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Proposal to Tokyo-based Seven & i by ACT could become biggest foreign takeover of a Japanese firmThe owner of the global convenience store chain 7-Eleven has received an offer from a Canadian rival to buy the company.The Tokyo-based Seven & i revealed on Monday that it had received a bid from the Canadian convenience store multinational Alimentation Couche-Tard (ACT) to buy its stake in the company. Continue reading...

Israel and Hamas signal that a breakthrough may not be as close as mediators have suggested. Plus, how a global tax on the super-rich could workGood morning.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has arrived in Israel for last-minute negotiations to broker a ceasefire in Gaza amid fears that the war could spread rapidly if Iran and Hezbollah embark on retaliatory action against Israel.How would this differ from previous truces? Unlike the week-long ceasefire in November, this one would be indefinitely extendable while the details of the next stage are negotiated.What do the polls show? Better news for the Democrats than when Biden was the candidate, with Harris now leading or tied with Trump nationally and the crucial swing states roughly split. Continue reading...

I hate water so much I once went on the radio to defend my stance. Then I was introduced to massive bags of ice ...My son brought his girlfriend home last month and we really wanted to make things nice for her. We started with a shame-fuelled whirlwind clean, but were instantly betrayed the second our son stepped inside and exclaimed: It's so tidy! I've never seen it this clean!" (It got worse when he showed her my office, the portrait in the attic to the rest of the house's Dorian Gray.)She is from the US, which added an extra set of anxieties about how we live, specifically around ice and water. I have watched enough TikTok videos of shocked, disgusted Americans complaining about European hospitality's inadequate water service and ice meanness to know that we are notoriously bad at providing sufficient, and sufficiently chilled, hydration for US visitors. Keen to do better, we scrambled to the supermarket to panic-buy bags of ice to fill the freezer, then affected a casual, offhand familiarity with this cold, watery way of life. Would you like iced water? Yes, we're always offering each other giant glasses of cold fluid brimming with ice cubes, extremely normal behaviour here! Continue reading...

As we are saturated with horror, it gets normalized - and Israel's assault continues unfettered. A Palestinian American poet on dehumanizationBack in May, when the image of a decapitated child in Rafah started circulating, my friend texted: This is the image. This is the one. Now the world's going to roar. For many of us, this has been the reality of the last months: waiting for the image that will shake complacency and complicity; waiting for the image so staggering it'll be non-negotiable. An amputated toddler. A blown-apart body. A girl hanging from the side of a building. We are still waiting.~ Continue reading...

In Manhattan, I was in her orbit for nine years - quietly, she passed on a lifetime's wisdom about grief, fear and hopeThe clarity of hindsight is often overstated, particularly when it concerns the relationships that transform us. The English teacher who taught us Edward Lear somehow becomes the sole reason that we write; our first big love opened us to the world; our childhood barber is the reason we smoke. But at times in our lucky lives, it is possible to know what you have while you have it. I learned this from someone who'd spent a lifetime trying to accurately perceive what was in front of her.For nine years, I worked as a personal assistant to the titanic Joan Didion. Joan was in her 80s, I in my early 20s, and for a good chunk of the time I worked for her, I lived with Joan in her apartment on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. We were, to outsiders, an odd pair: Joan, tremendously frail in her small, birdlike body, quiet, exacting; I, on the other hand, tall, excitable, eager to prove my worth, still in the process of self-discovery. Day by day, we sat together and read poems and the newspaper, listened to music, smoked. Day by day, she was teaching me how to sit still, to be watchful, to be present. When you are friends with someone 60 years your senior, you learn quickly that this moment - this exact moment - might be your last together.Cory Leadbeater is the author of The Uptown Local: Joy, Death and Joan Didion Continue reading...

Neither side will tolerate the necessary concessions until the US, Egypt and Qatar exert their considerable influenceAnother round of ceasefire and hostage talks, this time in Doha, has ended in disappointment. This is in large part because Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is unlikely to accept any agreement that Hamas could present as a victory - and has handcuffed the Israeli mediators with conditions that appear impossible for Hamas to accept.Beyond the substance of any potential agreement between the two sides is the emotional juice of so much of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship: the battle for national dignity and honour. Huge quantities of explosives have been dropped on Gaza by Israel since 7 October because of the humiliation felt by all Israelis, and especially Israel's leaders and military. So much of this war over more than 10 months has been fought on both sides as a war of revenge. Nonetheless, it also has major strategic consequences for Israel, Hamas, the Palestinian people, the nations of the region, and the world's major powers - above all the United States.Gershon Baskin is a former hostage negotiator and the Middle East director for International Communities Organisation, a UK-based NGODo 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...

