US news | The Guardian

More than 2,000 people died in 2023, with a decade of autopsy data uncovering escalating humanitarian catastropheMore than 2,000 unhoused people died in Los Angeles in 2023, meaning an average of nearly six deaths a day of people living on the street or in shelters in the nation's most populous county.The numbers reveal an escalating humanitarian emergency as the housing crisis and drug addiction epidemic collide, with victims found in tents, encampments, vehicles, parks, alleys, vacant lots, underpasses, bus stops and train stations. Continue reading...

Anthony Odiong was removed in 2019 over allegations of inappropriate behavior, but he continued to minister in New Orleans despite the archdiocese knowing about the complaintsA Catholic priest removed from his role at a New Orleans-area church in December over allegations of misconduct with multiple women was prohibited from working in and around Texas's capital for identical reasons in 2019, a diocesan official revealed in a privately sent letter obtained by the Guardian.It is unclear why Anthony Odiong was permitted to continue ministering to parishioners who had no idea about his past. The Austin diocese, the first to suspend Odiong, said it notified the New Orleans archdiocese. The New Orleans archdiocese said it acted in accord with civil, criminal and canon law" in its handling of Odiong but didn't elaborate. Continue reading...

Kremlin earlier said US president's comments at a San Francisco fundraiser were a disgrace'Vladimir Putin has described as rude" Joe Biden's comments in which the American president called the Russian leader a crazy SOB".Biden was talking about the climate crisis on Wednesday when he said: We have a crazy SOB like Putin and others, and we always have to worry about nuclear conflict, but the existential threat to humanity is climate." Continue reading...

Good plays have the power to shake us out of our complacency. This recurring debate is a pointless skirmish in a culture warCONTENT WARNING: This column may include opinions with which you forcefully disagree along with big name actors wading into the breach and, quite possibly, unrestrained below-the-line rage or rebuttal.So we're back here again: the debate on trigger warnings has become so persistent and volatile that the discussion might require its own trigger warning these days (as per above). Is the act of alerting an audience to sensitive, potentially triggering, content such as sex, violence and suicide (and that's just in Romeo and Juliet) a helpful access aid or it is infantilising us and neutering the power of theatre? Continue reading...

Alabama Fertility halts new procedures due to the legal risk' after state supreme court says embryos are extrauterine children'A second Alabama provider announced that it will pause its in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments on Thursday, just days after the state supreme court ruled in a first-of-its-kind decision that embryos are extrauterine children".We have made the impossibly difficult decision to hold new IVF treatments due to the legal risk to our clinic and our embryologists," Alabama Fertility said in a post to its Instagram account. We are contacting patients that will be affected today to find solutions for them and we are working as hard as we can to alert our legislators as to the far-reaching negative impact of this ruling on the women of Alabama." Continue reading...

Activists decry anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric as they mourn Nex Benedict, 16, who died after altercation' in Oklahoma high school bathroomThe death of a non-binary 16-year-old in Oklahoma has left LGBTQ+ Americans overwhelmed by anger and grief this week.Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old non-binary student, died on 8 February after a physical altercation" with classmates in their high school bathroom, according to a statement by local law enforcement on 21 February. Continue reading...

Congress should investigate case of Alexander Smirnov, who has been linked with Russian intelligence, leading lawyer arguesCongress should publicly investigate the case of Alexander Smirnov, the FBI informant charged with lying about corruption involving Joe Biden and linked to Russian intelligence, a leading lawyer said, adding that senior Republicans who pushed Smirnov's claims should be forced to testify.The Senate should open an immediate investigation into the Alexander Smirnov scandal - with public hearings, said Tristan Snell, formerly a prosecutor on the Trump University fraud case, now author of Taking Down Trump, a book on the former president's many legal challenges. Continue reading...

European Stoxx 600 index also reaches record close as strong Nvidia results fuel optimism about tech stocksJapan's main stock index, European shares and Wall Street's S&P 500 have hit all-time highs as strong results from the chipmaker Nvidia stoke investor exuberance over an artificial intelligence investment boom.The Nikkei increased 2.19% to end the day at 39,098.68. On the final trading day of 1989, it had closed at 38,915.87. The 34 years it has taken to regain its footing is a decade longer than it took Wall Street to recoup losses from the 1929 crash and Great Depression. Continue reading...

