minister Yoshihide Suga risks playing host to a coronavirus spike if he doesn’t check his Games hubris

Dr John Carlos was thrown out of the 1968 Games after making a stand for human rights. He does not see much progress by the IOC in the decades sinceI recently had the honor of sitting down with Dr John Carlos for my podcast, The Rematch. I wanted to get the thoughts of the man who made history by protesting in support of human rights on the podium alongside Tommie Smith at the 1968 Olympics. His views are particularly timely given the International Olympic Committee’s intention to enforce its infamous Rule 50 in Tokyo this summer. Under Rule 50, athletes are banned from protesting on the podium, field of play or at ceremonies (they can still express political views on social media or in interviews). It may as well be called the John Carlos and Tommie Smith rule.It is unclear what punishment athletes will face if they ignore Rule 50 and protest, but in 1968 the US Olympic Committee, under pressure from the IOC, expelled Carlos and Smith from the Games. Carlos told me he is concerned athletes will face similar punishments this year in Tokyo. Continue reading...

Chelsea, a 2.2 square-mile city, has a population of close to 40,000 people, 67% of whom are of Latino or Hispanic origin, according to the US Census Bureau. The bureau also reports that 18% of the population lives at the poverty line. The Chelsea police department considers itself ahead of many parts of the US when it comes to community policing and the way it deals with de-escalating domestic and criminal situations Continue reading...

Minority leader Mitch McConnell opposes a bill for a 9/11-style panel that could unearth embarrassing facts about the role of Trump and his supportersTop Senate Republicans are making a concerted effort to quash the creation of a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Capitol attack, deeply endangering the bill’s passage amid fears about what a high-profile inquiry into the events of 6 January might uncover.The Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, has said he opposes the commission bill in its current form and several Republicans who have previously expressed support said they could no longer back it. Continue reading...

Program starts with march led by the Rev Al Sharpton and Benjamin Crump to mark the anniversary of black man’s murder

US secretary of state also reaffirms Biden administration supports a two-state solutionThe US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has pledged the Biden administration will deal with “the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza” and will seek “equal measures of security” for Israelis and Palestinians as a ceasefire after 11 days of conflict held throughout the weekend.More than 240 people in Gaza, including at least 66 children, and a dozen in Israel were killed during the violence, marking the first major diplomatic crisis for the Biden administration. Continue reading...

Small-scale agriculture needs the tools and confidence to deal with the rapid changes society has to make

Last year, the city became the Covid capital of the world. Now, as cases have dropped and home sales increased, some think it’s the perfect time for progressive changesOf any city in the US, perhaps none has been so marked by the pandemic as New York.Early last year, the city became the Covid capital of the world, seeing 18,679 deaths in three months. Many from the city’s wealthiest zip codes moved to more spacious places, while those in low-income zip codes bore the brunt of the virus’s health and economic impacts. Continue reading...

Unlike her white predecessors, Hannah-Jones will be offered a five-year term without tenure. Here’s why that mattersTenure at American universities is not given. It’s earned. Those of us fortunate enough to have had a shot at earning it understand all too well the effort it takes to earn tenure, the costs of failing and privilege it conveys.Related: US journalist Barrett Brown arrested in the UK on incitement offences Continue reading...

Unconstitutional anti-abortion laws are often a grim kind of misogynist political theater. But that might be changingSenate Bill 8, the six-week abortion ban that the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, signed into law last week, is a total ban on abortion in everything but name. The bill is one of several across the country that bans abortions at six weeks of gestation – in layman’s terms, four weeks after fertilization and two weeks after the first missed period.Texas is the ninth state to pass such a bill, named by the anti-choice movement that lobbies for them as “fetal heartbeat bills”. The term is a misnomer, because at six weeks of gestation there is neither a fetus nor a heartbeat. Indeed, there is no heart. At six weeks, the pregnancy consists of an embryo, which will not develop into a fetus for nearly another month. No heart, and no other organ, is present. The so-called “heartbeat” that abortion opponents refer to is actually the pulsing of some cells that are starting to specialize, and which will eventually form cardiac tissue if the pregnancy continues. At the phase of pregnancy when abortions are banned by the new Texas legislation, the embryo is about the size of a pea. There are no exceptions for rape or incest. Continue reading...

New research reveals that the lure of the gogglebox reduces the hours we work and even encourages early retirementWe’ve all watched a lot of telly this past year. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. If it’s that or more Zoom, or even braving the weather in this shambles of a spring, I’m all for flicking on Netflix.When the pandemic started, everyone news-binged to find out what was going on and started subscribing to streaming services galore. In April 2020, we averaged 6.5 hours viewing a day against five in 2019. As the pandemic dragged on, people stopped bothering with the news (unless Boris Johnson was announcing a new lockdown), but kept streaming box sets, partly because TV is really good. You don’t need a lockdown to make you watch Normal People or The Queen’s Gambit. Continue reading...

Ming Smith: Evidence will be the inaugural exhibit at the Nicola Vassell Gallery, and will include some of her most recognizable images – and others that have never been seen before. Smith was one of the few women in Kamoinge, a collective of Black photographers established in New York in 1963 Continue reading...

Leaked files show how police stepped up surveillance efforts after January insurrections for signs of violence from far-right groupsWashington’s Metropolitan police department recorded threats to lawmakers and public facilities in the wake of the 6 January attack on the Capitol, according to documents made public in a ransomware hack on their systems this month.Related: Trump Hotel raised prices to deter QAnon conspiracists, police files show Continue reading...

