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Chief executive sends ‘very strong’ message to US staff where many workers are vaccinated against CovidThe chief executive of Morgan Stanley has become the latest US banking boss to call for an end to remote working, telling his New York staff that anyone who feels safe going out to a restaurant should return to the office.James Gorman admitted that the bank would take a different approach in countries such as India or the UK – where fewer than 25% of its 5,000 London staff have been going to work in person – due to stricter Covid restrictions. Continue reading...

Figures at major houses said book might stoke ‘staff uprising’ and it would be ‘too hard to get a book that was factually accurate’

Capitalism is reshaping the property market, locking younger generations out of buying somewhere to live and expecting us to be happy about it

The rise of confessional politics has its origins in the left’s post-60s turn away from structures and towards the individual“We are perhaps living at the end of politics,” Michel Foucault wrote in the late 1970s. With the exhaustion of utopias and radical alternatives to capitalism, what was now at stake, he memorably wrote, was to develop “new types, new kinds of relations to ourselves”. Political advancement is not delivered through “parties, trade unions, bureaucracy and politics any more”, he wrote. Instead, politics has become “an individual, moral concern”.In this new definition of politics – in which “everything is political” and “the personal is political” – the self was thought to have become the battlefield of contemporary politics. At that time, many intellectuals, including Foucault, announced the “end of the age of revolution”, opening an era where transforming oneself became the most popular conception of social change. With the collapse of collective “grand narratives”, they argued, we had now to look inwards. Beginning in the late 60s, political change would be reframed as a struggle against oneself, against our “inner enemy”. One had to confront the “fascist within”. Continue reading...

Before Trump, Obama’s justice department did more to hurt press freedom than any administration since Nixon. Here’s how we stop history repeatingThe US Department of Justice is under increasing fire for the still-unfolding scandals involving the secret surveillance of journalists and even members of Congress in the waning days of the Trump presidency. Some of these actions were even initially defended by the Biden administration’s Department of Justice.In response to the growing scandal – and the scathing condemnations from the surveillance targets at the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN – the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, has vowed the DoJ will no longer use legal process to spy on journalists “doing their jobs”. The Times, the Post and CNN are set to meet with the justice department this week to seek more information on what happened and extract further promises it won’t happen again. Continue reading...

Vladimir Putin has refused to give any guarantee that the opposition leader Alexei Navalny will get out of prison alive, saying nobody imprisoned in Russia should be given exclusive treatment.In an extended and testy interview with NBC News before his Geneva summit with Joe Biden, the Russian president refused to use Navalny's name, leaving journalist Keir Simmons to say 'his name is Alexei Navalny'.

Framework comes five months after violent mob attacked the Capitol but takes care to remain ‘ideologically neutral’The White House has published its first ever national strategy for countering domestic terrorism five months after a violent mob stormed the US Capitol in Washington.The framework released on Tuesday by the national security council describes the threat as now more serious than potential attacks from overseas but emphasises the need to protect civil liberties. Continue reading...

But there is no sign of a thaw in Russia-US relations. Plus, the White House releases first domestic terrorism strategy, and has California’s drought solved the mystery of a 1965 plane crash?Good morning.Anticipation is building as Joe Biden prepares to meet Vladimir Putin at a Geneva summit on Wednesday, but there is no sign of a thaw in Russia-US relations. Continue reading...

Millions have avoided in-person consultations in the past year and providers see ‘asynchronous’ care as the future of healthCompanies are hoping to cash in on what has become one of the inarguable winners in the pandemic economy – virtual healthcare – by offering subscriptions to circumvent the complex US health insurance system.Think Netflix, but for medicine. At least, that’s the promise to patients. Continue reading...

In those states, Republicans hold the governorship and the legislature, giving them the power to take aim at abortion access, trans rights, voting and gun safetyDemocrats across the US cheered last month, as Texas legislators staged a walkout from the statehouse to block the passage of a Republican bill that would enact a number of restrictions on voting access.Related: How Republicans came to embrace the big lie of a stolen election Continue reading...

