The perverse principles of the 1970s that powered the tech titans have left us with a world where the richest 1% own nearly two-thirds of its wealthIn the early 1980s hand-written chalk signs started appearing on the sidewalks of my grungy Manhattan neighbourhood: Whoever has the most toys when he dies, wins. At that time New York City was still recovering from near bankruptcy and those who could were leaving in record numbers. Crime and homelessness were rife, crack cocaine was offered on every corner.The sidewalk message was clear: consumerism is a con, resist it, stuff won't matter when you're dead. Continue reading...
More than 300,000 people lose power as 5in hailstones strike central Texas and tornado warnings issuedBaseball-sized pieces of hail fell in Texas as parts of the southern US battle thunderstorms and other severe weather.Photos posted to social media showed the oversized hailstones - about 5in across - that fell in Johnson City in central Texas, NBC News reported. Continue reading...
Police had arrested Marianne Mair' Smyth at a rental home after a podcast on her crimes prompted a listener to reveal her locationA US-born woman who disguised herself as an heiress to a $30m fortune while scamming nearly $100,000 from a television producer - who later sent her to prison and documented her misdeeds on a hit podcast - has been ordered extradited to Northern Ireland on a separate set of fraud charges.Marianne Mair" Smyth's extradition to the UK was authorized by John Nivision, a US federal magistrate judge, on Thursday, more than two months after she was arrested at a short-term rental home in Bingham, Maine, court records show. Continue reading...
Schools changed their names after 2020 George Floyd protests, but will now revert to old names celebrating slave-state leadersAn all-white school board in Virginia has voted to restore the names of Robert E Lee and other Confederate military leaders to two public schools in a backlash to the racial reckoning that followed the police murder of George Floyd.The decision to restore the names of Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Turner Ashby was taken on Friday morning by the six-member school board in Shenandoah county. Only one of the members voted against the resolution. Continue reading...
An interview with the woman who allegedly inspired the stalker character has been the latest jaw-dropper in the hit show's afterlifeWhat will happen next in the still-mushrooming Baby Reindeer saga? Probably one or more of a number of bad things. Latest bad thing to happen (at time of writing) was Piers Morgan's decision to pay the so-called real-life Martha - reportedly the inspiration for the stalker character in the Netflix programme - what she claims was 250 so he could interview her on his YouTube show. I always feel the most disingenuous gambit in journalism is the one that goes: We just want to give you the chance to tell your side of the story ..." Anyway, the resultant encounter dropped on Thursday night and was an object lesson in wild-west TV, which has already sparked condemnation from a number of angles. Let's hope it doesn't spark real-life events of its own.Clearly mindful of the criticisms that would be levelled at him for featuring someone UK news outlets had largely avoided even naming, Morgan approached his interviewee wearing a veneer of empathy. Ultimately, though, the Martha character's enterprise would surely seem low-grade to all the people who edited tabloid newspapers in the not-too-distant past. After all, if you want someone relentlessly pursued, you just get the news desk to do it. Or a private detective. Or - but no. We daren't all operate under the heroic uncensored" banner.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
United Democracy Project backing Sarah Elfreth, even with Harry Dunn, former US capitol officer, as fellow Democrat in House raceA pro-Israel lobby group has dropped millions into a Maryland congressional race as tensions remain high over the war in Gaza.The primary race in the third congressional district, which will be held on Tuesday, has attracted national interest thanks to the candidacy of one Democrat in particular: Harry Dunn. A former US Capitol police officer, Dunn and his colleagues won praise for their actions defending lawmakers against a violent mob of Donald Trump's supporters on January 6. In his New York Times bestselling memoir, Standing My Ground, Dunn recounted how the insurrectionists repeatedly used the N-word as they attacked him and other Black officers. Continue reading...
