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Agency ‘failed to uphold mission of strict fidelity’, special counsel John Durham concludes in investigation launched by Bill BarrSpecial counsel John Durham found no evidence that the US justice department and the FBI conspired in a deep-state plot to investigate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia in 2016, though the report released on Monday found that the FBI’s handling of key aspects of the case were deficient.The Durham report was sharply critical of how the FBI decided to open the counterintelligence investigation into Trump, known as “Crossfire Hurricane”, accusing top officials at the bureau of relying on raw and uncorroborated information to continue the inquiry.Durham said the FBI was more cautious of allegations of foreign influence when it came to the Clinton campaign, and did not pursue evidence in two cases of foreign governments trying to gain influence with Clinton while providing defensive briefings, unlike with the Trump campaign;Durham said the FBI was overly reliant on investigative tips from Trump’s political opponents and did not rigorously analyze the information it received, which extended the investigation and led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Trump;Durham said the FBI decided to move ahead with Crossfire Hurricane despite a lack of information from the intelligence community that corroborated the hypothesis on which it was predicated and FBI agents ignored information that exonerated key people in the case;Durham suggested that Crossfire Hurricane was “triggered” by the so-called Steele dossier, when it was in fact based on a tip from an Australian diplomat in London that a Trump campaign aide appeared to have advance knowledge about Russia releasing damaging information on Clinton. Continue reading...

The 2020 video, which depicts a bar shooting, instructs people to flee, hide and fight in order not to be killed in an attackA newly resurfaced FBI video purportedly training Americans to give themselves their best chance of surviving a deadly mass shooting is drawing scorn across the US and abroad.In the video, released in 2020 by the US’s top law enforcement agency, actors portraying everyday Americans explain to viewers ways in which they could at least survive – or, preferably, even stop – a mass shooting once the bullets start flying. Continue reading...

Molina was the first Latina to serve in the state assembly, the LA city council and on the city’s board of supervisorsGloria Molina, a groundbreaking Chicana leader in California state and local politics for more than 30 years, has died after a three-year struggle with cancer, her family announced. She was 74.Molina died on Sunday evening at her Mount Washington home, surrounded by her family, her daughter, Valentina Martinez, said in a statement. Continue reading...

Confounding the polls, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is now on course to extend his rule into a third decadeIn the lead-up to Turkey’s presidential election on Sunday, there seemed to be good grounds to believe that voters were about to turn their back on Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarian brand of nationalism. His assumption of quasi-monarchical presidential powers in 2018 had succeeded in uniting a perennially divided opposition against him. Polls suggested a close race, but placed the president’s main rival for power, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, significantly ahead. Requiring a vote above 50% to win outright and avoid a runoff, Mr Kılıçdaroğlu’s declared aspiration was to “finish it in the first round”.That optimism has turned out to be sadly misplaced. As it transpired, it was Mr Erdoğan who almost won at the first time of asking, winning over 49% of votes to Mr Kılıçdaroğlu’s 45%. The coalition led by the president’s Justice and Development party (AKP) is also set to win a surprise majority in the Grand National Assembly. That outcome will stymie opposition attempts to restore parliamentary democracy to Turkey, irrespective of the result of the presidential runoff in a fortnight’s time. Continue reading...

Republican former Texas governor, who has run twice before, once forgot name of government department he planned to abolishThe former Texas governor Rick Perry’s announcement on Sunday that he could mount a third run for the Republican presidential nomination encountered widespread mockery over a famous debate stage gaffe in which he forgot the name of a government department he said he would abolish.But Perry, 73, also ran into stormier waters, being accused of lying regarding his alleged involvement in Donald Trump’s election subversion. Continue reading...

Joseph Dituri set the record on his 74th day at a lodge situated at the bottom of a 30ft-deep lagoon and plans to stay 100 daysA university professor broke a record for the longest time living underwater without depressurization this weekend at a Florida Keys lodge for scuba divers.Joseph Dituri’s 74th day residing in Jules’ Undersea Lodge, situated at the bottom of a 30ft-deep lagoon in Key Largo, wasn’t much different than his previous days there since he submerged on 1 March. Continue reading...

