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The historic leaks prompted legislation: yet governments are finding new ways to monitor us. The UK’s online safety bill is one of themIt’s been 10 years since Edward Snowden holed up in a Hong Kong hotel room and exposed Britain and America’s mass surveillance operations to a group of journalists. His bombshell revelations revealed how the US and UK governments were spying on their citizens, intercepting, processing and storing their data, and sharing this information. Since then, although neither state has lost its appetite for hoovering up huge amounts of personal data, new transparency and oversight constraints, together with the growth of encrypted technology, have tilted the balance towards privacy.Snowden’s revelations sparked outrage and anger. Bulk interception was being done without a democratic mandate and with few real safeguards. When the scope of this surveillance came to light, officials claimed most of the information was not “read” and therefore its collection did not violate privacy. This was disingenuous; the data could reveal an intimate picture of someone’s life – a fact that was upheld in later legal challenges, which proved the surveillance violated privacy and human rights law.Heather Brooke is an author, investigative journalist and a member of the Royal United Services Institute panel appointed to examine government surveillance Continue reading...

Sheriff recommends charges over flights arranged by Florida governor to deport 49 South American migrants to wealthy townA Texas sheriff’s office has recommended criminal charges over flights that the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, arranged to deport 49 South American migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts, last year.In a statement on Monday, the Bexar county sheriff’s office said it had filed a criminal case with the local district attorney over the flight. The Bexar county sheriff, Javier Salazar, has previously said the migrants were “lured under false pretenses” into traveling to Martha’s Vineyard, a wealthy liberal town. Continue reading...

There should be an inspiring field of candidates to choose from. But the latest to challenge for the Democratic nomination shows the options are severely limitedRobert F Kennedy Jr likes to talk to dead people. In a recent interview, the anti-vaccine activist, who is challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, said he talks to the dearly departed daily. “They are one-way prayers for strength and wisdom,” he later clarified. “I get no strategic advice from the dead.”It doesn’t seem as if he needs it. Kennedy, who is the nephew of the former President John F Kennedy and the son of the assassinated presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy, is doing pretty well in the land of the living. While it is incredibly unlikely that the 69-year-old will wangle his way into the White House, his long-shot presidential campaign has gained momentum. According to a recent CNN poll, 20% of Democratic voters say they support RFK to be the party’s candidate and 64% say they would consider supporting him. That is well behind Biden (who came in with 60% of supporters) but nothing to sniff at. Particularly considering that Kennedy doesn’t have many policies, just a famous last name – and a penchant for spreading conspiracy theories and referencing Anne Frank in offensive ways. Continue reading...

City council vote 11-4 to move ahead with police and firefighter training center despite significant pushbackThe Atlanta city council early on Tuesday approved funding for the construction of a proposed police and firefighter training center, rejecting the pleas of hundreds of activists who spoke for hours in fierce opposition to the project they decry as “Cop City”.Some Cop City opponents have faced unprecedented arrests during which police have accused them under a state domestic terrorism statute, prompting a legal challenge which argues that the protesters are being unduly targeted over their constitutionally protected free speech. Continue reading...

Keenan Anderson’s cousin and BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors disappointed at ‘gaslighting’ from coronerThe Los Angeles county coroner on Friday released the official autopsy of a man who died after being repeatedly Tased and restrained by Los Angeles police officers, declaring the manner of death to be “undetermined”, a conclusion that has sparked outrage from advocates and his family.Keenan Anderson died on 3 January after LAPD officers held him down while responding to a traffic accident. Anderson was repeatedly Tased, and he yelled “they’re trying to kill me” before he became unconscious. He suffered a fatal heart attack at a hospital four hours later. Continue reading...