Authorities moved in overnight to clear campuses from Arizona to Massachusetts of students demanding schools cut ties to IsraelPolice moved in to disband several pro-Palestinian student encampments on US campuses on Friday morning as the foment over protests against academic ties with Israel over the war in Gaza continued to roil academia.Tent encampments at the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Arizona, Tucson, were all dismantled in early morning raids that saw cordons of police sweep in and clear the makeshift protest settlements. In Tucson teargas was used, and demonstrators responded by throwing bottles at officers. Continue reading...
The woman told police she had been living inside the grocery store sign for roughly a year, and had been able to get electricityContractors curious about an extension cord on the roof of a Michigan grocery store made a startling discovery: a 34-year-old woman was living inside the business sign, with enough space for a computer, printer and coffee maker, police said.She was homeless," said Brennon Warren, an officer with the Midland police department. It's a story that makes you scratch your head, just somebody living up in a sign." Continue reading...
With their success in persuading their university to divest from Israeli companies, they join a rich tradition of student activistsWho tends to get the big foreign policy calls right: student protesters, or their detractors? Answering this question, it turns out, is useful if you don't want to end up judged poorly by history. Student protesters were vilified when they stood against the Vietnam war, yet now, who would have wanted to be on the side that denigrated them variously as naive, dupes and extremists? How should we look back at the students suspended after walking out of lessons in protest at the impending war in Iraq in 2003? Today we might say they come off looking pretty good, having had far more foresight than the seasoned politicians and ageing media commentators who cheered that particular cataclysm on back then.That legacy loomed large on Wednesday in a courtyard at Trinity College Dublin, filled with students waving Palestinian flags alongside the Irish tricolour, as the triumphant student union president, Laszlo Molnarfi, told them their protests would succeed in Ireland, the US and across the world because our cause is right". The students were jubilant, because they had won.Owen Jones is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
Club members seem to have an idea of the type of women they're after; and why retiring tosspot' and git' is unacceptableCredit for the success of the TV show Baby Reindeer is largely owed to one woman, Jessica Gunning, who rescues Richard Gadd's baggy, self-absorbed script with her brilliant performance as Martha, Gadd's stalker. (When Gunning disappears, mid-series, we are effectively left in a room with a man doing bad standup). For the last week or so, coverage of the show's success - it's No 1 on Netflix in the UK and No 4 in the US - has rubbed shoulders with commentary about the ethics of the race to unearth the real people on whom the seven-part drama is based. Continue reading...
Analysis of 553 protests in solidarity with Palestinians between 18 April and 3 May found 97% of them did not cause serious damageAn independent non-profit that tracks political violence and political protests around the world found that 97% of campus demonstrations over the war in Gaza that have taken place in the US since mid-April have been peaceful.An analysis of 553 US campus demonstrations nationwide between 18 April and 3 May found that fewer than 20 resulted in any serious interpersonal violence or property damage, according to statistics from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (Acled). Continue reading...
The June European elections are my first as a French citizen - and they're in time to vote for the rising star of the left, Raphael Glucksmann Continue reading...
Anti-Vietnam war activists from Tariq Ali to the Weather Underground on the remarkable parallels with today's pro-Palestinian uprising - and authorities' responsesEarly last week, days before the NYPD raid, Eleanor Stein poked around the edges of the Gaza Solidarity encampment at Columbia University. The area was the hub of the pro-ceasefire, pro-divestment, pro-Palestinian protest movement that has, in recent weeks, spread across the United States (and, more recently, Canada and the UK). It wasn't her first time witnessing clashes of protesters and counter-protesters on the lawns of the august Ivy League school.In 1968, Stein was one of 700 students arrested at Columbia during protests targeting both the university's ties to the US military apparatus at the height of the Vietnam war, and the college's plan to build a segregated gym, at the height of the civil rights movement. This was really a crisis moment," Stein, 78, recalls. Students were taking a moral stand. We were ready to risk our careers, and our lives and our futures, and take a leap into the unknown and say, No. We are not going to budge.'"Top: On the mall in front of Low Memorial Library at Columbia University, a young man with a microphone speaks to a crowd of students, faculty and onlookers during a protest in New York, 1968.Bottom: Students camp on Columbia University's campus to protest against the university's ties with Israel in New York, 22 April 2024. Continue reading...