The opposition had to face down a hostile media and the president’s entrenched power. This disappointment could further skew the second roundIt was a tense and confusing night after election polls closed in Turkey yesterday. The official result is still unclear, but a runoff between the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and his main challenger, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, looks increasingly likely. Neither seem to have reached the necessary 50% threshold to win the election outright, but Erdoğan is clearly in the lead. In a press conference in the early morning hours, Kılıçdaroğlu said he that he was confident that he would win the runoff. However, enthusiasm, both onstage and among his supporters, was muted. These were not the faces of winners.While many thought that the opposition’s campaign, centred around political reform, unity and an end to the toxic polarisation in the country, was a breath of fresh air; others have criticised Kılıçdaroğlu’s approach for targeting mostly those who already agreed with his views, for his blue-sky attitude and focus on positive soundbites on social media.Constanze Letsch is a former Turkey correspondent for the Guardian and has recently finished a PhD on urban renewal in IstanbulDo 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...

Even a Trump-appointed judge agrees that this law is probably a blatant violation of the first amendmentI am the show director at Atomic Rose, a nightclub in Memphis, Tennessee. I first discovered drag through Shakespeare. I’m a founding member of Tennessee Shakespeare Company, and I got to play some drag roles there. Growing up in the conservative south, I had learned to suppress anything considered feminine as a safety mechanism. Drag was the first time I was able to put the feminine parts of me forefront, as a source of pride and strength rather than shame or weakness. I fell in love with the art, and I’ve been doing it now for over a decade.On 2 March, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed into law two bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community. The first, SB1, outlaws all gender-affirming healthcare for minors. SB3, the “anti-drag bill,” redefines drag performers as adult cabaret artists and classifies drag as a prurient art form. “Prurient” is a legal term referring to a shameful or morbid interest in sex.Bella DuBalle is a drag artist in Tennessee Continue reading...

As an African Aids activist and proud mother, I’ll fight Uganda’s homophobic bill, which denies my gay son’s right to existA toxic wave of homophobia is surging across east Africa. It is crashing down in Uganda, where members of parliament recently passed a bill that makes being gay a crime punishable by death and not reporting homosexuality a criminal offence. The most common refrain echoed by the anti-gay movement is that homosexuality is “un-African”.That belief is totally unfounded and ahistorical. As an African mother who has raised a gay child, it breaks my heart to hear such arguments. I know that my son and thousands of other children across Africa are both gay and fully, proudly African. Continue reading...

Measures would let him campaign while serving as Florida governor and shield travel records from publicRon DeSantis is using the final weeks before he reportedly launches a presidential campaign to modify Florida law to allow him to run while serving as governor and reduce transparency over political spending and his travel.DeSantis is poised to sign a bill that would exempt him from Florida’s “resign-to-run” law, so that he won’t have to give up his office in order to run for president. Under existing state law, if he were to run, DeSantis would have had to submit a resignation letter before Florida’s qualifying deadline this year and step down by inauguration day in 2025. Last month, Republicans in the state legislature passed a measure that says the restriction does not apply to those running for president or vice-president. Continue reading...

President Erdoğan faces serious challenge in elections that could see runoff vote against Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Plus, why do so many generation Z Americans put on British accents?

As housing prices increase in the picturesque town of Sitka, those already living on the edge are pushed off further into the wilderness

Now that Covid-era immigration restrictions have ended, the Biden administration has formulated new asylum regulationLast week, the Biden administration toughened its stance against migration at the US-Mexico border through a new federal regulation that severely restricts access to asylum. This “Circumvention of Legal Pathways” rule effectively replaces the Title 42 public health order, which Donald Trump introduced ostensibly to stem Covid-19 but has functioned increasingly as an immigration enforcement tool, allowing border officials to quickly expel migrants without the chance to request asylum in the US. Title 42 ended on 11 May.The new regulation means people fleeing their home countries because of unlivable violence and instability are rendered ineligible for asylum unless they can meet one of a handful of exceptions.already have permission to enter through a parole process approved by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).use a DHS scheduling system like CBP One – a recently developed government phone app – to secure a coveted appointment to present themselves at an official border port of entry. Or show up at a port of entry and meet a very high bar for why they couldn’t use the scheduling system.have sought protection in another country en route to the US and been denied it. Continue reading...

Administration officials are misreading the political moment – polls show the electorate is on the side of the presidentOne wonders what the Biden administration is afraid of when it comes to calling the Republicans’s bluff on raising the federal debt ceiling. While White House officials no doubt have genuine legal and policy concerns about their ability to act unilaterally to defuse the crisis, the overriding reason is likely fear of the political consequences, and on that front they are both misreading the moment and misunderstanding the composition of the country’s electorate.To quickly recap, Congress passes laws to “promote the general welfare” of the public, and those laws usually cost money. Not infrequently, the cost of those laws exceeds the amount of money the government has in the bank, so they have to borrow money to pay the bills. But because of an obscure 1917 law, the amount of loans the government can take out to pay its bills is capped at a set (and, frankly, relatively arbitrary) amount. When this happens, Congress must raise the limit of how much money can be borrowed to meet the country’s obligations. Continue reading...