From petty crime to a housing crisis, our city is suffering. Backlash is justified, but sustainable tourism is part of our futureMy city has been stolen from me and I'm not getting it back. In Barcelona, we are overwhelmed by mass tourism and there is no solution in sight. Our vulnerability as citizens is mirrored by the experience of people who live in other European tourist hotspots: Rome, Florence, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris or Prague, where measures to curb tourism's toxicity have been put in place with varying degrees of success.In Barcelona, it is clear that efforts such as noise restrictions and one-way systems in popular areas are not working, and this is why a grassroots backlash is taking hold. The city has about 32 million visitors annually. Continue reading...

The violence exposed racist, anti-immigration narratives based on lies. Yet there has been a gaping hole where the counter-argument should beFar-right thuggery. Marauding mobs. The prime minister's descriptions of those who brought one of the worst episodes of violence on to the country's streets captured their actions, but not their motivations or origins. Where did the rioters come from? Why now? Why are they attacking those they are attacking? If many people in this country are now, in Keir Starmer's words feeling targeted because of the colour of your skin, or your faith", how does such a colossal violation come about, and how will it be addressed? The only answers we have been given treat the problem as one of security, of a troublesome minority who do not represent" the country, and which will be stamped out by a heavy security response and prison sentences. A freak event triggered by the Southport stabbings. And that's that.But it will not be that. Because that minority reflects, and draws on, decades of racism, Islamophobia and anti-immigration rhetoric and policy broadcast by parts of the rightwing media, the Conservative party and the Labour party itself. Those years will not be swept aside by a policing crackdown. And their legacy will not, more importantly, be dismantled without its narratives being taken on and confronted.Nesrine Malik 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...

As Kamala Harris prepares to be formally nominated, organisers are expecting widespread protests at the Democratic National Convention in ChicagoAs thousands of Democratic delegates, party officials and elected leaders descend on Chicago for the Democratic National Convention (DNC) a smaller, strident group of protesters have taken to Michigan Avenue ahead of a week that promises several demonstrations.A protest of up to 1,000 marchers combining support for the Palestinian cause and abortion rights gathered at the iconic corner of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue in Chicago Sunday evening. The protest is the first of several demonstrations, legally permitted and not, planned for the convention. Continue reading...

Pro-Palestinian protesters are expected to gather outside the convention in Chicago seeking to influence party policy on Israel's offensive in GazaSome 40,000 protesters are expected to gather outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago on Monday to demonstrate against the Biden administration's position on Israel, with some groups saying they will push for amendments to the party's platform.The party is on guard for disruptions to high-profile speeches at the DNC, with one pro-Palestinian group called Delegates Against Genocide, angry at US support for Israel's offensive in Gaza, saying it will press for an arms embargo this week. Continue reading...

My life in Gaza was constantly at risk. Had I stayed, there is every chance I would've been one of the 40,000 Palestinians killed by IsraelWhere should the birds fly after the last sky?" The poet Mahmoud Darwish asked this decades ago, and every day for the past 10 months, I've been asking myself the same question. How can the world be so vast, yet when it comes to us Palestinians, there isn't enough space for us?My life in Gaza was constantly at risk, and I could have been targeted and killed at any moment. Had I stayed, there is every chance that I would've been one of the 40,000 Palestinians killed by Israel, of which as many as 17,000 are children, over 11,000 women and 113 journalists like me. A Lancet study even suggests that the Gaza death toll could exceed 186,000. Continue reading...

Republican senator urges Trump to focus on policy issues instead of making personal attacks against HarrisThe Republican senator and Donald Trump loyalist Lindsey Graham has warned that Trump is in danger of losing the US presidential election if he continues to talk about Kamala Harris's race and make other personal attacks instead of focusing on policy issues.Graham's comments came on Meet The Press when asked whether he agreed with Nikki Haley's recent admonition that Trump and Republicans should quit whining" and stop talking about what race Kamala Harris is". Continue reading...