About 16,000 people could be affected and water will reach ‘critical level’ in hours, says Kherson governor. Plus, the truth about ‘local’ food in US supermarketsGood morning.The Ukrainian government has accused Russia of blowing up the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River, and called for people living downstream to evacuate in the face of catastrophic flooding.How big is the dam? The dam traverses Ukraine’s enormous Dnipro River, holding back a huge reservoir of water. The dam is 30 metres tall and hundreds of metres wide. It was built in 1956 as part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant. The reservoir it contains holds an estimated 18 cubic kilometres of water, about the same volume as the Great Salt Lake in Utah.How much damage will be caused? The areas most under threat of flooding are the islands along the course of the river downstream of Nova Kakhovka and much of the Russian-held left bank in southern Kherson. Earlier modelling of such a disaster suggested Kherson city would not take the brunt of the flood, but the harbour, the docklands and an island in the south of the city are likely to be inundated. It is unclear how many people would lose their homes.What did Dennis say about Trump? Though Donald Trump has condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis, Dennis noted how proponents of both have generally supported the former president, who is widely considered the frontrunner for the 2024 White House nomination. He said he imagines his father “just rotates in his grave” in Arlington National Cemetery most times that Trump speaks. “He lies all the time – he cheats,” Dennis said of Trump. “I think that he is a guy who has none of the values that my father did.” Continue reading...

State Farm will almost entirely stop issuing new policies in California – with climate-exacerbated wildfires and bad public policy a large reason whyState Farm, the country’s largest property insurer, announced this week that it will almost entirely stop issuing new policies in California, the country’s largest property insurance market. The reasons for forgoing all that new business are entirely economic. The company cited “historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market”. Those things are owed largely to the wildfires engulfing bigger parts of the state in bigger chunks of the year.California’s woes have a lot to do with the climate crisis, which fuels the hot, dry conditions that turn wooded hills into kindling. It’s also a political failure. Housing crises in the Golden State have pushed more and more people out of densely populated areas and into the so-called wildland-urban interface – places that are cheaper to live in, and more prone to burn. Wealthy homeowners in fire-prone enclaves are also reluctant to move, keen to keep rebuilding properties that keep getting destroyed.Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at the New Republic and the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back Continue reading...

Court’s new ruling makes it harder for workers to join a union, easier to break one and riskier to try to force concessionsTheir contract had expired, so the local teamsters, drivers of concrete-mixing barrel trucks for a firm called Glacier Northwest, in Washington state, decided to walk off the job. Like all strikes, the point of the work stoppage was to inflict financial consequences on a recalcitrant management side: to show the bosses that their employees were united in shared interest and mutual protection and that it would cost them less money to negotiate in good faith and agree to the workers’ demands than to continue to fight the union for less favorable, more exploitative conditions. When the teamsters began their strike, 16 of the barrel mixing trucks were full. They drove them back to the Glacier Northwest lot and left them there.But if you don’t mix concrete, it hardens, and becomes useless. If this happens in a barrel truck, sometimes that can cause damage to the truck, too. When Glacier Northwest realized that their teamster employees had gone on strike, non-union workers were able to remove the concrete over the course of five hours, averting damage to the trucks. But they lost the use of all the concrete that had been mixed in those 16 barrel trucks that day.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Selwyn Jones has discovered ways to grow around his grief after his nephew was killed by police three years ago, including co-founding a nonprofit focused on addressing racial justiceThree years ago, footage of the brutal murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis emerged online, sparking a firestorm of outrage that spread well beyond America’s borders. As protesters took to the streets to demand racial justice and an end to police brutality, George Floyd’s uncle, Selwyn Jones, was stunned.He had never expected his late nephew’s name to be chanted so swiftly by hundreds of thousands around the world who stood in solidarity with his family. Three years after Floyd’s murder, 57-year-old Jones has discovered different ways to grow around his grief, largely through the Hope929 Foundation, a nonprofit focused on addressing racial justice which he co-founded with Liz Darden, an Arkansas-based educator. Continue reading...