As an author and a woman, I felt my role was to be scrutinised, yet not to speak out. Now, nobody shuts me upThere’s a saying my grandmother liked to use: little girls should be seen and not heard. I internalised that idea for much of my life, but when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020, something changed. Cancer took a great deal from me, but it gave me back my voice, and now I don’t think I’ll ever be silent again.I must have been a difficult child. Much of my childhood features people telling me to be quiet. Schoolteachers. Family members. The man who tried to rape me. The adult who, when I told her, and after having satisfied herself that nothing much had happened, decided that it would be best for me never to mention it again.Joanne Harris is the author of ChocolatDo 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...

With the NBA’s final four set, let’s take a look at the matchups as the Miami Heat, Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets battle for the titleWhat the Lakers need to do: Defend. When these teams met in the conference finals in the bubble in 2020, the Lakers won the series in just five games, holding Denver to 109.2 points per contest. They may have to do even better this time as the Nuggets boast perhaps the best player on Earth, Nikola Jokić, winner of two of the past three NBA MVP awards. Thankfully for LA, they have maybe the greatest defender on Earth in Anthony Davis. In the 2020 championship run, Davis’ long arms altered countless shots and he’ll have to do the same here. Continue reading...

These are the things I wish I had said to you when you asked me if being a parent was as awful as it soundedI decided to write this column in the format of a letter. I wanted to set myself the writing challenge of citing some of the many positive things about having a baby without being saccharine, resorting to cliche or generalising, and the only way I could find was this way. It’s addressed to one person, but I hope that those who find themselves at a similar crossroads take succour from it.To my friend A,Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author Continue reading...

James Comer claims he has a whistleblower who will make ‘Watergate look like jaywalking’, but is yet to deliver“This is a very serious investigation,” James Comer, chairman of the US House of Representatives’ oversight committee, told the rightwing channel Newsmax recently. “The allegations and the things that we’re investigating make Watergate look like jaywalking.”The Watergate scandal needed a whistleblower, John Dean, to bring down President Richard Nixon half a century ago. Republican Comer claims that he, too, has a “highly credible” whistleblower who will provide evidence that Joe Biden has been compromised by a foreign power. Continue reading...

Verdict has been hailed as victory, but sexual advocacy groups are condemning Trump’s attacks against the decision and the writer, calling them dangerous and belittling to survivorsAfter a New York jury found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E Jean Carroll, sexual violence advocacy groups and experts are having mixed responses to the verdict, particularly in light of Trump’s public attacks against the decision and Carroll, and as top Republicans have rushed to his defense.Despite the verdict and the jury awarding about $5m in compensatory and punitive damages to Carroll, Trump and a handful of Republican lawmakers have remained defiant: a move which sexual violence experts have condemned as risking re-traumatizing survivors. Continue reading...

Steve Vladeck says conservative majority is bypassing public scrutiny with unsigned orders on religion, abortion and moreConservative justices on the US supreme court consciously broke with decades-old congressional rules and norms to shift laws governing religious freedom sharply to the right through a series of shadowy unsigned and unexplained emergency orders, a new book reveals.Five of the six conservatives who now command the majority on the US’s most powerful court have rammed through some of their most contentious and extreme partisan decisions using the so-called “shadow docket” – unsigned orders issued frequently late at night, in literal and metaphorical darkness. The orders do not reveal who voted for them or why, often providing one-line explanations of the legal thinking behind them. Continue reading...

Mourners gathered to remember the 10 people killed by a white supremacist last year at the Tops Friendly marketAs families across the US celebrated Mother’s Day, several hundred people – including prominent elected officials – gathered at Buffalo’s Jefferson Avenue Tops Friendly market for a different reason: to mark the first anniversary of the day a white supremacist gunman drove several hours to Buffalo’s East Side and murdered 10 people at gunpoint.People from across New York state, the US and Canada had come to the predominantly Black neighborhood to show support after the shooting. And Sunday was no different as speakers hailed Buffalo residents’ resilience 12 months on from the mass killing that left their city bereaved. Continue reading...