Surge in schools playing non-contact version of American football and player numbers could hit 100k by 2026Flag football, a non-contact version of American football, is rapidly catching on in the UK with a surge in the number of schools involved and participation numbers set to hit 100,000 by 2026.Fuelled by an energetic campaign by the New York-based NFL to encourage young people in Britain to try the less violent alternative, teams with names such as the Northants Ducks, the South Coast Spitfires and the London Fruit Bats are experiencing rising demand. Continue reading...

The tennis player Naomi Osaka opened up this week about how she feels physically since having her daughter. Both athletes and non-athletes will have nodded in recognitionMy biggest issue is that I don't feel like I'm in my body," Naomi Osaka wrote this week on Instagram. A year after her daughter was born, the Grand Slam champion, who returned to the competitive circuit in January, is struggling to find her form. Itry and tell myself it's fine you're doing great' ... Internally I hear myself screaming what the hell is happening?!?!'"That is awful, but how fantastic that she is talking about how she feels. Traditionally, vulnerability is not welcome in elite sport, an environment of stigma surrounding mental health issues, a high threshold for help-seeking behavior, and a low sense of psychological safety", as one study described it last year. Yet so much of elite athletes' success is in their heads; of course they falter, habitually exposed to pressure that would crush us normal people (unsurprisingly, research suggests they may be at higher risk of deleterious mental health symptoms.Comments on this piece are premoderated to ensure discussion remains on topics raised by the writer. Please be aware there may be a short delay in comments appearing on the site. Continue reading...

Despite interest rates being at a 20-year high, sales of small businesses are strong, and may continue for yearsWhen you hear startup", you might think of the millions of entrepreneurs who have founded new businesses over the past few years. But these are mostly freelancers, contractors and people with full-time jobs who can accommodate a side gig. The real startup story is quietly happening elsewhere: trillions of dollars of wealth are slowly being transferred to a younger generation by boomers selling their businesses to those looking to build their own.According to a new report from BizBuySell, a business brokerage and research site, the number of small businesses being sold has not only recovered to pre-pandemic levels, but is quickly rising. And the market for would-be entrepreneurs is hot. Business owners who sold their companies in the second quarter of this year are getting 20% higher prices than those who sold their businesses the same time last year. Continue reading...

Graffiti and street art are by their nature ephemeral. More upsetting than works' destruction is the criminalisation of some artistsThis month, stencilled artworks by the street artist Banksy have been defaced, as with his Nissan-trampling rhino, or removed, as with his satellite-dish wolf and hoarding-bound big cat - sometimes just hours after their first public appearances.While the wolf was either stolen to order or opportunistically taken (and, much like the bronze Barbara Hepworth that was stolen and probably sold for scrap, is now worth many times less than its market value as a result of being formally unsellable), the thievery is not hugely dissimilar to the public removal of Banksy works by the official owners of the sites his pieces appear on. Often cut out of their walls to be sold at auction, you could argue they have been stolen from the public, to whom and where they rightfully belong.Rafael Schacter is an anthropologist and curator working on public and global art. His fourth book, Monumental Graffiti, will be published in October Continue reading...

Kamala Harris's ascent in the race for the White House has imbued the party with joy and galvanized ranksTens of thousands of Democrats are expected to descend on Chicago this week for their party's convention, bubbling with a feeling few had anticipated: pure, unconfined joy.At the end of their four-day fete, when the red, white and blue balloons tumble from the rafters of the United Center, Kamala Harris will have become the first woman of color to accept a major party's presidential nomination in American history. The moment will cap a frenzied few weeks for Democrats, following the vice-president's sudden ascent to the top of the ticket in a development that has transformed the race for the White House and galvanized a party once resigned to a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Continue reading...

The Israeli state has applied its usual strategy after this atrocity: deny, deflect, deceive, and wait for attention to move elsewhereIf you are ever in doubt about the nature of Israel's onslaught against Gaza, remember this little girl. Hind Rajab was a five-year-old Palestinian with an adorable smile. On the morning of 29 January, she got in a Kia Picanto along with her aunt, uncle and several cousins. They were seeking to flee the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City. The Israeli military fired on the car, killing everyone inside except for Hind and her 15-year-old cousin, Layan. A terrified Layan answered a call from the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), informing them that a tank was firing on the car: in the recording, you hear her tortured screams as she is shot dead. When the PRCS rang back, Hind answered, now the only survivor, surrounded by the bloodied corpses of her six relatives. She also referred to a tank and begged to be rescued. At one point she told the operator it was getting dark and that she was scared.After hours waiting for permission, the ministry of health negotiated safe access with the Israeli authorities for an ambulance. The paramedics arrived at about 6pm and were shot upon arrival. Two weeks later, their remains were recovered - along with the decomposed bodies of Hind and her family. Continue reading...