Earlier this week, Crowe said he kept shooting Robin Hood despite two broken legs. Now, Stallone has upped the ante with a horrific litany of bodily abuses. Who will share their medical notes next?One repeated theme in director Edward Zwick's very good new autobiography Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions is the importance of practical effects. For example, when he made The Siege, Zwick managed to shut down both Times Square and Brooklyn Bridge for a few hours to deliver a palpable sense of verisimilitude. If it had been made today, it will all be CGI and something ineffable will have been lost," he says.Zwick couldn't have possibly predicted this, but by chance he happened to make his claim in the midst of a glut of actors admitting that they are so dedicated to preserving the ineffable that they managed to bugger up their bodies beyond all comprehension in the name of audience satisfaction. Continue reading...

It is said that a mother who radiates self-acceptance vaccinates her daughter against low self-esteemHold your mum's hand and call an ambulance."Should I give her extra morphine?" Continue reading...

Republican Rachel Mitchell claims it's safer' not to send back Raad Almansoori, in custody pending charges for stabbing two womenA Republican prosecutor in Arizona has refused to extradite a murder suspect to New York, claiming it is safer" not to send him back because of the state's supposed treatment of violent criminals".Rachel Mitchell, attorney for Maricopa county - which includes most of the city of Phoenix - is holding the suspect, 26-year-old Raad Almansoori, in custody pending charges for stabbing two women. Continue reading...

The latest slate of knockout games featured a standout performance from Porto against Arsenal and the Diego Maradona Derby in NaplesThe second week of ties in the staggered Champions League last-16 was just as cagey as the first, and left plenty to play for in each of the second legs. Here's the prime performers from a week in which no team was able to gain more than a one-goal lead.Goalkeeper: Only two goalkeepers kept clean sheets, though Porto's Diogo Costa was not asked to make a save from Arsenal, and neither was Inter's Yann Sommer asked to face a shot on target from an Atletico player, so the week's most attacking game - PSV 1-1 Dortmund - threw up two contenders, both keepers facing plenty of shots. Alexander Meyer beats Walter Benitez to the crown, being only beaten by Luuk de Jong's canny penalty. Continue reading...

Comments by Israeli war cabinet member come as Israel continues to threaten ground invasion of Rafah. Plus, how monitoring nature from space could keep Earth healthy

Major League Soccer referees protested outside the league's headquarters after being locked out ahead of the beginning of the 2024 season. The lockout, a denial of employment by an employer during a labor dispute, was imposed on the referees after they overwhelmingly voted to reject a tentative new union contract agreement in a 95.8% vote, with 97.8% of the 260 union members voting. The union has also alleged unfair labor practices against the MLS and the Professional Referee Organization. The union cited members rejected the deal in part due to an attempt by the MLS and PRO to add a no strike and no lockout deal for the 2024 season and would have frozen wages, rolled back job security protections, and not addressed issues such as high workloads and travel for referees.

Republican former congressman - and one of the most prominent Trump critics - sounds the alarm ahead of the presidential electionA second Donald Trump presidency could spell the end of democracy in America and prove devastating for the world order", Adam Kinzinger, a Republican former congressman, has warned in an interview with the Guardian.Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, is vowing retribution against his political enemies in a second-term agenda more radical than his first, including mass deportations and a purge of the justice department. Kinzinger, one of the most prominent Trump critics in America, is sounding the alarm. Continue reading...

For 40 years, I've spent half an hour lying around doing nothing each day after waking up. It's scandalous behaviour that must be stoppedI thought I would get up early to write this, like I think I'll get up early to do something every morning. I set the alarm, full of sincere intentions, but when it goes off I just lie there for about half an hour. It has been this way every morning for 40 years. I'm not resting, I'm not rising, I'm not doing anything worthwhile, unless you consider doomscrolling while listening to the radio worthwhile.What an appalling waste of time. Forty years multiplied by 365 days multiplied by 30 minutes comes to 438,000 minutes, which is 7,300 hours, or 304 days. Scandalous. Nigh-on a year of my life thrown away neither sleeping nor doing anything useful. Continue reading...