Ajike ‘AJ’ Owens killed after allegedly trying to retrieve iPad taken from her child, while shooter has not been arrested or chargedA Black mother of four in Florida was killed by a white neighbor who shot her through a front door as the victim attempted to retrieve an iPad taken from her child, the civil rights attorney Ben Crump has said.In a Twitter post on Monday, Crump said the death of Ajike “AJ” Owens, 35, at a housing complex in Ocala on Friday evening was an “unjust killing” and lamented that the shooter had not been arrested or charged. Continue reading...

Gender-affirming care has helped many people like me. Yet earlier this year, the state of Missouri decided that transgender kids had too many rightsAccording to a Washington Post-KFF poll, only 43% of cisgender people (a person whose gender identity aligns with their assigned sex at birth) know a transgender person, so allow me to introduce myself.My name is Chelsea Freels and I use she/her pronouns. I’m a transgender junior at Clayton high school in Missouri. I love learning about psychology, computer science, and political and queer theory. After the pandemic relinquished its grip enough to open schools, I joined and have helped lead the business and media side of Clayton high school’s first robotics team. (Go RoboHounds!)Chelsea Freels is a transgender activist and a junior at Clayton high school Continue reading...

The abuses the Guardian helped him bring to worldwide attention go on: the authorities have merely made it harder to expose them

In 1945, then OSS agent Richard Helms sent son a letter on Hitler’s stationery saying ‘there can be nothing that’s worse’ than NazismA man who was three years old when his father – an American intelligence operator – sent him a letter on a vanquished Adolf Hitler’s stationery has declared himself disgusted by US extremist groups who still admire the former Nazi ruler.“Those people have no idea – the history and foulness of that,” Dennis Helms, the son of the late Richard Helms, the CIA director from 1966 to 1973, said of the presence of neo-Nazis and antisemitism in the US. “There can be nothing that’s worse … I can’t say enough bad about that.” Continue reading...

The US pro league is a start-up scrapping for its place in the sports world. But those at the sharp end pushing for a union have met opposition from ownersOne year ago, Mark O’Keefe helped the Austin Gilgronis clinch their first Major League Rugby playoff place. The center and his teammates were elated. But just before they bussed two-and-a-half hours south-east to Houston for their final game of the regular season, their coach, Sam Harris, called a meeting.“After beating San Diego, rumors started to circulate about our season ending prematurely,” O’Keefe said. “So the lads had a pretty bad feeling.” Continue reading...

The Argentinian is considering his options after PSG. Florida’s sunshine and lifestyle may appeal but he would find a club mired in mediocrityThe boos in Lionel Messi’s farewell match as a Paris Saint-Germain player made clear just how badly the Argentinian needs a fresh start, and a new club. Out of contract this summer, Messi faces a late career crossroads with three options in front of him – an emotional return to Barcelona, a switch that could be worth $1bn to Saudi Arabia or a move to Major League Soccer. PSG fans might have grown tired of Messi, but he remains a man in-demand.As things stand, MLS would be a third choice for Messi. On Monday, his father said his son “would love to return to Barcelona”, while the hundreds of millions the Saudis are offering would tempt even someone as ludicrously wealthy as Messi. Having said that, MLS hasn’t pursued a player this aggressively since David Beckham was lured to the league back in 2007. Like Beckham, Messi is a player who would move the needle in the USA and Canada. He could kickstart a new phase of growth for MLS, and the sport in general, in the run-up to the 2026 World Cup on North American soil. Inter Miami, however, aren’t doing much for the sales pitch. Continue reading...