US homeland security secretary defended strict new immigration measures as volunteers pitched in to help migrants stuck at borderCrossings at the US border with Mexico have dropped 50% after Title 42 restrictions ended at the end of Thursday and the Biden White House implemented an arguably tougher immigration policy, US homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Sunday.Meanwhile, Joe Biden on Sunday told White House pool reporters that the border situation immediately after Title 42’s elimination was “much better than you all expected”. The president said he did not plan to visit the border “in the near term” because to do so at this stage “would just be disruptive”. Continue reading...

While other students on the bus were engrossed with their devices, Dillon Reeves noticed the driver in distress and guided bus to safetyA Michigan boy who recently stopped a school bus from crashing after the driver lost consciousness leapt into action because he was the only passenger not distracted by an electronic device, according to a new report from CBS.On Sunday, two weeks after seventh-grader Dillon Reeves regained control of a school bus when its driver became unconscious, the network reported that the boy’s parents’ refusal to provide him a cellphone paid off in a big way. Continue reading...

JD Vance, accused of pushing white-supremacist ‘replacement’ theory, to appear alongside senior Tories at NatConJD Vance will virtually appear at a conservative conference in the UK this week, as the freshman Republican senator of Ohio seeks to take his rightwing message to an international audience.Vance will speak at the National Conservatism Conference, usually shortened to NatCon, which will begin on Monday in London. Other featured speakers include senior Tories Suella Braverman, Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg and David Frost. Continue reading...

Jenna Barbee, who is under investigation, insists film is related to curriculum and warns investigators are traumatizing her studentsA Florida teacher under investigation because she showed her class the Disney animated movie Strange World which features a gay character has defended herself on social media, insisting the film related to the curriculum and warning that state investigators were traumatizing her 10- and 11-year-old students.Jenna Barbee, a teacher at Winding Waters school in Hernando county, Florida, released a six-minute TikTok video in which she gave her side of the story. She said she had been reported to the local school board by one of her students’ mother, who sits on the board and was on a “rampage to get rid of every form of representation out of our schools”, Barbee alleged. Continue reading...

The former South Carolina governor – far behind Donald Trump in the polls – says nationwide ban is currently unviableNikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who is vying for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has distanced herself from calls for a federal abortion ban, saying that to promise such a universal barrier to terminations would be to lie to the American people.In an interview with CBS News’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Haley declined to follow some of her other potential Republican rivals for the presidency by backing a nationwide ban through congressional legislation. Instead, she said it is up to each state to set its own limit on abortion. Continue reading...

Boy’s eight-year-old sister was hunting for mushrooms in her back yard in a rural area when she was attackedA 13-year-old boy in Michigan saved his younger sister from a potential kidnapper by shooting the attacker with a slingshot, according to authorities.Police called the boy’s actions “extraordinary” and said he deserved to be commended after defending his sister with a weapon many associate with the biblical hero David – in his mortal battle against Goliath – and Link, the protagonist of the classic video game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Continue reading...

John Kennedy’s comments about Mexicans ‘eating cat food’ came as he urged the US military to enter country to ‘stop the cartels’Mexicans “would be eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent behind an Outback” Steakhouse restaurant if it were not for their nation’s proximity to the US, and their country should be invaded because of the presence of drug cartels there, the US senator John Neely Kennedy said.The Louisiana Republican’s racist remarks drew a strong condemnation from Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, who called Kennedy “a profoundly ignorant man”. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, meanwhile, urged the 37 million Americans of Mexican descent – along with other Latinos in the US – “not to vote for people with this very arrogant, very offensive and very foolish mentality” in the future. Continue reading...

Endless Zoom meetings, a full inbox, innumerable Slack notifications – who’s got any time to actually work?Meetings, more meetings. A Zoom call. A Google Hangout. Another meeting. Answering emails. Have you checked Slack? Did you sign off on those expenses in Concur? Ever feel too busy at work to get any actual work done? Well, apparently you are right. According to a new report from Microsoft, our workplaces have a serious productivity problem.The study – which surveyed nearly 31,000 full-time employed or self-employed workers across 31 markets between 1 February 2023 and 14 March 2023 – found that 64% say they struggle with having the time and energy to do their job. Meetings overload is the biggest productivity killer. Respondents to the survey said that meetings are their “number one productivity disruptor” with more than two-thirds saying they likely wouldn’t even be missed if they weren’t there.Gene Marks is a columnist, author and small business owner. His company, the Marks Group PC, provides technology and financial management services to SMBs in the US and abroad. Continue reading...