US stars have flooded English soccer on the backs of the Wrexham phenomenon. But the shimmer of fame cannot overcome ineffective ownershipTom Brady was nowhere to be seen as Birmingham City dropped to the third tier of English football. He was, however, in Los Angeles the following day for Netflix's The Roast of Tom Brady, a live TV special in which Bill Belichick, Kevin Hart and many others ripped into the seven-time Super Bowl winner.I see your soccer team got knocked down another tier in the English Football League," Belichick, Brady's former coach, said from the dais. For those not familiar with English football, thanks to the intricacies of their obscure regulations system, I'll put it in English for you: they suck! Not so easy to run a team, is it Tom?" Continue reading...
The president is under pressure from Republicans and progressives as humanitarian crisis builds and immigration remains a key voter issueThe Biden administration has said its proposed changes to asylum standards, unveiled on Thursday, that would fast-track some deportation will enhance security and speed up a backlog of cases amid record numbers of arrivals at the US-Mexico border.The changes will also, by Biden's own admission, be limited in scope and only affect a small" number of people who have been convicted of serious crimes or may pose a national security risk. Continue reading...
Search team find man who dug himself out of the snow, and confirm two men, aged 23 and 32, died near Lone PeakTwo skiers have been killed in an avalanche in the mountains of Utah that occurred after several days of spring snowstorms, authorities said.The victims were two men aged 23 and 32, whose names have not been released. Continue reading...
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is ready to stand alone if necessary as it continues its military offensive in Gaza, in what appears to be an indirect response to warnings from US President Joe Biden over its incursions in Rafah. 'If we have to stand alone, we will stand alone,' said Netanyahu.
Relatives of Roger Fortson say deputies went to wrong unit and killed Fortson, as sheriff releases body-camera footageThe family of a Black US air force airman who was fatally shot by deputies who burst into his apartment in the Florida Panhandle said Thursday that they want to correct a false narrative put forth by authorities about the encounter that led to his death.Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the family of Senior Airman Roger Fortson, said Fortson had not known it was sheriff's deputies who were breaking into his apartment - his castle" - and that he grabbed his legally owned firearm" to protect himself. Continue reading...
by Ramon Antonio Vargas in New Orleans and David Hamm on (#6MPJ2)
Lawrence Hecker pleaded the fifth 117 times as he detailed how the Catholic church protected him for more than two decades after he admitted to molesting children
New rule would restrict access sooner for people deemed to pose national security or public safety risk'The Biden administration on Thursday proposed a new rule that it said would streamline asylum processing at the southern border by quickly denying certain migrants deemed to pose a national security or public safety risk".The proposed rule would allow immigration officials to reject and deport migrants who are already ineligible for asylum at an earlier stage in the process, a change administration officials said would enhance national security and save taxpayer dollars. Continue reading...
Made by extending the thumb and little finger, while curling down the three middle fingers the sign is also known as hang loose'The shaka is poised to become Hawaii's official hand gesture.Last week, Hawaiian lawmakers passed a bill that would officially enshrine the gesture in the state's culture. The shaka, also popular in surf culture and commonly known as hang loose" is a friendly hand signal made by extending the thumb and little finger while curling the three middle fingers. Continue reading...
by Erum Salam (now) and Gloria Oladipo (earlier) on (#6MP3Y)
This live blog is now closed. You can read our latest story on Middle East tensions here.White House spokesperson John Kirby emphasized during his Thursday briefing that weapons are still being shipped to Israel.The clarification comes after Biden threatened to pause military aid to Israel if Israel launched a massive military assault in Rafah.Biden's statement was the clearest conditioning of aid that the administration has made since the start of Israel's war in Gaza", [Politico's] Jonathan Lemire and Jennifer Haberkorn write. And it sent immediate ripples through national politics, with conservatives accusing the president of abandoning a long-held ally and some liberals hailing the pronouncement."It's hard to overemphasize what a big deal this is. For decades, American presidents from both major parties have supported Israel with few to no questions asked. But Biden and the administration have been increasingly irritated by Netanyahu for months, specifically on the threats to invade Rafah and the number of civilians Israel has killed over the last seven months. Continue reading...