Mr Z has developed a taste for extreme food prep content. The footage is disgusting and has ruined his algorithmI’ve worked pretty hard to ban the use of Facebook in the household, not because of the threat it poses to democracy, nor because I’m worried about privacy or data or whatnot, but because it makes us look old. The kids don’t use it, obviously, because they’re not old. Mr Z has historically been susceptible to “six years ago today” nostalgia jags, and posting pictures of us on holiday that make it look as though everyone’s getting on better than they are. I’ve worked pretty hard to stamp that out, and if nixing Facebook means we miss the odd event of other people who are also old, I’m OK with that.What I can’t do is stop him watching food videos. It is a very distinct genre; I don’t know how you’d land on it by accident, except maybe if you typed into Google “the most disgusting thing anyone’s ever eaten”. A guy, often with only his arms visible, probably with sleeve tattoos, will get a gigantic piece of meat and fashion it into an unnatural shape, usually a rectangle. Then he’ll layer it into a tower, spliced with cheese, and wrap it in more meat. Somehow egg yolks will get involved, then additional cheese. It’s all a bit sped up, and mesmerising. I don’t know where the suspense comes from – what could it possibly taste like? Who would ever eat it? Why did an animal – sorry, eight animals – have to die for this? When is karma going to get involved and exact some retribution upon the mozzarella dude? These questions are never answered. And now you’re in the machine, and some fresh horror involving a thousand frankfurters is just about to begin.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

After 16 South Americans were abandoned outside a church on Friday, another flight of 20 migrants arrived on Monday morningFor the second time in four days, Florida picked up people seeking asylum and took them by private jet to Sacramento at taxpayer expense, California officials said on Monday after another flight arrived at a local airport.California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, on Monday branded his rightwing Republican Florida counterpart, Ron DeSantis, a “small, pathetic man”, and appeared to threaten kidnapping charges after the first incident in which a group of migrants was dumped at a Sacramento church. Continue reading...

The homes are advertised as ‘resilient to extreme weather’ and also keep out insects and rodents, according to manufacturer Plus 1Home Depot has quietly entered the real estate market.The US home improvement store giant appeared to debut its new tiny home or “getaway pad”, by home-kit manufacturing company Plus 1, last year, and it’s currently garnering traction on social media as a possible solution to unaffordable housing and property damage caused by the climate crisis. Continue reading...

Agent who took more than $1.4m in cash and diamonds to trade secrets is believed to have died of natural causes at age 79Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent who took more than $1.4m in cash and diamonds to trade secrets with Moscow, in one of the most notorious spying cases in American history, died in prison Monday.Hanssen, 79, was found unresponsive in his cell at a federal prison in Florence, Colorado, and later pronounced dead, prison officials said. He is believed to have died of natural causes, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press. The person was not authorized to publicly discuss details of Hanssen’s death and spoke on condition of anonymity. Continue reading...

A group of nearly 1,000 protesters, mostly women, demanded a ban on all guns – a move the governor said would be unconstitutionalHundreds of women staged a sit-in outside Colorado’s capitol on Monday, calling on the state’s Democratic governor to ban all guns, a move his office said “would simply be unconstitutional”.The gun-ban protest included an estimated 1,000 people by late Monday morning, with some protesters joining from out of state, the Denver Post reported. Continue reading...

While wolverines are native to California, they’ve been essentially extinct from the state since the 1920sA wolverine was spotted three times last month in the eastern Sierra Nevada, a rare occurrence for an animal that’s only been seen one other time in California over the last 100 years, state wildlife officials said.While wolverines are native to California, they’ve been essentially extinct from the state since the 1920s – likely the result of hunting and fur trapping in the decades following the gold rush, though records from the time don’t indicate what exactly caused the population to decline. Continue reading...

Republican presidential candidate sided with the Florida governor claiming children were being ‘indoctrinated’ about LGBTQ+ issuesRepublican presidential candidate Tim Scott was booed by a television audience – and rescued by Whoopi Goldberg – after he defended Florida governor Ron DeSantis and claimed American children were being “indoctrinated” regarding LGBTQ+ issues.The South Carolina senator, 57, also accused hosts of ABC’s The View of voicing a “dangerous, offensive, disgusting message to send to our young people today”, in contending that his success is an exception in a systemically racist society. Continue reading...

Former vice president filed papers on Monday; Democrats criticise Haley on abortion stance after CNN town hallDonald Trump’s lawyers are at the justice department today to argue to top officials that the former president should not be charged over the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, the Washington Post reports.The attorneys at the meeting include John Rowley and James Trusty, who last month sent a letter to attorney general Merrick Garland, asking for a meeting and complaining about the investigation into Trump, which is led by special counsel Jack Smith. Continue reading...