As a child in communist Albania, I yearned to play with her. But as soon as she was within reach, I didn’t want her any moreWhen I was a child in communist Albania, happiness was called Aniushka. Aniushka was a large Czechoslovak doll that belonged to my neighbours. They were party members who had been allowed to travel to Prague at one point, and brought Aniushka back to decorate their bedroom. She was not on sale in any Albanian shop.She had thick, black hair done up in a chignon, and wore an imperial-looking, orange satin dress adorned with lace. Her lips were bright red, and she had deep blue eyes, and long, dark eyelashes that gave her a dreamy expression. She sat majestically on the bed with the sides of her dress unfolded over the mattress, giving the plain, communist furniture a solemn, Habsburg air. I would stare for hours, longing to touch her. Sometimes, I sat on a chair by the bedroom doorstep – which was as close to her as I was allowed to get – and we talked about whether she might like, one day, to become a toy rather than an ornament.Lea Ypi is a professor in political theory in the government department at the London School of EconomicsDo 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...

William Leslie Arnold killed his parents aged 16 in 1957 and escaped prison ten years later, mystifying authorities until nowWilliam Leslie Arnold was just 16 years old in 1958 when he killed his parents and buried them in the backyard after they refused to let him borrow the family car to take his girlfriend to a drive-in movie showing of The Undead.Arnold went about his life in and around Omaha, Nebraska, telling everyone – even family members – that his parents had taken a trip. Two weeks later he was arrested, confessed to the killings and led investigators to his parents’ makeshift gravesite. Continue reading...

Experts say party’s ‘tough-on-crime’ approach for 2024 could spark rise in violence and worsen US mass incarcerationRepublican and rightwing rhetoric over the state of crime in the US could spark a rise in violent incidents and worsen the country’s mass incarceration problem, experts say, as “tough-on-crime” political ads and messaging seem set to play a large role in the 2024 election.Violent crime was a huge focus for Republican candidates during the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans spent about $50m on crime ads in the two months leading up to those elections, the ads pushing a dystopian vision of cities ridden by murder, robbery and assault, and of Democratic politicians unwilling to act. Continue reading...

A novel approach to holding Russia accountable for atrocities in Ukraine could ensure that lies and mass murder do not go unpunishedThe powerful were meant to be afraid of the truth. Journalists were meant to “hold truth to power”. Evidence was meant to destroy wrongdoers as sunlight does a vampire. Find the evidence, the logic went, and the powerful could be shamed and brought to justice.Historically, the powerful would try to censor and suppress the facts. The Nazis tried to keep the truth about their atrocities hidden. The Soviet leadership would howl with embarrassment when dissidents passed information about conditions in the gulag to the outside world. Richard Nixon was brought down after the facts of his bugging his political opponents, and his ensuing cover-up, were brought to light. Continue reading...

Network’s own reporters criticise decision to give ex-president platform in ‘town hall’ format that allowed him to spout freelyDonald Trump and CNN were in rare agreement: the former president’s hour of free prime-time television on Wednesday evening, dressed up as a “town hall” with Republican voters, was a triumph.“America was served very well by what we did last night,” CNN’s chief executive, Chris Licht, told skeptical members of his own staff at the network’s daily news conference the following morning. Continue reading...

The return to the Arab fold of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is deeply shameful, and that shame should be shared by the US and its alliesThe grotesque rehabilitation of Bashar al-Assad’s regime – Syria’s criminal president has been cordially invited to this week’s Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia – makes sense to cynical Arab governments. They hope to reduce Damascus’s dependence on Iran, encourage refugees to return, halt state-sponsored drug rackets and cash in on reconstruction.But from a human perspective, their decision is utterly shameful. More than 300,000 civilians have died since Assad turned his guns on Syria’s 2011 Arab spring pro-democracy uprising. About 14 million people, half Syria’s population, have fled their homes. Most who remain are short of food. Then came February’s earthquakes. Continue reading...

Investigations are mounting, making it harder for the former president to spin his troubles as persecution by liberal elitesIf the outcome of Donald Trump’s sexual assault trial wasn’t a foregone conclusion, his response to a jury finding he attacked the writer E Jean Carroll was all too predictable.The former president lashed out at the judge as biased and the jurors as “from an anti-Trump area”, meaning liberal New York, after they believed Carroll’s account of the millionaire businessman attacking her in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s. The jury ordered him to pay $5m in damages for “sexual abuse” and for defaming Carroll by accusing her of “a made-up SCAM” for political ends. Continue reading...