The call centre for my insurer is in Scotland but the system is all-American. When the bills arrive, the hurt begins all over againI have lived for long enough in the US to be acclimated to most of the cultural differences, starting with 20% tipping and ending with the customary address of strangers as sir", or ma'am", as opposed to the dithery British er, excuse me?". The exception to this, of course, is US healthcare, which will never strike me as less than outlandish. So it was, last week, when I had cause to call 911 in the middle of the night, but only after putting in a call to my insurers to request pre-authorisation.If you take the narrowest view, there are aspects of US healthcare that are superior to the UK and European models. In the early hours of last Thursday morning, I knew, for example, that an ambulance would arrive at my door within 10 minutes and probably sooner, no questions asked. I knew that, once I'd been discharged from the ER, I would be able to choose my own doctor for follow-up care, and have some say in how, where and when I was treated. I also knew, with a certainty that I suspect deepened the back spasms that kicked off the whole thing in the first place, that if I didn't take the necessary steps, I would be receiving a $3,000 invoice from my insurers for the cost of the ride - and that even if I did everything right, there was no guarantee.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Nick Saban's departure from Alabama shocked me as a football fan. But as an anthropologist and ethnographer, I was more concerned with what the news meant for the playersOnly a few days after the 2024 College Football Playoff National Championship game, head coach Nick Saban announced his retirement from his post at the University of Alabama. Saban's successor was announced the next day when the public learned University of Washington's Kalen DeBoer, fresh off a loss in the national title game, would lead the Crimson Tide.As someone who follows college football, I was shocked by the announcement. After almost two decades and six national championships in Tuscaloosa, Saban seemed a rock-solid fixture. But as an anthropologist and ethnographer who specializes in the intersection of race and sport, I was more concerned with what the news meant for the players, given how the timing of and secrecy surrounding these hires highlight a striking disconnect in football's focus on family. Continue reading...

Former Conservative PM, whose tenure lasted 50 days, tells CPAC she fell victim to UK's establishment ... its bureaucrats and lawyers'Liz Truss, the former British prime minister, spoke at a far-right conference in America on Wednesday, styling herself as a populist who took on America's equivalent of the deep state" in her own country.Truss was among the headline speakers at this week's Conservative Political Action Conference at the National Harbor in Maryland. CPAC is billed as the biggest annual gathering of conservatives in the US but has in recent years embraced Donald Trump's brand of nativist-populism. Continue reading...

In Munich I heard both Ukrainians and Alexei Navalny's widow tell us why Putin must be defeatedAs we approach the second anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine this Saturday, ask yourself a simple question: is Europe at war? When I put this to a room full of participants at the Munich security conference last Sunday, most of them raised their hands to say yes, Europe is at war. But then I asked a second question: do you think most people in your own country have woken up to this? Very few hands went up.This was a Munich of painful contrasts. Here, at the conference, were badly wounded Ukrainian soldiers giving us stories from a frontline hell. Yuliia Paievska, a veteran military medic, told us she had seen streams of blood, rivers of suffering", and that children have died in my arms". We are the dogs of war," she said, recalling how she herself was captured in Mariupol, imprisoned for three months and tortured by the Russians. Give us the weapons," she concluded, to kill this war."Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Well, it's not that they're anti-ceasefire ...

Biden administration considering using immigration law used by Trump after Republicans rejected a negotiated immigration billThe White House is considering using provisions of federal immigration law repeatedly tapped by Donald Trump to unilaterally enact a sweeping crackdown at the southern border, according to three people familiar with the deliberations.The administration, stymied by Republican lawmakers who rejected a negotiated border bill earlier this month, has been exploring options that Joe Biden could deploy on his own without congressional approval, multiple officials and others familiar with the talks said. But the plans are nowhere near finalized and it's unclear how the administration would draft any such executive actions in a way that would survive the inevitable legal challenges. The officials and those familiar with the talks spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to comment on private White House discussions. Continue reading...

Denver police investigating if racial bias was involved in disappearance of pieces including panel depicting Black veteransA large Martin Luther King Jr memorial in Denver's City park was vandalized, and police are trying to determine if racial bias was involved.Several pieces of the marble and bronze I Have a Dream memorial were stolen sometime Tuesday. The missing pieces include a bronze torch and angel, as well as a bronze panel that depicted Black military veterans, the Denver Post reported. Continue reading...