The daughter of civil rights activists has an unbroken history of working to change anything that wasn't right', friends sayIt was the first week of July. News of the presidential election had been mired, for eight days, in alarming assessments of Joe Biden and that shambolic debate. The president had started but not finished sentences, slurred words and at points stood with his mouth slightly agape while his opponent, Donald Trump, ignored questions and lied without fact-check.Now, on 6 July, inside New Orleans's convention center, the 30th annual Essence Festival of Culture was under way. Kamala Harris was set to speak, one of the vice-president's biggest in-person events since Biden's performance had seemingly upended the race. The attendees - mostly Black women, drawn to this long-running music-festival-meets-women's-expo - were waiting to see Harris. Some were chattering about the possibilities: did her future lie at the top of the Democratic party's ticket? What could, or should, happen next? The press corps now trailing Harris had swelled in size, and began to scribble notes and scramble for a look as Harris walked across the stage as the defiant second chorus of Beyonce's Freedom boomed. A rousing cheer came from the standing-room-only crowd in the cavernous, 600-seat room. Continue reading...

The tech boss's overtures were possibly made with one eye on favourable regulation, but doesn't he know what happens when you swim with sharks?The dorsal fin of the tiny remora fish conceals a suction mechanism, enabling it to cling to sharks, which are full of urea and can live for many years. And on Monday, the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and Elon Musk, the billionaire playman and galactic space-lord of the decomposing social media channel Twitter (currently X), revealed the depth of their mutual admiration in an eider-soft and incompetently livestreamed interview. Trump said horrible things for two hours and Musk giggled. TV executives wanting to reboot Top Gear, with that classic Jeremy Clarkson/Richard Hammond chemistry, need look no further.The shark-remora relationship is mutual. The remora consumes leftovers dropped by the shark and eats parasites that live in its mouth. This delights the shark - parasites can be irritating - and predators that might harm the remora are deterred, as the shark gives it a ride through the dangerous oceans. Could Musk help peck clever black women out of Trump's mouth? Would Trump's election deliver Musk free passage through the choppy seas of communication regulation? Just how hard can Musk's remora suck?Stewart Lee's Basic Lee is streaming on Now TV. He appears in a benefit for War Child headlined by Idles at the Bristol Academy this Saturday 24 August, curates and hosts the Komedia stage at the Brighton Psych Fest on 30 August, and his 2025 tour, Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf, begins at London's Leicester Square theatre this DecemberDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

Tasteful nudity is back in business - it's as if the last seven years had never happenedI know what you're thinking: Whatever happened to sexy tyre calendars? I really miss those." You're in luck. The 2025 Pirelli calendar has been shot ultra-sexy, with tasteful nudity/near-nudity again. This is after the Italian company spent years reacting to #MeToo and accusations of pandering to the male gaze by shooting clothed campaigns.AnnieLeibovitz was involved in taking the photos at one point. There were photos of Yoko Ono, Serena Williams, Patti Smith and more... but they had their clothes on, so who cares? Continue reading...

Whether playing the lover opposite Marianne Faithfull or the assassin in Le Samourai, the prolific French actor, who has died aged 88, was a symbol of the lost beauty of the 60s A life in picturesThere is a famous photograph of Alain Delon in 1967, sitting on a couch next to Marianne Faithfull, with a subdued Mick Jagger on the other side of her, apparently taken around the time Faithfull was about to star in The Girl on a Motorcycle, in which Faithfull modelled a sleek leather body suit that Delon's character would take great delight in unzipping. Faithfull is leaning over intimately as Delon murmurs to her, laughing, lit up in his presence, her body language entirely enfolded into his. Jagger can only look down uneasily at his cigarette. Later Faithfull would say that she didn't fancy Delon one bit, but confirmed that Jagger was very jealous.Be that as it may, it is hard to think of anyone who, if only for a split second, could have upstaged Jagger at that moment, who could have drawn the gaze of Faithfull and the press cameras to him. And that is Delon, in all his eerie, heartstopping, almost extraterrestrial gorgeousness. He was one of the most - maybe the most - beautiful male stars in cinema history. Continue reading...