The Israeli leader is dragging out the war and undermining a ceasefire for political reasons. Can Biden toughen up?On Monday, the Israeli military ordered Palestinians in the city of Rafah to evacuate ahead of airstrikes, which unleashed fears that Israel was starting a ground invasion of Gaza's southernmost city, where 1.4 million Palestinians have taken shelter. Hours later, Hamas announced that it had agreed to a ceasefire proposal outlined by Egypt and Qatar. But the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejected the deal and doubled down on his plan to invade Rafah and achieve total victory" against Hamas.It was a dizzying day in Israel's brutal seven-month war on Gaza. But one thing was clear: Netanyahu does not want to end the war - and he's doing all he can to undermine negotiations for a ceasefire and an agreement to release the remaining hostages held by Hamas since its 7 October attack on Israel. Netanyahu and his extremist allies fear that once the war ends, they will face early parliamentary elections and multiple investigations into the government's intelligence failures leading up to the Hamas attacks.Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University Continue reading...
Tactic can disrupt adversaries' plans but also risks politicising intelligence and compromising sources, article arguesAn increasingly common US tactic of declassifying intelligence with the aim of disrupting the plans of adversary powers can bring short-term gains, but risks creating long-term problems for the US intelligence agencies, two former CIA officials have warned.In a new article in the journal Foreign Affairs, David Gioe, a former CIA analyst and operations officer, and Michael Morell, who was CIA acting director and deputy director, argue that the most serious risk is the politicisation of intelligence, if it is routinely shaped before publication to suit the purposes of the administration of the day. Continue reading...
Investors denied used-car website a 6bn-plus valuation in London, leaving New York to do the deal. UK fund managers are not such dinosaurs thenOne of life's unfairnesses, officials at the London Stock Exchange sometimes grumble, is that high-profile flotation flops in the UK tend to be remembered for years whereas IPO disasters in New York are quietly forgotten as the locals move on and look for the next big thing. The complaint has some merit. Take Cazoo, whose car crash for investors would surely have generated many more headlines if it had happened in London.The UK-based used-car website opted for a New York listing in 2021 because high-growth companies are better understood by US investors", as its founder, Alex Chesterman, put it at the time. Ho, ho. It turns out that the American assessment that Cazoo was worth $8bn (6.4bn) could not have been more wrong. Continue reading...
Academic staff occupy lobby of Greenwich Village campus building in support of students' demands for divestment from IsraelThe first faculty-led Gaza solidarity encampment protest in the US was established on Wednesday night at New York's New School campus.Nearly two dozen professors and lecturers at the New York City college pitched tents and unrolled sleeping bags in the lobby of an academic building located in Greenwich Village in Manhattan in support of their students, and against Israel's attack on Gaza and their university's financial ties to Israel. Continue reading...
Tens of thousands of books are banned in US prisons, in an often arbitrary process that limits education opportunitiesOn a Monday night, just after six, Alicia Williams waits for the last stragglers to take their seats in her cramped classroom at the Washington corrections center. Her students braved western Washington's fall weather to get here and they enter the room still ruffled from the wind, their khaki uniforms flecked with rain.There is no rush. Instead of the lesson she planned to teach, Williams will be relying on hastily adjusted notes and on-the-spot explanations. She'd just heard she wasn't allowed to teach the book her class was scheduled to discuss that night. Continue reading...