Five-year-old Sloan Mattingly of Indiana was buried in a rare but deadly event unknown to many AmericansThe collapse of sand holes, like the one that killed a five-year-old Indiana girl who was digging with her brother on a Florida beach, is an under-recognized danger that kills and injures several children a year around the country.Sloan Mattingly died Tuesday afternoon at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea's beach when a 4-5ft-deep (1-1.5-metre) hole collapsed on her and her seven-year-old brother, Maddox. The boy was buried up to his chest, but the girl was fully covered. Video taken by a bystander shows about 20 adults trying to dig her out using their hands and plastic pails, but the hole kept collapsing on itself. Continue reading...

Death of Jaahnavi Kandula, 23, from India, ignited outrage after fellow officer was recorded making appalling' remarks about caseProsecutors in Washington state said on Wednesday they will not file felony charges against a Seattle police officer who struck and killed a graduate student from India while responding to an overdose call - a case that attracted widespread attention after another officer was recorded making callous remarks about it.Officer Kevin Dave was driving 74mph (119km/h) on a street with a 25mph (40km/h) speed limit in a police SUV before he hit 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk on 23 January 2023. Continue reading...

Former UN ambassador and Republican presidential candidate expresses support for Alabama supreme court rulingThe Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has spoken in response to the recent supreme court ruling out of Alabama, revealing that she believes embryos created through IVF are babies".In a new interview with NBC, the former UN ambassador expressed support for the Friday ruling by Alabama's supreme court that deemed that frozen embryos are children". Continue reading...

James Biden appears before House oversight and judiciary panels as key Democrat says investigation is really over at this point'A top Democrat urged Republicans to fold up the tent to this circus show" and stop attempting to impeach Joe Biden, after the president's youngest brother, James Biden, testified to the House oversight and judiciary committees.The closed-door session was held after the revelation that a former FBI informant, charged with making up a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving the Bidens and a Ukrainian energy company, had contacts with officials affiliated with Russian intelligence. Continue reading...

This live blog is now closed. For the latest on James Biden's testimony, read our full report:

Daughter of 2008 presidential candidate flatly rejects outreach effort by Kari Lake, US Senate hopeful from far right of partyIn her quest to win an election, the Arizona Republican US Senate candidate Kari Lake is trying to win back the voters she alienated in her last run, when she lost the 2022 gubernatorial race to a Democrat.And Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late Arizona senator John McCain, whose name is near-synonymous with the state's political history, is not letting Lake off the hook. Continue reading...

If you have implemented a DIY project to tackle the climate crisis in your home or neighbourhood, we'd like to hear from youThe sheer size of tackling the climate crisis can feel overwhelming. When it comes to taking serious action, politicians move at a glacial pace, and the possibility of another Donald Trump presidency could slow things even further.But we also know that real change often happens first at the local level - in our own homes, backyards and communities. We want to hear how US readers are creating their own solutions to the climate crisis, particularly readers in the US west and south-west, where issues such as drought, wildfires, extreme heat and air pollution are at their worst. Continue reading...

Ed Clark's exit announced as company battles to repair reputation amid safety crisis after terrifying midair incidentBoeing has ousted the head of the 737 Max program as the planemaker fights to repair its reputation following a terrifying cabin panel blowout.Ed Clark, who was also general manager of Boeing's plant in Renton, Washington, is leaving the business with immediate effect, according to an internal memo. His exit was first reported by the Seattle Times. Continue reading...

Everyone wanted a ceasefire. Only they wanted their own ceasefire, not anyone else's

A report in the journal Criminology shows that homicide cases are less likely to be solved when the victim is BlackFor nearly a decade, Nicole Gardner would tense up any time someone asked: How many kids do you have?"Her daughter Ronique Gardner Williams was shot and killed in 2015 while riding in a car in Richmond, California. Seven years later, her eldest son, Damon Gardner Isles, died following a seizure, but he had also been shot years before in Boston. Though her children died under different circumstances, they shared one tragic commonality: neither had received justice as the victims of gun violence. Continue reading...