Given the G7’s underwhelming pledge, WHO approval for two Chinese jabs is a welcome boost“Vaccine diplomacy” has evolved into a dirty phrase, not least in relation to China and the notion that its government could be exchanging ineffective jabs for geopolitical capital. At the weekend the G7 pledged just 1bn of the 11bn vaccines needed to immunise low- and middle-income countries, suggesting that the west cannot vaccinate the world alone. But, over the past month, international scientific and public health authorities have confirmed an exciting finding: that, despite the doubts of some critics, vaccines made by Chinese companies actually work. While they may remain ideological adversaries, China and the west now have no choice but to collaborate on vaccinating the world.On 2 June, the World Health Organization finally approved Sinovac for emergency use. Just days earlier, China’s largest state-owned pharmaceutical manufacturer, Sinopharm, had released peer-reviewed phase III clinical trial data proving its vaccine’s efficacy to western sceptics – and had it published in the the Journal of the American Medical Association, no less. Phase III’s “golden seal” means that each vaccine is effective enough to be widely distributed. But critical gaps in safety data for patients over the age of 60 remain for both Sinovac and Sinopharm jabs. While significant, these data holes notably did not deter a major approval from the world’s highest public health authority. With only 6% of the globe fully vaccinated, the need for doses clearlyoutweighs the risks the vaccines may pose. Continue reading...

Thousands of Southern Baptists are gathering to elect their next president amid deep divides over addressing systemic racism and sexual misconductThousands of Southern Baptists from across the US are heading to Tennessee this week to vote for their next president, a choice laced with tension that could push America’s largest evangelical Christian denomination even further to the right and potentially spark an exodus of Black pastors and congregations.Each of the three leading candidates for president presents a unique vision for the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and will help guide the Protestant denomination through the thorny issues it currently faces – declining membership, deep divisions over acknowledging the existence of systemic racism and fresh accusations of mishandling sexual abuse allegations. Continue reading...

Once at least 70% of adults are vaccinated, we need to gradually open our borders and adopt a different attitude to what risks we are willing to acceptCovid-19 remains widespread globally and it is unlikely to ever be eradicated. Few countries have not had extensive community spread. Even countries with previous good control, such as Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Vietnam, are seeing increasing numbers of cases.We remain fortunate that in most of Australia we have not seen much community spread. By global standards, we still have only had a small proportion of our population infected. Continue reading...

Pitchers have always bent the rules to make their pitches harder to hit. But this season, with batters struggling, the authorities are starting to crack downIt’s a good time to be a pitcher in Major League Baseball: they are enjoying their most dominant season since 1968, which baseball historians refer to as “The Year of the Pitcher”. And it’s all the more welcome for the pitchers as they’ve spent the last few years being brutalized by the game’s sluggers. It may not last though. According to ESPN, MLB is expected to issue a memo detailing revised enforcement and penalties, forcing a reckoning with one of the league’s primary “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” rules. Continue reading...

Apology came after the extremist Republican congresswoman visited Washington’s US Holocaust Memorial MuseumMarjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist Republican congresswoman, has apologized for her comments comparing the required wearing of safety masks in the US House to the horrors of the Holocaust.“I’m truly sorry for offending people with remarks about the Holocaust,” Taylor Greene told reporters outside the Capitol on Monday, saying she had visited Washington’s US Holocaust Memorial Museum earlier in the day. “There’s no comparison and there never ever will be.“ Continue reading...

Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene apologised for comparing Covid-19 mask requirements and vaccinations to the Nazi Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews. ‘I have made a mistake and it's really bothered me for a couple of weeks now, and so I definitely want to own it,' Taylor Greene said. Her apology on Monday came amid calls from some Democrats to censure her for the Holocaust remarks. Her comments had also been denounced by Republican congressional leaders

Joe Biden said meeting with Vladimir Putin would be ‘critical’ and that he would offer to cooperate on areas of common interest if the Kremlin so choses. Biden warned that if Russia chose not to cooperate in areas like cybersecurity ‘then we will respond’. The US president also characterised Putin as ‘bright’, ‘tough’ and ‘a worthy adversary’. When questioned by reporters, Biden said the potential death of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, now jailed in Russia, would be a tragedy and would hurt Russian relations with the rest of the world and with the United States. The two men are meeting in Geneva on 16 June for the first time as presidents

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...