Corey Briskin and Nicholas Maggipinto say state's definition of infertility discriminates against same-sex couplesA former New York assistant district attorney and his husband on Thursday filed a class-action lawsuit against New York City, Mayor Eric Adams, former mayor Bill de Blasio and other city leaders in a landmark case for the rights of gay men who want to conceive children in the US.Corey Briskin, 35, and Nicholas Maggipinto, 38, allege that New York's definition of infertility discriminates against same-sex male couples, violating federal and state civil rights laws. Continue reading...
Robert F Kennedy Jr makes comment after New York Times reports worm got into his brain, ate a portion of it and then died'In a US presidential campaign season growing more bizarre by the day, the independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr offered to eat five more brain worms and still beat" Donald Trump and Joe Biden in a staged debate.Kennedy was speaking after the New York Times published a startling story about a 2012 deposition in which he said a previous neurological problem was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died". Continue reading...
by Alice Herman in Hillsdale, Michigan and agencies on (#6MP4B)
Stephanie Scott and Stefanie Lambert charged for promoting baseless conspiracies' and showing disregard for voter privacy'Dana Nessel, Michigan's attorney general, announced felony charges Tuesday against Stefanie Lambert, an election-denying attorney, and Stephanie Scott, a former small-town election clerk , over an alleged 2020 voter data breach.Nessel's office alleges Lambert and Scott allowed an unauthorized computer examiner" to access private voter data from the 2020 general US election and that Scott illegally withheld voting equipment amid an order from the Michigan secretary of state to submit it for regular maintenance. According to a statement from Nessel's office, Lambert transmitted voter data at Scott's direction. Continue reading...
Universities across the US are dropping or shrinking graduation ceremonies as pro-Palestinian protests continue. Some students feel they're being punishedSpare a thought for the class of 2024. Some graduating seniors, many of whom did not receive proper high school send-offs due to early Covid lockdowns, once again face muted celebrations.Though the majority of commencement ceremonies across the US are going ahead as planned, a handful of universities have pared down or outright cancelled festivities on the big day. Columbia University administrators announced plans to cancel its university-wide ceremony, citing security concerns, while Emory University will move its commencement off campus. The University of Southern California (USC) cancelled its main ceremony in favor of smaller receptions for different schools. Ditto for California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, in northern California, which has closed its campus entirely and will host smaller celebrations arranged off campus. Some students believe the move is intended to squash dissent by those protesting against Israel's war on Gaza. Continue reading...
UmaSofia Srivastava's resignation, so soon after departure of Noelia Voigt as Miss USA, shocks world of US pageantsTo lose one pageant queen may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.Two days after Miss USA stepped down from the role citing health issues, Miss Teen USA also bowed out on Wednesday. In an Instagram post, the winner of the Miss Teen USA pageant, UmaSofia Srivastava, said that her personal values no longer fully align with the direction of the organization". Continue reading...
Former adviser Tom Bossert relays view of defense secretary James Mattis and describes how Trump leaked own meetingsDonald Trump's defense secretary called him a madman in a circular room screaming" and stayed away from the White House, a new book quotes a senior Trump aide as saying regarding the man now facing 88 criminal charges but set to be the Republican presidential nominee for a third successive election.Anybody with sense - somebody like Mattis or Tillerson - they immediately shunned and stayed away from Trump," Tom Bossert, formerly homeland security adviser to Trump, tells George Stephanopoulos in the ABC News anchor's new book, The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis. Continue reading...
Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund booked their spots in the final at Wembley thanks to a pair of unlikely match winnersTwo second legs that both reached a dramatic crescendo, one with late goals, the other with late misses, set up a Wembley final between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund.Goalkeeper: Andriy Lunin, Real Madrid Continue reading...
Santiago Paredes says he raised concerns over defects on fuselages leaving Spirit AeroSystems factoryA former employee of Boeing's largest supplier has alleged that key aircraft parts regularly left the factory with serious defects.Santiago Paredes, who worked for Spirit AeroSystems in Kansas between 2010 and 2022, said he was used to finding anywhere from 50 to 100, 200" defects on fuselages - the main body of the plane - that were being shipped to Boeing, and he felt threatened for raising his concerns. Continue reading...