Waving the Olympic flag in Paris, the cult's star made the world forget about the unpleasant bitsAround 75m years since a mighty intergalactic leader somehow triggered the existence oftoday's Scientologists, the interests of their religion and the rest of humanity seem finally to have aligned: in shared devotion toTom Cruise.After Cruise leapt into the Olympics closing ceremony to pick up a flag that he took - once he had been hailed by dazzled elite athletes - via motorbike, plane and parachute to LA's Hollywood sign, both his feats and his casting were hailed as inspired. You would never have known from unstinting appreciations acknowledging him as the best loved, the bravest, most revered star in the world, that Cruise has been long and widely considered too senior a Scientologist to be unconditionally admired or, given the reported mischiefs of that organisation, much tolerated. Continue reading...

Retaliation can only end in mutually assured self-destructionThere have been many moments that have been described as milestones in the war that began when Hamas militants surged through the $1bn (772m) fence constructed by Israel around Gaza on 7 October to kill more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abduct another 251. With hindsight, we can now see that few of them were genuine inflection points.The death toll resulting from Israel's offensive in Gaza last week reached 40,000, according to Palestinian officials. The number does not differentiate between combatants and civilians but around two-thirds of those fully identified are women and children. Then there are those still under the rubble, who may total 10,000. Continue reading...

Ex-president quickly broke away from prepared speech to accuse vice-president of being a communist and a fascistDonald Trump tried to reset his campaign at a rally in battleground Pennsylvania on Saturday as polls show Kamala Harris pulling ahead in key swing states.But the former president quickly broke away from the prepared speech about economic issues to launch personal attacks on Harris including accusations that her agenda is both communist and fascist, and that she has the laugh of a crazy person". Continue reading...

Former Democratic Hawaii representative, who fell out of favor with party, to be rehearsal stand-in for vice-presidentDonald Trump has tapped Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic Hawaii representative, to help prepare him for next month's presidential debate with Kamala Harris.The selection of Gabbard as rehearsal stand-in for the vice president, first reported by the New York Times, suggests that despite denials, the former president may be planning to prepare for the 10 September clash with greater-than-usual diligence. Continue reading...

Jack Draper won a controversial match point against Felix Auger-Aliassime at the Cincinnati Open on Friday. The Briton appeared to hit the ball on to the floor off the frame of his racket before it looped over the net. Auger-Aliassime argued with the umpire, who deemed the shot fair. With no video replay available to the officials, the decision was left to the umpire. Draper won the match 5-7 6-4 6-4 and will face Holger Rune in the quarter-final.

National Park Service says collapse is seventh in Rodanthe in four years and warns of dangerous debris on beachThe home on a beach of North Carolina's Outer Banks leaned against the surf before the pilings below it sagged, then gave way, toppling the entire structure into the sea.A beachgoer posted video of the collapse on Instagram on 16 August. A Rodanthe NC house was consumed by the ocean right in front of me!" the caption read. Continue reading...

Trump to hold rally in north-east while Harris tours through west of what election forecaster calls tipping point' stateThe US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will hold dueling campaign events this weekend in the critical political battleground state of Pennsylvania.The former president was due to hold a Saturday rally in Wilkes-Barre in the north-east of the state, while the vice-president is on a bus tour of western Pennsylvania starting in Pittsburgh on Sunday, before the Democratic national convention kicks off on Monday in Chicago. Continue reading...

The theme of the event is passing the torch', giving the party the chance to spotlight its up-and-coming starsDemocrats will gather in Chicago on Monday to kick off their convention, where Kamala Harris will formally accept the party's presidential nomination. Party members have indicated that the theme of the week will be passing the torch" to a new generation of leaders, after Joe Biden cleared the way for Harris by abandoning his re-election campaign.Conventions provide a unique opportunity for up-and-coming lawmakers to speak to a national audience and boost their name recognition as they prepare for their own possible presidential campaigns in the future. Continue reading...

A ceasefire could enable progress towards a two-state solution - the only long-term route to safety and securityThis is a perilous moment in the Middle East. Israel's actions in Gaza continue to lead to intolerable loss of civilian life. Hostages taken by Hamas terrorists remain in chains, 316 days since the 7 October attack. There are French and British citizens among them.Fighting between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah has intensified. Iranian threats of further escalation mean the risks of a full-scale regional war are rising. Continue reading...