The ex-president is accused of abuse of power, fraud, tax evasion and more but he has not been charged with anythingA sudden fall from power always comes hard. King Alfred was reduced to skulking in a Somerset bog. A distraught Napoleon talked to coffee bushes on St Helena. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia hung around the haberdashery department of Jolly’s in Bath. Uganda’s Idi Amin plotted bloody revenge from a Novotel in Jeddah. Only Alfred the Great made a successful comeback.All of which brings us to Donald Trump, currently in exile at his luxury club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Whingeing amid the manicured greens and bunkers of his exclusive golf course, the defeated president recalls an ageing Bonnie Prince Charlie – a sort of “king over the water” with water features. Like deposed leaders throughout history, he obsesses about a return to power. Continue reading...

Tracey Williams-Dillard, the publisher of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, on how her team works tirelessly to help tell a well-rounded narrativeJust five blocks away from the crossroads of 38th and Chicago, where the world watched Derek Chauvin murder George Floyd last May, sits the oldest Black newspaper in Minnesota: the Spokesman-Recorder.The almost 87-year-old paper was originally two Black newspapers, the Saint Paul Recorder and the Minneapolis Spokesman, launched by civil rights activist Cecil Newman. In 1976, when he died, his wife, Launa Newman, ran the paper until she was 86. In her retirement, Newman passed the paper down to her granddaughter: Tracey Williams-Dillard. Continue reading...

The pair’s split has been the subject of fevered press scrutiny – and claims of Bill’s links to Jeffrey Epstein has fed the frenzyThe announcement that Bill and Melinda Gates were to divorce was amicable enough, suggesting a smooth split between the famous couple who turned a billion-dollar software fortune into a driving force for global philanthropy.Related: Bill Gates ‘left Microsoft board amid inquiry into relationship with employee’ Continue reading...

A year ago, Christopher Martin took an allegedly counterfeit bill. The police were called, and shortly after, Floyd would be deadChristopher Martin lived above a bricked grocery store in south Minneapolis, with a maroon awning and bold red signage that reads Cup Foods. So when a cashier’s position came up last year, he took it without thinking.He quickly learned the regulars’ orders by heart, their specific tobacco preferences, their favored snacks. The job was more than just a paycheck. “A family, community base,” he remembered. “A lot of jokes and laughs.” Continue reading...

Keeping the housing market spinning has become top priority for a government focused on wealth creation based on propertyWhen we consider the likely effects of Boris Johnson’s administration over the next three years, and possibly beyond, it is easy to believe his achievements will be near or less than zero.Looking back to his time as mayor of London, he wasted most of his first term dealing with arguments among his close lieutenants before procrastinating about which of his limited set of manifesto pledges he would implement. Only in his second term did he press ahead with the capital’s cycle superhighways – for many people his only visible achievement. Continue reading...

Wyoming state senator Anthony Bouchard, 55, rebuked for referring to relationship as ‘like the Romeo and Juliet story’Wyoming state senator Anthony Bouchard, a Republican trying to unseat US congresswoman Liz Cheney next year, revealed that he impregnated a 14-year-old girl when he was 18, describing the relationship as “like the Romeo and Juliet” story in a description that drew a rebuke from a sexual assault prevention group.Related: Can ‘Never Trump’ Republicans gain party control – or is it a lost cause? Continue reading...

Pair accused of sleeping and browsing the internet instead of monitoring Epstein on night he died admitted falsifying recordsThe two Bureau of Prisons workers tasked with guarding Jeffrey Epstein the night he killed himself in a New York jail have admitted they falsified records, but they will skirt any time behind bars under a deal with federal prosecutors, authorities said Friday.Related: Trump Hotel raised prices to deter QAnon conspiracists, police files show Continue reading...

Eight people injured, one of whom is in critical condition, police department saysTwo people have been killed and eight others injured in a shooting in downtown Minneapolis.The 10 people shot included five men and five women, the police department said in a series of tweets on Saturday. Continue reading...

I felt alone as a Jew attending a Palestine solidarity rally in 2014. I don’t feel alone any moreOn Nakba Day, 15 May, amid the outbreak of war in Israel/Palestine, I attended a rally in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, to commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from the new Israeli state in 1948, and to protest against the oppression of the Palestinian people in the land between the river and the sea. From the signs I saw as part of that crowd – “This Jew will not stand by” or “Another Jew for a Free Palestine” – and from monitoring my social media feeds, it was clear that there were thousands of Jews taking part in these protests in cities all over the country.Related: Palestinians return to damaged homes as UN calls for Gaza dialogue Continue reading...

The notorious heir and subject of The Jinx documentary is on trial for the murder of his friend and confidante Susan BermanRobert Durst has been beating the odds for close to 40 years – escaping scrutiny for the disappearance of his first wife, going un-investigated for years for the cold-blooded murder of one of his best friends and, most startlingly, winning acquittal in a murder trial in Texas in which he admitted shooting the victim and dismembering the body with a bow saw and a paring knife.But time, and luck, may be running out for the notorious black sheep of a high-profile New York real estate family. Continue reading...

The Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd’s death forced leaders to re-examine the images in our everyday lives – in the US and beyond Continue reading...

The killing of Floyd by a white officer reflected a common history of violence against Black people that united protesters in a renewed global movementGeorge Floyd’s murder felt like everything was the same and nothing was the same, said Miski Noor, an activist in Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed by a white police officer a year ago on 25 May.“How many times have we seen Black death go viral?” asked Noor, the co-founder of Black Visions, which advocates for abolition, an approach to public safety that does not involve the police. Continue reading...