Ex-president’s lawyers complain about perceived misconduct in investigation into handling of documents and obstructionLawyers for Donald Trump met with top US justice department officials on Thursday to complain about perceived misconduct in the criminal investigation into the former US president’s handling of national security materials and obstruction, according to two people familiar with the matter.The meeting involved Trump lawyers Jim Trusty, John Rowley and Lindsay Halligan speaking with the special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigation, and a senior career official to the deputy attorney general, one person said. CBS News first reported the meeting. Continue reading...

This blog is now closed. You can read the full report here: Binance accused of mishandling fundsHere’s a quick summary of what happened today:The US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, the most serious action taken by US regulators against the company.The SEC said that Binance operated a shell company, Binance.US, to skirt federal regulators, along with diverting customer funds to outside entities.Binance issued a response to the SEC’s lawsuit saying that it had been complying with regulators’ “questions” and was looking to negotiate a settlement with the agency.In the aftermath of news of the complaint, the price of Bitcoin fell below $26,000 for the first time since March. Continue reading...

The 70-year-old activist, intellectual and democratic socialist said on Twitter that he will be a candidate for the 2024 contestCornel West, the 70-year-old activist and public intellectual, announced on Monday that he is running for president in the 2024 election as a candidate for the People’s party. West made the announcement in a video posted to Twitter, saying that he had “decided to run for truth and justice”.“I come from a tradition where I care about you,” West said. “I care about the quality of your life, I care about whether you have access to a job with a living wage, decent housing, women having control over their bodies, healthcare for all.” Continue reading...

John Rumpel said daughter and granddaughter were among crash victims, and another daughter was killed in 1994 diving accidentA leading Republican donor whose family members were killed in a plane crash in Virginia on Sunday following a pursuit by US military jets lost another daughter in a scuba diving tragedy almost 30 years ago, it was reported on Monday.John Rumpel, a Florida businessman and frequent contributor to Donald Trump’s political operation, said his daughter Adina Azarian, 49, and two-year-old granddaughter were among four victims of the crash that caused a security scare when the plane flew over restricted airspace in Washington DC. Continue reading...

The three-year-old Louisiana pup was already known for her prodigious licker before Guinness confirmed she was a winnerVirtually everyone who met Drew and Sadie Williams’s dog after the married couple from Louisiana first adopted Zoey three years ago could tell the labrador-German shepherd puppy had a long tongue.It turns out it wasn’t just long – it was longer than that of any other dog in the world. Continue reading...

One year after Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips were killed in the Amazon, their work explaining what is happening there goes onThe decision by Brazilian police to charge two more men with the murders of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips, in the Javari valley region of the Amazon, brings the possibility of justice one step closer. To the three fishers already in custody for the shootings, which took place one year ago, have been added the alleged leader of a transnational illegal fishing network, Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, nicknamed Colombia (where he also has citizenship). A fourth fisher, Jânio Freitas de Souza, is alleged to have been one of Silva Villar’s henchmen on the Itaquaí river, where the killings took place.For friends and supporters of the two men’s work defending the Amazon and its Indigenous inhabitants, the investigation’s progress offers some relief. If such acts of violence go unpunished, criminal organisations that wield power in the Amazon will be further emboldened in their use. But even if convictions are secured, this will be the exception and not the rule when it comes to attacks on environmental defenders – defined by the United Nations as people who strive to protect human rights relating to nature.Do 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...

Securities and Exchange Commission alleges Binance mixed billions in customer funds and lied to regulators and investorsBinance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, was sued by the US’s top financial watchog on Monday, accused of mishandling customer funds and lying to regulators and investors.The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused Binance of mixing “billions of dollars” in customer funds and secretly sending them to a separate company controlled by Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao. Continue reading...