Proponents hope a sleek inter-city service between the two US cities will revolutionize public transportation in the region and reduce the amount of cars on the roadThe last time someone tried to run an eye-catching passenger train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, in the early 1970s, it was more like a cruise ship than a regular rail service, a rollicking ride along an old freight line with booze, gambling and live music nicknamed the Crapshooters Express. It left California on a Friday and returned its passengers – drunker, poorer and not always happier – in time for work on Monday morning.The idea did not catch on, largely because the journey took seven-and-a-half hours each way, almost twice as long as crossing the Mojave desert by car and more than seven times as long as flying. On the train’s star-studded inaugural run, the scotch, bourbon, gin and vodka all ran out within an hour. Amtrak agreed to run the service only because the Las Vegas hamber of commerce agreed to cover any losses and then only on weekends during the winter months. Passenger numbers fell off precipitously and after going through a few different iterations, the venture collapsed. Continue reading...

Florida governor lands in crucial early-voting state in Republican nomination process after weeks of lagging behind TrumpFlorida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, has rolled out a hefty list of endorsements from Iowa lawmakers as he visited the crucial early-voting state on Saturday in an attempt to garner support for his potential Republican presidential campaign.The pro-DeSantis Super Pac Never Back Down announced endorsements from 37 Republican Iowa state senators and representatives, including the Iowa senate president, Amy Sinclair, and the state house majority leader, Matt Windschitl. Continue reading...

The allure of digital relationships that can be curated and controlled comes at the expense of mutual vulnerabilityThe western drift away from seeking moral instruction from the church is understandable; the morality plays staged every day on Reddit’s infamous “Am I the Asshole?” threads are far more entertaining.A few weeks ago, a post went viral in which the author seeks a public verdict on the question “AITA for asking my roommates to remove their dildos from the bathroom mirror in a way that was not kind?” The young poster had responded to the presence of newly washed sex toys in a shared space with a disgusted hostility and the dildo-owning flatmate complained the poster should have requested the removal more politely. Continue reading...

Daniel Penny was charged on Friday with second-degree manslaughter in death of fellow passenger on New York subwayAn online fundraiser for Daniel Penny, who placed fellow subway rider Jordan Neely in a fatal chokehold in a case that has come to symbolize fears over crime, racism and vigilantism, has raised more than $1m for his legal defense.The fundraiser for Daniel Penny, a white former marine, who was charged on Friday with second-degree manslaughter in the death of Neely, who is Black, is on GiveSendGo. The Christian fundraising website has also hosted drives for rightwing vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse and far-right groups, including January 6 insurrectionists. Continue reading...

Situation at the border stands in contrast to Republican fear-mongering as Biden officials establish strict new policiesThe US-Mexico border saw surprising calm one full day after pandemic-era immigration restrictions known as Title 42 were lifted and replaced by new Biden administration policies intending to block unlawful crossings while establishing a legal means of entering the US, according to reports.The seeming quiet stands in stark contrast to fear-mongering promoted by many conservatives including the Texas governor, Greg Abbott. The Republican politician accused Biden of “laying down the welcome mat to people across the entire world” and deployed “specially trained soldiers” to the border. Continue reading...

We’re shamed if we make ‘bad’ choices on diet, but Big Food and an overwork culture are the real culpritsWe live in a toxic food environment, and Big Food has extremely clever marketers and food scientists. That all of us eat a lot of Big Food’s produce means those people are very good at their jobs. It doesn’t mean we have failed if we eat what the industry makes.In the UK, about 50% of the average adult’s diet, and 65% of a child’s, is ultra-processed. As Dr Chris Van Tulleken’s latest book, Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food... and Why Can’t We Stop?, points out, that means much of what we eat includes newly invented substances that humans haven’t eaten before and we know very little about how they interact with us, or each other. Continue reading...

Talented teenager has been a remarkable success story but needs to make adjustments on and off court to reach next levelHalfway through her third-round tussle with Paula Badosa in Madrid this month, Coco Gauff’s mind was elsewhere. Errors sprayed from her racket and she could barely land a forehand inside the court. Gauff haemorrhaged game after game, sharing grim expressions with her team. She was dismantled 6-3, 6-0.“I mentally wasn’t engaged in that second set. I let something happen in the first, maybe one or two bad points. I just stayed down,” said Gauff this week in Rome. Continue reading...