The most disturbing thing about the prolific parenting vlogger was that she was peddling cruelty worldwide in plain sightWhen I first started working in the mid-90s, there was a big furore when a US evangelical church produced a leaflet about child-rearing that included detail on the right size of cane to use to punish a six-month-old baby. The story was enough of a scandal that it travelled across the Atlantic - in the old-fashioned way, from a US newspaper to a British one - but it didn't merit comment, we decided in the end, because it was just a sad story about a bad person. Child abuse exists, and sometimes hides itself under religion: there are wider conversations about whether or not religions could do more at an institutional level to stamp it out, but those, if they're in good faith, shouldn't be started by professed atheists, to whom such institutions would be unreceptive. It was also felt at the time that, just because a person says a thing, even goes so far as to print it on a leaflet, one needn't necessarily react as if they've created a movement.Thirty years on, child abuse still exists, and still sometimes disguises itself as faith: Ruby Franke, a Utah mother of six, was convicted yesterday of aggravated child abuse, on charges so grave that her consequential sentences could amount to up to 60 years in prison. A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she was a prolific parenting YouTuber until her 8 Passengers channel was taken down by the platform last year. She proselytised harsh discipline, such as withholding food as punishment; but she omitted to mention in the vlogs that she created what a prosecutor called concentration camp-like conditions" for her children, that she made them do physical tasks in extreme heat without shoes, socks or water, and forced them to stand on hot concrete for hours, sometimes even days, at a time. Her malnourished 12-year-old son, who was bound with duct tape, escaped and asked for help from a neighbour. Police later found his sister in a similarly malnourished state.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

With Messi in Miami and the World Cup coming to US soil, the eyes of the world are on Major League Soccer like never before. It's only raised the stakes of a nasty labor dispute between MLS and its refereesMajor League Soccer referees have been locked out ahead of the beginning of the 2024 season set to begin on Wednesday evening with Lionel Messi's Inter Miami set to play Real Salt Lake.The Professional Soccer Referees Association (PSRA), the labor union representing referees who work MLS matches, condemned the lockout by the MLS and the league's referee employment organization. The lockout, a denial of employment by an employer during a labor dispute, was imposed on the referees after they overwhelmingly voted to reject a tentative new union contract agreement in a 95.8% vote, with 97.8% of the 260 union members voting. Continue reading...

President's son claims use of picture shows prosecutors' evidence against him shouldn't be taken at face valueLawyers for Hunter Biden have claimed that a picture government prosecutors are using to support a tax fraud case against him shows neatly arranged lines of sawdust from a carpentry shop - and not cocaine as the government contends.Joe Biden's son is facing tax evasion charges for failing to disclose millions in foreign income and a charge for failing to disclose he was a drug addict on gun licensing forms. He claims that use of the picture shows that prosecutors' evidence against him should not be taken at face value. Continue reading...

Both his grandmother, the late Queen, and King Charles might have been more cautious. But judged right, it's a welcome strategyWhat did he mean by that?" the devious 19th century Austrian statesman Prince Metternich is supposed to have muttered, when he heard that his equally wily French rival Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand had just died in 1838. It's a question also being posed after Prince William was heard yesterday calling for an end to the fighting in Gaza as soon as possible.The words were hardly exceptionable: the prince, like every other civilised and sentient being, spoke of the terrible human cost of the conflict and the desperate need for increased humanitarian support as he visited the British Red Cross offices in London. Too many had been killed, he added, as he listened to first hand accounts directly from the charity's staff amid the rubble at the scene.Stephen Bates, a former Guardian correspondent, is the author of Royalty Inc: Britain's Best-Known Brand and The Shortest History of the Crown Continue reading...

Student organizers, faculty and workers protest against coffee company's response to union organizing effortsStudent organizers, faculty and workers at 25 university campuses across the US are calling for their institutions to cancel their contracts with Starbucks in protest against the company's response to union organizing efforts.The Starbucks gets an F" actions will take place on Thursday at campuses including the University of Chicago, the University of South Florida, UW-Madison, New York University, Georgetown and Rutgers. Continue reading...