WHO says southern Gaza hospitals are running out of fuel. Plus, Bernie Sanders reveals bill to tackle $220bn in US medical debt Don't already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up hereGood morning.Joe Biden publicly warned Israel that the US would stop supplying it weapons if Israeli forces launch a major assault on Rafah - the last remaining city in Gaza that has not been razed in the Israeli offensive.What pressure is the US applying on Israel? US diplomacy appears to have failed to stop a Rafah invasion, so Biden is now speaking publicly. In an analysis, the Guardian's world affairs editor, Julian Borger, writes that the decision sends a message to Netanyahu that the US dog is beginning to regain control of its tail".What is the humanitarian toll of the war? After Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took 200 hostage on 7 October, Israel's onslaught on Gaza has killed almost 35,000 people - mostly civilians - and displaced about 80% of the 2.3 million population. Northern Gaza is experiencing full-blown famine", according to the UN World Food Programme.Will this really make a difference? The IDF do not need new bombs to invade Rafah. They have more than enough stockpiles to reduce it to rubble. But US officials are talking of this as a hinge point in the US-Israel relationship, Julian Borger reports from DC.What do prosecutors allege? That the money paid to Daniels was therefore an election expense and was deliberately entered wrongly in Trump's business documents - with that act being the crime, rather than anything to do with the actual payment of hush money to cover up the alleged affair. Continue reading...
Trump's hush-money trial is, at heart, about the ways powerful men work to prevent women from telling ugly truthsHe seems to have understood it as a business deal. That's what Stormy Daniels - the former porn star whose account of a sexual encounter with Donald Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006 is at the center of his criminal hush-money trial - told Anderson Cooper in 2018. When Trump summoned Daniels to his hotel room in Lake Tahoe, he suggested that she might come on his television show, Celebrity Apprentice. Then he demanded sex.In the law this is called quid pro quo - this for that - an arrangement in which work is offered in exchange for sex. It's illegal: sex cannot be a condition of employment, or a prerequisite for being considered for a job, under laws that are designed to punish sexual harassment and make workplaces accessible and tolerable for women. But Trump has long had a casual relationship to the law.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
The ex-president scored two huge legal victories this week that make it all but certain two of his trials will take place after NovemberDespite some dismal days spent in the courtroom, Donald Trump earned two significant legal victories this week with separate decisions that make it all but certain two of the pending criminal trials against him will take place after the 2024 election.As had been expected for months, US district judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday scrapped a 20 May trial date that had been set in south Florida over the former president's handling of classified documents. The delay was almost entirely the doing of Cannon, a Trump appointee, who allowed far-fetched legal arguments into the case and let preliminary legal matters pile up on her docket to the point where a May trial was not a possibility. Continue reading...
Politicians' glee about abortion becoming an electoral weapon contrasts with real-world consequences of bans, say advocatesAmy knows that a lot of people hate every candidate on the ballot this November.A nurse who's worked for more than a decade at Bread and Roses Women's Health Center, an abortion clinic in Gainesville, Florida, Amy has dealt with both patients and friends who feel so disillusioned about partisan politics that they don't want to vote at all in the 2024 elections. She gets it: the mere thought of the last few elections makes her grimace. Continue reading...
State's attorney general also appealing to allow new, majority-Black district to stand for November electionBlack Louisiana voters are working against the clock to keep a panel of conservative federal judges from blocking a new Black-majority congressional district from being in effect for the November election.The Louisiana state conference of the NAACP, advocating for that district, asked the US supreme court Wednesday to put on hold the order of the fifth circuit court of appeals, which on 30 April invalidated Louisiana's new congressional district map for the 2024 election. Continue reading...