Disgraced former New York Republican congressman's criminal trial was scheduled to start early next monthThe disgraced former New York Republican congressman George Santos is expected to plead guilty on Monday in a deal with prosecutors on charges that he defrauded his campaign during his 2022 midterm elections, according to multiple reports.Hints of a plea agreement came on Friday ahead of Santos's federal criminal trial, which was set to start early next month. Prosecutors and defense attorneys suddenly scheduled a hearing without explicitly saying why. Continue reading...

Speeches can boost state politician to national prominence, despite awkward challenge with Harris nominationIn 2004, Barack Obama was a relatively unknown state legislator trying to become Illinois' next senator - until his speech at the Democratic convention. When Democrats gathered in Boston to nominate John Kerry, many Americans heard Obama speak for the first time. And they were mesmerized.I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible," Obama said that evening. Continue reading...

A memoir of one couple's years in hospitality captures the strange alchemy of running a restaurantMy intense interest in restaurants may be traced all the way back to childhood, when I coolly set up my own little place in the Victorian outside loo at my dad's (somewhat of a hipster location, I think now). A short-lived but highly memorable establishment - at my funeral, there will doubtless be ye olde sibling jokes about how I misspelled lettuce - everything on the menu had been drawn by me in felt tip, and then cut out by hand. Service was brisk, orange squash was complimentary, and the atmosphere in the kitchen was straight out of The Bear. Woe betide the customer who dared to laugh on receiving a serving of peas that comprised just three tiny discs of lime green paper. What did they expect? I had no sous-chef and no decent scissors.Something stuck in my small brain in that freezing cold washhouse, and it has never left me. What works, and what doesn't? Why will one restaurant succeed and another fail? (Paper veg isn't the half of it.) On city walks, wherever I happen to be, it strikes me again and again how much passion it takes to survive in hospitality - and yet, how often such passion seems either to have gone awol, or to have sent owners in the wrong direction entirely. So many paradoxes, so many confusions. From the outside, quick fixes are obvious, even to the amateur eye. Shorten your menu! Paint over that maroon wall immediately. But it's also indubitably the case that some very bad restaurants are packed, and some very good ones heartbreakingly empty. Continue reading...

The president hoped for a speedy victory; instead, there are foreign tanks on Russian soil for the first time since the NazisVladimir Putin's war plan was simple. Russian tanks would roll into Kyiv, while special forces seized key buildings and raised the Russian flag. The operation - to conquer Ukraine and to install a puppet government - would take around three days. The west would be horrified, of course. But - sooner or later - it would grudgingly recognise this new and great Russian reality.Two and half years after his full-scale invasion, however, the triumphant parade Putin envisaged on Kyiv's Khreshchatyk boulevard has yet to happen. Victory has proved elusive. Ukrainians didn't welcome liberation" by their Slavic brothers in the way Putin's spy agency predicted. They fought back. The country's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, also failed to leg it and to follow Russia's imperious script. Continue reading...

Not only will literary criticism wither, but we risk losing the campus novel entirelyAh, A-level results week, and how weirdly enjoyable it is when you're not doing them yourself, have no children of your own in the game, and nieces and nephews who aren't yet old enough. Out for a walk with my headphones, Ilisten delightedly as a triumphant candidate appears on the BBC's World at One: Evie from Southend, who sounds as pleased as punch. What will she do now, asks the presenter, who also has a smile in his voice. She doesn't miss a beat. It's all sorted. In the autumn, she'll go to Durham University to read... English literature.This stops me in my tracks. What? Surely everyone knows that English literature is dying. Since 2012, the number of students reading it at university, as I once did, has fallen by more than a third; staff are being laid off, departments are closing, scholarship is missing in action. I've just read a major" new study of the poet, WHAuden, and, as I write in my review, its gargantuan size - you could more easily slip a hardback edition of Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course into your handbag than this book - announces it as a relic even before publication. No, Stem subjects are where it's at now, and my amazement at Evie's passion" for her course is going to take a full circuit of the park to fade. Continue reading...

Students, faculty and advocates warn of chilling effect on free speech as schools across US introduce restrictionsUniversities across the US are planning tougher rules to restrict protests when students return from summer vacation, an effort to avoid the chaos of last semester when demonstrations against Israel's war in Gaza led to police crackdowns on campuses nationwide.Columbia University students, who were at the vanguard of the movement, may encounter the most changes. The university president, Minouche Shafik, resigned this week in the wake of criticism for her handling of the protests, but not before overseeing the installation of fencing around the lawns of the school's quad - the heart of campus life and the site of large protest encampments. Continue reading...