The intolerable pressure leads to terrible family rows. I thought I had escaped the worst of it with my children, but I now realise I was wrongIn September 2013, I thought I was the most intelligent person ever to exist. By some masterstroke of family planning, I’d managed to have two children, spaced almost two years apart, but because the first was born in September and the second August, they were in adjacent school years. By my calculations, I’d saved two whole years of childcare, which back then was more expensive than the mortgage, but only because at that point Liz Truss was still in charge of childcare costs, and had yet to screw with everyone’s mortgage. And it wasn’t even intentional, my miracle! I was a genius at the level of the ovary.Obviously, I hadn’t really thought through what the consequences would be, once they hit the meaningful-exam stage of life, which they still haven’t – at the moment I’m just observing other people. GCSE and A-level events are objectively weird for a household whatever its composition, because for the first time, the kid’s day has the highest stakes. You can pretend this is true for the preceding decade – big day, darling, you’re the narrator in Sinbad the Sailor and yes it is a big deal whether you get the crabs and the dancing squid in the right order – but now it is real. It doesn’t matter what your job is, whole human lives could be hanging off your performance; you still won’t come anywhere near the singular tightrope of the exam, that absolutely atomised space where you’re not allowed to ask for help, you can’t take a little more time, and you’ll be judged on the outcome, indeed that is all you’ll be judged on, until such time as you achieve anything else, which could be never.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Rivals condemn ex-president for posting a message of support on Truth Social after North Korea added to WHO boardA number of Republican presidential candidates, including Ron DeSantis, have criticized Donald Trump after the former president again praised the dictatorial leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un.The intervention from Trump’s rivals, who have largely avoided attacking the influential frontrunner, comes as a rare moment of dissension during the campaign. Continue reading...

The route I used to escape is now closed – but new technology makes it increasingly hard to keep the population under control

Russia claims to have fought off ‘major offensive’ and says 250 Ukrainian troops killed in attack. Plus, what caused a global shortage of pink paint?

After a Sweet 16 shooting killed four Black youth, Martin Collins searches for answers and fights to keep his son’s name aliveOn the night of 15 April, gunfire broke out at the dance studio in Dadeville, Alabama, where Alexis Dowdell was celebrating her 16th birthday.The shooting turned a joyful gathering of teenagers into a chaotic and bloody nightmare, cutting short the lives of four young people in the small rural town north of Montgomery: Marsiah Collins, a 19-year-old high school graduate and musician; Shaunkivia Nicole “KeKe” Smith, a 17-year-old senior who managed the basketball and track and field teams; Corbin Dahmontrey Holston, 23, who graduated from Dadeville high school in 2018; and Alexis’s brother, Philstavious “Phil” Dowdell, an 18-year-old star football player. Continue reading...

Former DoJ prosecutors say Trump will pack government agencies with sympathizers in effort to ‘secure his autocratic power’As Donald Trump begins another campaign for the presidency, his extremist rhetoric and lies about the 2020 election signal that in a second term, Trump would attempt to thwart the rule of law at the justice department and other agencies in an effort to expand his power and attack critics.Former DoJ officials, some Republicans and academics say that if Trump becomes the Republican nominee and is elected again in 2024, he would most likely appoint officials who would reflexively do his bidding, target dissenters he deems part of the “deep state” and mount zealous drives to rein in independent agencies. Continue reading...

Now that Biden has signed the deal into law, what can we expect in the next 17 months leading up to the 2024 election?It was supposed to be their ace in the hole, their single biggest bargaining leverage. But in the end, House Maga Republicans got surprisingly little out of their agreement to increase the debt ceiling.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...

The country’s new housing law could change so much – but may be reversed if rightwing parties gain more influenceA housing revolution is taking place in Spain. On 26 May, a monumental new housing law came into force. It was the culmination of years of work and sought to enshrine housing as a human right. But now that vision is in danger. Two days after the law passed, rightwing parties won seats in local and regional elections. Last week Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, called a snap election. On 23 July, when Spain goes to the polls, the fate of this law will hang in the balance.The origins of the law go back decades. In 1956, José Luis de Arrese, who would become Franco’s first housing minister, said that Spain had to change from “a country of working-class tenants to a country of homeowners”. Governments encouraged property ownership at the expense of renting. It created a new class of social housing – “publicly protected housing”. Unlike your average council home, a publicly protected home is subsidised by the government and offered for sale at an affordable price. Once 30 years have elapsed, it can be sold on the free market. Continue reading...