Mr President, make the call. End this genocidePicture the scene. An Israeli prime minister launches airstrikes on an Arab population. Civilians are killed in their thousands. An American president, stunned and shocked by the scenes of carnage on his TV screen, makes a call to his Israeli counterpart. And ... within minutes ... the bombing is over.Sound crazy? Or maybe simplistic? Perhaps naive, even?Mehdi Hasan is a broadcaster and author, and a former host on MSNBC. He is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Police blamed a verbal altercation' between two men carrying firearms for leaving one person dead and 22 injured at the Kansas City Chiefs' victory parade. Plus, Trump launches Never Surrender' gold sneakerGood morning.Two men were charged with murder yesterday afternoon in connection with a mass shooting in Kansas City on 14 February that killed one person and wounded 22 others at a rally for the Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs, according to prosecutors.What happened? According to court records, the defendants attended a Super Bowl parade and rally on February 14, 2024, and were armed with firearms," the statement said. It added: A verbal altercation occurred and gunfire broke out with no regard for thousands of other individuals in the area."Who was the victim? The woman who died in the shooting, Elizabeth Lopez-Galvan, 43, was a popular radio disc jockey, her station and friends said. Twenty-two other people, including at least nine children, were wounded by gunfire, authorities said.Did Trump mention Putin? Despite prompts from host Laura Ingraham, Trump did not mention Putin when asked about Navalny. The Kremlin has denied involvement in Navalny's death and said western claims that Putin was responsible were unacceptable. Continue reading...

The Biden campaign keeps fumbling basic progressive causes - allowing Trump to falsely paint himself as a populist heroJoe Biden visited East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a massive train derailment and ecological disaster, for the first time last week. The problem, of course, is that the accident happened over a year ago. Donald Trump visited while out of office, only two weeks after the initial disaster.The mismatch encapsulates a major problem for the Democrats' messaging. They have allowed Trump and the Republican party to position themselves more and more as representing workers and victims of corporate negligence and malfeasance. Biden and the Democrats must change their positioning and economic messaging to reassert that they will fight for workers.Ben Davis works in political data in Washington. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign Continue reading...

Fernando Gonzalez Ortega's arrest shows clergy has not uprooted all molesters despite reform calls, abuse victims and advocates sayA Roman Catholic priest near the US's border with Mexico is facing criminal charges on allegations that he sexually molested a child, according to authorities.Fernando Gonzalez Ortega's arrest for sexually abusing a minor and of trafficking of persons demonstrates that US Catholic bishops have not yet rooted out all molesters under their command despite reform prompted by the worldwide church's decades-old clergy molestation scandal, abuse victims and their advocates have argued.In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453 or visit their website for more resources and to report child abuse or DM for help. For adult survivors of child abuse, help is available at ascasupport.org. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International Continue reading...

Relationship with IM-1776, which praises dictators and attacks liberal democracy, is collaborative and supportiveChris Rufo, a rightwing culture-war celebrity and close Ron DeSantis ally, has maintained a close relationship with IM-1776, a dissident right" magazine that regularly showers praise on dictators and authoritarians, puffs racist ideologues, and attacks liberal democracy.The outlet's editors and writers - many of them so-called anons" working under pseudonyms - have variously advocated for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act; celebrated figures such as the Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski and the proto-fascist Italian nationalist Gabriele D'Annunzio; and advanced conspiracy theories about the Covid pandemic, and what they term the regime", a leftist power structure that they imagine unites the state, large corporations, universities and the media. Continue reading...

Many of us gravitate towards people who are similar to us. But as I recently discovered, there is delight to be found in our differencesIn the UK, it's quite rare to have a truly diverse group of friends. In 2018, a YouGov study found that one-third of white Britons didn't have any friends from an ethnic minority background, while other research has suggested that people, including children, tend to gravitate towards those who have the same class background.I've always prided myself on having a diverse array of friends, but recently I too realised that my circle was overdue a shake-up. As the number of people I talk to continually shrinks - as most people's friendship circles do as they age - I've recognised some repeated patterns. My friends in the UK are mostly middle class (although plenty of us had working-class upbringings), earning a decent wage, and a mixture of ethnicities, but few are first-generation immigrants. Many of our experiences are shared and enough are delightfully different- but we are all coddled by having grown up in one of the world's richest countries. Continue reading...

The new season kicks off this week. Our panel of writers deliver their verdicts on the MVP, champions, Season Pass' team and the young players to watchA full season of Lionel Messi in MLS. The GOAT made an immediate impact for Inter Miami last year, but his best moments came in the Leagues Cup and US Open Cup. There's no guarantee of success for Inter Miami (see their chaotic pre-season). Messi, however, will surely produce some magic - assuming he can stay fit. Graham Ruthven Continue reading...