The tech giant pays billions so that its search engine is the default on our screens, but a US judge has ruled this illegal. Perhaps now we will see innovationEarlier this month, a district court in Washington DC handed down a judgment in an antitrust case that has shaken up the tech industry. In a 286-page opinion, Judge Amit Mehta announced his conclusion. After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act."Now I know that for normal, well-adjusted people, antitrust cases are an excellent antidote to insomnia, but stay tuned for a moment because this is a really big deal. Apart from anything else, it shows that an ancient legal warhorse, the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, still has teeth. And to see it successfully deployed to bring an overbearing tech company to heel is a delight. After all, it was the statute that in 1911 broke up John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil as well as American Tobacco, and AT&T in 1982. It was also used to prosecute Microsoft in 1998. Continue reading...

Congress report says shot hit would-be assassin's weapon, wounding him before he was killed by Secret Service sniperThe first shot back at the would-be assassin who was firing at Donald Trump last month was from local law enforcement and hit the gunman's weapon, briefly knocking him down, a preliminary report from the US Congress has revealed.The gunman was wounded by fragments flying from the damaged weapon and then, as he got back up, he was killed by a federal sniper, the report found. Continue reading...

Does Donald Trump's running mate think there is any point to postmenopausal females' beyond free childcare?Consider, if you will, the mysterious role of the postmenopausal female. Her ovaries have shrunk and she is no longer able to fulfil a woman's biological destiny of bringing children into the world. What's the point of her? Continue reading...

Before flag's 2028 Games debut, Housh Doucette says US team is already great'Darrell Housh" Doucette, the quarterback of the US's national flag football team, couldn't help but be offended at the hype video circulating online shortly after the 2024 summer Olympics wrapped in Paris.The clip showed the superstar NFL quarterback Jalen Hurts lighting a football on fire, tossing it into the torch looming over the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and igniting the Olympic flame. Then, the face of the Philadelphia Eagles turned around, stared into the camera, and deadpanned, It's our turn," before text reminded viewers that men's and women's flag football - a younger cousin to the tackle format where Hurts plies his trade - would make its debut on the Olympics program for the 2028 LA Games. Continue reading...

On Monday Democrats return to Chicago to prepare to anoint Kamala Harris as their candidate - amid striking parallels with the events 56 years agoSean Wilentz was in the convention hall when someone handed out copies of a news wire report. I remember the first line," he says. It said, The lid blew off of this convention city tonight.'" The article went on to describe chaos and bloodshed in Chicago as police clashed with protesters against the Vietnam war.Just 17 at the time, Wilentz and a couple of friends raced to the scene in downtown Chicago. It was horrible. The cops were angry and didn't like the kids and the kids were angry and didn't like the cops. I saw a motorcycle cop go on a sidewalk and pin a kid against the wall. I was very scared." Continue reading...

Health non-profit's affiliate announced changes for September, but staff say abortion access is already limitedIn the coming weeks, Planned Parenthood's Manhattan health center will stop offering core reproductive health services, including abortions after 20 weeks and deep sedation for procedures like abortion or IUD insertion.The Manhattan clinic currently offers abortion through 24 weeks and is the only Planned Parenthood location in the state that does so. The group has been beset by financial challenges, and plans to close a number of New York clinics in the near future. Continue reading...

Disconnect between what US voters want and what the Biden administration does seems to widen dailyRarely has a head of state received a more hostile welcome than that which met the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, when he arrived in Washington DC to speak before a joint session of Congress last month. While no senior US officials turned up to greet him on the tarmac, thousands of demonstrators marched in protest of his speech, including 200 from the group Jewish Voice for Peace who were arrested during an occupation on Capitol Hill, and others who burned him in effigy and replaced the American flag flying in front of Union Station with a Palestinian flag.Perhaps more telling was the decision of roughly half of congressional Democrats to boycott the address altogether. A dozen years ago, that would have been unthinkable," noted Peter Frey, board chair of J Street, a Jewish lobbying group that supports Israeli security as well as a Palestinian state. One lawmaker who did attend, the representative Rashida Tlaib, wore a keffiyeh and held a sign calling Netanyahu a war criminal" who was guilty of genocide". Meanwhile, a number of labor unions, including the National Education Association, the Service Employees International Union and United Auto Workers sent a letter to Joe Biden calling for an end to US support for Israel's war in Gaza. Continue reading...