The new Little Mermaid film reinforces the sense that the Disney princesses’ significant others are doomed to non-existenceMuch has been said over the years about the Disney princesses – some are bad role models, some good, they set impossible expectations for young girls, they’re predominantly white, and so on. But what about their male counterparts? Just like the princesses have evolved as characters, so have the roles of the Disney princes; yet, we rarely hear about their cultural impact (or lack thereof).So who are the Disney princes? The latest iteration of the character is Prince Eric in the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. Although he has more screen time than in the original, he’s arguably even more redundant this time around. The film follows the same story beats, but it overhauls Ariel from a naive and reckless figure into a mature protagonist who doesn’t fall for the first human pretty boy she lays her eyes on. The Little Mermaid wants to keep Eric, but it doesn’t want to need him. Continue reading...

In a video released by the US Navy, the USS Chung-Hoon observes a Chinese navy ship conduct what is described as an 'unsafe' manoeuvre in the Taiwan Strait on 3 June. The Chinese navy ship moves across the path of the American destroyer, forcing the US ship to slow to avoid a collision, the US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement. The incident occurred as the US destroyer and Canadian frigate HMCS Montreal were conducting a 'freedom of navigation' transit of the strait between Taiwan and mainland China. China's military rebuked the US and Canada for 'deliberately provoking risk'

I thought that dropping out made me a failure, but it was the making of me as a journalist and writerFirst came the sobbing – a great gust of tears that successively overwhelmed my shirt sleeve, an entire box of tissues and an extra-large bath towel. Next came a prolonged period of sitting cross-legged on the floor and staring blankly into space while a single question – infused with equal parts sorrow and self-pity – tolled in my head: “What will become of me?” At last came the desperation-fuelled gesture I dreaded beyond all others: I quit.I was certain that dropping out of graduate school, and giving up the teaching appointment that funded it, would ruin me. Surely it would mark me as a snivelling loser, a lazy bum, a spineless coward. But I had no choice because my misery was so acute. (And I was running out of towels.)Dr Julia Keller is a journalist and the author of Quitting: A Life Strategy Continue reading...

While some countries turn marriage into a patriotic act, it might just give us a radical new way to live our livesOne of the curious things about marriage is the role it’s played in embedding commonly held views about normality. Married people are generally considered normal people. As such, they have possessed inordinate power to dictate the terms of normality in a way that single people rarely can. And yet marriage, clearly, isn’t for everyone. Plenty of people have no desire to do it. Plenty of others have done it and haven’t liked it. The stats only corroborate this. Fewer people over the years have been getting married, while the stresses and strains of lockdown in 2020 (along with the temporary closure of venues) saw divorces in England and Wales overtake weddings for the first time.Not everyone, however, is taking marriage’s declining popularity lying down. At the recent National Conservatism conference, delegates were promised a national revival founded on “faith, family and flag”. Likewise, China has just proposed a list of measures to actively encourage its young women to marry and have children (and not just one child any more: three, ideally). This is a national policy, but it’s one with global benefits: to stem the threat of economic stagnation, growing the population is supposed to ensure the continuity of a huge, and therefore cheap, labour force. In other words, unless more Chinese women have more children, we’ll all have to pay more for our merch – with matrimony here (never mind that not everyone who marries has children and not everyone who has children gets married) still framed by national governments as the gateway to maternity first of all. Other countries may well follow China’s lead. In Japan, where they’ve just recorded a seventh consecutive year of declining birthrates, and fewer couplings, the government is accused of failing to act quickly enough to mitigate the effects of a rapidly ageing population.Devorah Baum is associate professor of English literature at the University of Southampton and the author of On Marriage Continue reading...