With only 144 spots and an ever-growing talent pool, the WNBA may be the most difficult league to make in all of sports. For a rookie class led by Caitlin Clark, it'll be a whole new ballgameFrom the moment Caitlin Clark was tapped by the Indiana Fever with the first overall pick in last month's WNBA draft, the buzz surrounding the once-in-a-generation player from the American heartland has only redoubled.The 22-year-old from West Des Moines, who broke Pete Maravich's 54-year-old record to become the all-time leading scorer in major college basketball history earlier this year, is the bandleader of a sensational WNBA rookie class that has drawn millions of new fans to the women's game in recent months - and generated an unprecedented sense of excitement as the league's 28th season tips off on Tuesday night. Continue reading...
The former heavyweight and US Olympian has awoken from a coma after saving his parents from a fire that almost took their livesTHUD."On 13 March, Mark Coleman's eyelids jolted open, as his bedframe shook. His 11-month-old rottweiler, Lil' Hammer, cowered under the bed. Chronic nightmares had plagued Coleman since childhood, but it was his dog who woke him around 3am that morning. Coleman left his childhood bedroom - he was on an overnight stay visiting his parents - for a glass of water. Continue reading...
This verbal boxing match is great entertainment, but the real winners are the artists and label executives getting rich off the spectacleThe sight of two (or more) people tearing chunks out of each other is one of humanity's first and most enduring forms of entertainment. The sheer excitement, the intrigue, the unpredictability, the adrenaline rush, the bloodlust: who can resist? And in exchange for their courage, discipline and possibly even their lives, we reward our gladiators handsomely. It's payday for the poetic, profit-seeking, pride-protecting feud between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, easily the landmark competitive event of our time.Rappers are our modern gladiators (and poet laureates). And thanks to social media and the fact that every major media organisation worth its salt - the BBC, the New York Times, the Guardian - has dedicated prominent real estate to cover and contextualise the beef blow-by-blow, track-by-track, the world is their colosseum. Are you not entertained? Continue reading...
Pro-Palestinian protesters briefly interrupted the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, during a Senate hearing, calling for a free Palestine while raising their palms painted red.Austin confirmed that the US paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns the country was approaching a decision to launch a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah
All 32 teams have been busy over the last few months. But which ones have significantly boosted their chances of success in 2024?Houston took a twin-track approach this offseason, trying to balance a championship window with maintaining future flexibility. After an unexpected playoff run, with the top two rookies in the league, oodles of cap space and no first-round pick, it would have been easy to toss money around like a nepo baby in Cabo. Continue reading...
At some deep level, the former adult film star clearly has his number and knows how to hit him where it hurtsThe spectacle of Stormy Daniels on the witness stand in a Manhattan courtroom this week sent one back to the image of Trump's last female antagonist, E Jean Carroll, the advice columnist who famously sued Trump for sexually assaulting her, standing victorious outside another courtroom in January. Daniels, unlike Carroll, is not the plaintiff in this case. Nonetheless, Trump's fortunes rest, to a large degree, on her credibility, a 45-year-old former porn star who the New York Times described this week as a complicated and imperfect witness". If Carroll - elegant, measured, articulate - was the perfect victim, Daniels is practically the archetype of the woman court systems tend to revile. And yet, on the strength of her opening testimony, she strikes me as Trump's very worst nightmare.This impression is extrajudicial. Daniels, who has already been rebuked by the judge for straying off topic, may prove too wayward a witness to achieve what Carroll did: the civil case equivalent of a guilty verdict against a man almost supernaturally able to avoid them. If we are looking beyond verdicts to the public image, however, Daniels is in some ways by far the more menacing foe for Trump. You couldn't make up the details of her testimony this week, which sent court reporters scrambling to find sober ways to present her account of spanking Trump with a rolled up magazine and insisting on having sex with her without a condom. This is a woman willing to meet Trump at his preferred site of conflict - public humiliation - and on the evidence so far, he isn't weathering it well.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
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